Part 91 (2/2)
”I think the fire's accelerating the drain. It's going to be one of those days, I'm afraid ... And I was really looking forward to going back to the Milieu and thumbing my nose at NAICE.
How about you, Wayland?”
Tony was unloading the electroliser, replacing the dysprosium salts in their canister. He said dully, ”I hoped to live here in peace with my wife. She's in Nionel.”
”Tough,” Alice said. ”Whoops-the floor's starting to go.
Hang on to the equipment.”
The flames stretched high and the broken walls of the lab building crashed all around them. As the conflagration dwindled they had a clear view of the camp compound. The shuttle aircraft that had landed shortly before the Yotunag onslaught was a smouldering ruin. A few mutant bodies lay about, but there was, ominously, no sign of human or Tanu remains.
Alice cuddled the small sigma generator solicitously while Tony braced the electric furnace and Kalipin saw to the safety of the bottled dysprosium. The lab bench bucked as the floor subsided. Small tools and the chloride canister went flying. The chairs fell over and a taboret dumped. The monsters outside, sensing the disturbance, capered and yawped and smote the crumbling floorboards with their hammers to accelerate the process of disintegration; but the sigma held, and eventually those inside stood on a stabilized wooden cutout, surrounded by smoking debris.
”Fire doesn't seem to bother the ghoulies much,” Alice remarked to Kalipin.
The Howler shrugged. ”Their feet are tougher than horn, and it's said they commonly use wildfire to harry game here in the northern wastes. The Yotunag are the most terrible of our mutant brethren. Not even the Howlers of the Bohemian mountains are so cruel and intractable. These creatures laughed to scorn my Master Sugoll's invitation to join him at Nionel, and they even dared to devour certain Ingatherers who attempted to pa.s.s through their territory on the way south from the Amber Lakes. Oh-Yotunag are rotten through and through! No doubt about it. And as crafty as they are ferocious, as the stealth of their attack today proves. It's not easy for Howlers to go invisible, you know.”
”Why the h.e.l.l couldn't they leave us alone?” Tony whined.
”We weren't doing any harm.”
Kalipin held up the handful of gla.s.s vials with the dysprosium.
”We were taking something from the earth. A commodity useless to them, it's true, but one that was nevertheless their property. Ilmary and Koblerin the Knocker and I tried to explain to the man Trevarthen that we should pay for the stolen minerals with gemstones valued by the Yotunag. But he refused to listen, even when John-Henry and Stosh were ambushed and killed.
His response, and that of King Aiken-Lugonn, was to mount more grey-torc guards with Milieu weapons around the camp.
Well-we saw what happened as a result of Trevarthen's bad judgment.”
”He's past caring now,” Tony said, ”along with all the rest of them caught outside the sigma.”
Alice studied the display on the force-field generator. ”And so will we all be-in about ten minutes, rough reckoning.”
The monsters raged, circling amidst the smoke. There were forty or fifty of them, waving bronze-bladed spears and hammeraxes with stone heads the size of bed pillows. Great glee was manifested when a squad of brutes laden with bulging leather bags came shuffling over from the area of the diggings. The bags, emptied on the ground, proved to be full of roasted refreshments for the battle-company. The Yotunag fell to with a will, from time to time flinging bones or other grisly leftovers at the sigma bubble. Tony and Alice turned green and Kalipin settled down to recommend his soul to Teah's mercy.
Then Alice exclaimed, ”Hey-look over there!”
They saw blue-white flashes beyond the sh.e.l.l of the primary refining shed. Two large trolls came rus.h.i.+ng pell-mell around the ruins, only to be downed by dazzling blasts that left them incinerated skeletons.
”Sweet s.h.i.+t,” Tony said. ”There's somebody back there with a Bosch 414 or some other heavy-duty blaster! Don't tell me the Marines have landed-”
The besieging monsters all went charging off in the direction of the renewed hostilities. Numbers of them went invisible. They were met by a fusillade that nearly blinded the sigma captives in spite of the screening effect of the dynamic field.
”See how our rescuer shoots even the invisible Foe!” Kalipin cried. ”Thanks be to the G.o.ddess!”
It was true. Once the visible ogres had been zapped, the hidden marksman set to work potting unseen targets. Inside of five minutes the yard between the wrecked lab and the refining shed was thick with calcined exotic bones and blackened metal accoutrements.
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