“It should be me,” Reyes said, grimly observing the chaos.
“With respect, Chief,” O’Brien said, “no fucking way. You’ve got to see this launch through. I’ll try to buy you a few minutes.”
“He’s right,” Helena said. “We’ll buy you some time.”
“We?” O’Brien asked.
“Don’t argue,” Helena snapped. “He’s my son, too.”
Reyes bit her lip and gave a curt nod. “Go.”
O’Brien ran downstairs, with Helena close behind. Outside, the sound of gunfire was deafening. “I’ll coordinate the defense at the roadblock,” he shouted, as they exited the building. “See if you can rally the runaways.”
Helena looked like she might argue but then nodded. “Good luck,” she said.
“You too,” O’Brien said.
Helena turned and ran toward the Iron Dragon, which towered over them on the launch pad about two hundred yards away. The launch command center, the water tower and several other buildings were clustered at the far west end of the island, on the other side of the launch pad. The Eidejelans who weren’t part of the mission control team or the auxiliary defense force were packed into these buildings, and many of the undisciplined defenders had apparently decided to join them. It was an understandable reaction: the Eidejelans’ defense plan had gone to hell, and it was pretty clear the roadblock wasn’t going to hold the attackers for long. The riflemen had gone to be with their families, either to put up a last-ditch defense or simply to be with them one last time. Helena’s job was to remind them that their sacrifice was for nothing if the Iron Dragon didn’t launch. O’Brien watched her vanish into the cloud of steam—actually hydrogen and oxygen that were boiling away from the propellant tanks—that drifted away from the base of the rocket. Even now, Thorvald and Freya waited in the capsule for Alma to give the command to launch. Dark clouds still hung overhead and the wind continued, but O’Brien knew that it if looked like the Indians were going to overrun the barrier, Alma would order the launch anyway. He intended to buy her as much time as he could.
He turned ran past the steel storage sheds clustered around the observation tower to the main road. The roadblock was only about a hundred yards away, stretching some fifty yards to the north and the south across the narrow strip of flat ground connecting the launch site with the rest of the island. On either side, the ground fell off quickly to steep rocky terrain that continued to the ocean. Posts with razor wire had been strewn all the way to the water, but it was hardly necessary: the rocks were already as effective a barrier as the fence. As moved quickly up the road, the sound of gunfire grew even louder.
The defenders manning the roadblock were doing an admirable job, but there were too few of them, and they were too closely clustered together: attackers were climbing over in three different places, where the defense was weaker. So far, the Indian riflemen had hung back, directing their fire at the planes passing overhead; only men armed with spears and tomahawks rushed the barrier. None had made it more than a few yards down the road because the defenders were dropping them almost as fast as they cleared the barrier, but this sort of defense was inefficient and dangerous: the riflemen had to turn to fire at men to the sides and behind them, sometimes firing right over the heads of their comrades. They couldn’t afford to lose men to friendly fire.
From the observation tower, the solution had seemed simple: the riflemen needed to be more evenly spaced along the barrier, with more men assigned to the gaps. But that meant pulling some men off the barrier momentarily, and on the ground it was harder to tell which men could be spared. They all seemed to be constantly engaged with the enemy. Without a respite, it would be impossible to reorganize them.
As if in response to his thoughts, the P-51 approached from behind, the hum of its motor barely audible over the near-constant thunder of gunfire. Glancing over his shoulder, he guessed he had about three seconds before Michael opened fire. After that, he would have maybe another five seconds to take advantage of the disruption of the attackers caused by the machinegun fire. He turned back to the roadblock, mentally identifying the weak points in their defense and the riflemen who would fill them. As the P-51 opened fire, tearing into the ranks of the attackers just on the other side of the barrier, O’Brien ran to the first man. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Move twenty yards to your left!” he shouted. The man turned, staring wide-eyed at him for a moment, and then nodded. O’Brien moved to the next rifleman—actually a young female engineer. “Ten yards to your left!” He shouted. “Yes, sir!” she shouted, and moved to where he was pointing. The P-51, having left a line of dozens of corpses in its wake, was banking for another approach. More Indians were about to move in, but for a moment there was a pause in the onslaught. As O’Brien continued to move along the barrier, barking orders, he noted with relief that his plan seemed to be working: the Indians continued to swarm the fence, but the attackers were now stopping them before they could climb over. As he approached the last man who was out of position, the man—just a boy, really—turned and fired, hitting O’Brien in the right shoulder. Stunned, he stumbled and fell to the ground.
“I’m sorry, sir!” the boy cried. O’Brien recognized him as an engineer who worked in the transistor plant. “I didn’t know it was you!”
“Ten yards to your right!” O’Brien barked, but the sound of gunfire drowned out his words.
“What?” the boy shouted.
O’Brien pointed, but it was already too late: an Indian had already vaulted over the corpse of one of his comrades who had fallen on the razor wire, and two more were close behind. The closest rifleman was already firing as fast as she could, dropping attackers within a few yards of the fence. As the P-51 came in from the south, the Indians surged forward, hoping to get close enough to the defenders to avoid the machineguns’ wrath. Several died trying to get over the barrier, killed by a bullet or sliced to pieces by the razor wire, but each corpse man slumped over the fence provided another entry point. The P-51 opened up again, tearing a gap in the attackers a few yards from the fence, but it no longer made any difference: the attackers closed the gap almost immediately, and the defenders were too few to keep them from overrunning the roadblock.
Still half in a daze, O’Brien sat on the ground watching Indians vault over the fence. The boy stood a few feet away, firing wildly at the attackers, while the other riflemen held their positions, killing as many of the Indians as they could as they approached. In the distance, O’Brien caught sight of the P-51 banking in the distance, black smoke pouring from its tail. One of the riflemen had tagged the plane with a lucky shot. Between the sounds of desperate gunfire and Indian war cries, O’Brien heard the P-51’s engine sputtering. He became aware of a sharp pain—not in his shoulder, but in his heart. He’d never expected to survive this battle, but he had hoped not to see his own son die.
As Michael lined up the P-51 for one final approach from the west, three Indians encircled the boy standing over O’Brien. He killed two with the rifle, but the last one thrusted his spear into the boy’s belly just below his ribcage. He jerked the spear out and the boy fell, limp, to the ground. Gunshots rang out all around them, and Indians were now pouring over the fence by the dozen. As the Indian with the spear approached, the P-51 roared overhead, so low that the Indian threw his hands in front of his face and dropped to the ground. The plane crashed into the posts behind them, obliterating the roadblock and plowing into the attacking force on the other side. The plane hit the runway and skidded another hundred yards, its propellers chewing up flesh and asphalt as it went, until it erupted into flames halfway to the hangar. It left a trail of carnage in its wake.
The Indian who had impaled the boy got to his feet, and O’Brien, still on the ground, backed away, favoring his wounded shoulder. The man closed the distance between them, but as he raised the spear over his shoulder, a gunshot tore into his chest and he fell to the ground. Turning, O’Brien saw Helena, holding a rifle. Not far behind her we
re at least a hundred other riflemen. As the riflemen took up positions across the road, she helped O’Brien to his feet and they took cover behind a nearby shed. The defenders had driven back the Indians for the moment, but now the Indian riflemen were advancing. They moved to the remnants of the roadblock and took cover, opening fire on the defenders on the road. The defenders were forced to flee behind the few structures in the area that offered some cover.
“Were you shot?” Helena shouted, as he sank to the ground against the wall of the shed. Gunshots sounded all around them.
“It’s fine,” O’Brien said. He hadn’t even looked at the wound. He knew it was probably bad, but he barely noticed the pain. “Michael….”
“I know,” Helena said.
O’Brien closed his eyes, and tears streamed down his cheeks. The gunshots were sporadic now, as there were only a few available firing positions with any cover. Most of the defenders were pinned down behind one of the buildings like Helena and O’Brien.
“I guess the good news,” O’Brien said after a moment, “is that none of us are likely to survive this.” There was no denying it: they might hold off the riflemen for a while, but there were another three thousand Indians with spears and tomahawks behind them. If the Cho-ta’an ordered another all-out assault, there was no way they could withstand it. They’d get off a few shots, but the Indians would overwhelm them with sheer numbers. O’Brien shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“For getting you involved in all of this. This ridiculous project, the sky ship. If I hadn’t shown up at your father’s house in Constantinople thirty years ago…”
“No, O’Brien,” Helena said sternly. “Don’t you dare apologize for that. Because of you, I got to be part of the most amazing project that humans have ever undertaken. And Michael got to fly. Do you know how rare that is, for a human being to fly? It was the one thing he wanted, he happened to be in the one place where he could do it. Human beings won’t get another chance for nine hundred years. No, don’t you dare apologize for what you put in motion, O’Brien.”
O’Brien nodded. She was right, of course. Whatever happened now, it had been a wonderful adventure, and they had done it together.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, after a moment.
O’Brien listened, but he didn’t hear anything. “It’s quiet,” he said.
Helena nodded. The only sound was that of wounded men moaning in the distance. As she got to her feet, one of the riflemen came around the corner. “Ma’am,” the young man said, “they’ve stopped shooting.”
“Out of ammo?” O’Brien asked hopefully.
Helena was dubious. “Then why aren’t they rushing us? They’ve got the numbers.”
“Spaceman!” shouted a raspy voice in the distance.
A shiver went own O’Brien’s spine. He met Helena’s eyes. “Cho-ta’an.”
“Spaceman!” shouted the voice again. “Come out where I can see you. It’s time to end this.” The Cho-ta’an spoke in Frankish.
O’Brien struggled to his feet.
“Oh, no you don’t,” said Helena. “If he wants to surrender, he can surrender to me.”
O’Brien laughed, and then winced at the pain. “Always the optimist,” he said. “He wants to talk to a spacemen. My crew started this. Let me finish it.”
Helena looked him in the eyes and then nodded. She kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t let it be for nothing,” she said.
He wrapped his left arm around her, gave her a squeeze, and then kissed her on the forehead. “Be right back,” he said. He let her go and walked around the edge of the building to face the Cho-ta’an.
Chapter Fifty
Half-expecting to be cut down by a hail of bullets, O’Brien closed his eyes as he made his way to the road. When his foot hit asphalt and there had not been any gunshots, he opened them and continued down the road toward the remnants of the roadblock. Hiding behind the sheet metal buildings around him was what was left of the Eidejelan defense force. In the distance, the wreckage of his son’s plane still burned on the runway, and clustered around it were several hundred Indians armed with spears and tomahawks. Beyond them were thousands more.
As he neared the scattered debris from the roadblock, a tall, lean figure dressed in a gray cloak emerged from behind a group of Indians. So at last he would meet the Cho-ta’an, face to face.
O’Brien stopped on the road some thirty yards away from the Cho-ta’an, clutching his wounded arm. Warm blood trickled down his fingers, dripping to the bullet-riddled asphalt. All around him were the mutilated bodies of dead and dying Indians.
The Cho-ta’an came closer, stopping only a few paces in front of O’Brien, and removed his hood to reveal his alien features. He was flanked by a dozen riflemen.
“Spaceman,” the Cho-ta’an rasped, a note of satisfaction in its voice. “My name is Tharres. It is good to meet you at last.”
“Dan O’Brien. You’re trespassing.”
“This island belongs to me now. It’s rather sad, isn’t it? With your knowledge, you could have changed history, and instead you’ve been reduced to hiding on one tiny little island.”
“I was talking about the planet,” O’Brien said.
The Cho-ta’an laughed its choking laugh. “We are both strangers to this planet, Dan O’Brien,” it said. “You have no more right to be here than I do. It’s time to end this absurd game, don’t you think? It took me a while to understand what your people were up to. Trying to change the future without changing history. It was always a fool’s errand.”
“Maybe,” O’Brien said. “But we had to try.”
“And I had to stop you.”
“Why? Your race won’t even encounter humans for another thousand years. Why do you care so much about winning a war that hasn’t even started yet?”
“Do you have children, Dan O’Brien?”
“I did, yes,” O’Brien said. Two that I will never see again, and one who just died in front of my eyes.
“Ah, then you know the pain of a father losing a child. I have had seven children. Did you know that Cho-ta’an are hermaphrodites? We cycle between male, female, and asexual. Ordinarily, Cho-ta’an assigned to military roles are given hormones to keep us in the asexual mode. It allows us a certain singularity of focus that humans would not understand. However, my supply of hormones ran out forty-eight Earth years ago. Do you understand what that means?”
“You’ve been cycling between sexes for forty-eight years. So what?”
“It means that for forty-eight years, I have been experiencing the pain of losing seven children, first as a mother, and then as a father, over and over, for forty-eight years. Under natural conditions, we spend a year in each state, but a year on Yavesk is approximately seven Earth years long. This gives us time to prepare for the… emotional changes that occur as a result of the hormonal shift. On Earth, however, there is no buffer. When I am about to adapt to one state, I begin to transition to the next. My children were killed by your kind, in a bombing raid on peaceful planet that the IDL considered a strategic target. Two years ago, I was mourning my children’s death as a mother. Last year, I mourned them as a father. As of three months ago, I am the monster that mothers and fathers depend on to avenge their children. You ask why I care about winning a war that has not yet begun, but it doesn’t matter to me whether my children died a thousand years ago or will die a thousand years in the future. I am a being whose one overriding biological drive is to punish those responsible for their deaths.”
“Then this isn’t a negotiation,” O’Brien said. “You intend to kill us all.”
“On the contrary,” Tharres said. “My singularity of purpose does not blind me to reality. This is not personal, Dan O’Brien. No one else has to die. The fact is that both the past and the future are on my side. Put an end to this project. Leave this island and I will let you live. Let history take its course.”
“Does history taking its course invo
lve you setting yourself up as the god-emperor of North America?”
The Cho-ta’an laughed again. “I have told my army I would lead them to great riches in these islands. Soon they will realize that I have nothing to offer them, and they will turn on me. You were right, you see. I did not understand it at first, why you spent your time sneaking around Europe rather than trying to change history to give your race an advantage in the war. But after fifty years on this planet, I see that what is done cannot be undone.”
“Why are you trying so hard to interfere with a project you’re convinced is doomed?”
“I acknowledge there is a small chance someone could have reached space prior to the twentieth century without it having been recorded. I intend to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“How do you know we won’t try again?”
“To launch another rocket?” the Cho-ta’an asked. “Your oil well has been destroyed. My army is setting fire to your factories. And if I’m not mistaken, you’ve lost all your fighting men and about half of your engineers already. You and whatever other spacemen are still alive are reaching the end of your natural lifespan, as am I. My comrades are already dead. Try again if you like, in Iceland or some other remote island. I won’t stop you. All I ask is that you abandon this project, here and now. After that, what happens happens.”
O’Brien considered the Cho-ta’an’s offer. He knew that Cho-ta’an didn’t live much longer than humans, even under ideal circumstances, and this specimen had already survived for fifty years in a hostile environment. If Tharres really was the last one alive on Earth, then resistance to Pleiades would end with the alien’s death. On the other hand, Tharres was right: Reyes and O’Brien wouldn’t live that much longer either, and they’d lost a sizable fraction of their engineers. Even if they regrouped somewhere, the inertia of the past was against them. This had been their one chance to find a loophole in history, and maybe it had always been a foolish dream.
The Voyage of the Iron Dragon Page 35
