"One minute, my Commander," Best called out as the upper edge of the sun peered up over the eastern horizon, painting the rolling hills in scarlet and orange as if in anticipation of the battles to come. Feric dogged the hatch shut, adjusted his harness, thumbed his microphone, and ordered: "Start your engines!" The roar of the starting engines was all but drowned out by the thunder of wave after wave of fighter-bombers sweeping low over the great Helder army and soaring into the sunrise.
Best nodded to Feric. "Forward!" Feric shouted.
Best engaged the throttle, and with a mighty lurch, the command tank hurtled eastward, and the earth shook with the weight of the massed Helder armor sweeping forward behind it. To the east, fountains of thick black smoke and rich red flame spouted along a wide front as the planes atomized the paultry fortifications along the Malax border. A few moments later, the long rolling rumbles of the bombardment could be heard even above the terrible din of treads and wheels and engines.
The planes continued to wheel and dance in the sky as Feric led his juggernaut forward across the rolling hills and gentle valleys, pulverizing everything that grew in its path, sending a captive thunderstorm of dust miles in extent into the air above it. The bombs continued to fall as the motorized attack force rumbled and roared like an avalanche of men and steel toward the border; it seemed to 195
Feric as if he were leading his troops straight into a wall of billowing smoke and sudden explosions.
When Feric's tank was a mile or two from this terrible inferno, the thunder of planes could once more be heard overhead as wave after wave of Helder dive-bombers flew westward back to their bases, their bombloads expended, their work well done.
A few minutes later Feric led his forces across the Malax border and into a surreal landscape of destruction.
"Thus might the surface of the Moon have appeared to the Ancients," Best whispered.
Feric nodded. As far as he could see, the land was torn and pitted with great steaming craters, strewn with jagged fragments of rock, metal, and trees; every inch of the soil was overturned and naked as if some gargantuan plow had prepared it for seeding. A dense pall of acrid smoke gave the air a chemical reek, completing the other-worldly illusion. As for the rabble of Malax, nothing was in evidence save a red smear here and there.
"The air force has certainly done its job to perfectioni"
Best exclaimed.
"Yes, Best," Feric said, "a new era in warfare has begun—lightning from the skies, then an irresistible surge of armor, the two mighty steel fists of Heldon acting in close coordination."
"It appears that one fist alone was enough to dispatch Malax, my Commander!"
Feric chuckled wryly, but he knew full well that the vast hordes of Zind would not be swept away from the sky with such foolish ease. Before long, the new style of warfare he had developed would be tested to the ultimate.
He anticipated with relish the thought of bringing his air power and armor fully to bear against the might of Zind, for here was an enemy more worthy of the immense destructive power now at his command.
Feric found the unopposed sweep across Malax an exercise in boredom; there was nothing to be seen but rolling hills, pockets of cancerous radiation jungle which grew ever more numerous and larger in extent as the army moved eastward, fields of pathetically twisted crops, occasional pens of six-legged cattle or grossly bloated swine with vile mottled skin, and here and there a collection of reeking mud huts. Organized resistance simply did not ;S
exist; indeed hardly a Malaxian was to be seen since the t 196 l
dust cloud of the Helder army alone was enough to scatter the mongrels long before Feric's lead tank hove into sight.
Intelligence had indicated that a modest Zind force had occupied the eastern regions of Malax; it was these Warriors that Feric expected to be the first to quench the keen thirst for combat that was building in every Helder soul.
They would not offer more than passing resistance, but at least they could be counted on to hold their ground and fight to the death.
It was therefore something of a surprise when the first contact with the forces of Zind came from the air.
