The whinnies pranced a little farther.
“I will, but I have one more thing to do.”
The aircraft was coming back, and it looked like every gun on the planet was firing at it. Tracers reached up from everywhere in the city and from the military units camped outside the city. At least two missiles launched.
Dork could see the aircraft was a little slower, and he understood what the pilot was doing. He was going to try to launch one bomb and then the other. They’d talked about such an attack when they were contingency planning but had decided it was impractical because they didn’t know if the weapons would work.
He took a deep breath—the pilot wouldn’t know there was only one designator down here; he would be expecting two. Dork would have to be perfect. He squared his shoulders, leaned into the designator, and lased the spot where the closest cable was tied into the mountain.
* * * * *
Chapter Eighty-One
R’Bak
Surface-to-air missiles lifted off from all sides as Laser Acquired and Code Verified illuminated on the Skipper receiver. Bowden realized he was out of time, and he fired the selected Skipper. He then selected the remaining bomb, dialed in the new code, and fired it off in the same direction as the first without waiting for the lights.
Both bombs roared off, and he yanked the craft around, pushing the throttles to the stops. The first bomb hit somewhere—he couldn’t tell where because he was dodging missiles—then the craft shuddered as a missile hit the craft, followed a heartbeat later by a second.
The tiny handheld missiles weren’t big enough to knock the massive interface craft from the sky, but they were plenty big enough to kill an engine, and a multitude of warning and caution lights illuminated as the starboard motor died.
He pushed the nose down, trying to get below where the enemy forces could see—and shoot at—him as he roared back across the J’Stull town. He started trying to jink, but as soon as he did, the port motor coughed twice, so he settled for straight and level flight to try and get as much distance between him and the town as he could before the engine died from fuel starvation. That was probably better, too, because the large craft hadn’t responded correctly to the control input; the thrusters had obviously been hit, as well.
A couple missiles arced over him, and he chuckled. At some point—right around the time the control station building blew up, he thought—he’d rediscovered his will to live, and the missiles flying by him impotently gave him a longer lease on life. He’d been prepared to die, but now—for the first time in 133 years—he was finally prepared to live.
A few rifle rounds hit the plane, and he crouched lower in the seat. There was no fuel left in any of the tanks and not much else to blow up; all he had left to protect was himself.
The motor started chugging again as he cleared the city, and he started a gentle climb. Although he hadn’t had long to learn the systems of the interface craft, he knew the fuel fed from the aft portion of the tank, and he tried to get every drop he could into the engine.
The port motor lasted about 30 seconds more, and then he became a glider pilot as it cut out and everything in the cockpit died. The sounds of silence quickly overwhelmed him as he searched for an emergency power source. He finally found what he was looking for and pulled the RAT handle. The ram air turbine—nothing more than a small motor that converted his airspeed into electricity by means of a fan blade—extended from the wing, started spinning, and power returned to the cockpit.
The RAT also gave him limited hydraulic power, and he was able to gently turn the craft toward the largest patch of sand he could find. The interface craft had all the glider characteristics of a rock, though, and it was apparent as he descended through 1,000 meters altitude that he wouldn’t reach it.
* * *
Scout came back to stand over Dork’s shoulder and grunted another time.
“I know,” Dork said. “You want me to come. We have to finish this.” He placed the designator where the first steel cable on the closest mountain tied into the support that had been erected there. The box turned off.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed. He realized immediately what had happened and grabbed his pack to get the other battery. Scout grumbled again, louder.
“I know!” Dork exclaimed. “You’re not helping!”
Scout blew out a breath and stepped back as Dork snapped the new battery in and powered the mule back up. He verified the code was still correct, re-centered the cable in his view, and turned on the laser.
He’d only thought every gun had been firing at the aircraft before; now it sounded like World War III as the aircraft approached again, and everyone in the city opened up on it. He could see the first bomb launch from the plane and did his best to hold the laser steady.
Fire blossomed in his view, and he pulled back, set in the third code—1777—and leaned forward into the viewfinder. He frantically steered the viewer up and long, and hit the designate button when he was on-target. He didn’t have long to wait; the bomb burst ten seconds later.
“Damn it!” As the smoke cleared, he could see the wire was still attached. The platform swayed, though, and he pulled back the view and saw the first bomb had been a success; the first cable had been severed and was hanging limply from the platform. Movement caught his eye, and he zoomed back in on the second cable. It frayed under the additional weight as he watched, and finally separated.
The transmitter arm fell, shattering the giant dish beneath it in a crash that shook the ground underfoot. We’ve done it!
Boom!
He looked up as a missile hit the aircraft, then a second missile that blew off a chunk of the starboard wing. The plane was still flying, though, and it made it past the town before it was lost to sight, although the smoke it was trailing gave a pretty good indication which way it was headed.
Scout grunted again, emphatically.
“Yes,” Dork said with a smile. “Now we can go.”
* * * * *
Chapter Eighty-Two
R’Bak
“That right there!” Cook crowed as the antenna transmitter arm fell 150 meters and crashed into the dish below it. “That’s what success looks like right there!”
“Halt!” the J’Stull leader called. The squad had been marching toward the military facility through a series of low hills when the plane had come back and fired its last two bombs toward the antenna.
The leader walked up to Cook and pistol whipped him across the temple. Cook collapsed to the ground.
“Bastard!” Aliza said, bending over to help him.
Cook looked up groggily. “That the best you got?” he asked. “You hit like…a sissy.”
The leader leaned over and stuck his pistol in Cook’s face.
“Go ahead and do it. Won’t change the facts, though. You still hit like a little girl.”
The leader drew back to strike Cook again but then relaxed and smiled. “I see what you’re doing.”
“Winning, mostly,” Cook said, nodding to the cloud of dust rising from the antenna.
“No, you’re trying to make me lose my temper and kill you.” The man nodded. “But I won’t. I will take you back, and then I will smile while they torture the answers from you.”
“Hopefully, they have someone…stronger than you, then,” Cook muttered. “Or we’ll be at it…all day.”
“Don’t taunt him anymore,” Aliza said quietly. “Save your strength.” She looked up suddenly as a whistle sounded.
“What is that?” the leader asked. “Are there more—”
A gun fired, and the man’s head exploded.
The satrap soldiers turned to find the source of the shot and didn’t see the herd of whinnies pour quietly over the hill behind them. More shots rang out from the unknown gunman, then the whinnies were on them. The giant lizards’ assault rolled over the satrap’s forces, and the creatures leaped into the air to tackle the opposing soldiers. Wet crunching noises ensued as the lizards bit through
skulls and tore out throats.
It was over before the Lost Soldiers could even throw themselves out of harm’s way. Some of them picked up scratches from the creatures’ horny hides as they raced past, but no one was seriously injured.
Athena stomped one of the soldiers’ heads and came over to nuzzle Aliza’s shoulder as Dork stood and walked down the hill toward them.
“What?” Aliza asked, looking at the twenty-some whinnies. “How? Where’d these whinnies come from?”
Dork shrugged. “I don’t know. I got lost, but then Scout came and found me, along with our whinnies and some others that the big one we met must have rounded up. I designated the targets for the aircraft, but then the whinnies wanted to come and save you, so we set up an ambush.” He shrugged again. “Worked pretty well, I think. Those buggers are smart.”
“That’s a hell of a job, Private Dorkhouse,” Sergeant Cook said.
“Yes,” Aliza added, shaking her head in disbelief. “Well done.”
The other men clustered around to pat him on the back.
“Thanks, y’all, but I was just trying to do what I could to make up for my mistake. If I hadn’t gotten lost—”
“We might very well have all been captured,” Aliza said. “But you did get lost, and then you successfully completed the mission, and you saved us from the J’Stull. That’s a pretty good day for anyone to have.”
“It’s not over yet,” Dork said.
“Yeah,” Cook said. “We need to get the hell out of here before the satrap’s forces come looking for us.”
“That’s not what I was talking about.”
Cook’s eyebrow rose. “No?”
“No,” Dork said. “We’ve still got an aviator to go save. I think his plane must have crashed on the other side of the city. But there’s just one thing…”
“What’s that?” Aliza asked.
“I got kinda turned around in the attack,” Dork said. “Can someone else lead?”
* * *
Bowden woke to a tapping sound. He opened his right eye—the left one didn’t seem to be working very well—but then realized his right eye didn’t work very well, either. All he could see was yellow. The second thing he noticed was that he was hanging forward in his straps, and the third thing was he hurt all over.
The crash came back to him as he rubbed the dried blood off his left eye and was able to finally open it. The nose gear had collapsed in the crash. The interface craft made a terrible glider, and it had stalled and gone in nose-first. When the gear collapsed, the nose had buried itself in the sand, all the way to the cockpit. At least he’d been out of fuel, so the craft hadn’t gone up in a spectacular fireball.
The sudden stop had been painful, though, and he was pretty sure he’d hit his head on the instrument panel. As he focused, he saw a clump of hair on the altimeter. The knob to set the atmospheric pressure was bent to one side. He had a corresponding indentation a couple of inches long above his eyebrow.
The knocking continued, and he realized it was coming from the side window. He turned his head slowly—he didn’t think his neck was broken, but it was a definite possibility and he didn’t want to take any chances. Dork’s happy face was just outside, and he was waving for Bowden to get out of the craft.
Bowden nodded, braced himself on the instrument panel, and unstrapped. He turned to exit the cockpit, saw Samkamka, and more of the flight came back to him. The other craft with Byrd in it was gone. Samkamka was gone, and, judging from the smell, had been dead a little while.
He sighed and continued working to extricate himself. The collapse of the nose gear meant the craft was at about a 30-degree angle, and it was difficult for him to climb up the cockpit floor to the access door, especially in the shape he was in. Eventually, he figured out how to use the seat as a brace and made it up and out.
Thankfully, the skin of the craft hadn’t crumpled, and he was able to unlock the door. It flipped to the side—a gravity assist—and he looked out to see the ground team all mounted on their whinnies.
“Did we win?” Bowden asked. “Because I feel like I was in a plane crash.”
“Yes, sir, we did!” Dork exclaimed. He came over and helped Bowden down, although he winced as he did so. “The control building is in a bazillion pieces, and the transmitter got knocked down and wrecked the antenna dish. We did it!”
“Yeah, you did it,” Sergeant Cook said. “And, believe it or not, you pissed off about 10,000 J’Stull, who are now on their way to capture us and ask us a lot of painful questions.” He pointed to the north, where a cloud of dust could be seen. A larger, fainter one was rising behind it. “That said, I think the attack columns being led by Captain Moorefield and Lieutenant Tapper might cut that process pretty short. But unless we want to find ourselves as the hostages in a very tense situation, I’m thinking we want to be someplace else, right now. Unless we want to experience more of the J’Stull’s tender mercies, that is. So, all due respect, sir…but let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Where are we headed?”
“Home, suh,” Dork said as he helped Bowden down. “We’re going home.”
* * * * *
Chapter Eighty-Three
Spin One
Murphy stared at the final page of the final after-action report. It stared back at him from the computer screen, as if defying him to contradict it…if he dared.
But it was hard to believe. Transmitter destroyed. The J’Stull defenders and their regional allies crushed and scattered by Moorefield’s and Tapper’s mechanized columns. Dozens of fuel-cell APCs captured not just intact, but in perfect condition. Hundreds of serviceable long arms thrown down by the impressed locals. Hundreds of said locals were now eager-to-please POWs ready to spill their guts about what their “enslavers” had said, planned, feared.
The loss of Bowden’s flight was a brutal reminder of the grim costs paid for the victory—but if there was any consolation to be had, the results were certainly an enduring testimony to those who had made the ultimate sacrifice achieving them. Murphy sighed; that kind of rhetoric didn’t make him feel any less responsible, any less guilty, for the men lost, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t compose a few memorial words to be spoken at some time and place when all the Lost Soldiers could be gathered together. Wherever and whenever the hell that might be.
He checked his G-shock. Only ten minutes until the Acclamation began. The invitation had been so solemn that he dared not be late, fashionably or otherwise. Just why the SpinDogs called a victory celebration an “Acclamation” was a bit of a mystery, but he’d certainly have the answer by the end of the evening. Or rather, as soon as he could politely extract himself from the event. He leaned forward to turn off the computer…and the screen blanked momentarily. Just before it re-illuminated with a familiar message:
“If alone in a secure environment, enter assigned access code. N & N.”
Murphy realized he had stopped breathing. He exhaled slowly, entered his code, and waited.
Numbers started scrolling across his screen, appearing in clusters and groups. He frowned, wondered at the pattern…and then realized what they were: coordinates. He copied them down, swiped to the next screen.
A long list of entries—labels and descriptions—began scrolling past.
Murphy leaned forward, paused on one, and read greedily. He allowed himself the luxury of a small, hopeful smile as he did.
* * *
Max Messina didn’t enter the large almost cavernous room in which the Acclamation was being held, although the SpinDogs used the verb “convened.” Which had Murphy thinking, for the first time, that maybe something a little more formal was needed to fill the gap between cheap local mufti and duty uniform. But the Ktor hadn’t been thoughtful enough to pack a lot in the way of wardrobe options when they had kidnapped him.
Being in that frame of mind, he started when the bay doors opened and revealed a scene that was anything but staid or formal. Well, there was formality in the dr
ess, but it included a lot of variation by Family, age, and personal taste. He had read somewhere that, in Venice of the early 17th century, if you entered a party of the upper classes, you could tell almost everyone’s job and social station just by reading the obvious or subtle differences and cues present in their dress and adornment. In point of fact, the prostitutes were every bit as well-marked as the priests.
To the best of Murphy’s knowledge, SpinDog society had neither holy men nor whores, but the Venetian paradigm seemed applicable—if only he’d known what the differences in outfits and ornaments signified. Skylights let in the night-cycle twilight of the hydroponic farms that dominated the inner surface of Spin One, the various crops reaching toward the axis of rotation where luminous filaments ran the length of the hollow asteroid. The dance floor—such as it was—seemed to be more a central space for interpretive athletic display than anything else.
Max leaned toward Murphy. “Boss, stay where I can see you, okay?”
Murphy shook his head. “Can’t promise that, Sergeant. I’ve got to go where the diplomatic currents carry me tonight.”
Max may have cursed under his breath before replying. “Yeah, I get it. Okay. Look, if I go in there, I can’t be sure I won’t get mobbed up when you need me.”
“Then hang back here, Max, and do the best you can.”
“You really have to go into that viper pit, sir?”
“C’mon, Max, they’re not all vipers.”
“Yeah, I’m sure there are some rattlers in there, too.” But the big man smiled.
Murphy returned the grin, slipped into the room…
And was accosted/greeted before he got three yards in. “Major Murphy!” shouted a person he’d never seen before, wearing the colors of the Otlethes Family. “We are honored that you have come! Acclaim and be Acclaimed.” He handed Murphy what looked like a miniature mace and dashed off into the crowd.
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