Star Kitten by Purple Hazel Page B

dump trucks built on top of tractors would back
slowly up to the edge of the ramp and dump out their contents, then
drive down the ramp as quickly as possible. Each tractor dumper
would be followed by another tractor dumper, backing up the long
ramp to the top. They’d only go one at a time though, just in case
the Security Troops tried detonating the mess hall window and
opening fire on them. No need to lose another hundred Nausties in a
surprise attack, Perry figured.
    Each tractor following the previous one,
would dump its payload as well—continuing this process hour after
hour until the ramp was nearly complete, slowly but surely rising
those last few feet to the window of the Mess Hall.
    However: when the ramp was finally within
about five to ten feet of the windows—and hopefully before the
enemy soldiers inside started to open fire—Perry had a very, very,
very nasty surprise waiting in store for them. Something they’d
never suspect or could have prepared for….
    Back at that first war council meeting when
the idea of blowing up the entire terminal first came up; Perry was
already considering the nuclear devices inside the newly captured
Earth Cruiser. But he had no intention of detonating the entire
canyon in a nuclear holocaust either! Far from it, actually.
    This is what Perry actually had in mind for
the battle at the very top of the ramp: Slart engineers would go
inside the now-buried Earth Cruiser to retrieve the detonators from those
thermonuclear warheads. Just the detonators off the top of the
warheads—nothing more. These detonators Perry wished to have
mounted onto a rack in the back of a dump truck… and then actually
BACK that vehicle all the way up the ramp to the top. The way Perry
imagined it, the detonators could be welded into a rack and placed
in the large open bin of the dump tractor. Then the whole payload
could be covered up in dirt, disguising its deadly contents.
Because of this, it would look just like any other load of dirt,
and the Security Troops inside the Mess Hall would never suspect
what was really inside that hauler.
    Meanwhile, Perry needed
General Hicks to have the entire army assembled in formations for
the final assault… in full view of the
Warden’s forces above . The large tractor
with the drill mounted to it would be positioned at the base of the
ramp, while the “last fifty” of the dump trucks took turns
ascending the ramp, one after another. The defenders would wait
patiently for those final dump trucks to spill their loads and
complete the ramp; thinking the real battle was yet to come .
    As Perry imagined it, the Security Troops
would have been assuming all along that when the tractor drill was
mounting the ramp for the final assault and troops were queuing up
behind it for the attack: that’s when they finally needed to
prepare themselves. So they’d pay little attention to the last few
dump trucks hauling up dirt for the ramp. They’d be waiting for the
drill! And they’d be waiting for the massed attack forming up
behind it too. That’s how Perry would catch them off guard.
    One more dump truck offloading soil? And
then another, and then another? They could just ignore those and
wait for the tractor drill and the assault troops rushing up behind
it! That would be the real attack, they’d believe. That’s what they
would have been told by their superiors, Perry assumed.
    They’d brace themselves for the final attack
and arm themselves to mercilessly mow down thousands of half-naked,
oxygen-depleted, riot-crazed prisoners until this bloody rebel
uprising was finally exhausted. After all why should they even be
worried? They actually had every reason to be overconfident. After
all, they had all the technology. The rebels had nothing but some
captured EIC’s to complement their spears and javelins; and of
course the false bravado that so often comes from achieving a few
minor victories in the early part of a rebellion.
    But these Security Troops?
Oh,