Keith Laumer - Zone Yellow

Swft was surrounded by the mob now, and taking solid blows from numberless clubs. Major Lst worked his way through to him and took a position back-to-back with the general. They clobbered Two-Law after Two-Law, until they were surrounded by a ring of fallen attackers.

Gus slammed through to them, and was felled by a big Ylokk with a six-foot quarterstaff. Helm got ahead of me, and I had to call him to heel.

“Don’t get cut off, Andy,” I cautioned him. By then I was close enough to knock the wind out of a Two-Law who was squarely behind the lieutenant and winding up for a killing blow to the head. There were plenty of targets; we kept busy knocking them over, and in a few seconds were climbing the ring of casualties with Gus, to join Lst and Swft.

The latter gave me a grateful glance and said, “We must break out of this trap before it occurs to them that one blast from a disruptor would finish us all.” He glanced toward our troops, who, surrounding the Princess, Marie, and Smovia, had interlocked their short arms and had been backed against the wall near the door.

“Her Highness―” he started, and staggered at a blow delivered by a squatty pink-striper who had noticed his distraction. I slammed the attacker down and another behind him.

Swft was back beside me. “We must relieve Her Highness!” he managed to gasp out. Ylokk lungs didn’t have our human capacity for prolonged effort. I nodded, and we formed a retiring wedge and roved our way back to the group guarding the princess in the partial shelter of the doorway. The assault was slacking off; the Ylokk lacked sticktoitiveness.

“Your Highness!” Swft called. “Retire inside, I beg of you! Nst,” he addressed the non-com in charge of the detail. “Inside! At once!” Then to me, “The lock will be difficult.” Nst went right to work on it with a tool of some sort, but seemed to be having no success. Too bad; the mob was pressing us hard. We needed an escape route.

Intent on all this, both Helm and I failed to intercept a Two-Law who plunged in from the flank and dealt Swft a terrible blow with a three-foot club. Swft didn’t fall, but staggered aside, and was surrounded by the enemy, who pulled him down and flowed over him.

Andy shot two or three and charged; I nailed a fellow who slipped in behind him, and we reached Swft, or what was left of him. He looked like a rolled carpet, oozing blood. The poor fellow had never fully recovered from that first shot back at the transfer station before the beating he had taken at the hands of the mob; and now this trampling. I tried to get an arm under him to help him up, but Smovia was right: Swft was one tough rat.

He pulled from my grasp and brushed Andy aside, and reared up to his full seven-foot-two, and yelled at the mob of Two-Laws surrounding us: “Get back! I order you in the name of Her Imperial Highness: withdraw!”

I understood what one fellow right next to me yelled back: “Give us the slaves!”

Swft pushed forward and struck the impudent Two-Law down. The mob shuffled uncertainly. Some seemed ready to attack; others were moving back. They were balanced on a knife edge.

“These humongs are under my protection!” Swft shouted, and knocked down another pushy Two-Law. The next fellow started a lunge toward the general, and I tripped him and then stamped on his head. Swft was still on his feet, but sagging. He delivered a buffet to still another aggressive rat, and was at once assaulted from two sides. Andy and I fired into these, making every shot count.

Old Gus moved up and added to our firepower. We beat them back, though they didn’t seem to learn very quickly that our pistols were lethal. A Two-Law sergeant lying at Swft’s feet stirred, and before I could nail him, lunged upward with a foot-long knife, trying to rip Swft wide open, but only slashed his thigh. Swft fell, bleeding copiously.

Minnie had slipped past her soldier guard; she came up beside me. The mob fell back then, quieting down as if even they were stunned at the enormity of attacking Her Highness. Andy pulled her back, and Smovia went to Swft, while Big Gus and I took turns clubbing down any of the mob who tried to approach. There was the ear-shattering bang! of a pistol shot behind us, and I turned to see Ben ready to fire again into the lock, but Nst kicked the door and it swung in as pieces of the lock mechanism dribbled from its edge.

“Have to get him inside!” Smovia yelled. He was tugging at General Swft’s ankles. I gave him a hand.

“Guess that rat’s done for,” Gus yelled in my ear. “Guess maybe now we can go in there and get at the machine that’ll take us back where we belong.”

“Help the doc get him inside,” I ordered him. He griped, but Ben and Marie stepped in to help. Andy and I, as well as Smovia, had our hands full. We could go on heaping up Two-Laws with headaches, but they kept on coming. We were saving our ammunition for the ultimate emergency.

“What you want with a dead rat?” Gus demanded, then ducked a club swung by a rat who stepped on Swft’s inert body. “Whyn’t we get inside and get gone?”

“He gave his life for us,” I said. “We owe him something.”

There seemed to be almost a lull in the assault. Our soldiers were still staying close around Minnie, or trying to. She slipped between two of them and right past me and advanced a step, then another, toward a captain in the glowering, shouting front rank of the mob. She held out a somewhat bedraggled bouquet of the wildflowers she had been gathering along the way. The dumfounded Two-Law officer took the offering and abruptly went to all-fours.

“Her Highness!” he yelled. “It’s Her Highness!” He crept backward, then rose and issued commands. The mob began to melt away. He prostrated himself again and waited, crouched before the young rat-girl.

“Rise, loyal soldier,” she said to him, as one to the manor born. What was it, I wondered―instinct, developed over millennia of exercising absolute authority?

Minnie raised her voice: “Go to your house now,” she called.

Smovia was back, looking distressed. “They’ll tear her limb from limb,” he bleated.

“Not while I live,” a sleek young captain of her self-appointed guard said. He moved up beside her, and quietly urged her to retire. Meanwhile, a cry had gone up: “Her Highness! Her Highness! She’s come back! It’s Her Highness!”

“Come on, Colonel,” Helm urged. “It’s time to get inside.” The rest were already past the broken-open door, and Andy and I slipped inside the Skein compound accompanied by confused yells from the Two-Law-led crowd.

“Where is Her Highness?”

“―lies! Don’t be fooled!”

“I saw her!”

“―a plot to deceive us all!”

“You’re insane, you know, Mister Colonel,” good old Gus told me, “if you think you’re going to make that crowd knuckle under to a baby rat. How do you plan to do it?”

It was dark and cooler inside the technical facility. All I could see was lab-type benches and a corridor leading off into the rear of the building. I didn’t give old Gus an answer because I didn’t have one. I’d been counting on Swft to handle that part. Now he was flat on his back, or as flat as his anatomy would allow; Smovia was stitching up his eighteen-inch wound.

“How bad is he, doctor?” I asked him. He nodded impatiently, “No real damage done,” he muttered. “Lost lots of blood, of course, but septicemia is his big risk. I’ve used plenty of antibiotics, and he could pull through.”

“Not in time to help much, Colonel,” Andy remarked.

“Damn right!” Gus chimed in. Andy socked him in the gut and he shut up, momentarily. As soon as he recovered his wind he was grabbing at my arm and telling me, “We got to get out of here, now!”