The turbulence from the atmosphere eased as the sky cleared to display a sunny late morning landscape. He had come in east of the capital city, betting the attackers would be concentrating their initial efforts on the most populous urban center. He approached with proper cautiousness, invisible ship or not.
On the perimeter of the city two standard defense turrets lay in smoldering ruins. They had not been designed to take out multiple large warships single-handedly. Since the military base had been emptied days ago, if all the turrets were destroyed the attackers were now unopposed, free to carpet-bomb the highly populated region until it too lay in ruins.
Fire plumed in the distance, and the smoky outline of a tower collapsed beneath it. Caleb’s jaw clenched in anger, but he forced himself to focus. Having assessed the scene, he pulsed Isabela.
Hey, are you safe?
The response was several seconds in coming.
Caleb? We’re under attack. We were on our way out of town when it started but….
What happened?
We ran into an office building for shelter, and the floors above us collapsed. We’re trapped beneath some rubble in the basement…I can’t say how much rubble.
Are you hurt?
I’m fine, a couple of scrapes is all. Marlee’s arm is broken—I hope it’s only a break. We tried to find a way out, but everything’s blocked.
Sit tight. I’ll be there in a few minutes.
You’ll what? Where are you?
In the air two kilometers outside downtown. I came to save you, little sis.
This is why I love you—you are crazy beyond all reason. We’re, um…in the western part of the city? It was so chaotic, I honestly don’t know exactly where we ended up.
Not to worry. I’ve got that covered, too. Just hang on.
He gazed at Noah, who sat in what was normally his chair. “The situation has gotten a tad more complicated. They’re trapped in the basement of a collapsed building.”
Noah cringed and leaned closer to the viewport. “Where?”
He opened a new screen in the HUD and relayed it a signal. A red dot began flashing in the upper left region of the overlay of the city map. “Right there.”
Noah shot him a questioning look.
“When I visited my sister a few months ago I placed a tracking beacon in her daughter’s favorite stuffed animal. I didn’t have a reason to other than children get lost sometimes, especially exuberant ones like Marlee. She doesn’t go anywhere without Mr. Freckles, so it seemed the thing to do.”
“Always planning for every eventuality, aren’t you?”
It was good Noah was here; his friend had kept his mood from descending into too dark a venue during the trip. “It’s sort of my job.”
He drew closer until the cruiser and two frigates materialized on the visual scanner, then slowed to a hover. The Alliance vessels sailed in the lower atmosphere but high above the planet’s surface, content to wreak their destruction from a coward’s distance. Six smaller markers traversed the city at a far lower altitude.
As they reached the eastern edge of downtown, it became apparent the fighters were burning wide swaths of it via constant streams of laser fire on each pass. When one came to the outskirts it simply pivoted and began a new run. The smoke roiled so thick from collapsing buildings and raging infernos it was difficult to determine which structures still stood.
The Akagi remained in the distance, its aggression centered on the spaceport, but both frigates joined the fighters in their steady devastation of the urban area. One circled above a cluster of buildings the map told him represented the government complex. The other concentrated on a sector containing the densest accumulation of the tallest towers to the northwest.
A sector which also held Isabela and Marlee.
His heart thudded in his chest, driven by his fear for their safety…but if he wanted to save them he needed to treat this like a mission.
He could reach the vicinity without attracting notice no problem. But digging her out of the rubble would take time—time during which he’d need to leave the Siyane on the street, where it risked being crushed by falling debris or entire buildings and leaving them no escape route.
“So what are you thinking?”
He could land then have Noah take back off and fly the ship nearby in relative safety—except thanks to Alex’s extensive security Noah couldn’t fly the ship. Also, Noah’s help on the ground would markedly shorten the time the rescue took.
Confident in the effectiveness of the cloaking shield, he continued forward until the dot signifying Marlee’s location lay half a kilometer away.
He’d call the neighborhood a war zone, but that implied someone was fighting back. This was unopposed butchery.
A third of the structures were on fire or at least partially collapsed. Vehicles were strewn across the streets or impaled into the sides of buildings. He wasn’t close enough to see the bodies, but they were there. It was a weekday and every one of those buildings would have been heavily occupied. Multiply this level of damage across every sector and there were tens of thousands dead.
One of the fighters streaked by to his left, its weaponry cleaving into buildings, vehicles and streets alike. The laser swung up to slice vertically through a tower on the same block where Isabela and Marlee were trapped. It served as the final blow for the already damaged structure, and the edifice crumbled. Scaffolding, stone and glass plummeted to the ground below to fill the intersection he had been considering as a landing site with piles of debris and giving truth to his logistical concerns.
Noah groaned. “Goddamn. This is a bloody killing field. What kind of psycho is this O’Connell?”
He took several seconds to exhale, to ensure he was calm and in control of his actions when he made the decision.
…A dead one.
He yanked the ship to the north and veered toward the western edge of the city while pulsing his sister.
Isabela? Hold on a bit longer. I’m going to be a minute.
Don’t get yourself killed trying to rescue me, okay?
Have a little faith, sis.
I do.
“Caleb? New plan then? Not that I knew what the old plan was.”
To the west the terrain transitioned to a temperate stretch of desert plain. The region was sparsely populated for fifty kilometers. But how to get them there? They were too spread out.
Breadcrumbs.
Caleb wasted no time in gunning the engine. Each shot fired by one of the attacking ships could be the one that ended Isabela’s life.
The fighters were indisputably fast and agile. They raced across the scanner—still only six though the intel stated there should be twelve—and it took him a minute to pick one out against the bright turquoise sky. The small ship crisscrossed the western suburban neighborhoods on the outskirts, bombing homes. Of all the despicable…yep, it made for an excellent first target.
He knew from personal experience the Siyane’s weaponry possessed superb targeting and tracking capabilities. As soon as the fighter crossed his path, he fired.
The pilot had no idea it was coming and thus made no attempt to evade. The close-proximity hit burned up the shield long before the pilot found the origin of the weapons fire, and the small vessel fractured into metal shards.
In his peripheral vision Noah gave an emphatic nod. “Nice, one less fighter. They’ll be hunting for us now—but I suppose every second spent hunting for us is a second they’re not slaughtering people and all. Not a bad plan. If that is the plan?”
Caleb didn’t have time to explain the plan. He immediately disengaged and changed direction, arcing above the debris and angling farther into the city. He didn’t care for destroying the ships over a populated area, but it was necessary to draw the warships out to undeveloped land and thus hopefully save many more lives in the end.
The next fighter he was able to pinpoint cruised above downtown bombing buildings indiscriminately. One of the frigates hovered nearby, w
recking the government complex two shots at a time. This was unequivocally going to spin them up. He’d need to be careful.
He lined up on the outside of the fighter’s route, the direction he hoped to draw them behind him. The trajectory from which the attack came would be clear. He breathed in through his nose, waited…and fired.
This shot caught the engine first, resulting in a far stronger and faster explosion. He could feel the frigate turning his way as he accelerated away toward the flatlands beyond the urban center.
In seconds two additional fighters arrived in the vicinity. Still sufficiently close, he chose one, adjusted his angle and eliminated it.
That got their attention.
The cruiser—his ultimate target—suspended its in-process demolition of the capital’s spaceport, but allowed both frigates to advance on the location of the previous attack ahead of it.
Coward.
“You know, if you don’t tell me what it is we’re doing, I’m going to go get a beer and kick my feet up on the couch.”
He spared a tilt of his head in Noah’s direction, who instead opted to orient himself properly in the chair and strap himself in tighter.
Three fighters darted about near the Siyane, searching for the source of the attacks. When a minute passed and no more appeared, he decided they must have lost the rest at an earlier point in their offensive. He pulled out of range of their search and fired on another.
Even before it was destroyed the other two were closing in on his position and firing blindly. He pulled up in a vertical climb, inverting to gain distance—while ignoring Noah’s expletive-peppered muttering—and pivoting to fire at a 45° downward angle.
This drew fire from the lead frigate. He was forced to disengage prior to the complete destruction of the fighter, but he doubted it would recover from the damage inflicted. Slowly but inexorably the two frigates began to line up as his location became clearer. Not in a straight line from his current vantage of course, but it was fine. He wasn’t constrained to a single vector.
One fighter remained, and he felt the distinct need to eliminate it. It would be a shame to leave it free to fly around the city and inflict greater damage. Besides, the cruiser needed to be drawn a little farther out and over the increasingly desert-like flatlands.
Caleb targeted the final fighter and fired. Instantly he broke off, arced up and sideways and fired again. Climbed and fired again. The fighter tumbled through the sky as a shot from the frigate nearly caught the Siyane on the third round.
It was now or never.
He checked his harness and swung wide to 60° port of where he had been and reversed to gain distance. The broadside of the lead frigate loomed due ahead, with the tail section of the other frigate peeking out beyond it.
“Do you trust me?”
Beside him Noah snorted. “To not get us killed? Not in the slightest.”
“Fair enough. Do you trust Kennedy?”
“To not get us killed? Um…probably.”
“Good.”
Noah stared at him. Then, as realization dawned, he burst out laughing and sank down in the chair until he was half on the floor, held up solely by the restraints.
“You are the craziest motherfucker I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. In the highly unlikely event we survive this, I will buy us the finest bottle of single-malt scotch I can afford to celebrate before Alex kills you. And she is going to kill you.”
“Won’t be the first time. You ready? This is about to get exciting.”
“Thank goodness. I was getting bored.” Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Just out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to rank them.” Caleb gunned the engine.
43
EARTH
SEATTLE
* * *
A SUDDEN GUST OF WIND BENT the tall, reedy grass shoots to tickle the exposed skin on Kennedy’s hand. She pulled the sleeve of her sweater down lower and hugged her knees tighter against her chest.
Discovery Park was Alex’s favorite place to go running in Seattle, and she’d mentioned it often. Kennedy had never visited it before, but this had seemed as good a time as any. Now that she was here she understood why Alex liked it. It exuded a quiet, peaceful aura and a rustic, natural charm. A pocket of seclusion tucked against the bustling city behind it.
The sun dropped beneath the wooded profile of the Olympic Mountains in the distance, and the sky shifted to a deep slate blue to match the waters. She closed her eyes.
The battle for Seneca would be starting about now, she presumed. She couldn’t say for certain, because despite all her work these last weeks to boost the war effort, as a civilian with no specific contribution to make in the battle itself she was not allowed to be in the War Room.
The Siyane would be reaching Krysk about now, she presumed. She couldn’t say for certain, because she hadn’t talked to Noah since they left. A critical observer might say she was being vindictive, punishing him for leaving with such easy glee.
But the truth was she didn’t dare invest any more of herself in him. Not unless or until he returned and possibly not then. The thought of him dying already hurt too much as it was, but what she’d told Alex had turned out to be painfully accurate: he was a free spirit, and though she’d tried her damnedest, she wouldn’t be able to keep him. No matter how much she wanted to.
Alex was gone, transformed into a cyborg and sent to the beachhead three kiloparsecs away. Her precious adiamene—while Alex had inadvertently created it she thought of it as her own—was gone, shipped to the front line to patch some holes.
The fate of the galaxy, of humanity itself, would be decided in the next several hours. And she sat on a frigid, empty beach, shivering her ass off and feeling sorry for herself. Clearly not her finest moment.
She could have gone home, of course. Home to her parents in Houston or home to her apartment on Erisen. She could have visited her brother in Miami or Gabe in New York or a dozen friends in a dozen locales. She needn’t have been alone. But wallowing was so much easier to pull off when one was alone.
She had done her part, spent seven hundred million of her family’s fortune and half her own to give the military one more edge, one more tool to increase their odds of victory. She owned half of the patent on the adiamene, with Alex and Caleb sharing the other half, so if the Metigens were defeated at least she should eventually make the money back.
But perhaps Noah was right; perhaps she was too spoiled, and a bit of a princess, too. She’d overplayed her cards with him, blithely thinking she could wave her hand and patch up his life because that must be what he wanted, right? And when she’d realized her error and tried to correct it…
…well, she’d never needed to fight for a man before. She had no idea how to do it.
Now she found herself alone and as helpless as the countless billions of people out there, huddled with friends or family or wandering the streets but all waiting to learn whether destruction would rain down from the stars.
For tonight the stars brightened in time with the darkening of the sky, and she tucked her hair behind her ear and lifted her gaze upward to study them. Her great-great-grandmother had helped people shed the leash of Earth to not merely reach the stars but inhabit them. Two hundred forty years later the idea that they had once been tethered to this single, solitary planet, lovely though it may be, seemed incomprehensible to her.
And now the Metigens wanted to kill them because they reached too high, too far, too fast.
If the aliens had been ‘watching’ since the beginning like Alex said, didn’t they realize this was what humans did? It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been warning signs. People reached further than before, beyond their grasp, attempted the impossible and failed. Tried and failed again—then succeeded. Not everyone or even most people, but enough.
If the Metigens didn’t care for this behavior, they should have stopped humanity before they were strong enough to
defeat them. They should have stopped humanity when they were still leashed to Earth.
Why the aliens hadn’t done so was an open question, but regardless of the answer it was their mistake, and one she hoped they would be regretting very soon.
EASC HEADQUARTERS
Miriam considered the varied assortment of information displayed above the war table with a critical eye.
The upper two-thirds of the space was devoted to high-detail tactical maps of Senecan and Romane space. For the time being they hovered quietly, but that would not last. Along the bottom third ran a series of ever-changing charts and data readouts: damage assessments, casualties, outstanding supply requests, formation numbers and more.
A comparatively narrow column in the center was reserved for stacked holos of the decision-makers. Dedicated connections were established for Prime Minister Brennon in Washington, Chairman Vranas in Cavare and the overlooks on the bridges of the EAS Churchill and SFS Leonidas. Those would, generally speaking, be occupied by Admiral Rychen and Field Marshal Gianno respectively. And, of course, Alexis. Slots for smaller holos at the bottom accommodated lesser or transitory ‘guests,’ such as Defense Secretary Mori, Assembly Speaker Gagnon and various field commanders.
Satisfied with the presentation, she allowed her gaze to blur and lose definition. The room bustled with activity around her, but she tuned the noise out.
This was it. She had pulled every string she controlled and used every trick she knew to get the necessary resources into place. Eighty-seven percent of Alliance ships had reached their intended destinations; the final thirteen percent continued toward their goals with due speed.
Nearly five thousand sheets of adiamene had been shipped and more poured into the supply chain every hour. Over four hundred vessels used it to patch holes and cracks while in transit. Supplies of the metal were loaded onto all dreadnoughts and cruisers and as many of the frigates as they were able to manage. The remaining quantities were stored at the rear staging points, where damaged vessels would retreat for repairs if the campaigns went on for long enough.
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