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"Down with the Lhasinul"
There was the purple flash of a Tonite from somewhere high above, and the captain came
to life an instant too late. Caught squarely, he bent slowly to his death; cold, reptilian face a
mask of contempt to the last.
Russell Tymball brought down his gun and smiled sardoni- cally, "A perfect target against
the Flame. Good for Kanel The changing of the Flame was just the emotion-stirring thing we
needed. Let's go!"
From the roof of Kane's dwelling he aimed down upon the Lhasinu below. And as he did, all
Hell erupted. Men mushroomed from the very ground, it seemed, weapons in hand. Tonites
blazed from every side, before the startled Lhasinu could spring to their triggers.
And when they did so, it was too late, for the mob, white- hot with flaring rage, broke its
bounds. Someone shrieked, "Kill the lizards!" and the cry was taken up in one roaring
ululation that swelled to the sky.
Like a many-headed monster, the stream of Humanity surged forward, weaponless.
Hundreds withered under the belated fury of the defending guns, and tens of thousands
scrambled over the corpses, charging to the very muzzles.
The Lhasinu never wavered. Their ranks thinned steadily under the deadly sharp-shooting of
the Tymballists, and those that remained were caught by the Human flood that surged over
them and tore them to horrible death.
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The Memorial sector gleamed in the crimson of the bloody Flame and echoed to the agony
of the dying, and the shriek- ing fury of the triumphant.
139
BLACK FRIAR OF THE FLAME
It was the first battle of the Great Rebellion, but it was not really a battle, or even madness. It
was concentrated anarchy.
Throughout the city, from the tip of Long Island to the mid- Jersey flatlands, rebels sprang
from nowhere and Lhasinu went to their death. And as quickly as Tymball's orders spread to
raise the snipers, so did the news of the changing of the Flame speed from mouth to mouth
and grow in the telling. All New York heaved, and poured its separate lives into the single
giant crucible of the "mob."
It was uncontrollable, unanswerable, irresistible. The Tym- ballists followed helplessly where
it led, all efforts at direction hopeless from the start.
Like a mighty river, it lashed its way through the metrop- olis, and where it passed no living
Lhasinu remained.
The sun of that fateful morning arose to find the masters of Earth occupying a shrinking
circle in upper Manhattan. With the cool courage of bom soldiers, they linked arms and with-
stood the charging, shrieking millions. Slowly, they backed away; each building a skirmish;
each block a desperate battle. They split into isolated groups; defending first a building, and
then its upper stories, and finally its roof.
With the noonday sun boiling down, only the Palace itself remained. Its last desperate stand
held the Humans at bay. The withering circle of fire about it paved the grounds with
blackened bodies. The Viceroy himself from his throneroom directed the defense; his own
hand upon the butt of a semi- portable.
And then, when the mob had finally come to a pause, Tym- ball seized his opportunity and
took the lead. Heavy guns clanked to the front Atomos and delta-rays, from the rebel stock
and from the stores captured the previous night, pointed their death-laden muzzles at the
Palace.
Gun answered gun, and the first organized battle of ma- chines flared into desperate fury.
Tymball was an omnipresent figure, shouting, directing, leaping from gun-emplacement to
gun-emplacement, firing his own band Tonite defiantly at the Palace.
Under a barrage of the heaviest fire, the Humans charged once more and pierced to the
walls as the defenders fell back. An Atomo projectile smashed its way into the central tower
and there was a sudden inferno of fire.
That blaze was the funeral pyre of the last of the Lhasinu in New York. The blackening walls
of the palace crumbled in, in one vast crash; but to the very last, room blazing about hmia
140
BLACK FRIAR OF THE FLAME face horribly cut, the Viceroy stood his ground, aiming into
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the thick of the besieging force. And when his semi-portable expended the last dregs of its
power and expired, he heaved it out the window in a last futile gesture of defiance, and
plunged into the burning Hell at his back.
Above the Palace grounds at sunset, with a yet-roaring [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]