The current plan was to land and refuel near Russellville, Arkansas, in the southern Ozarks, at one of the secondary fields that the Federation’s air strength was being dispersed to. There, they were to meet headquarters staff of an engineer brigade that Major Gerofsky had contacted via the military network, who would fill them in on the situation and look into further options for them to explore. In getting a connection to LA when the entire communications system was inundated, and finding contacts among the military commands in the area they were heading to, Gerofsky’s contribution was already invaluable. Nyarl seemed possessed by fierce determination to carry through the task that Luodine had begun, which precluded rest and all other considerations.
As for the crew, in the little time he’d had to form any impression at all, Cade saw Powell as capable, easygoing, and sufficiently amenable to the unorthodox for an undertaking like this. Davis was taciturn, methodical, and, Cade guessed, solidly competent. Although Koyne hadn’t said anything openly, Cade detected rancor at why they should be working with aliens when aliens were wiping out warships and bases, and a lot of people along with them. Cade had explained that Hudro and Nyarl were here to inform their home world of what was going on, not entertain it, and a lot of their colleagues had died, too, as a result of pursuing the same goal. Koyne seemed to accept it intellectually, but beneath, the resentment was still there. Cade hoped he would be able to just stick to his job and not let feelings become a problem.
Marie stirred, sighed drowsily, and pulled closer to his shoulder. He opened an eye momentarily. “Hi.”
“Mmm. . . .”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“Not really.” A pause. “How do you sleep when you think the world might be about to be blown up?” A short silence passed while Marie blinked, yawned, then laid her head back, looking at him. Up front, Koyne was talking into his mike, identifying the flight in response to an interrogation from somewhere. Finally, Marie said, “Roland . . .”
“Hmm?”
“In case this whole thing doesn’t . . . Well, if it all comes to the worst. I just want you to know that it could have worked again with us. There’s a different side to you that I never saw until recent times.”
“Maybe it didn’t exist until recent times.”
“It was always there. People are what they always were. It just sometimes takes new situations to bring other sides of them out.”
It was meant as a genuine compliment. But Cade couldn’t get lyrical at a time like this. “Well, you’ve sure got yourself a new situation,” he said dryly.
Did Hyadeans really have a different side to them too, the way Cade thought, and Vrel, Luodine, Hudro, and others had said? If so, could it be brought out in time? Marie had told him why Luodine had believed things would happen quickly on Chryse. Cade hoped Luodine was right. From what he could tell, everything hinged on it now.
By the time they cleared the Rockies, they were getting reports of the Union opening interdiction attacks on supply routes through Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg in answer to Canada’s coming out openly for the AANS. The reason for the sudden activity in the northern theater quickly became clear. In keeping with the policy of going all-out for a quick win, the Federation was opening a second offensive, thrusting eastward between Chicago and Indianapolis, presumably to cut off the Michigan peninsula. Maybe taken by surprise, somebody in the Union command authorized the use of pocket nukes against armored spearheads that had broken through south of Indianapolis to secure a flank along the Ohio River. Sacramento ordered retaliation in kind, and a panic reaction set in on both sides to take out the other’s launch sites before they could fire first, which spread rapidly. The Hyadeans in Washington decided that they weren’t prepared to sit there, waiting to be nuked by squabbling Terrans, and before the C22-E reached Russellville, they were intervening everywhere.
Powell was back in the skipper’s seat. Everyone was awake. The airwaves were swamped with confusion on all bands as the plane descended above scrubby flats scarred by a winding creek bed, with dry hills rising on one side. There had been no response on the tower or emergency frequencies. Powell was making a visual approach based on map reading and using landmarks given by the on-board database. Ten miles out, they flew over the remains of a ground-attack intruder bearing Union markings, formerly USAF, still burning. Black smoke rose into the sky where the airfield lay ahead.
Little of it was left. The airfield buildings and hangars were blown to pieces, the fuel storage area at one end ablaze, and the two major runways cratered and strewn with wrecked aircraft. Passing low, they could see figures moving about among scattered vehicles, many overturned or burning, more strung along the road serving the base. Some of the figures waved frantically, but it was impossible to make out what was meant. It didn’t much matter, since landing was out of the question. Koyne managed to raise somebody local on radio, but what they were saying was incoherent. Nyarl got some telephoto shots.
They turned eastward to follow the Arkansas river downstream toward Little Rock. Koyne scanned frequencies for an alternative landing ground, finally making contact with the ground controller at a small airport for private planes that a Marine Corps unit had taken over in the mountainous country to the north. “C22 Six, Five Zero. We read you, Control, and are on our way in. What’s the gas situation there? We’re running on less than a quarter full.”
“I’ll be watching for you. Every situation’s a mess here. Right now we have stocks, but everyone and his brother is showing up. You may have to fight it out at the trough.”
“Roger.”
They were stacked in a pattern waiting to come in, which took them out over the flatter country around Conway and Greenbrier. Twisting plumes of smoke from downed planes and recently hit targets hung over the landscape like gigantic mutant trees. There was a lot of military activity below, with tanks and other vehicles deploying, artillery and missile positions being dug among the overlooking hills. The whole pattern of movement seemed to have reversed. In place of the confident pushes forward that had been reported all day, everything spoke of a sudden falling back on the defensive. Things were going wrong.
They had to make a slow circuit at the last moment while a crippled fighter limped in on one engine. Then, finally, they landed amid a confusion of aircraft loading and taking off, trucks and service vehicles jostling for space, and Marines digging in on the facing hillside. While Powell and Davis went to investigate the fuel situation, Cade, Gerofsky, and Hudro sought out a harassed adjutant officer who seemed to be the nearest there was to anyone knowing what was going on. It didn’t amount to a lot. Orders were to get operable combat aircraft out to reserve strips farther back and clear the field for evacuation flights. Nobody was going anywhere across the Mississippi. The big buildup had been shattered by a storm of counterattacks unleashed from the other side, and what was left of it was in retreat all the way from St. Louis to the Gulf, apparently to try and form a line along the edge of the Ozark Plateau. Frantic efforts were being made to issue Nuclear, Biological and Chemical contamination suits, but preparations for such eventualities had been inadequate.
“Is wrong way,” Hudro said, shaking his head. “Static lines no good against Hyadeans.”
“What’s the right way? Gerofsky asked.
“Move fast, all way back to Rockies, deploy new strategies, strike back unexpected. Need more air, orbit support than exists. There is no way. Terrans don’t have mobility to fight Hyadean armies.”
Reports coming in from elsewhere were garbled and contradictory. Even with Gerofsky’s credentials linking him to the presidential staff, it proved impossible to get a connection to Yassem for the rest of the day. Amid the turmoil, Cade found a lieutenant in charge of a supply unit sending ammunition to positions being prepared farther forward. Cade explained their mission, and the lieutenant offered a ride out the next morning to see for themselves what was going on there. Cade put it to the others. They decided that Nyarl should go,
naturally. Marie volunteered to assist. Since it would be a venture into a military operations area, they agreed that Gerofsky should go too. They spent the night with a Marine antiaircraft company on the edge of the airfield, sleeping in foxholes and listening to the distant drumming of artillery fire. Aircraft continued arriving and departing through the night.
After they had shared a dawn breakfast with the troops of sausage, beans, hash brown potatoes, and coffee, Hudro went to the tower with Davis to continue trying to contact Yassem. Cade remained with Powell and Koyne in the plane, preparing the new material for immediate transmission if a link was found. Marie, Nyarl, and Gerofsky hitched a ride to the supply unit, and an hour later drove out aboard an ammunition carrier going to a battery command post seven miles ahead. Nyarl carried the portable recording equipment. Gerofsky got himself and Marie issued with infantry submachine guns. She looked back in her element.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Clara Norburn had told Major Gerofsky that Cade possessed an infectious charisma that turned people who started out as opponents into willing collaborators. That was how he had prospered in his unique business of trading commercial and political contacts. The South American TV documentary that had helped propel the Federation to secession had been the work of a mix of Terrans and Hyadeans that he, more than anyone, had brought together. And then Gerofsky had experienced it himself in the space of a few hours, when he found himself reversing his initial position to first endorse, and then join, the enterprise they were committed to now. Admittedly, Cade had failed to win any converts among the high command he had met in Beijing, but the fact that he had even gotten a hearing was in itself an accomplishment not to be belittled.
After hearing Hudro voicing his doubts, Gerofsky was even more mindful now of Cade’s warning that a head-on clash with the aliens could only lead to disaster. If the news they were getting of the Federation’s offensive being hurled back all the way down the southern Mississippi front was correct—never mind what was happening farther north between St. Louis and Indianapolis—the war was not going to be won in a rapid pincers movement through Pittsburgh and up the east side of the Appalachians as had been intended. But the mood permeating from Sacramento was still to defy and fight, not look for ways of winding down. What disturbed Gerofsky most after hearing Hudro’s pronouncement on mobility was the speed with which counter-thrusts seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, already this side of the river—in less than a day! It went against all the accepted norms and doctrines of what should have been possible. Conceivably for that very reason, the commanders were failing to grasp the implications and still preparing for defense against the kind of war they knew.
They drove past pits and emplacements being prepared among the low hills overlooking the plains extending away toward Stuttgart and the Mississippi valley: 125 mm howitzer batteries; 155 mm self-propelled howitzers being dug in hull-down; medium-range ground-to-ground missile launchers; mobile AA missile carriers and multibarrel antiaircraft cannon. Heavy-lift helicopters whup-whupped their way overhead, hauling dangling artillery pieces and crates of missiles to forward positions. Finally, the carrier bearing him and the others came to a false crest ahead of a ridge line, behind which the battery they were delivering to had been situated. The view over the lowlands ahead showed tanks spreading out and deploying behind cover; weapons emplaced along a creek bed; a command post undergoing camouflage and concealment. . . . All according to the book. But this was over a hundred miles from the Mississippi. If they were already facing a credible threat as far advanced as this, then what they were facing was from a totally different book.
Nyarl kept busy throughout, capturing anything that caught his interest. Since there was no quality connection back to the plane, he was storing the clips offline for delivery later. Some of the troops they passed reacted sourly to seeing a Hyadean, once or twice with open hostility, and Gerofsky had to defend Nyarl’s presence repeatedly. He himself was having to work at accepting Marie—until so recently one of the enemy in the form of CounterAction. He studied her as she sat perched on one of the carrier’s box sides, cradling her weapon, clearly awed by the extreme to which those efforts had finally contributed, yet also deeply apprehensive. She saw him from the corner of her eye and turned her head.
“It feels strange, us being on the same side.” Gerofsky looked around. “A bit overwhelmed? Not what you expected?”
“We wanted to awaken the people,” Marie answered. “Not all-out war. Somehow it all went out of control. Do you understand it?”
“I’m not sure anyone understands it. These things take on lives of their own.”
The whoosh came of an outgoing missile launching distantly, followed by another. Marie gazed after them as they cleared the skyline. “And now we’re trying to do the same thing again, only this time on Chryse.”
“Is it possible to make it work there, when it didn’t seem to here, do you think?” Gerofsky asked.
“Nyarl thinks so. He says minds work differently on Chryse.”
Gerofsky stared across at him on the far side, panning the camera at a field radar being set up. “Let’s hope he’s right. It might be the only chance we’ve got.”
As a precaution, Powell had moved the C22-E out to a corner of the field, away from the airport buildings and the crush of aircraft loading or maneuvering into a takeoff line to evacuate the field. That was probably what saved it when the attack came in.
Cade was in the cabin, keeping an open radio channel to Hudro and Davis in the tower; Powell was standing outside, taking in the general scene. Suddenly a shriek of warning sirens went up, and within moments, all over the airfield amid shouted orders and calls to stations, figures were jumping into slit trenches, running for cover, manning antiaircraft weapons. Short-range ground-to-air missiles were already flaming away all around like birds lifting in response to a spreading alarm call. Cade grabbed the helmet he had been given and tumbled out of the plane to join Powell in the ditch by the perimeter taxiway. The thudding of gunfire, felt as continuous jolting to the ears rather than heard, was already coming from the north. Then the harsher barking of fast-firing, smaller-caliber weapons joined in, getting nearer.
They came in low over the hilltops with a roar rising to a scream, a loose formation of maybe ten or twelve. Cade didn’t know the type—they were just glimpses of bodies and wings outlined against the sky. One disintegrated as it cleared the ridge and fell on the slopes below in a cascade of flame. The lead group blanketed the ground defenses with rockets and fragmentation cluster. The rest went down into strafing runs to pour cannon fire and scatter low-yield bomblets across the field. One aircraft failed to lift with the others, hitting the ground and exploding somewhere beyond the far end of the field. Cade pushed himself up slowly from the ground, dazed by the suddenness and the violence of it. Slowly, he registered planes sagging and broken amid the smoke; figures picking themselves up, staggering among the wreckage, pulling others out; the cacophony impressing itself from all sides as his numbed ears recovered, of exploding ammunition, screams for help, voices shouting. Beside him, Powell straightened up, looking about. A transport on the main runway, one of its wings torn at the root and draped back over the fuselage, erupted into a fireball. Smoke billowed outward over the ground in a churning curtain, and then several figures ran out covered in blazing fuel. Somebody from a rescue tender doused them with foam while others grabbed them and tried to roll them on the ground. Another was trying to unfold a tarp. Cade could only stare, numbed by the horror of it. Then the sharp crack of something detonating overhead made him look up. It was like a Fourth of July star burst, except that the objects being ejected from the center were not incendiary submunitions but self-powered devices like birds that seemed to be dispersing. Another exploded above the far end of the field. Then another, off to one side. Still bewildered, Cade turned his head toward Powell. “What the hell are those?”
Powell shook his head. “It beats me. All I know is, I’ve neve
r heard of anything like ’em before.”
The side of the tower facing the field had been raked by cannon fire. In what was left of the day room on the ground floor, Hudro groped his way through the smoke and dust, lifting aside a steel locker that had been thrown at an angle against the wall. A body that had been pinned behind it slid down into a heap. Somebody was groaning and calling for aid in the direction of the stairs. A corpsman in a helmet bearing a red cross appeared from outside and went on through. Hudro came to the daylight but kept back within the frame of the doorway while he took in the situation. Sergeant Davis, his face bloody and covered in dust, stumbled up beside him.
Flocks of what looked like gliding, stubby-winged birds were spiraling down to settle all over the airfield. A plane that seemed to have escaped serious damage lurched its way out from behind a transport that was starting to burn and turned toward the main runway. A swarm of maybe a dozen small shapes, some rising from the surrounding ground, others not yet landed, converged upon it like dogs around a bear, each exploding on contact to leave the aircraft crippled and immobile. Two more homed on a staff car racing along the nearby verge, causing it to swerve and overturn. One came down off a hangar roof to explode among a group of figures running toward the fire shed. Another rose up from the sand to pursue a soldier who jumped up from a foxhole, getting close enough before detonating to blow off his upper body.
“What in the name of Christ are they?” Davis asked fearfully.
Hudro scanned the surrounding. Similar things were happening in every direction as panic took over. The sounds of intensifying battle were coming distantly but insistently from the east. “Smart drones,” he replied. “Is way to deny use of base but not destroy. Means they plan to take over soon. Next attack will be with fragmentation—like rain of razors.”
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