The frightened soldiers finally regained their feet. The effects of the slow-ship wine wore off quickly now as the elderly mercs tried to make some sense of what was going on. Then, from over the hill came the wail of a siren, a noise they'd heard only in drills and rarely in the last century.
The drunken soldiers all looked at each other, as if to say, What does that sound mean again?
Then it dawned on them. The siren was blown only in case of an emergency. This could only mean one thing: Their base was under attack.
The soldiers scrambled to the top of the hill to find the ungodly aerial machine had turned around again and was now sweeping through the valley that housed their base.
The facility sat at the edge of a huge, ancient crater, an impact made millions of years before. To the north there was nothing but wide open space. To the south, a vast desert that featured an enormous, solitary butte. To the east, beyond the five enormous, rusting space gantries, a half-dozen mountains ran for ten miles or so. To the west was a series of shallow hills, one of which bordered the small town where the Last Drop stood.
The flying machine was bearing down on the base's 2,500-foot deep-space antenna tower now — the BMK garrison's only link to the outside world. The winged devil screeched across the sky with the same ear-piercing sound, a stream of Z beams spilling out of six blasters attached to its nose. The craft twisted and turned like nothing these men had ever seen before, blasting away at the base's communication cell, shearing off the top of the tower and exploding it into a cascade of bright yellow sparks.
Then the mysterious craft disappeared again. Some of the soldiers thought it had blinked out, vanishing into another dimension. But others claimed it had simply accelerated very quickly and departed the area at incredibly high speed.
No matter. It was suddenly on them again, this time coming from the east. In one long, perfectly executed strafing run, its six blasters tore into the base's ammo dump, its food supply warehouse, and its mess hall, leaving a string of earsplitting explosions in its wake.
But at the same time, a new sound could be heard. The ground began rumbling just in front of the base's huge docking gantries, followed quickly by a massive explosion of dirt and rocks. From this small storm of yellow dust, a huge mechanical monster began to rise.
It was one of the base's recessed Z-gun platforms, part of the antiquated space-defense system. Breaking through the rocky crust of the planet's surface, the enormous platform rose to a height of five hundred feet, its multiple-tube Z guns swiveling in the direction of the bizarre spacefighter.
A cheer went up from the drunken mercs on the hill.
At last, they were fighting back.
But right away, problems arose. The base's huge gun platforms were completely automatic. Their robotic sensors were designed to identify hostile spacecraft many thousands of miles away, focus their targeting systems on the enemy, and then let loose with a stream of Z-beam fire that could prove deadly to even the largest of spaceships. Yet the mysterious craft attacking the base was minuscule compared to any vessel the guns had been built to destroy. What's more, it was capable of accelerating to speeds that the Z guns' targeting systems simply could not keep up with.
So once the flying machine pulled off a strafing run that had carved the base's barracks assembly in two, it veered left, directly toward the gun tower. The platform's Z-beam weapons saw it coming and fired once. A storm of the green destructo-ray flowed from the enormous tube and rocketed harmlessly off into space, missing the swiftly moving aircraft by nearly a half mile. The aircraft was traveling so fast, even the speed-of-light Z beam could not catch up to it.
The huge Z tube began moving again, but it was already too late. The winged craft let loose with a Z-beam barrage of its own, hitting the gun platform's hinged assembly squarely on the turning knuckle, effectively cutting it off at the knees. The platform hesitated for a moment, almost as if it was defying gravity, then came crashing down, slamming into the rocky surface with an explosion so violent, a tiny yellow mushroom cloud emerged from the impact.
But as this was happening, another of the base's gun platforms broke its way through to the surface. It reached its full extension much quicker than the first, its sensors locked on the previous action. It began firing off destructo-beams even before its supporting platform had locked in place.
The roar was tremendous, the emerald Z beams blinding to the unprotected eye, but again, it was a futile act. The flying machine simply turned itself over, deftly avoided the wash of deadly fire, and unleashed another staggering blast from the half-dozen guns in its nose. This barrage hit the top of the second gun platform, vaporizing the weapon in a huge ball of sickly orange flame. Like its predecessor, this platform came crashing down with such force, it caused a series of minor quakes around the tiny planet.
Undaunted, a third gun platform exploded from beneath the surface, then a fourth and a fifth. These huge weapons began firing almost randomly. Suddenly, the thin blue sky was filled with gigantic waves of incredibly powerful Z-beam blasts. It seemed almost impossible that anything could make its way through the wall of emerald fire, but somehow the attacker did just that. It emerged from the firestorm, twisting and turning on its stubby wings, weaving through the river of lethal rays with ease.
It let loose one barrage from its nose weapons, turned quickly to the left, fired off another, then turned again and let go with a third. In lightning quick succession, the three streams of fire found their marks on the three huge gun platforms, severing them all at the hinges. In a trio of successive impacts, the huge platforms came crashing down, sending another series of tremors around the planet.
The soldiers on the hill were all back down on the ground by now, breathing heavily in their oxygen masks, hugging the craggy surface for dear life. The sound of the attacker's power plant and the base's facilities being turned into subatomic dust had caused some of their ears to bleed. Their throats were hoarse from involuntary screams.
Finally, the space fighter left the scene, exiting the area with yet another earsplitting screech. A full minute of silence went by before a few brave souls took their heads out of the sand and actually looked up. Their eyes could not quite believe what they were seeing. Perhaps it was Doomsday after all.
The crater valley was a smoking ruin. The immense flaming wreckage of the five gun platforms was throwing tremendous clouds of smoke into the sky. Fires crackled everywhere. More than two-thirds of the base's structures were either flattened or engulfed in flames. After several thousand years of existence, the base had been practically destroyed in less than two minutes.
But even stranger things were to come.
Not a minute after the space fighter vanished, there came another flash of light above the base.
This one was bright red, blinding in intensity. It was followed quickly by five more. In a blink there were suddenly six enormous starships hovering over the smoldering base.
These ships looked old, like travelers from the past. They were about a quarter mile long, from the needle point to the back of the wedge. Their superstructures had a flared look that had gone out of style early in the last millennium. These ships had a gleaming quality though, deep-space blue with bright superchrome throughout. The weak sun was glinting off all this chrome, making the starships look deadly but dazzling at the same time.