Instantly, Best, Bogel, Remler, and even the portly Waning were on their feet with their beer mugs in their hands and fire in their eyes.
"Death to the Dominators!" Best shouted.
"Long live final victory!"
"Hail Heldon!" cried Bogel.
"A toast to our glorious leader, Feric Jaggar!" Waffing roared, raising his mug high in the air. The other High Commanders clinked their mugs with his; all shouted
"Hail Jaggar!" and poured the beer down their throats.
For his part, Feric felt a wild joy wash away all doubt; there was nothing like a life-and-death struggle to raise a man or a people to superhuman heights of glory. He elevated his own beer mug and proclaimed a further toast: "To the force of evolution! To blood and iron and the total victory of the fittest!"
Following Waffing's lead, the High Commanders gave a great spontaneous cheer and smashed their beer mugs against the wall.
There was not the slightest doubt in Feric's mind that the key to victory over Zind was the lightning seizure of the great oil fields to the southeast. With this vast reservoir of petrol in the hands of Zind, the mighty mechanized army of Heldon would expire within a month of all-out combat from thirst, whereas the early capture of the oil fields would enable Heldon to grind the forces of Zind to gruel with massive armor and air power.
Unfortunately, this situation must be as obvious to the Doms as anyone else. Therefore, the only course open to 193
Feric was to feign an all-out dash across nortTiem Zind for the capital of Bora; if the Dominators were convinced that the Helder strategy was to win the war quickly by rolling across the northern Zind heartland and sacking the capital, the bulk of their forces could be tied down in an effort to protect Bora in the north. A task force of tanks and motorcycle troops backed up by the first squadrons of the new jets could then sweep south and east out of Borgravia and seize and secure the oil fields before Zind could properly react.
The key to this strategy was the credibility of the Helder march on Bora in the eyes of the Doms; this would have to be an all-out attack by the major part of the army upon the very stronghold of the enemy. Heavy casualties, fighting of incredible ferocity, and massive resistance were certain. A spectacular display of fanaticism and heroism on the part of the Helder forces would surely be called for.
For this reason alone, Peric knew that he would have to lead this attack and leave the seizure of the oil fields to Waning. Further, his conspicuous presence in the forefront of the march on Bora would lend the final touch of credibility to the operation in the eyes of the masters of Zind.
Thus, as the first rays of dawn began to light up the sky over the rolling hills of east central Heldon, Feric sat anxiously beside Best in his tank at the head of the greatest armed host Heldon had ever fielded, awaiting the penultimate moment. A hundred and fifty miles to the north, two Helder armored divisions were even now crossing the Roul on pontoon bridges in the vicinity of Lumb.
This small force had been augmented by hundreds of empty motorized troop carriers, giving the appearance of a much larger army; by now the Doms would be convinced that the main Helder assault would be through Wolack and would be marching west to meet the attack.
Thus when the real attack came from a hundred and fifty miles to the south through the rump state of Malax, the Helder army would be able to fall on the exposed southern flank of the horde a hundred miles or more inside Zind itself. Feric hoped that this feint-within-a-feint would lend even more credibility to his strategem, while at the same time allowing the war to begin with a fine flourish and a stunning defeat for Zind.
"Two minutes' to zero hour, my Commander!" Best called out. Feric nodded, and peered up through the open 194
hatch of the command tank, behind which was an army that surely would have made even the Ancients cringe.
Seven hundred swift black-and-red tanks—most of them equipped with the-new flamethrowers—formed the forward phalanx, a front fifty tanks wide. Behind this wall of steel, and flanking it on both sides, were two full divisions of motorcycle SS, and then three divisions of regular army motorcycle troops surrounding hundreds of fast armored troop carriers and supply trucks. Completing the totally motorized vanguard force were two score of the old heavy dreadnaughts. A vast aerial armada operating from safe fields inside Heldon would fill the skies at the first sign of serious resistance. In the van of the motorized troops, a quarter of a million .infantrymen would march into Zind, ready to add their weight to any fixed battle, and mean-while carrying out Feric's order to leave no artificial structure standing and nothing left alive. Quite literally, all that was Zind would be scoured from the face of the earth!
