Pressing her entire body against the soil, Ayliss cringed inside her armor as the sunlight was replaced by a yellow glow that raced toward them. A second crash of thunder passed over, followed by a blast of heated wind that lifted her into the air and threw her back several feet. The imagery showed an ovular fireball expanding where the nearest shuttle had been, and understanding came with it. The shuttle had clung to its suicidal course because it was unmanned. Remotely piloted, it had been intended to draw the deadly swarm because it was carrying one of the thermal bombs.
Another shockwave, this one from the opposite direction, as if the enormous explosion had burned up the very atmosphere around it and now a hurricane of other gasses was rushing in to fill the vacuum. Dirt swirled up and would have blanked out the sun if the orb could be seen through the fireball that stretched across the firmament. Lying there, feeling the heat slowly dissipating across her armor, Ayliss shut her eyes because she didn’t want to see what had happened to the Banshee squad closest to the blast.
“Rig? Rig?” Dellmore calling.
“I’m here.” Ayliss didn’t open her eyes. “Everybody okay?”
The different voices called out, proof that they were all alive. Varick answered last, and Zuteck responded.
“Hey, Captain?”
“Yeah.”
“You are officially our good luck charm.”
“What about the squads?” Reena demanded. “Are they alive?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The screens were slowly returning to normal, as if the trio of enormous fireballs had given retina burns to every camera covering the battlefield. “The last one just called in. Said they were a little singed, but all right.”
“What’s surveillance saying? Did we burn those things up or not?”
“The three concentrations are gone.” Merkit pressed a finger against his earpiece, relaying the messages. He gave Reena a hopeful look. “I think it worked.”
“Get the second shuttles in right away.”
“Already inbound,” Merkit answered. “Amazing. We couldn’t have done this near unarmored troops. The blast, the concussion, the heat, the vacuum . . . would have killed them all.”
“Are the next shuttles ready?”
“As soon as we’ve picked up these three squads, we’ll do it again with three more. With any luck, the aliens will stop coming after us.”
“Shuttles inbound, ma’am.” The warning made Merkit go silent, and they watched as the markers for the individual craft appeared in three different parts of the screen. “Squads ready to board.”
The cursors blinked in flight, each time moving closer to the pickup points like water bugs kicking across the surface of a lake. Reena’s mind was racing with the different variations of her plan, cooked up by Immersely’s staff in case the aliens reacted faster than expected. More unmanned flights, some with bombs and some without. A kaleidoscopic dance that would keep the detonations from knocking down the other ships.
The shuttles were almost to the pickup points, where the Banshees were marking their locations. Evacuating in this fashion would take many hours, unless the aliens retreated back inside their caverns. Reena’s thought shifted to the bigger question of what their opponents had hoped to accomplish with their devastating foray aboveground. Even if they’d killed every human on the surface, it wouldn’t save them in the long run.
“Shit!” Merkit caught himself too late.
The dots were back, forming quickly around the descending shuttles and the waiting Banshees.
“Why can’t we detect them?” Reena shouted impotently, knowing the moths only appeared on the scanners when they gathered in large numbers. She grabbed the console in front of her as the red cloud grew, her fingers whitening. Forcing herself to let go, and refusing to push the horror and disappointment away. “Put it on speaker. Let me hear it.”
“Ma’am, there’s no reason—”
“Let me hear it!”
A burst of static belched across the room, immediately followed by frantic calls.
“Perimeter! Tight perimeter!”
“Grenades only at this range! Don’t use up your flame fuel!”
“It’s gonna land on us!”
The shuttle’s cursor disappeared in the crimson mist, just a few hundred yards short of touchdown. A series of booms rattled the speakers, and then the cloud was surrounding the Banshees.
“Give it to ’em, sisters! Burn ’em down!”
“There’s too many of them!”
“They’ve got Temple! They’re crushing her!”
A rattle of gunfire, and then another explosion, and then silence.
The low hum of activity that was always in the background of the operations room was now missing. Technicians sat in various postures, some staring at the screens, others bent over in thought, while the remainder tapped out communications or whispered into headsets. Reena stood stock still, her lips parted slightly, and Merkit paced back and forth in a slow trudge near the back wall.
Someone had muted the audio, but it was all there on the monitors. The presentation automatically focused in on enemy contact, the view dropping to show the markers where individual Banshee squads were being surrounded and killed. Missiles rained down in a useless ring around some of them, a reflex call for protection that had always worked in the past. Incendiary rockets, not anywhere near as powerful as the therm-bombs, burned the ground and the low vegetation and even a few of the moths before the swarm closed in.
General Merkit stopped pacing, pointing at one of the monitors. “What’s going on there? What are those machines?”
On the screen, transparent globes fitted with engines and outsized pincer arms were carrying individual Banshees through the air. A tech enlarged the image while another answered.
“Those are extravehicular maintenance craft, brought down to the surface by the units supporting the Banshees, sir. No one seems to have known they were there. They’re scooping up the squads that are closest to the swarms and flying them out of danger.”
“How many of those things are available?”
“Impossible to say. No one’s directing them, and so the different support outfits are all mixed together. It’s pretty confused.”
“Find out how many of them are down there.”
“General.” Reena spoke with resignation.
Merkit flinched, knowing what was to come. “I’m here, ma’am.”
“No matter their numbers, those machines are only prolonging the inevitable. There’s no need to continue this. Order the fleet to move to minimum safe distance.”
“There has to be something we haven’t thought of.”
“Hear that?” She raised her left hand, palm up with the fingers spread, swinging it slowly from the elbow. “Not a word. If anybody’s got the solution, they’re keeping it to themselves.”
“How about . . .” Merkit’s mind raced. “We cut the feed to the squads. That way they won’t know if a shuttle is approaching or not. The aliens can’t read their minds for information they don’t have. We can still see where each squad is located, so we send a remote-piloted shuttle to each of them. They see it, they run on, it takes off.”
“Blind them? How are we going to explain that to them?”
“That’s the thing—we don’t tell them. We can’t.”
“Ma’am?” one of the techs called out.
“What is it?”
“The aliens just broke off one of their attacks.” The man pointed at the screen, now focused on the missile-torn plain around one Banshee squad’s position. “A squad assigned to Crater Thirty-Nine is reporting that the swarm flew away all at once.”
“Let me speak to them.”
“This is Sergeant Littlefield.” a tired voice answered. “Who’s this?”
“This is Chairwoman Mortas. How did you drive the aliens away?”
“We didn’t.” The words came through as exhaustion mixed with awe. “They had us. They fuckin’ had us. And then they just . . . left.�
�
Chapter 19
“The tanks are blasting holes in the wall!” Lieutenant Wolf reported from somewhere on the SOA’s perimeter. “We’re gonna have to fall back.”
Mortas listened to that report, and many others like it, from a vault buried under the Ministry. The prisoners had shown them the secret subterranean passage, but even so it had taken the nefarious talents of Leoni’s drivers to gain access to Asterlit’s bunker.
“Gunships using high explosive rounds!” Major Hatton called out from several blocks away. “They’re chewing up the buildings around us. Displacing to the north.”
Other reports carried similar tales of a losing battle. The Orange and the Flock were out in force, killing the green suiters in large numbers, but the units converging on the city were all hardened HDF. Protected by rocket fire and armored vehicles, they were grinding their way forward and squeezing the Orphans into a pocket that was getting smaller and smaller.
In addition to the medics that had arrived in a recent salvo of darts, Strickland had found a pair of communications specialists who volunteered to help Jander work the sophisticated equipment in Asterlit’s vault. The gear had been left running when the normal operators had fled, but the new radiomen weren’t sure they’d managed to transmit any messages off-world yet.
“Sergeant Strickland, you can stop sending people.” Jander called back to the Mound. “The Force is closing in on us. Load up another salvo of darts with ammo, and then send everybody away.”
“I’ll do that, but I’m coming in on the last one” Strickland answered. “If I’m gonna get executed, I want to be with my own.”
A muted blast thrummed against the bunker’s heavy walls, suggesting that the rocket-jamming gear was beginning to fail. Sergeant Leoni was up on the roof, firing anti-aircraft missiles at any gunships that tried to get close while FITCO drivers emptied the latest darts and shoved them over the side.
“I hear you. Make it quick. And tell anyone there who isn’t an Orphan to say they had nothing to do with us.”
“Aw, shit.” Strickland’s words rang with disappointment. “Won’t be seeing you, sir. Inbound rockets.”
“No!” Mortas shouted, as if to drive them away with his will. “Get down! You can make it!”
“Oh, that’s doubtful.” Strickland answered just as a succession of earthquake-sized explosions pounded over the speakers. The transmission ended.
“They killed them.” Easterbrook whispered at his elbow, a blood-soaked field dressing wrapped around her head. Much of the bunker was taken up with other wounded and the medics, but no one had been able to convince her to sit quietly. “They’re gonna kill us all, aren’t they, sir?”
“It’s all right,” he murmured, squeezing her shoulder while cold reality crystallized in his guts. One of Cranther’s comments came to mind, and he gave a lame grin. “It’s a lot cleaner when Command kills you on purpose, than when they do it by accident.”
“We’ve got confirmation!” one of the communications men shouted, bouncing in his chair. “Sir, we’ve been broadcasting your message off-world for almost an hour!”
“Who’s telling you they heard it?”
“Your first choice—the Holy Whisper radio net. The Whisper is rebroadcasting even as we speak.”
Mortas blew out a long exhale, and then gave Easterbrook a hopeful glance. “We might not be dead yet.”
The speakers came alive with the address he’d recorded an hour earlier.
“This is Lieutenant Jander Mortas of the Orphan Brigade. I am broadcasting from the Celestian Security Ministry in Fortuna Aeternum. Orphan units have attacked the Seat of Authority because Governor Damon Asterlit murdered our commanding officer, Colonel Jonas Watt, along with his entire staff.”
The others had gone silent, even the worst wounded gritting their teeth to listen.
“We have captured the Ministry and much of the Seat of Authority, and we have killed Governor Asterlit. We are under heavy attack by Human Defense Force units, and I ask you to rebroadcast my words to anyone who will listen.”
The room shook with another detonation, dust drifting down around them.
“Governor Asterlit had committed numerous crimes before murdering Colonel Watt. He had secretly reopened several mines in areas that the rebels never captured, and transferred Celestian citizen refugees to those mines. Right now, this very moment, they are being forced to work in exchange for their food rations.
“If you believe that the rebellion ended the slavery on Celestia, you have been misled. Video evidence of the new camps at the mines has been smuggled off-world by Orphan officers, and I ask whoever now has that footage to release it immediately. Your friend Erlon Pappas died so you could have that evidence.
“The Orphan Brigade has removed Asterlit’s government, and I am begging you to direct the HDF units attacking us to cease fire. Please rebroadcast this message, and if possible, send it to Chairwoman Reena Mortas.”
Jander looked at the nearest specialist. “Who confirmed receipt?”
“Someone claiming to know you, sir.”
He punched a button, and a young male voice came through the speakers. “This is Dru Clayton, from the Holy Whisper station on Roanum. I know Jander Mortas personally, and he is a man of honor and a man of peace. I am rebroadcasting his message, and urge every one of my brothers and sisters to do the same.”
“You think that will do it, sir?” Easterbrook asked, one hand clutching his armor while the other pressed against her head.
“Not sure. Maybe nobody’s gonna listen to a bunch of pacifists.”
One of the commo men turned in his seat. “I can’t think of a better group to call for a cease-fire.”
“Where’d you get the boomers?” Mortas asked Sergeant Leoni once he emerged on the roof. The jamming was still working, and several FITCO troops were firing the rocket launchers at the building across the street. Sited on lower ground, it was a good three stories shorter than the Ministry.
“You wouldn’t believe the arms room they had here.” Leoni was crouched by an unbroken part of the stone railing. No darts remained on the expanse, which was now covered in spent missile tubes and chonk casings. “Boomers, chonks, anti-aircraft, and tons of ammo. Looks like they figured they might have to use this place for a last-ditch defense.”
“They were always terrified of the people they abused,” Jan commented. Outside the distant wall surrounding the SOA, billowing clouds of smoke and soaring flames said that much of the city was rapidly disappearing in fire. “Fortuna Aeternum. Eternal Fortune. Look at it now.”
“For what it’s worth, I liked your message, sir.”
“We got an answer from the Whisper, and they’re rebroadcasting it. We’re sending it out to as many stations as we can. Not sure it’s gonna be in time.”
“The tanks have knocked down the wall to the north.” Leoni pointed. Gunships roared back and forth in front of what must have been a large armored assault creeping down the narrow streets. “The Orange and the Flock are holding them up, but that’s not going to last.”
A tree-sized rocket sailed down out of the atmosphere toward them, and Mortas shouted a warning just as Leoni grabbed his arm to keep him from going flat. The missile veered off course long before it would have impacted, wobbling in flight before erupting in the mud flats outside the city. Leoni laughed.
“The jamming takes a little getting used to. The drivers don’t even notice them anymore.” Mortas looked at the far edge, where the troops were still firing boomers. “Some of the CIP got in there, started lobbing chonk rounds at us. About the only thing that can reach us that doesn’t have a guidance system.”
“They’re gonna find a way to get past the jamming. And even if they don’t, those tanks will knock this whole place down when they get here.” Mortas made a decision. “Come on. Everybody down to the bunker.”
“With all due respect, sir, I’m not interested in being cornered. They’re going to execute us all anyway, so
I think I’ll stay put.”
The stark finality of Leoni’s statement hit him like a blow. The words took the high likelihood that they wouldn’t get out alive and turned it into a certainty.
“What about them?” Mortas pointed at the soldiers on the bare edge, where the darts had completely destroyed the railing.
“Same opinion. Everybody who wants to be downstairs is there already.” Leoni peered over the railing, at the front of the Ministry. “Look at all those big wide stairs. I was thinking how much I’d like to just sit out there. Eat a little lunch, watch people walk by.”
“You may yet.” Jander tried to control the rising doubt. “Who knows what that message might do? Come down to the bunker; we’re just playing for time now.”
“It’s been a pleasure working with you, sir.” Leoni extended a bloodstained hand.
He took it, staring into the older man’s eyes. “Don’t do this. Come with me.”
“We’ll hold ’em off as long as we can, sir. But when they come banging at that door, make sure they don’t take you alive.”
Chapter 20
“Why are they breaking off the attacks?” Reena asked, watching the monitors showing several embattled Banshee squads that were now in the clear. “Is this a trick?”
“Doubtful,” Merkit replied, his eyes flicking over the various screens. “What would they hope to get? A few more shuttles?”
“Ma’am,” a technician called, rising from her seat and pointing. “Look at Crater Forty-Seven.”
Reena stepped up to the monitors. The crater that held the partially assembled spacecraft was completely changed. The busy worms and caterpillars were almost all gone, and the truncated fuselage was no longer in the center of the shaft. It was pressed up against one side, and all three of the mammoths that had been holding it upright had coiled together. She watched in fascination as the circular hull bent, shivered, and then crumpled under the weight and the pressure of the beasts.
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