Zone Yellow

Chapter 22

The inner-city wall was high and impressive, stoutly built of hewn stone with spikes on top. The gate was of plank-and-iron-strap construction, and guarded by a tall Ylokk in a fancy red-and-gold outfit, and armed with a Bofors hand-cannon he didn’t seem to know how to hold. He kept peering down the three-inch barrel while fiddling with the firing mechanism. His head was still intact, however, when I followed Major Lst up to him. He gave the major a casual look, and switched his gaze to me, until Lst barked what sounded like “Hsst!” followed by a rusty-spring squeal. Then the sentry snapped-to and almost dropped the cannon. Lst grabbed it and checked it over expertly.

“Fine weapon,” he commented to me. “Clever recoil mechanism.”

I agreed and helped him find the ceremonial-looking but functional key attached to the sentry’s belt, and we got the gate open. Nobody jumped out and said “Boo!,” and we filed through unchallenged. I had the humans out as flankers now. The Jade Palace loomed, pale green as a jade palace should be, replete with crenellated towers, slim spires, flying granfallons, and ominous fire-slit openings through which their devastating disruptors could be aimed.

We came on like people who belonged there, and, following Lst’s directions, took the drive that swept around the side to the technical compound out back. A few Ylokk in lab coats who were lounging around outside the big front door looked curiously at us, but nobody made a move.

We bypassed the main entrance and took a footpath around to a small entry almost hidden by pink flowering shrubs. There were two businesslike Ylokk here in combat fatigues. They unlim-bered two-foot clubs and hung loose, watching us approach. Then the one with the green back-stripe squealed something and Lst replied with a squeal of his own. He spoke softly and both of the guards snapped-to, turned to unlock the door, and disappeared inside.

“What were the magic words?” I asked him.

“I told them the truth,” he said. “They know me, of course. We are the escort of Her Highness. I gave the impression her retinue would be along shortly―” He broke off because the advance guard of a howling mob burst into view coming around the other side of the building. They had clubs and looked plenty mad.

Swft suddenly appeared at the front of our column. As soon as he had realized who we were, he had broken his cover and joined us. Taking in the situation, Swft went to meet the mob. A tall Two-Law sergeant in the front rank raised his club. Swft took it away from him and barked an order. Some of the oncoming crowd shied away from him and flowed past on both sides.

Smovia whistled softly and said, “That is one tough rat.”

“Look out, Swft!” I yelled, and moved up, with Helm beside me, to take out a couple of enterprising Two-Laws who had ducked in behind the general. But two more rushed him from the flank; he nailed one with the borrowed club and the other backed off, just in time for another pair to volunteer from his right. Andy and I intercepted them, and old Gus charged past us and took the offensive.

Swft was surrounded by the mob now, and taking solid blows from numberless clubs. Major Lst worked his way through to him and took a position back-to-back with the general. They clobbered Two-Law after Two-Law, until they were surrounded by a ring of fallen attackers.

Gus slammed through to them, and was felled by a big Ylokk with a six-foot quarterstaff. Helm got ahead of me, and I had to call him to heel.

“Don’t get cut off, Andy,” I cautioned him. By then I was close enough to knock the wind out of a Two-Law who was squarely behind the lieutenant and winding up for a killing blow to the head. There were plenty of targets; we kept busy knocking them over, and in a few seconds were climbing the ring of casualties with Gus, to join Lst and Swft.

The latter gave me a grateful glance and said, “We must break out of this trap before it occurs to them that one blast from a disruptor would finish us all.” He glanced toward our troops, who, surrounding the Princess, Marie, and Smovia, had interlocked their short arms and had been backed against the wall near the door.

“Her Highness―” he started, and staggered at a blow delivered by a squatty pink-striper who had noticed his distraction. I slammed the attacker down and another behind him.

Swft was back beside me. “We must relieve Her Highness!” he managed to gasp out. Ylokk lungs didn’t have our human capacity for prolonged effort. I nodded, and we formed a retiring wedge and roved our way back to the group guarding the princess in the partial shelter of the doorway. The assault was slacking off; the Ylokk lacked sticktoitiveness.

“Your Highness!” Swft called. “Retire inside, I beg of you! Nst,” he addressed the non-com in charge of the detail. “Inside! At once!” Then to me, “The lock will be difficult.” Nst went right to work on it with a tool of some sort, but seemed to be having no success. Too bad; the mob was pressing us hard. We needed an escape route.

Intent on all this, both Helm and I failed to intercept a Two-Law who plunged in from the flank and dealt Swft a terrible blow with a three-foot club. Swft didn’t fall, but staggered aside, and was surrounded by the enemy, who pulled him down and flowed over him.

Andy shot two or three and charged; I nailed a fellow who slipped in behind him, and we reached Swft, or what was left of him. He looked like a rolled carpet, oozing blood. The poor fellow had never fully recovered from that first shot back at the transfer station before the beating he had taken at the hands of the mob; and now this trampling. I tried to get an arm under him to help him up, but Smovia was right: Swft was one tough rat.

He pulled from my grasp and brushed Andy aside, and reared up to his full seven-foot-two, and yelled at the mob of Two-Laws surrounding us: “Get back! I order you in the name of Her Imperial Highness: withdraw!”

I understood what one fellow right next to me yelled back: “Give us the slaves!”

Swft pushed forward and struck the impudent Two-Law down. The mob shuffled uncertainly. Some seemed ready to attack; others were moving back. They were balanced on a knife edge.

“These humongs are under my protection!” Swft shouted, and knocked down another pushy Two-Law. The next fellow started a lunge toward the general, and I tripped him and then stamped on his head. Swft was still on his feet, but sagging. He delivered a buffet to still another aggressive rat, and was at once assaulted from two sides. Andy and I fired into these, making every shot count.

Old Gus moved up and added to our firepower. We beat them back, though they didn’t seem to learn very quickly that our pistols were lethal. A Two-Law sergeant lying at Swft’s feet stirred, and before I could nail him, lunged upward with a foot-long knife, trying to rip Swft wide open, but only slashed his thigh. Swft fell, bleeding copiously.

Minnie had slipped past her soldier guard; she came up beside me. The mob fell back then, quieting down as if even they were stunned at the enormity of attacking Her Highness. Andy pulled her back, and Smovia went to Swft, while Big Gus and I took turns clubbing down any of the mob who tried to approach. There was the ear-shattering bang! of a pistol shot behind us, and I turned to see Ben ready to fire again into the lock, but Nst kicked the door and it swung in as pieces of the lock mechanism dribbled from its edge.

“Have to get him inside!” Smovia yelled. He was tugging at General Swft’s ankles. I gave him a hand.

“Guess that rat’s done for,” Gus yelled in my ear. “Guess maybe now we can go in there and get at the machine that’ll take us back where we belong.”

“Help the doc get him inside,” I ordered him. He griped, but Ben and Marie stepped in to help. Andy and I, as well as Smovia, had our hands full. We could go on heaping up Two-Laws with headaches, but they kept on coming. We were saving our ammunition for the ultimate emergency.

“What you want with a dead rat?” Gus demanded, then ducked a club swung by a rat who stepped on Swft’s inert body. “Whyn’t we get inside and get gone?”

“He gave his life for us,” I said. “We owe him something.”

There seemed to be almost a lull in the assault. Our soldiers were still staying close around Minnie, or trying to. She slipped between two of them and right past me and advanced a step, then another, toward a captain in the glowering, shouting front rank of the mob. She held out a somewhat bedraggled bouquet of the wildflowers she had been gathering along the way. The dumfounded Two-Law officer took the offering and abruptly went to all-fours.

“Her Highness!” he yelled. “It’s Her Highness!” He crept backward, then rose and issued commands. The mob began to melt away. He prostrated himself again and waited, crouched before the young rat-girl.

“Rise, loyal soldier,” she said to him, as one to the manor born. What was it, I wondered―instinct, developed over millennia of exercising absolute authority?

Minnie raised her voice: “Go to your house now,” she called.

Smovia was back, looking distressed. “They’ll tear her limb from limb,” he bleated.

“Not while I live,” a sleek young captain of her self-appointed guard said. He moved up beside her, and quietly urged her to retire. Meanwhile, a cry had gone up: “Her Highness! Her Highness! She’s come back! It’s Her Highness!”

“Come on, Colonel,” Helm urged. “It’s time to get inside.” The rest were already past the broken-open door, and Andy and I slipped inside the Skein compound accompanied by confused yells from the Two-Law-led crowd.

“Where is Her Highness?”

“―lies! Don’t be fooled!”

“I saw her!”

“―a plot to deceive us all!”

“You’re insane, you know, Mister Colonel,” good old Gus told me, “if you think you’re going to make that crowd knuckle under to a baby rat. How do you plan to do it?”

It was dark and cooler inside the technical facility. All I could see was lab-type benches and a corridor leading off into the rear of the building. I didn’t give old Gus an answer because I didn’t have one. I’d been counting on Swft to handle that part. Now he was flat on his back, or as flat as his anatomy would allow; Smovia was stitching up his eighteen-inch wound.

“How bad is he, doctor?” I asked him. He nodded impatiently, “No real damage done,” he muttered. “Lost lots of blood, of course, but septicemia is his big risk. I’ve used plenty of antibiotics, and he could pull through.”

“Not in time to help much, Colonel,” Andy remarked.

“Damn right!” Gus chimed in. Andy socked him in the gut and he shut up, momentarily. As soon as he recovered his wind he was grabbing at my arm and telling me, “We got to get out of here, now!”

“And what of Her Highness?” Major Lst spoke up. “We’ve come this far; we can complete the mission.”

“My mission,” Gus cut in, “is to get my sweet butt back to Sodra, where it belongs!”

He looked toward poor little Minnie, where she was huddled by the door, surrounded by her faithful guardians. She stood and spoke to a fellow beside her, who almost fell down prostrating himself and unbarring the door. Before I could get my jaw open to yell, she had slipped through into the mob-roar and a glimpse of angry rat-faces. I got to the door with my pistol unlimbered, and watched her step up on the pediment of a fancy lamppost and face the crowd: The noise abated enough for me to hear her say, in that little-girl voice:

“…return to your homes, as I shall, now.”

Smovia jumped forward to dissuade her. She stepped aside from his clutch and said, “It’s all right, dear Unca Mobie. I know what to do.”

They gave way as she stepped down; there was some scuffling in the front rank between a few diehards who were still out for blood, and the cooler heads, who, being in the majority locally, suppressed the agitators. A lane opened up right across the lawn to the elegant green tower looming over the Skein terminal.

We all watched with our mouths open as she went up the broad steps to the ornate doors; all but her self-appointed escort, who hurried to form up alongside her, while the crowd took up the chant:

“Her Highness is here! Welcome to the Empress!”

Then they set up a discordant wailing that Lst told me was the anthem of the Folk. By now a pair of well-groomed rats in fancy overlong coats with brocade-and-lacework had appeared at the palace doorway, and were ushering Minnie respectfully inside.

Andy muttered a sound expressing admiration and astonishment. “Talk about class!” he commented. “And this Grgsdn thought he could replace thatl”

Swft had gotten to his feet, his leg tightly bandaged. Smovia was fluttering like a mother bird, but the general pushed him back.

“I must be at the side of Her Highness!” he insisted. “There is much that I can explain―matters which require explication!”

“Try explaining some of it to us,” Andy suggested.

“That child,” Swft stated impressively, “is the legitimate heir the mob has been howling for, spurred on by the traitors of the Two-Law party and by Grgsdn, its infamous leader. Her return will put an end to the rebellion, and”―he caught my eye and paused impressively―”to the foolish invasion attempt.”

“OK if we get out of here now?” Gus came in on cue. “I guess the little pet rat―” He got that far before Major Lst gave him the old torso-sweep and slammed him back against a flimsy partition, which collapsed. Gus, cursing loudly, extricated himself from the shattered screen, not without a few cuts from the broken glass.

“Looky here what that rat done to me!” he demanded, holding out a burly forearm bleeding from a number of superficial cuts. “Done cut me up some,” he concluded, then resumed yelling. Andy had to sock him hard under the ribs to quiet him down. He finally ran out of gas, and huddled, whimpering amid the debris.

Major Lst and I had succeeded in restraining Swft.

“We’ll go over later, sir,” the major reassured his superior. “When things have calmed down a bit. But how did Her Highness―if she really is Her Highness―come to be wandering in the forest in the company of escaped slaves?”

“We’re not escaped slaves,” I told him. “We’re with the Army of Occupation, or the Imperial Embassy, depending on how the details are sorted out.”

“Salubriously, I have no doubt, Mr. Ambassador,” Swft put in. “At ease, Major. I’ll brief you later.” He was looking anxiously out through the open door toward the Palace entry. The last of the crowd were trailing away across the plaza, carrying their wounded, with only a few scraps of paper and items of dropped equipment to indicate the recent activity.

“I’m worried, Colonel,” Smovia told me. “The poor kid is outnumbered. She can only get so far on her youth and innocence.”

“Don’t forget her instincts,” I reminded him. He nodded. “I suppose her clan has ruled here for at least as long as collies have herded sheep―and every collie pup is born with an urge to round up something.”

“Ah, Colonel,” Ben said diffidently. “Gus was, of course, out of line, but now the little female is back in her palace, surely we can give a thought to our own return home.”

Swft spoke up. “I heard your noble speech, Colonel, when I lay near death, when you vowed to carry on my mission. I now absolve you of that responsibility; I am after all, alive, thanks to the good doctor, and I can carry on from this point.”

“Not quite,” I objected. “I want to see little Minnie enthroned in state, and this Grgsdn in irons.”

Major Lst spoke up: “Gentlemen, I respectfully suggest that we form up in a military manner and proceed to the Palace as if expecting to be welcomed. The time for killing is past.”

He was right, of course. We marched over in formation. The fancy-dress sentries at the big west facade snapped to, and a moment later the liveried footmen inside were holding the ornate door open for us. Official-looking fellows came over and clustered around Swft. He seemed to be reassuring them that all was in order, and motioned me forward. I went up and was introduced to a baron and a duke, and Swft gave me full credit for saving his life, and those of several victims of the Killing. The courtiers got excited then, and questioned him closely. Then the most elaborately-braided of the bunch hurried away as if to spread the word. By now, a new crowd had formed outside, not shouting threats this time, but clamoring for Her Highness who, they shouted, had come back to overthrow the Killing.

Five minutes later, a party of uniformed Ylokk came marching into the square in good order, herding along a score or so of battered-looking fellows with the yellow badges of the hard-core Two-Law.

Swft conferred with a couple of other red-stripers, and came over to tell me all organized resistance to the restoration of order had ceased, and could he show us to our quarters now?

He could; I, for one, was so tired I couldn’t think, and the rest were in no better shape. It was the finest bed I’d ever stretched out on; I got that far in my assessment before I fell over the edge into dreamless sleep.