Star Kitten (11 page)

The charges were set for only five minutes,
and with one massive Pumalar roar from the crew commander to signal
evacuation, the entire ramp full of workers fled down the incline
to the cavern floor to take cover, with Spleefs repelling from
above onto their shoulders. Soon the blasts went off, and debris
was flying in all directions, crashing down on the cheering
Nausties below. Bodies fell from the command bubble too!

The explosions were not enough to destroy
the whole structure, but the entire base of it did collapse and
fall 250 feet to the floor, letting freshly manufactured oxygen
into the canyon, and right where it was needed: near the top of the
ramp. Casualties in that battle had been horrendous, but the thrill
of seeing so many Security Force guards being eliminated really
lifted the spirits of the tired Nausties. Bodies of at least 65
guards littered the ramp from the explosion, with mangled body
parts and looks of terror frozen on their faces. Now, Warden
Ggggaaah’s forces would have no other options. No relief force was
coming. No ship would dare land on that planet now that it was
under attack. They had no means for defense but to just wait on the
Nausties to break into the Mess Hall and fight them to the death
right there.

It was only at that very moment that
Architeuthis and the rest of the Nausties that day began to
realize, they might just win this war!

But STILL, there was so much to have to
consider. So many Nausties had already died! So much had been
sacrificed. And yet even more was going to be asked of them. Much,
much more perhaps. Oh, they’d bear up to it, of course. These
Nausties possessed hearty souls. Still, just how far would they
really be willing to go to win their independence? Could they
sacrifice all they had? It might just very well come to that,
General Hicks feared….

On the twenty-fifth night of the rebellion,
General Hicks finally called it a day, and staggered over to his
bed pallet inside one of the captured food warehouses. The air was
better in there anyway, so he’d finally be able to breathe better
and perhaps finally get over his pounding headache. That’s what the
thin air was doing to workers outside in the canyon all the time.
Thin oxygen was giving many workers splitting headaches every day.
But yet they just kept on working.

The General would be trying to get a few
hours of sleep while crews worked frantically around the clock
hauling, spreading, packing, and filling in dirt to form the last
part of the ramp. But so much was still on his mind. Had he
considered everything? Every potential challenge?

Lying next to him as always when he sat down
on the bed was his companion, Perry. They’d been together for a
decade now; and Perry had always been his right hand man, his
confidant, and his partner. Perry was not just Hicks’s bedmate
either, Perry was in actuality a really smart Earth man who could
devise amazing solutions to both technological and physical
challenges. Hicks was the warrior-leader type who had that rare
ability to be able to see inside men's hearts and motivate them.
Perry, by way of comparison, was the type who could help such a
strong man with those abilities come up with a viable plan to
succeed. Always the man behind the man. Always the man behind the
scenes, Perry was. But now Perry's brilliance was under the
spotlight, and Hicks was thrilled to let his lover's star
continually shine bright.

"What am I not thinking of 'P'?" asked Hicks
with a snarling sigh. His throat had been badly damaged in a fight
many years earlier, by a Pumalar's dagger, and never healed all the
way back to normal. His neck still bore the terrible scar. Hicks
said, "This ramp... it's insane. The Romans built one at Masada,
just like we’re doing. Lucius had about 10,000 men working on it,
just like we do—give or take a thousand. And like us, those tough
bastards built a ramp out of soil and bedrock—in the middle of the
god dammed desert!” Hicks reclined onto the mattress next to Perry,
and continued, “Theirs was 375 feet high too I think I read once….
Did you know that?” Perry nodded with a grin. He had heard Hicks
tell the story before several times.

Perry rolled up on one side of his body so
that Hicks could lie down next to him comfortably. Hicks gave out a
long sigh and continued in a low mumble, “… they did all that just
to assault 900 rebels in a damned fort. Crazy. But they did
it—somehow—those stubborn Romans.” Hicks pulled in a really long
breath of air, then sighed it back out, “And I guess so can we...
but I just don't know, 'P'. So many things could go wrong… at the
top, I mean… you know?"

Perry snuggled up to his companion and
caressed his chest to calm him a bit. Perry knew very well that if
they tried a frontal attack they only had a thousand captured EIC's
to use in the assault; and half of them were nearly out of
ammunition. Otherwise, they’d be using spears and javelins against
space age weaponry. He knew they’d be going up against a very
likely well-fortified barricade inside that mess hall, once they
broke through, and that they’d be facing a hellish barrage of
weapons fire once they tried assaulting the breach. But yet Perry
wasn’t worried in the least. Not even a bit, really.

However… General Hicks was quite worried!
“So let’s go over this again, ‘P’,” growled the General. “What
REALLY happens when we get near the top?” Perry gave a big sigh and
continued caressing his lover’s shaved and tattooed chest. Perry
said soothingly, “Hickey, just get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll show
you exactly what I have in mind. I promise…. But for now you need
to sleep.” And Hicks knew Perry was right. He just needed to put
everything on ice for a little while, and breathe in the better
oxygen inside the converted warehouse. His head needed to stop
pounding too; and his body needed rest.

Gradually Hicks drifted off to sleep,
despite the cacophony of noise going on outside on the ramp
construction. Four hours of sleep. That’s what he kept telling
himself. That’s all he needed. Just sleep four hours and try not to
think…. Come out swinging the next day. Tomorrow was going to be a
really big day once again, Hicks knew, and people would be counting
on him. Let Perry handle the details. He probably had it all worked
out anyway. He always did in the past after all.

Once again, Hicks was quite correct, because
Perry had it all figured out in his mind. In the final phase of the
ramp construction, dump trucks built on top of tractors would back
slowly up to the edge of the ramp and dump out their contents, then
drive down the ramp as quickly as possible. Each tractor dumper
would be followed by another tractor dumper, backing up the long
ramp to the top. They’d only go one at a time though, just in case
the Security Troops tried detonating the mess hall window and
opening fire on them. No need to lose another hundred Nausties in a
surprise attack, Perry figured.

Each tractor following the previous one,
would dump its payload as well—continuing this process hour after
hour until the ramp was nearly complete, slowly but surely rising
those last few feet to the window of the Mess Hall.

However: when the ramp was finally within
about five to ten feet of the windows—and hopefully before the
enemy soldiers inside started to open fire—Perry had a very, very,
very nasty surprise waiting in store for them. Something they’d
never suspect or could have prepared for….

Back at that first war council meeting when
the idea of blowing up the entire terminal first came up; Perry was
already considering the nuclear devices inside the newly captured
Earth Cruiser. But he had no intention of detonating the entire
canyon in a nuclear holocaust either! Far from it, actually.

This is what Perry
actually
had in mind for
the battle at the very top of the ramp: Slart engineers would go
inside the now-buried Earth Cruiser to retrieve the
detonators
from those
thermonuclear warheads. Just the detonators off the top of the
warheads—nothing more. These detonators Perry wished to have
mounted onto a rack in the back of a dump truck… and then actually
BACK that vehicle all the way up the ramp to the top. The way Perry
imagined it, the detonators could be welded into a rack and placed
in the large open bin of the dump tractor. Then the whole payload
could be covered up in dirt, disguising its deadly contents.
Because of this, it would look just like any other load of dirt,
and the Security Troops inside the Mess Hall would never suspect
what was really inside that hauler.

Meanwhile, Perry needed
General Hicks to have the entire army assembled in formations for
the final assault…
in full view of the
Warden’s forces above
. The large tractor
with the drill mounted to it would be positioned at the base of the
ramp, while the “last fifty” of the dump trucks took turns
ascending the ramp, one after another. The defenders would wait
patiently for those final dump trucks to spill their loads and
complete the ramp; thinking the real battle was
yet to come
.

As Perry imagined it, the Security Troops
would have been assuming all along that when the tractor drill was
mounting the ramp for the final assault and troops were queuing up
behind it for the attack: that’s when they finally needed to
prepare themselves. So they’d pay little attention to the last few
dump trucks hauling up dirt for the ramp. They’d be waiting for the
drill! And they’d be waiting for the massed attack forming up
behind it too. That’s how Perry would catch them off guard.

One more dump truck offloading soil? And
then another, and then another? They could just ignore those and
wait for the tractor drill and the assault troops rushing up behind
it! That would be the real attack, they’d believe. That’s what they
would have been told by their superiors, Perry assumed.

They’d brace themselves for the final attack
and arm themselves to mercilessly mow down thousands of half-naked,
oxygen-depleted, riot-crazed prisoners until this bloody rebel
uprising was finally exhausted. After all why should they even be
worried? They actually had every reason to be overconfident. After
all, they had all the technology. The rebels had nothing but some
captured EIC’s to complement their spears and javelins; and of
course the false bravado that so often comes from achieving a few
minor victories in the early part of a rebellion.

But these Security Troops?
Oh, they had tear gas and concussion grenades to eliminate whole
platoons of attackers as they approached. That Mess Hall up there
probably had a whole arsenal of weapons and ammunition stockpiled
for its defense! Those Security Troops defending that position
would assume it would be nothing but bloody murder, once that drill
rolled up that ramp and started boring through their thick glass
wall. However… they were all sadly mistaken! Perry had
no
intention
of sending 10,000 Nausties into a turkey
shoot.

Instead, those unwitting Security Troops
barricaded in there would be blown to bits by what they thought was
just another load of dirt from a dump truck… a dump truck which
actually contained three thermonuclear warhead detonators concealed
under a mound of innocent looking dirt!

Detonators from a nuclear warhead would
create a directional charge big enough to blow up several floors of
the mess hall and even the barracks above it. If they all three
went off at the same time, the explosion would be large enough that
General Hicks’ entire force could have plenty of time to rush right
up the ramp unopposed. The hole would be so large… the Nausties
could easily hop right across; and into the building. Thousands and
thousands of them too. They’d just need to carry up long steel
planks to lay down over the gap created by the explosion. Then they
could rampage through the terminal and overwhelm the defenders
inside quite easily.

Perry knew all about nuclear warheads and
detonators because of his background. He’d once been recruited by a
large military contractor right out of college, where he’d been a
top-flight Physics major. Eventually the young Perry found himself
on the fast-track to a stellar corporate career in the defense
industry, developing advanced weapons technology, and soon he knew
of all the tactical uses for them. But that’s when he got into a
romantic relationship with one of his older mentors at the
company.

The man Perry fell in love with was a
colleague from work who was clearly going places in the
corporation, and Perry believed he could just ride the man’s
coat-tails all the way to the top. However the relationship soured
over time. The older man was already married and after a year or
so, his wife had become suspicious of the clandestine affair (so
the man claimed). He suddenly wanted to end it with Perry, and
though it broke the young man’s heart, Perry accepted his
decision.

However… within less than a year, the older
man was right back in the saddle; and quite openly dating another
younger man in another department who was fresh out of college.
Young Perry was devastated.

Then one day that older colleague from work
was found dead in a hotel room. Brutally murdered actually. The
perpetrator could have been most anyone really, with all the jilted
lovers the older man must have had, but suspicion fell upon Perry
as the likely killer. He denied it, of course, even if he didn’t
have a real air-tight alibi, but whether he did it or not, Perry
was eventually convicted of the crime and sentenced to “twenty
years—hard labor”.

One day a high-flying young up-and-comer
employed with an intergalactic military contractor… the next day
hauled off in a bright orange jump suit with shackles on both his
ankles and wrists. Six weeks later, he found himself exiting a
large space cruiser along with 60 other new prisoners to work in
the mines of Rijel 12… knowing he’d never see Earth again.