Sofia huffed, "It washes out all the stars."
Sofia's "it" was, of course, Shiva V. Though close enough to suggest its immensity, it was still too far to make out details in its armor. At the moment, it looked like a fairy jewel, a shiny alabaster bauble in a child's treasure chest.
Paolo squeezed her tight. "It will not be there for long, of that, I can assure you." He did not mention that it might not be there because it would soon be here.
"I know, darling." She turned to him and kissed his cheek. "Kill it for me, please, darling?" In the tone of her voice, all wrapped together in that moment, were all the emotions ever devised by a woman: love, hate, teasing, fear, yearning, puzzlement, and a host of others too subtle ever to be named or understood by a mere male.
But Paolo knew they were there, and responded to them, as men do. "We will kill it," he promised.
"And their homeworld. Destroy their homeworld, so they never come again." Sofia shuddered in the darkness.
Paolo exhaled slowly. There was a limit to his willingness to embrace a lie, even to comfort his beloved. He felt a shiver of tension rise up his back, knowing what Sofia needed to hear, knowing he could not say it.
And then he was calm—unnaturally calm, calm beyond quiet. The shiver of fear disappeared, and a tranquil certainty he had known once before filled him, and he was not himself. He became, for that moment, someone else, someone looking back upon this moment from a distant future, someone who knew the truth as it had already been writ. "I will not destroy their homeworld," he said at last from that distant place. "The fate of their star is for Mercedes to decide, and for the people who will join her."
"As long as we keep it in the family," Sofia replied, pressing her head into his shoulder.
* * *
Jessica stepped from her cocoon, wobbled a moment, and walked quietly out of her office, out of the hall, out of the building, into the night sky. She discovered the nighttime had drawn a crowd. As nearly as she could tell, everyone at Fort Powell was out here, staring into the sky.
She did not have to look up to see what drew their attention. Shiva hung there, a most beautiful harbinger of death. Seeing the others standing there transfixed, Jessica considered going back inside. But she peeked up for just a moment, and could not take her eyes off of it.
A deep male voice made her jump. "Gorgeous, isn't it?" General Samuels said, wistfully.
"Gorgeous," Jessica agreed. They stood quietly for a moment, staring at the now-angelic orb. "Why are they so determined to kill us?" she asked of no one in particular.
She should have known, the General would somehow respond. He shook his head. "There is a more interesting question, Jessica. Why is their determination so half-hearted?"
Jessica turned to look at him with upraised eyebrows. "It doesn't seem very half-hearted to me, General."
Samuels shrugged. "And most people sleep better, believing this is a full-out effort on the Shiva's part. But really, Jessica, suppose you wanted to destroy us at all costs. Would you drop a Shiva into orbit before blowing up cities? Why bother with individual cities?" He pointed into the sky. "Our calculations suggest that when a Shiva comes through our Oort Cloud, it is traveling at eighty percent the speed of light. If they didn't care about anything except destroying us, it wouldn't slow down, Jessica. It would just charge right through the system, and hit Earth head-on at full speed. There wouldn't be anything left except molten rock." Samuels spread his hands. "Nothing left at all."
Jessica shivered. "So they want us—or at least our planet—for some purpose of their own." She shook her head. "What could it be?"
Once more Samuels just shrugged. "The 'castpoints have a lot of theories, all with low probabilities." He smiled. "My own personal favorite explanation is the 'Galactic Sierra Club gone amuck' theory." He gave her a short laugh, which subsided when she just stared at him.
"What's a Sierra Club?" she asked, puzzled.
The General deflated as she watched. "It was an organization I belonged to in my youth that . . . ah . . . well, never mind. Some jokes just don't span the generations very well, I guess."
To cheer him up, Jessica decided to offer him the most ridiculous explanation she'd heard. "My grandmother thinks the Shivas are manufactured by a machine, originally built for a big government by the lowest bidder. The original purpose was for wiping out competing governments, while keeping most of the people alive to serve the Shivas' government. Granma says the good news is, after becoming operational, the Shivas almost certainly destroyed the bureaucrats who spawned them." She gave the General her warmest smile.
But he didn't find her story any funnier than she'd found his. He nodded quite seriously. "A variant of Saberhagen's Berserkers," he said. He watched her eyes nervously, wondering if she'd understand at least that reference from long ago.
"Right, I've heard of the Berserkers," Jessica said. The General visibly relaxed, knowing he wouldn't have to explain that one. They laughed together.
Samuels tilted his head back to Shiva V. "You think it's beautiful now? Wait till we blow it up. That is a sight of corruscating splendor," he said with a confidence she knew he could not feel.
"Why General, you're a poet." She batted her eyeflashes at him, then continued, "I can't wait to see it," she replied with a burst of verve she knew that he knew she could not feel, either.
* * *
The Dealer sat alone in his apartment and looked out his tiny window at the bright, terrible face of his greatest opportunity. By this time tomorrow, he would be a rich man.
He considered emailing to thank Reggie Oxenford for giving him the insight. Now the Dealer not only knew he would soon become rich, but he would become rich helping, more or less, to save the world. It was a good thing to believe, looking up into the sky at a terror so cold and alien.
Yes, the time for scams was past. Or at least his next great scam was put on hold for a couple of days.
* * *
Reggie stepped off the roton with a gratefulness even greater than usual; all the time they'd been in orbit, he'd kept expecting the ship to get hit by a missile from Shiva. It was a silly thought, of course, but with the enemy vessel so close, so big in the tiny viewplates of the roton, it was hard to avoid.
He walked to the edge of the landing pad and looked up into the night sky. Deadly beauty gleamed back down.
A silken voice of lace and satin spoke, "Taxi, sir?" The voice ended in a mocking tone. He saw from the corner of his eye that the speaker was throwing him a salute. Mercedes' eyes glowed in the night, almost as bright, in his opinion, as the light of Shiva.
Reggie shook his head. "You are outrageous, girl." He held his hand out to her, and Mercedes stepped close. Reggie continued, "Take me to milady's apartment," he said with appropriate haughtiness.
"No way, mister." The tone was still laughing, but the message was serious. "This here taxi service takes you to your motel." Mercedes stepped closer, so close, but not touching. " 'Milady' has to work tomorrow, and she needs to be undisturbed."
Reggie sighed. "I suppose I can understand that." Unable to restrain himself in such close proximity, he reached suddenly around her head, grasped her hair in his hands, and pulled her in for a kiss. "For luck," he explained.
She responded with surprised pleasure, then stopped. They stood together, holding hands, looking up into the face of night.
Chapter Ten
The Alabaster Hall
True love was a rare thing, and Anatoly Vinogrado understood just how incredibly lucky he was to have had two loves in his life. His first love was, of course, his wife. But his new love, his new mistress, was every bit as special to him. He loved his Mark VIII HellBenders.
He'd loved them when he first ran the sims of them in action, so fast and agile. Now he loved them even more, watching them in their elusive grace, driving home to Shiva. Somehow, Shiva was having trouble tracking them—he could tell from the subtle errors in the countermissile fire, their slowness to retarget as the
HellBender evaded. Time after time, Anatoly's new babies got closer to Shiva than ever before.
But still not close enough. Anatoly sighed. Well, even true love did not promise perfection.
Shiva knew that it faced something terrible and new. It had fired a huge flock of Hydras in the direction of Vinogrado's task force. Shiva hadn't found the fleet yet—if it had, the fire would be aimed at them, not merely in their general direction—but if it did . . .
He focused on getting his HellBenders ever nearer, ever deeper into the defensive envelope, into the plasma tube beneath the ragged hole he had made with his last hit. At last he conceded defeat: Shiva had more layers of defensive fire protecting that cratered opening than it had for half the rest of the ship. Anatoly would have to try a different track.
He turned to targeting the ring of small hemispheres encircling the tube, the proximity antimissile batteries. If he took a chunk out of those, maybe someone else would get another hit on the tube itself.
Two of his missiles jigged onto his newly designed tactical course just in time to avoid destruction. One of those died shortly thereafter.
From the corner of his eye, Anatoly saw a Hydra on his screen suddenly change course, zeroing in on his task force flagship. Shiva had found the fleet at last. Anatoly didn't have much time left.
His surviving HellBender dodged another countermissile. Enemy laser fire grazed it, but it was too close now, and a flash of light blossomed on the screen as the missile struck, halfway between two of the countermissile batteries.
"Victory!" Anatoly shouted to no one in particular, raising his fist in defiance of the seemingly invincible Shiva. He had just set a new world record—he was the first person in history to get two scores against the goddess of destruction.
Examining the results of his hit, his practiced eye suggested he might have wiped out six of the counterbatteries, not just the two closest to the blast. A good score, indeed.
Another flash lit the screen, but this time it was not good news. The cruiser Phnom Penh disintegrated as a pair of missiles struck home. Then Anatoly stiffened; three Hydras veered toward his own South Hampton.
There wasn't really any chance of surviving a three-Hydra salvo. He would have to hurry.
Anatoly punched buttons to fire again, and found he couldn't: his missile bays were empty. He was out of a job.
But someone else on some other ship had noticed the weakened counterfire in the area where he'd nailed the countermissile launchers. And someone was trying exploit the weakness. Anatoly could see missiles streaking toward the plasma tube from the undefended angle. If they could keep it up long enough, they'd surely get another hit.
He watched idly as the South Hampton's countermissile fire nailed one of the Hydras. His mind turned to the future. His son, Illya, had just been accepted to the Space Force Academy in Colorado Springs. There had never been any doubt that Illya was a bright kid, incredibly bright. Indeed, Anatoly's wife Aleksa frequently compared Illya to her own grandfather, who, while he might be a rickety old codger, was probably the smartest man Anatoly had ever met.
Anatoly raised his fist once more. "My son will finish what I have begun," he promised the distant monster. "You will be sorry you ever—"
Five submissiles from a Hydra struck the South Hampton as one. The light radiated so brightly as to be completely painless.
* * *
CJ floated in the pitch blackness of the windowless ship, hardly daring to breathe. She could tell the other members of her team shared the same fear of sound she felt, for she could not hear them breathing, either. She wondered if the others had died somehow; she wondered if instead she had died and this was the afterlife. Or afterdeath.
The blackness clung to her. As she started to feel like she was suffocating, she heard a hearty laugh. "Is anyone still alive?" she heard Lars' booming voice.
CJ cringed, then forced herself to be calm. "It's funny, Lars, isn't it, that your voice makes me nervous, because I'm afraid Shiva will hear."
Axel's voice came from the other side of the cylinder. "You can say that again, CJ. Lars, I know that, in space, no one can hear you laugh, but could you keep it down anyway?"
Lars chuckled again, but this time the sound was muffled, like he was holding his hand over his mouth. "Do you really like the silence better?"
A rush of acceleration pushed CJ deep into her shockweb. CJ could not see, but knew that the huge concrete ballast had been thrown off, leaving the Argo almost motionless relative to Shiva. A tiny push, delicate compared to the last one, came next, followed by a thin whining sound as the grappling hooks reached into the docking bay. CJ knew the hooks had found purchase when she was pressed once again into her shockweb, ever so gently. A muted clang announced the ceramic-on-ceramic collision of the Argo with the enemy ship. A soft glow, the glow of a thousand Midwest lightning bugs, filled the room as chemical-powered lights came up. The left side of the Argo became the floor as the Argo, locked now inside Shiva, took on Shiva's gravitational force, induced by the smooth and constant deceleration of .85 gees as it approached Earth.
CJ spoke at last. "Okay, folks. We're here. Axel, do your stuff."
"Check," Axel said with his leering grin. He swung down into the chair by the touchscreen.
Everyone sat up to watch Axel work the controls. On the screen they could see the lock-picking arm of the Argo swing out to the docking bay's optical verifier.
Back on Earth, CJ knew, a 'castpoint and prizeboard were working at full speed as the various experts of Earth vied to determine the best method of attack. The problem was actually straightforward, since the lock's mechanism had not been changed since Angel One's assault, merely the codes. And no one planned to sit around trying to figure out the codes.
Instead, the lock-picking hand snapped the lid off the lock, and a long finger dug into the bowels of the mechanism. Axel worked the finger using analyses coming off his screen, forwarded by MacBride from the 'castpoint.
A tiny tremor shook the ship as an outer wall slid over the dock's opening, to seal the dock for pressurization. Then the first blast shield separating the dock from the interior of the ship revealed its true nature, by sliding back into a hidden recess.
Roni clapped his hands. "Let the games begin." Lars was already heaving the heavy rear hatch of the Argo out of the way. Akira slid out, graceful as a ghost, and started setting up the drilling system on the outer docking bay door. Axel squeezed out after him—the Argo fit the Shiva docking bay like a hand in a glove, filling the bay with as much gear and as many people as Earth engineering could cram in.
Lars went to the front of the Argo and rolled the forward hatch back. Roni and CJ rolled gear forward, which Lars lifted over the lip of the hatch and onto the Shiva's floor.
By the time CJ stepped down from the hollow ceramic crate that had brought them here, Akira and Axel had completed their efforts: the redundant pair of X-ray lasers that supplied their link to the outside world was in operation, peeping through a pair of tiny holes in the outer door.
Five minutes later everyone was encased in their exoskeletal armor frames. They climbed onto their bikes and started down the Alabaster Hall.
* * *
Jessica rubbed her temples. The headache was worse than it had ever been during the exercises, but she could take no chance of dulling her perceptions, even with as mild an analgesic as aspirin.
From the start of the lock-picking operation to the moment when Morgan turned away from the screens to take a break, hardly half an hour had passed. Yet she was trembling from the tension. She cracked the hatch on the cocoon and stepped out for an orange juice.
With the juice in her hand, halfway to her mouth, she broke into an uncontrolled, almost hysterical laugh. Her heart had just about stopped when all the feeds from the Argo had shut down moments earlier.
A twist of the doorknob made her turn: the General walked in, looking sympathetic. "You all right there?" he asked in a worried tone.
"You d
idn't warn me about the blackout," she snapped in accusation.
The General stopped, then nodded. "You mean when Shiva's outer air lock door closed."
"Right." Jessica brought her hands up to cover her eyes. "When the door closed, and shut off all our comm, I was suddenly blind. I thought for sure the Angels were trapped in there, without help, and Morgan and I would both just twiddle our thumbs till the missiles hit us."
"I am very sorry. I think, though, you'll find the comm system reliable from here forward."
"Right." She took a drink of her orange juice. "Well, I need to get back into the cocoon. Um, could I ask you for a big favor?"
The General looked at her in surprise. "How can I help you?"
Jessica looked away. She could feel heat on her face. "Could I keep a screen open to you in your office? So I can ask you an occasional question."
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