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Fifteen men and women, including Astrid, joined me in the center of the room. When I signaled ready, a low whiz of a noise flowed through the chamber. The world turned black for a moment then we found ourselves in a sunny field. The wind blew some type of Sandeling dust at us; large, puffy grains that floated gracefully through the air. To our right the forest stood. Large brown trunks partially obscured by the dark green of the leaves on the drooping branches. Nothing human or alien moved north or south of us. In the distance I saw the faint black outline of the castle. I waved my arms toward the trees.
“Let’s go.”
The squad ran over and we took positions behind the trees. I didn’t know what type of goggles they had at the castle, but I didn’t want us spotted by the defenders. The cousin of an Earth owl whooed in the distance. A brown, four-legged creature scurried ten yards away from us. A blue bird set on the branches above us and looked down curiously.
Everything else was still. Leaves swirled slightly in the wind. But besides the brown forest dweller nothing else moved on the planet. There was nothing in sight. Which was a good sign.
Tyson focused his long-range binoculars on the castle.
“There’s a lot of Soltarians guarding that wall, sir. But there’s not supposed to be anything on the planet to guard against,” he said.
“That’s true. How many guards are there?” I said.
“Looks to be about two hundred and it’s a really big wall.”
I grabbed a pair of binoculars and aimed them at the castle. The word ‘castle’ did not do it just. The binocular screen revealed it was a mile long and a mile wide. About ten yards thick. Higher towers on each corner. In the two upfront, two ugly-looking Soltarians peered out toward the landscape. I felt a sense of unease. Tarum hadn’t gone into detail about his race’s history, but if the Cappnids had a rural economy and rustic existence, who built this thing? Then again, Europe had something of a rural life in the Middle Ages but it did have a lot of castles, although none to my understanding was as large as this one. Due to the high walls, I couldn’t see much of the insides. I lowered the binoculars.
“Mr. Tyson. That’s a little larger than we were thinking. Can your drones take that out?”
“Think so, sir. The range of a neutron bomb is more than a mile. I don’t think it should be a problem.”
“Can you get a bomb on a drone?”
“Sure, I can. Really big explosives come in small packages nowadays.”
“A neutron bomb can take out humans. Will it do the same to Soltarians?”
“It should, although I can’t give you a hundred percent guarantee. Ninety-five percent, maybe. But we have backups if the neutrons don’t work.”
I glanced toward our landing area.
“Where’s our second squad?”
“Don’t know. They haven’t arrived yet,” Astrid said. She was at my elbow. “Something could have gone wrong.”
“I told Blackjack to keep an eye on Tarum. That guy still worries me.”
“By the way, how did you know he was double-crossing us?”
I shrugged. “There was no moment of revelation. I just had an uneasy feeling about it. Plus, the more I thought about it, the more that lizard guy looked like the aliens we tangled with on Vanodor. Put one and one together and I came up with ‘there’s something fishy about this.’”
“Wow. That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”
I sighed and looked again at the landing area. “They should be here by now.”
“I can go back and check.”
“Not yet. Give them about five more minutes.”
There was silence for four minutes and then Ritter spoke up.
“Major, we may have a problem.” He was looking into his scanner.
“What type of problem?”
“There’s a large force approaching us from the south. Looks like about two thousand soldiers. I’m reading weapons, difficult to say just what type. I’m guessing they’re just normal laser weapons. Also, sir, just on the edge of my scope it appears another force is heading toward us from the east.”
“How many?”
“No definitive readings yet, but I’d say about a thousand.”
“How far away are they?”
“Currently about eight miles.”
“Walking, I hope.” I said.
“Yes, it looks like a convoy on foot,” he answered.
“That gives us some time.”
We could bounce back to the future and save the attack for another time. But we needed to take out the Soltarians as soon as possible. If we bounced back and allowed three hundred years of history to proceed, the planet might be a very different place when we reappeared in the future. It’s a paradox that when playing with time you never know how much time you have. If we left now, what would the future look like?
And if we stayed, we could be pinned against three armies. I needed the second squad. Our drones and other heavy weapons were coming in the second and third time jump.
“Major, the gates of the castle are opening,” Tyson said, as he stared through his binoculars again.
“They’re putting up a welcome sign?”
“No, sir. Soldiers are marching out. Columns of five, looks like.”
“Darn. I didn’t think we sent out invitations.”
“They’re not carrying white flags, so I don’t think they’re going to surrender.”
“Shucks, there goes my first option. I was going to accept the surrender.”
“Better go to your second option, sir.”
I didn’t tell Mr. Tyson that there was no second option. We had one plan – attack the castle. I didn’t expect three armies to be marching toward me with only one-third of my s quad. I wondered if Tarum had been lying again. Or possibly General Conbor had covered all his bases. He was a nasty character, but he was very intelligent.
“Mr. Tyson, can you see what type of weapons they’re carrying?”
He looked through the binoculars again. I was hoping for some good news.
“It doesn’t appear like they have any long guns, major. They do have sidearms, but I can’t tell what type they are. Regular speed. They don’t appear to be in any great hurry.”
No, they wouldn’t. The Raiders had no place to go. Retreat was cut off, plus we couldn’t zoom east. If we headed west, we’d be in an open field with one army in front of us and two behind. We’d be squeezed to death.
I looked up. “And there are no drones in the sky? No air weapons of any type?”
“No, sir.”
“Ritter!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Set up a defensive perimeter. We do have long guns. If they charge up we should be able to take them out before they can reach us.”
I took one look through the binoculars at the Soltarians. They were as ugly as ever. But where did the lizard guy come in? At one time General Conbor had two-legged lizards as his allies. Where did he pick up the Soltarians? Besides, the Soltarians didn’t like any outside contact. How did the general become their leader? Not that the guy didn’t have some basic charisma. He did, as most dictators do. But I doubted human charisma influenced the hairy Soltarians. Something was amiss here...
“What are you thinking? Making this our battleground?” Astrid said.
“Yes, at least we’d have a defensive position. If we have three armies converging I don’t want to fight them on open ground. They would have the advantage. But if we establish a defensive posture we might be able to take out about ninety-eight percent of them while they charge.”
As the Soltarians marched closer, I hoped they knew very little about combat, or at least about the combat they were about to engage in. In this age, armies did not clash by night, or at noon. In the space age, high-tech weapons had ended such fiery engagements. But it appeared there might be some old-fashioned warfare if the three groups kept heading our way. Perhaps their commanders didn’t know the results of a battle when armies charged a well-defended position. World War I generals had learned that lesson. Or at least some of them did. A few stupid ones didn’t. Gen. William Sherman had learned that long before the First World War. He never wanted a one-on-one engagement. He kept maneuvering his army so the Confederates could not dig in. Maybe the Soltarians last ground battles were three hundred years ago and hopefully they had forgotten the lessons of history.
Even without binoculars I could vaguely see the black-clad soldiers marching from the castle.
“Where are our other two squads?” I said.
Rab had the second squad. If something had gone wrong he would have sent one soldier back to inform me of the problem. But no one had appeared.
We stripped ourselves of guns and jetpacks. Three Raiders used their lasers to slice through tree trunks. When the trees fell, it sounded like thunder as the ground shook a few seconds. We sliced off the branches and used the trees as barricades. It would not be a solid fortress, but the wall of trees would be the best we could do in the time we had. We were all sweating after three minutes of the labor. Sweat poured down my face. I began to miss the frozen emptiness of Sandeling, three hundred years in the future. I kept looking toward our landing spot, about twenty yards away, hoping to see the second squad materializing. But nothing.
I checked the scanner. The closest army was still about six miles away and we had some of our barricades up. There would be holes in our defenses, but the wall of trees was not specifically for keeping the enemy out. I hoped no Soltarian soldier would ever get close enough to leap over the wooden wall. I hoped we’d kill them before they got within six feet of the wall. But the wood would deflect their shots.
I didn’t think the general lived up to his name. Perhaps even Conbor, for all his brilliance, didn’t know anything about ancient warfare. But if we didn’t materialize at the valley, we’d have to take a chance. We’d have to hope they only brought sidearms.
We had laser riflers instead. Which meant the Raiders could kill their enemies a long way off. A mile away a Soltarian soldier might be marching swiftly one minute and have a hole blasted into him the next moment. Unlike the Americans dug-in on Bunker Hill during the Revolution, we didn’t have to wait until we saw the whites of their eyes.
If all went well, the Soltarians would represent the Confederates and we would represent the Union on this space version of Gettysburg. But ever since we had landed on Sandeling, things had not gone well.
“Rab, where are you?” I said.