Doomsday Warrior 15 - American Ultimatum (19 page)

They rode and fired lasers and fought to keep back the welling tears at the devastating destruction of their own forces. All the elephants, the riders who would never see their wives or children again! The sheer hideous waste of it all! And perhaps worst of all, though they had undoubtedly gained time for the rest of the army to move out, Rockson knew one thing for certain. And it made his heart sink like a ball of lead into the ocean of his soul. There was no way in hell they were going to be able to defeat Killov even with ten thousand elephants.

Nineteen

I
f Rockson had basically thought of himself as a man without an overabundance of fear, other than a few palpitations here and there, he was disabused of that notion as he and Rahallah rode like the wind just one step ahead of the pursuing sky-mountains. It was one thing to be killed by a man, or even taken out by one or another of the rad beasts that filled the globe. But this was of a different order. Smashed into something resembling ketchup, less than ketchup—just melted into the ground along with everything else that happened to get caught beneath the falling death.

“Come on, baby, move that big ass,” Rock shouted as he leaned over toward the war bull’s flapping right ear. But the great beast didn’t need any prodding on that account. It was feeling its own brand of fear—an emotion that it hadn’t had much experience with either. Somehow it knew that many, if not all the others, of its species who had been riding alongside it just minutes before were kaput. There was a telepathic link between the animals. And it could feel them no more. Could make no contact—just empty ether when it reached out to touch their animal souls.

The falling mountains grew even closer, smashing down on every side of them, making thundering sounds that seemed as if they would crack their very eardrums. Rock had no idea how they weren’t crushed; so many of the things seemed to be landing only feet away. But though the crushing mountains were perhaps the deadliest weapon next to the atomic bomb ever invented, the handlers of the levitation stones riding far behind the damage they were causing perhaps couldn’t
see
exactly what it was they were crushing. Accuracy was not at a premium. But then it didn’t have to be.

They skirted along the leeward of a dune, Rahallah in the lead, his elephant ten yards ahead of Kral. On the other side of the wall of sand they could hear the immense stones stamping, searching out anything that lived. And then, luck. A thick fog bank rolled in right over the top of the desert sands. And within seconds the two elephants were lost inside, invisible to the outside world. Rahallah’s elephant slowed automatically once it was a few hundred feet inside. Kral came up right behind him and grabbed his tail so they wouldn’t get lost—a result of the training that the creatures had undergone over the years.

They slid off sideways through the fog, along a set of dunes. The Amun weapons-handlers didn’t need to see
much
to guide their weapons—but they needed
some
sighting of targets every mile or so. As the rocks drove up and down, the two men shot away from the action. The moving mountains didn’t follow, the men could hear the thunder for miles. Then the stones were heading off due southeast, toward the Nile.

Rockson leaned far forward so his chest was lying atop the neck of the war beast. He could feel the animal below him, feel its power as the great dark legs churned through the sands like an oceanliner’s propellers through the sea. They seemed to go through the thick soupy mist for an hour after the great booms had disappeared miles off. The crazy bastards under Killov’s command didn’t seem to have any particular strategy for conquering the countryside. Just kill everything, let the devil sort it all out later. You couldn’t surrender or even agree to be on his side if he wasn’t interested. Just a madman uprooting his Earth garden’s human weeds with ruthless, mortal blows.

At last they emerged from the fog and could see the desert ahead for miles. Rahallah led them on, heading due south now. Rockson hadn’t the foggiest idea where he was. Doubtless both elephants had more sense of location than he did right now. Which made him feel just great, in addition to the wonderful morning it had already been.

They meandered for another half hour or so through increasingly complex interwoven patterns of dunes, like a veritable maze of sand, then reached a vast and chasmed plain at the start of which the earth sank down nearly a thousand feet with sharp jutting rock formations and caves everywhere. As if he were seeing traffic signs, Rahallah just kept his beast going, threading his way right through each crevasse and chasm. Suddenly, as they rounded a bend, ten lasers were aimed at them from the trunks of ten war elephants standing side by side. Not a sight one wanted to come on unprepared! But the handlers above recognized their own and opened their ranks, staring at the two silently as it was not their rank to question.

The two men rode inside to a large grottolike formation with stalagmites and stalactites hanging everywhere, like ice cream cones of calcium deposits. Elephants, fighters, and their wives and children were everywhere within the immense cavern, trying to set up their tents again in much more crowded circumstances. These were the ones so many were sacrificed to protect!

Rockson looked anxiously around for more of his men. Kral headed down the middle of a corridor that was kept cleared of man or beast to facilitate movement.

This was truly a nomadic army. They had pulled up stakes and were setting them back down again in the space of several hours. Homes, cooking tents, hospitals—all sprang right up, ready for function. If he had to fight alongside anybody, these seemed like the guys. Not that they or he had a chance against the Killov forces.

Rockson was relieved when he spotted Chen and Archer holding up Sheransky, one of his arms around each of them like a drunk unable to stand up on his own.

“Rock, it’s Rock,” Chen exclaimed, looking up with something approaching happiness on his usually stone face. “Thank the Lord you made it! We’d heard about an hour ago how the battle went—a single war elephant returned with its wounded rider. We heard that the entire diversionary force had been wiped out!”

Archer turned his head as he heard the voice and screamed out,
“Rrrroooooccck!”
with such force that a number of elephants honked back challengingly, creating quite a din—which lasted for several seconds, until their handlers told them to shut up in their own unique Egyptian/Elephant dialect.

“Yeah, we made it,” Rock said. “But all the other poor bastards with us got it. It was the worst thing I’ve seen in a long time, boys, and that’s no lie. Wiped out in a stone-massacre. We couldn’t do a goddamn thing.”

Rock was frustrated, angered by the loss of so many good men and mounts. He had been especially invited over to help get this show together—but as far as he could see, it was getting worse by the second. The colonel had gotten his hands on some potent weapons indeed. And Rockson wondered, though he dared not voice the question fully even to himself, whether the bastard had at last found the very thing that might give him the entire planet delivered on a squashed silver platter.

“Rockson—we must meet with General Tutankhamen and his top staff,” Rahallah shouted over to him from his elephant. “Must organize a new way to respond to the Skull’s army! Please,
now!
Your men are as safe as anybody else in this blasted cave here.”

“Got to go,” Rock said, looking down with a good feeling that at least his own men were alive, for now. It could have been worse. “You all need anything?”

“No, we’re fine, Rock. Go ahead, man,” Chen said. Archer just gazed adoringly up, a few wet tears trickling out of his eyes and onto his greasy beard, as he had been
sure
Rock was dead.

Rockson turned and rode, following Rahallah’s war beast. The pharaoh and his top men were already seated around on elephant footstools in a circle. Ten of them, all giving advice to Tutankhamen, who listened to each man and then told the next to have his say. Rock was glad to see there was input from the whole top staff. Democratic voicing of opinions could only open up the potential for fresh ideas.

Rock and Rahallah’s mounts lowered themselves next to the other elephants of the top military leadership. With feed bags strapped on, the elephants were ready to stand there all night just chewing.

Rock jumped down on the tusk, using the quick-exit method, and was glad to find that he’d at last gotten it right. His elephant looked at him through one of those huge cup-sized eyes, gazed him up and down, and then looked away. It snorted as if to say maybe, just maybe Rockson wasn’t a complete dumb-bunny after all. It still hadn’t made up its mind.

Rahallah saluted the pharaoh with a three-fingers-toward-the-side-of-the-chin gesture, and Tutankhamen returned it, welcoming them both warmly.

“Your excellency,” Rahallah said softly but firmly. “I must regretfully inform you that your son is dead.” The pharaoh’s whole face seemed to go slack for a second, and he aged about thirty years in that second. But then he pulled his grief back inside him, and his face hardened back to its typical regal demeanor filled with command.

Rock sat patiently as they all had their say. Basically, they wanted to fight, to go back and get revenge for those who were slain. They agreed that it was not for desert warriors to run like old women, not like war elephants to show their tails instead of their tusks. Then Rock and Rahallah were asked for their opinions, and the black man spoke first.

“I say your men are great fighters, among the bravest I have ever seen,” Rahallah said dramatically. He had not been Premier Vassily’s right hand and man-servant for decades without learning how to be the consummate politician, a suave diplomat in his own way. He had dealt with generals, leaders of countries, emperors of whole continents. Had served Vassily well and learned statesmanship. He told the assembly that to counterattack without an effective new plan would be tantamount to suicide. That the weapons which he and Rock had seen in action up close were just too unstoppable with the present configuration of forces. He spoke for only a couple of minutes, but seemed to impress Tutankhamen, who looked at him, nodding his head yes almost imperceptibly. Rahallah even used an Egyptian proverb, saying that it was a foolish man who threw himself and all that he loved off the cliff, instead of finding a way down it.

Then it was Rock’s turn. He didn’t have to talk. There were other ways of explaining. He found a small piece of soft-stone, put it on the hard-packed cave ground, and then found a piece of broken stalagmite as big as a football. He held it up over the small stone. Then he let the stalagmite drop from about three feet. There was a quick murmuring among the assembled leaders. Rock reached down and lifted the large stone up again. Its target was smashed, broken into little pieces ready for the sandbox outside.

“You and Rahallah speak with wisdom,” Tutankhamen said after there was total silence for about ten seconds. “Of course you are both right. We cannot throw ourselves beneath the rocks. But then what is our—our new course, Rockson?”

“We need a trick, a way in the backdoor, something to neutralize the damn weapons!” he exclaimed. One of the men who had been seated around the circle spoke up. Rock could see he had a sharp angular face. He looked to be eighty, perhaps ninety years old, with shrunken-in cheeks and a nose that a hawk could have loved.

“He’s the power man—Sesostris—the medicine man,” Rahallah whispered to Rockson as the man began to speak in a slow creaking voice, as if the door of a crypt were being opened.

“I learned secrets as a child,” Sesostris trembled out. “Secrets passed down from my father, who was one of the gravekeepers of the Cheops pyramids. There is a
second
level below the level where the Qu’ul sticks were found by the Cult of Amun years ago. A level containing the counter-force to the antimatter devices—the Ra sticks are the negatives of the Qu’ul that Colonel Killov is using.” The man paused as if catching his breath.

“And it is said that there is a way into the pyramid that few know of. The Ra sticks exist, I know they do. The pharaohs were given the Qu’ul, it is said, by the Cat God, to build the pyramids. This must be true, for those immense slabs of rock would
not
have been lifted by mortal men. They were raised, floated over the land. All of the ancient structures were built that way! But the gods made the Ra sticks so that if mankind got out of hand with the Qu’ul, there would be something that could destroy them. These are things that I have not revealed since I heard them as a child.” The shaky old man sat down heavily.

“I say, let’s check out the damned things,” Rockson blurted out, “before we have any more battles! We’ll get a small force together and go to the pyramids. Are they far?”

“The Cheops pyramids, no. Not more than a day by elephant,” Rahallah said. “I think your idea is the correct one, Rockson.” Pharaoh Tutankhamen nodded in agreement.

“We can only take three men,” Sesostris spoke up again. “No more can be taken inside the tomb entrance or there will be the God’s wrath! Yea, the legends that speak of the Ra sticks mention only three.”

Rahallah looked at Rock, and they both knew two who were going: them.

Sesostris smiled, his lips looking as if they would crack, and said, “You will need me along. Only I know the secret way inside!”

Twenty

F
or an old man, the Egyptian witch man, Sesostris, rode his war bull like a rodeo vet out for the winning trophy. He had insisted that no one other than himself had the slightest chance of finding the passage in, or of knowing how to deal with the Ra crystals. His elephant seemed as old as he was, all wrinkled with flaps of skin hanging down everywhere. The damned thing made Rockson’s own prime male bull seem like a positive teenager, and he knew Kral was at least fifty from the size of the tusks. Rahallah had told him, though, that old Sesostris and his mount could hold their own.

All three war bulls had been outfitted forward and rear in armor. The first armor layer was coverings of dried elephant hide, overlapped in opposite directions, so their opposing grains would double their strength. Over that, handmade steel mesh hung down across their chests and exposed back flanks. Often their enemies would try to stab into the great war elephants with long thin spears like icepicks eight feet long, to pierce their hearts and lungs. But now that the beasts had been wearing the armor for years, they had become more or less immune from anything other than mortars or bombs—and, of course, falling mountains.