When All Seems Lost

by William C. Dietz

  “Once we put down inside the landing bay, the T-2s will exit first,” Santana continued. “Sergeant Fox and Private Urulu will neutralize whatever kind of reception party the bugs have waiting for us. Commander Schell, if you would be so kind as to supply some qualified people to blow that space elevator, you can count on Sergeant Snyder and Private Ichiyama to get them there.”

  “No problem,” the naval officer said approvingly. “However, I suggest that the demolition team avoid firefights, and go straight to the space elevator.”

  “Roger that,” Santana agreed. “Once the landing bay is secured, the rest of us will head for the control room. And it would be a good idea to keep our pilots out of the fighting unless you’d like to walk home. Does anyone have questions?”

  “Yes, sir,” Shootstraight put in. “How are we going to get off this tub without pressure suits?”

  It was an obvious problem, or should have been, except that the legionnaire hadn’t thought of it. Fortunately, Schell was there to field the question. “Rather than blastproof doors, the Imperator’s launch bay is protected by a permeable force field. So the landing area will be pressurized. Unless they have the means to bring the ship’s over-shields back online that is. . . . In which case we are in deep trouble.”

  “Aren’t you glad you asked?” Bozakov inquired, as he slapped a fully loaded mag into his assault rifle. That produced some very welcome laughter, for which Santana was grateful, as the shuttle began to close with the ancient dreadnaught.

  Confident that preparations were under way, the cavalry officer went back to check on Vanderveen. All of the naval personnel were better at zero-gee maneuvers than the soldier was, but by being careful never to release one knob-style pincer-hold before securing the next, Santana managed to pull himself back toward the stern without coming adrift.

  Having received some pain tabs and antibiotics from the legionnaires, not to mention plenty of water to wash them down with, Vanderveen was feeling better by then. So when Santana arrived, he found the diplomat working side by side with a navy med tech to prepare for the likelihood of additional casualties. One of the RAVs had been taken aboard, and with some help from the diplomat, the supply-starved corpsman was in the process of looting it. “Isn’t this the same woman I found nailed to a cross?” the cavalry officer wanted to know.

  “It is,” Vanderveen admitted. “But that was then—and this is now. One of the navy docs looked me over and says I’ll be fine. . . . Assuming nobody shoots me.”

  “I want you to stay on the shuttle until the fighting is over,” Santana said sternly.

  “Or what?” the diplomat wanted to know.

  Santana recognized the same defiant look he had first seen on the planet LaNor. He smiled sweetly. “Or I’ll tell your mother and let her deal with you.”

  Vanderveen laughed, the shuttle slowed, and Tanaka’s voice came over the intercom. “We’re sixty seconds out— prepare for landing. And remember, there’s a good chance that the Imperator’s argrav generators are still running, so prepare for the sudden restoration of gravity.”

  “Be careful,” Vanderveen said softly, as she looked up into Santana’s eyes. “We have some unfinished business to take care of.”

  “Yes,” Santana agreed solemnly. “We certainly do.”

  ABOARD THE RAMANTHIAN DREADNAUGHT IMPERATOR

  As seen from the Imperator’s enormous flight deck, the permeable force field looked like a blue whirlpool. It rotated from left to right and crackled as it spun. The movement could have a mesmerizing effect if viewed for too long. Which was why File Leader Sith Howar was careful to look away from time to time in spite of the fact that a shuttle-load of alien escapees might arrive at any moment.

  The whole affair had been handled badly. That was Howar’s opinion. First, his superiors mistakenly assumed that the animals would attempt a rendezvous with a Confederacy relief force. Then, when the enemy ships failed to materialize, the higher-ups assumed the escapees would attempt to board one of the merchant vessels and positioned all of the available fighters to block such an effort. Finally, when it became clear that the humans were headed for the Imperator, the eggless incompetents dumped the whole mess on him. “You will defend the space elevator to the very last trooper.” Those were his orders—and there was no mention of reinforcements.

  Still, having become acquainted with the slaves during the time they’d been aboard the warship, Howar was confident of his ability to eradicate the aliens. The accomplishment would hasten both his promotion and the point at which he could transfer to a more civilized world.

  Such were the Ramanthian’s thoughts as the incoming shuttle nosed its way in through the center of the whirling force field and immediately put down on the durasteel deck. The boxy vessel was already taking small-arms fire by then, but nothing too powerful, lest the defenders inadvertently damage the dreadnaught’s hull.

  Still, one of the crew-served energy projectors was able to score a direct hit on a landing skid. That caused the vessel to slump sideways but in no way impeded the ramp, which was in the process of being lowered when four T-2s jumped down onto the blast-scarred deck.

  File Leader Howar had heard about human cyborgs, and even fought some of them via virtual-reality training scenarios, but never actually confronted one. So when four of the exotic creatures appeared, and opened fire with their arm-mounted weapons, the officer was shocked by the sheer violence of the attack. The fire from more than two dozen assault weapons served to slow the cyborgs but in no way damaged them, as the legionnaires began to advance. Howar finally found his voice as bolts of coherent energy scored direct hits on the same crew-served energy weapon the Ramanthian was counting on to stop the alien monstrosities. “Take cover!” he shouted unnecessarily, and hurried to obey his own order.

  Meanwhile, confident that the other cyborgs had the situation under control, Snyder and Ichiyama took off at a trot. Each T-2 carried a gunner’s mate plus enough explosives to sever the twenty-three-thousand-mile-long space elevator. Something they needed to accomplish quickly before bug reinforcements arrived on the Imperator. A possibility that, though not apparent to Howar, was crystal clear to his most senior noncom, an irascible veteran who had taken the liberty of stationing himself aboard the traveling chain-hoist positioned high overhead.

  So while one of his troopers activated the machine, which put the boxy control module into motion, the oldster was standing on the observation platform ready to drop grenades on the cyborgs as they passed below. And the initiative would have been successful, too, had it not been for Oliver Batkin, and the agent’s ability to fly. “Sorry to disappoint you,” the cyborg said as he rose directly in front of the surprised noncom. “But it isn’t nice to drop things on people.”

  A single shot from the spy ball’s .50-caliber gun was sufficient to kill the Ramanthian as the unsuspecting T-2s passed beneath him. That brought the second Ramanthian outside to be dispatched in a similar fashion. With that accomplished, Batkin departed. Taking control of a battleship was no easy task—and there were plenty of things for the spy to do.

  Although two of the hulking cyborgs had departed the launch bay, two of the fearsome machine-things remained, so Howar was careful to keep his head down as his troops sought firing positions among a mountain of cargo modules. Having concealed themselves, the Ramanthians were free to fire on both the T-2s and the shuttle, an effort intended to pin the POWs down until help arrived. That was the theory anyway, until the shuttle wobbled into the air and began to advance!

  Santana, Shootstraight, and Bozakov were standing on the partially extended ramp as the shuttle lifted off. It was hard to maintain their footing given how unsteady the ship was, but each man was secured to the Ramanthian vessel by a cargo strap, which allowed him to lean forward without falling off.

  Within moments of taking to the air, Tanaka began to rotate the shuttle so that the stern pointed at the stack of cargo modules. That gave Santana a good look at the enemy’s position, as w
ell as the rest of the bay and the shuttles parked there. There were no signs of activity around the other ships, for which the officer was grateful.

  Bullets began to ping around the legionnaires as Tanaka backed the shuttle toward the Ramanthian stronghold, and energy bolts splashed the hull as the bio bods returned fire. And a devastating fusillade it was as the ship passed over the pile of cargo modules, thereby allowing the threesome to fire down on the bugs below. That sent the Ramanthians shuffling every which way as the bio bods pursued them with short bursts of fire.

  Santana suspended firing just long enough to throw three well-aimed grenades before bringing his assault weapon back up again. The resulting explosions threw body parts and chunks of debris high into the air as Shootstraight fired shot after well-aimed shot into the maze below. Each bullet brought one of the enemy soldiers down as the shuttle slid back and forth above their exposed heads.

  Howar wanted to surrender at that point, but knew he couldn’t, as the shadow cast by the shuttle slid across his face. So he struggled to remain upright in spite of the downward pressure caused by the roaring repellers, said a mental good-bye to both of his mates, and looked death in the eye. The human with the black hair fired, and Howar fell. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to end.

  The fighting continued for another two or three minutes, but with no leadership, and having lost the high ground, it wasn’t long before the last of the enemy troopers went down. The shuttle landed shortly thereafter, which gave Santana an opportunity to inspect the battlefield, but the sight of so many broken bodies brought him no pleasure, only a moment of relief, followed by a vast weariness and the knowledge that more work remained.

  Having been alerted to the invasion by File Leader Howar, a group of Ramanthian naval personnel were quick to open fire on the cyborgs and their riders as they left the lift and turned into a corridor. And, like their peers in the launch bay, they were completely unprepared for what ensued. The barricade they had thrown across the passageway outside the cargo-handling facility did very little to stop the large-caliber bullets or the bolts of coherent energy that Snyder and Ichiyama fired at them. So it was only a matter of seconds before the ten-foot-tall invaders marched the length of the hall and killed the last defender.

  Though not fully operational yet, the space elevator was secured to a specially designed framework located just beyond the air lock the Ramanthians had attempted to defend. And having worked aboard the ship, the ex-POWs knew they wouldn’t be able to enter the airless space without pressure suits.

  So it was agreed that the sailors would prepare the explosive charges, and the cyborgs would place them. Then, once everything was ready, the charge would be triggered from the hallway.

  Having won the battle in the corridor, and with one of the demo packs dangling from her massive neck, Snyder felt confident as she followed Ichiyama into the lock. Both cyborgs had to bend over in order to enter and were forced to remain in that position as the air was pumped out of the chamber.

  The T-2s half expected to run into an ambush once the hatch cycled open, but nothing happened. That allowed them to enter the cavernous hold and look around. Roughly half the space was taken up by color-coded cargo modules. Various pieces of half-lit cargo-handling equipment were parked in the surrounding murk, and while some of them continued to radiate heat, there were no signs of Ramanthian personnel in the area. “It looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves,” Snyder said approvingly. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The head end of the space elevator was directly in front of them. It consisted of a massive framework that had been tied into the ship’s steel skeleton and supported a computer-controlled winch, which was there to keep the cable from becoming too taut or too loose. A system of guides kept the cable centered and prevented it from making contact with the surrounding hull.

  Lower down, just below the crosspiece that supported the winch, Snyder could see the platform from which the specially designed self-braking cargo modules could be loaded onto the elevator. Ichiyama saw it, too, and immediately made his way out onto the ramp so he could place his charge. Knowing that one demo pack would be more than sufficient to sever the cable, Snyder was content to merely watch.

  Such were the legionnaire’s thoughts as a giant pincer plucked the cyborg off the deck and lifted her up into the air. The loader was at least ten times larger than the T-2, and controlled from a compartment located in the machine’s blocky head, which was where a technician and inveterate slacker named Gontho was taking a nap until a series of radio messages woke him up. But rather than rush into battle, and potentially get himself killed, Gontho was content to remain where he was until the enemy cyborgs appeared below. At that point it was a simple matter to take the loader off standby and grab hold of the nearest war form. It was a feat the Ramanthian could accomplish with minimal risk to himself. Now, confident that he could destroy the Confederacy cyborg, Gontho began to squeeze.

  Snyder “felt” the huge metal pincers start to close and struggled to free herself. But the legionnaire soon discovered that she was going to die. Not like the last time, when the medics pulled her back from the brink, but for real. “Blow charge two,” Snyder ordered over the radio. “And do it now!”

  “What?” one of the gunner’s mates wanted to know. “I thought Ichiyama was going to plant the charge.”

  The cyborg knew the bio bod couldn’t see them and was understandably confused. “He is,” Snyder confirmed, as her torso shattered under the unrelenting pressure. “But I want you to trigger charge two, and I outrank your swabbie ass. So, blow the pack now!”

  The bio bod did as he was told, and the demolition charge attached to Snyder’s chest exploded. It destroyed the Trooper II and blew a large hole through the loader’s torso. Gontho swore as his controls went dead, the machine staggered, and tried to right itself. The Ramanthian hit his hatch release, but nothing happened, as Ichiyama called on the gunner’s mates to trigger his charge. That produced a flash of light, but no sound to go with it, as the space elevator fell through the hole and into space.

  The significance of that registered on Gontho’s brain just as the technician felt the badly damaged loader topple forward. He screamed, “No!” but there was no one to hear as both the operator and his machine fell through the hatch and entered space. However, rather than follow the cable down as the tech feared he would, the War Gontho soon found himself in orbit. He screamed over a radio that no longer worked, watched his air supply continue to dwindle, and cursed his rotten luck. Gontho had an excellent view of Jericho, however, even if he couldn’t find the serenity to enjoy it, and was soon consumed by the surrounding darkness.

  The space elevator didn’t fall at first because roughly half of it was still weightless. But without the dreadnaught to serve as a counterweight, it wasn’t long before the bottom half of the twenty-three-thousand-mile-long cable began to pull the top half down. And once that process began, the rest was inevitable.

  The first hint that something was wrong came when the free-falling superstrong cable began to tug at its anchor point. Which, unbeknownst to the Ramanthians stationed around it, had been systematically weakened during the installation process. Metal clanged on metal, and the cable jerked spasmodically, thereby alerting the ground crew to the fact that something was wrong.

  However, it wasn’t until an upper-level jet stream took hold of the errant space elevator, and pulled the free end toward the east, that the Ramanthians realized the full extent of the danger they were in. But it was too late by then, as the cable plucked the anchor assembly out of the pyramid it had been secured to and converted the heavy-duty hardware into a massive flail!

  A variety of competing forces caused the superstrong cable to whip back and forth across the adjoining airstrip. It leveled the terminal building with a single blow, made a loud cracking sound as it cleared fifty acres of jungle, and erased what remained of Camp Enterprise. Then, as Jericho’s gravity continued to pull more of the line
down, the ground shook as if in response to an earthquake.

  The cable was falling in five- and ten-mile-wide coils by that time. Each loop scoured portions of the planet clean as it was pulled sideways and sent clouds of dust thousands of feet up into the air. And it all happened so quickly that Vice Admiral Tutha had no more than felt a tremor and looked up to see hundreds of flyers burst out of the Hu-Hu tree in front of his headquarters building than the free end of the cable destroyed 80 percent of his command. Including the prefab structure he was standing in.

  But by some stroke of luck, Tutha emerged from the debris almost entirely unscathed, to wander aimlessly through the wreckage of what had been the largest military base on Jericho. Later, after all of the damage assessments were completed, it would turn out that 7,621 Ramanthians had been killed by the collapsing space elevator.

  Of course that wasn’t the worst of it. Somewhere, out in the jungle, tens of thousands of nymphs were about to emerge from the wilding stage. Which was the moment when teams of specially trained civilians were supposed to gather the youngsters in and begin the process of socializing them. Except that wouldn’t happen now. Which meant thousands of the Queen’s offspring were going to die, or worse yet, live like savages in the primordial jungle.

  The horror of that was too much to bear, and the officer was busy searching the debris for a weapon with which to take his own life, when the energy stored inside a coil of cable located three miles to the north was suddenly released. The whiplike space elevator lashed out, erased a major river, and sent a tidal wave of soil flowing over the spot where Tutha had been standing. Meanwhile, many miles above the devastation, the Imperator floated free.