Star Kitten (9 page)

But an amazing thing
happened. The Zorg guards at the remaining food depots actually
began…
surrendering
! Yes, after a while, seeing the futility of their situation
and cut off from any communication with headquarters, guard posts
began capitulating and negotiating terms for surrender. Now the
tide was truly turning.

Such is often the fate with isolated combat
units, cut off from command and any hope of reinforcement. Besides,
these were not trained soldiers. They were nothing but police; and
for that matter not even that. Just a rudimentary weapons training
accompanied by an orientation on how to change shifts and
distribute food rations to starving, exhausted prisoners. Otherwise
they were just bullies who thrilled at holding a weapon that they’d
rarely gotten to discharge, and barely remembered how to operate
anyway. When large forces of Nausties appeared outside their guard
posts and demanded surrender, most simply just gave up and tossed
out their weapons. General Hicks ordered all their lives spared
too… they’d be vital sources of information later in the war, no
doubt!

Within a few days, the Nausties had secured
most of the planet except for the command headquarters and main
terminal. Soon, they were massing inside the Service Tunnel itself.
Yes, the tide was turning, but this was still going to be a
desperate battle.

“Alright, boys… how do we crack a walnut
with our own butt cheeks?” asked General Hicks with a sarcastic
growl and a menacing grin. In the dimness, his men chuckled and
snickered subtly. It was still a very serious situation, but the
general’s surprising levity was appreciated nevertheless. Hicks
gathered his aides and military advisors inside the service tunnel
to plan the final attack, and the first expectation he wanted to
set was this: No idea was too far-fetched. Nothing was too crazy to
consider. Time was running out too. By now, Warden Ggggaaah surely
must have put out a distress call for help. The only bad idea
anyone could have suggested was to wait and think it over a few
days. They didn’t have a “few days”.

Emergency lights were all that shown inside
the service tunnel now, and as far as anyone could tell, the entire
area for miles in every direction, had been secured. This was their
bridgehead, and supplies were beginning to pour in from below.
They’d been fortunate already….

Freight elevators extending from the service
tunnel down to the mines, ran on emergency electrical backup
sources… backup power connected to their own separate battery
systems in case of a planet-wide blackout. Ironically, the Nausties
noticed, the elevators were equipped with a shut-off switch that
could be engaged at the TOP of the elevator shaft in case of a
riot, but they still had their own individual power systems which
could be turned on to run the elevator separately from the main
electrical grid, until they’d need to be recharged.

True, the discovery that they could operate
the elevators for a while was a relief. Especially after Spleefs
and Zorgs had climbed all the way up those first two elevator
shafts and realized just how difficult that actually turned out to
be. Practically no one wanted to have to do it again (not to
mention repeatedly!) Carrying up supplies that way would have
required THOUSANDS of Nausties wearing backpacks filled with water
vessels or food rations. It would have taken days to perform this
and to continually supply forward units in this manner for an
assault would have been a monumental task.

Amazingly enough, the leader of the
Schpleeftkorkii gang had devised a plan for just such an operation,
if it ever came to that!

His concept, which fortunately never ended
up having to be executed, was to use TWO captured elevator shafts
and create a gigantic circuit of Spleefs, Earthers, and Zorgs
working in supply brigades of 1500 to 2000 beings each. They would,
if necessary, throw on sacks, tied to their backs, filled with
several pounds of supplies and literally CLIMB all the way up (over
a mile) to the service tunnel above them on ladders only about
three feet wide. Then when they’d completed the ascent, they’d use
captured transport vehicles to travel across the service tunnel to
another empty elevator shaft and then CLIMB ALL THE WAY DOWN.
Service vehicles below would transport them back to the other shaft
to reload with supplies on their backs; and … then climb all the
way back to the surface (over and over again). The Schpleeftkorkii
gang leader, Solomon Mwanga, was actually a black African Earther
and he’d allied with several other gangs to create three full
supply brigades to rotate into this diabolicaly circuitous
process.

It could have worked, rotating nearly five
thousand beings in a constant circuit of climbing up elevator shaft
ladders, then descending all the way back down to reload. But
having two working elevators was much, much easier.

Instead, Schpleeftkorkii gang members were
able to ferry up supplies on giant freight elevators and provide
military support in the attack. What a lucky break, this was. And
this rebel army was in dire need of lucky breaks too, because the
air below the surface would be getting thinner and thinner every
day they fought on against the Security Forces defending the
Warden’s stronghold….

In the meeting between Hicks and his aides,
General Hicks urged the men in his unit to “think outside the box,”
as he put it—coining an old Earth expression. Standing on the
cavern floor looking up at the ceiling, Hicks and his men had to
contemplate the horrendous task of getting all the way up to the
command center above them. And no doubt, up in that command center
(250 feet above the cavern floor) Warden Ggggaaah and his own aides
were looking right back down at them, trying to guess their next
move.

All access to and from that loading bay had
now been cut off, when the riot alarm had sounded, so General Hicks
and his men were going to have to figure out a way to get all the
way up to that planet surface where the main terminal facility was
located; or find a way to break into the terminal office complex up
near the top of the canyon.

Hicks folded his arms and glared. “We’ve got
about three days of really good air, before it starts thinning out
in here, boys. Gotta find a way up there… Gotta hurry up too” he
said gesturing toward the windowed command center 250 feet above
them. “Nothing’s too crazy, like I said. Give me any idea you can
come up with!” he urged. There was a long pause. No one wanted to
be the first idiot to suggest something stupid or impossible.

“Anything at all…come on boys,” he said,
hands on his hips and glaring at them. Finally within a few
moments, ideas began to flow from members of the group. Some were
creative, some were unrealistic, and some… were just downright
insane: from spot-welding components of equipment together and
creating a giant scaffolding… to detonating the thermonuclear
warheads inside the one single captured space craft still sitting
down in the cargo bay with them. This idea involved blowing up the
entire terminal, and leaving nothing but a giant crater. The entire
premise behind this idea was thus: if the Nausties could not
survive much longer on thin air and dwindling rations, they’d take
out Warden Ggggaaah’s staff and security forces right along with
the whole terminal. Then they’d find a way to survive on the planet
growing hydroponic farms below.

Perry, who was General Hicks’ male life
partner, disagreed with that idea immediately, saying with a
sarcastic grin, “Nah, we’re not desperate enough to blow up the
whole terminal… not quite yet, anyway.” After all, Perry deduced,
capturing the terminal intact was still the best solution,
regardless of the casualties required…. Perry’s greatest fear,
after the fall of the Warden’s headquarters, was for the planet to
descend into chaos, murder, cannibalism, riot, and even civil war.
His fears were well-founded, too.

But that one crazy idea about blowing up the
entire terminal eventually led to more sane ones. And eventually a
really ambitious idea was proposed, that only someone like Perry
could grasp and be inspired by. In fact, when it first was
proposed, almost everyone balked at the audacity of it, except for
Perry. It just needed a little tweaking, that’s all. Because
someone in the group actually suggested they build a giant hill...
out of mineral ore! It took a crazy man to come up with a crazy
idea like this, and the Arian Knights gang sure had plenty of
them.

The man’s name was actually Vladimir “the
Impaler” Vyebyvatsya, and he was from the Earth region of Russia.
On Earth, he’d been leader of a Russian mafia cartel, and
responsible for—or even directly involved in—over a hundred
murders. Now pushing 40 Earth years old, he was tattooed almost
from head to toe, just like a lot of Russian gang members, and
though long in the tooth, he was still quite terrifying.

All he suggested actually, was to dump dirt
all over the large space craft still parked in the loading bay and
build a large mountain that could reach the top of the cavern. Then
the Nausties could construct a spiraling roadway that could ascend
it. Once reached, The Impaler suggested, the men could use
explosive charges to take out the command center and from that
breach, enter the facility and battle its defenders. The other
aides at first scoffed at the idea, arguing that it would take too
long, and the base would have to be quite enormous to create a road
wide enough for vehicles to spiral up to the top.

Perry, however, immediately saw how the
concept made sense, given the resources they had available, but it
just needed a slight alteration. “Wait, General, I think the
Impaler may have something there,” interjected Perry. Suddenly all
eyes were upon him—even the very violent Russian who’d thought it
up, looked at Perry with surprise. Perry continued, gesturing at
the space craft and then up at the walls of the cavern above, while
the general and his aides watched. “We’ll take this idea of a large
dirt mound, but make it into a RAMP that would use the spacecraft
underneath to support its weight, then simply DRIVE dump trucks up
the formed ramp to create a steep incline leading up past the
command center above us.” The Impaler nodded in approval, then
added, “Right, Perry. See General? We then could drive a tractor UP
that dirt ramp to the wall of the space terminal offices. Then… we
just drill through it!”

As Perry explained it to everyone, “Captured
guards have told us that on the other side of that wall are
thousands of offices and barracks for soldiers; even a massive mess
hall. You can see them through the windows up there… look!” There
were many windows, and if the assault ramp was wide enough, there
could be a constant convoy of dump trucks driving up with full
loads to lay additional soil, and still allow plenty of room for a
tunnel driller to drive up and break through.

The Slarts could figure out all the
engineering. And General Hicks had thousands of experienced mine
workers to create it! Hicks liked the way it sounded.

Hicks loved reading about ancient warfare
when he was in prison back on Earth, and he could recognize
immediately that they were all basically just taking a page from
Earth History. Much like Alexander’s ingenious “Mole” that he built
to attack the city of Tyre in 332 BC, or the Battle of the Crater
near Petersburg, Virginia in 1864. Even more specifically this
sounded like the way the Romans did it in the Battle of Masada in
73 AD. This plan that Perry and the Impaler proposed would be
almost exactly like that of General Lucius and the X Legion. In the
assault on Masada, the same strategy was employed: an earthen ramp
was constructed leading up to an otherwise impregnable mountain
fortress, perched on a mesa overlooking a valley.

It was diabolical what the Romans devised,
using only 10,000 legionnaires, auxiliaries, and slaves, to build
an earthen ramp in the desert heat by hand, but somehow they did
it. The Romans simply dumped basket after basket of soil onto a
narrow path that led up to the main gate of the fortress. It took
them three months to create the earthen ramp and make it wide
enough and strong enough for their army to attack up it. And they
knew they’d be pelted with arrows and stones by the defenders as
soon as they got within range.

The Romans were successful in finishing the
ramp (which is still there to this day), taking thousands of
casualties in the process. They made it with bedrock and soil from
the nearby desert, broiling in the sun as they worked day after
day. But they just kept on dragging basket after basket of dirt up
that ramp, until it was solid enough to hold horses with wagons.
Then wagons carried even more dirt for them to pile up and smooth
out to create a solid roadway, and they used wooden beams to add
stability. They then drove and dragged a metal-clad battering ram
up to the gate to punch a hole through it.

Of course, when they finally got there, the
Romans only found horror and death: almost all the 961 rebels had
killed themselves in the night. None of them wanted to be slaves,
preferring death to the alternative, so they committed mass
suicide. When they entered the fortress, the Romans found only a
few women and children left alive, hiding in an empty cistern.

This task would be similar: to build a giant
dirt ramp by using thousands of already experienced miners to pile
up millions of tons of soil and ore and form a road on top to drive
a tractor across. The tractor would have a drill mounted to the
front which could punch a giant hole in the wall of the offices
above them. And just like the doomed defenders of Masada thousands
of years ago, the Warden and his staff would get to watch this
amazing feat going on below them, with nothing to do but just wait
and see if the Rebels could make it all the way up to try and kill
them.