by K. J. Coble
She reached for the weapon but halted herself just shy. Couldn’t be. Someone would have awakened her. She turned and glanced at Cynthia in the cot beside her. Her sister hadn’t roused, barely stirred for a moment, murmuring something and shuddering. The alarms continued in the distance.
Sandy grabbed her trousers and pulled them on. She rose and buckled on her gunbelt. She didn’t know why, the air just seemed to call for it.
Cynthia groaned in her sleep again and Sandy stepped over to lay a hand on her twin’s forehead. The skin was moist with perspiration. Her dreams seemed to have worsened since she returned to camp. They used to sleep together occasionally, spooning for warmth in the winter months. Since getting back, Cynthia climbed into the covers with Sandy every chance she got, sometimes thrashing in the night or hugging herself to Sandy with a painful grip.
Sandy leaned forward and pressed her lips to her sister’s cheek before striding from the chamber.
Sten was in the corridor, eyes red from sleep. Sandy had quartered her squad near her.
“What the fuck?”
“Don’t know,” Sandy replied, pushing by him. “Gonna find out, though.”
She came across others in the hall as she made her way, members of the companies assigned as the Station’s garrison. A frail-built man who looked like an accountant stepped into her path. Platoon Leader, Anders, her immediate superior. She shouldered by him, ignoring whatever questions he sounded. He’d served with some competence in the Defense Force, but he had scared eyes and Sandy didn’t trust him, didn’t really care what he had to say.
She was halfway down into the cave complex when the echo of the alarms cut out. Guerillas came and went in the narrow passageways, runners mostly, and the occasional officer with a look that made her guts tighten. She began to jog.
More craziness at the entrance to the Station proper. A knot of officers was arguing while aides and sentries stood around. Someone started shouting and she thought there was going to be a fight. She slid by and was nearly through the door when a hand clamped down on her bicep.
“You got a reason for being down here, Sergeant?” The armored sentry had the body of a wrestler but the face of a teenager.
“Hell, I helped find this damned place!” she snarled and yanked her arm free of his grip. “Let me be!”
“Can’t just do that, Sarge,” he replied. He reached for her. “Let’s go.”
Sandy swore, couldn’t believe this. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a runner hustling up the access corridor from the Station. She smiled at the sentry, made like she intended to cooperate. The runner reached the exit and started to slow down as he saw the two of them blocking his way.
“Come on—”
Sandy grabbed the runner by the sleeve and thrust him into the swearing sentry. She lurched free of the tangle and sprinted down the passage. Shouts and scuffle echoed behind her. Grated floor clanked beneath her feet. She heard the order to stop and wondered if, of all the things in this war, she would end up shot by her own side in a mishap.
A technician, obvious in her red overalls, stumbled to get out of Sandy’s way. Sandy whirled her around, interposing another barrier between herself and pursuit. She reached the command center, surprisingly uncrowded and unguarded. Janotski, seated with others at the holographic terminal, looked up and gave her a confused smile.
A hand slapped down on her shoulder and whipped her around. “All right, enough!”
Sandy had her fist cocked back to throw but another hand settled on it gently. The sentry released her with eyes wide and went to attention, features suddenly boyish in their shame. “Sorry, sir. Let one get through.”
“Not a problem,” Crozier said as he carefully forced Sandy’s fist down, patting her shoulder with his free hand. “Sergeant Schweppenberg is welcome here. Thank you, soldier.”
The sentry gave an embarrassed nod and went
“Doing things the easy way just doesn’t occur to you sometimes, does it?” Crozier said, turning to face her with a flicker of a grin. The humor came with obvious effort, though, and his gaunt, unshaved face was freshly lined with stress.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Heard the alarms, did you?” Crozier said with a weary tone. “Damn. Probably woke the whole mountain. Didn’t think to have them disabled when we first got here.” He gestured her into the chamber. “Have a look, why don’t you?”
Sandy stepped into the room, darkened, with only the holograms to provide illumination. Half the huge HoloScreen was taken up by an image of Lurinari, overlaid by a grid with cities and known Korvan installations indicated in red. Her attention went to the red icon coasting into the planet’s space, highlighted by flashing yellow double haloes.
A quadrant of screen had divided off to show a closer image of the icon, a starship with long, hard angles, and bulbous to stern where gravity drives bulged.
Sandy sucked in her breath. “One of ours?”
“No. Korvan.” The holograms underlit Crozier’s features, made them look craggy, old. “Computer says it’s a battleship, Tan-class. One of their flag vessels. But it appears to be alone.”
“It could have friends out there, just beyond passive sensor range,” Janotski said from his seat. “But painting the sky with our active scanners would point us out to half the continent.”
“Is it here to reinforce them?” Sandy asked, her stomach filling with sick dread.
“I’m not sure,” Crozier replied. His hand reached thoughtlessly toward the neck of his shirt, then tightened and withdrew. “The computer says they’ve suffered extensive battle damage. They must have had to fight their way through the Coalition blockade.”
“What are we going to do?”
Crozier looked at Sandy, then glanced over his shoulder at a handful of partisan officers crowded along the wall, tight-faced.
“We’re going to sit quiet and see what happens,” he answered. “I’ve sent word to all our commanders to cease current operations and scatter. Not an easy process. We’re not in direct contact with everyone.”
“What about the refugees, the camps?” Sandy asked.
“We’ve instructed them to go to ground as effectively as they can.” Crozier’s hand started for his neck again. He grabbed it in the other and began kneading the two together. Jaw muscles stood out and his eyes looked watery in the holographic glare. His voice dropped. “It’s all we can do.”
Sandy stepped close to him. She dared not touch him, not in front of all these others, but she wanted to remind him she was there, keep him from drifting off. She watched his profile, noted every ripple of tension grinding across his face. Bet he’s wishing Ro was here...come on, Devin...be strong...they need you to be strong...I need you...
Crozier looked at her abruptly and said in a voice just above a whisper, “If they detect something...” He cut himself off, bit his lip and looked back at the HoloScreen. The light glowed in his eyes.
Sandy crowded closer to him.
MINUTES GROUND BY, became a quarter hour, then a half-hour, then nearly an hour. The red icon crawled across the hologram. Vast distances seemed miniscule on the screen as the starship pulsed its gravity drives, braking hard for Lurinari orbit. The computer projected the battlewagon to be aiming for geosynchronous over Mondanberg. It was most assuredly in contact with its brethren on the ground by now.
The command chamber had begun to stink of sweat. Perhaps sensing this, Janotski lit a cigarette. The smoke turned eerie blues and reds in the holographic light. A couple of the partisan officers stepped outside the room and were talking in low tones. Someone was distributing coffee.
A warm cup was pressed into Crozier’s hand. He looked at Sandy and smiled in thanks. An aide provided him a chair. He leaned back into it and took a bitter, scalding sip as he stared at the Korvan ship. He hadn’t expected this. He should have.
“They got their shields up yet?” Crozier asked.
“No,” replied Janotski.
&nb
sp; “How about weapons? We have any idea of their weapons capabilities?”
“That would take a focused scan with active sensors, Major,” Janotski answered, his voice pitched high with the strain.
“Damn.” Crozier took a longer sip of coffee, relished the heat rolling down his throat, the way it cleared his thoughts and chased the fluttering of nerves from his stomach. He glanced at Sandy. She was watching him, hard lines around the eyes. Worrying. Part of him wished her a thousand kilometers from here. Though it was good to have a friend near, he admitted to himself.
“How quickly can we have the main gun ready?” he asked.
The quiet conversations in the background cut off. Janotski tossed Crozier a quick glance.
“We can crash-start the thing in five minutes.”
“Even with the reactor on cold standby?”
“I’ve seen the specs, Major.”
“Then do it.”
Janotski’s hands began to fly across the control console. He shot orders at the young, red-clad girls servicing the consoles to either side of him and they began to work too.
Holograms flashed with schematics and warnings Crozier didn’t understand. He looked at Sandy. Her face was still tight, but she managed a smile for him. He smiled back. The churning in his gut stilled. He got up and set the coffee down on the console, leaned forward to lay a hand on Janotski’s shoulder. “I just hope those work crews cleared the mountain blast doors.”
“Don’t worry, sir,” Janotski said. “My boys knew their business. This old girl will fire. Fire like a dream.”
“Maybe we won’t have to find out.”
Crozier straightened and turned to look at the knot of officers behind him, members of his tiny staff and commanders of the Station garrison. They looked scared. He should say something to them. They were people Ro had picked, people Crozier should know better than he did. But there had been no time. So many details he should know.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, tried to focus, tried to see his wife. No good. He opened them again. Sandy was still smiling that worried smile.
The computer chirped and half the room jumped. Crozier forced himself to take his time, turning to face the screen, appear calm. The icon of the Korvan battleship blinked in time to the sound. “What’s happening?”
“Sensor sweep, low-level,” Janotski replied in a tight voice. The girl to his left had frozen at her controls, sobbing silently with fear. Janotski placed a reassuring palm on her shoulder to stir her back to work. “Probably routine orbital procedure.”
“Have they seen us?”
“I...don’t know. They’re not powering their weapons. Shields aren’t up.”
“Only a matter of time...” Crozier murmured and turned from the screen to stare at the wall behind him. Sandy stood at his side, eyes now on the floor. She was close, perhaps inappropriately so, her body radiating its warmth into him. No comfort, there, though. Crozier felt suddenly chilled and alone.
A low rumble began to thrum through the room. That would be the blast doors peeling back from the mountainside. No way that would be missed if the Korvans were looking this way. Klaxons began to howl through the Station.
“Goddammit!” Crozier spun around to face the screen. “Turn those off!”
Janotski fumbled over a reply, but his fingers blurred competently across his console. The racket cut out. Crozier ran a hand across his forehead and pulled it away damp.
“Major?” That was one of the officers, Captain Svetlana, a razor-thin woman—formerly a lawyer—who commanded C Company of the Station garrison. “Major, shouldn’t we see to evacuating the mountain?”
“Evacuate to where?” Crozier replied without taking his eyes off the screen. The red icon of the Korvan ship burned in his vision. Schematics of power levels and systems readiness flashed to one side. “How much longer?”
Before Janotski could reply the computers chirped again. The old man ran a hand through his ragged hair. “Another sensor sweep! They’re looking for us...”
“How long?”
“Another minute. The reactor’s coming up. Surely they see us by now.”
Sandy’s hand wrapped around Crozier’s and squeezed. He returned the pressure in kind as he said, “Fire as soon as you’re ready.”
Janotski paused, licked his lips. “Yes, sir.”
The computer began to blat, an ugly, electric death knell.
“They’ve seen us!” Janotski squeaked. The girl beside him was bawling into clenched fists. The other stared without expression. “They’re targeting us!”
Crozier leaned over the console and Janotski. “Fire.”
“Almost there...”
The blatting seemed to get louder. On the HoloScreen, complicated targeting diagrams painted themselves across the Korvan battleship. But the icon was changing, too, and numbers were scrolling down beside it. Even Crozier could decipher the meaning: weapons ready, shields coming online.
“Fire! Fire, now!”
Janotski’s fingers executed an intricate series of keystrokes.
The room shook. The mountaintop belched hellfire.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Ubermind screamed for perhaps a thousandth of a second before being rent to subatomic particles. The agony of that tiny fraction of time multiplied across the Awareness, building into a shrill eternity.
Zarven didn’t remember dropping to the chair. His eyes pinched shut, his mouth locked open, and his hands flew to the sides of his head, pressing in to contain the ice-pick of pain and horror punching through his brain. He did’ot know if he screamed. The Ubermind’s death wail drowned out sound.
The Awareness shuddered with the psychic earthquake. Most Korvans wouldn’t recognize the anguish for what it was, precisely. But even the most fresh, dull-minded Minrohaust would realize something was horribly wrong. And most, at least those in this hemisphere, would not have missed the brief, new star in the night sky that marked the annihilation of the Sovorahz.
Zarven came back to his surroundings slowly, as one does from a nightmare. Hands lowered from his face, the knuckles sore with their exertion. His skin stung where the nails had dragged trails of red. He blinked, tried to exorcise distorted, howling images that may or may not have been the Ubermind and the dead crew of her vessel.
Ozer was on his hands and knees, trying to rise and groaning out loud with the effort. Tedeschi leaned against the conference table, one hand rubbing the left side of his face. Zarven thought he heard him giggling.
“By the Imperative...” Ozer managed over the Awareness. “What have they done?”
“The worms have...assassinated a Ubermind,” Tedeschi said, disbelief and detached, madman hysteria crackling in his harmonic.
The Intelligence officer’s words surprised Zarven for a moment. How had he known that? But as he listened to the Awareness, Zarven realized the word was out. And he could not recall what had spilled from his tormented consciousness in the last few seconds. In fact, Zarven found himself struggling to piece together what had passed between himself and the Ubermind, at all. A hole throbbed in his memory and every time he tried to grope into it, glaring pain and death screams blew him back.
One little shard lodged at the edge of that hole, something he was having a hard time sorting out.
“Can’t be...” Ozer wobbled to his feet. “How?”
Zarven rubbed viciously at his temples and sat up in his seat. Forcing the uproar of the Awareness from his mind, he asked, “Where did that blast come from?”
The conference room table lit up with a new hologram, an image of a low, unremarkable mountain at the edge of the Coreal range. At the mountain’s heart glowed the fire of a fusion reactor, freshly stoked to life. Interpretation began to display in emotionless script above the image. A schematic blinked into existence, the unsurprising conclusion drawn from analyzing the reactor signature and the blast that had killed the Sovorahz
.
The image zoomed out, becoming a map of the region surrounding the southeast Coreal Valley. A jolt of shock passed through Zarven, clearing some of the misery in his skull. The mountain continued to be highlighted, a glowing icon no more than a hundred and fifty kilometers from Teshima. Even less from Outpost 9.
“Well,” Zarven said with a weary predator’s resignation. “At least now we know where they are.”
IT CAN’T BE...CAN’T be...
Tan-Ezatz realized she was being lifted from the floor. Her head screamed—or was that Tzarinta keening through the plasma fireball of her death? Her mouth hurt and when her tongue probed about, she tasted blood and felt the flap of her lip that she had bitten through. She moaned and was surprised to hear her voice out loud. She had heard little else for what seemed like an eternity.
“Easy, my Haust.” That was Kavelton. The young Korvan was setting her into her seat, leaning her back gingerly.
Something shifted, popped. Tan-Ezatz’s shoulder was a roaring ache and she clamped her good hand down on Kavelton’s forearm, drawing in her breath with a hiss.
“I’m sorry,” Kavelton said in a rush, fumbling to make her comfortable and compounding his errors. “I’m sorry, my Haust.”
“Kavelton,” she said slowly when she had forced the pain down, “find me a physician. Quickly.”
The young Korvan scrambled away, intent on dragging one up to Tan-Ezatz’s office with his bare hands. On his way out she heard him give orders to sentries to bar entrance to her chambers. Good lad. He wasn’t thinking about what had happened, yet. Denial was easier. It would be hard on him, hard on them all when they realized the full extent of the disaster.
How had this happened? She wanted to scream, wanted to wail like a baby in a birth crèche. Uberminds had died in battle before, but not in ages and not like this. This was not the way for so much wisdom, such amazing experience to be snuffed out. Such an abrupt, crude death. Such...erasure...
Tan-Ezatz began issuing instructions to her computers and holograms flashed. Reports flooded in and the data was being refined very quickly. A mountain in the Coreals, out in the badlands where there had been so much trouble, glowed in the midst of all the projections.
