Doomsday Warrior 05 - America’s Last Declaration (25 page)

“Keep firing,” Rockson telepathed to the mutants around the plateau. “Send down everything we’ve got. Every Nazi we take out now, we won’t have to fight later.” The mood on the peak, of the freefighting forces, was joyful. They threw their arms around one another and whooped out yells of triumph. Tears of thanks ran down their dirty, scratched faces. Whoever these creatures were that were wreaking such havoc on the plains below—they were clearly friends of free men everywhere. Century City was saved.

Suddenly Rock heard a crack and then a painful cry for help behind him. He turned. Dr. Shecter, some ten yards away, was bleeding from a wound in his stomach.

“Rock, I . . .” He pointed with his eyes behind them both. The Doomsday Warrior turned. A grimy squad of Nazi soldiers were just coming up from the back of the southern mountain, firing their Kalashnikovs and subs as they ran.

“Shit,” Rock muttered, diving down on the dirt and edging over toward Shecter. He dragged the tall but somewhat frail creator of all of Century City’s marvels up over a rock with one single pull of his muscled arm.

“Stay down, damnit, you hear me?” Rock screamed into the pain-stricken face of Shecter.

“Sorry, Rock, I—” But the Doomsday Warrior cut him off. There was no time for discussions right now. He ripped his .12-gauge shotpistol from its holster and poked his head up over the boulder that shielded them. The Germans were coming full speed right toward them. Rockson fired five times, swinging the spewer of steel death around at the chests of the five lead soldiers. They crumbled to the rocky plateau, their guts bursting out like the stuffing of an old pillow. The rest dove for cover and set up a counterbarrage of fire.

Gunter, who was in the lead of all that remained of his Wolfpack force—only thirty men, shouted out orders to the rest of the commando unit to spread out and flank them from both sides.

“You will soon die, freefighter. Come out now and we will make it less painful than it might be,” Gunter barked out in a thick German accent as he slammed another magazine into his submachine gun.

“There’s been enough dying of freefighters today,” Rock yelled back. “Surrender now—and we’ll let
you
live. As commander of the free forces, I promise you that.” Gunter answered with a burst from his Turgenev, spraying a line of slugs that ripped into the boulder, cutting out little craters that erupted in a violent cloud of dust.

It was crazy, Rock thought, as he virtually sat atop the wounded Shecter who groaned but lay still beneath him. The goddamned Nazis were beaten—but these fools didn’t even know it. The Glowers’ mental signals must have a limit that they could reach. That’s why they sailed around the valley, so they could hit all the troops. Rock knew his shotpistol, as deadly as it was, was not going to stop this bunch. He turned around to see if he could get any help. The artillery unit closest to him, some fifty feet away were lying draped over the bottom of the big .152mm cannon, nearly fifteen feet long. The Nazis coming up on him must have caught them with their first barrage.

“Stay put,” he screamed right into Shecter’s face. But the scientist was already unconscious. Just as well. Rock shot straight up and unleashed six more volleys from his pistol, sending four of the Nazis straight to hell. He ducked down again as they returned the fire, breathed deeply and shot out from the back of the boulder toward the cannon. It wasn’t that far, but with fifteen crack shots firing with everything they have at him, it seemed like a million miles off. Bullets dug in everywhere around him, knifing into the dirt and rocks at his feet in little explosions of powder. He felt a sharp pain in his right calf, but was able to keep running.

“Get him,” Gunter screamed, rising from the ground and spraying his full magazine of 7.2mm slugs. “He is the leader. Kill him and you will be rich forever.” The Wolfpack squad rose as a man and let loose with a hurricane of fire power, the air whistling with trails of screaming white-hot bullets.

But Rock was already at the artillery post. He dove through the air as he heard the hail of slugs behind him, landing hard on the metal emplacement atop which the big gun swiveled. The migration of shells tore just inches over his head and out into the sky above the valley where freefighter and Nazi choppers were still battling it out. The Doomsday Warrior kicked two of the dead Americans off the turret and hoisted himself up into the firing seat. The damned thing was loaded—great. He pulled a lever and the immense cannon began slowly turning around from its previous target on the valley floor. As it swiveled, Rock cranked a hand-pushed wheel that lowered the muzzle of the stolen SS120 cannon until it was aiming almost straight down.

Bullets slammed into the metal all around him, pinging off the hard steel with sharp cracks.

“Get him, get that damned mutant bastard,” Rock heard Gunter scream out, as the waves of autofire slowly bore down on him. But that was the last thing the Nazi officer ever said. Rock zeroed in through the twin sights down the immense green muzzle and slammed his fist down on the red firing button. The cannon roared out a deafening scream and sent its six-inch shell out in a blast of smoke. The three-foot-long message of death flew only eighty feet before hitting the ground. It erupted in a blinding cloud of fire and smoke, sending limbs and a rain of flesh off in all directions. When the dust cleared seconds later Rock saw instantly that there was nothing left—not a man, not even a piece of a man. They had chosen—and they had died.

The great sand ships of the Glowers at last came to a rest in the center of the valley. The three bows of the two hundred-foot-long crafts pointed at one another, creating, to those who looked down from above, the appearance of a three-pointed star. They stood on the bows and surveyed the damage they had wrought. They felt no guilt, nor pain for the tens of thousands of dead Germans littered around the wide valley, slaughtered—albeit by themselves—like so many cattle.

“We have changed the time/space continuum,”
they thought as one.
“We have altered the history of the human species.”

“We are the human species,”
one of the many thought.
“We are human. We are Americans. We are descended from the same womb that our freefighting brothers are. We have done right.”
They took in the magnitude of death and devastation around them. Even
they
had never seen the full extent of what their powers could do. And they, in their own way, were awed.

“We must leave now,”
a reply came.
“We have done what we must do. Now we must pull back from the human destiny of our brothers. They must work out their ultimate evolution. This is our way.”

“This is the way,”
the other voices joined in chorus. They hoisted the great sails up to their full capacity and turned the ships around, heading back toward the valley entrance where Nazi troops were still fleeing in terror for the safety of the far mountains.

“We shall kill no more today,”
the voices sang out in a soft harmony as the sand ships’ sails filled with the invisible energy of the sun and the cosmic rays raining down from space. The ships quickly reached cruising speed and tore past the German troops as they exited the valley. The Glowers stood on the bows, staring straight ahead, mindless of the Nazis who screamed in horror and flung themselves to the dirt and behind rocks. But the Glowers had had enough of death. They mentally charted their course back home and vanished like a shipful of shooting stars into the slowly darkening sun.

Seventeen

C
olonel Killov looked down through his superscope binoculars from a mountain peak some ten miles to the east of Forrester Valley. He could hardly believe his eyes—the Nazi invasion was turning into a defeat of the highest order, because of these strange glowing mutants. And yet, perhaps it was all to his advantage. Premier Vassily had suffered a mortal blow with the destruction of his German force. The Kremlin power-makers would wonder if he was weakening, would begin casting their eyes elsewhere for a new leader—a stronger leader. And Killov was that man. He could turn the debacle around in his favor by being bold, daring—right at the instant of apparent defeat.

The freefighting forces were spread out over a twenty-mile range—within the valley itself and to the north. He knew that. And Century City, that elusive stronghold of Ted Rockson which he had never been able to find, was somewhere within that twenty-mile width—of that he was sure. He lifted the glasses from his pin-sized eyes and hesitated. There would be problems if he went against Vassily’s orders—the use of nuclear weapons. But Vassily was in no position to get him now. The commander of the KGB quickly dug out two pills from his pocket and slammed them into his mouth. He waited a minute or two for the chemicals of the Transcednal and the morphine tab to hit his system. Then he felt the familiar, wonderful warmth stream through his veins, giving him courage in this moment of paramount importance.

The colonel reached over to a small radio transmitter next to him and sent out the command to his fleet of waiting jet fighters, each armed with a neutron bomb. “This is Killov. Strike, strike, you understand. Mode Red strike. Immediately.”

“Received and carried out,” a voice at the other end replied. Killov clicked the radio off and sat back, his dark eyes burning with excitement. All these years—and now. At last he would destroy his most hated enemy—and in the process strengthen his chances tremendously to become premier: Boldness—that is why he would rule, deserved to rule. Because he had the courage to do what others only thought about.

The fleet of six Ilyushin-7 jet bombers streaked out of their landing field some thirty miles away. Swept back wings, noses arched forward like a hawk’s beak, they were fearsome weapons indeed, capable of reaching Mach 4 if necessary. Although on this trip there would be nothing to stop them. Major Velinsky piloted the lead jet, the other five, flying in his stream, each a hundred feet apart, forming a V-formation behind him.

“This is not a test run,” Velinsky said over his throat mike. “From orders of Colonel Killov himself, we are to proceed to vector five, sector three and deploy our weapons.” He paused for a moment, straightening the throttle on his roaring fighter as he nosed up into the clouds beginning to gather above the Rockies. “This is a historic moment, men. The day we have been planning and training for for years. Keep calm, carry out your flight patterns just as you have always done—and we will be successful. Tonight each of you will be a hero—will dwell in Paradise. Of this I assure you, for the colonel will reward us beyond our dreams.” His speech given, the major hit cruising speed and straightened out his flight path. There were but three minutes to the target zone.

The Technicians, with Lang leading up the twisting trails behind Ice Mountain, had traveled for days. Everything had gone wrong—from blinding sandstorms, to half the ’brids dying from lack of water. But they were here—and that was what mattered.

“These slopes have a ratio of incline-to-hybrid stability that is quite alarming,” Ullman said to Lang, as they at last reached the top of the peak that looked down on Century City, some two miles off.

“Sorry about that,” Lang said. “I’ll speak to the construction teams as soon as we’re home about building some superhighways up here.”

“I sense an equation of jocularity,” Ullman said, trying to smile, though his exhausted body could barely gather the energy to move his lips.

“Halt,” a voice screamed out at them from behind a tree. “Who goes there?” Ullman reached for his black beam pistol but Lang put his hand out and softly pushed the deadly weapon back.

“It’s Ok—it’s one of the good guys,” Lang said, his mismatched blue and violet eyes, like Rockson’s, twinkling with excitement at being home. “It’s Lang,” the young mutant said, holding his hands out to show he had no weapons. A face peered cautiously from around the tree trunk. “Remember me—Lang? I’m back with the expeditionary force sent to bring back the Technicians.” He swept his hand around him, to show that the race of mini-men was indeed with him. “Well, here we are. I must say I was expecting a more fitting welcome.’

“Jesus—Lang,” the guard said, stepping from behind the tree, as a dozen other faces in branches and concealed behind rocks lowered their weapons. “Where the hell have you been? Don’t you know we got a goddammed war going on around here?” He quickly told the returning freefighter and the Technicians who gathered around curiously what had occurred.

“Well, what happened?” Lang asked, his face draining of blood.

“We don’t know for sure yet,” the guard answered. “There’s wounded already coming back from Forrester Valley and—” his voice cracked—“they said it wasn’t going too good at all. Could have used your friends here though—I’ll tell you that. Too bad you’re so damned late.”

Lang’s eyes flashed with anger, mostly at himself—for not having arrived in time to make the crucial difference. “Fuck off, Parcells,” he said. “We did every damned thing we could to—”

His voice was cut off by the sudden screaming roar of six jets far overhead. Jets that were swooping down in a wide circle obviously preparing to strike.

“Holy shit,” Lang shouted. “Maybe we’re not too late after all. Ullman—deploy your men. There’s no time for setting up tripods or any of that shit. Just tell them to pull them out and start firing. Those are Red bombers—and I think I know what kind of cargo they’re carrying.”

“There is a sudden necessitation of destructive energy,” the leader of the Technicians said, addressing the rest of his race who stood around him in a circle. “Without proper mathematical coordinates we are requested to equate particle-beam energies necessary to terminate approaching air vehicles. Compute?”

“Compute,” the voices of the Technicians answered at once. They drew their pistols and unslung their black beam rifles, lying down on the rocky trail as the freefighter guards looked on in amazement. They sighted up the six jets, using the three triangular sights that stood on top of the smooth black barrels.

One after another of the small race of super geniuses pulled the triggers on their deadly weapons. Black beams, as dark as the darkest dream, shot out of the narrow muzzles and in a millionth of a second—traveling at the speed of light itself—slammed into the bombers, themselves moving at nearly two thousand five hundred mph. Most of the black funnels of energy missed, but one clipped the tail off the rear jet. It veered wildly out of control, spinning around like a drill and headed straight for the Rocky Mountain peaks below, exploding in a puff of fire.