Chapter 5

Dick was with the group assaulting the ventilation shaft from the king's chambers; this was identified as "Shaft Alpha." The other shafts had similar names.

All four shafts had a steel-bar grill closing the mouth, and this had to be cut away with the explosive cord. In Shaft Alpha, they didn't bother to drop the whole grill, just enough was burned out to allow one trooper at a time to get through. This was where they met their first sign of birds and their first machine gun. A light machine gun began to fire after they were about 10 feet into the horizontal portion of the shaft. Instinct and training took over as soon as the machine gun began to fire—they dove to the ground, right into about 6 years' supply of bird droppings, and these must have been large birds! It was a good thing that they were all wearing full armor, which included a face mask with a breathing filter. Otherwise, they would have all choked on the dust and the fumes released when they landed on the bird shit. Nobody was hurt, but there were some pissed-off troopers.

Meanwhile, they still had a machine gun to deal with. The machine gun was the light, economy model with only traverse capability. It was madly swinging from side to side spraying bullets about 42 inches off the ground. There was no vertical motion to the machine gun's tracking system, so it just kept shooting uselessly over the heads of the troopers lying in the shit. Dick decided to save his resources, so they just lay there until the machine gun ran out of ammunition.

They stood up and brushed off as much of the shit as they could and continued on their way. Another 20 feet along the shaft, they came to a ditch about 10 feet deep and about 12 feet across. There were sharpened stakes standing up at the bottom of the pit. A tumble into the pit was sure death for anyone not well protected by armor capable of resisting penetration by a sharp-pointed weapon; however, the armor worn by the humans was easily able to withstand that kind of attack.

This pit was supposed to catch any unwary person stumbling along in the near darkness, but the night-vision glasses built into the faceplate of the armor made the pit as obvious as it would have been if it were outside at high noon on a clear day. Having seen the pit, the next question was how to get past it. Careful examination of the pit revealed the solution. The stakes were set about 12 inches apart, so it was possible to step between them if one paid attention to his steps.

Dick discussed the problem with his people and they decided that the easiest way to get across was to walk. Two of the sturdiest troops rigged a line and lowered another trooper into the pit. Dick stood guard as they repeated this for the rest of the team. Dick was the last to go down on the rope. The troopers in the pit formed a human ladder to bring down the last two of the team. They carefully walked over to the other side of the pit and formed another human ladder. The rope holders were the first ones up the human ladder, and they helped the others to get up to the shaft floor. The last troopers in the pit were pulled up by ropes, and they were ready to resume their journey through the shaft.

A little farther along the shaft, they ran into another of the grills blocking the passage. This grill looked a little different from the first one, then one of the troopers spotted the wire running from what looked like an electrical junction box on the wall. The obvious conclusion was that this grill was protected by electricity. Probably, touching the grill would result in a fatal shock unless something was done. The solution was obvious.

Three troopers ran back to the pit, and one was lowered into the pit to fetch one of the metal stakes. They were back in a few minutes with a piece of metal stake nearly 18 inches long. One end was set on the ground near the grill, and it was pushed over so that the other end contacted the grill. There was a bright flash of light and the stake and part of the grill actually melted from the current running through it. This was a lot more spectacular than anyone had expected, so they figured that they had better check before going farther.

The same group of 3 troopers returned to the pit and came back about 15 minutes later with several more of the spikes. A repeat of the previous effort at shorting out the grill didn't seem to do anything, so they assumed that the fuse had blown. They cut a door through the grill and proceeded farther along the shaft, carrying the unused stakes with them in case they were needed again.

The next obstacle they found was another automatic machine gun emplacement, but this one was far superior to the previous one. This was a pair of guns on opposite sides of the shaft and able to traverse both horizontally and vertically. The guns had some sort of sensor which enabled the guns to track anybody getting close. As soon as the guns started to fire, the team ran back up the shaft to get out of sensor range. These guns were going to have to be eliminated, they were too dangerous to let them have free shots at the humans.

One of the humans' weapons was ideally suited to handling this kind of problem. They had a shoulder-fired rocket launcher which had a laser target designator. The shooter looked through his aiming device and put the laser spot on the target. When he fired, the rocket zeroed in on the laser spot and followed it to the target. The weapon was easy to use; the only problem was that the shooter had to hold his aim during the flight time of the rocket, and that was hard to do while being shot at. That was avoided in this case by standing back out of sensor range of the machine guns while firing the rocket.

A trooper who was skilled in this weapon's use was awarded the honor of taking out the machine guns. He worked his way up as close to the machine guns as he could manage without drawing fire and launched a rocket. Bull's eye! One machine gun was eliminated and one machine gun was damaged by flying rock shards from the wall of the shaft. The damage was weird in that it made the second machine gun start to shoot, narrowly missing the trooper who had fired the rocket. The gun continued to fire until it ran out of ammunition, and the team was able to continue its advance through the ventilation shaft.

It wasn't much longer before they came to a right-angle bend in the shaft. It now turned down and ran vertically to the king's chambers. About 20 feet below this bend was located the fan which pulled the stale air out of the bedroom, etc. The fan completely filled the diameter of the shaft; there was no way to avoid going through the fan. It was spinning much too fast to be passed through while it was running, though there was plenty of room between the blades if it were stilled. The rocket launcher was called upon again, and a rocked was fired into the hub of the fan. This completely ruined the fan's bearings and it seized up, immediately.

The team rushed down the service ladder and stood on the service platform over the fan. Some of the team had to remain on the ladder, since there wasn't enough room for everybody on the platform. When they got close to the fan, they could see the service port through the fan's shroud. It turned out that they did not need to stop the fan; they could have gone through the service port with the fan still running, but it was safer this way.

They opened the hatch to use the port and were greeted by a fusillade of gunshots. About 30 feet below the fan was a sort of manifold which collected the air from several rooms before it was drawn into the main ventilation shaft. This way, the amount of air drawn from each room could be regulated by means of shutters. The construction of the manifold was like that of any other room in the tunnel complex. Its ceiling was high enough so that a man could walk around comfortably in it to allow for convenient maintenance, so there was no problem putting in a number of guards with guns to prevent the humans from entering.

There had been no real hope of keeping the king's security guard from knowing that the attack had begun, so they had plenty of time to station a defensive squad in the manifold. The one good thing was that they didn't have machine guns which could conveniently shoot up at the angle needed in the defense of the ventilation shaft. Nevertheless, there was no way the humans could get into the manifold without a spectacular maneuver.

This spectacular maneuver was accomplished by dropping 5 flash-bang anti-terrorist grenades down the shaft. The bright flash blinded the defenders and the concussion of the bang knocked them senseless long enough for a couple of troopers to get down the service ladder and stun ray the entire complement of enemy troops in the manifold. The rest of the team joined the first two in the manifold and they made ready to enter the king's bedroom.

The chance that the king was still in his bedroom was minuscule, but we had to look there, anyway. Any security man worth his salt would have dragged him out, even if the king objected, after all of the noise the humans were forced to make right over their heads. Yes, the bedroom was empty, so they started a room-by-room search in hopes of coming up with his location. No luck! It looked like the humans were going to have to search the entire tunnel complex unless they got real lucky.

Just as they were about to leave the king's chambers, the team from ventilation shaft Gamma showed up with the stunned body of the king and queen. They had been hiding in the manifold under Shaft Gamma and had been caught by the effect of the flash-bang grenades before they could hide somewhere else. The whole caboodle were stunned, and the king and queen were grabbed by the invading team. They took the queen because she was the real brains of the pair.