Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome (39 page)

“This is it,” said Tvrdy, panting. He and the five remaining Rumon crouched behind the overturned hulls of unfinished boats. “We dare not let them take us alive. We have two choices.” He did not have to say what the choices were.

“I say we take as many with us as we can.” The Rumon spoke with bold determination.

“I was about to suggest it,” said Tvrdy. “We'll spread out, hold fire, and force them to come in and get us ...” He paused and added, “You'll all know what to do.”

“Director,” said one of the Rumon, “you could get away.” He nodded toward the river behind them. “We could cover your escape.”

“No,” replied Tvrdy. “I won't abandon you.”

“The rebellion needs you,” said another. “It is your duty to save yourself if you can.”

“My Hagemen are right,” put in a third. “Go now while you still can.”

“We will die anyway, but our deaths will aid our Hagemen if they allow you to escape,” added another.

Tvrdy looked at each of them. Yes, it would be most expedient. But something inside him struggled with the notion. “We can all escape,” he said.

“If we all go, they'll catch us,” replied the first Rumon. “But if you go alone, you have a chance.” The others nodded their agreement, eyes hard, jaws set, faces earnest in the flickering light of the burning boat.

It's true, Tvrdy considered. There is a chance. What will happen to the rebellion without me?

“Old mother—” The voice startled Tvrdy. “Trabant is looking for you.”

“Cejka!” He hit the switch. “Trabant has found us in the boatyard.” He looked at his men. “We hit them as soon as Cejka opens fire. Be ready to move the instant the line breaks.”

A long minute passed. Then another.

The Invisibles, suspicious of the lack of activity, began blasting the boatyard. The raiders hunkered down and covered their heads. “Hurry, Cejka,” whispered Tvrdy.

The Invisibles, intent upon destroying the boatyard, did not see Cejka, Bogney, and the Dhogs slipping in behind them. The instant Cejka and his team attacked, Tvrdy and the Rumon opened fire. The Invisibles, crushed between the hammer and anvil of a dual attack, succumbed in seconds.

It happened so fast that it took Tvrdy and the Rumon a moment to understand that the way was clear. They crept cautiously from hiding and then scrambled over burning wreckage to join their comrades.

“Can we get back?” asked Tvrdy.

“I think so,” answered Cejka, “if we hurry. There are more Invisibles on the way—we can count on it.”

“Talk later,” grunted Bogney.

They made their way slowly back to Threl Square using the escape route Tvrdy had designed, avoiding open areas and better-traveled byways. Bogney led the way, using his Dhog's finely honed sensitivity to detection. They saw no one until, skirting Threl Square, they encountered a Mors Ultima squad making a sweep through a row of Hageblocks.

“Deathmen coming this way,” whispered Bogney.

“We'll have to leave our route, go around,” Tvrdy replied. “Can you get us back on the other side?”

“Dhogs get Tanais and Rumon back.” With that, he struck off in the opposite direction.

If not for the fact that the Dhog apparently possessed an uncanny sense of direction, Tvrdy would have said they were becoming hopelessly lost. But just when Tvrdy decided he must stop Bogney now before it was too late, the Dhog's unerring sense proved itself, and they emerged from an obscure passage into a close behind the Hageblock they'd been heading for when the Invisibles forced them off the path.

“Well done!” said Tvrdy, clapping the squat leader on his broad back.

They hurried off again, and eventually reached the Saecaraz refuse pits, which in times past had been built over the remains of the ductwork that at one time fed air to the Isedon section. At the bottom of one of the pits lay a grate which opened into the ancient duct.

The refuse pits were surrounded by a high fibersteel grid fence, which the Dhogs had long ago adapted to their own purposes. But between the Saecaraz wall and the fence lay a no-man's-land—a razed strip of moldering rubble.

The exhausted raiders stood in the mouth of a broken sewer conduit and looked out across the strip. “We're almost there,” said Tvrdy. “Cejka, you and your team go first. We'll cover you from here.”

They struck off across the strip. Tvrdy and the others fanned out in front of the sewer conduit, scanning the surrounding Hageblocks and streets for any signs of approaching Invisibles. Cejka reached the refuse pits and gave the all-clear. “You're next,” said Tvrdy to Bogney, and Dhogs rushed out into the strip.

There must have been at least five squads of Invisibles already hidden in the rubble because lightening struck from every direction at once. The Dhogs, caught in the open, shriveled under the terrible blast, cut down as they ran.

Tvrdy attacked the Invisibles from behind, and Cejka's men, finding themselves suddenly exposed to hostile fire, scrambled for cover.

The Invisibles turned their attack on Tvrdy's team, now well hidden in the ruins around the sewer. The resulting fight was fierce and fast. The Invisibles, having divided up the raiders nicely, now sought to crush them by dint of superior numbers. They advanced without regard for life or limb, throwing themselves into the fight with a ferocity Tvrdy had never witnessed before.

The rebels fell one by one to the horrific onslaught. The Invisibles pressed the attack, bearing down relentlessly, forcing the rebels to give ground beneath a sheet of searing fire.

Tvrdy saw what was happening, and realized that if his men broke and ran, the Invisibles would butcher them in a killing frenzy. Their only hope was to stand against them and somehow withstand the force of the attack.

Above the shriek and crackle of the thermal weapons, the rebels heard a voice, Tvrdy's voice, crying, “Stand your ground! Stand! Stand!” And they saw their commander standing fast with his weapon on his hip, firing bolt after blistering bolt into the onrushing Invisibles.

Cejka's team, having survived the initial attack and regrouped, now laid into the Invisibles from behind the fibersteel grid of the refuse pits. The Invisibles' attack, broadsided even as they pressed for the kill, faltered.

Tvrdy saw the momentary confusion—the Invisibles' divide and conquer tactic had turned on them. He dashed forward, shouting, “Attack!” His men jumped up, and they ran to meet the Invisibles, screaming, weapons crackling, orange flames bursting the night into a million shadows. The Invisibles fell back upon themselves, stumbled, tripped over one another as the foremost ranks collided with those behind.

In seconds the Invisibles were reduced to chaos, and Tvrdy, still firing into the swarming ranks, broke off the attack and headed out across the strip. He reached the place where the Dhogs had gone down and found the few survivors struggling to pull their dead and dying out of the rubble.

“Leave them,” shouted Tvrdy. “Save yourselves!”

“No leaving Dhogs behind,” replied Bogney, swaying under the weight of a body slung across his shoulders.

There was no time to argue about it, so Tvrdy ordered his men to help get the casualties out while the Invisibles regrouped across the strip behind them, Cejka doing his best to hold them off. A moment later the raiders were fleeing to the refuse pits, the Invisibles charging hard after them.

The raiders reached the gridwork around the pits just as the Invisibles, seeing their prey escaping, rallied and broke out of Cejka's containment, their black shapes flying over the broken strip.

They came rushing in, heedless of the wilting return fire. Invisibles fell in clusters as Tvrdy's men labored to hold them off. But the Invisibles were too many and too quick. Their Mors Ultima commanders had decreed a suicide attack in a last-ditch effort to stop the rebels and, despite fearful casualties, were leveling the full force of their attack on Tvrdy's group, trapping them outside the grid fence.

Hemmed in on every side, men dropping all around, the rebel team made a desperate last stand—weapons blazing, throw-probes glowing white hot, overheated handgrips searing the hands of those who held them—and kept on firing.

The Invisibles bore down, wave after wave of raking fire strafing the stranded rebels. In seconds it would be all over.

Then, with a flash and a roar, the strip erupted, hurling debris and dirt high into the air as one long continuous explosion ripped the ground. The Invisibles, frozen in the terrible cataclysm, were blown back by the force of the explosion, their bodies broken and flung like so many bundles tossed through the air.

“Piipo!” Tvrdy cried, turning to see the Hyrgo and his squad racing to their aid, the blunt barrels of their old-fashioned weapons smoking.

“Get moving!” yelled Piipo. He waved the gun overhead. “We'll hold them off until you're inside.”

The rebels scurried to safety, taking their casualties with them as they fled down into the refuse pits. Once inside, they passed the bodies of their comrades through the grate at the bottom of the pit and then followed them into the duct. More explosions thundered above, and then Piipo's team came pouring through a gaping hole in the grid fence and down into the pit.

“They'll ... follow ... us,” said a breathless Tvrdy when Piipo had joined him. “Get the injured ... out of here.” His voice rang in the ductwork with a harsh metallic sound.

Cejka and his men were already dragging the injured and lifeless deeper into the great curving corridor. Piipo brandished his weapon. “I saved two rounds for them.”

“Good,” said Tvrdy. “Seal the duct. That will slow them down.”

“We can never use this entrance again anyway,” said Cejka. “Now they know about it.”

“Give us as long as you can to get clear and then destroy it,” ordered Tvrdy. He turned to leave, saying, “And give yourself plenty of time as well.”

“Get going. I'll join you soon.”

They hurried off down the snaking ductwork, hands pressed against the smooth metal sides, feeling their way in the darkness, for the old duct was lit only at rare intervals by smudge pots placed along the floor.

They felt the rumble of the detonation before the concussion pummeled them like a giant fist, laying them out in one devastating punch. The shockwave rattled the duct with a deafening clatter as the walls convulsed.

And then all was silent.

Tvrdy and Cejka picked themselves up, choking in the smoke and dust raised by the explosion. Both peered fearfully into the churning blackness behind them. “Piipo?” Cejka called. “Piipo!”

Hearing a cough and another and then footsteps staggering toward them, they reached out their hands and caught the floundering Piipo as he lurched toward them.

“Are you hurt?” asked Cejka.

Piipo looked at them with a dazed expression. “I'm all right,” he shouted. “I can't hear so good.”

They took him by the arms, and together the three threaded their way back to the Old Section.

“We heard on the
monitor that you were in trouble,” said Piipo, speaking slowly and a little over-loud. He sat with his head in his hands, his right ear bandaged, both eyes black from the concussion of the bomb he used to seal the entrance. “When Cejka went to find you, he told us to stay there in case we were needed. I remembered the old weapons Tvrdy had showed us in the arsenal, and I thought they might be useful if the Invisibles found us. So I sent men back to get them.”

“You sent men back?” wondered Tvrdy. “All the way back to the Old Section for those weapons?”

Piipo smiled proudly. “The Hyrgo are sturdy. It was nothing.” Then he remembered the dead and added with a slow, sad shake of his head, “But we might have been quicker.”

“You did well,” said Tvrdy. “We all owe you our lives.” He looked at Cejka. “And I thank you, too.”

The mood in the briefing room was subdued. Treet had seen the raiders return, had seen the dead and dying carried into the Old Section, had seen the haggard, beaten expressions on the faces of the men ... and knew that the raid had failed.

Now, a few brief hours later, Tvrdy was leading a much dejected group through an autopsy of the miscarried mission. “That is something at least,” continued Tvrdy, “to still be alive this morning when so many are not.”

The others in the room remained silent.

“I take responsibility for the failure of the raid,” said Tvrdy, speaking softly. “It was my idea. I gave the order. I was wrong, and others paid for my mistake.”

“Not your mistake,” said Cejka. “We all agreed. We did what we thought right. Besides, the raid was not a total failure. We succeeded in every other objective. We wiped out Jamrog's bodyguard—the best of the Mors Ultima—and several squads of Invisibles.” He raised a fist to shoulder level and smashed it into his palm. “And we would have had Jamrog, too, if not for Mrukk.”

“The fact is,” Tvrdy said, “that we did not meet our primary objective—to remove Jamrog. This morning he is alive, and his hatred burns against us. We have succeeded only in making him more furious than ever.”

“Also a minor objective,” Piipo reminded him.

Tvrdy gave a snort of displeasure. “But at what cost? Too many men died for that success to have any value.”

Treet remembered it was Kopetch who had suggested that Jamrog's anger might be useful. He glanced around the room and saw that Kopetch was not among them. Had he been killed, too?

He also noticed that Bogney and his two Dhogs sat in stony silence. Knowing the Dhogs had taken the brunt of the beating at the refuse pits, he supposed they were hurt and angry about the results, and were demonstrating as much by their aloofness.

Fertig, who had stayed behind with Treet and Ernina, entered the room and took a seat. All eyes turned toward him.

“You might as well tell us now,” said Tvrdy. “Waiting won't make the news easier to hear.”

“We lost forty-three in the raid,” Fertig replied. “Seven more died of their wounds during the night. Fifty altogether.”

“The wounded?”

“Sixteen. Most should recover, but three or four may not. Time will tell.”

Tvrdy nodded. Treet had never seen him so despondent, so beaten. “We have lost over half of our ready force.”