The Doomed Planet

PART EIGHTY-FOUR

  Chapter 2

  The Battle of Camp Kill began in the early afternoon. It began suddenly and unexpectedly and rushed to a disastrous conclusion.

  Only a few hours after the Hightee Heller announcement had superimposed itself over Homeview, Lombar Hisst arrived at Spiteos in a monstrous flying tank.

  He landed on the parade ground, gave himself another speedball and, seating himself on the turret in the burning desert sun, began to supervise the landing of a hundred thousand reinforcements.

  Lombar Hisst felt ferociously good. He was at the height of his intellectual powers, he was achieving a sustained and elevated mood. He felt capable of superhuman feats. That was from the speed. The heroin was giving him a smooth-off of rough edges, a physical warmth and feeling of great satisfaction. And his underlying personality, psychotic paranoia, had shifted over to the kingly phase of megalomania. Up there on the tank, huge in his red uniform, he was indeed, not just in his imagination, a very dangerous man.

  The giant black castle of Spiteos loomed over to his left. It contained thousands of tons of opium and heroin in its upper storerooms, enough to bring an awful lot of population under control, to say nothing of a conclave of Lords.

  It was the amphetamine that worried him: while he had enough of the pure stuff for years of his own supply, he did not have enough to carry even the Lords on for another month no matter how hard he adulterated it. He was speculating as to when he could get the Earth invasion launched: he had not touched the ships and troops scheduled for it in the isolated staging areas. He was depending right now for reinforcements on the prisons he had almost emptied out: they might be a sorry lot and they might look weird in the ways they wore their uniforms and carried their arms but they were killers, make no mistake about that. Loosed upon the population with heavy weaponry, they could sweep the mobs away like chaff, screaming “Long Live Hisst!” for giving them the chance to murder, loot and rape. The million in from Calabar were already setting a fine example in the cities: they were like packs of lepertiges let loose on helpless wool animals. People had no way now to keep count of the civilian casualties.

  So Lombar, sitting there, felt very safe and confident. The Fleet and Army, not knowing whom to obey, were very neutral. Spiteos was easy to defend and Palace City was impregnable, utterly.

  Above his head, low in the atmosphere, were three hundred Apparatus war vessels. They might be old and cast off from the Fleet, for they were intended for raids on unconquered planets just to keep them busy and afraid, but they were better than anything less than the Fleet. Drifting up there, they were standing guard while the latest reinforcement freighters disgorged their hundred thousand on the hot sand just below the camp.

  The regiments were forming up. There were a hundred of them. They made a grand display. Lombar smiled a wolfish smile, tasting his power as the horde marched in to pass in parade and then prepare their close-by bivouacs. There was no music: that was not Apparatus style. But the thud of all those feet made the very ground quail.

  Lombar’s smile broadened until he showed his teeth: the standard bearers as they passed had gotten the word—they were giving him the quick change of step and momentary kneel that was the Royal salute.

  Then a sharp sound penetrated his ears. It sounded like a rapid series of explosions, quite small. They seemed to come from the chasm across from the castle. It was quite like small arms fire.

  But the burst was very short. Nothing else happened. Believing it must be some squad practicing or executing somebody with guns instead of throwing them in the chasm, Lombar Hisst ignored it and looked back at his passing troops. The last of them were just now going by, the rest had already fanned out and were busy annealing together dirt huts in a clutter of trucks and poles: it appeared to be a new town of mean shacks that was magically manifesting out of the sand.

  What saved Lombar’s life at that moment was the desire to cool his thirst. He dropped down through the turret into the capacious cabin of the flying tank, and one of the crew, to restrain the afternoon sun which had been streaming in to compete with the overloaded air coolers, let the turret cover snap shut.

  Lombar was standing just behind the explosion-proof observer port. He was pouring a canister full of sparklewater.

  From across the parade ground there was a terrible flash!

  BOOOOOM!

  A moment later a concussion wave hit the tank a harder blow than ever could have been delivered by a warship shell!

  WHOOOOM!

  The tank was thrown backwards fifty yards in a breath!

  Men and huts and buildings were flying through the air as though propelled by the most monstrous hurricane that ever hit a planet’s face.

  Snelz had blown the Camp Endurance shell magazine with enough explosive to level a town! And the magazine had contained enough charge to level a city!

  Three hundred warships, hovering too low and in atmosphere, caught the full blast of the concussion wave!

  They went hurtling end over end up into the sky like thrown chaff. They tumbled in the torn air, battered out of control.

  High overhead, well above the atmosphere at a height of three hundred miles, a thousand rebel troopships hung, watching the debacle. They were ignored, as the intercepts had said they would be, by the neutral Fleet.

  They dived!

  In a dazing rush they slashed down to the plain like hawks.

  Before the dust of the blown magazine had settled—indeed, before the smoke of the explosion had had a chance to rise fully into the air—a hundred thousand rebel troops under Prince Mortiiy were leaping down from air locks upon the desert sand.

  With a howling rush, feet hammering, emitting a high keening yell, they fell upon the hated Apparatus survivors with electric bayonets and handguns that bellowed rage point-blank!

  Their uniforms were tatters, their faces gauntly starved, but they made up for everything else with their pent-up avarice for revenge.

  There was no quarter given.

  The few guns the Apparatus got into action vanished under a torrent of flashing blades.

  Hatred cut a searing swath across Camp Kill.

  A hundred and seventy-two thousand Apparatus troops were dead in less than half an hour, leaving only some ships and the gun crews on the castle still fighting. They could not be touched by such an assault.

  But the slaughter of the Apparatus infantry was not the end or purpose of the Battle of Camp Kill. It was only the preparation.

  PART EIGHTY-FOUR

  Chapter 3

  Jettero Heller, aboard the Rebel flagship Retribution, a hundred miles above the battle, gave his weapons belt a hitch. He picked up his helmet from a bench. He looked across the bridge where stood Prince Mortiiy, Hightee Heller and the Countess Krak, spots of color amidst the drab uniforms of the rebel general staff.

  “I think it’s time,” he said. “That battle looks about over.”

  “Oh, Jettero,” said the Countess Krak, “can’t you let somebody else do it? Guns are still firing from the castle! It’s dangerous!”

  Heller said, “Life usually is. Now, don’t follow me down too close, as I may still draw fire.”

  “I think,” said Mortiiy, “I should make a pass with the Retribution. This ship is armored and can stand some heavy jolts.”

  “No, Your Highness,” said Heller. “You’re carrying valuable cargo: yourself, my sister and my lady love, to name a few. I’ve just run out of heroic speeches, so goodbye.”

  The air lock of the tug had been hugged against the Retribution’s side and Heller went through and closed it with a clang.

  He hit the local controls a clip and the Prince Caucalsia jumped sidewise and then hurtled straight down.

  Two Apparatus vessels, recovered from their tumble, were trying to box in a rebel sighting ship, but he ignored the fight. He didn’t have any guns anyway.

  Fifty miles, twenty miles, down, down, down he went. And then he was in the drifting battle dust above the mi
le-deep chasm.

  Yes, there was still some shooting.

  The guns on top of Spiteos were manned, firing.

  Heller was a silhouette against the sun. He jinked and shells went screaming by.

  He suddenly dived straight down into the mile-deep chasm. As no one had ever anticipated an attack from there, defense artillery on the castle top had never been installed to depress so low.

  The vertical walls were flowing up on either side of him. There were ledges and he was surprised to see that now and then executed men had hit and hung there, never falling to the bottom. It was a grisly place.

  He had no interest in what might lie on the canyon floor. He halted the tug halfway down and looked up.

  A rebel ship was engaging the defense guns on the top of the castle high above. Great gouts of furious flame were bursting out from the black rock: some of the basalt, turned molten, ran in a stream of fire past the tug.

  “Well, they’d not make much of a dent on this massive hulk that way,” Heller thought. Let them clean off a little more artillery and he’d go up.

  He rose slowly up the black canyon wall. Jockeying the tug, had he been able to reach out through the windscreen he could have touched it with his hand.

  He was inspecting.

  Then he found it: ground level, just opposite the other rim. He cruised along horizontally. He counted the twenty spears he had set to knife into this.

  Somebody up on the castle roof high above must have him on a scope. A hand grenade exploded nearby and made the tug shake.

  He turned the tug to stand on its tail and pressed a firing trigger. A barrage of blueflash raked the high battlement vertically above. He hoped whoever it was up there had been looking.

  Just to make sure, he turned on the silver coating of the tug, making it totally visible. That would attract attention. He fired another blueflash barrage.

  Now that he could be seen, the rebel warship held its fire.

  Heller looked skyward and saw nothing. He had to resort to a scope. Yes, there was the Retribution up there.

  Everything was in place.

  He settled himself into the local-pilot chair and fastened his belts.

  He reached for the tug controls. Motors screamed in the rear of the tug.

  With the speed of a vaulter, he went straight up, flat against the castle wall.

  Over the top of the battlement he went.

  With a sudden dart, the tug leveled out.

  It lanced across the top of the castle, away from the chasm.

  A blastcannon roared close to him with a flash.

  His tractor engines were screaming like banshees!

  He pushed all his throttles home. Planetary drives, Will-be Was, tractors, everything!

  The tug surged, snapped back, surged, snapped back.

  It was all he could do to stay in the pilot seat, even with belts!

  With yank after yank he was trying to pull the whole vast castle over!

  Surge after surge after surge, the tractor beams held on. Roar after roar after roar, the engines bit.

  Then there was a shuddering difference. A sound like a sighing screech was transmitted through the tug.

  The fault that he had fired into, in the chasm side of the castle with the twenty rock-splitting spears, was parting.

  The drives shuddered forward without surging back, pulling with a deafening thunder of power.

  Suddenly all engines went into a raving scream.

  Heller slammed his drives shut.

  Behind him he heard a moaning cry as though some monster was dying.

  Then there came a tremendous roar, enough to shake a planet.

  The tall, tall castle of solid black rock had turned over on its side.

  It was followed by the death rattle of falling stones.

  Heller turned off the tractor beams and a few boulders dropped out of their invisible net.

  He built some altitude and looked back.

  The great castle of Spiteos lay supine and broken.

  But that wasn’t all.

  Heller smiled. When he had surveyed it originally, he had spotted where the storehouses were. And his guess at their content had been right.

  Strewn in piles upon the plain were opium and heroin, like vomit that had been thrown up by a stricken beast.

  Then he stared. That wasn’t all that was happening down there!

  Evidently, having fought their way past paralyzed or terrified guards and gotten to the now-exposed ramps, literally thousands of political prisoners were pouring out of the caves and tunnels far below the level where the castle had broken.

  They were spreading like a swarm of insects from a disrupted nest, uncounted numbers of them. Even from this height their naked filth, rags and protruding bones were showing. Starved into near insanity, frenzied now in their sudden freedom, they raced away, scrambling over the debris of the wrecked castle, fanning out across the plain.

  Heller looked up. Yes, the Retribution was there. The cameras which she carried had been shooting everything that happened and they were catching this. Not only that, with the power of a warship’s communication drives, the Retribution was forcing in onto the Homeview band, overpowering the transmission from Joy City as before.

  Heller flipped a switch to catch the screen and make sure. The Retribution was so close to hand that there was hardly any of the Joy City transmission visible here, but Heller could dimly make out the under-picture.

  The Retribution’s several cameras were following various mobs of escaping prisoners. Heller smiled. What a black eye for Hisst: the “deserted” fortress was shown to be an Apparatus prison.

  And then he saw something that caused him to freeze.

  The real purpose of this raid was to display to Voltar that Spiteos did contain drugs. The cameras had caught them strewing across the plain.

  But now a group of prisoners, reaching that spot, starved, must have thought it was edible flour.

  Fully two hundred of them had stopped. They scooped up handfuls of it, tasting it.

  Heller clipped on his powerful speakers. “GET AWAY FROM THAT!” he shouted down. “DON’T EAT THAT STUFF! IT’S POISON!”

  A camera had zeroed in on them. Heller had them up close on the screen.

  He did not know exactly what chemicals they might be. Opium? Heroin? Some cutting agent?

  Before he could even yell again, a terrible thing happened. The prisoners suddenly went into agonizing convulsions!

  It was on the screen. It was going to all Voltar.

  Rebel infantrymen had reached the place. They were pushing at the prisoners, probably getting orders from the Retribution, trying to get the prisoners away from the strewn piles.

  Some of the prisoners, instead of welcoming deliverers, began to fight like madmen! They had gone crazy with chemicals even after just a taste!

  Later they would find that a lot of what the prisoners had grabbed was not morphine or opium or heroin but the adulterative elements which were there in vast supply to be used in cutting, and they included powdered strychnine.

  But the picture said to any viewer all it needed to say. True to Hightee’s statement earlier that day, Spiteos was full of something stored by Hisst to be used against the population and that something drove men mad!

  And here was Hightee’s voice again, ringing loud and clear:

  “Citizens of Voltar! You have seen that what I told you is true! ARMY, FLEET, POLICE, ALL DECENT MEN, HEAR ME! SLAUGHTER THE APPARATUS AND HUNT AND KILL THE USURPER LOMBAR HISST!”

  PART EIGHTY-FOUR

  Chapter 4

  Lombar Hisst lay in the cabin of the tank.

  The vehicle was upside down.

  His head had rammed into the chest of the driver who lay there, neck broken, dead.

  The padded interior muted sound but he had heard infantry yells outside, shots and screams. Just a short time ago the whole area had been shaken by something falling down.

  He was playing it very quiet. Ap
parently they had missed, somehow, the fact that he was there. Maybe from outside it looked like just another overturned, wrecked tank; perhaps several of them were lying about.

  Sooner or later some infantry would start inspecting the wrecks to see if there was anyone still alive in them. He knew he was in a very tight spot. His mind was racing.

  He crawled across the tank roof, which was now the floor. He inspected the controls. He knew how to drive these things, none better. The controls seemed undamaged. But he needed information. Just how tight was this spot that he was in?