by Rick Partlow
Roza punched him in the arm lightly. “I already told them that,” she admonished him. He grinned, though she couldn’t see it through his helmet. Even in this huge clusterfuck, with imminent death staring him in the face, he was glad he was with her.
Then he heard turbines whining shrilly as the APCs in the rank behind the burning wreckage began to power back up…and slam directly into the burning hulks blocking the road.
“Oh, shit,” Ari muttered.
The first impact didn’t move the wreckage more than a few centimeters, so the vehicles backed up and rammed them again, the squeal of tearing metal and the grinding of the charred wheel rims against the pavement echoing down into the gulch and across the fields.
“Missile team up!” Roza was already yelling, waving them forward. “Get ready to hit the next row of vehicles as they come through!”
The first APCs to batter through the flaming hulks were on fire themselves, their grey metal hulls charred black and smoking, and Ari knew that the heat inside them had to be unbearable…for a human. The first group through stalled for a moment, and Ari thought the heat might have caused the wheels to seize up; but then the line of APCs behind them pushed hard and shoved them off to the side, two of the armored vehicles actually flipping over the side of the bridge to crash into the ditch ten meters below;
“Now!” Ari and Roza shouted together as the third lines of armored vehicles emerged from the line of wreckage, the firelight throwing menacing shadows off their dull grey surfaces.
The missile team let loose with another barrage and a half-dozen projectiles streaked out to strike the vehicles coming through the gap in the line. Six fireballs merged into one and the end of the bridge was consumed in an inferno with a wash of heat that Ari could feel through his armor even 200 yards away.
“I think that did it!” Roza said over their private comm channel. “They can’t just ram through that!”
“No,” Ari agreed grimly. “Now’s when the fun starts.”
The thermal lenses in his helmet were useless because of the flames, but by the light of the fire, he could see the armored figures clambering out of the hatches of the foremost vehicles in the jammed up convoy while the APCs behind them spread out on either side of the bridge. He knew what was coming next.
“Everyone get down!” He yelled over the general comm channel. “Get to cover!”
Taking his own advice, Ari flattened himself behind a berm that had formed where a low dividing wall had once stood, just as a rank of the Protectorate vehicles opened up with their autocannon. All around, the ground began to erupt as explosive shells ripped into the midst of them, targeted at the spots from which the missiles had been fired. Most of the team had moved, but Ari saw one trooper flying backwards in a rain of dirt and sod.
“Heads up!” He heard Roza’s voice on the net as the incoming fire began to slack off. “They’re coming up the ditch!”
Ari lunged up over the berm, bracing his carbine on the hard dirt, linking the weapon’s optics with his helmet’s targeting system. The Protectorate troops were barely visible, their grey armor dampening their thermal and IR signature, but the helmet’s targeting computer enhanced the picture using their movements and Ari focused on the closest of them, a shadowy figure clambering up the side of the ditch. A steady press on the trigger sent a three-round burst of 8mm slugs screaming from the carbine’s barrel and punching into the biomech’s head, sending it sprawling back into the dry creek bed. He shifted aim to the one just behind it and took it down as well, then took a moment to roll over to the other side of the berm, vacating the spot just as a cannon round hit not a meter from where he’d been.
Ari ignored the explosion and the clods of dirt that spattered against his side and picked out his next target…
“There are not enough of us,” General Kage told Shannon Stark over the command channel, not looking up from the barrel of his rifle as he put another round downrange, blowing the head off of an armored biomech. “They will overrun us when we run low on ammunition.”
He didn’t flinch as a cannon round struck near their position and a CeeGee trooper fell back, writhing and clutching at his side, where shards of shrapnel had penetrated his armor. “We must pull back and regroup at a more advantageous spot.”
“There is no more advantageous spot,” Shannon reminded him, squeezing off a burst from her carbine. “If we seek hardened cover, Dominguez will drop kinetic weapons on us and kill us even faster.”
“Then we will be forced to retreat and strike at them from the roadsides after they clear the bridge,” Kage said. “Or we will die where we stand. We can’t win without the defense satellites or air support.”
Shannon grunted, jerking back as an enemy bullet grazed the side of her helmet, setting her ears ringing and filling her vision with stars. She ducked down below the cover of the low, rock wall, hearing bullets punch into it from the other side. Cursing softly, she shook her head to clear it, then checked the time on her helmet display.
“We have to hold out a bit longer,” she told Kage, climbing back to a knee and bringing her weapon to her shoulder again. “I’m hoping for some good news on both fronts.”
“I recall one of your American sayings,” Kage growled. “Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.”
“I personally am Irish, born and bred, General,” she corrected him absently, most of her brain working on ranging a rifle grenade. “But as we seem to have a double-handful of shit right now,” she went on, launching the grenade into a clump of biomech troops coming over the bank of the dried-up stream, “we really don’t have much to lose by hoping.”
* * *
“Prepare to drop the drive field,” Nunez said, trying to make his voice sound calm and self-assured…but Patel noticed that his eyes kept darting back toward the main viewscreen, where the image of Earth continued to get larger and closer. “Commander Pirelli, we’re only going to have one shot at this before they target us with the lasers, so make it count.”
“You won’t be able to access the feed from the defense satellites,” Patel reminded her, feeling like he was backseat driving sitting in the acceleration couch behind the command station. “But you might try the news net sats. Their resolution is nearly as good.”
“I’ll cross-reference Colonel Stark’s comm signal,” Pirelli said, nodding sharply, “and drop the shots across the bridge from their position.” Her eyes flickered towards the countdown on her station’s display. “Ten seconds till we’re in range.”
“Lt. Sweeny,” Nunez said, “drop the field.”
Sweeny’s hand played over the control projection and the one g deceleration ceased abruptly, leaving them all in zero gravity. “Commander Pirelli, do you have a target lock?”
“Give me a few seconds, sir,” she said in a distracted voice, drawing a line from her sensor projection to the glowing avatar of a news net satellite, then tracing another from the satellite to the glowing signal from Shannon Stark’s communications ‘link.
I’ll give you all the time you want, Patel thought but didn’t say, but the Protectorates might not be so patient. But that was something the ship’s Captain would say, he reflected bitterly, and that was no longer his job.
Patel could see Nunez starting to fidget as nearly a minute passed, but then a satellite image came up on the Tactical display, showing a thermal/infrared rendering of the battlefield far below them on the darkened circle of a sundown Western hemisphere. Dim yellow-green humanoid shapes scurried here and there, and swarmed across the black gap of the dry creek bed, and here and there flares of white and red erupted where chemical hyperexplosives unleashed their fury. But what shown brighter were the ruddy glowing turbines inside the appropriated Marine armored vehicles that the Protectorates were using, arrayed in a semicircle on the other side of the bridge.
“Targeting the vehicles closest to the bridge and working outward,” Pirelli announced clinically, tracing the intended arc of fire a
cross the image projected in front of her. “Firing Gauss cannons…now.”
Patel started to say something to Nunez, but forced himself to wait, and just as he thought he would have to step on the man’s toes…
“Mandel,” Nunez said to the Communications officer as they all felt the far-away jolts of the electromagnetic coilguns opening up. “Tell McKay it’s time to launch.”
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” Jason McKay muttered as the assault lander kicked free of the Sheridan‘s hangar bay with the sharp bang of maneuvering thrusters.
“Not too crazy about the idea of closing the wall up with our English dead,” Jock commented drily from the row of seats behind him. More loud, abrupt bangs echoed through the packed rows of the lander as the maneuvering rockets shifted their attitude, swinging the drive bells parallel to the course of the Sheridan.
“You know your Shakespeare, Jock,” McKay said, raising an eyebrow in slight surprise as he glanced back at the NCO.
The big, blond Aussie looked even bulkier than usual in the full battle armor and HALO parachute rig they all wore, his battle rattle overflowing the edges of his acceleration couch and the safety harness straps pulled to their maximum extension. “Not too many buggers in the military that don’t know Henry V,” he said, shrugging it off.
“Don’t let him fool you, sir,” Vinnie said with a snorting laugh. “Jock was lead in a high school production of Henry V that got picked up by Republic HoloNet Entertainment’s Asia Talent Search. He was a minor celebrity in Sydney for weeks.”
“Oh my God,” Sergeant Watanabe spoke up from the seat on the other side of Jock Mahoney, his normally morose face breaking into a smile. “I saw that broadcast! That was you?”
“Hold onto your butts, ladies and gentlemen,” Commander Villanueva’s voice sounded over the speakers from the cockpit. “We’re going in.”
“The wardrobe girl was a smokin’ hot Sheila,” Jock muttered, half to himself.
Then the lander’s drive ignited and the two dozen Special Ops and Marine troops were pushed back into their seats as it moved from behind the shelter of the monolithic star cruiser and headed for the atmosphere below.
* * *
The Protectorate gunners were beginning to get the range, walking round after round in towards the CeeGee positions, and Shannon was about to admit to General Kage that he had been right and they were going to have to pull back, when it seemed like God Himself reached down and smote the enemy. Claps of thunder sounded as sonic booms echoed through the sky and trails of ionized vapor connected the heavens and the Earth for an eyeblink. The ground erupted across the road bridge, liberated kinetic energy turning the very air into a weapon as superheated gas turned to plasma and bathed the Protectorate lines in incandescent fire.
Shannon knew she should be hugging the ground, but she couldn’t look away from the apocalyptic vision that stretched out before them, lighting up the night with a glow brighter than day. If the attack by the orbital defense satellites had been the terrifying hand of an angry deity, this was the very end of the world by comparison. She counted at least three dozen of the groundcar-sized projectiles fall, each taking out a handful of enemy vehicles in a splash of plasma and a mushroom cloud with an impact that shook and split the very earth beneath them. Men and women and biomech troopers lay helpless, unable to walk on the trembling ground.
And then it ceased as abruptly as it had begun, leaving a preternatural silence that let Shannon hear the crackle of the flames and the pop-crack-boom of ammunition cooking off in the APCs that had been at the edge of the strikes and had only been set afire rather than being vaporized outright. An instinctive thought that didn’t reach her conscious mind made her turn and she gasped involuntarily at what she saw.
Behind them, rising into the sky from a spot over five hundred kilometers away to the southeast, a crackling thread of ionized atmosphere marked the invisible passage of an incredibly powerful laser beam, fed by a dedicated fusion reactor. Designed to launch cargo capsules into orbit, it doubled as a defense system against orbital attack…and now it was being used against them by their enemies.
“They have done what they can,” Kage said, eyeing the line of destroyed enemy vehicles…at least a third had been destroyed in the attack. “Now, the rest is up to us.”
“Ari, Tom,” Shannon broadcast on her team’s net. “Take them over the top. This is all the advantage we’re going to get…let’s take it.”
She picked up her carbine from where it had fallen and checked its load, focusing on the enemy…but she couldn’t help a glance up into the night sky and a hope that the Sheridan was still there.
* * *
Admiral Patel sighed with relief, settling back into his acceleration couch as the Sheridan headed away from Earth at one gravity. It had been way too close.
“Damage report,” Nunez said, his tone normal but sweat beading on his forehead.
“Captain Nunez,” Commander Devlin’s voice came over the bridge speakers, “we took quite a hit before the drive field came up. “Can’t tell without a survey flight, but we lost quite a bit of armor off the nose and there may be some damage to the laser emitters we’ve been using for gravimetic sensors. The sensors are still working, but I’m getting some feedback in the circuits. I don’t know how long they’ll hold out.”
“Stay on top of it, Commander,” Nunez said. “We don’t have time for repairs right now…there are still dozens of Protectorate ships heading this way.”
“Aye, sir,” the man acknowledged.
“Any word on the lander?” Patel asked quietly. Nunez looked from him to Pirelli.
She shook her head. “They entered the atmosphere before the laser fired,” she told them, “but then I lost it and we’re too far away now.”
“The battle down there is out of our hands now,” Nunez said, crossing himself instinctively. “Our battle is out here. Helm, set course for the nearest formation of Protectorate ships.”
“Aye, sir,” Lt. Ghent replied, linking his board to the Tactical sensors.
“Sir…” Pirelli began hesitantly, frowning at her display. “We’re at pretty extreme range for the sensors we’ve rigged up, but I think I’m detecting an Eysselink drive field coming from the direction of the wormhole.”
“Damn,” Nunez muttered, shaking his head. “More of those ramships?”
“No, sir,” Pirelli said, her eyes widening. “Whatever this is, it’s much, much larger than that…”
Chapter Forty-Three
Valerie cradled Natalia in her arms, feeling the jerking sobs slowing, feeling the wetness of her daughter’s panicked tears soaking her blouse over her left shoulder. There were dirt stains on her skirt from sitting on the floor and she had to fight an inane impulse to brush at them. Instead, she drew her knees up and huddled in the corner of the cabin’s kitchen, trying not to stare. But there was so much to stare at…
There was, to start with, Vice President Xavier Dominguez. She’d known the man for years, from before her father ran for President; he’d even been to their cabin a few times, been fishing with Glen in the lake. Now…now he was like a different person. His eyes were wide and red, like he was on something, and his skin was pale and clammy. He looked wired and terrified and giddy all at the same time, and it was scaring the hell out of her. He sat in a chair at the kitchen table, foot tapping out a haphazard rhythm on the wooden floor, eyes glued to the large tablet resting on the table in front of him, showing the tactical display from the orbital defense satellites.
Dominguez had flown into a rage when the Sheridan had shown up and launched an attack on the biomech ground force, screaming curses as he tried to target the ground-based lasers in an attempt to destroy the ship. He’d pounded the table in frustration when she’d put up her drive field before the laser did any real damage, but now he was back to his keyed-up murmuring, ignoring everything else around him, including Natalia’s panicked reaction to his violent outburst.
&
nbsp; Then there were the half dozen mercenaries he’d brought with him. They were all cut from the same mold: hard-faced, hard-eyed men and women in nondescript grey fatigues and body armor, submachine guns strapped across their chests and sidearms at their hips. They were stationed in and out of the cabin, ever watchful yet ignoring her and her daughter except to make sure that neither of them made a false move.
And of course, there were the platoon of biomechs that had flown in on a tilt-rotor transport just after the mercenaries had seized the cabin. They were all outside, but she could see them through the bay windows, patrolling robotically along the perimeter of the property, three of them stationed around the dock, barely visible in the glow of the exterior floodlights. Thankfully, their helmets hid their dead, black shark’s eyes, but there was no mistaking their inhuman bulk or the graceless, mechanical precision of their movements. One of the mercenaries was their controller, she had deduced: a plain-faced blond woman who wore a backpack with a small transmission dish affixed to it, a control pad strapped to her left forearm.
But the one thing she was trying the hardest not to stare at was Charlie Klesko’s body. He’d been killed by the mercenaries the minute they’d stepped out behind Dominguez, shot on the porch outside the back door of the cabin, and they’d left his body where it fell. The back door was clear transplas and through it she could see his sightless eyes staring at her, the blood pool beginning to dry under his body. Charlie had been a friend…
She forced those thoughts down, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry. It was bad enough that they thought of her as helpless, a hostage. A surge of anger went through her, but she pushed that down as well. She couldn’t afford to give into rage any more than grief. She had to think of Natalia.
She pulled the three-year-old away from her shoulder and looked her in the eye. Natalia looked just like the pictures she’d seen of her mother as a little girl, except that her hair was blond like her father’s. Right now, her cheeks were streaked with tears, her face red from crying, her lower lip quivering.
