“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
