“Buzz ‘em!” I said.
“What?”
“Distract them. Anything!” I shouted. Boon pushed the gig forward, and we shot toward the choppers.
The first helicopter fired a rocket into the crowd. When it hit, the explosion was violent. And sickening. I hated to think how many people had been killed in that one short second. A second rocket was fired, making another direct hit into the charging army. The explosion ripped the ground, tearing up cement. Bodies were launched like rag dolls.
“Do it!” I screamed at Boon.
The klee cut across the nose of the first chopper, barely missing it. The pilot pulled out of his attack run and turned his chopper to come after us. Boon buzzed the second chopper, doing a figure eight between the two. Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe Boon was a better pilot than Kasha. Our aerobatics seemed to confuse the pilots, which was the best we could have hoped for. All I wanted was for them to stop firing long enough for…
Suddenly both helicopters started to rotate wildly. They were out of control, and I thought I knew why. They kept firing rockets but had no way of directing them. Several hit the conclave wall. None hit our people.
“Pull up!” I shouted.
Boon shot skyward to get away from the doomed helicopters. There was no telling which way they would fly as they struggled to stay airborne. The hunters had become hunted. The gars were firing their radio cannons at them from the ground, which meant the marauders wouldn’t be in the air for long. I didn’t know if the weapons from Black Water were disrupting the choppers, or had damaged their dado pilots. Didn’t matter. Either way, they were going down. I feared for a moment that they might crash onto the battlefield… with tragic results for those below. I held my breath, watching the helicopters dodge about like crazed butterflies. They crashed within seconds of each other… but not on the battlefield. Both hit square onto the roof of the dado factory.
“Woohaa!” I screamed in victory, surprise… and relief.
Explosions erupted that tore through the factory’s roof. More explosions followed from below… far more than made sense for the number of rockets they were carrying.
“That’s where they build the helicopters,” I told Boon. “They must store the rockets-”
I was cut off by the sound of an immense explosion that came from inside the factory. A huge mushroom cloud of fire and black smoke blasted into the air, blowing out the roof. The wave of heat buffeted our little gig. Boon had to fight to keep control.
“I guess they store their fuel there too,” I added.
We both laughed. It was an incredible stroke of luck. I hoped the explosions carried through to the dado side of the factory.
I heard several smaller explosions coming from the ground. Besides the rifles that the rebels provided, there were also a few weapons that packed a little more punch. I saw people dropping to their knees and bracing another type of rifle against the ground. When they fired, a burst of flame erupted from each muzzle. It must have packed a heck of a kick. Seconds later explosions erupted near the destroyed door of the fortress.
“They’re like grenade launchers,” I said to Boon, not that he knew what a grenade launcher was. “They’re getting closer.”
Dados gathered inside the destroyed doorway to defend the obvious point of attack. There were dozens of them, all with the silver weapons. They fired wildly into the crowd that was growing ever closer. Every one up front held a shield. The constant metallic pings told me that they were warding off the charges fired by the Ravinians.
More grenades were launched, blowing dados away, throwing them back into the fortress. Several people formed a wall of shields to protect the gars that were moving forward with their radio cannons. When they got to within forty yards of the door, the sharp-shooting gars planted and fired. Dados fell like paper dolls in the wind.
The first wave of the attack was nearly at the fortress.
Looking back, I saw that the second wave had begun their charge. I hoped that the first wave would get into the conclave soon and neutralize the dados, because none of the people in the second wave had shields.
The dados along the top of the wall had grown sparse. Either they had been blown away by the gars, or had gone to the ground to make the final stand at the door.
“They’re going to make it,” Boon declared.
Sure enough, the first of the attacking force had reached the door and fought their way inside. I couldn’t tell if any Travelers were among them.
“Now!” I shouted. “Get us over the top.”
Boon throttled up and flew the gig over the giant wall. We were in, and got our first view of the action behind enemy lines. Below, our people poured in through the destroyed door, past the wreck of the golden engine. There were still a lot of Ravinian guards on the ground, fighting back, but far more were laid out on the ground. Finished. As the exiles and gars pushed inside, anyone who didn’t have a weapon to begin with picked up a silver wand from a fallen dado. We were gaining firepower.
That proved to be the last straw for the defense of the conclave. The dados didn’t retreat. They weren’t programmed to retreat. They didn’t know fear. They fought till the end, but the end came quickly. In minutes the grassy park below was filled with the remains of hundreds of dados.
I looked farther into the conclave, fearing that there might be a counterattack, either from more dados or from human Ravinians. As I wrote before, that is what I truly feared. If the human Ravinians engaged this army, they would lose and they would die. That wasn’t why we were there. This wasn’t meant to be a slaughter. From our vantage point flying high over the compound, I saw no counterattack. In fact, I saw very few Ravinians at all. I caught glimpses of a few who were deeper in the compound, but they were fleeing. They wanted no part of this fight. They expected the dados to protect them.
The dados failed.
“Put us down,” I said to Boon.
We dropped quickly and landed softly on the grass. We had done it. We were in. More and more exiles and gars flooded in through the destroyed door. Many grabbed weapons and began climbing up to the top of the wall. They all knew the score. This was only the first half of the battle. The attackers would soon become defenders, and it would be our turn to hold off a huge army bent on taking over the conclave.
I ran toward the destroyed door, looking for Uncle Press and the Travelers. There was a moment of panic. Had any of them been hit? People ran past me, running deeper into the conclave. They knew their mission. Seek out and destroy every last dado. They would move in patrols of twenty, searching everywhere. The destruction of the dados had to be complete. Another group would be headed for the factory to root out any last dados there, but I was pretty sure all they’d find was burning wreckage. The assault had been a complete success.
But where were the Travelers?
I stepped over a fallen dado… and the robot grabbed my leg. He was down, but he wasn’t dead. I was so surprised that I didn’t defend myself. The dado tossed me down. I hit the grass and spun back, expecting an attack. The dado still had his silver weapon. He raised it to fire at me… and got clocked in the head by a wooden stave. The dado fell to its knee and got clocked again. It may have been a robot, but it couldn’t stand up to the vicious onslaught. It dropped the weapon, reached for it, grabbed the wrong end… and instantly went dead.
“I prefer doing things the old way,” Loor said, spinning her stave triumphantly.
“You didn’t kill it, it was the weapon,” I shot back, kidding.
“It was as good as dead already,” she argued. “Yeah, whatever. Thank you.”
Loor gave me a small smile, which for her was huge. “Will I ever have to stop protecting you, Pendragon?” “Man, I hope so.” “Bobby!” Uncle Press called.
He ran up, out of breath. Behind him were Alder, Spader, Kasha, and Siry. Boon joined us as well. We all stood there looking at one another. Spader began to laugh. Alder followed. Then Siry and Uncle Press and even Kasha and Loor. It was a moment of pure exhilaration. We had done it. We had gotten a toehold in the Conclave of Ravinia. There was nothing funny going on; it was more a laugh of pure joy.
“Where’s Aron?” I asked.
Uncle Press stopped laughing. The others did as well. The mood instantly turned dark.
“He almost made it,” Uncle Press answered. “He was near the door. But he took a hit from a dado that we thought was finished.”
