by John Lumpkin
“That is a significant concession on their part.”
“Indeed,” Komarov said. “We think they are giving ground to get us out of the war, and they have also cut off a path from your space into theirs by putting us between you.”
“And all this … the Kirov and the rest, and all the troops, this was to demonstrate resolve to the Chinese, right? And you got free passage through American space, with an American escort, to get here.”
“Yes. For once, I’m rather impressed with our leaders, I must say. I also feel compelled to tell you that I only learned this was a possibility shortly after the battle near Long Nu. I am truly sorry for the deception, my friend.”
“I understand, Sergei,” Donovan said. “I don’t think I’m in a position to hold deceptive behavior against anyone.”
Komarov bowed his head slightly. “And please, Mister – Calvin. Be careful on the surface. Chaos makes a useful cloak.”
He left, escorted by the ship’s master-at-arms, leaving Donovan to wonder alone how things had gone so wrong.
Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
They made it another ten blocks before a Chinese drone spotted them.
It was an unarmed monitor, and Rand initially refrained from ordering it shot down, hoping his squad would register as a cluster of civilians if no one was watching closely. But it followed them, so Rand had his grenadier drop it.
We can’t reach the exit before they’ll be on us, he thought. At least the rest of the guerrilla company, including the other VIPs, had made it out.
He scanned the street. Still no civilians out. There, that’s a good spot. He ordered the squad to move into a deserted two-story restaurant at the corner of 19th and MLK, which advertised a basement bar. The corner makes it easier for the Hans to hit us from two directions, but we can hide Rivera in the bar and put guys on the roof, at least until the drones come. He ordered Patterson to launch the squad’s last scout drone to see what was arrayed against them.
“The force that followed us through the gate looks to be a couple of platoons, one infantry, and the other some kind of security unit,” she reported. “They are moving very slowly in our direction, acting like they expect an ambush. There’s a second force headed our way from where we entered the camp from the outside. They are probably the guys who engaged First Platoon. They’re spread out along several primary streets, looking for us. And … they’ve got some heavy hitters, sir. Six LAVs.”
Rand flipped to transmit to the entire squad. “All right, everyone down to the basement – ”
He wasn’t sure if he heard the gunshot or the sound of breaking glass first. The sniper drone had aimed its big bullet through the window and at Corporal Briggs’ head, but the soldier had turned at the last second, and the round cracked into the hardwood floor, kicking up a plume of splinters.
A grenadier upstairs lit off another small antiaircraft missile, which streaked into the sniper drone and exploded. The drone fell to the pavement.
“Nice shot, Mook,” Patterson transmitted.
“Cancel previous,” Rand said. “Everyone stay in position, and call out the Hans as soon as you see them.” He turned to Neil. “Time to make yourself useful, buddy.”
USS Apache
“Signal from the flag, spacestrike request from the surface,” the comms watchstander announced. She sounded puzzled. “Admiral Cooper is asking for volunteers.”
“Volunteers?” Captain Howell asked. “Weaps, what’s the target?”
“Several armored vehicles in Sycamore proper, sir,” Lieutenant Ortega replied. “Fleet intel rates that area as still very red for STO defenses.”
“Sounds like a job for one of the cruisers, then,” said Carruth, the XO. “Maryland is ahead of us in the bombardment queue.”
“That won’t work, sir,” Jessica said. “We’re the only ship in range with enough thrust to increase our inclination to reach the target in time, and then change our orbit again to avoid going over the Han continent. Even then, we’ll be shooting a high-angle shot through lots of the atmosphere, meaning we’ll have to use most of our laser power to do any damage. We can manage one pass, maybe twelve minutes of useful laser time.”
“But then we won’t have any laser power left to shoot down any Stoats they throw at us,” Carruth warned. “And even with all the suppression kinetics we’ve been throwing at them, there’s no guarantee they won’t try to take a surface laser shot at us.”
Everyone looked at Howell, whose face had lost its command pose and now betrayed uncertainty.
“Sir, we need to thrust immediately to maximize time over target,” Ortega said.
Howell said nothing. Jessica raced through several screens of data about the fire mission request, saw the originator code: Sneaker.
“The request came from Lieutenant Mercer,” she said.
Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
“Twenty-five minutes, and we’ll get some help,” Neil said. “My ship, as it happens.”
“Thanks, Neil.”
To the south, they saw a series of white lights, climbing upward in the night sky. Missiles.
Maybe thirty or so. Looks like Hellastrae’s Rangers have done some good; otherwise Apache would be facing three times as many. “I can’t promise they’ll be able to do everything we need, though,” Neil said. “They will be under fire and won’t have a lot of time overhead.”
Rand nodded. “Hope they make it through, Neil.” He pressed his handheld screen to transmit to the squad. “Might have some friendlies overhead soon, so let’s engage the Hans as soon as they are in range.” He turned back to Neil. “Hopefully the prospect of recapturing our VIP will dissuade them from just blowing us up.”
“Right. It’s better that we force them to come in and slaughter us personally,” Neil said. Come on, Rand, your people need you to lead them.
“That’s the spirit,” Rand said, a shadow of his usual grin cracking across his face. He turned to one of the guerrillas. “Yo, Ramos, you were stationed here in Sycamore, right? Was this restaurant any good?”
Ramos snorted. “This place? Out of my price range, sir. Maybe one o’ you high-and-mighty officer types could afford it, but not on a PFCs salary, that’s for sure.”
Rand looked skeptical. “You think I’d be caught dead in here? The ambiance is terrible, and the service … we’ve been in here, how long, fifteen minutes? And no one’s even bothered to take our drink orders.”
Several of the soldiers laughed. Good, Rand. Even if it’s just bravado, your people need it, Neil thought.
The first Chinese armored vehicle appeared to their south, far down 19th Street, moving in their direction. With Briggs covering him, Ramos ran outside, kneeled, and fired an antitank rocket in its direction. The LAV blew up, sending a black cloud into the peach sky of Kuan Yin’s early dawn.
Keep the enemy back. If they close, they’ll figure out that there’s a basement and Rivera is in it, and they can launch explosives into the top floors, Neil thought. Rand’s troops were taking low-percentage shots to keep the Chinese at bay, but their ammunition would run out eventually.
“More LAVs coming!” Patterson shouted from her window. “Infantry’s with them, under cover.”
We can’t run, not with Rivera in tow. Maybe it’s time to find a white cloth.
He saw a bright light in the southern sky, moving fast across his field of vision.
“There she is!” he shouted.
USS Apache
“Count is twenty-eight Stoats intersecting with our orbit,” the CIC caller said.
Apache was pointing its nose down at the surface, which was racing by beneath her. The ship’s defensive laser emitters fired on the missiles racing up to meet them, destroying several, and antimissiles took out a few more. But the incoming missiles had only 350 kilometers to cover – point blank range in a space battle – and they closed quickly.
“Ready point defenses,” Captain Howell said.
“We’ll ne
ed to devote three hundred thirty mike-whiskeys to the point defenses to shoot all those down,” Lieutenant Ortega said.
That won’t leave me enough, and Neil will die, Jessica thought.
She said, “There’s a lot of smoke in the lower atmosphere from the battle fires. If I don’t have five hundred for bombardment, I’ll just be giving the Hans a suntan.” Apache’s laser engines could muster six hundred megawatts of power. If we were just a damn destroyer, we wouldn’t have this problem, she thought. Ortega’s too conservative. Those Stoats are dinky missiles with dinky warheads. But how to convince Howell to overrule Ortega? She remembered Neil’s theory, that Howell had achieved some measure of self-actualization after helping take down the Ban Chao.
“Come on, let me kill some Hans, Skipper,” she said.
It worked. “Lasers, five hundred mike-whiskeys to the main cannon,” Howell said. “The rest to the point defenses. Ortega, you take the PD so Barrett can focus on the bombardment.”
“You may have just killed us, Barrett,” Ortega muttered, quiet enough that only Jessica could hear.
Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
Of Jessica’s five hundred megawatts, only fifty were not absorbed by the air and smoke between Apache and the Zeixing infantry fighting vehicle rolling up 19th Street. But that was enough: Everyone heard a crack, and a thin column of air took on a greenish tint. Then the top of the IFV flared a brilliant green. Goggles darkened to prevent blindness, but everyone nearby looked away anyway. The vehicle’s battery exploded, sending fragments slicing through the nearby Chinese soldiers.
Aguirre and Ruiz, Torren and McKay, Yancey, Pravitz, Ramirez and the rest, Rand thought.
Another Zeixing died thirty seconds later.
The advancing troopers realized what happened and scattered, running into buildings or down alleys, anything to get away from hell being unleashed on the big, defenseless targets in the street.
USS Apache
“Laser engine temperature is still in the red,” one of Jessica’s techs transmitted. “Fifteen seconds until I can give you another shot.”
“Not enough,” Ortega said bitterly. “We’re going to catch a couple of inbounds. Hope those Stoats don’t carry any nukes.”
Your fault, Jessica thought. I warned you that you were holding the lasers way too long on each missile. They weren’t Han antiship missiles, and we weren’t maneuvering to avoid them. They had lots of excess fuel for the PD to feast on.
Once cooled, the point-defense lasers destroyed two more missiles, and a beam touched a third just as it struck the Apache’s main cylinder. A moment later, a second missile struck just three meters away.
Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
“Cap’n Castillo, Hans coming up MLK on foot, running! Lots of ‘em!” Ramos shouted. He blazed away out a window.
Rand ran to an east-facing opening, looked outside, and saw a wave of Chinese soldiers sprinting toward them. Some were shouting battle cries; some were firing wildly, and bullets thunked into the restaurant exterior.
A goddamn infantry charge. They must have decided the best place to avoid being fried from the sky was right on top of us.
Rand smashed the window with the butt of his carbine, picked a target, and dropped him. Other members of the squad did the same; Neil couldn’t actually find space to take a shot, so he went to a south-facing window, intending to lean out and fire across his body, but he couldn’t see around the building’s entry vestibule, which extended out onto the sideway.
Rand watched as the leading edge of the charge staggered and fell to his squad’s fusillade. A few turned and fled, but more kept coming, and then the enemy was on them.
The first one tried to leap through a window but tripped over the waist-high sill, crashing into Sergeant Patterson. She threw him off, put her rifle to his head, and fired. But more followed, and another soldier in riot gear burst though the restaurant’s front door, spraying shots from a submachine gun. Three Americans, including Patterson, and the two Chinese soldiers all went down in a heap. Rand’s armor took a hit, and he stumbled, but he still brought his M7 up and fired into the man’s chest. His target collapsed, and Rand fell to one knee.
Behind the fallen riot-gear trooper an officer in battle armor entered; he wisely took cover in the entry vestibule. He raised his rifle to fire into the guerrillas still lined up along the east-facing windows.
Neil’s gun bucked in his hands. It was nearly a miss; the officer’s shoulder armor took some of the blow. The man fell backward for a step, and he looked in Neil’s direction.
Maybe he’d surrender, Neil thought.
But Neil’s gun fired again, this time directly into the officer’s torso. At this range, the carbine’s bullet was too much for the soldier’s armor, and it cut into his heart. Agency ceased to guide the man’s motions, leaving gravity to take over and drive him to the ground.
Lieutenant Colonel Shen Liang’s final thought was to remind himself that his final thought should be of his family.
You’ve killed again, Neil thought.
USS Apache
Both Stoat warheads struck Apache’s ventral heat sink, igniting a secondary explosion that Jessica felt shake the frigate from nose to tail.
But most of the explosion’s energy was spent burning through ship’s food stores and unoccupied crew quarters. Foil packages of burritos and tins of pasta spun into space; in CIC, the lights blinked once, and a draft of cool air washed over the crew, stopping when anti-decompression bulkheads slid into place.
“All sections, damage report,” Howell said.
Reports came in. No casualties. The hull breach was contained.
We took the punch, Jessica thought. I just hope we did enough for Neil and the others.
Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
Seeing the death of their officer, most of the rest of the Chinese troops abandoned their charge, save two who were fighting hand-to-hand with Rand’s troops. Three feet away from Rand’s prone form, Marine Corporal Gonzalez pulled a knife from his boot and stabbed his assailant in the throat. The man screamed and gurgled blood. Nearby, Ramos tried a wrestling hold on his own attacker, but the man produced a sidearm and shot him in the chest at point-blank range, and then leapt out the window and fled.
Neil ran to that window and raised his rifle, lining up on the soldier who had killed Ramos, but before he could pull the trigger, he heard more than a dozen shots from outside. He saw little red puffs on the man’s torso, and the soldier staggered and fell. Other fleeing Chinese soldiers bolted right or left, save for two, who dropped their rifles and raised their hands in surrender.
Someone in civilian clothes walked up to them and shot them both in the head with a pistol. Neil heard more shooting, farther away, and the streets in view were empty of the enemy.
Neil went to Rand.
“I’m okay, I think,” Rand gasped, rolling over. “Armor stopped it, barely. Wind knocked out of me. How’s everyone else?”
Neil, his hands shaking, looked around at the carnage and tried to formulate a reply. At least three of Rand’s troops were dead. Sergeant Patterson, wounded, had pulled herself upright against a wall, and she was trying to stop the blood flowing from her thigh. She looked pale but was barking orders to the PFC trying to help her.
“Friendlies approaching!” Corporal Gonzalez shouted from the window. “At least, I think they’re friendlies.”
Several people entered the restaurant.
“Where’s your CO?” said a husky female voice.
Rand pulled himself up, coughed, and said, “I’m here.”
Violet Kelley walked up to him. “Glad to see you aren’t dead, Castillo.”
In her months with the Sycamore underground, Violet Kelley had not been idle.
She had built a network of more than a thousand volunteers, some as young as 12. She had directed the construction of hundreds of guns using a pair of home fab units that the Chinese had failed to confiscate. Sh
e had built a core unit of fighters and used them to train the angriest of the interred civilians.
But she feared they would not last once they came under fire, and she didn’t think she could instill proper combat discipline without a cadre of veteran sergeants. Instead, she doctored a few photographs and engineered stories of Chinese soldiers kidnapping, raping and torturing American civilians, nurturing a murderous rage to stand in place of professional coolness under fire.
She set them loose when Rand’s company had blown a hole in the internment camp’s outer wall. They ambushed Chinese guards and attacked several access points from the rest of the city; at the three main western gates, her irregulars ran headlong into machine gun fire, dying in scores. But two groups broke through elsewhere, moving into the Chinese civilian residential area, slaughtering as they went, and a third made it through the same gate Rand and his platoon had used to reach the VIP prison. Led by Michael Bannerjee, that group attacked the internment camp for American military personnel, and freed thousands of POWs, many of whom had been there for two years.
Upon learning of this, the Chinese civilian leadership panicked and fled for Fengsheng in a suborbital. Rumors spread through the populace about vehicles able to rescue them, too. Some went to the spaceport, looking for craft that would not be there, while thousands fled down the winding cliffside road toward the Port of Sycamore. Hundreds forgot their rebreathers and perished of carbon dioxide poisoning.
Some with long-range personal cars fled south, running headlong into the retreat of the PLA brigade that had been defending the southern approach to Sycamore. A massive traffic jam ensued, and American air and space power was merciless in its attacks.
General Xie transmitted the surrender of Sycamore a day later.
Prisoner-of-War Recovery Station, Forward Operating Base Foster, East of Sycamore
Some of them made it.
Patterson was recovering from her leg wound at a mobile hospital. And Rand had found Captain Gant, Cruz’s aide from Falcon, on the list of POWs, along with Major Montaño, his old battalion commander from Cottonwood. And Sergeant Ruiz had survived! Bannerjee had found him, incapacitated and dying after the battle at the gate, and he summoned a civilian paramedic who had stabilized the Green Beret. He would need a new foot grown, but he had messaged Rand that he would be able to return to combat duty in a few months.
