by Diane Duane
She watched the screen. They were creeping closer to the Scout. “Thirty kilometers now,” said Ronnie. Then a few moments passed. “Twenty-five…Stingray two targeting. Acquire. Launch!”
The Lightning bounded again. A third dot appeared, the missile. Jonelle watched the targeting trace from the missile lock onto the alien craft, watched the two dots draw closer together, closer, almost merge—
The alien craft jogged sideways again, southward, just as the missile should have struck it. Ron swore. “Sorry, Boss,” he said. “Still too much range. And they know the speed of these missiles too well—I wish I had some more vector to add. I’m closing—”
The Lightning leapt after the Scout. The Scout leapt too, almost due southward now. “Whatever he’s going for,” Ron said, “it won’t be Chur, not unless he does another one-eighty.”
“He may have that in mind. You just make sure you put one of these up his butt: before he gets a chance, Ronnie.”
“Kinky,” Ron said mildly The Lightning accelerated— Jonelle had to brace herself more firmly
“Don’t let him get as far south as the San Bernardino pass,” Jonelle said. “He’ll vanish down that like water down a drain.”
“I won’t,” Ron said. “Twenty kilometers now, Boss. Targeting Stingray three now. Acquire—”
“Wait for fifteen kilometers, Ron—”
“That’s my intention, ma’am.”
She watched as the two dots, the Scout and the Lightning, slowly slid closer together. “Fifteen point four—fifteen point two. Fifteen kilometers—firing!”
Bound! went the Lightning. Once again a third dot appeared as the missile leapt away. The targeting trace from the missile indicated positive lock. They watched while the dots inched closer, closer, merged—
The screen flashed. “It’s a hit!” Ron said, but the Scout didn’t slow or veer. “Damn. Not enough damage. Must have winged him.”
“Once more,” Jonelle said softly.
“Loading four—he’s still heading south. Nope,” Ron added. “Angling west, now.”
Deeper still into more remote territory, Jonelle thought. If that Scout knew where they had come from, it was definitely trying to get them as far away from any kind of help as possible. “It had better be the next one, Ronnie,” Jonelle said, “or you won’t have anything to protect us with if a friend of his shows up. And if he gets much farther south, and you drop him there, he’s going to fall right on St. Moritz. That would not be a good thing.”
Ron looked furious. “Four ready,” he said. “Accelerating. Ten kilometers. If I can’t hit him at that range, Boss—”
Jonelle said nothing. Ron’s face set. “Targeting. Acquire. Firing!”
The fourth missile leapt away. They watched. Jonelle clenched her teeth, thinking, Come on, you, come on! The dots drew closer, drew closer. Merged. The screen flashed—
“It’s a hit!” Ron cried, and the forward speed of the dot representing the alien Scout decreased abruptly. It veered almost due south. “Going down, Boss! Tracking now. Losing altitude: one thousand meters—five hundred—passing over the lake—now gaining a little. He’s trying to make it over the mountain—” Ron chuckled.
The dot stopped. “Down,” Ron said. “On the north slope of…what’s its name here? Monte dell’Oro. One of the mountains south of the lake.”
Jonelle bit her lip. It was not the kind of place she would normally choose for a ground assault. Attacking either uphill or downhill was a nuisance, no matter what the tacticians said. You wound up with gravity as the chief enemy, in a fight where you already had one that was deadly enough. But this was no time to be complaining. “Right. Notify the Skyranger that our boy’s on the ground, and then take us down easy. Nice shooting, Ronnie!”
She turned and went back to talk to her people, a last few words before they put their tender skins out where aliens could shoot at them. In her own days as sergeant and captain and colonel, Jonelle had always made sure to take those few moments, for the simple reason that— ground assaults being what they were—it was likely to be your last chance to ever talk to some of these people. Or, alternately, their last chance to talk to you. But what she mostly wanted to communicate to them now was something she had been feeling on and off since she left Ari’s bedside:
I’m sick of sitting around. I’m going to go kill something.
The Lightning grounded, harder than necessary perhaps—a function of the bad terrain, or of the fact that Ron Moore was better at flying than he was at landing. Jonelle hefted her heavy laser and said, “Everybody ready, now?”
From the others, all armored, came a chorus of “Yes, Boss” and “Let’s go!”
The Lightning’s deployment doors opened out over the icy ground strewn with rocks and boulders. It helped a little that the Lightning’s jets had blown the site mostly clear of snow, but around the Scout there was still a fair amount, and the wind whipping past them was bringing more in the beginnings of drifts from the upper slopes of the neighboring mountain. At least there was no danger of an avalanche: all the snow that could fall down in the immediate neighborhood had fallen down.
Fire erupted from the downed Scout. It might not be able to fly, but at least some of whatever aliens were inside it were apparently all right. This annoyed Jonelle, and made her suspect that the inmates were of the more robust types of aliens. Damn.
“By fours,” she said to the sergeant in the other team. “Don’t hurry. Get your folks safely disposed, and if there’s snow for them to use as cover, have them make the most of it. It’s no protection, but it can be a distraction.”
Jonelle’s first four went out, one of them with a motion scanner.
“Nobody outside, Boss,” said the squaddie with the motion detector after a few moments. “Nobody out here at all but us chickens—whoops! Six high!”
Something moved upslope, on the narrow ledge at the top of a jagged cliff face. Squaddies whirled, fired. The creature leapt apart in a burst of blood, shrieked, and fell down among them.
They all stared. It looked like a goat, but it was bigger, and had huge back-curved horns. “Holy shit,” one of the squaddies said. “It’s a big-horn sheep.”
“It’s an ibex,” someone else said.
Jonelle shook her head regretfully. “It’s toast,” she said. “Poor thing. Never mind. It’s getting on toward breakfast time—let’s go crack this egg.” She hefted her laser cannon and left the Lightning, followed by three more of her squad.
The assault took the better part of two hours. From Jonelle’s point of view, it was the usual crazed, confused melange of noises, images, and general craziness, everything seeming to happen at once. Afterward, people always told Jonelle how organized and cool she seemed, and how structured her handling of the situation was. She never believed it. She always lost track of how many grenades she had thrown, how many targets she had fired at, lost, fired at again. Her heavy laser was damaged about halfway through the assault, and she was forced to pick up one belonging to one of her dead squaddies and work with that—something that always obscurely bothered Jonelle when she was fighting. She thought of the life this weapon should have saved, and didn’t, through lack of skill or bad luck—there was never any way to tell, and it was too late now. She fired at and killed every alien that came within sight of her, first assessing them for commercial value, but all of them seemed strangely devalued today. One she stunned, a Snakeman leader who would at least be useful for interrogation. Her team did most of the aliens in before she had a chance. She wondered whether the cold was slowing her down, or whether her people were simply actively protecting her. There was no telling. She wished they would concentrate more on themselves. For herself, she went on firing.
By the time the shooting stopped, four of her people were dead inside that ship, or outside, in the dark, in the drifting snow. Jonelle and the survivors, including the sergeant, stood around shortly thereafter, surveying the wreckage of the ship. “Kind of strange, if you ask me, Boss,” said the se
rgeant.
Jonelle was still trying to make sense of it. “How many of them did you say?”
“Four Snakemen, including the leader. Two Chryssalids and a whole pile of Silacoids.”
“Silacoids,” Jonelle muttered, shaking her head. “Why?”
“Seven of them,” said one of the squaddies, rejoining the group. “I just got the last one—it was trying to run away in the snow. They don’t do too well at that—the snow melts off them, and the trails are kind of obvious, they’re so hot.”
“All right,” Jonelle said. “Let’s clean up here. Strip the ship of things that can be easily carried, and make pickup on the corpses. Get the prisoners stowed. I’ll call Irhil for a strip team to get the metal and the other consumables.”
She made her way slowly back to the Lightning. That was when the last Chryssalid jumped her. The thing seized her with its claws, hunting for somewhere to inject the venom that would put out her humanity like a candle being snuffed. Jonelle grappled with the thing, gasping with revulsion. After a moment her suit training cut in, and she jumped, and flew. There she hung, in midair, badly balanced and wondering if she was going to crash—hovering, or trying to, in a storm of blowing snow, while the Chryssalid hung from her, squirming and shrieking and thrashing, trying to breach her armor.
Both her hands were busy holding it away. Jonelle had nothing to get a shot at it with, and her people wouldn’t dare shoot at it for fear of hurting her. As if this wasn’t enough, a gust of wind blew her, back first, into the nearby cliff face from which the poor ibex had been blasted.
OK, Jonelle thought. Two can play at that game. She forced the suit to leap back away from the cliff again, and swung herself around in midair, so that the Chryssalid was toward the wall of stone. Then she launched herself at the cliff, full force.
Some time before, back in the States, Jonelle had gone with some friends from the Washington base to a crab joint near the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. There they were all issued wooden mallets and shown to a large table covered with newspaper, where, as soon as they were seated, many large, steamed crabs were unceremoniously dumped in front of them. The sound the mallets made when cracking the crabs open was very like the sound Jonelle heard now, except that this was considerably louder, and the crabs in Baltimore hadn’t screamed. Stones fell down from the cliff, and the Chryssalid shrieked and fell away from her. As it fell, laser fire lanced out from one of the teams preparing to board the Lightning. The pieces caught fire as they came down, and lay there in the snow, hissing, burning, until more blowing snow put the fire out.
Jonelle landed, breathing hard, more from the shock than anything else. Two of the squaddies hurried over to her with the sergeant. “Are you all right, Commander?”
“I’m OK,” she said. “Let’s get ourselves stowed. I’m going in to make that call.”
Jonelle made her way back to the cockpit of the Lightning and looked out as her people got ready to be boarded. She hit the comrns control for a connection to Irhil M’Goun. “Dispatch—”
“Yes ma’am, Commander.”
She looked out the cockpit window at the early, early primrose-colored light of dawn, creeping into the eastern sky. “We’ve taken down that large Scout,” she said, “about fifteen kilometers southwest of St. Moritz. We’ll need a strip team. What’s the condition down there?”
“We’re secure down here, Commander. No damage.”
“Other intercepts?”
“One successful, one failed.”
“What failed?”
“A Harvester came through on the same trajectory as your Scout, Commander. There was nothing to send after it but an Interceptor, and it lost that.”
“Where did it go?”
“Lost, Commander. We haven’t a clue. Sorry. “
“Wonderful,” Jonelle said, more to herself than anyone else. “Wonderful. All right, Dispatch, we’ll be back in Andermatt shortly. Tell Commander DeLonghi I’d appreciate a call.”
And she hit the comms button to close down the line, and began, softly, and with some virtuosity, to swear.
Five
It took Jonelle the better part of the day to get post-sortie matters sorted out at Andermatt. Though the facility had been ready enough to have flight crews move in, she hadn’t seriously thought that sorties would have to start so quickly—at least, she’d hoped they wouldn’t have to, but that hope was clearly gone. The aliens know something’s going on in this area, she thought. I’ve got to do everything I can to keep them from finding out what it is, especially until that mind shield gets in.
Once back on site, Jonelle got on the comms network and on the phone, and began hounding people—mostly about the mind shield, but also about more transfer troops to replace the people most recently injured or killed, and about quickly disposing of the various marketable alien materials they had acquired this morning. Irhil, as well, had had a couple of successful interceptions—a medium Scout and an Abductor—which put the base over its break -even point for that months finances and left it with a surprising amount of spare cash. Jonelle was glad about that, for she intended to take most of it for Andermatt. She was gladder still that there had been no deaths during those interceptions and only a few injuries, none of them very serious. Either Joe’s finally settling in, she thought, or else Ari read him the riot act forcejully enough that he took it to heart, and the results are showing already. A little early to know which, yet, but we’ll see….
She sat awhile with her calculator, totaling up the funds available to her and considering her options. It was now more likely that Andermatt would be attacked, since an attack had been launched from it. Not a whole lot more likely—but the threat is significant. She had already budgeted for the simplest level of defense, missile defenses, and those were in the process of going in. They would be ready next week, but they weren’t as effective as Jonelle would like. Fortunately, the site itself was not terribly amenable to anyone landing there, alien or otherwise. Chastelhorn Mountain was one of the most nearly vertical-sided peaks Jonelle had seen hereabouts. However, that would not stop aliens attacking it while in flight. Plasma-weapon defenses would be better, but they cost a lot more, and Jonelle had just spent so much on the mind shield, which wasn’t going to be ready for a month and a bit anyway.
She sighed. The missile defenses would have to do for the time being. There was also workshop space to be thinking about, and a new psi lab for Andermatt….
I hate this, Jonelle thought. Here we are saving the goddamn Earth every other day, and nevertheless we have to drive ourselves crazy pinching pennies and skimping on equipment we need so that we can buy other equipment we need…. It’s disgusting. We should have carte blanche, if we’re supposed to function properly! I can just see it: about two centuries from now, some friendly alien species comes through here and finds our present bunch in residence, and when the new guys ask the invaders what happened to the original species, they’ll say, “Oh, they died of insufficient cash flow.”
The commlink warbled at her. She slapped it, probably harder than necessary, and said, “Yeah, what?”
“Irhil comms, Commander,” said her secretary Joel’s voice. “Got your noon report.”
Oh God, is it that time already? I’ve got to eat something before I fall over. “Talk to me,” she said.
“Commander DeLonghis compliments, but he can’t make his own daily report until three. He’s down putting the boot in on some craft repairs.”
“That’s all right. What else?”
“Got someone down in the infirmary asking for you.”
“Joel!!”
“Says he wants to lodge a complaint, actually. Something about the quality of the food, or lack of it rather.”
“How long has he been conscious?”
“About two hours, it seems. Doc didn’t inform anybody until about half an hour ago. He wanted to run some diagnostics, he said, and didn’t want the whole planet stampeding in there to see him.”
�
�The doctor,” Jonelle said, getting up hurriedly and getting into her uniform jacket, “is going to get yelled at for not calling me first. You tell him so.”
“Yes, ma’am.“Joel’s voice was amused. “I think he was expecting it.”
“It’s good to have staff who’re prepared,” Jonelle said, and slapped the comms control to shut it down. Then she headed down the hall to see how the second-level hangars were coming along—and to hitch a ride with the next Skyranger heading down to Irhil M’Goun.
She heard his voice long before she saw him. It sounded somewhat cracked and rusty not much like the usual mellow rumble, and Jonelle paused just inside the infirmary’s office door to listen for a second before making her way back to the bed wing.
“What total crap. You’re just doing this to make me miserable.”
“I’m doing this,” said Gyorgi’s patient voice, “because it is seriously unwise to overstress the digestive system of someone who’s just had a skull trauma. I could explain the whole etiology of the problem to you, using short words and big color pictures, but I don’t have time. Let’s just say I have no desire to see you blow a blood vessel tonight, my evening off I might add, because I indulged your pathetic whining for chili. You can have chili in a couple of days. Right now, you drink the goddamn milkshake, or I’ll dump it in your lap.”
“I don’t like strawberry!”
“That’s not what you said in Rome,” Jonelle said, putting her head in the bed-wing door.
Ari lay there in the bed, supported at a low angle by a couple of pillows, and turned on her the only slightly changed expression of generalized loathing with which he had been regarding the pink milkshake on the bedside table. He looked thoroughly disgusted and uncomfortable, and she was very hard put not to burst out laughing.
“In Rome,” he said, “they were fresh strawberries, Commander. Unlike this wretched, artificial strawb-o-pap. Nothing that color can possibly be any good for you.”
“The protein content is quite adequate,” Gyorgi said, “for the temporary nourishment of the colonel’s allegedly superb physique, and much more than adequate for the sustenance of the minuscule brain inside that foam-rubber skull. Drink it, Ari, because that’s all you’re getting until dinner.” He headed out of the room.
