X.
The Geek Luftwaffe and the Kragan Airlift
At 0245, an attack developed on the northwestern corner of theReservation, in the direction of the explosives magazines. It turnedout to be relatively trivial. Remnants of the mob that had been brokenup by air attack on the road had gotten together and were makingrushes in small bands, keeping well spread out. Beating them off tookconsiderable ammunition, but it was accomplished with negligiblecasualties to the defenders. They finally stopped coming arounddaylight.
In the meantime, Themistocles M'zangwe called from Konkrook, appearingin the screen with his left arm in a freshly white sling.
"What the hell have you been doing to yourself?" von Schlichten wantedto know.
"Crossbow-bolt, about half an hour ago. A couple of inches lower andacting Brigadier-General Colbert'd have been talking to you, now,instead of me."
"Lucky it didn't have a nitro-capsule on the end. How are you makingout? Have Kankad's people started coming in, yet?"
"Oh, yes, about six hundred of them have gotten in already, in thedamnedest collection of vehicles you ever saw. Kankad must be usingevery scrap of contragravity he has; it's a regular airborneDunkirk-in-reverse. Kankad sent word that he's coming here in person,as soon as he has things organized at his place. And the geeks herehave scraped together an air-force of their own--farm-lorries,aircars, that sort of thing--and they're using them to bomb us hereand at the mainland farm, mostly with nitroglycerine. We've shot downabout twenty of them, but they're still coming. They tried aboat-attack across the Channel; that's how I got this. We've beendoing some bombing, ourselves; we made a down payment for Eric Blountand Hendrik Lemoyne. Took a fifty-ton tank off a fuel-lorry, fitted itwith a detonator, filled it with thermoconcentrate, and ferried itover on the _Elmoran_ and dumped it on the Keegarkan Embassy. It musthave landed in the middle of the central court; in about fifteenseconds, flames were coming out every window in the place." His facebecame less jovial. "We had something pretty bad happen here, too," hesaid. "That Konkrook Fencibles rabble of Prince Jaizerd's mutinied,along with the others; they got into the hospital and butcheredeverybody in the place, patients and staff. The Kragans got there toolate to save anybody, but they wiped out the Fencibles. Jaizerdhimself was the only one they took alive, and he didn't stay that wayvery long."
"How are you making out with your Civil Administration crowd?"
M'zangwe grimaced. "I haven't had to put any of them under actualarrest, so far, but we've had to keep Buhrmann away from thecommunications equipment by force. He wanted to call you up and chewyou out for not evacuating everybody in the north to Konkrook."
"Is he crazy?"
"No, just scared. He says you're going to get everybody on Ullermassacred by detail, when you could save Konkrook by bringing themall here."
"You tell him I'm going to hold this planet, not just one city. Tellhim I have a sense of my duty to the Company and its stockholders, ifhe hasn't; put it in those terms and he may understand you."
"Yes, I'll try that out on Meyerstein, too. He's in a hell of a stateabout the losses the Banking Cartel are taking on this deal.... Well,I'll call you when there's anything new."
By 0330, it was daylight; the attacks against the northwest corner ofthe perimeter stopped entirely. Wallingsby had the three-hundred-oddSkilkan laborers at work; he had gathered up all the tarpaulin he couldfind, and had the two sewing-machines in the tentmaker's shop running onsandbags. Jules Keaveney, to von Schlichten's agreeable surprise, hadtaken hold of his ARP assignment, and was doing an efficient job inorganizing for fire-fighting, damage-control and first aid. ColonelJarman had his airjeeps and combat-cars working in ever-widening circlesover the countryside, shooting up everything in sight that even lookedlike contragravity equipment. Some of these patrols had to be recalled,around 1030, when sporadic nuisance-sniping began from the side of themountain to the west. And, along with everything else, Paula Quintonmanaged, along with her other work, to get a complete digest prepared ofthe situation elsewhere in the Terran-occupied parts of the planet.
The situation at Konkrook was brightening steadily. The second wave ofKankad's improvised airlift, reenforced by contragravity fromKonkrook, had come in; there were now close to two thousand freshKragans on Gongonk Island and the mainland farms, Kankad himself withthem. The _Aldebaran_ had reached Kankad's Town, and was loadinganother thousand Kragans.... There was nothing more from Keegark. Amessage from Colonel MacKinnon had come in at dawn, to the effect thatthe geeks had penetrated his last defenses and that he was about toblow up the Residency; thereafter Keegark went off the air.... By0730, the _Northern Star_ had landed the regiment Murderers, armedwith first-quality Terran infantry-rifles and a few machine-guns andbazookas, at the Palace at Krink, and by 0845 she had returned withanother regiment, the Jeel-Feeders. The three-lane street connectingthe Palace and the Residency had been widened to six, and then toeight.... Guido Karamessinis, at Grank, was still at uneasy peace withKing Yoorkerk, who was still undecided whether the rebels or theCompany were going to be the eventual victors, and afraid to take anyirrevocable step in either direction.... Eight men and four women, thesurvivors of a trading-station on the eastern shore of Takkad Sea,reached Konkrook in a lorry; another trading station, on the southshore, reported by telecast that the natives there had refused to riseagainst them, and had crucified five of Rakkeed's disciples who hadcome among them preaching _znidd suddabit_.
At 1100, Paula Quinton and Barney Mordkovitz virtually ordered him toget some sleep. He went to his quarters at Company House, downed aspaceship-captain's-size drink of honey-rum, and slept until 1600. Ashe dressed and shaved, he could hear, through the open window, theslow sputter of small-arms' fire, punctuated by the occasional_whump-whump-whump_ of 40-mm auto-cannon or the hammering of amachine-gun.
Returning to his command-post at the telecast station, theterrain-board showed that the perimeter of defense had been pushed outin a bulge at the northwest corner; the TV-screen pictured a crudebreast-work of petrified tree-trunks, sandbags, mining machinery,packing-cases and odds-and-ends, upon which Wallingsby's nativelaborers were working under guard while a skirmish-line of Kragans hadbeen thrown out another four or five hundred yards and were exchangingpot-shots with Skilkans on the gullied hillside.
"Where's Colonel Quinton?" he asked. "She ought to be taking a turn inthe sack, now."
"She's taking one," Major Falkenberg, who had commanded the action atthe native-troops barracks and the labor-camp, the night before, toldhim. "General Mordkovitz chased her off to bed a couple of hours ago,called me in to take her place, and then went out to replace me.Colonel Guilliford's in the hospital; got hit about thirteen hundred.They're afraid he's going to lose a leg."
"That's a bloody shame!" He pointed to the northwest corner of theperimeter on the screen. "Whose idea was that?" he asked. "It's a goodone; I ought to have thought of it, myself."
"Your new adjutant," Falkenberg grinned. "She asked somebody whatthose big domes, up there, were. When they told her there were tenthousand tons of thermoconcentrate, five thousand tons ofblasting-explosives, and five tons of plutonium, under them, shedamned near fainted, and then she ordered that, right away."
More reports came in. The entire garrison of the small Residency atKwurk, the most northern of the eastern shore Free Cities, had arrivedat Kankad's Town in two hundred-foot contragravity scows and fiveaircars. Two of the aircars arrived half an hour behind the rest ofthe refugee flotilla, having turned off at Keegark to pay theirrespects to King Orgzild. They reported the Keegark Residency inruins, its central buildings vanished in a huge crater; the _JanSmuts_ and the _Christiaan De Wett_ were still in the Company docks,both apparently damaged by the blast which had destroyed theResidency. One of the aircars had rocketed and machine-gunned someKeegarkans who appeared to be trying to repair them; the other blew upKing Orgzild's nitroglycerine plant. Von Schlichten called Konkrookand ordered a bombing-mission against Keegark organized, to make surethe two ships s
tayed out of service.
The _Northern Star_ was still bringing loyal troops into Krink. KingJonkvank, whom von Schlichten called, was highly elated.
"We are killing traitors wherever we find them!" he exulted. "The cityis yellow with their blood; their heads are piled everywhere! How isit with you at Skilk?"
"We have killed many, also," von Schlichten boasted. "And tonight, wewill kill more; we are preparing bombs of great destruction, which wewill rain down upon Skilk until there is not one stone left uponanother, or one infant of a day's age left alive!"
Jonkvank reacted as he was intended to. "Oh, no, general, don't do allthat!" he exclaimed. "You promised me that I should have Skilk, on theword of a Terran. Are you going to give me a city of ruins andcorpses? Ruins are no good to anybody, and I am not a Jeel, to eatcorpses."
Von Schlichten shrugged. "When you are strong, you can flog yourenemies with a whip; when you are weak, all you can do is kill them.If I had five thousand more troops, here...."
"Oh, I will send troops, as soon as I can," Jonkvank hastened topromise. "All my best regiments: the Murderers, the Jeel-Feeders, theCorpse-Reapers, the Devastators, the Fear-Makers. But, now that wehave stopped this sinful rebellion, here, I can't take chances that itwill break out again as soon as I strip the city of troops."
Von Schlichten nodded. Jonkvank's argument made sense; he would havetaken a similar position, himself.
"Well, get as many as you can over here, as soon as possible," hesaid. "We'll try to do as little damage to Skilk as we can, but ..."
At 1830, Paula joined him for her breakfast, while he sat in front ofthe big screen, eating his dinner. There had been light ground-actionalong the southern end of the perimeter--King Firkked's regulars,reenforced by Zirk tribesmen and levies of townspeople, all of whomseemed to have firearms, were filtering in through the ruins of thelabor-camp and the wreckage of the equipment-park--and there wasrenewed sniping from the mountainside. The long afternoon of thenorthern autumn dragged on; finally, at 2200, the sun set, and it wasnot fully dark for another hour. For some time, there was an ominousquiet, and then, at 0030, the enemy began attacking in force, drivingherds of livestock--lumbering six-legged brutes bred by the NorthUllerans for food--to test the defenses for electrified wire andland-mines. Most of these were shot down or blown up, but a few got asfar as the wire, which, by now, had been strung and electrifiedcompletely around the perimeter.
Behind them came parties of Skilkan regulars with long-handledinsulated cutters; a couple of cuts were made in the wire, and asection of it went dead. The line, at this point, had been ratherthinly held; the defenders immediately called for air-support, andJarman ordered fifteen of his remaining twenty airjeeps and fivecombat-cars into the fight. No sooner were they committed than theradar on the commercial airport control-tower picked up air vehiclesapproaching from the north, and the air-raid sirens began howling andthe searchlights went on.
As a protection from the sudden fury of the summer and winter gales,the buildings were all low, thick-walled, and provided with steeldoors and window-shutters which were electrically operated andcentrally controlled. These slammed shut in every occupied building.The contragravity which had been sent to support the ground-defense atthe south side of the Reservation turned to meet this new threat, andeverything else available, including the four heavy airtanks, liftedup. Meanwhile, guns began firing from the ground and from rooftops.
There had been four aircars, ordinary passenger vehicles equipped withmachine-guns on improvised mounts, and ten big lorries converted intobombers, in the attack. All the lorries, and all but one of themakeshift fighter-escort, were shot down, but not before explosive andthermoconcentrate bombs were dumped all over the place. One lorryemptied its load of thermoconcentrate-bombs on the control-building atthe airport, starting a raging fire and putting the radar out ofcommission. A repair-shop at the ordnance-depot was set on fire, and aquantity of small-arms and machine-gun ammunition piled outside fortransportation to the outer defenses blew up. An explosive bomb landedon the roof of the building between Company House and the telecaststation, blowing a hole in the roof and demolishing the upper floor.And another load of thermoconcentrate, missing the power-plant, setfire to the dry grass between it and the ruins of the native-troopsbarracks.
Before the air-attack had been broken up, the soldiers of King Firkkedand their irregular supporters were swarming through the dead sectionof wire. They had four or five big farm-tractors, nuclear-powered butunequipped with contragravity-generators, which they were using likeground-tanks of the First Century. This attack penetrated to themiddle of the Reservation before it was stopped and the attackerseither killed or driven out; for the first time since daybreak, thered-and-yellow lights came on around the power-plant.
As soon as the combined air and ground attack was beaten off, vonSchlichten ordered all his available contragravity up, flying patrolsaround the Reservation and retaliatory bombing missions against Skilk,and began bombarding the city with his 90-mm guns. A number of firesbroke out, and at about 0200 a huge expanding globe of orange-redflame soared up from the city.
"There goes Firkked's thermoconcentrate stock," he said to Paula, whowas standing beside him in front of the screen.
Half an hour later, he discovered that he had been overly optimistic.Much of the enemy's supply of Terran thermoconcentrate had beendestroyed, but enough remained to pelt the Reservation and the Companybuildings with incendiaries, when a second and more severe air-attackdeveloped, consisting of forty or fifty makeshift lorry-bombers andfifteen aircars. The previous attack von Schlichten had viewed in thescreen at the telecast station; it was his questionable good fortuneto observe the second one directly, having been out inspecting thedefenses around the ordnance-depot at the time.
Like the first, the second air-attack was beaten off, or, moreexactly, down. Most of the enemy contragravity was destroyed; at leasttwo dozen vehicles crashed inside the Reservation. As in the firstinstance, there was a simultaneous ground attack from the southernside, with a demonstration-attack at the north end. For a while, vonSchlichten found himself fighting hand-to-hand, first with his pistoland then, when his ammunition was gone, with a picked-up rifle andbayonet. It was full daylight before the last of the attackers waseither killed or driven out.
Five minutes later, while he was reloading his pistol-clips withsalvaged cartridges, the _Northern Star_ came bulking over themountains from the west.