Night was drawing nigh. The high castle walls of Shiloh were drenched with the purplish-red of sundown. Twilight marked major activity for both factions.
All SCARAB forces were under the command of Somer Krest, the Wise Old Man. The SCARAB forces dressed in desert camouflage were resting from their days journey and preparing their battle weapons. The highest power weapon was the Sand Canon, also known as an Eraser. The machine sucked up sand through the back and blasted it out the front dissolving anything within 250 paces. This was good and bad. Some times things or people were erased on the other side of a wall or building accidentally.
For hand-to-hand combat, SCARAB forces had few projectile weapons. They just didn’t have resources to buy black market commodities. They invented a formidable close-combat hand-held weapon which quickly extended an internal collapsible telescoping rod with a steelplast poison dart affixed at the end. It was called an X3. But the troops called the X3 a Skull Crusher because it had the spring action force to penetrate multiple bones. The poison dart was good for four shots and then required redipping. It never seemed a problem as most warriors used it without the poison.
Lamia’s forces were under the direction of General Thin Rattle. He wasn’t military trained actually. He had no officially earned military rank. He was actually from some unusual eastern university. His marriage to Lamia meant he automatically got the job of Military Dictator. A job he enjoyed. He needed something wicked to do to offset his boredom and anxiety. His real profession was so esoteric it had no worth in reality. Something like counting how many grains of sand were in the desert. His self-coined battle name was “Fang”. His people addressed him as General Fang but behind his back they called him the “Sweaty Bully”. His men were well paid and mostly mercenaries. It was the only way he could keep a semblance of military order. Intelligence reported Fang frequently hung deserters. Disloyalty was something the SCARAB had difficulty comprehending. It only confirmed Fang was a nut case.
Fang’s forces in their blood red uniforms were fortified in the highest and largest castle tower. It was constructed of solid rock covered with plastisteel. Virtually impenetrable. This gave them obvious advantage with their projectile missiles and free view of the battlefield. They could see the SCARAB still just outside the outer walls.
General Fang’s war challenge pierced the canvas canopy of the commando tent. Angled from descending high flight, three blood-covered arrows splattered stain in the hot sand on impact. Krest cursed the General’s reckless flamboyant displays; always shooting at unseen targets. “They aren’t my battle signal. We go when I call,” thought Krest.
He didn’t wait long his men were ready and willing.
“OK. Let’s get those Erasers hot. I want five holes to drive through. Get goin’,” barked Somer Krest. This is it, he thought to himself and felt a chill on his back.
The night sky turned black as they worked.
“They won’t fire until we’re through the wall. They don’t want to help us out any blasting a bigger hole,” said Somer Krest.
A distance from Krest and the scorching Erasers, Yew Rue examined an apparent piece of jewelry strapped to his wrist. It was a radio detonator. He had secretly made a deal to insure SCARAB forces won this part of the war. Soon General Fang would perish.
“We’re through the wall, c’mon,” hollered some men. As the men pour forward onto the battle field about eight crackling booms occurred simultaneously. Land mines!
Somer Krest scrambled out and saw among the fracas the gruesome scene of a young man who’d lost both hands and his sight. The wounded boy was struggling to get up on crimson stumps.
“Get down, son, and stay down,” ordered Krest.
“Who are you? What happen?” asked the bloody boy warrior.
“Somer Krest here. You’ve fallen on a mine. You lost both hands and your eyes,” Somer Krest minced no words.
“Am I going to die?”
“Do you want to?”
“I believe so, sir, I don’t think I’ve got much left.”
“You know who I am?” quizzed Krest.
“The Wise Old Man, sir!” sounded the young man.
“Then you listen to me. I am placing tourniquets on your arms. You will not die while you are under my protection. Do you understand, soldier?”
“Yes, sir!” came back the dazed voice. Physical shock was setting in.
“Son, you’ve a locket around your neck. Does it contain an H-pix of someone worth living for?”
“Yes, sir. Her name is Anchor, sir,” he replied.
“Anchor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your name, son?” Krest asked.
“They call me Driver, sir.”
“Driver, it would mean a lot to me to see this H-pix of Anchor. Would you mind?
“Please, sir. Go ahead. She’s beautiful.”
“So I see. I’ve always wanted to see her before I died,” he spoke softly and prophetically. Somer stared at her enchanting face in the glow from a parachute flare.
“Listen, we must move you now. This area is getting too hot,” said Krest.
There was no reply.
The medics unceremoniously amputated Driver’s mutilated hands; a repulsive and hideous sight. He would never hold his two sweet loves again. He died the next hour.
Krest had removed the locket and Driver’s military war ID and put them both in a rugged chemplast packet and sealed it. On the outside he scribbled with his field pen: To Ungula. He placed it in his breast pocket and snapped it shut. He would remember this warrior along with all the others who would die tonight. He was haunted wondering how Anchor was faring tonight. Does she sense the turmoil being fought for her cause? Somer thought, Does she know she is inspiring her compatriots?
“Watch for the ray guns!” shouted Somer as he dashed into the uproar.
On top of the tower, the sadistic General Fang looked over the railing with night occulars and laughed giddily, “Ha! The fool’s! They walked right into those mines. Drat! This battle will be over in minutes. Idiot’s. Prepare the Ray Rifles. Cut them down … slowly.”
The General paced back and forth as if he were agitated. His face was a permanent scowl with jaw jutting out when he was angry. He seemed always to be angry. He heard a familiar but faint barking. He rushed to the rail searching. There through the occulars he saw a large black dog.
“What is my son’s black dog doing with those desert rats?” Deep inside he was screaming, “The Black Dog!” He knew he was betrayed. It was already too late to abort the mission. His miserable son, the weakling, always taking his glory. His ceaseless competitor! Even Lamia loved his rebel son more than her General Husband, he spat the venomous thoughts in his raging mind. It was too cursed late! Perspiration beaded his wrinkled brow as he waited the inevitable treachery. He didn’t wait long.
The tall tower was showering SCARAB forces with ray and missile weapons. It was a butchery. Yew Rue had finally had his fill. He slid the panel back on his wrist transmitter and pressed a small red square in the center. The entire bottom of the tower was prewired with explosives and erupted spewing molten lava. The tower toppled scattering bodies and armament in all directions. From here on, the battle was hand-to-hand. Fangs foolish men refused to surrender. No prisoners were taken, except Fang himself.
“I want Fang,” hollered Somer Krest.
Fang was promptly located and drug over to the moat. His head flopping back over the filthy waters.
“General Fang, I am ordered by the rightful heirs to the throne of the Golden City, to execute you on sight for all your murderous crimes,” pronounced Somer Krest, “Do you have any last words?”
“My own son betrayed me!” yelled the enraged Sweaty Bully.
“I’m sorry to hear you have family troubles,” muttered Krest as he popped an X3 Skull Crusher into the General’s mouth, “a few words of my own: You officially died when you married my sister, the witch. She joins you soon, depraved illness! May God have mercy on your tainted soul!”
An X3 Skull Crusher execution really is fairly painless to the casualty. The rod dart has a numbing agent which is also an extremely lethal poison. It’s painless and quick, but remarkably messy.
Krest depressed the activate switch but the X3 misfired. He tried again with the same results.
“I’ll listen to nature and reprieve your death sentence and banish you instead,” said Krest, “You men. Escort this puny rat back to his dreary hole. I never want to see him again.”
The Sweaty Bully never returned to his homeland. The desert buzzards picked his bones clean. Sadly, he was killed while escaping. Run down and crushed by a large sand vehicle. Another unfortunate war tragedy.
The outer Battle was miraculously won, although how the tower collapsed remained a mystery, never explained by Yew Rue. Always his special secret.