The Iron Dream (35 page)

From this great height, the sight below took the breach away: a huge gleaming black swastika with an enormous pillar of fire soaring toward the heavens out of its center and casting rich orange highlights off the burnished black metal of the massed fighting machines.

"It's beautiful, Feric," Bogel said softly.

Feric opened his microphone to give the final orders to Waning, who was supervising on the ground. "It's not quite completed yet," he told Bogel. Then he began issuing orders to the men below.

"March!"

Below, the glistening black swastika began to rotate about the central axis of the pillar of fire. A great Helder army formed into the sacred racial emblem executed a massive victory march around the burning capital of true humanity's final enemy.

"Open fire!"

From the huge swastika circling the great flame, there now erupted a universe of smoke and sparkle and flame, as every tank opened up with its cannon and every SS

motorcyclist fired a stream of bright tracers with his submachine gun, all directed inward to feed the raging firestorm at the heart of the grand spectacle.

Now the incredible final victory pageant was complete and the transcendent glory of the moment properly celebrated. Far below, a swastika of smoke and fire revolved about the raging funeral pyre of the Dominator mutation, and in a large sense of every defilement, small or large, of the human gene pool. The vast sparkling swastika of ten thousand bright stars set off against gleaming black metal rotating about the immense pillar of billowing orange flames was a sight to stir the soul with its sheer immensity and physical beauty alone. But the symbolism pleased an even more noble level of the human spirit: the great circling swastika of fire and metal was the visual epitomization of Helder idealism and Helder power in the eyes of even the simplest of men; likewise no one could mistake the captive fountain of fire for other than what it was, the funeral pyre of Zind. Thus the spectacle was both perfectly symbolic of the final victory of the forces of Heldon over the putrescence of Zind and the actual historical moment of that victory itself; a pinnacle of human his-227

tory, and that event's celebration in a great work of art, all in one.

Tears filled Feric's eyes as he beheld this sight. His fondest dreams were fulfilled. He had led Heldon to total victory and insured the posterity of the pure human geno-

type forever; soon the breeding program would convert the race of Helder into a race of purebred SS supermen.

He had raised humanity to its former genetic purity and glory and would someday have the unprecedented honor of creating the next step in human evolution, a true master race. No man could conceivably ask to accomplish more.

Yet he had accomplished more, and that final feat was visible below him. He had ended the final triumphant Armageddon with a transcendent work of high art that would live for all time.

A day later, when the Firestorm had burned itself out, allowing the Helder army to enter Bora, there was nothing left but an endless vista of smoldering gray-and-black ash, enlivened here and there by sporadic flickering flames and glowing piles of still-smoldering embers. Although the city had held tens of thousands of nominators and millions of their slave monstrosities, not even their bones were distinguishable from the general ash heap.

Bora, Zind, and the Dominators had been quite literally scoured from the face of the earth.

Feric entered the city with Bogel, Best, Waning, and Remler in his freshly polished black command car, escorted by a score of prime blond SS specimens in trim black leather on spotless black-and-chrome motorcycles. Behind his vehicle, a long line of tanks, motorcycle troops, and infantry fanned out throughout the corpse of the city to sift the ashes for any sign of life.

"There's no doubt that the Dominators have at last been expunged from history," Remler said as the wheels of the car sent up feathery clouds of gray ash. Feric nodded; there was nothing to be seen from horizon to horizon but ashes, guttering fires, and glowing embers.

The chances of even one Dom surviving this holocaust were indeed dim; not so much as a single building remained that was even remotely recognizable as such.

Suddenly Best was gesticulating wildly, then pointing off into the ruins to the left of the car. "My Commanderi Over there!" •

Feric followed the line of Best's finger and spotted 228

something hard and metallic intruding itself amidst the ashes a hundred yards or so from the car. He ordered the driver to approach the object, whatever it was.

As the command car and its outriders plowed through the ashes, Feric could see that what they were approaching was a small cube of steel perhaps eight feet on a side, burnt a livid blue-black and half covered by ash.

The driver stopped the car immediately in front of the artifact; the SS elite guard sat on their thrumming motorcycles awaiting orders.

"Let's have a look at this thing ourselves," Feric suggested. Following the lead of their Supreme Commander, the four High Commanders quit the car and tromped their way through the ashes toward the cube of scarred metal.

Feric reached the nearest wall of the cube: a feature-less slab of seared steel that gave the impression of being several feet thick. Circling the cube, he came upon a heavy round hatch about six feet in diameter, with a dogging wheel at its center.

As he attempted without success to turn the wheel and undog the hatch, Remler, Best, Bogel, and Waffing reached his side.

"Obviously an entrance to some underground chamber," Bogel observed.

"Let's have a hand with this hatch," Feric ordered. AH

five men threw their backs into the effort to turn the dogging wheel, with no more success than Feric had met by himself.

"It must be locked from inside," Remler said.

"Let me call for a tank to blast it open," Waning suggested.

'That may not be necessary," Feric replied, unsheathing the Steel Commander, the weapon which he alone could effortlessly wield, which had the effective mass of a small mountain.

Grasping the hilt of the Great Truncheon firmly, Feric aimed a mighty blow at the center of the hatch. There was an earth-shattering clang, a terrible metallic ripping sound, and the shaft of Feric's noble weapon thrust through two feet of steel as if it were so much cheese. The dogging wheel and the lock mechanism clattered inward into deep darkness. Feric dealt the hatch two more blows, and then it fell outward, kicking up a great cloud of ash and exposing a gaping round hole beyond which was naught but impenetrable gloom.

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With the Steel Commander still tightly gripped in his right hand, Feric stuck his head inside the cubicle. In a few moments his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw that the interior of the thick steel cube held nothing more than a flight of stone steps descending into the bowels of the earth in even thicker blackness.

He withdrew and spoke to his comrades. "This is the entrance to some underground installation. There may be something alive down there."

"Why don't we have a look for ourselves, my Commander?" Best suggested brightly. "Perhaps if we're lucky, you may have the honor of personally slaying the last Dom on earth after all!"

Instantly, Remler was all for it. "If we're really lucky, we may encounter enough Doms for us all!"

For his part, Feric was all for the expedition. Even if there weren't any live Doms down there, it would be an excellent excuse to get some exercise after being cramped up in the command car for so long. "By all means!" he declared.

Only Bogel seemed somewhat dubious. "It might be a good idea to take the SS guard with us," he suggested.

"Surely you're not afraid of a hole in the ground, Bogel!" Waffing japed.

"There's no point in risking the life of the Supreme Commander of Heldon needlessly," Bogel said. "What a fiasco if something should happen to Feric at this moment in history!"

Clearly, Bogel's point was well taken. Personal wishes aside, Feric realized that he had a sacred duty to the people of Heldon to take reasonable measures to protect his own safety.

"Very well," he said. "Waning, fetch ten SS lads and have them bring portable electric globes."

Minutes later, Feric was leading his High Commanders and ten tall blond SS men down the flight of stone steps through a dank, cool shaft, with an electric globe in his left hand and the Steel Commander at the ready in his right. Although Feric himself left his submachine gun slung over his shoulder, the others had their guns cocked, prepared, indeed eager, for action.

The stairs descended into the earth for well over a hundred feet, finally debouching into a passageway hewn from the solid rock, its walls dewy with moisture.

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"This has the look of some sort of bomb shelter to me,"

Waning said. "Be on your toes!" he told the SS men somewhat superfluously as Feric led the party down the corridor. The passage led away into the darkness for perhaps a hundred yards, then abruptly terminated in another steel hatch quite similar in design to the one that had sealed the entrance cubicle. Clearly, if there was anything alive in this dank grotto, it would be behind that hatch. Moreover, the doubly sealed structure of this final redoubt made it exceedingly probable that anything which had reached the shelter before the bombardment would indeed still be living.

Feric silently ordered the others to stand back, then raised the Steel Commander high over his head and struck the hatch a prodigious blow, while at the same time leaping sideways out of the possible line of fire of anything within. With a terrible clatter that reverberated all up and down the passageway, the Great Truncheon of Held cleaved the steel hatch in twain, and the pieces fell to the stone floor at Feric's feet.

Instantly, the ten SS men were at Feric's side, their submachine guns leveled, their icy blue eyes gleaming with hyper-alertness like chips of polished steel. But there was no gunfire from within; instead, a nickering orange light poured forth into the stone corridor. Cocking the Great Truncheon, Feric lead his party through the hatch and into a small chamber carved from the rock and lit by a ring of guttering torches.

Inside the chamber was naught but a single small instrument console behind which stood an ancient, wizened, crook-backed Dom with huge sunken black eyes and the evil broken grin of a ferret. This monstrosity was garbed in Zind gray set off with all manner of gold braid, precious jewels, and golden brightwork, giving the effect of some fetid rodent stuffed into a royal uniform as part of a particularly vile schoolboy prank.

Nevertheless, the dominance pattern exuded by the sordid brain of this grandfather of all Dominators was the most powerful Feric had ever felt. It was all he could do to keep from obeying the powerful impulse to toss away the Great Truncheon which ripped through his mind.

Behind him, he heard a great clatter of metal on stone as the High Commanders and the SS guard discarded their weapons at .the foul creature's bidding—only Feric's will was strong enough to resist this incredibly powerful Domi-231

nator, and even his muscles were frozen into immobility, paralyzed in the conflict of mighty wills between himself and the ancient Dom.

"Welcome human filth," the Dominator croaked in a grisly dry parody of a human voice. "Needless to say, I've been expecting a visit. However, the presence of Feric Jaggar himself was too much to hope for. I shall enjoy watching your face, Jaggar, as the human genotype is wiped from the face of the earth for all time!"

The creature was clearly mad, somehow mistaking the final destruction of his own loathsome kind for that of true humanity! Feric threw every ounce of his will into the struggle to break the dominance pattern long enough to dash the wretch's brains out with the Steel Commander, but succeeding in effecting only slight movement.

The Dominator threw a switch on the console before it, then laughed maniacally until a thin spittle sprayed from its leathery lips.

"Thus is sealed the fate of your worthless kind. Jag'

gar!" the old Dom cackled. "The activating signal has been sent to an installation of the ancients far to the east of here which our creatures have revived. In minutes, a huge nuclear explosion will take place in the wildlands, spewing millions of tons of radioactive dust into the air.

The ancients here built the device so that no enemy might survive their defeat. We were not able to restore it completely, but we've made it work well enough. In weeks, the atmosphere of the entire earth will be so contaminated that no human will ever breed true again. The wombs of even your precious purebreds will bring forth nothing but hunchbacked dwarfs, Parrotfaces, Blueskins, and dozens of new mutations, perhaps even our own kind. You have destroyed the Dominator Empire, and now we destroy humanity for all time! Die, human filth!"

An enormous flare of rage burned through Feric's being, instantly breaking the dominance pattern as if it had never existed. He leapt forward swinging the Great Truncheon of Held, and brought the mighty weapon down on the skull of the drooling, cackling Dom, smashing it like a melon, spattering greasy gray brains everywhere, ripping clear through the creature's torso, splitting it in half and spilling pulsing translucent organs all over the dank stone floor. \Vith another swipe, Feric dashed the instrument console to pieces, the force of his enraged blow 232

burying the headpiece of his weapon in the floor below to a depth of nearly a foot.

With the death of the last Dom, the others were freed from the dominance pattern and all began babbling furiously at once.

"It can't be!"

"The Fire!"

"The death of the human race!"

"They couldn't—"

"Silence!" Feric roared, with tears in his eyes and a red-hot rage burning in his heart. "Stop this gibbering at once! Let us hasten to the surface and see if the foul creature uttered more than empty words before we mourn our race!"

When they reached the surface, the scene was as before: an endless vista of gray ash and smoldering rubble, through which the army of Heldon moved unopposed, finding nothing whatever alive.