Return To Kaldak

The woman warrior Sparra walked beside him. She also seemed to be enjoying herself. Such pleasure in killing was strange in a woman, but then Shangbari reminded himself that Sparra was as much warrior as woman.

They came to what seemed to be a small door set in the ground. Sparra motioned that Shangbari should stand back, then pulled one of the small hand-bombs out of her pouch. She was about to throw it when the door opened and five Doimari ran out shooting. One of them hit Sparra as the bomb left her hand. She fell, and the explosion of the bomb knocked her over the edge of the cliff. She did not cry out, so Shangbari knew she must be senseless or dead.

Fortunately the bomb killed or wounded the five Doimari. Shangbari finished off the wounded ones with his knife, then looked over the edge of the cliff. He was surprised to see that Sparra had not fallen far. She lay in a sort of nest of wires hung on poles sticking out of the cliff-an «ante

Shangbari found that he could not reach Sparra's ankles with his arms at full stretch. To get a good grip, he needed help himself. So he called to four men to hold him, two on each leg, and let him down until he could grab Sparra. Then the four pulled both Shangbari and Sparra back up over the edge of the cliff. She was alive when they laid her down, because her eyes flickered. Then a great gush of blood came out of her mouth and she went limp.

As Shangbari knelt to close her eyes, the long-awaited seventh explosion went off. He saw the last fire-beam machine fly out into the air in pieces. That was good to see, but he did not like what he saw after that. A great slab of the face of the cliff fell after the machine, then smaller pieces. Cracks elsewhere showed that before long more of the cliff might fall away.

Shangbari liked even less what he felt under his feet. The ground went on shaking even after the explosion, as if someone were hitting the cliff face with a gigantic hammer. The others kneeling beside Sparra felt it, too. He did not have to urge them twice to pick her up and move away from the edge of the cliff.

Some of the others were doubtful. «Even if the demons in the rock are waking, what of it?» one said. «We have destroyed the last fire-beam. Surely they will go back to sleep now that we no longer set off bombs in their ears?»

In reply Shangbari pointed at the base on the level ground below. It was almost completely hidden in smoke by now, but new spurts of flame shot up every minute or so. «They will not let the demons sleep, and indeed why should they? Their work is not done. Ours is. Let us return to the sky-machine, so that it may swiftly carry us away from the demons if they come out to attack us.»

He had to threaten a couple of sluggish fools with duels, to take place after they returned to the village. And if Ikhnan objected, then let him object! In the end everybody followed Shangbari back to the sky-machines.

When the explosions kept going off after the surviving Tribesmen got back to the guardhouse, Blade started worrying. The fires must be traveling through the underground fuel pipes. That was fine, up to a point. But what if the fires reached the main fuel dump and set it off prematurely?

Blade didn't know how much fuel the main dump held, or what kind. He was pretty sure it was a lot, and potent. If it all went off at once-but that was why he'd time the charges at the dump to go off after the raiders were airborne again.

He looked around at his raiders. Everyone who was going to be back was back-twenty-eight of the forty in the two lifters here, some of the wounded. «Get everybody into the second lifter,» he told Ezarn and Ikhnan. «I'll take the one with the laser turret.»

«It's going to be tight,» said Ezarn.

«No worse than it was coming out, with twenty people and the explosives,» said Blade. «With the second lifter flying light, I can maneuver it more easily. That could be important, if there's anybody left around here with some fight in him.»

Loaded to capacity, the first lifter took off. As Blade, Cheeky and Ezarn got into the second, they saw the third lifter heading toward them from the top of the cliff. Then Blade was too busy getting his lifter airborne, while Ezarn strapped down a heavy Doimari laser he'd acquired somewhere.

Once they were in the air, Blade breathed easier. He'd been afraid to the last moment that something would break one of the germ cylinders. Unless Kaldak's scientists had been able to turn the formula into a usable serum, that could mean a horrible death for-

It was like the sun coming up from deep inside the earth. A monstrous ball of orange fire rose where the main fuel dump had been, carrying with it slabs' of concrete, clods of earth, and parts of buildings weighing many tons. With deceptive slowness, the fireball swelled, swallowing everything in its path. The shock wave reached the guardhouse and tore it apart, but before the pieces could go far the flames caught up with them.

Then the shockwave hit the lifter, tossing it like a leaf in a gale. Blade was even busier than before, and not quite sure he was going to be able to stay in the air at all. Ezarn clung to anything which offered a handhold, and cursed the Doimari, lifters, air travel, rockets, and his own folly in letting himself be talked into coming along on this raid.

At last the air quieted down and the smoke cleared away enough to give Blade a good look at the damage. Where the main fuel dump had been was a smoking crater. Around it for a mile in all directions lay blackened wreckage. The base couldn't have been much more thoroughly wrecked with an atomic bomb.

«We could have done the whole damned job with that,» said Ezarn. Looking over Blade's shoulder. «Saved a lot of good men, too.» He seemed to be expecting Blade to say something then added, «Well, I don't care what shape the Tribesmen's ears were. They were damned good. Damned good.» He muttered that several more times as he went back to the laser turret and started strapping himself in.

Blade gri

The three lifters met over what was left of the main blockhouse. With propellers throttled back so that they hung in the sky, the men in them could talk back and forth without radio. Blade didn't want any Doimari eavesdropping.

«Sparra is dead, Voros,» said Shangbari. «We brought away her body, so that she might lie among her own people.»

Blade swallowed. Sparra dead. He would think about it later. At least she'd been a volunteer who died with a gun in her hand, not an i

«Does anyone know what happened to the Seeker Detcharn?» he asked. No one seemed to. Blade was about to give orders for the course home, when a sudden rumble and roar drowned out the whine of the propellers. Everyone looked around wildly, fearing some unknown form of attack-then stopped to stare at the cliff.

Slowly but steadily, the whole cliff which held the laboratory complex was collapsing. Pieces of stone the size of Seekers' mansions were sliding down or falling freely, landing on top of other pieces, throwing up explosions of dust and gravel. Blade saw flashes of sunlight on metal, as laboratory equipment, steel beams, and elevator shafts tore loose and fell with the stone. Blade thought he saw human figures also falling, arms and legs flailing wildly.