Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000

  The whole lowest floor of the “pagoda” was wide open on all four sides. The pagoda was really just a fancy roof. The metal transshipment platform was in plain view. The Chinese had polished it until it shone even in the subdued light.

  Jonnie walked under the high roof to get a better look at where they had put the all-important console. Then he smiled. Over on the other side of the platform they had built a stand with sides in the shape of a huge, savage-looking, winged beast!

  Angus was there at the console and he waved. “It’s something, isn’t it?” said Angus.

  Yes, it really was. A huge head, two wings, a curling tail. Armored metal. Painted gold and red.

  “A dragon,” said Chong-won. “Once it was the emblem of imperial China. See, it is laminated molecular armor.”

  Not only that, but it had a top! The console was set into the dragon’s back and a cover was made of dragon scales so the operator could work the console without anyone’s observing what he was really doing. There were two stools on the raised console platform and a side shelf for papers and a computer. And all armored. Nothing was going to hurt that console. Or see what was being done with it either.

  Such a far cry from the materialistic Psychlo, who was without paintings or art. And what these Chinese could do!

  “See?” said Chief Chong-won. “It is the same as those other dragons.” He pointed to a dragon that formed the roof point of the pagoda nearby. Each corner had one. And then the chief pointed to some unfinished work over by the bank. “Each bunker was supposed to have its dragon over the entrance. We have not had time to put them up.” They were much smaller dragons, made of baked clay and painted in gold and red.

  The console looked fine under the protective cover. Angus had a copy of the coordinate book there and was drilling himself without punching anything. He was figuring how to convert the figures in the book to this moment of time and the console buttons. “I’ve got it pretty well,” said Angus. “It just takes quite a bit of time to do the calculations. There are eight separate movements listed for each planet and you have to pick where on the planet. But it is not too hard.”

  Jonnie looked up. Another bomb had just hit somewhere. “If all that would stop, we’d be in business. I don’t have any idea when it will or exactly what we can do with this console yet.”

  Chief Chong-won was pointing at the inside of one of the huge posts that held up the pagoda roof and protected the platform and console from rain. They had rigged mine spotlights on each post so that they spotlighted the platform center. “At night,” he said, “they won’t shine outside.”

  Jonnie wanted to go over to the operations bunker, but the chief detoured him into a large underground room in the side wall of the bowl. It was nicely tiled and had a platform at the end for a speaker. It had chairs and would hold about fifty people. Very nice.

  Then Chief Chong-won showed him a sample of thirty little apartments they had made for guests and visitors. They were in addition to pilot and personnel berthings. These Chinese engineers could certainly build in wood and tile and stone, particularly when assisted by Psychlo machinery.

  Jonnie was interested in gun emplacements all around that could cover the platform and the bowl interior. Given troops, the place could really be defended. But they did not have all that many troops.

  He finally got to the ops room. It was a busy place. It was a miniature of the one they had found in the American underground base. A huge map of the planet was in the center. As reports came in from the adjoining communications office, men with long poles were pushing about small lead models of planes and the war vessels in orbit. Enemy vessels were red with tags. Their own planes were green with tags.

  Stormalong was there in his white scarf, leather coat and oversized goggles. He had two Buddhist communicators on either side of him and they were talking into close-to-the-mouth microphones that excluded any speech but theirs. Their shaved heads gleamed under the too-large headphones they wore.

  Jonnie was told they were operating a planetary battle channel—used by Stormalong—and a planetary command channel used by Sir Robert. The Scot war chief had a thirteen-year-old Buddhist boy operating his channel.

  Nobody had to brief Jonnie. It was all there on the big operations board. Singapore was really catching it. There was a lot of antiaircraft being used at the Russian base. Dunneldeen was flying air cover for Edinburgh. Thor was flying air cover for Kariba. Nothing was happening at the Lake Victoria minesite or any of the rest. But where it was hot, it was very hot.

  Jonnie listened in to the babble on both battle and command channels. It was all in Pali which he didn’t speak.

  There was a third station, manned by a Scot officer, that was monitoring enemy traffic.

  Down at the end of the room where there were some spare desks, Glencannon was hunched over a pile of pictures. Jonnie glanced at them. They seemed to be viewscreen runoffs of an air battle. The one he had when the Swiss was killed? Glencannon had another stack, apparently just taken. They were of the huge monster overhead.

  Glencannon seemed very agitated, his hands shaking. He had not really recovered from that courier run, seemingly, for Stormalong didn’t have him flying. He didn’t answer when Jonnie spoke to him.

  The operations board was not good, but Jonnie did not have anything to contribute. It was simply a slugfest. He wondered how long places not protected with atmosphere-armor cable could hold out. Edinburgh was particularly vulnerable. A worry about Chrissie passed through his mind. He hoped she was safe in a bunker under Castle Rock. Sir Robert answered his question. Yes, they were all in bunkers up there. It was mainly antiaircraft that was protecting the place. Dunneldeen was taking care of strafing planes that tried to come in. The antiaircraft was taking care of bombs.

  Jonnie thought he had better look at this antiaircraft they had here. He had never seen the Psychlo guns in action. Not up close.

  He went out. Chief Chong-won had vanished, attending to other duties. Chinese families with their children and an occasional dog were sitting about, mostly in and near rifle pits. They looked a bit worn, a bit worried. Some of the children were crying. But the parents smiled broadly, and got up and bowed as Jonnie passed. It made him hope their confidence was not misplaced.

  The exit from the bowl was a curving underground passage under the cable so it wouldn’t have to be turned off each time anyone went in or out. The curves were to prevent bomb flash and fragments from getting in.

  He went to the first antiaircraft gun emplacement. The gun was shielded. The two gunners were in Russian bulletproof battle dress. A Scot officer saw him and got out of a pit.

  “We don’t have enough of these,” said the Scot, pointing at the gun. “We can’t cover the lake. It’s all we can do to cover this bowl.”

  Jonnie went over to the gun. It had computer sights that zeroed in on anything moving. What one had to do was hit a trigger and the gun calculated the speed and direction of a moving object, sent a blast concussion into its path, then found the next moving object and hit that.

  He looked up. An enemy plane at about two hundred thousand feet was barely discernible. Jonnie knew the range of this gun was short of that by about fifty thousand feet. So did the enemy apparently.

  That plane was dropping bombs.

  The gun bucked five times rapidly. Five bombs exploded in midair, direct hits by the gun. The explosions up there came back down to them.

  “The ones you feel land,” said the Scot officer, “go into the lake. They’re beyond our sector. And of course the ones that fall way out in the woods. We don’t bother with those.”

  Jonnie looked toward the woods. Seven or eight miles away there was quite a fire going. No, three separate fires. Every animal within fifty miles must have left the country. The African buffalo the Sherpas had was probably killed by bombs earlier. Well, the woods wouldn’t burn very long. It was pretty wet just now.

  He looked back at the gun. What havoc one of these things would have
made with their attack on the minesites over a year ago if the attack had not been a total surprise. And if security chiefs like Terl had not let the company defenses go neglected.

  Another bomb hit on a hill about ten miles away, and even from here one could see the geyser of smoke and trees. That battleship up there was dropping pretty heavy bombs. If one hit this cone, he didn’t know whether the atmosphere screen would repel it.

  He was walking back to the entrance when he saw Glencannon come out. He was buttoning up a heavy flying suit. He didn’t have a communicator or copilot with him. He was walking toward a plane that was surrounded by sandbags. Jonnie thought he must have special orders and did not stop him.

  Glencannon got into the plane, a heavily armored Mark 32 that had been converted to high-altitude flying.

  Just as Jonnie started down into the passage, Stormalong came racing out of it.

  “Glencannon!” shouted Stormalong.

  But the pilot had taken off.

  4

  For days Glencannon had brooded over this. His sleep was tortured with nightmares.

  In his mind he could still hear the voice of his Swiss friend, “Go on! Go on! I will shoot them down! Keep going!” And then his scream when he was hit just before he ejected. And back of Glencannon’s eyes he could still see the viewscreen of his friend’s body being shot to pieces in the air.

  He had his own playbacks of the war vessel that had launched those planes. And he had the shots taken of this monster overhead.

  It was the Terrify-class, battle-plane-launching capital ship Capture. There could be no doubt about it. That was the vessel that had butchered his friend.

  He felt he should have gone back, regardless of any orders. The two of them could have finished the Tolnep attack plane, he was certain. But instead he had followed orders.

  He had suppressed the urge to go up and destroy that ship, and he felt that if he did not go ahead and do it now his whole life would be a nightmare.

  He heard Stormalong’s voice in clear Psychlo on the local command channel: “Glencannon! You must come back! I order you to land!” Glencannon clicked the channel off.

  This was Stormalong’s own Mark 32 he was flying. It had been in “emergency reserve.” It was rebuilt for high altitudes, the doors and ports sealed tight. It had huge firepower and even side bombs that could destroy half a city. It was armored to take a ferocious beating. And while its guns may or may not be able to penetrate the skin of a capital ship, there were other ways.

  They could not follow him from the ground. All other Mark 32s were at Lake Victoria and here they were only using interceptors. No, they could not follow him. Not to the heights he was going.

  He vaulted skyward higher and higher. He adjusted his air mask so it was snug: he was going to go out of the atmosphere.

  The Capture was swinging in a slow and ponderous ellipse, three hundred fifty miles above Kariba. It was fifty miles above the termination of the Earth’s atmosphere. It was operating on reaction engines and was no longer simply sailing in orbit.

  Planes would leave it, streak downward to targets, and then return to be rearmed. One spotted him and dove. Almost with contempt, Glencannon centered him in his sights and pressed his fire button. The Mark 32 bucked in recoil.

  The Tolnep burst into fire and plummeted earthward like a comet.

  It alerted the Capture to his presence, and as he neared it the gunports winked and long laces of flame streaked the sky about him. One splashed on the side of the Mark 32. It made the flight deck hot.

  Glencannon danced back out of range. He saw the steering ports of the ship jet fire and anticipated its course.

  Twenty-five miles in front of it he began to tap his console to hold his position. It was just out of the Tolnep’s range.

  He adjusted his viewscreens and began to watch.

  The stars were glaring bright in the blackness above him but he had no eye for them. The Earth spread out its curves below him but he saw them not.

  His whole, concentrated, obsessed attention was on the Capture, studying it.

  The ship resumed operation after a bit, believing his mission must be surveillance, not attack. The arrogance of such a ship was plain. It did not believe it could be hurt. It was once more launching and taking aboard planes.

  Glencannon saw that just before they opened the huge front ports of their hangar deck, a small exterior warning light winked, probably to warn approaching planes to stand clear and not get in front of the ship as it was about to open the door and launch.

  Each time the door opened he studied the enlarged viewscreen of the interior. The entire hangar deck was cluttered with planes. Tolneps in pressure suits were racing about, fueling ships and loading bombs. They had gotten out much larger bombs now.

  They were leaving the interior magazine open. Fuel cans, probably liquid gases, littered the hangar deck. The Tolneps were overconfident and sloppy. But what could one expect of a slaver?

  Glencannon shifted his attention to the rearing diamond-shaped bridge. There were two figures there, moving back and forth. One was not in uniform. A civilian, probably. The one in the naval cap seemed to have attention only for the civilian. No, they were not being alert.

  He turned his attention back to the outside light and the hangar door. He timed it. He calculated his own position.

  In the back of his mind he could hear the voice of his friend from time to time: “Go on! Go on! I will shoot them down! Keep going!”

  That was exactly what Glencannon was going to do: shoot them down!

  For the first time in quite a while he felt calm, relaxed, confident. And totally determined. He was doing exactly what he had to do.

  The next time . . .

  The light went on!

  His hands hit the console.

  The Mark 32 streaked ahead, almost smashed him through the back of the seat with acceleration.

  Guns flamed in the Capture.

  Balls of orange glare racketed against the Mark 32.

  It sliced straight through the barrage.

  Just as it entered the open hangar door Glencannon’s hand hit all guns and bombs.

  The explosion was a sun blowing apart!

  Jonnie and Stormalong saw it as they stood outside the cone, back of a gun viewscreen. They saw the plane enter the hangar door with all guns blazing.

  But it required no viewscreen to see the flash. The abrupt glare lit the fading daylight for fifty miles around. It was painful to the eyes.

  It would be soundless in the void above the earth. But it was not motionless.

  The giant capital ship began to fall. A flaming arc began to draw its way down the sky, slowly, very slowly at first, but building up speed.

  And then it hit the atmosphere and began to burn more brightly.

  Down it came, further and further, lower and lower.

  “My God!” said Stormalong. “It’s going to hit the lake!”

  Down it came, faster and faster, like some huge comet painting the sky.

  It was dropping at an angle.

  Stormalong’s muscles strained as though by will alone he could push it into the hills and away from the water above the dam.

  Down it came, a blazing incandescent wreck, traveling at great speed.

  Five miles uplake from the dam it struck.

  The heat and speed of passage thundered in the air. Then came the screeching crash of the strike.

  Steam and water geysered a thousand feet in the air.

  There was an underwater flash as some remaining part of its fuel exploded.

  The shock concussion raced ahead of the wave as great as any tidal wave.

  The deserted Chinese village was snuffed out as though it had never been.

  The concussion wave hit the back of the dam.

  The water wave inundated the structure, smashing flashboards, flying in a mighty cascade into the air at the dam front.

  The ground underfoot shook.

  Breathless, they stea
died themselves and stared. Would the whole dam go?

  Waves subsided. The dam was still there. But there was new sound in it.

  The lights were still on. The generators were running.

  Guards who had been in the powerhouse came staggering out.

  Water was roaring down the river as the excess sped away, tearing down banks, ripping through islands.

  Engineers came racing from the cone.

  Most of the machinery which had been parked near the lake had been swept away. They were racing about trying to find a flying platform.

  They found one imbedded in the bank, half-covered with mud. They freed it, swept the mud off it, and got it flying.

  The engineers and a machine operator went flying along the top of the dam.

  Jonnie and Stormalong stood by beside a plane, waiting to see whether the engineers needed help. Their voices, in Chinese, were coming over a mine radio.

  The atmosphere armor over the cone was still sizzling in Stage Three. Guards got back into the powerhouse and turned off the dam protection cable and reduced the cone armor to Stage One.

  Although this dam lake was one hundred twenty miles long, it seemed lower in level.

  Jonnie and Stormalong were about to take off to see what the engineers had found when they came back. They landed and were reporting to Chong-won. There was a lot of excited and upset talk and Jonnie went over.

  “They say the dam did not break,” Chong-won told him. “Flashboards are broken all along the top and even some concrete along the walkway and the guard rails are gone. But that is nothing. They can see no cracks. However, at the far end of the dam abutment, over there on the other side of the dam, it seems to have shaken loose from the bank and there is water escaping. They say water is erosive and it could get bigger. It could even greatly lower the level of the lake to a point where the water turbines will not run.”

  “How many hours?” said Jonnie.

  Chong-won asked them. They could only guess. Maybe four, maybe five hours. They would do all they could to stop the water and plug the leak. They did not have much grouting to seal it. The whole far end of the dam seemed to have torn out of the bank. They wanted to get back over and do what they could.