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screen, eating his dinner. There had been light ground-action along the
southern end of the perimeter-King Firkked's regulars, reen-forced by Zirk
tribesmen and levies of townspeople, all of whom seemed to have firearms, were
filtering in through the ruins of the labor-camp and the wreckage of the
equipment-
park-and there was renewed sniping from the mountainside. The long afternoon
of the northern autumn dragged on; finally, at 2200, the sun set, and it was
not fully dark for another hour. For some time, there was an ominous quiet,
and then, at 0030, the enemy began attacking in force, driving herds of
livestock-lumbering six-legged brutes bred by the North Ullerans for food-to
test the defenses for electrified wire and land-mines. Most of these were shot
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down or blown up, but a few got as far as the wire, which, by now, had been
strung and electrified completely around the perimeter.
Behind them came parties of Skilkan regulars with long-handled insulated
cutters; a couple of cuts were made in the wire, and a section of it went
dead. The line, at this point, had been rather thinly held; the defenders
immediately called for air-support, and Jarman ordered fifteen of his
remaining twenty airjeeps and five combat-cars into the fight. No sooner were
they committed than the radar on the commercial airport control-tower picked
up air vehicles approaching from the north, and the air-raid sirens began
howling and the 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 steel doors and
window-shutters which were electrically operated and centrally controlled.
These slammed shut in every occupied building. The contragravity which had
been sent to support the ground-defense at the south side of the Reservation
turned to meet this new threat, and everything else available, including the
four heavy airtanks, lifted up.
Meanwhile, guns began firing from the ground and from rooftops.
There had been four aircars, ordinary passenger vehicles equipped with
machine-guns on improvised mounts, and ten big lorries converted into bombers,
in the attack. All the lorries, and all but one of the makeshift
fighter-escort, were shot down, but not before explosive and thermoconcentrate
bombs were dumped all over the place. One lorry emptied its load of
thermoconcentrate-bombs on the control-building at the airport, starting a
raging fire and putting the radar out of commission. A repair-shop at the
ordnance-depot was set on fire, and a quantity of small-arms and machine-gun
ammunition piled outside for transportation to the outer defenses blew up. An
explosive bomb landed on the roof of the buiding between Company House and the
telecast station, blowing a hole in the roof and demolishing the upper floor.
And another load of thermoconcentrate, missing the power-plant, set fire to
the dry grass between it and the ruins of the native-troops barracks.
Before the air-attack had been broken up, the soldiers of King Firkked and
their irregular supporters were swarming through the dead section of wire.
They had four or five big farm-
tractors, nuclear-powered but unequipped with contragravity-generators, which
they were using like ground-tanks of the First Century. This attack penetrated
to the middle of the Reservation before it was stopped and the attackers
either killed or driven out; for the first time since daybreak, the
red-and-yellow lights came on around the power-plant.
As soon as the combined air and ground attack was beaten off, von Schlichten
ordered all his available contragravity up, flying patrols around the
Reservation and retaliatory bombing missions against Skilk, and began
bombarding the city with his 90-mm guns. A number of fires broke out, and at
about 0200 a huge expanding globe of orange-red flame soared up from the city.
"There goes Firkked's thermoconcentrate stock," he said to Paula, who was
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 been destroyed, but enough
remained to pelt the Reservation and the Company buildings with incendiaries,
when a second and more severe air-attack developed, consisting of forty or
fifty makeshift lorry-bombers and fifteen aircars. The previous attack von
Schlichten had viewed in the screen at the telecast station; it was his
questionable good fortune to observe the second one directly, having been out
inspecting the defenses around the ordnance-
depot at the time.
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Like the first, the second air-attack was beaten off, or, more exactly, down.
Most of the enemy centra-gravity was destroyed; at least two dozen vehicles
crashed inside the Reservation. As in the first instance, there was a
simultaneous ground attack from the southern side, with a demonstration-attack
at the north end. For a while, von Schlichten found himself fighting hand-to-
hand, first with his pistol and then, when his ammunition was gone, with a
picked-up rifle and bayonet. It was full daylight before the last of the
attackers was either killed or driven out.
Five minutes later, while he was reloading his pistol-clips with salvaged
cartridges, the Northern
Star came bulking over the mountains from the west.
Chapter XI- Of Princedoms Which Have Been Won by Conquest
Holstering his pistol, he raced for the telecast station, to receive a call
from a Colonel Khalid ib'n Talal, a Zanzibar Arab, aboard the approaching
ship.
"I've one of Jonkvank's regiments, the Jeel-Feed-ers, armed with Terran 9-mm
rifles and a few bazookas; I have a company of our Zirks, with their mounts,
and a battalion of the Sixth N.U.N.I.;
I also have four 90-mm guns, Terran-manned," he reported. "What's the
situation, general, and where do you want me to land?"
Von Schlichten described the situation succinctly, in an ancient and
unprintable military cliche.
'Try landing south of the Reservation, a little west of the ruins of the
labor-camp," he advised.
"The bulk of Firkked's army is in that section, and I want them run out as
soon as possible. We'll give you all the con-tragravity and fire support we
can."
The Northern Star let down slowly, firing her guns and dropping bombs; as she
descended, rifle-
fire spurted from all her lower-deck portholes. There was cheering, human and
Ulleran, from inside the battered defense-perimeter; combat-cars, airjeeps,
and improvised bombers lifted out to strafe the Skilkans on the ground, and
the four airtanks moved out to take position and open fire with their 90-mm's,
helping to flush King Firkked's regulars and auxiliaries out of the gullies
and ruins and drive them south along the mountain, away from where the ship
would land and also away from the city of Skilk. The Northern Star set down [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]