Blade signaled for the team leaders to gather around him and then dismounted. Each fighter unslung his pack of combat gear from his saddle, then drifted over to join the circle assembling around Blade. With the point of his teksin sword Blade drew his plan on a bare patch of ground. When he had finished giving his orders, he straightened up and looked soberly at the even soberer faces around him. «This is our moment, our moment to stand up to the Looters and prove that the people can defend themselves against all enemies. The eyes of all the people are on us, not just the living but all those who have died that the people might live to this moment.
«We shall not let them down.»
Blade shrugged his shoulders to settle his pack into a more comfortable position on his back, raised his baton, and led the way toward the shore of the lake.
The bushes were thick and thorny. The fighters creeping through them made enough noise to be heard a mile away by anyone not totally deaf. Fortunately the machines seemed to be just exactly that.
As they slipped within range of the subsonics, Blade noticed apprehensive or grim looks spreading across the faces of the fighters. Was their new knowledge, the loss of the fear of the unknown, going to be enough of a defense? For a minute or two Blade couldn't help wondering. Then slowly the faces straightened and the eighteen men and women moved on steadily.
The fighters in Blade's teams were scratched and sweating by the time they settled under cover. Then came a hot, nerve-wracking wait in the grass and under the shrubbery. They had to allow Anyara's teams plenty of time to get into their positions on the other side of the lake. Both attacks had to go in as nearly as possible at the same moment.
So they waited, impatiently whittling at twigs with their teksin knives, slapping at the insects that whined maddeningly around eyes and into ears, wiping off the sweat that trickled down foreheads and necks. The sun moved higher until it burned down almost straight out of a cloudless sky, baking the earth and filling the day with a sleepy warmth.
Hot, sweaty, insect-ridden minutes followed each other, one by one, until Blade knew that at least half an hour must have gone by. Had something happened to the other teams? Had they been ambushed and destroyed, silently and swiftly. They might have- A woman lying next to Blade grabbed his arm and pointed off to the right. Blade's eyes followed the woman's pointing finger. Through a gap between two branches Blade saw an orange handkerchief waving on the other side of the lake. It was the signal «ready and waiting» from Anyara's teams.
Blade took a deep breath. He reached into his pack and took out a bag of teksin wedges and a hammer with a teksin head and a wooden shaft. He tied these to his belt. He saw flickers of movement in the bushes all along the line of fighters, as each one of them got out his particular equipment and hung it on his belt.
Then Blade reached into his pack once more, and pulled out a teksin whistle with a gilded leather thong. He looped the thong about his sunburnt neck, put the whistle between his lips, took another deep breath-and blew with all the power in his lungs.
Bushes exploded with cracklings and crashings as Blade and eighteen others leaped to their feet and plunged out into the open. Some of them were obviously dizzy from heat and strain and the subsonics. They lurched and staggered as they ran. But they stayed on their feet and kept going.
Blade swung to the right as he ran, moving up to join the team that was heading for the right-hand machine. It grew larger and larger as they ran, squatting there in all its metallic ugliness. The turret was turning slowly, but the machine showed no sign that it noticed the approaching people.
Then the turret stopped dead and began to swivel slowly back toward Blade. It had registered that the world outside was sprouting something strange, possibly unnatural, possibly even dangerous.
Run, run, run! Blade almost shouted the words out loud. Get to the machine before it starts moving or shooting. Thirty yards, twenty, ten. Breath rasped in his throat, his chest was tight and painful with strain and tension. Five yards, four, three- A young man, even more agile than Blade, sprang into the air like an Olympic broad-jumper, leaping for the machine's rear platform. He landed on his feet, nearly going forward on hands and knees. Metal clanged and boomed under him. He turned forward, grabbing for the bag and the hammer at his belt. Blade leaped up onto the platform beside him.
The young man bowed his head to Blade. «I am sorry, Mazda, that I took from you the honor of being first. It was rightly-«
«Never mind honors now, Zeron,» said Blade sharply. «Let's get to work.»
As Blade spoke the turret's turning swung the ray-tube toward them and over them. Clinging to the tube was a young woman. She was pounding wedges into the opening in the turret from which the tube jutted. As the turret's turning carried her out of sight, hammers sounded forward. The two men with the most dangerous assignment were at work, driving heavy plugs into the holes from which the tentacles emerged. If they didn't work fast, they would be the first to die.
Blade took his own advice and pulled a wedge from his pouch. He slid it into the gap between the turret's base and the ring on which it revolved, pushed on it hard, then grabbed the hammer and swung it with both bands. Whang! Whang! Whang! Each blow sent a tingling through Blade's hands and arms and a vibration through the metal under his feet.
Whang! Whang! Whang! Zeron was doing the same thing. The machines might have enormous power stored in them. But how much of that power could they feed to the motors that turned the turrets, extended the tentacles, maneuvered the legs? If that power was not enough to overcome the resistance of a dozen or so teksin wedges swiftly driven into place by fighters of the people, it would be the end for one of the machines' prime weapons.
From underneath the machine came more hammering. Someone was driving wedges into the joints of one of the legs. A machine could not get up and fly away unless all four legs were retracted. Now someone was busily at work making sure that at least one leg on this machine would never retract.
Blade rammed in a second wedge and went to work with the hammer. Then a third. Then a fourth. By the time the fourth wedge was in place he was streaming with sweat. His bare chest and arms were as wet as if he had just climbed out of the lake. But the turret was as thoroughly immobilized as if it had been seated in concrete.
The young woman on the tube sprang lightly to the ground. Blade recognized Chars. As she did so there was a whooosh and flickering orange yellow flame suddenly enveloped the tube. Greasy black smoke streamed up into the sky.
Chara smiled at Blade. «Burns good, doesn't it?» She had wrapped a layer of cloth soaked in teksin oil around the raytube, then set it on fire. The burning cloth raised the temperature inside the tube high enough to ruin the sensitive electronic equipment.
Something went pfffffssssshsssssttttt! — like the biggest of all cats-from underneath the machine. The machine shivered, then sagged down at one corner. The man who had been working on the legs scrambled hastily out from under. His face was black with smoke and his hair and eyebrows a good deal skimpier than they had been before. His teeth flashed white as he grinned.
«It tried to pull up the leg. But I think something went wrong with the little machine for the leg. Am I right, Mazda?»
«It seems like it.»
Blade hung his hammer on his belt and climbed on top of the turret to get a better view. He nearly shouted out loud as he saw a tentacle flashing around the other machine they had attacked. Then he saw that the turret was motionless, the ray-tube a smoking, half-melted mass, and not one but two legs jammed and buckled. One of the tentacles had pushed out its wedge, but that was all. The six members of the attacking team were standing back at a safe distance, watching the deadly tentacle clutch at nothing but empty air.