Soon Feric had fought his way to within a hundred yards of the Zind steam dreadnoughts which had gathered themselves into a defensive circle completely surrounded by Warriors. Behind him came Best, then the four lead tanks, and the elite motorcycle SS bodyguard, their black leather reddened with Warrior blood. To the rear, was the great main formation of SS shock troops advancing through the body of the horde leaving a bloody river of fallen Warriors in its wake.
Suddenly, the tactics of the Dominators changed. The dominance groups of Warriors surrounding the dreadnaughts stood their .ground, switched over from truncheons to rifles, and began to fire volley after volley at point-blank range straight at the unrushing Helder shock troops. Behind Feric, a fine young SS hero screamed in pain, then fell from his motorcycle with bright blood spurting from the deep wound in his neck All around Feric, bullets tore into the SS men, scores of fine specimens shrieked in agony and fell from their mounts into (he dust; a bullet pinged off the frame of Best's cycle and missed his head by inches.
"Machine gunsi" Feric shouted, sheathing the Steel Commander, and drawing his own submachine gun. He gunned the engine of his cycle and led the column on a short flanking sweep to the north, so that the maximum number of Helder tanks could be brought to bear on the enemy dreadnaughts.
Feric then fired his submachine gun directly into the nearest formation of Warriors, cutting down a brace of the creatures. At this signal, the tank cannon opened up. A barrage of high explosive shells crashed amidst the enemy 158
dreadnaughts in a tight pattern, sending a dense pillar of orange fire and black smoke into the air, followed by a heavy clattering rain of sharp metal fragments. Before the flame and smoke had even began to disperse, another massed barrage rocked the Zind dreadnaughts, then another, and yet again another.
In the place where the eight Zind command dreadnaughts had been was naught but a steaming crater filled with shards of smoking metal and bits of bloody protoplasm.
The effect of this destruction on the formations of Warriors who had been defending the dreadnaughts was nothing short of astonishing. The synchronized disciplined formations instantly dissolved; giant brainless Warriors began milling about crazily in every conceivable direction.
Some of the creatures fired their rifles wildly in the air; others simply tossed their weapons away. Many of these suddenly decorticated lumps of muscle began to urinate aimlessly, spattering their fellows. All sorts of disgusting grunts, shrieks, and howls rent the air. The whole mass of creatures around the smoking crater as well as great sections of the Zind horde in the general vicinity were reduced to nothing more than a brainless herd of rioting animals; the Doms controlling this entire section of the horde must have been housed in the dreadnaughts along with the Zind high command. With the destruction of these dreadnaughts, the Zind horde was bereft of overall command, and this particular fighting section was converted into nothing more than randomly twitching muscles.
The cannon and machine guns of the SS mowed down these decorticated former slaves of the Doms like fish in a barrel as Feric led his troops in a zigzag course through the herd of leaderiess and essentially helpless Warriors across the valley floor and up onto the southern ridgeline out of the chaos below. Uncountable thousands of the Zind slaves were dispatched; yet thousands more could have been slain had Feric's tactics called for anything less than continuous disorienting speed.
Instead, Feric led his force east along the ridgeline for a few miles, then down into the valley again, hitting the horde that much closer to Lumb. The Helder troops concentrated their attacks on the war-wagons drawn along by the huge Pullers, for each time one of these mobile firing platforms was blasted to bits, one more formation of 159
Warriors went berserk, throwing their weapons away, firing wildly into the air, attacking their fellows aimlessly, urinating and defecating all over each other like a vast pen of crazed swine. There was no doubt that the controlling Doms were located on the war-wagons; each such Dom slain rendered a thousand Warriors militarily useless.
Again and again and again, Feric led his men in sweeps across the Zind horde, each swing bringing the SS force closer to Lumb and the bridge over the Roul, each travers-ing of the valley cutting a broad path of massive destruction through the Zind horde.
