The Soldiers of Halla (38 page)

“What have the gars been told?” I asked Courtney. “I mean, if it comes to a close-in fight, what will they do?”

“You mean what's going to happen if it looks like we're losing?” she asked.

I nodded.

“There will be no prisoners,” she said with certainty. “One way or the other, this will be a fight to the death.”

As fatalistic a thought as that was, it made perfect sense. If I had to choose between dying in battle or being rounded up and put into a cage and held until I was slaughtered for food, I know the decision I'd make. Surrender was worse than suicide.

The four of us stood on that platform, watching as the klee army emerged from the destroyed mountain.

“Is there no end to them?” Kasha said, thinking out loud.

I thought back to the view we'd gotten of the army from the sky when we flew in the day before. There were thousands of them. Multiple thousands. There was no way that a guerrilla force of gars and Yanks would stand a chance against them.

“When you met with the gar defenders last night, did you plan for this possibility?” I asked.

“You mean did we figure out what to do if the klees got in and they turned out to be dados?” she asked. “Yes. We put together a rough plan.”

“How rough?” I asked.

“Well, considering we didn't think this would really happen, not a whole lot of thought went into it. But it's not complicated. The plan is to lay back with the radio cannons, wait until the klees enter the kill zone, then give the order to unload on them.”

“How precise are the weapons?” Kasha asked. “Does each dado have to be shot separately?”

“Yes,” Courtney answered. “The throw of the radio cannons isn't very wide. But we've got the best marksmen in charge. All they need is the order to fire.”

“And who gives that order?”

Courtney looked at me and gave me the confident smile that I had seen so often. “That would be me.”

Of course it would. She's the one who introduced the concept of dados to the gars. Why shouldn't she be in charge? Courtney trained her binoculars back down into the valley. The hordes of klees continued to pour into the valley. There seemed to be even more than we'd seen from the air, but I think that was because they were more concentrated from having come through the gap.

“Are there enough cannons?” Boon asked nervously. “There are a whole lot of targets down there.”

“More than enough,” Courtney answered without taking her eyes away from the binoculars. “With plenty of power to fire several charges from each weapon. The trick is to get our shooters close enough to be able to target the klees, but not so close that, if the cannons are ineffective, they would be in the way of our counterattack.”

“Counterattack?” Kasha asked.

Courtney didn't answer. She was focused on events down below. The flag-carrying klees were a third of the way through the valley, headed for the waterfalls. They were about to pass by the thick stand of trees that grew along one shore of the lake. I had no doubt that the gar shooters were hidden among those trees. Courtney held the binoculars with one hand and lifted her link radio with the other.

“Stand by,” she spoke into the radio.

Her voice didn't betray the tension I knew she was feeling. Were the klees dados? Would the radio weapons be effective against them? We would know in a few short seconds.

“Wait for my command,” Courtney said softly, as if she didn't want her words to be overheard by the klees below.

The army marched on. The first line reached the stand of trees. How long would Courtney wait? Was the hurried plan they hatched being put into gear? Were the gar shooters in position?

“On my command,” Courtney finally said.

I didn't know what she was waiting for, but this was her show, so I wasn't going to comment.

“Five…four…three…two…one…
fire
!”

The first line of klees froze in their tracks. That one reaction was all we needed to know.

“Dados,” Courtney growled in triumph.

The dado klees dropped their flags. The red stars of Ravinia fell into the dirt. In seconds, multiple hundreds of klees were lying on the ground, lifeless. There was no doubt. They were dados. Wave after wave hit the ground. I heard the faint sound of the whine of radio waves rising from the valley floor as the gar shooters unloaded on them. There must have been hundreds of weapons down there, all firing incessantly. That's how many dados fell.

“They aren't klees!” Boon shouted with joy. “They can be stopped!”

Within a minute the bodies of a thousand dado klees littered the valley of waterfalls. It looked like total victory. At first I thought that the only reason the klees to the rear weren't falling was because they couldn't get past the sea of bodies and enter the kill zone. I figured it was only a matter of time before word got passed back and the remaining dados beat a quick retreat.

That didn't happen.

“Why are they continuing to march forward?” Boon asked. “They must realize they have entered a trap.”

The first hint of doubt crept into my head. Every last
klee wearing the red uniform of Ravinia was dead. Or deactivated. Or whatever. They were joined by many more who wore the uniform of soldiers from Leeandra and wound up dead as well. But there were many to the rear who kept moving forward, crawling over the bodies, continuing the assault.

“Something's wrong,” Courtney announced.

“Could the gars be out of ammunition?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said ominously. “Or maybe the rest aren't dados.”

The truth suddenly seemed obvious. The radio cannons had knocked out the dados, but there was more to this army. Much more. The dados were sent in first, perhaps for this very reason, to draw out the radio-cannon fire. Coming up from the rear were flesh-and-blood klees. Most of the army had been wiped out, but there were still plenty of living klees to bring the battle to Black Water.

Courtney kept her eyes down on the valley. If she was scared, she didn't show it.

Kasha said, “You said something about a surprise?”

“Yeah,” Courtney replied. “Now or never.”

The klees clambered over the fallen dados effortlessly. After all, they were cats. They dropped to all fours and continued moving forward. It was almost as if they had practiced this maneuver. The first ones over the pile of dead dados advanced several yards and then stopped, waiting for the others to make their way over and assemble. It was hard to tell how many were there. Five hundred? A thousand? More? The army had been cut down considerably, but there were still plenty of living klees left to do some damage.

“What's going to happen?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“This isn't the Black Water you knew, Bobby,” Courtney explained, sounding way too calm for the situation. “Much of the change has to do with the Yanks, who helped the gars advance. It was clear that if the klees ever decided to attack, the gars wouldn't stand a chance. So they had to come up with unexpected ways to defend themselves. Creating the radio cannons was one of those ways.”

“But there's another, right?” I asked hopefully.

“The theory is there,” Courtney answered. “We weren't able to fully test it, for reasons that will become obvious, so I guess you'd call this a ‘trial by fire.' It's either going to work, or Black Water is done.”

The remaining klees assembled beyond the mass of dado bodies. Several klees on zenzens rode to the front of the pack. I figured these must be the officers. They had been lying back, safely waiting for this moment. Now they were about to lead the charge into Black Water. One officer rode to the front of the klees, raised his arm as a signal, and motioned for the waterfall. Moving as one, the mass of klees began to make their way toward Black Water.

“Are gars guarding the waterfall?” I asked.

“No,” Courtney answered. “The tunnel doesn't offer any position to attack from. Gars are waiting on the far side, but we're hoping the klees don't make it that far.”

Kasha asked, “So you will try to stop them before they reach the tunnel?”

“That's the idea,” Courtney answered.

We all looked down over the edge as the re-formed but smaller klee army marched toward the waterfall. I glanced up into the mountains on our side of the valley. Were there guns up there? Were the gars going to roll rocks down onto the klees? What was going to happen?

Courtney lifted her link cube. The command to launch the counterattack was hers to give. “All units, prepare to release,” she ordered.

I watched her scanning the scene below, calculating. I glanced to Kasha. Kasha shrugged. She didn't have any better idea of what was about to happen than I did.

Courtney looked to us and said, “If we're lucky, this is going to get ugly.”

She brought the link cube to her mouth and gave the order. “Three…two…one…release!”

“Release what?” I asked.

My answer came in the form of a high, shrill whistle. It was soon joined by another. And another. Soon the piercing whistle sound filled the valley, echoing off the stone face of the surrounding mountains. Looking at the klees, I saw that the sound didn't affect them at all. They continued their march.

“It didn't work,” Boon fretted. “They aren't stopping.”

“Hang on,” Courtney said with patience.

Whatever was supposed to happen wasn't happening. The whistle sound continued, growing in pitch and in volume. I felt bad for any stray dogs that might have been wandering around. Not that there were any dogs on Eelong.

That's when I remembered. I had heard a whistle like that before. On Eelong. There may not have been dogs on this territory, but there were other animals. Was it possible? Was this the final defense that the gars had pinned their hopes on?

A second later they struck. The forest that surrounded the base of the mountains came to life. Leaping from the dark confines of the trees were…tangs. Hundreds of
them. They had appeared from nowhere, and they looked pissed. The klee officer held up his hand to signal his soldiers, but they already knew. They were surrounded by a ring of angry tangs. The first line of klees stopped, which meant the rest of the army bunched up behind them. In seconds the klee army had gone from a tight, formidable force, to a group of confused cats. Obviously, they hadn't expected this, which is exactly what the gars had been counting on.

Courtney glanced back at me with a sly smile and said, “We stopped battling tangs and learned how to train them.”

I thought back to when I had been treed by the tang, when I first got back to Eelong. That thing was just as vicious as any tang I had ever seen, and I had no doubt it would have ripped me apart if it hadn't been for the gar that called him off—with a whistle. The gar had petted the snout of the subdued beast. The carnivorous lizard had become as docile as my dog, Marley. From that one event I had learned that the gars could calm the tangs. From what I saw below, they could also fire them up.

The klees turned outward to defend themselves. They raised their weapons to protect against the rampage. It was too little, too late. The vicious tangs descended on the klees like a swarm of hungry locusts. There was a bloodlust going on that actually turned my stomach. Courtney's prediction came true. It got ugly. I couldn't watch. Looking to Kasha and Boon, I saw that they had to turn away as well. These were their brothers down there. As misguided as they may have been, these soldiers were still klees. Saint Dane's influence put them on a violent path, and that violence was now being turned back on them. They were slaughtered.
There was no other word for it. I heard the tortured screams of the cats as they desperately tried to fend off the tangs, or to flee. The tangs were merciless. I was grateful to be as far away as we were, because I couldn't imagine hearing the sounds of tearing flesh. And chewing. And death.

Some klees escaped. The officers on zenzens were the first to bolt. They galloped back toward the newly cut gap and out of the valley as fast as their zenzens would take them. A few were hunted down before their zenzens got up to speed. The tangs leaped at them and took them down violently. Several stragglers managed to escape. A running klee was faster than a running tang. I can't judge how many got away, but it wasn't many. The rest fell to the teeth and talons.

The battle didn't last long. The event was swift and violent. Within minutes hundreds of klee bodies lay in their own blood, being devoured by tangs. I guess that's justice for you. The klees came to eat the gars, and instead, they found themselves on the menu.

Kasha's voice quivered when she said, “I do not know if I should be repulsed…or thrilled.”

Another whistle sounded. Different pitch. Different frequency. The trained tangs instantly gathered together and trotted back into the forest from where they'd come, looking suddenly docile…and satiated. In minutes, all that was left of the massive klee assault on Black Water was a gap blown into the mountains, seven destroyed gigs, a pile of fried dados, and the bodies of hundreds of half-eaten klees.

The attack had been an absolute and total failure.

Courtney pulled the earpiece from her ear and turned to me. The relief on her face was obvious. “Guess it worked.”

It was over. The klees had come knocking and the gars
shut the door. The four of us hurried back for the elevator and descended quickly into Black Water. When we exited the elevator tunnel, we witnessed a scene of total joy. It was pandemonium. This was a war they had been preparing for for a long time. It had ended in complete victory. The four of us stood at the mouth of the tunnel, looking down the slope into the village. We didn't join the celebration. That would have been tricky, considering Boon and Kasha were klees. We had to make do with witnessing it from afar.

The village was in an uproar. People cheered. Music played over loudspeakers. Gars hugged Yanks. People were kissing. The radio cannons that minutes before had been set to protect the first ring of buildings were laid down, and their shooters were dancing joyously. It was an outpouring of positive emotion like I had never seen before. It reminded me of when we had prevented the klees from poisoning Black Water so many years before…times twenty.