by Steve White
"Naeriy, is that you? Are you okay?"
She looked up and recognized the dark face behind the powered armor's viewplate. "Yes, Major Thompson, I'm all right—thanks to you. My fighter was hit and I was trying to find your troops."
"Well, it looks like you've found us," he said cheerfully. "Now we need to get back to the main body ASAP. These flanking actions seem to have died away, and we're getting ready to assault the fortress itself." He reached down with one arm and scooped her up. "If you'll permit, we can travel faster this way. And none of us have been able to figure out a way to get fresh from inside one of these tin suits!"
Her laugh had an edge of released hysteria, but at least it was a laugh.
* * *
The counterattack came as they were nearing the fortress. Behind a wave of Implementers, blasted down almost contemptuously by the Marines, came the cyborgs, supported by weapon turrets that only now revealed themselves, rising up through the wreckage and belching death from heavy weapons to which powered combat armor meant little more than ordinary combat dress, or naked flesh. Their fields of fire were limited as long as the cyborgs were deployed, of course. But DiFalco knew that if they defeated the counterattack it would only be to face unrestricted fire from those massive plasma guns and mass-driver artillery when they assaulted the fortress. And he had to force down a rising suspicion that this was going to be tougher—a lot tougher—than they had suspected.
"We've got to send the Resistance troops back, Joel," he yelled into his communicator, above noise that even the armor's soundproofing couldn't keep out.
"Why?" He could barely make out Thompson's voice.
"Because it's murder to send Dorleann and his merry men against the cyborgs, damn it! They'll be eaten alive—they're just simply playing out of their league, and you know it!" He took a breath. "I said this was your show down here, Joel, but if I have to make this an order . . ."
"No need, Skipper; you're right. But let me keep a couple of Resistance special weapons squads on the front line. They've got some stuff that can make the cyborgs say 'Ouch.' And they're willing—God, but they're willing!"
"Permission granted. I'll do the same. Signing off." As he spoke the last words, the cyborg squad broke upon them with the blinding speed that seemed to belie their bulk.
Semiportable mass driver guns manned by Marines in nonpowered combat armor fired back in a continuous crackle as their slugs broke mach. Those hyperdense rounds, accelerated at such a velocity, would have stopped a main battle tank of Earth, DiFalco reflected as he got his plasma gun up; the cyborgs would keep coming for a little while through a burst of them. Marines in powered armor fired back with their various arms (each was, in effect, a walking special weapons squad) and the sheer concentration of firepower became more than the heat-containing urban battlefield could seemingly hold.
A heavy weight crashed down on DiFalco's armored back and he went down, rolling over with the cyborg that forced itself on top with a strength exceeding even that of powered armor and tried to maneuver a forearm weapon mount of some kind against DiFalco's viewplate. The American made an activating motion with his jaw, and a foot-long blade of aligned crystalline steel sprang out of its powered sheath under his left arm. He drove it into the wiring at the base of the cyborg's "throat," and was rewarded by a crackling noise accompanied by sparks. With the cyborg momentarily "stunned," he pushed himself out from underneath and gripped one of its arms in his clamps with crushing force, and, with a tremendous heave, yanked the arm out. There was no blood, only the sparking of torn electrical circuitry. All lower-ranking Korvaasha were "cyborgs" in some degree, but one of these things was little more than a robot with an organic central processing unit that had once been a living being's brain.
In the instant it took the cyborg to assimilate the loss of the arm, DiFalco grasped his plasma gun, specially designed to be handled by the suit's clamps—his right arm's integral laser weapon would have taken too long to burn through that tough metal hide. The cyborg had just staggered erect when he got off an insanely short-range shot while lying on his side, and in a senses-overpowering blast the cyborg ceased to exist save as a charred, sparking stump above its legs. DiFalco felt singed despite everything the armor's temperature control could do, but at least the radiation shielding held—no warning squeal awoke in his ear.
As he performed the difficult maneuver of getting to his feet in powered armor, he saw that his troops had taken losses but were in possession of the field. He wondered how Thompson was doing.
"Damn it, Naeriy, I thought I told you to go to the rear!"
The young Raehaniv pushed back her borrowed combat helmet and looked up at Thompson defiantly. "I've attached myself to a special weapons squad—the Resistance people are showing me what to do. You've got to let me do something, Joel!"
"Oh, what the Hell!" Thompson closed up his viewplate and spoke through the outside speaker. "Get back to your unit, Marine!" he barked, and turned away before she could smile dazzlingly at him. "What a war!" he muttered to himself as he strode off. And he'd thought Colombia had been weird!
He continued his inspection of the perimeter, approaching a semiportable plasma gun emplacement. "What's the word, Suvarov?" he called out, recognizing the crew chief.
The Russian raised the faceplate of his nonpowered armor. "Quiet, Major. We seem to have stopped the counterattacks. At least we haven't seen any more cyborgs since . . ."
A nearby structure that held another strongpoint took a hit that showered them with debris, and Suvarov frantically closed his faceplate as he ordered the plasma gun swivelled in search of targets. They must be close, Thompson reflected, since they had gotten off a shot without benefit of the laser target designators that, as they must have learned by now, only alerted the Marines to the fact that they were being targeted. And they must also be doing without the heat sensors that the Marines' armor, with its IR cloaking feature, could defeat. So where were they?
Then they were visible, darting in and out of cover with that impossible speed. Thompson, whose plasma gun had long ago shorted out—at least it seemed long ago—put his mass driver gun on full auto and hosed one of them down, cutting the relatively vulnerable legs out from under it. Legless, it continued to try to hump itself forward with its arms. Fighting off a sensation of nightmare, Thompson put a burst through it lengthwise, from the top of the head down. It shuddered and jerked convulsively, as if from a heavy jolt of electricity, and finally lay still.
Suddenly, Suvarov's plasma gun, which had been laying down a barrage of lighning bolts and thunderclaps, blew up with a force that threw Thompson off balance. As he tried to right himself, a mass-driver slug crashed through the armor of his left arm with shattering impact, sending his own weapon flying and spinning him around to crash to the ground. His suit's biomonitor reacted instantly with a painkilling injection, but the sudden chemical influx left him barely aware of the cyborg that was approaching, training its weapon on him. He closed his eyes.
It was as well that he did, for he missed the explosion. His sound pickup automatically tuned out the deafening noise, and he kept his eyes shut as flying debris rattled like hail on his armor. When he opened them, there was only wreckage where the cyborg had stood. From behind a pile of rubble, Naeriy stood up, still shouldering the missile launcher that looked too heavy for her.
Thompson, at the threshold of unconsciousness, managed a smile. "Lady, you are somethin' else!" he breathed.
She went to her knees beside him and fumbled with the access hatch. "Quick!" she called to the Resistance troops that were busily setting up weapons emplacements. "Help me get him out of this powered armor! And get a medic over here!" Her voice was a little unsteady.
Thompson smiled again and let the darkness take him.
* * *
The first missile impacts of dawn had been audible even down in the maximum-security level, and Tarlann and Iael had awakened, wide-eyed, to the dull crumps and the shouting of the Implementers
that had, as time had passed, taken on an unmistakable tone of panic.
It was, Tarlann decided, time.
They had, of course, scanned him thoroughly and taken away anything that could possibly be used as a tool or weapon. But they had left him his clothes, including his shoes. Now, as Iael watched unblinkingly, he twisted off the left heel. Its interior, of what was to any Korvaash scanner exactly the same plastic as the right heel, fell out. He reaffixed the hollow shell of the left heel.
The research laboratories of the conglomerate Varien had left to him were on the leading edge of many new technologies, including electrically active plastics that could be encoded to respond to certain stimuli in certain ways. As Tarlann tapped the heel repeatedly against a pipe, crouching over to shield it from any surveillance pickups, it began to change shape. Iael's eyes got even bigger as it took on the form of a very small knife. Tarlann tested the edge. It wasn't crystalline steel, of course, but it would cut.
"Father . . . ?"
Tarlann gestured him to silence and slipped the plastic blade into a pocket. He gave Iael a long look. "We can only wait," he said noncommitally. The boy's lips tightened and, with a steadiness beyond his years, he nodded.
He is so young, Tarlann thought. His youth is only one of the things the Korvaasha have destroyed.
Will anyone ever again have a youth like mine was?
After some interminable time, the door clanged open and three Implementers entered. The leader turned and pressed his thumb to the wall scanner, closing the door behind them. Then he swung around, and Tarlann saw a face burned into his memory as if by corrosive acid.
"Yeah, it's me," Laerav slurred. "Working down here's usually a punishment detail, but I volunteered—me and these boys." He was drunk. Like his subordinates, he had a mag needler slung over his shoulder. He also held a monomolecular-edged knife with which he gestured at one of the other two, who grasped Tarlann's left arm and pulled it painfully up behind him.
Laerav thrust his face within inches of that of Tarlann, who had become the current focus of a lifetime's impacted, festering hate. "The Director wouldn't let us hurt you," he spat. "Just like he wouldn't let us have any fun with your crazy bitch of a wife—she wouldn't've been as much fun as the little cunt anyway. But now everything's turning to shit and noboby's paying attention. I'm gonna cut you up real slow. But first you're gonna watch what Durlien does with your spoiled little prick of a son. He likes boys!" Laerav grinned drunkenly. "And then you're gonna watch us cut him apart before we start on you! You're gonna pay for . . . for my whole . . . for everything!" His voice had risen to a scream, and he was shuddering convulsively. Then he took a deep breath. "Durlien, get started!"
The Implementer holding Tarlann forced him to his knees and pointed him toward the corner where Durlien had trapped Iael and was forcing him to the floor, grinning idiotically. He had laid his mag needler on the floor.
Desperately, Tarlann fumbled for the plastic knife with his free hand while his captor watched Durlien eagerly. His fingers finally closed around the smooth hard coolness of the grip. With all the strength he could muster in this position, he stabbed backward.
With a roar of startlement and pain, the Implementer released Tarlann's arm to clutch with both hands at his stomach, from which the plastic handle protruded. Before Laerav and Durlien could come out of their haze of alcohol and anticipation, Tarlann lurched up and slammed a shoulder into his erstwhile captor, shoving him against Laerav. He cut himself open on the Assault Leader's almost infinitely sharp knife, screaming and lurching in convulsive agony and sending the blade flying out of Laerav's hand.
Durlien started to rise, then glanced back and had time for a split second of horror as he saw that Iael had grabbed his mag needler. The weapon's recoil was small, but it was enough to throw the boy's aim off and send a stream of hypervelocity needles arcing across the chamber. But the tracery of death crossed Durlien's chest, ripping through his heart. Blood squirted from the little holes and gushed from his mouth.
With frantic clumsiness, Laerav started to unsling his own mag needler. But Tarlann, drawing on hysterical strength and quickness, dived for Laerav's dropped knife, scooped it up, swung around and up, and plunged the blade into Laerav's abdomen up to the hilt, slamming the Assault Leader up against the wall.
For an instant, they stood locked together in a silent tableau, with only a small trickle of blood coming from beneath the hilt that pressed tightly against the orange coverall. Laerav's eyes protruded and sweat poured from him. But he didn't move.
"Yes, that's right, don't move," Tarlann whispered. "You know what this blade can do. If you move, you'll just slice yourself on it."
Involuntarily, Laerav moved a little. It brought a gasp of agony and a renewed flow of blood.
Tarlann nodded. "Now, Laerav, I want you to reach over to the thumbprint scanner and open this door. I'll guide your hand. Afterwards, I'll leave you with the knife still in; if you don't move, maybe help will reach you."
Eyes glazing over, Laerav obeyed. The door sensed his living thumbprint and slid grindingly open.
With a quick motion, Tarlann brought the knife down, the one-molecule-wide edge slicing effortlessly through everything it encountered and exiting through Laerav's crotch.
Laerav's eyes popped and he shattered the silence with a horrible, gurgling shriek as he watched his guts bulge out and fall with a plopping sound into a greasy, steaming pile on the floor.
"I lied," Tarlann admitted genially.
Laerav's screaming died down to a kind of agonized rasping as he fell forward. Tarlann turned to Iael.
"Collect their needlers. We'll get others from the Implementers on the levels above while we're freeing the prisoners." Iael sprang to obey while Tarlann stepped ouside the door and studied a schematic of the fortress, its writing in Raehaniv for the benefit of the Implementers.
By the time they departed, Laerav's noise had ceased.
* * *
They brought what was left of Dorleann back to the command post.
The Resistance leader had insisted on taking part in the latest futile attack on the ruinous-looking fortress that loomed up tantalizingly ahead. Once again they had been flung back.
"And that's the story," DiFalco concluded, speaking into the ground-to-orbit communicator. Liberator was currently over this hemisphere, and he had brought Aelanni up to date. "Our intelligence badly underestimated the defenses of this place. We can't put a dent in those heavy-weapons turrets, and we can't make any headway against them. If we could just reach that fortress, I'm convinced we could take it. But we can't cross the killing ground around it."
"The fighter-configured shuttles . . . ?"
"Our fighters are a spent force. The ones that are left can keep circling over Sarnath indefinitely on grav repulsion, but they've expended all their missiles. Their lasers are attenuated by all this smoke down here—the turrets laugh at them."
Silence fell in the little command post. Raenoli, now in command of the Resistance, sat quietly, face graven with unshed tears. Thompson—DiFalco had ordered the medics to bring him around with stimulants—lay back, left arm encased in Raehaniv instacast spray. He would lose the arm (hypervelocity projectiles inflict no small wounds) but it was only temporary; the Raehaniv could force-grow a cloned replacement and graft it on. And he would live, at least if Naeriy had anything to say about it. She had not left his side, and she was still there.
DiFalco wiped his brow and knuckled his eyes again—he had never realized what a sybaritic luxury that was, for none of their training exercises on Terranova had ever overloaded the air conditioning systems of powered armor suits like the one he had just climbed out of. The suits had ingenious facilitiies for dealing with the body's other wastes, but nobody had ever thought of the sweat that ran down the inaccessible brow into the eyes. All you could do was blink a lot. Note for future reference: issue tennis headbands to powered-armor troops.
Golovko's voice—he was also in on
the hookup—came from the communicator. "Eric, it's no good. You've got to abort the operation."
"NO! We've come too far to stop now, damn it! I will not let these bastards stop us now!" DiFalco startled himself with his vehemence.
Thompson tried to sit up, and Naeriy grasped his hand protectively. "The Skipper's right," he got out, gasping for breath. "We've paid in blood for this ground! If we cut and run now, a lot of good people will have died for nothing. I don't think we'll ever be able to mount a second assault." He actually grinned. "Hell, Colonel Golovko, we couldn't break off this engagement if we wanted to! Without fighter cover, they'd shoot us out of the air as our assault shuttles lifted from this landing zone!"
"But, Eric," Aelanni asked, voice charged with urgency, "how will you get into the fortress?"
DiFalco's head hung for an instant, then he straightened. "You'd better put all the heavy-duty intellects up there to work on that, Aelanni. We're open to suggestions! And," he added quietly, "ask Yakov to mention this problem to God, will you? I think we need a miracle."
* * *
"Well, Director," Lugnaath spoke languidly, "despite the failure of your counterattack, you appear to have been as good as your word concerning the invincibility of this fortress."
Gromorgh carefully didn't reveal his relief. He had experienced some bad moments when the counterattack had been stopped—who could have imagined that these Marines would be able to stand up to the cyborgs? But it had been merely a disappointment, not a disaster. The fortress was still inviolate.
"Indeed, Third Level Embodiment," he said unctuously. "We can continue smashing these pathetic attacks indefinitely. Nothing can penetrate our defenses here. Nothing!"
Behind him, the scanner lock beeped and the entrance to the command center slid open. Gromorgh turned, annoyed. No one should be entering now . . . .
No! It wasn't possible!
A disarmed Implementer was thrust in, and the ragged human scarecrow behind him pumped a burst of electromagnetically accelerated needles into the nearest Korvaash guard. More freed prisoners crowded in, cutting loose with their captured weapons. And Gromorgh recognized their leader . . . .
