Mai Lee looked startled, but only for a moment before regaining her aplomb.
Zimmerman laughed unpleasantly. “You aren’t the only one with spies in the field.”
She waved away his words irritably. “Is it a deal?”
“I’ll not relinquish all command, but I will comply with your strategies. You will be in overall command.”
“Done,” she said, smiling. “Meet me on the Moonbreak Heights at dawn.”
After she had cut off the connection, she sat brooding for a time, watching alien monsters ravage her neighbors’ lands. One of the sections of the holo-stage showed a detachment of several hundred aliens moving swiftly into position to the south of her fortress. She would have to move soon.
Disturbed by Zimmerman’s words about spies in her midst, she headed down into the darkest levels beneath her fortress and there found the battlesuit, parked in its cubical. Climbing inside, she curled up into the womb-like pilot’s webbing to sleep until it was time to march, two hours before dawn.
No assassin would find her easy prey tonight.
“Gi!” cried out the peasants in terror as the lumbering battlesuit marched swiftly onto a lifter in the great courtyard. Running for the shelter of the village, the peasants scattered. No one had bothered to tell them that a war was in progress. The predawn light was a pleasant pink tinge in the air. Sounds of heavy equipment filled the last minutes of the night.
Surrounded by six squadrons of her heavy troops in full battlegear, Mai Lee’s lifter rose up to join the others. In unison, the flotilla moved off, surrounded by a flock of escorting helicopter gunships.
Reaching Moonbreak Heights and meeting the Zimmermans, Mai Lee drove her battlesuit down the ramp and onto the granite mountaintop. She was thrilling inside, this entire experience was turning into a fantasy for her. Over the years of her incredibly long, dull existence she had come to enjoy nothing more than battle, but was too wise to put herself into most of them. Life had become extremely boring of late. Now, however, simply sitting back would no longer do. It was no longer the wisest, safest course. The aliens had forced her hand. She almost felt thankful to them for this rare opportunity to indulge herself. She looked forward to witnessing and participating in a great deal of carnage. Like a child in a sweetshop, she relished every moment of the experience.
“ZIMMERMAN!” boomed the amplified voice of the battlesuit. Mai Lee grinned as she watched the man take an involuntary step back from the blast of sound.
“Turn that damned thing down!” Zimmerman growled back, not easily intimidated even by a madwoman driving several tons of high-tech weaponry.
Mai Lee modulated the volume somewhat, but still left it turned up to a domineering level. “Report your strength, commander,” she demanded.
Zimmerman stood in battlegear with his aides and bodyguards surrounding him in a nervous knot. “Now wait,” he said, upraising his forefinger. “We have to get some things arranged. First-”
“There will be no further arrangements,” barked the giant figure of Mai Lee. The suit took a half-step forward, powerful claws gouging the mountainside. “Place yourself under my command, at least strategically, and report your strength immediately. There is no time for dickering. We must move at once.”
“I plan to comply, but-” began Zimmerman again, his lips lifting from his teeth. His knights were snarling among themselves. One man threw his computer slate aside and drew his sidearm.
“Comply immediately or I will withdraw,” came the booming response.
“Sir, we have no need of this witch,” the young man who had drawn his weapon hissed in his ear. With her amplified hearing, Mai Lee caught every word. She recognized the youth as Zeel, one of the new hotheaded generation of the Zimmerman clan.
For a moment neither of the leaders spoke. Around them gathered the simian-like giants of Mai Lee’s palace guard and the expertly trained blue-suited knights of the Zimmerman clan. Both sides eyed the other with distaste and an eagerness to fight.
“We will comply,” said Zimmerman. A wave of emotion swept the Zimmermans. “But, we will keep a separate unit command, and my men will not follow your orders without my approval.”
Hidden from view, Mai Lee grinned inside her battlesuit. The grin soon turned into a cackle of mirth. She calmed herself enough to activate the exterior voice circuit and accept his offer.
Things moved more smoothly after the issue of command control was settled. The group set up the battle computers under a dome on one of Mai Lee’s lifters and gathered there to organize their forces. Although the Zimmermans had taken casualties, several other related clans had also bolstered their numbers. All in all, their combined armies represented a formidable, fast-moving force.
“We have mobility on them, and air-power. Additionally, they have lost the element of surprise,” boomed Mai Lee. Still wearing her battlesuit, she ignored the jibes of the officers concerning her personal cowardice. Let them see in battle who would be counted as a coward. She swept a powerful mechanical claw to the south, toward the Polar Range. “There, in the mountains around Grunstein, resides the nest of our enemies. After some careful maneuvering and a diversionary attack, we will strike it hard.”
“Where will we strike?” demanded a cadet out of turn.
Mai Lee wheeled on him. She let him ponder the blue radiance in the mouth of Gi long enough to turn pale before answering. “Right here. The enemy is coming to us, even now. And we shall be waiting for them.”
She brought her titanium fists together with a resounding clang.
Before noon they mounted their first counterattack. Tunneling had been discovered beneath the Arden, a huge tract of forestland that separated the Slipape Counties from the polar range. The aliens were, in fact, building an underground highway between their strongholds in the Polar Range and the counties.
But the Moonbreak Heights, a natural formation of solid granite thrust up from the planet’s interior, formed a barrier to the tunneling. Too deep to dig beneath, they would have to either dig around the obstacle, or take the position and cross it in the open before tunneling on the other side. Mai Lee thought they would try the latter, more daring approach.
Shortly before noon the aliens proved her right by boiling up out of the ground at the foot of the heights. Culus and shrade teams discovered their positions, and were quickly eliminated by sniper fire. Simultaneously, Mai Lee ordered a heavy barrage of artillery fire to suppress the enemy pouring out of the tunnels. The tunnel mouths were quickly turned into a mass of molten craters, and then smoke hid the scene from view.
There was a lull in the fighting.
“Looks like we gave them something to think about,” said Zimmerman, staring into a holo-image enhancing set of lenses. “I can’t make out anything moving, just a lot of bodies.”
“We surprised them, but we haven’t stopped them,” rumbled Mai Lee. “Do you see any of the whale-like digging creatures?”
“Yes,” said Zimmerman. He paused to adjust his goggles. “At least two of them, or what’s left of them.”
“Good.”
“What we should do now is head for their nest immediately. We can hit them by surprise before they get any stronger,” said Zimmerman. “Let them dig their tunnels. Before they’re done we could take their nest. Our lifters move much faster than anything they’ve got.”
Mai Lee grimaced. The man had been whining about this for over an hour now. “That’s why I’m in command,” she stated bluntly.
Biting his tongue, Zimmerman returned his attention to the foot of the heights. “You were right. They’re down there, forming up ranks just inside the treeline to rush the slopes. They must have opened up more tunnels further back in the trees.”
Almost immediately, exhibiting the blinding speed of attack that was characteristic of their tactics, a dark line of killbeasts rushed out from the treeline and began to climb the slopes. Without orders, the men along the ridge opened fire. Before they could reach cover, the alien line thinned and finally became ragged.
“We’re slaughtering them!” whooped the officers.
Then a wave of counter fire came up from the trees and the slopes. Rifles, plasma-weapons and laser carbines swept the crest of the ridge. Men screamed and were shorn in half. One of Mai Lee’s troopers, his helmet blown off and his head on fire, toppled from the ridgeline and rolled down the slope into the face of the enemy.
