by Smith, Glenn
“Is there a problem, Commander?” Benny asked as they waited at the bottom of the stairs for the alpha team leader to signal the all clear.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Akagi answered. “We sometimes lose contact with the patrols when they head around to the other side of the planet. We have the best research equipment known to science at this outpost, but our comm equipment isn’t exactly state of the art, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
The team leader gave the signal, and as they started up the stairs Dylan asked, “You mean all the patrols headed to the other side of the planet at the same time?”
“Of course not,” Akagi answered. “That would leave our outpost wide open.”
“That’s my point.”
“Give my S-F commander a little credit, Lieutenant,” Akagi insisted.
They emerged from the tunnel, and with a wave of his hand Akagi pointed out that the alpha team members had fanned out and set up a hasty security perimeter among the scattered boulders. “See there?” he said. “He and his people know what they’re doing.”
“Then why can’t you make contact with them?” Benny persisted.
“Not all of the patrols have a direct link to the comm-center.”
“Why not?”
“I would guess it’s to prevent them from tying up the main comm-channels with a bunch of needless chatter, Captain,” Akagi answered somewhat impatiently. “We do need to keep those channels as clear as possible, you know. But that is only an assumption on my part. I let my S-F commander handle those things. That’s part of his job.”
“I hope you’re right,” Benny commented.
As they walked in silence the rest of the way, each man lost in his own thoughts, Dylan watched the Security Forces teams operate. The individual soldiers leapfrogged from one source of cover to the next while moving as a group at the pace he and his fellow officers had set, maintaining a secure perimeter around them at all times. Seeing them in action brought back memories of the people he’d served with and of the worlds he’d visited, and he realized, though certainly not for the first time, that he still missed it. He missed being a Military Policeman. He especially missed his Security Forces duties. He missed it more than ever before. He missed that even more than he missed being a Ranger. Why he suddenly missed it so much he couldn’t say. Perhaps because of what he was about to do. Yeah, that was probably it.
Life had been so much simpler back then. Sure, he’d seen his share of danger. He’d seen friends and comrades killed or wounded in action, some of them under his leadership. But he’d never had the fate of the entire human race resting on his shoulders before.
They rounded the last huge boulder, the canine-like head, and made the final right turn.
“Drop the field,” Akagi ordered the guard. The same corporal was still on duty. “Seems the lieutenant here will be going through after all.”
“Are you sure this time?” the guard asked sarcastically as he threw Dylan a dirty look.
“Just drop the goddamn field, Corporal!” Akagi shouted as he and Dylan approached it.
The guard complied without another word.
As the Security Forces fanned farther out and moved to secure the perimeter around the Portal, a sudden explosion rocked the site, hurling dirt and bits of stone and rubble into the air and knocking everyone to the ground.
Someone—Dylan felt sure it was one of the SF troops—screamed at the top of his lungs, “My leg! Oh God! They blew my fucking leg off!”
Dylan rose to his hands and knees and spotted the panic-stricken soldier lying on is back, screaming, writhing in pain and clutching his severed leg’s bloody stub in his hands. He started to stand, intending to rush to the man’s aid, but then saw that two of his comrades were already running toward him, so he dropped back to the ground, crawled to some cover, and stayed put, just as he knew they’d want him to. Just as he’d want his charges to, were he one of them.
“Lizards!” another of the soldiers shouted in warning as he fired his weapon to the north and east. His head exploded a second later, splattering the area around him with blood and brain tissue, but his finger held the trigger depressed and continued firing even as his body tumbled down over the rubble he’d been using as cover and fell to the dirt.
The rest of them opened fire in the direction he’d been shooting.
The Portal guard scrambled to his feet and dashed back to his console, but an almost blinding beam of green-white death stabbed through his chest and out through his back like a spear of lightning before he could raise the energy field. His torso disintegrated in an explosion of boiling blood and guts and bone fragments, leaving only his head and extremities to fall half-burned and lifeless to the ground.
Sirens blared to life all around them. Dylan broke cover and joined Benny and Akagi as they scrambled toward more effective protection—Akagi’s precious ruins were all there was—while the SF troops fought on.
“Those are the air raid alarms!” Akagi shouted over the din of battle as they jumped over a fallen column—Benny moved pretty good for a man his age, Dylan noted—and shrank into its shadow as best they could. “This must be a full scale invasion!”
The security post next to the Portal exploded, and potentially deadly bits of smoldering plastisteel shrapnel and transluminum rained down on them.
“I don’t think your patrols just cruised around the planet!” Benny shouted.
“Neither do I!” Akagi agreed, his eyes wide with fear. “We’ve got to make it back into the tunnels!”
“That’s a negative, Commander!” Benny contradicted. “The tunnels won’t be safe under aerial bombardment! Too much danger of a cave-in. Besides, we’ve got to send Dylan through the Portal before they destroy it!”
“How the hell are we going to send him through now?”
A distant but obviously massive explosion shook the ground beneath them.
A panicked call followed seconds later. “X-ray One to Commander Akagi! X-ray One to Commander Akagi! Come in, Commander!”
Akagi slapped his comm-link. “Go ahead!”
“Commander, we’re under attack! We’re being bombed from orbit! At least...”
Another explosion shook the ground and roared over the comm-link.
“Petrakos!” Akagi shouted.
“We’re still here, Commander, but I don’t know for how long! Half the barracks just went up and there’s a plasma leak in the...”
The largest explosion yet hit—a deafening blast that seemed to rock the entire planet. Ancient stone columns that had stood the passing of thousands of millennia crumbled and fell. Boulders tumbled from the tops of ancient rubble piles. Akagi’s comm-link went dead and the air raid sirens fell silent.
“Mister Petrakos!” Akagi shouted. “Crewman Petrakos, come in!” He slapped his link. “Petrakos, come in!” He slapped it again. “Petrakos!”
The ground rumbled yet again, but it felt different somehow—not like the explosions of incoming ordnance. Then it rumbled again. And again.
“Oh shit,” Benny said quietly.
“What?” Akagi asked urgently, glaring at him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“They’ve induced an Earthquake. We’ve got to send Dylan back now, Commander!” Benny advised him.
“What?”
“We’ve got to send Dylan through the Portal!” he shouted. “Right now!”
“But there’s a war going on out there, Captain! We’ll get killed!”
“That doesn’t matter anymore!” Benny shouted, suddenly angry. “Don’t you see what’s happening here?”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is all part of a full-scale interstellar invasion! Jupiter’s moons, the colonies, Earth, here! The goddamn Veshtonn are hitting us everywhere at once! We’ve got to send Dylan back before it’s too late! Before they blow this whole damn planet to bits!”
“Before they... But they have troops down here! They wouldn’t blast the
whole planet with their own troops on the surface!”
Benny looked him in the eye and said, “Don’t bet on it.”
Suddenly a cry like the voices of hundreds of crazed, screaming killers filled the air as the quick reaction force of SpecOps marines armed with heavy weapons poured out of the tunnel and charged the perimeter to join the fight. An entire platoon armed with heavy pulse rifles, crew-served machineguns, grenade launchers... The clamor of war grew deafening, forcing the officers to hunker down even lower and cover their ears. Akagi, Benny, and before long even Dylan found themselves screaming just to compensate.
And then, less than a minute that seemed like an eternity after the QRF had arrived, the battle ended and peace returned. Only the cries of the wounded calling for medics remained.
Dylan broke cover first and stood up, potentially exposing himself to certain death, but nothing happened. “Looks like it’s all over,” he said as he watched some of the marines fill the gaps in the perimeter while others tended to their wounded comrades.
Benny and Akagi stood with him just as the QRF’s platoon leader jogged up to make his report. “They bugged out, Commander,” he said. “We probably took out close to a hundred of them before they could escaper, though.”
“It was a ruse, Commander,” Benny interjected.
“What are you talking about?” Akagi asked him as the platoon leader looked on.
“The Veshtonn never turn tail and run from a fight they intend to win,” Benny explained. “They were nothing more than a distraction.”
“Why would they want to...”
“So we’d stand and fight instead of evacuating?” the platoon leader asked.
Dylan didn’t need to hear any more. He knew exactly what they needed to do. “I’ll meet you by the Portal,” he said, heading in that direction even before he finished speaking.
“Right now, Commander,” Benny said to Akagi. He grabbed the commander by the arm before he had a chance to follow on his own and pulled him along beside him.
And then the enemy resumed their aerial bombardment. Benny and Akagi charged ahead as one pile of ancient ruins after another exploded all around them. Clumps of dirt and shards of shrapnel and rubble pelted them as they ran. With no more enemy ground troops left to fight, the surviving marines and Security Forces troops pulled back and scrambled for whatever cover they could find.
Benny cried out when a large chunk of stone struck the side of his head and knocked him to the ground. Dylan heard his cry and started back to help him, but Benny shouted, “No, Dylan! Go! Before it’s too late!”
Dylan hesitated for one more brief moment—blood was pouring down the side of his new friend’s cheek—but he knew that even minor head wounds tended to bleed a lot. Benny would be all right. His mission remained his highest priority. His only priority.
He ran back up the ramp with a newly determined Akagi hot on his heels. He stepped out into the center of the Portal and Akagi went right to work. The mechanism’s bright flash and loud rumble came and went but were for the most part lost amidst the explosions that surrounded them and continued threatening them, and the steady hum that followed never had the slightest chance of being heard.
Akagi’s fingers sped over the controls like those of a concert pianist’s. He touched his hand to the destination symbol and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Pel’Ka! Tre’Qoom boshe’ta vasim! Tusa! Kapek e Tor’Rosha vej Rosha, Pen’to rhim con win, vet wona’sa torsh’kava vo dusin, vet zimta kajj wen subeg ga vol revi!”
Dylan stared at his handcomp as the ancient ruins continued disintegrating around him.
Double digits.
“Come on,” he quietly coaxed the timer.
A massive explosion rocked the entire area. Akagi fell against the console but somehow managed to hold his hands in place. Dylan glanced over at him as dirt and pebbles rained down on him and saw a rivulet of blood flowing down the right side of his face.
Eighties, seventies, sixties...
More explosions.
Fifties, forties, thirties...
A blinding flash far beyond the horizon, and then a glow that dimmed ever so slowly. No mistaking what that was. The Veshtonn were using nuclear weapons!
Or something even worse.
Twenties...
The shock wave would be on them in seconds.
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen...
Dylan started doubting that he was going to make it.
Ten, nine...
No chance. He was going to die right there. They were all going to die.
Seven, six...
He was going to burn to a cinder and vaporize in an instant.
Four...
He could hear the thunderous wave of death approaching.
“Here it comes,” Akagi said with calm resignation.
Dylan looked over at him, standing there and staring at the approaching harbinger of his doom, having already surrendered to the inevitable.
Three...
Dylan turned and looked that way as well and just watched the swirling, billowing black wall of oncoming death.
Two...
At least it would be a quick death.
One...
“Here I come, Lord.”
Zero.
Interlude
Several Months Later
Wearing his medal-heavy dress grays for what he knew was most likely the last time, Vice-Admiral Icarus Hansen—soon to be the former Vice-Admiral Icarus Hansen, he strongly suspected—sat straight and tall in the filled-to-capacity military courtroom’s defendant’s chair, lost in his own quiet thoughts as he waited for the panel of judges to return to the bench and pass sentence against him. His court-martial proceedings had dragged on for more than four months thanks to all the motions, countermotions, and other legal maneuvers the attorney’s for both sides had entered and pulled along the way. He found it all pretty remarkable when he thought about it, considering that he’d pled guilty to every single charge that had been brought against him and had pretty much thrown himself on the mercy of the court.
But now, finally, it was all coming to an end. His trial and everything that had led up to it had dominated nearly every aspect of his life almost since the moment he was rescued and he’d quickly grown tired of the whole thing. But at least he still had his life. That in itself was nothing short of a miracle given the enormous size and scope of the Veshtonn invasion—that Heather had survived as well was truly a miracle indeed—and despite the fact that he was probably going to spend the rest of it in prison, he supposed he should be grateful to be alive.
No one, not even those few individuals who’d already known that the end of the human race was all but inevitable, had seen the attack coming. Not that soon. Not the commanders in the field, not Earth Federation President Shakhar, not Chairman Brian MacLeod or the members of his Earth Security Council. Not even he himself. Especially not once the tide of battle in the Rosha’Kana system had turned and the Veshtonn had been forced to retreat, thanks in no small part to the creative tactical maneuvering carried out by the starcruiser Rapier under the command of now Fleet Captain Erickson. Who could have guessed, given the losses the enemy had begun to suffer in that embattled system by that time, that their gradual retreat had actually been a desperate redeployment of forces in preparation for a massive assault against the Earth and her solar system?
The answer, unfortunately, had been ‘no one.’ Coalition commanders in-theater had been convinced that the enemy was simply regrouping for a counterattack and had redeployed their own remaining forces to defend against it. Solfleet Central Command had even deployed additional ships to reinforce the line, leaving the solar system inadequately defended. As a result of that gross miscalculation, Earth’s colonies beyond the asteroid belt had been annihilated and the inhabited moons of Jupiter and Saturn had been pulverized before anyone had even seen the enemy coming. The colonies on Mars and Luna had likewise been bombed to rubble, though a few hundred colonists had somehow manag
ed to survive long enough to be rescued. Mandela Station had been reduced to scrap, but again several hundred personnel had survived and had later been rescued from those compartments that hadn’t either fallen to the Earth, burned up in the atmosphere, or tumbled off into space never to be found. The enemy had even landed on Earth herself and had proceeded to destroy one city after another while every man, woman, and child who could do so fought desperately to preserve of the human race.
All totaled almost nine-hundred million people had lost their lives. And yet, perhaps by some miraculous act of God, of the billions who’d survived the initial bombardment, several millions had managed to fight back and had eventually banded together with the remnants of Solfleet and each nation’s own military forces in Earth’s defense, and had saved their mother world one more time.
Yes, mankind had survived...again...and his survival had come to be referred to in the news media as ‘the first silver lining to the dark cloud of events’ that had occurred. The second, of course, being the continued survival of the Tor’Kana race. By withdrawing from Rosha’Kana, the enemy had handed that system back to the Coalition, and those Tor’Kana who still survived had quickly returned to their world. Only time would tell if there were enough of them left alive to successfully repopulate that world, but at least they had a fighting chance. Had they died out completely the Coalition they had founded would likely have died with them, and not one of the member worlds would have stood a chance against the Veshtonn alone.
None of that made any difference to Liz, of course. She was still just as dead. ‘Armed and dangerous,’ the news services had described her as after the fact. A military tribunal had declared the shooting—had declared her death—justified. She’d been buried in her hometown outside Kansas City. Karen had stayed there after the funeral to spend time with their families.
Despite the fact that she could be a real pain in the ass sometimes, Hansen was going to miss Liz. She’d been one of the most motivated and dedicated officers he’d ever worked with. She certainly hadn’t deserved what had happened to her.
For a while after everything calmed down Hansen had held on to one small hope. The hope that Lieutenant Graves might do something, anything, to change it all. But then the official word had come down through channels that Station X-Ray One had been vaporized in another Veshtonn attack with all hands lost. The ancient Tor’Roshan Portal that he’d ordered Graves to travel back in time through had been destroyed, and no sign or signal that he’d made it into the past had ever been identified.
