Leo Frankowski - Copernick's Rebellion

“He is crazy,” Kelly muttered, jettisoning the fuse and bracing for a crash. He hit the lever to jettison the fuel, but he knew he was too late.

The huge plane came in near the center of the valley and erupted in a spray of broken wood and torn aluminum. The wings sheared off, engines ripped loose, and nearly full fuel tanks ruptured. Orange flames and black smoke poured through houses and into basements. Huddled people screamed and died.

One wing tank spun into Pinecroft’s side and burst and burned. The entire side of the hundred-foot-tall tree was a blanket of flame. It went through the windows and up and down the elevator shaft.

Mona and Patricia made it to the surface in Mack, a TRAC tanker loaded with water. They set him to spraying those walls that were not yet burning, and got out.

Copernick’s fauns, Colleen and Ohura, ran out of the tree house, each carrying a human baby. Most of Ohura’s black hair was burned off.

“My babies!” Mona screamed.

The fauns handed the unharmed Copernick children to Mona and Patricia, then turned back to the burning tree house.

When Colleen and Ohura ran inside, they found the elevator bouncing rapidly, convulsed with pain. They ran to the staircase, reaching it just as burning jet fuel was starting to dribble down. Without hesitation they ran up the stairs through the flames. Their hoofs provided some protection, but the fur on Ohura’s legs caught fire midway up. She continued upward to the fauns’ room before throwing herself to the floor and rolling on the carpet to put out the flames.

Cradled in soft niches on Pinecroft’s second floor, the four baby fauns each still lay on its back contently sucking the treenipple just above its mouth.

While Ohura flailed at her smoldering fur, Colleen took the babies from their niches. As Ohura finished she picked up one of her own children and one of Colleen’s. Each carrying two fauns, Colleen and Ohura bounded for the corridor.

The fire and smoke in the hallway had grown much worse, and the fauns had to crawl, babies clutched to their breasts, groping then-way to the service stairway, Colleen in the lead. A wall of flames shot up between them and Ohura gasped, involuntarily inhaling the fire, singeing her lungs. She couldn’t breathe or speak, and the world started to become dark gray. As she became unconscious, she tucked the two children under her, trying to protect them from the heat with her own body.

Colleen reached the service staircase before she realized that Ohura wasn’t behind her. She hesitated for a second, then turned back to grope blindly for her sister. As she crawled, a branch that had supported the third floor gave way, smashing the bones of her left knee and pinning her to the floor. The smoke cleared for an instant and she saw Ohura a few feet in front of her.

“Ohura! I’m over here!” But Ohura didn’t move.

The log pinning Colleen down was two feet in diameter and fifteen yards long. Colleen struggled helplessly, rolling over, trying to rip her own leg off. Anything to save herself and her children.

Suddenly an LDU darted through the smoke, his body silvery white to reflect the heat. His lateral tentacles grabbed for Ohura and the two babies were quickly secured to his underside.

The LDU turned its attention to the trapped faun. I’m Dirk, Colleen.” He tried to lift the log from her leg but failed. “Better give me the children. I can’t move this log.”

The flames were rapidly approaching them as Colleen gave up the baby fauns. The pain in her leg was unbearable. Death would be welcome.

“Sorry, Colleen.” Dirk tapped her behind the head, knocking her unconscious, ending the pain. Then he wrapped a tentacle tightly around her left thigh and with one whack of a dagger-claw severed the leg above the knee.

Dirk placed Colleen next to Ohura and the four baby fauns and raced down the burning stairway to safety.

Copernick stayed at his post in the communications center, giving an almost continuous stream of rational orders to the CCU, most of which had been anticipated and were being put into effect before they were received. Guibedo stayed at his nephew’s side, occasionally making suggestions.

“Get as many of the crew out as possible,” Copernick said. “Give them medical treatment in preference to our own people if necessary. We need the bastards.”

LDUs waded ankle deep through burning gasoline, slashing through aluminum and boron-fiber composite with their knife-claws, searching out every scrap of human flesh in the burning bomber.

Tree houses over an entire square mile were searched for the injured, the dying, and the dead.

The fire did not spread past the second subbasement of Copernick’s complex, because of Pinecroft’s green growing wood and the efficiency of the LDUs.

Hundreds of injured people and animals were brought to the third-level medical center. Among them, near the end of the list, were Ohura, with third-degree burns over eighty percent of her body, and Colleen, battered but still alive.

Liebchen was with them, holding four uninjured baby fauns, the size of squirrels.

“Dirk pulled you all out. He says that you’re going to be okay in a month,” Liebchen said. Ohura’s lungs were too seared for her to speak, but she smiled slightly.

“Are our babies all right?” Colleen’s eyes were swollen shut.

“I’ve got them all right here. They’re fine. Lady Mona said you two did everything perfect,” Liebchen said.

“Oh, good. I hope Pinecroft’ll be all right,” Colleen said, before putting herself to sleep.

“What’s the status on the bomber crew?”

“Six of the original eight are alive, my lord. Three of those are capable of talking. Their flight orders were signed by Major General Hastings, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“Hastings, huh?” Copernick said. “That’s perfect, politically. I want those three men programmed to make complete confessions to the news media, and I want it done in three hours. They are to say that they had orders to drop an atomic bomb on American citizens, and that they would have done so if their plane had not developed engine trouble. Call for volunteers among the valley’s citizens. I need all roads out of the valley blocked by ‘refugees’ for three hours. We need time to set the stage before the newsmen get here.”

Guibedo said, “What do you figure that’s going to accomplish, Heiny?”

“We were lucky this tune, and we can’t repeat the performance. Bringing that plane down cost us five hundred birds.

“CCU. See that all of the birds are cleaned out of the wreckage. I don’t want the government to know that we have any capability of fighting back. Save any birds that can be saved and… give the rest an honorable burial.

“Uncle Martin, our only hope is to kick up so much political flack that our opponents will wait a few months before attacking again. And with luck, by then they won’t have anything to attack with.”

“Heiny, it’s time we let our bugs loose.”

“Do you want the honor, Uncle Martin?”

“Yah. Now I want the honor. Telephone! Do it!”

In subbasements below their feet, long ceiling-high racks were filled with white eggs the size of beachballs, each connected by a black umbilical cord to the mother—being and by a thin pink string to the CCU.

The eggs began to open. By the thousands, full-sized swans broke soundlessly from their shells and started their silent, orderly, mindless procession upward. They climbed the wide circular ramp four hundred feet to the surface, and beyond, through the burned-out shell that was Pinecroft. They climbed until they were a hundred feet above the ground then dove into the night air. The great white birds circled high, then each flew off to its own separate destination.