Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  “We thought—” The newscaster shook his head abruptly, desperately, and stopped. Everyone knew what everyone had thought. He took a deep, deep breath. Again. And again, hyperventilating. “They destroyed the station. No warning. They fired a nuclear missile.”

  The face was replaced by an image of the Cascade. A round port opened in its hull. Gases billowed. A metal cylinder appeared, moving slowly, faster, faster yet, streaking invisibly toward its target.

  “They saw it coming. We saw it coming, with our surveillance cameras. There was no warning.”

  The image cut off in a burst of static. The screen was black.

  Sunglow had turned away from the VC, back to the window. Now she said, “Look.”

  Dotson looked first at her. Yes, her ears were also flat, and the fur of her neck and shoulders and back was beginning to rise, increasing her apparent bulk. The harness she wore now cut deep fissures in her outline.

  He looked out the window, out and up and deep into blackest night, and he could feel his own pelt responding to her example, to the hormonal surges of anger, fear, and panic, to the need for all-out battle. A prickling beneath his tail announced the discharge of scent a moment before his nose confirmed the news. His lips curled back involuntarily to expose his teeth. He gasped.

  The glints that were the human fleet’s nine ships were brighter, spouting incandescent flame, moving.

  “They’re moving now,” said the VC’s voice. The picture was still absent. “Coming down, out of orbit. We don’t know what they plan.”

  They were bringing doom. Bringing the doom the Gypsies themselves had feared and fled. Bringing the doom of which the Founder himself had warned.

  “We can’t run, can we?” asked Sunglow quietly. No one answered.

  The image showed the Bonami at the landing field.

  “We’ve tried to ask them. But they’re not taking calls. Not in space. Not down here.”

  One ship cut its engines, and then another. Another. They kept on moving, diverging now. Another. They had picked targets on the ground below them, and they were coming, coming … Dotson wished he could measure and compute their trajectories. Different trajectories, he was sure. Different targets.

  Were any of them heading for the valley, the Worldtree? For him and Sunglow?

  He could not tell, and if he could, there was nothing he could do.

  One arm crept around Sunglow’s back even as she clutched at his own chest. They leaned against each other, ears still back, fur erect, breathing hard, their nostrils filled with the scent of their fear, staring at the crowd outside, at the sky, at moving sparks and course correction flames and distant stars.

  That crowd outside was silent now, silent except for the rhythmic sough of hyperventilation: “Huh! Huh! Huh!” Hands clutched at hands and shoulders, contact, saying, “We are together.” Every individual in the street stared upward, teeth bared, ears back, fur pushing out their boundaries. Even the children, their eyes wide with terror, bristled in the vain hope that they could bluff their foe into retreating, head down, tail between its legs, gone to seek some easier prey.

  But humans didn’t have tails, did they?

  And why did Dotson think they didn’t bluff worth a damn?

  The starship glints were gone, occluded by night and world, rooftops and bluffs. Even Worldtree and Worldtree Center.

  “We’ll fight, won’t we?” said Gypsy Blossom.

  Of course they would. The teeth and bristling pelts on every Rac in sight insisted there was no other option. They could not flee as the Gypsies had. They could not hide among the stars. And no truce was possible with creatures who hated and feared and refused to talk.

  “What with?” asked Sunglow.

  The waiting Racs still did not move. The humans were coming. It was only a matter of time.

  The only question was, “What then?”

  And every Rac thought he or she knew the answer.

  The first missiles marched a line of fire across Worldtree City above the bluffs, through neighborhoods of single-family homes and apartment buildings, through parks and factories, through night-vacant schools. Behind them came the thundering roar and shriek of spacecraft in atmosphere, rockets thrusting to balance against the tug of gravity. More missiles struck in the valley, tearing craters where moss and honeysuckle grew, stripping roofs from Worldtree Center’s libraries and laboratories and offices and halls of worship, crumbling walls, striking, striking, striking even in the ring of buildings nearest the bluffs.

  They could no longer hear any voice attempting to narrate the progress of catastrophe. The VC set was silent, its screen dark. Every broadcast station on the planet had surely died in the first moments of the bombardment. So had the power stations, for the only lights now visible in the night were the fires that bloomed in gaudy flame and pungent smoke and noise and noise and noise. Rubble rained from the sky and broken masonry flowed across the pavements. Shrapnel flew and struck and sliced into both walls and flesh. Sound was boom and crash and scream of pain and terror.

  Few died in the collapsing buildings, for nearly every Rac who lived in the valley was out of doors, watching the sky and wondering when the attack would come. Until the moment when they knew.

  Thousands died in the streets, struck down by bricks and shingles and beams of wood and steel. The gutters ran red with their blood.

  More thousands died from the blows of shock waves emanating from nearby explosions. Others died of simple shock, unable to accept what their senses were telling them.

  “It’s gone.” Sunglow’s voice was stunned. The window frame before her was empty, its glass shivered and fallen to the street below as a million dagger shards, but that was not what she meant. Beyond, visible past the wreckage that had once been a street of homes and shops and dormitories, lit by flame from the valley and the city, was the Worldtree. Around its feet were a few small buildings. Old structures. The oldest, built of massive stone, used now for little more than storage.

  Almost all the rest of Worldtree Center was rubble.

  One end of the Great Hall was among the few exceptions.

  Something flickered in the sky. A flash of light stunned their night vision. An explosion shook their building. There were creaks and groans, the shrieks of tearing wood and steel.

  The wall before them fell away in dust and rubble.

  The floor tilted.

  The structure that had sheltered them so far snapped and popped and leaned.

  Dotson swore and grabbed his mate, but there was nothing he could do but try to balance on the floor beneath him as it thrust from the collapsing building and rode a wave of rubble into the street. But the floor flexed and buckled and cracked, and when it struck the broken wall across the street, its sudden lurching halt threw them tumbling and sliding across the shattered wood.

  There was blood on his hands when Dotson rose to his knees. He studied his palms and wrists in the fireglow. Splinters.

  “Sunglow?” Where … ? There. Sobbing. Sitting on one haunch, the other dark and shiny-wet with her own blood. Plucking fragments of flooring from her hide.

  “I’m all right.”

  There was no sign of Gypsy Blossom until he looked toward the pile of rubble that had stopped their ride. She was tumbled against a block of masonry, but she was alive. One leg was bent, the other straight. Her arms were groping for a grip on something, anything, solid and unmoving and trustworthy.

  “No!” Dotson seized her hands and winced at the strength of her grip. “Don’t move. We’ll carry you.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  “But your pot’s broken.” A few ceramic shards still clung to the dirt surrounding her feet. The rest were scattered in the rubble ahead.

  “I’m bleeding too. But that’s just splinters, jus
t like you.” She pulled against his hands until she was sitting up. Then she bent and began to paw the dirt from her feet, combing her fingers through her roots. As the roots came free, they coiled and retracted to form a neat ruff around her calves. “It feels right,” she said. “Like it was time anyway.”

  Sunglow was on her feet now, stepping cautiously toward them. “Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know.” A slender spear of wood jutted from her upper arm. She tugged it free, and blood as red as any animal’s dripped from the wound.

  “We can still carry you.”

  The bot shook her head. “I’d only slow you down.”

  “Where can we go?”

  The light was growing brighter, and waves of heat were beating down. Dotson looked up, shading his eyes against a great roaring, thundering ball of incandescent fire descending toward them. One of the human starships was landing in the valley.

  They could not stay where they were, could they? An hour before, there had been buildings here. A street filled with waiting, watching Racs. Now there was only rubble and bodies and screaming, wailing survivors.

  A sky filled with alien thunder and the distinctive scream of Rac fighters, in the air at last, ready to attack the enemy with their own cannons and missiles.

  There would be ground-to-air missiles too, erupting from buried emplacements prepared against Farshorn attack. Finally the humans would feel the bite of their victims.

  But the glare and roar continued, never faltering. Explosions lit the air above the bluffs, and the screams of fighters died. More explosions marked the deaths of missiles. The air reeked of dust and blood and the chemistry of murder.

  “The tunnels,” said Dotson Barbtail. “In the bluffs.” Where natural caverns, worn as water seeped through rock shattered by the impact that created the valley, had been shaped into passageways and storerooms and parking garages.

  “Let’s go.” He pointed toward the mouth of the nearest tunnel, Turnstone. A black oval rimmed by polished slabs of stone, it was as visible as if the sun were standing at high noon. “That way. Run.”

  Gypsy Blossom took her first awkward steps, arms windmilling to keep her balance, going to one knee when the broken floor sagged beneath her.

  “Grab her arm,” said Sunglow, and they did. One of them supported the bot on each side. They lifted her bodily across gaps in the rubble. They boosted her over obstacles.

  As they neared the bluff, the ground smoothed out. They stumbled over a curb, and there was pavement beneath their feet. They were on the road that entered the tunnel to carry traffic above the bluff, to Worldtree City and beyond.

  But Worldtree City was now as ruined as the valley and Worldtree Center. The tunnel no longer led to a passageway but to shelter, just as it had long ago, when the Racs themselves had warred over this valley.

  The bot shook them free, staggered, and ran on her own. She was not as fast as they, but she was fast enough.

  It was only a moment more before all three reached the cavern and shelter.

  Dotson was not surprised to see they were not alone.

  He was surprised at how few Racs were gathered just within the tunnel mouth to watch the destruction of their Jerusalem.

  Had so many died?

  Or had they fled deeper within the sheltering rock?

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Ali Catrone lifted her head from the screens and indicators of her drive room station, her eyes looked haunted. Her lips were a grim line, her brows drawn together above dark shadows, her gestures abrupt and jerky.

  Marcus Aurelius Hrecker felt no more cheerful than she. Yet both kept their attention on the displays before them, their fingers moving jerkily to keep the flow of power to the Bonami’s weapons systems flowing smoothly and the ship itself poised for immediate liftoff if the tide of battle should somehow turn.

  Though “battle” was hardly the right term. The destruction that raged outside the ship was almost wholly one-sided. Human missiles rained down while the coons scrambled and fled and died like the denizens of a Martian city cracked open by a quake. There was no resistance in the valley other than a few brave fools with rifles and shoulder-mounted missile launchers, a single platoon of useless tanks, finally a first squadron of military jets. Elsewhere the story might be different.

  They were the only two in the drive room. She was here because the drives were her responsibility, he because his only ship-based experience was on the shifter board. The rest of the drive crew were at weapons stations, scanning the skies and ground for attackers and selecting targets both for defensive particle beams and for offensive missiles.

  The demand for power fluctuated from moment to moment, soaring when the ship’s particle beams were fired. They could destroy an incoming missile in milliseconds or attack nearby ground forces. They could be used on distant targets only in space, where there was no air to ionize and absorb the beam.

  The ship boomed and rocked and trembled as the Engineers’ own weapons shook the ground on which it sat. It rang when shrapnel flew from exploded buildings and vehicles and struck its skin. Yet no alarms rang or hooted to signal penetration of the hull. The Bonami and all her sister ships had been well built.

  Hrecker wished he were a religious man, for then he could pray. But that wish did not distract his attention from the shifter board. He smoothed response curves and adjusted controls, struggling to keep the probability field confined within the ship, within the field. If it swelled too much, he knew, it might encourage a missile to strike more squarely or find the hull’s weakest point. It might even permit a missile to tunnel through the hull. Either way, the results would be catastrophic.

  He also made sure the basic underpinning of the ship’s power generator functioned efficiently and reliably. Ali Catrone controlled power levels and was prepared to shunt every terajoule to the drives themselves the moment Captain Quigg demanded flight.

  Tamiko was in the main control room, in constant touch with General Lyapunov and the other aides and captains, coordinating the attack on the coon civilization.

  Did she too wish she could pray? He stole a glance at Catrone. She did, he thought. At least, there was a tiny cross held snug against the hollow of her throat by a slender chain. But for what? Success in their effort to destroy all the dreams of a people, a species? She was an Engineer, after all. Anti-Gypsy. Anti-gengineering. Yet he thought she might not be quite as vindictive and destructive as many others.

  Or would she pray for survival in the face of the coons’ violent resistance?

  Or for absolution?

  The screens told the tale. The fleet’s missiles pounded cities and mines, refineries and factories, universities and hospitals. Mushroom clouds rose above military bases and airfields and ships at sea. Smoke billowed, flame glowed and gouted, and when the wind blew vision clear, there were ruins, rubble, destruction, death. Particle beams brought down every coon fighter that took the air and nearly every missile that they launched. Hrecker felt quite awed by the scale of human power.

  The destruction was hardly total, for most of the missiles’ warheads were not nuclear and the human arsenal was not unlimited. But it was vast enough for terror, vast enough to make resistance impossible, vast enough to force the coons to accept new masters. Vast enough to make the coons hate everything that smelled of human.

  The ship shook once more. He almost grinned at that proof that they had not yet quelled all resistance.

  But the ground was trembling less. The meters showed fewer power surges. The screens showed smoke already dissipating.

  The coons had lost. Of course they had.

  Easy meat.

  The humans had won. Of course they had.

  It was over, and human ships were on the ground, the Cascade and Gorbachev beside the Bonami on the landing field, the Boliva
r, Drake, Saladin, and Toledo squatting in the valley. The Ajax, too big and fragile to land, was still in orbit.

  A speaker crackled into life, and the voice of General Lyapunov said, “We have won. The coons no longer have a space station or launch facilities for their rockets. They have no factories or military bases. Their ability to resist us is at an end. Soon they will be no threat either to us or to our descendants.”

  The General paused as if for breath. When he resumed, his voice was caustic. “If any doubters remain within our fleet, let me assure them. We cannot afford to leave these alien creatures alone. They are far too vicious to trust.”

  The screen showed massive concrete slabs exploding from some farmer’s field. Smoke gushed out of the ground, and then a pointed cylinder slid into view, rising, accelerating, adjusting course, and finally merging with a human starship in a titanic explosion that left only an incandescent cloud.

  The General sounded very satisfied when he said, “They actually used nuclear warheads against us. But only two got past our defenses.” There was a moment of silence. “The Pizarro and the Villa. We will remember them forever, and we will have vengeance on their treacherous killers.”

  The screen now held a different image. A line of tiny print identified its source as the Saladin. It showed the tower the coons called the Worldtree rising above a shattered Worldtree Center.

  Hrecker did not feel victorious.

  He looked across the room at Ali Catrone. She was rubbing her forehead with the fingers of one hand. She did not either.

  Neither of them dared to put into words their guilt and shame, or the thought that the loss of the Pizarro and the Villa was richly deserved.

  “Remember that treachery,” said General Lyapunov. “The coons undoubtedly have more in store. They must have hidden weapons caches. They may even have more nuclear missiles. We must therefore remain constantly alert.”