The Sword and the Plough (33 page)

“Daddy!” Amanda Kassada clutched at her
father. “I’m frightened. There’s fighting happening out there. Will
we be all right?”

Her father nodded. “Yes, I’m sure we will. I
can see the queen’s uniforms up there on the battlements.”

* * *

“Right! Your attention, please!” The captain
shouted above the battle’s clamour. “I am Captain De Vries and this
is Lieutenant York. We are the advance guard of the queen’s forces.
Our mission is to get you out of here to safety.

“We’ll be leaving by a small gate at the rear
of the fort. Our friends outside will keep the Megran troopers busy
for as long as it takes.” He paused. At that instant, the sound of
an explosion came from outside the walls. The Megran troopers gave
a rousing cheer.

“
But whatever you do,” the captain
continued, his countenance suddenly grim, “once we start to move,
don’t stop! And whatever you do,
don’t look
back
!”

* * *

Things went well to begin with. The first
rush of prisoners, with Caroline at their head, made it safely
across the open ground to the postern gate and into the gully
beyond where an escort of armoured ploughs stood waiting. For a
time, Lars believed they might all make it without casualty. The
sounds of battle and the thick clouds of grey smoke had helped
screen their escape.

* * *

“
Hold it
right there!”
The Megran
was puzzled. He pointed his Meredith at the captain’s
chest.

There were three of them, Megran troopers
in their phony red, on their way to the ramparts as reinforcements.
They had come up through the smoke and commotion before anyone had
seen them, catching the last batch of hostages out in the
open.

The first one spoke again, directing his
question at the captain.

“Who are you?” he wanted to know, his dark
eyes narrowing with suspicion. “I haven’t seen you before. And what
do you think you’re doing with the prisoners?”

The captain gave a wry smile. “Captain De
Vries –
private
–
is the answer to your first question,” he replied easily. “And as
to your second, we have orders to escort the prisoners to a place
of safety.”

* * *

“Daddy, what’s going on?” Amanda asked,
looking up at her father. They were in the last batch of hostages
to leave the keep.

“
I don’t know, Sunshine,” her father said,
attempting a comforting smile. “I can’t hear what’s happening.
There seems to be an argument among some of the officers. However,
they’re all wearing the queen’s red, so I’m sure everything’s going
to be okay.”

The remaining hostages pressed up beside the
father and daughter to see and hear more clearly, the same
uncertainty on their minds.

* * *

De Vries?” the Megran trooper was saying.
“I’ve not heard of you, sir.” He was far from convinced. “May I see
your orders
–
sir
?”

“
I was given the authority,
personally
,” the
lieutenant intervened smoothly.

“And who might you be?” The Megran’s gaze
shifted abruptly to the lieutenant, but the Meredith in his hand
never wavered.

“Lieutenant York,” the young woman
replied.

“York?” The Megran was now doubly confused.
“Any relation to the general?”

“Yes, General York is my father. My
identification tags will prove who I am.”

The Megran leaned in to take a closer
look.

“
Lieutenant Cheryl York,” he read aloud.
The pistol barrel dipped slightly. “But it says here – Queen’s
Regiment…” He was now even more perplexed if possible than
before.

“That’s right,” the lieutenant replied
evenly.

What happened next, happened almost too
fast for the eye to see. Lars saw the lieutenant leap into the air,
saw the Megran crash backwards under a savage storm of kicks, heard
the Meredith pistol rattle across the black stone yard.

The second trooper went down the same way in
almost the same instant before he even knew the tide had
turned.

The third froze where he stood as he felt the
sharp stab of the captain’s Meredith in his ribs.

“Sorry we can’t stay to chat,” the captain
muttered, his eyes like flint. He swung the pistol barrel swift and
hard, clubbing the man under the ear. The Megran dropped to the
ground without a sound.

But the incident had not passed without
Megran witness. Shouts of challenge now rang out from around the
ramparts. Abruptly the grey air about the last hostage group grew
bright with the fury of weapon fire.

“
Get moving!
Run!
” the captain shouted.

And run they did, in groups of three or four,
running low, the quarry of the Megran guns. Lars saw his sister run
with the others, the light-bolts slashing round her as thick as
rain.

The hostages with weapons now returned the
fire, their light- bolt volleys slicing through the acrid
smoke.

“Keep moving!” It was the lieutenant’s voice
above the wild confusion. “Keep moving! Run!”

* * *

“
Amanda! No!
No!”
Ben Kassada slid to his knees beside his
fallen daughter. “Amanda!” he wailed, his dark eyes glistening with
incipient tears. “Oh Amanda! Amanda!”

But he knew at once that she was dead. The
light-bolt had burnt a fist-sized hole through the centre of her
back, the bones of her exposed rib cage burnt black.

He scooped her up in his arms and began to
run.

He did not see the light-bolts strike
round him, nor hear the shouts and cries of friends or foes. He did
not feel the blast that killed him, the force of it driving him on
another three metres before he dropped to his knees and toppled
forward. He fell across the body of his only child.

Another half-dozen light-bolts struck his
twitching form. His hair blazed briefly, blackening his skull.
Finally, he lay still.

* * *

The enemy’s fire was taking its toll. Lars
saw five more hostages fall to one cruel fusillade. The smoke
burned his eyes and his voice was hoarse with shouting. “Run!
Run!”

The Meredith pistol in his hand grew hot with
work. But in the swirling world of grey smoke, he could only aim at
the flash from the Megran weapons and trust to luck some of his
shots hit home.

Lars saw the captain, his helmet all but
burnt away, stand steady as a rock to draw the Megran fire, the
light-bolts from his Meredith picking their way along the
battlements, seeking targets.

But nothing could withstand the relentless
Megran fire for long, no armour protect against the light-bolt
storm, and it was but a moment before he saw the captain fall,
three bolts of light converging at his chest to strike him
down.

Lars would have gone then to the captain’s
aid, but suddenly the lieutenant was there, standing over the
stricken form, her light-bolt rifle spitting fire. She turned and
cast him one fleeting look. And he heard her voice cry out above
the battle’s rage.

“Get them out, Lars! Get them out! The
fighting’s ours to do, not yours.”

And as he led the remaining hostages out
under the cover of the rolling smoke, he saw her small dark shadow
standing firm, and white hot flames leap from her arms against the
foe.

* * *

Six of Hakim’s ploughs were waiting outside
the walls. Hakim clapped a hand in quick greeting upon his young
friend’s shoulder.

“Thank the stars you made it,” he said. “Are
you the last?”

Lars looked back at the fort’s dark walls.
Thick billows of smoke blotted out the sky’s deep blue.

He nodded. “Yes, we’re the last,” he
said.

“Good, then we’d better move fast. We’re
heavily outnumbered and can’t hold on for long. We’ll have to try
and make a run for it.”

“Hakim!” The cry was little more than a
croak. It was one of Hakim’s farmers, red faced and breathless.
“Megran reinforcements have come up from Vegar. Horse troopers are
everywhere. We’re surrounded.”

And even as he spoke, they heard the deep
crump of explosions as the battle intensified.

Hakim’s eyes were deep pools of despair.

“Now we’re for it,” he muttered.

Commander Usha Sinha spun her bridge chair
round and glared at the silent computer face of lights and data
displays that stood beside her.

“Wake up you worthless box of circuits,” she
muttered angrily beneath her breath. “Wake up!”

The computer scans had reported nothing but
empty space along their planned course through the Jupiter Trojans.
Empty space, and a few hundred thousand harmless chunks of rock,
some as small as footballs, others the size of mountains.

“
Did you speak, commander,” the computer
enquired – a smile in the mellifluous tones of its perfect male
voice.

“No!” the commander snapped back in reply.” I
sneezed.

“Gesundheit,” the mellow voice crooned.

The secret with humans, its programmers
had said, was to ignore their emotions as being entirely
unreliable. And the commander was being totally unreliable
today.

Usha Sinha stared out through the space
glass dome of the
Daring’s
bridge. Her crew had been on hostile alert for
nearly an hour. She drummed her fingers impatiently on the bridge
chair arm…They were out there somewhere. She believed the boy. It
was her instinct too…

Whoop!
Whoop!
Alarms sounded and
warning lights flashed from the computer face as if the machine had
suddenly come awake, as indeed in a way it had.

Battle stations! Battle stations! Hostiles
dead ahead. Range 5000 kilometres and closing.

Clever electronic screening had kept the
hostiles hidden from the
Daring’s
computer scans until the last moment, but even so,
their own screening devices must have worked at least as well, for
they seemed to have taken the enemy ships by surprise.

“All ships! All ships! This is Commander
Sinha speaking. Take up battle formation in a line behind me.”

In her mind’s eye, she saw her red-faced
captains bellow out her commands and on the navigator screen saw
the other ships swing into line like ducklings behind a mother
duck.

Range 3000 kilometres and closing. Range
3000 kilometres and closing…

The computer’s peremptory tones boomed out
across the bridge. The stupid
machine was in its element now, the 4DTWS sphere
calculating speed and distance, computing guns and angles, and rate
of fire. It would automatically issue battle orders based on the
split-second decisions of its electronic brain, unless overridden
by the ship’s captain.

Range 1000 kilometres and closing…

There, the blips were on the monitor now.
Seven enemy ships moving in a wedge shaped formation, the leading
ship a good deal larger than the rest.

Range 500 kilometres and closing…

The two fleets were racing toward each
other’s mutual destruction.

Range 300 kilometres and closing…

Commander Sinha did not heed the computer
now
– there was no need
– the enemy squadron was on the visual screen. She switched
to
500 magnification
.

Range 200 kilometres and
closing
…

She sat forward suddenly. In the name of
Bess, the lead ship was a battleship. Even by itself, a warship of
that size far outgunned the total firepower of her little
flotilla.

Range…

“Damn!” The computer was displaying an
illustration of the Megran battleship to all her ships for all the
crews to see, citing its name and that of its commander, listing
its capabilities and its weaponry…

Range…

“
Riddick
! Turn that damned computer off!”

Arrogant machine, it was calmly computing
the inevitability of their own destruction.

“All ships! All ships! Go to captain’s
control for firing orders.”

The battleship’s grey shape grew fast. It was
so huge. What range? What range. She could not wait.

“
Fire!”
The
Daring’s
light-bolt cannons thundered into
action.

The light-speed bolts hit the power shields
on the enemy battleship’s bow and danced harmlessly down the big
ship’s side.

“Damn! We fired too soon. Recharge!”

Now the giant ship was almost upon them.
Its turrets flashed. Two hundred high-powered light-bolts slashed
through the
Daring’s
power shields to the naked hull. The bridge computer face
exploded in a shower of brilliant sparks like fireworks.

“Fire!”

Air loss alarms. Somewhere, the
Daring’s
hull was rent
apart. Airlock doors were closing fast trapping some of her crew in
an airless tomb.

“
Fire!” She saw the
Daring’s
light-bolts, at point blank
range, bounce off the battleship’s armoured hull.

“Fire!” There was no hope…

“Fire!” The energy charge was almost
gone…

“Fire!” One last burst before their breath
snuffed out…

The final explosion, when it came, seemed far
away. And it did not seem to Usha Sinha that she was dying as she
should. The flash was blinding, but there was no pain, and the
roaring in her ears was like the cheering of a thousand men.