The first move was to cross the river.
It would take a while to get everyone across the barge bridge. Or, at least enough people to begin the assault. Alder, Loor, Spader, and Siry took charge, directing the movement. It was kind of eerie. Nobody spoke. The tension was obvious. They knew that their time had come.
I went across first with Mark, Courtney, and Uncle Press. We walked a short way toward the conclave and stopped, motioning that that was as far as the first line should come. First over the bridge were several gars with radio cannons. They would be critical in knocking out any dados on top of the wall. They were followed by several exiles and gars, who carried either the silver shields or stolen weapons. These were the same weapons that we had used to fend off the dados when Mark, Elli, and I were in the dado factory. They were like rifles, but with wide barrels. They worked. I walked back to the river and looked down to see that the barges weren’t as stable as I would have liked, but they were holding. At any one time I’d say there were several hundred people on top. They swayed and tipped, but the weight was divided evenly, so there were no disasters.
I went back up front to join Uncle Press and the others. A formidable force was gathering. I could only imagine what the Ravinians were thinking. I hoped they were scared.
I wondered where Saint Dane was. He had to know that a storm was brewing. Was he ready? Or was he on Eelong, frantically trying to rally the dado army? Had he envisioned something like this happening? Saint Dane always thought four steps ahead. There was every possibility that he had something planned for us once we got inside. That was the scariest thought of all.
Our mission from this point on was straightforward. Control the Conclave of Ravinia. To do that, we had to eliminate every last dado. Once that was accomplished, we would gather every resource possible and defend the conclave against the dado army that was sure to return. I was confident that we outnumbered the Ravinian security force a hundred times over. My fear was what the human Ravinians might do. If they got into the fight, it would be a bloodbath. On both sides.
Looking back at our gathering forces, I felt as if we had waited long enough. Aron came forward and explained to me the logistics of the assault they had worked out during their march from downtown.
“We have four waves,” he explained. “The first will bring the radio cannons to neutralize the dados. They’ll also have shields and rifles. Their job is to pave the way for the following waves to enter the conclave.”
“They’re going to take the brunt of it,” Uncle Press said gravely.
The concept made sense. The job of the first wave was critical. They would be charging into the strength of the Ravinians’ defense. The grim reality was that these brave people would take the heaviest losses.
Uncle Press continued, “I think the Travelers, Aron, and Boon should be in the second wave. We will need them once we get inside.”
“I will attack with the first wave,” Loor said. It was a flat-out statement. There was no arguing with her. She wasn’t going to hide behind anybody.
“As will I,” Alder said.
“What about me?” Spader chimed in. “I think I’d like first crack at these wogglies. We earned it, didn’t we?”
“Me too,” Siry chimed in.
“And me,” Boon said.
Uncle Press looked to Aron. Aron shrugged. “It is not the time to be cautious.”
Uncle Press shook his head and sighed. “Fine. Who picked you people anyway?”
“That would be you, mate,” Spader said. “And you made some fine choices, I have to say.”
I said, “Mark, you’ve got to hang back.”
“Not a chance!” he shouted.
“You have to. You’re the only one who can coordinate the rebels. We have no idea what’s going to get thrown at us. If you go down, we’re done.”
He wanted to argue. Instead he offered a compromise. “I’ll be in the second wave.”
I didn’t fight him. “Courtney, stay with him.”
“I’ll watch his back,” she said in her typical bold way. “Just watch your own.”
“I’ve got plenty of people watching my back,” I assured her.
“You’re not going,” Uncle Press said to me.
I snapped a surprised look to him. “The hell I’m not!”
“It can’t end for you here, Bobby. Not like this.”
“No way. I’m not asking anybody to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.”
“You have to. There’s more to this battle than claiming the Ravinian conclave. We could get inside and take over the fortress and even turn back the dado army, but that isn’t what this is about. It’s about the return of the spirit of Halla. It’s about taking back what was meant to be and ending the dark cloud that has altered events throughout time and space. Like I said, there’s only one way that can happen. For that, we will look to you.”
I didn’t understand what he meant at first. What kind of double-talk was this? There was no way he was talking me out of this fight. I looked to the other Travelers for support, but they seemed to know what Uncle Press meant.
Alder was the one who put it into words. “What Press means is, you have a bigger task ahead.”
My anger slipped away as the realization hit me. It was true. I couldn’t risk falling during the attack. My destiny went beyond the storming of the conclave. If we were to triumph, once and forever, Saint Dane had to be ended.
That job was mine.
“I want to be there with you all,” I said.
“You will be,” Alder said.
“You have always been with us,” Loor added. “Your spirit was our guide from the beginning. Today is no different.”
I believe that was the highest compliment I’d ever been paid. I hoped it was true. I hoped I could live up to it.
“Boon, stay back with me,” I said. “We’ll fly in over the top.”
“Yes, sir!” Boon said eagerly, and jumped to my side.
I took one last look at my Traveler friends. Alder, Spader, Siry, Kasha, and my uncle. Press Tilton. The Traveler from Second Earth before me. Each carried a silver shield, except for Loor, who had her wooden stave out and ready.
“And so we go,” I said.
Uncle Press nodded to Aron. Aron brought out his link radio cube.
“First wave at the ready,” he said into the glowing cube.
Instantly the first line of warriors tensed up. Boon, Mark, Courtney, and I got out of the way. We quickly made our way through the mass of people, headed for the gig that was waiting near the river.
Suddenly I heard what I thought was a huge cheer. It wasn’t. It was a battle cry. I turned back to see the first wave of exiles and gars running for the conclave. The assault was under way. Just like that. My stomach turned over. Such brave people, all willing to give their lives for a better world. Or rather, for the better world that used to be. They charged across the open field with nothing to protect them but those tiny shields. There were thousands in that first wave. I wondered how many would be left standing when it was complete.
I wondered what would happen to the Travelers.
The dados didn’t wait for the assault to get too close before they began shooting. The steady paf paf paf of their weapons echoed across the battlefield. Several of our people were hit, and turned to ash instantly. The result of getting hit by a charge from one of those weapons had the same effect as what we’d seen when the Ravinian guards had executed that poor guy inside the conclave. Instant incineration. I hoped it wasn’t painful. Adding to the sound of the weapons firing was a constant metallic pinging sound.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Those silver shields repel the charge from those guns,” Mark explained. “We stole them from the Ravinians a long time ago. Never thought we’d have to use them.”
It gave me a little bit of hope that at least they had some protection. But there looked to be hundreds of dados on top of the wall, the high ground, firing down. No matter where they shot, they were sure to hit one of our people. That’s how many of us there were. A couple of gars dropped to their knees with their radio cannons and started firing back. One by one, dados were knocked backward off the wall, never to be seen again. It looked like a shooting gallery.
Boon ran for the gig and started powering up.
“I gotta go,” I said to Mark and Courtney.
“We’ll see you inside,” Courtney replied.
There was a quick group hug.
“Get us home, Bobby,” Mark whispered.
I pulled away and looked into the faces of my two best friends. We were no longer the little kids who’d grown up together in Stony Brook. Yet we were. Who could have foreseen the people we would become? I was proud of who we were and what we had done, but this was not the way it was meant to be. It made me sad, and a little angry.
“I love you guys” was all I said, and ran for the gig. I had to get out of there. I didn’t want to let my emotions take over by even thinking of the possibility that I would never see them again.
The gig’s rotors were up to speed. I jumped in next to Boon and strapped in.
“We going straight in?” he asked.
“No. We should hover above until they break through.”
We lifted off smoothly. After a quick wave down to Mark and Courtney, we shot skyward and got a bird’s-eye view of the battle below. It looked like one of those battlefield attacks from the American Civil War or World War I. Thousands of people charged for the fortress, while the Ravinians fired back to keep them away. This was old-school warfare with some new-school weapons. The only difference was that there weren’t any bodies on the battlefield. That’s because they had been obliterated. There were no remains. At least, not yet.
Leading the way were Uncle Press and the Travelers. They dodged around the smoking hulks of the downed choppers, using them for protection when possible. Wisely, they were not running in a straight line. They wanted to be difficult targets.
“Uh-oh,” Boon said.
Looking forward, I saw that two more helicopters had lifted off from beside the conclave and were headed for the battlefield. My fear was that they were going to start firing rockets into the crowd. Those little silver shields would have no effect against that kind of barrage.
“Buzz ’em!” I said.
“What?”
“Distract them. Anything!” I shouted.
Boon pushed the gig forward, and we shot toward the choppers.
The first helicopter fired a rocket into the crowd. When it hit, the explosion was violent. And sickening. I hated to think how many people had been killed in that one short second. A second rocket was fired, making another direct hit into the charging army. The explosion ripped the ground, tearing up cement. Bodies were launched like rag dolls.
“Do it!” I screamed at Boon.
The klee cut across the nose of the first chopper, barely missing it. The pilot pulled out of his attack run and turned his chopper to come after us. Boon buzzed the second chopper, doing a figure eight between the two. Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe Boon was a better pilot than Kasha. Our aerobatics seemed to confuse the pilots, which was the best we could have hoped for. All I wanted was for them to stop firing long enough for…
Suddenly both helicopters started to rotate wildly. They were out of control, and I thought I knew why. They kept firing rockets but had no way of directing them. Several hit the conclave wall. None hit our people.
“Pull up!” I shouted.
Boon shot skyward to get away from the doomed helicopters. There was no telling which way they would fly as they struggled to stay airborne. The hunters had become hunted. The gars were firing their radio cannons at them from the ground, which meant the marauders wouldn’t be in the air for long. I didn’t know if the weapons from Black Water were disrupting the choppers, or had damaged their dado pilots. Didn’t matter. Either way, they were going down. I feared for a moment that they might crash onto the battlefield…with tragic results for those below. I held my breath, watching the helicopters dodge about like crazed butterflies. They crashed within seconds of each other…but not on the battlefield. Both hit square onto the roof of the dado factory.
“Woohaa!” I screamed in victory, surprise…and relief.
Explosions erupted that tore through the factory’s roof. More explosions followed from below…far more than made sense for the number of rockets they were carrying.
“That’s where they build the helicopters,” I told Boon. “They must store the rockets—”
I was cut off by the sound of an immense explosion that came from inside the factory. A huge mushroom cloud of fire and black smoke blasted into the air, blowing out the roof. The wave of heat buffeted our little gig. Boon had to fight to keep control.
“I guess they store their fuel there too,” I added.
We both laughed. It was an incredible stroke of luck. I hoped the explosions carried through to the dado side of the factory.
I heard several smaller explosions coming from the ground. Besides the rifles that the rebels provided, there were also a few weapons that packed a little more punch. I saw people dropping to their knees and bracing another type of rifle against the ground. When they fired, a burst of flame erupted from each muzzle. It must have packed a heck of a kick. Seconds later explosions erupted near the destroyed door of the fortress.
“They’re like grenade launchers,” I said to Boon, not that he knew what a grenade launcher was. “They’re getting closer.”
Dados gathered inside the destroyed doorway to defend the obvious point of attack. There were dozens of them, all with the silver weapons. They fired wildly into the crowd that was growing ever closer. Every one up front held a shield. The constant metallic pings told me that they were warding off the charges fired by the Ravinians.
More grenades were launched, blowing dados away, throwing them back into the fortress. Several people formed a wall of shields to protect the gars that were moving forward with their radio cannons. When they got to within forty yards of the door, the sharp-shooting gars planted and fired. Dados fell like paper dolls in the wind.
The first wave of the attack was nearly at the fortress.
Looking back, I saw that the second wave had begun their charge. I hoped that the first wave would get into the conclave soon and neutralize the dados, because none of the people in the second wave had shields.
The dados along the top of the wall had grown sparse. Either they had been blown away by the gars, or had gone to the ground to make the final stand at the door.
“They’re going to make it,” Boon declared.
Sure enough, the first of the attacking force had reached the door and fought their way inside. I couldn’t tell if any Travelers were among them.
“Now!” I shouted. “Get us over the top.”
Boon throttled up and flew the gig over the giant wall. We were in, and got our first view of the action behind enemy lines. Below, our people poured in through the destroyed door, past the wreck of the golden engine. There were still a lot of Ravinian guards on the ground, fighting back, but far more were laid out on the ground. Finished. As the exiles and gars pushed inside, anyone who didn’t have a weapon to begin with picked up a silver wand from a fallen dado. We were gaining firepower.
That proved to be the last straw for the defense of the conclave. The dados didn’t retreat. They weren’t programmed to retreat. They didn’t know fear. They fought till the end, but the end came quickly. In minutes the grassy park below was filled with the remains of hundreds of dados.
I looked farther into the conclave, fearing that there might be a counterattack, either from more dados or from human Ravinians. As I wrote before, that is what I truly feared. If the human Ravinians engaged this army, they would lose and they would die. That wasn’t why we were there. This wasn’t meant to be a slaughter. From our vantage point flying high over the compound, I saw no counterattack. In fact, I saw very few Ravinians at all. I caught glimpses of a few who were deeper in the compound, but they were fleeing. They wanted no part of this fight. They expected the dados to protect them.
The dados failed.
“Put us down,” I said to Boon.
We dropped quickly and landed softly on the grass. We had done it. We were in. More and more exiles and gars flooded in through the destroyed door. Many grabbed weapons and began climbing up to the top of the wall. They all knew the score. This was only the first half of the battle. The attackers would soon become defenders, and it would be our turn to hold off a huge army bent on taking over the conclave.
I ran toward the destroyed door, looking for Uncle Press and the Travelers. There was a moment of panic. Had any of them been hit? People ran past me, running deeper into the conclave. They knew their mission. Seek out and destroy every last dado. They would move in patrols of twenty, searching everywhere. The destruction of the dados had to be complete. Another group would be headed for the factory to root out any last dados there, but I was pretty sure all they’d find was burning wreckage. The assault had been a complete success.
But where were the Travelers?
I stepped over a fallen dado…and the robot grabbed my leg. He was down, but he wasn’t dead. I was so surprised that I didn’t defend myself. The dado tossed me down. I hit the grass and spun back, expecting an attack. The dado still had his silver weapon. He raised it to fire at me…and got clocked in the head by a wooden stave. The dado fell to its knee and got clocked again. It may have been a robot, but it couldn’t stand up to the vicious onslaught. It dropped the weapon, reached for it, grabbed the wrong end…and instantly went dead.
“I prefer doing things the old way,” Loor said, spinning her stave triumphantly.
“You didn’t kill it, it was the weapon,” I shot back, kidding.
“It was as good as dead already,” she argued.
“Yeah, whatever. Thank you.”
Loor gave me a small smile, which for her was huge. “Will I ever have to stop protecting you, Pendragon?”
“Man, I hope so.”
“Bobby!” Uncle Press called.
He ran up, out of breath. Behind him were Alder, Spader, Kasha, and Siry. Boon joined us as well. We all stood there looking at one another. Spader began to laugh. Alder followed. Then Siry and Uncle Press and even Kasha and Loor. It was a moment of pure exhilaration. We had done it. We had gotten a toehold in the Conclave of Ravinia. There was nothing funny going on; it was more a laugh of pure joy.
“Where’s Aron?” I asked.
Uncle Press stopped laughing. The others did as well. The mood instantly turned dark.
“He almost made it,” Uncle Press answered. “He was near the door. But he took a hit from a dado that we thought was finished.”
It was a shocking, hollow feeling. Aron was the leader of the gars, and had been since my first visit to Black Water. He was the visionary who helped civilize the gars and earn them respect. It was hard to believe that he was gone. His spirit had surely became part of Solara, and Solara was all the better for it.
“Hey!” came a familiar voice.
Mark and Courtney came running up to join us.
“Can you believe this?” I said. “We did it.”
“Not yet, we didn’t,” Mark said, dead serious.
His tone didn’t fit the moment of victory. I looked over his shoulder to see hundreds upon hundreds of our people streaming into the conclave. I didn’t get it. From what I could see, we had most definitely done it.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Mark held up his walkie-talkie. “They found it.”
We all knew what he meant.
“When?” I asked.
Courtney answered, “The flume downtown came to life five minutes ago. Dados are pouring out in droves. They’re headed this way.”
We stood there in stunned silence. Our celebration was a short one. Though it was something we expected, knowing it was actually happening was still a shock.
Mark said, “I’d say we have two hours at best before we get swarmed.”
Uncle Press looked around and said, “We know what to do. Bring all the radio cannons inside. Call back the choppers. Find every weapon and get it into the hands of a gar or a Yank.”
The Travelers scattered to carry out the commands. I was left with Mark and Courtney and Uncle Press.
“Two hours,” Uncle Press said, looking at me.
“We can do it,” Mark said. “We will do it.”
Uncle Press didn’t respond to Mark. He was focused on me.
“Two hours,” he repeated.
His grave look said it all. I nodded in understanding.
He stood straight, looked me square in the eye, and said, “Go get him.”