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A.R.Yngve

DARC AGES Book Three
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Chapter 39


Sir Devis became livid with terror when he witnessed the volcanic eruption at close range. Himself a lower nobleman-warrior in service to the Paskos, he habitually avoided risks and clung to what little privilege he still had. So he left Kamo and Dohan circling the crater while he turned the flagship around, and steered the flagship back south.



The village lay half-concealed in a narrow valley, covered by a patchwork of camouflage-nets on poles. Darc stumbled into a clearing just outside and found the village abandoned. He saw no sign of Mechao's secret weapon -- and he dared not risk a closer look. But something was needed to attract the approaching enemies -- something Mechao had not managed to do on his own. With grim determination, Darc set his rifle on low effect, and squeezed the trigger. He swept a continuous beam over the camouflage nets; they were burned off and collapsed over the huts. A second laser-beam flickered from behind him. Darc ducked down, spun around -- and saw Meijji, dreadlocks spreading in all directions from her oval brown face. She shot down the remaining camouflage nets in a few seconds -- and urged him along with her, away from the deserted village.

"The others are moving away from the plateau," she explained while they breathlessly hurried through the terrain, further upward. "The invaders are closing in."

She was faster and less exerted than he was. Darc pushed himself to the edge, on the verge of collapse. By some miracle of will, he made it far enough from the village to avoid being spotted by Pasko's forces, as they mounted the smoking hillside. The enemy caught sight of the now exposed, abandoned village.



Tharlos ordered his signalman to flash a message to his flagship as it came into sight above -- the ship was a surprise, but a welcome one. Another signalman aboard the flagship saw the message flash from the ground, and conveyed the order to the ship crew. Presently, the flagship flew over the abandoned village and strafed it with a blazing fusillade. The dry huts and houses exploded into fire. Tharlos sent the spider robots ahead of him, to scout the village for traps.

The black robots clattered into the burning village, scanning for life signs. A few stray chicken, dogs, and cattle were blasted dead as they tried to escape. The robots registered nothing they were programmed to avoid, and stopped -- awaiting further orders from Lord Tharlos. Tharlos marched into the clearing with his knights and soldiers, looking out for more mutated monsters like the flying reptiles on the beach. The troops relaxed somewhat, when they saw the deserted houses. Tharlos ordered them to proceed upward along the path, to the cliff mansion which loomed thirty meters above the valley.

But as the troops marched onward, a footsoldier began to cough -- hard. A sergeant yelled at him to stop coughing -- and gasped, clawing at his own throat. Without warning, the hindmost troops were toppling over like rows of dominoes. A hidden gas canister had been triggered when the village was bombed, with a delayed effect. All humans and animals that had breathed Mechao's invisible gas, now died horribly. Soldiers gargled, tore off their helmets in confused agony -- and their brains instantly dissolved. Bleeding from eyes, ears, and noses, two companies were wiped out before they could outrun the unseen death-shroud.

Tharlos and his decimated troops escaped uphill, cursing the dumb robots that had walked through the poison gas unscathed. His soldiers were in disarray, shooting randomly at the distant mansion, at the landscape, at imagined horrors emerging from their feverish imagination. Short on stamina and ammunition, Tharlos's troops were now also running out of courage. His rallying cries were ignored, even scorned.

A panicking footsoldier shouted to his sweat-soaked comrades: "We're all doomed! Tharlos led us into a forbidden place, and now the Goddess has awakened to swallow us all!"

One of the knights ignited his backpack jets, took a flying leap through the air, and shot down the soldier with a powerful blast of his gun.

"Quiet and fight!" he barked. "Winning or losing, we stand by our commander -- till the end!"

Laser fire hit the knight from behind, and his backpack exploded. He spun up through the air, and tumbled down the mountainside like a burning, twitching tin doll. Someone among Tharlos's own troops had fired the shot. Soldiers scattered recklessly into the burning, smoking terrain -- heading for nowhere in an alien terrain. And despite the hopeless situation, Tharlos refused to retreat. He summoned his sole knight at hand, a handful of officers and soldiers, plus his war robot. They proceeded up the winding trails toward the vertical cliff face that lay ahead.