Day of the Dragonstar (33 page)

Jashad took a deep breath of the humid air, then signaled his explosives men. They scrambled through the undergrowth to his side: five of the best in the business, backpacks jingling softly. Jashad wiped a frond out of the way and addressed the men. “Think you can put a hole in that wall?”

The leader grinned, his white teeth contrasting with his sweaty, dark skin. “No problem.” He nodded over to the guards. “If you take care of those two . . . creatures, we’Il blow half the wall down.”

Jashad glanced over at the saurians again, rubbing his beard, which irritated him in this environment. “I truly regret that we have to operate in this fashion. Would that we were the-first to contact this extraordinary race! But amends can be made later. We have no time to waste; we must move forward immediately, and anything—human or alien—that stands in our way must be removed. I’ve never seen conditions in which the ends have more justified the means.”

The explosives team poised at the dense edge of the clearing, waiting for the signal to run.

Jashad gave the signal for his sharpshooters to take their places, indicating what their targets would be. He watched them with pride as they inched forward, then aimed.

Such a shame indeed, thought Jashad as he put his binoculars over his eyes and focused them on one of the guards. Such an interesting looking creature, slightly taller than the average human, with large, bright eyes. Three fingers across from the opposable thumb. How fascinating! He hoped that, after this battle, when the TWC was in control, when they had crushed or captured Colonel Kemp and his men, and penetrated the engine section of this mammoth starship, they could come to terms with these lizard-men. With a well-trained will, Jashad pushed any regret or guilt from his mind. Then he signaled the snipers.

Bullets exploded.

Jashad watched as they slapped into one of the guards. The blood which splattered was certainly red enough. The saurian jerked back, took another round in the face, then toppled over the side and thudded onto the ground. With a downward gesture, Jashad signaled for the explosives men to advance. Then he called out for the sharpshooters to cover them.

The explosives men jogged forward, almost as one, their timing was so practiced. Within seconds, they had split up and taken their places at five-meter intervals along the wall. Quickly, bars of C-7 plastic explosives were slapped against the rock, cement, and wood. An explosive cap was immediately embedded in each one. These would be triggered by radio, once the commandos were away and out of danger.

All was going well, until another of the saurians appeared at the left tower. This one had a different kind of crossbow, Jashad noted with surprise. On this one—slightly bigger—the quarrel seemed to be
moving.

The explosives team was already on the way back.

Jashad called out to the sharpshooters,

High-powered rifles cracked, bringing down the saurian guard.

But the quarrel had already been unleashed. It slashed down toward one of the men,

“Watch out!” Jashad screamed, quite unprofessionally.

The men quickly did zig-zags. The quarrel swooshed past the man on the left end, just missing him.

Almost immediately, it sprouted wings, swerved around in a tight arc, and buried itself in the man’s abdomen. The commando gave an agonized scream. The quarrel’s tail seemed to lash about like the tail of a snake. Blood flowed onto green khakis.

By the time that the realization that the arrow was a living thing dawned upon Jashad, the thing had already chewed halfway through the commando. Jashad cursed, then yelled for the others to hurry back.

The stricken commando writhed on the ground for a few seconds, and then was still. Sounds of tiny teeth snapping carried on the slight breeze.

Stunned expressions on their faces, the others returned to cover.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Jashad cried. “I want that wall down!”

Immediately, the explosives team leader took off his backpack and picked out his radio control box. He selected the proper frequency, then pushed the button,

With the sound of rolling thunder, huge holes were tom out of the thick wall. Dust and rock spumed. Smoke and fire licked up. The top of the wall caved in. When the debris finally settled, there was a quite adequate opening in the saurian wall.

“Advance!” Jashad cried, gripping his own weapon with renewed intensity. Quickly, the guerrilla force scrambled through the clearing to the edge of the rubble. Jashad peered over fallen masonry and shattered wood beams. Two hundred meters away was the city that Canter had spoken of. But there were also quite a number of frenzied saurians advancing toward the TWC commando force. Some were riding their dimmer and
bigger
cousins, beasts that snorted as they slowly stamped toward them. “I know it’s hot,” Jashad called. “But we’d better erect our fighting suits.” Quickly, he pulled his own from his backpack, wishing that his men had the sophisticated fighting suits employed in honest-to-goodness wars. But since with a terrorist/guerrilla team mobility was the deciding factor, each man carried only a standard defense: an oversuit, strategically reinforced with bulletproof plastics in vital places. Jashad slipped this on quickly, then pulled his LS helmet down, adjusting the gas mixture to medium-level performance. In normal actions,
swift
actions, the setting was
peak.
But who knew how long this business would last?

Without having to be told, the men carrying rocket launchers loaded their first rounds. Rifles were raised.

Jashad, feeling heady with the rich oxygen mixture flowing into the LS helmet, chinned his communication unit and was about to call for advance, when an alarmed voice blared into his earphone. “Commander! Behind! Look behind us!”

Jashad spun around. Emerging from the forest swarmed a group of about twenty unclothed saurians, armed only with clubs.

With frenzied screams, they raced toward the destroyers of the wall.

“Unit B!” Jashad cried. “Turn and open fire!”

Twenty men swiveled, aimed, and sent a volley of rifle fire into the ranks of the saurian attackers. Most of the lizard-men were cut down mercilessly, but two managed to avoid the bullet spray. They leapt upon two commandos. One was quickly dispatched by speedy knife work. Before the other could be killed, however, his club had smashed a commando’s helmet and sharp claws had torn out the man’s throat.

“Unit B, cover our rear,” Jashad said. “The rest, advance. Get those rockets going at the biggest defenders!”

This was
not
going to be so easy, after all.

They charged forward. At a range of fifty-meters away from the saurian defense force—an impromptu one at best, Jashad noticed—the launcher men kneeled and aimed their rocket tubes. Smoke flashed. With a boom and a thud, the first rocket penetrated the chest of a Triceratops, literally blowing it apart. Methodically, each of the burden beasts were so disposed of.

At the range of twenty meters, the other commandos flopped to the ground on the order of Jashad. Rifle cracks ripped the air. Within minutes, perhaps a hundred saurians lay writhing or dead on the plain.

More, however, swarmed from the city, carrying wooden swords and crossbows fitted with their living bolts. Soon Jashad was swatting away the persistent creatures trying to bore their way through his suit. Several of his men were killed in this fashion, when their suits were penetrated. It was a slow and agonizing death. The things more than unnerved Jashad, but his years of training put him into kind of an automatic control of the situation.

Suddenly, he heard fierce roaring from behind him, loud to him despite the helmet. “Jashad,” the voice of Unit B’ s leader cried over Jashad’s earphone’s. “Rocket launchers!”

Jashad turned.

Emerging from the forest were the most fearsome beasts he’d ever seen. An Allosaurus was slinking forward, mouth open wide anticipating a feast. Following it closely was a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Both had no doubt been attracted by the scent of blood. Growls of other creatures echoed their bellows in the distance.

The party had been announced, the feast proclaimed.

Jashad swore violently as he crouched and chinned the com control. “Unit C. Lower numbers, up to Five. Detach from ranks and cover rear.”

With practiced speed, the specifically numbered men with rocket launchers broke ranks and ran back to join Unit B. Even as they did so, Jashad saw with dismay that other unclothed saurians were slipping around the sides of the broken wall, dodging the roaring carnivores.

A rocket fired. A chunk of Tyrannosaurus blew away with a blast of smoke and blood. The monster paused only a moment, then forged onward. Another rocket, fired recklessly, missed entirely.

With a prodigious leap, the Tyrannosaurus attacked the closest of the rifleman, snapping him off at the thighs. The disconnected legs wobbled a moment, then teetered over. The Tyrannosaurus chomped quickly mechanically, ignoring its wounds. Bullets splattered its chest to no apparent affect.

Jashad cried, “Advance through the town!” The defenders had been thinned out, and if they could break through, they would have the shelter of the city to assist their efforts to stay alive. He could see that the rear defense would soon become a bloody carnage. He hadn’t counted on the place’s fauna to come to the aid of its beleaguered intelligent cousins. But then, to a hungry dinosaur, it didn’t make any difference if it were eating a human or a saurian. If the invaders moved through the saurian army, or whatever had met them, the saurians would have as much of a problem with the invading monsters as the commandos were having.

Losing about ten men in the process, they managed to do just that.

Sweating profusely, Jashad stopped to catch his breath. His bayonet dripped with saurian blood.

The sound of engines came to his ears. The sound of whirring propellers . . .

Jashad looked up. An ornithopter flew over his head, maybe a hundred meters high. His first inclination was to order it shot down. But when he realized that the flying machine was passing without attacking the commandos, he decided to let it pass.

Already, a possible alternative plan was forming in his head. There
had
to be an alternative plan . . .

This one was not working well at all.

* * *

He wasn’t half as drunk as they thought he was, thought Captain Francis Welsh, as he lay back in his command chair, set to the reclining position. These fucking A-rabs had no idea how much beer Fran Welsh could pound and still walk the line. His single guard sat somewhere behind him, presumably with a gun still trained to his general vicinity, but Welsh did not want to chance anything.

He had played along with that vicious bastard, Jashad, because he wanted to stay alive. It was that simple. But the beer and the dead-time on board the ship were starting to wear thin on him. Plus the fact that he knew that his crew was dead and other IASA people were probably getting killed all around him . . . He was beginning to feel guilty, and a little itchy.

Perhaps it wasn’t so simple after all. Simply saying
screw it
wasn’t going to make him feel any better in the long run. Always the short run, always the easy way out. That had been his motto of late. Just putting in the time till that pension would take care of him. Shit, how could he lay there thinking about his goddamned pension when there were guys getting wasted all around him? That stank, plain and simple.

His thoughts were interrupted by the compartment hatch opening. Playing up his drunken bit, he lolled over the edge of the chair to cast a moonish, glazed eye toward the new arrival. Some guy wearing an IASA jumpsuit carrying an automatic rifle. Welsh didn’t recognize him but the guard did not seem upset to see the uniform of the opposition. Something funny going on here.

“Orders from Jashad,” said the stranger, and the guard stood up, keeping his own weapon at the ready. “I am Rassim—you were expecting me?”

“Yes sir,” said the guard.

“The
Goddard
and the
Heinlein
are secured, and so is the enemy’s base camp. We are to escort the prisoner from the ship to the base camp. Let’s go.”

The guard turned and approached Welsh, who remained limp in the chair trying to look as foolish as possible as he ogled Rassim and the guard.

“What the hell’s the matter with him, drugs?” asked Rassim.

“Drunk,” said the guard. “All he
does
is stay drunk!” He laughed.

“Then we’ll have to carry him. You on that side, I’ll grab him under this shoulder.”

All right, thought Welsh. This is where it happens or it doesn’t. Either I let them take me out of here, or I make my move. Let’s see what happens . . .

The one called Rassim shouldered his weapon, slinging the strap over his arm, and bent down to firmly grasp Welsh under the armpit. The guard, surprisingly enough, tried to do his part with one hand, still holding his rifle in his left hand. Welsh let his head roll to the side, where his nose was inches from an automatic handgun in the guard’s thigh holster. Now isn’t that interesting? he thought. But as long as he’s got his rifle ready, I’m screwed. Of course, I might be finished anyway, seeing’s how I haven’! handled a weapon since basic training twenty years ago . . .

Welsh went completely limp and let his eyes becomes slits.

Dead weight, and the guard could not handle him with one hand; it was that simple. There was a pause as the guard reluctantly shouldered his weapon and grabbed Welsh more
securely. He felt himself being lifted, half-dragged from the chair towards the hatch.. All three of them would not be able to squeeze through the entry at once and there would be more jockeying of position. It would be then. Or not at all.

Waiting for the right moment. A turn of the head, and pressing of the guard’s thigh up against him. It had to be timed right . . .

It was.

As they hefted him sideways to slip through the hatch, Welsh’s flailing arm brushed the guard’s waist, then fell into the trigger-well and he yanked it free, pointing it upwards. He squeezed the trigger and the sound of the shell exploding that close to his own face shocked him. But not nearly as badly as the guard. In a moment of suspended time, Welsh saw the man’s lower jaw catch the slug in its upward ascent and dissolve completely into a scarlet blossom. Then bullet passed through the roof of the mouth and he watched the man’s scalp explode outward.