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Nup kicked the door further open, the ore basket in plain view on his lap. Then Nup saw Jo
Jo
He tried to duck back inside an instant after the shot. He was not quite fast enough.
Enough fuel and ammunition for twenty battles not only went up, it also flashed down into the open fuel and ammunition receptacles!
The roar and almost instantaneous concussion hit Jo
The safety line held and snapped him back inside the door.
In that confused instant, as though it were a still picture, he saw Zzt on fire just starting to fly out into space. He saw the whole Mark 32 leap in an exploding ball high in the air.
Jo
The concussion had been too much for his head and he was passing out again.
An idiot phrase passed through his mind just before a deeper darkness blanketed his senses. “Old Staffor was wrong. I’m not too smart. I just cost myself the only target search beams can pick up.”
The drone was not rolling now that it had been relieved of its unstabilizing weight.
The body on the icy floor just inside the door did not move.
The lethal cargo soared onward toward Scotland and the rest of the world, its goal the final obliteration of the remainder of the human race, the ones it had missed a thousand or more years ago.
Chapter 4
The small boy sped on feet of fire through the underground passages of the dungeons of the castle. He was soaked with the rain that fell outside. His bo
He identified a room ahead and tore into it, shouting: “Prince Du
Prince Du
Du
The small boy was wrestling with excited hands to light a candle dip with a ratchet flint device.
So it was “Prince” Du
They only called him that on feast days or when somebody wanted a favor. His uncle, Chief of Clanfearghus, was the last of the Stewarts and entitled to be called King, but he never made anything of it.
The light was burning now. It shone upon the sparsely furnished stonewalled room. It showed the rain-drenched, excited black-eyed boy, Bittie MacLeod.
“Your squire Dwight, your squire Dwight ha' sent a message, who he say is most urgent!”
Ah, this was different. Du
“Your gillies are afoot asaddling a mount. Your squire ha' said 'twas most urgent!”
Du
What a busy night it had been. His and Dwight's plan had been to bring the
Chiefs across the sea to celebrate the victory. They had landed both ships on a flat place two miles off so as not to shock the people, and he had borrowed a horse from a startled farmer he had known and ridden in.
He had gotten his uncle, Chief of Clanfearghus, out of bed, and gillies had flown to light the fires on the hills to gather the clans to hear the news. The minesite in Cornwall was no more. They would be free to roam the whole of England!
The Chief was very fond of his nephew Du
Du
That attended to, he had come home for a nice snooze.
Bittie seemed to be trying to remember something else. He was hopping from one bare foot to the other, squinting up his eyes, wiping at his nose. Then the boy seemed to abandon his effort. Du
The boy's eyes caught the sword on the wall. It was a claymore, used in battles and for ceremony. It was a real claid heamh mar, five feet long, not just a basket hilt saber. Bittie was gesturing at it, indicating the prince should wear it. Du
When he saw the eagerness die in Bittie's eyes, Du
Du
The ancient ruin had remained a ruin above ground so as to attract minimal attention from drones that had gone over for centuries. Some said the place had once been the seat of Scottish kings. It s dungeons had been expanded and it was a fortress in itself.
Two gillies had Du
He mounted, and at a signal they tossed the boy up behind him, claid heamh mar and all.
It was raining. A storm apparently had moved in. It had been clear when they landed but now the dawn was thick with overcast.
It was at that moment that Bittie
MacLeod remembered the rest of the message. “Your squire,” he said to Du
The boy's accent was thick, not the accent of an educated Scot. “To what?” demanded Du
“I misremembered, I couldna think of the word,” apologized the boy. “But it did sound like 'squiggle.' "
“Scramble?” asked Du
“Ah, so 'twas, so 'twas!”
Du
They came plunging to a stop on the flat-topped knoll. Du
And then Dwight landed nearby, startling the horse into frantic plunging that lifted the boy and the sword off the ground at every rear.
Du
There had been no radio messages from the compound. Dwight, as arranged, had faithfully stayed on watch. He had waited for any break in radio silence and the end of the silence itself. The time period had ended, but pilots, not hearing from the compound and Robert the Fox, had not opened up.
But something else peculiar had happened. Dwight had picked up a Psychlo conversation on the planetary plane band, very loud and clear. It seemed loud enough to be within a thousand miles or so, maybe more, hard to tell.