General Marc J. Alan, as quoted in Maria Bartley-Rand,
Flower of Life: Journey Beyond Protoculture
Since the surprise departure of The Homeward Bound, five months earlier, commo tech Paul Rawley, of Space Station Liberty had made a habit of speaking with the Zentraedi at least once during each of his shifts. Curious to know if Dana Sterling had executed a spacefold, Tay Wav'vir had initiated contact only hours after Wolff's ship had jumped; and from that first communication, a kind of radio friendship had formed between Rawley and the Micronized aliens. This had made it easier for him to accept the presence of the factory satellite in Earthspace, despite his continuing to regard it as a beacon for the Invid swarm.
The cloud, too—the so-called Sensor Nebula—was still lurking out by Mars orbit, looking from Earth like a postage stamp-size blemish of golden light. But the enemy itself had yet to be heard from, and everyone had begun to wonder if Dana Sterling's controversial leave-taking hadn't resulted in some extraordinary occurrence in the far reaches of the Fourth Quadrant of known space.
Not that the wondering had had any effect on Earth's war footing. In
fact, the Defense Force had succeeded in reconditioning several Tristar- class battlewagons, and rearming a dozen frigates and scores of Logans, Alphas, Betas, Veritechs, Hovertanks, A-JACs, and other mecha. Most of those, however, were being kept in concealment on the moon or on secret bases downside. And even the fleet's spaceborne destroyers were separated by great distances, so as not to present a visible threat to the Invid.
Nevertheless, command's battle plan remained unclear. At times it appeared that a limited bombardment of Earth would be tolerated before the fleet would be directed to counterattack; but at other times—chiefly when Southern Crossers were asked—one got the impression that any act of aggression would meet with an immediate reply. The inconsistency troubled Rawley—whose chronic anxiety was responding only sporadically to medication—and it was frequently the subject of his conversations with Tay Wav'vir.
"You must cease your whining and honor your imperative," Tay was telling him during one seemingly interminable shift in January 2033. The feed was audio only, and Rawley often had to strain to hear her. "After all, Paul Rawley, you are our eyes and ears on the Solar System. We need you to alert us to the swarm's arrival, so that we may fly to the fore."
The Zentraedi females had been armed, after a fashion, with six Battlepods that had been found moldering in a warehouse north of Detroit City.
"What can you hope to accomplish with six Battlepods?" Rawley asked. "Distinction."
It was ground they had covered before, but no matter. Rawley was about to pursue the argument when the display screens at his station turned snow white. Tay picked up on his silence and asked the cause.
"Some kind of system glitch. The screens are white with interference." "Pure white like the snow that falls in your northern climes?"
"Exactly like that. I'm going to—"
"Place your station on full alert," Tay interrupted. "The Regis has come. Empowered by the Flower of Life, she folds her brood through space-time
by an effort of sheer will. Place your station on full alert, Rawley. The War has arrived."
Rawley's trembling hand opened a line to station control. "My screens are down," he started to say.
"We're working on it," the voice in his ear replied.
Rawley swallowed hard. "It's the Invid—they've defolded."
"Rawley, take it easy," the voice said after a moment. "A spacefold doesn't knock out every scanner on the station."
"I'm telling you, it's the Invid! Put the station on alert and notify ALUCE and Denver." His hand slammed down on the early warning keys. But no sirens answered him. "Put the station on alert!" he screamed.
The display screens had turned dazzling white and a circular, albescent glow was now visible through the observation bays, throwing the nearby factory satellite into stark silhouette.
Rawley's left hand fumbled for his vial of medication as a torchlike beam struck the factory satellite on its far side, instantly annihilating it. Then the beam sundered itself into more than a dozen curving combers that streaked downward to umbrella the Earth.
All but one, which was surging straight toward Liberty.
Within hours, Earth's major cities were lanced by the harnessed power of the Invid swarm. Contrary to what had been said, outlined, and sometimes promised, Defense Force command—in the moment it learned of the destruction of Space Station Liberty—ordered the fleet to counterattack. Teams of mecha launched from their places of concealment to engage the russet Pincer Units disgorged by the swarm's clam-shaped troop transports. The skies crackled with lightning and resounded with fulminations.
Incensed by the countless fiery deaths of her children, the Regis retaliated. Additional cities were targeted and reduced to rubble; then towns and villages; then anything that smacked of resistance: passenger jets and cargo ships, tractor trailers and heavy equipment, bullet trains and city buses . . . She descended on the Starchildren's colony like a wrathful demon,
killing thousands in one fell swoop and demolishing the ship that was to have launched the following week.
Earth was pounded and pulverized, rendered numb by the attack and the swiftness with which the swarm constructed their hives. Not only in the Northlands—whose tortured mid-Atlantic region was to house the Regis's sprawling, central-hive complex—but throughout the Southlands, and across the face of Europe and Asia, and southward into India, Indonesia, and Australia. Even Japan wasn't excluded. South of Tokyo, on the flanks of Mount Fuji, where they found fields of cultivated Flowers waiting for them, the Invid built several small stilt hives. Though they chose not to disturb the subterranean city nearby, treating it as if it were the nest of some innocuous indigenous species . . .
Jonathan Wolff was in Brasília when the first enemy wave struck, but he made it safely back to Valhalla, or "Soldiertown," as the place had come to be called, where John Carpenter, the Wolff Pack, and hundreds of recruits were dug in, in anticipation of an attack that never came.
Months later, Carpenter would make a daring flight to Tokyo, returning to Valhalla with Louie Nichols, who helped reestablish contact with ALUCE, which had not been heard from since the first hours of the invasion. Plans were eventually devised for a coordinated attack on the central-hive complex—termed Reflex Point—to be led by General Nobutu's ALUCE forces, with support from Valhalla and the demoralized remnants of Aldershot and Satori's battalions.
But the attack would fail miserably, and would constitute the last action by Earth's ground forces for the remainder of 2032. Worse, the defeat would result in an irreparable breach in Wolff's forces, owing to Wolff's absence during the attack.
For days earlier, Wolff had learned that his wife and son were thought to be prisoners in a hive that had been constructed near the raging oil fires outside Dallas. Terry Weston—one of the few survivors of the Starchildren's colony—would die in Wolff's raid on that hive. The assault, too, proved futile, in that Catherine and Johnny Wolff had already been moved to Reflex
Point.
Carpenter would never forgive Wolff for putting his personal needs first. He would decamp for Portland and amass his own band of guerrilla fighters, known as the Splinters. Satori, too, would break ties with Wolff, withdrawing her support for Valhalla, which would slowly come to mirror the increasingly dissipated state of its disheartened commander.*
And as for Louie Nichols, he would remain in Valhalla for close to three months, returning to Tokyo soon after he had monitored a burst transmission from a Commander Gardner of the Mars Division. A fleet of REF ships had defolded from Tirol and were decelerating toward Earth.
In his brief communiqué, Gardner would not only make mention of admirals Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes, General Gunther Reinhardt, and Dr. Emil Lang, but Dana Sterling and "the intrepid crew of The Homeward Bound."
The former 15th had succeeded.
And there was no s
topping them now.
*Satori wouldn't surface again until after the war, as head of the so-called Homunculi Movement, although there would be evidence to suggest that the movement's leader was an imposter, and that the real Nova Satori was a secret though guiding force in Earth's Reconstruction.
End RTUCN.COM
Before the Invid Storm Page 19
