The Apocalypse Troll

"That's it, Skip," Comstock said tautly. "They're inside the zone."

"Okay, Moose. Take 'em down."

"Roger. Flashing scope, Skip. Opti-launch coming up ... now!"

A launch-and-leave missile dropped free, ignited, and flashed ahead of the big fighter at Mach Four.

"One minute to impact," Comstock reported as Tobin broke in a sharp turn to port. He wanted to position himself on the bogeys' tails if they should somehow elude Papa Delta Flight's missiles.

They didn't. The two lead planes hit the water in flaming pieces at almost eight hundred miles an hour, but the two in the rear never hesitated. They only squatted still closer to the waves and bored right on in until White Section blew them out of the sky.

Blake Taggart didn't have a clue what had hit him.

One moment he was walking angrily along the night-black highway; the next there was a weird flash of light, and then ... nothing. Nothing at all, until he woke up here. Wherever "here" was.

He tried to sit up, but his muscles refused to obey. Part of his brain told him that should frighten him, but he felt only a dreamy wonder. He stared up at a blank metal ceiling, breathing slowly, and something scuttled around the inside of his skull like a spider's dancing feet.

"Welcome, Blake Taggart."

The voice came from all around him-a queer, dead-sounding voice. Mechanical, he thought dreamily, and cold, and it echoed inside his head as well as in his ears.

"Your kind has not treated you well, Blake Taggart," the dead voice went on. "I have seen in your memory how they turned upon you."

Taggart felt the familiar visceral rage. It bubbled within him, yet for all its familiarity, it was different now, stronger than ever, as if his resentment had been honed and sharpened while he was unconscious. As if the last vestige of acceptance had been stripped away by a surgeon's scalpel, leaving only the cold fury of betrayal. He tried to speak, but his lips and tongue were as dead as the rest of his muscles.

"If I choose to help you, Blake Taggart," the slow, grinding voice said, "you can regain all you have lost, and more. You will have your vengeance ... and I will have mine. Do you understand, Blake Taggart?"

The paralysis left his vocal cords. He made a strangled sound of surprise when he discovered that fact, then swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

"W-What do you mean?" he asked finally, then grunted as anguish lashed his nerves. It vanished almost before he could feel it, but he swallowed again, harder, as he recognized its warning.

"I am generous, Blake Taggart, but not ... patient. You will do well to remember that. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he whispered. Then, louder, "Yes!"

"Better," the voice said. "Blake Taggart, I require a human assistant with certain talents. You may be that assistant."

"For what?" It was odd how unafraid he was, as if his churning anger armored him against fear. Yet it was more than that, too. Somehow the voice was preventing him from fearing, he thought, but that meant nothing beside his sudden eagerness for the vengeance it promised him.

"That will become clear," the voice replied, "if you have the strength to endure my mind touch. I have learned all I may from your unconscious mind; now you must open fully to me, willingly." There was a weird, horrible sound, one Taggart recognized only slowly as laughter. "You may die, Blake Taggart. Yes, you may well die. But if you live ..." The voice trailed off tantalizingly.

Taggart stared up at the metal ceiling and wondered just how much the voice had already done to him. His lack of fear, his fiery eagerness to avenge himself, his sharp, bright hatred-those were his, but they'd been strengthened. He knew they had, but he found that he did not care.

"Sure," he said. "Come ahead."

It was a pity Mordecai couldn't be here, Aston thought, looking around the huge cavern, but the Argentinos were showing more balls than brains, and McLain had preempted Morris for his nominal function.

He looked at the two hulking M60A3 battle tanks, and even to him it seemed absurd that anything as small as Ludmilla's blaster could damage them. He turned to her, reflecting that she looked younger than ever in her brand-new uniform. Was that because he knew how old a Marine captain ought to look?

"Ready?" he asked, and she nodded calmly. "Any special precautions?"

"Just stand well back," she said, and checked her weapon settings as Aston joined Jayne Hastings beside the tripod-mounted camcorder behind her.

"Now," Ludmilla continued when they were out of the way, "I know what sort of power settings I need with this-" she lifted her blaster slightly, finger clear of the firing stud "-to take out most Kanga combat mechs, and also the setting to kill a Troll combat chassis. By seeing what effect those settings have on your armored vehicles, we'll all be in a better position to estimate what weapons your strike teams need, Dick."

"I just can't quite believe that-" Hastings indicated the blaster "-can really zap a tank, Milla. I'm trying, but ..." She shrugged.

Ludmilla glanced back at her and dimpled suddenly.

" 'O, ye of little faith,' " she murmured, and raised her weapon.

Once again, the blaster did absolutely nothing. Its complete silence, Aston thought, grew more unca

A blue-white flash, no larger than the palm of his hand, burned with eye-tearing brilliance on the right-hand tank's glacis, directly under the gun. A wicked, whickering crash battered his ears like bottled thunder, and then there was silence ... a silence broken only by the seething hiss of steaming metal.

Aston stared at the damaged tank, momentarily stu

A small, perfect circle had been bored through the five-inch armor, and he climbed up on the tank and peered down through the opened hatch. There was some internal damage, but not as much as he'd expected; almost all the power had been expended on the glacis, and surprisingly little splash had been flung about the driver's compartment.

"Well?" He climbed down with a thoughtful expression as Ludmilla spoke. "Can your weapons do that, Dick?"

"I think so. The latest TOWs certainly can, but they're vehicle-mounted. I'd say the Predator-that's our newest man-portable antiarmor weapon-can do it, too."

"Good." Her face was calm, but her voice was taut. "But that's the easy part. A Troll's armor can take a lot more damage, and he carries battle screen."

"You mentioned that before," Aston said. "Just what is it?"

"Think of it as a force field that interdicts incoming fire. Warship screens can absorb multimegaton explosions, but even a heavy Troll chassis isn't big enough to carry screen that powerful. The important thing to bear in mind about it, though, is that it can be overloaded locally by a lot less destructive energy than the entire screen can handle. We use sequenced attacks to do that to ship screen, then punch a missile through the weakened spot, but I doubt we can do that to the Troll because it takes such fine coordination. So we'll have to try to punch through with a single shot-and this is what kind of energy it will take."

She herded her friends back into position and changed the settings on her weapon while Jayne slipped a filter over the camcorder's lens.

"Cover your eyes," she said levelly, and squeezed the trigger again.

The whiplash sound was far worse this time. The crackling roar was more protracted, with sounds like secondary explosions, and Aston was devoutly grateful that the tanks carried neither fuel nor ammo. The acrid stench of burning paint and molten metal assailed him, and raw, bitter heat pressed against the hands over his eyes.