by Neal Asher
He couldn't block images of what people back home were doing at this moment. He had lived through it as a pilot, but never as a civilian. Listening to radios, to sirens, to civil defense instructions never comprehensive enough to be of real value. Orders to evacuate, issued over cable communications from neighborhood to neighborhood. People afraid, people throwing things into automobiles or scrambling for buses or trains or Civil Defense trucks...
He tried to quell such thoughts. He needed his wits about him.
At the axis chambers, the security guards organized the people into priority tram groups. He was plucked from the crowd by three young marines and ushered almost forcibly into a special car.
The center of Stone external communications was a walled-off area about twenty meters square in one corner of the prime dock staging area. Six marine corporals stood by the door, rifles at ready, their boots hooked into special loops to brace them in case they needed to aim and fire. Lanier passed between them. Inside the room, ten people had gathered. They watched him closely as he pulled himself into a seat.
Four video screens were mounted in one wall. Innumerable repeaters had been wired into most of the consoles. Only one of the big screens was on, showing a fuzzy picture of the Stone itself surrounded by data readouts. That was a picture from the Drake: just as he had first seen the Stone, four years ago.
Pickney handed him a pair of Velcro galoshes. "It hasn't started yet," she said. "But there's been an alert. Something's hit the fan but we're not sure what it is. Put this on." She wrapped earphones and mike around his head. "I've been getting everything coordinated for the past half hour."
"Orders yet?"
"Nothing specific. Just the alert."
He sat where he was told and a bank of keyboards and viewers was moved near to him. Captain Kirchner and his aide, a young mustachioed lieutenant commander dressed in khakis, entered a few minutes later and were seated a few meters away in similar accommodations.
Kirchner, in charge of external Stone defense, was really the central figure now. Gerhardt was in the first chamber, making preparations; but for the moment, what happened in the chambers was incidental. "Get fifteen men outside the bore hole with portable detection systems," Kirchner said. "I want them hidden behind those honey-comb walls, out of sight—no heat signatures. And get those goddamned Gatling guns in position."
Quiet descended. Pickney, earpbones clamped over her short, bobbed hair, listened intently. A burst of static issued from a speaker on the other side of the room.
On the largest screen before Lanier, a picture flicked on, wavered and steadied into crystal clarity. The source was a camera just outside the bore hole, in the honeycombed dimple. The camera was oriented toward the Earth at that moment. The limb of the Earth, still in darkness, came into focus. The picture shuffled twice as enhancers did their work. Lanier could then make out continents, cloud patterns, city lights in the night. They were within a few minutes of being nearest in their orbital path to Earth—less than three thousand kilometers.
A crackly radio voice came over their headphones. "Heavensent, Heavensent, this is Red Cube. Alert situation
Remarkable."
"Shit," Kirchner murmured.
"Bears have just announced their end run. Captain Kirchner, we are devising responses now. Your situation is unknown. Please advise."
"We are secure and making preparations," Kirchner said.
Red Cube—the Joint Space Command western headquarters in Colorado—came back with, "You are now out of our response pattern, Captain. We must conduct affairs as if you did not exist. The steam in the sweatbox is thick. Looks like they're going to take out our near-Earth capability. Understood?"
"Understood. Hope to God you can keep them in line, Red Cube."
"Heavensent is now on its own, Captain."
"Yes, sir."
The transmission ended.
"My screen shows an OTV approach," Kirchner said. "Is it identified?"
"OTV forty-five, carrying supplies and reinforcement personnel, launched nine hours ago from Station Sixteen," Pickney said. "We've been monitoring."
Kirchner's aide confirmed that the marines in the dimple had picked up a blip on their scanners.
"Take it aboard," Kirchner said. "We're going to be getting a lot more in a day or so if this goes all-out."
"Yes, sir—several more launching already."
A screen before Lanier rolled up a picture of the OTV approaching the bore hole. Suddenly, the OTV expanded into a glowing sphere. Silently, quickly, the sphere dissolved at its edges and darkened to dull orange. Debris scattered in silhouette against the diffuse shells of gas.
"Sir," Kirchner's aide said, "they're seeing dark transits out there, blocking stars. Behind the OTV."
"The OTV's gone," Lanier said. "Captain, they've snuck in behind our ship."
"My God," exclaimed a voice over a the hissing and crackling loudspeaker. Pickney had opened the marines' frequency to all in the room. "Something's taken out our ship. Am I seeing—"
"Transits, transits! No blips."
"Durban here. I'm getting dark spots but they have to be retinal."
'"No way. I didn't see the flash and I'm getting four, five, six transits blocking stars. Big suckers."
"They're going to come down the pipe," Kirchner said. "Get the OTV tanks rigged to block them. Team A, release your cables."
Cameras in the bore hole showed ghostly infrared- and low-light-enhanced images of men in suits moving behind the first rotating dock. Mortar-like cannon fired coiled steel cable across the hundred-meter diameter of the bore hole. Harpoons fixed the cables in the opposite wall. Seven were fired in rapid succession, making a web in the bore hole. Three discarded OTV tanks were maneuvered up from the sides and fixed in position with more cables. All this was done in less then ten minutes.
"They won't come in the staging areas," Kirchner said confidently. "It would be a waste of time. If they come down the pipe, they'll go for the chambers. They can mop us up later. I hope Oliver's soldiers are prepared."
In the commotion, Lanier had directed his eyes away from the screens displaying the Earth. He returned his attention to them.
Tiny orange spots blossomed along the Soviet coast west of Japan, simple suborbital rockets deploying solid debris to bring down low-orbit satellites and battle stations. "Pop-ups," Kirchner said.
One of the marines outside the bore hole said something garbled. Then, as Pickney enhanced the reception, the voice continued, "Sir, they're blowing the masks."
The large screen switched to a view down the bore hole. Stars twinkled beyond the flare-lit rotating dock and the outer lip of the bore hole. Three shadows moved against the stars. Then, fire rimmed the shadows and pie slices of black material drifted away, revealing shapes difficult for the eye to define. The mirrored noses of the intruders were reflecting the dark interior of the bore hole and the illuminated prime dock. "Signature," Kirchener's aide said. "They're Russian, ocean-launched heavy-lift cargo vehicles. First is in the pipe."
Twenty meters wide, the Russian ships resembled Christmas decorations as they entered the bore hole. Invisible beams of energy from guns hidden beyond the rotating dock were already making parts of the leading heavy-lifter glow orange. Lanier could not begin to keep track of what was happening. His eye moved from screen to screen; Kirchner spoke rarely now. The procedures had already been outlined; his men were doing all they had been trained to do, all they could do.
"Pickney, patch me through to seventh chamber," Lanier said.
"Everyone's in first and fourth chambers by now," Gerhardt said.
"Then get me fourth chamber. Wherever. I want Heineman."
"Lead ship returning fire," said an anonymous voice from within the bore hole. "Looks like they're aiming for the tanks, maybe the cables."
"Maybe they don't see the cables," another voice suggested. The tone of both soldiers was calm, expectant.
Lanier noticed a monitor showing the tiny sta
r of Station Sixteen, in low Earth orbit of one thousand kilometers. As he watched, the star became a glowing smudge of white light. The light winked out.
"Heineman on your button five," Pickney told Lanier. He punched the button.
"Lawrence, this is Garry."
"I was almost out the door and they pulled me back in. I'm in fourth chamber, Garry. I was on my way—"
"Lawrence, we're in—we're being attacked. Just get to the V/STOL and take it up. Hitch to the tuberider and take it down the line. Stay there until we call you back."
"Got you. I was on my way."
The button popped up and dimmed.
More brilliant white flowers grew from pinpoints to blue-white smudges over Japan and China—four in all. These were orbital nuclear bursts, designed to incapacitate communications and power nets with intense flashes of electromagnetic interference—the source of more static over the speakers. As the Stone moved in its counterclockwise orbit, and as the Earth turned beneath them, he saw more bursts over the Soviet Union and Europe—fourteen in all. A veritable nuclear springtime. They had upped the ante since the Little Death. No strategic exchanges yet—but no unshielded electronics or communications systems would survive these preliminary steps in the dance.
The smaller viewscreens showed pictures intercepted from those scanning satellites still intact and broadcasting.
The coast of North America, southern and Baja California prominent, came into dawn, high-altitude glows casting an eerie light across the ocean and land, like penlights on a relief map. The carnage still hadn't begun. What was the plan bluff? Deception?
The negotiations would have begun already. What has been done, what will be done unless ... How to scale back, defuse, settle for a limited confrontation ... Who was bluffing whom, and how far they would go.
Who would surrender.
*23*
Colonel Mirsky gripped the edge of the hatch leading to the ship's cockpit. There was no direct view of the bore hole; the laser shield and armored outer hull covered the forward windows. He couldn't understand the displays before the two pilots; they were a confusion of vague lines, spinning circles, things like Easter eggs rolling and precessing in a grid pattern. "Get your men ready," the ship's commander said, glancing over his shoulder. "Tell them to stay close to the bore-hole walls until they exit into the first chamber. They have men with lasers waiting. Sting like bees."
Heavy fists seemed to slam on the outside of the hull in a rapid tattoo. Alarms went off. "Naughty fellows; that was a Gatling gun," the copilot said. "Laser shields penetrated. Minor outer hull breach."
Mirsky backed out and closed the hatch behind him, the commander's comment about bees still echoing in his mind. Mirsky had once tended bees on a city co-op in Leningrad as a student project. We invade the hive, he thought. Naturally, they try to sting.
He floated across the first compartment, picked up his helmet and issued terse instructions. The sergeants—squad leaders for the second and third compartments—pulled themselves through the hatches to alert their men. Minutes and it would begin.
"Why so glum, Alexei?" he chided a soldier inspecting his helmet. "Friends, are your weapons charged?"
They pulled their rifles out of a charging rack and checked the glowing LEDs.
"Line up," Mirsky said. In the second and third compartments, he heard orders being barked. The first company commander, stationed in the first compartment, Major Konstantin Ulopov, was already in his helmet, with the cannonbearer Zhadov tugging experimentally at the connections and seals on his suit. When he was given the okay, Ulopov would in turn assist Mirsky.
None of them had much protection against laser or projectile hits. In this sort of warfare, an AKV or even a pistol—prepared for the vacuum, but with standard-issue bullets—was as effective against a soldier as antipersonnel lasers.
Mirsky approached the small group surrounding "Zev," Major General Sosnitsky. "Our battalion is prepared, Comrade General," he reported.
Sosnitsky's staff of three officers—with the Zampolit, Major Belozersky, standing nearby were checking and re-checking the general's suit, like chicks around a hen. Sosnitsky lifted a gloved hand over the commotion and offered it to Mirsky. Mirsky grasped it firmly. "The Marshall would be proud of you and your men," Sosnitsky said. "Today—or tonight or whatever it is—will be glorious."
"Yes, sir," Mirsky said. Even though his thoughts about the command structure bordered on the cynical, Sosnitsky had the power to make him feel emotion.
"We will give them something back for Kiev, won't we, Comrade?"
"That we will, Comrade General."
He glanced up at Belozersky. The political officer's expression was a mix of exaltation and borderline panic. His eyes were wide and his upper lip was damp.
Mirsky wiped his own upper lip. Moist. His whole face was moist. Then he backed away from the group and resumed his position.
The queuing lights near the three circular exit hatches came on and the craft began its erratic tumbling, designed to offer unpredictable targets for marksman as the soldiers leaped forth. It would also scatter them like chaff inside the bore hole; the partners would grip each other's harnesses and jump as a group to stay together until they had their bearings.
They would not fire randomly; there was more chance of hitting one another than an antagonist. Only in direct combat
with clearly seen opponents would they fire, and they were not to waste their time even with that if it could be avoided.
Everyone was suited and lined up. The emergency airlock surrounding number two exit hatch had been dismantled and stowed against the bulkhead. The pumps began to evacuate the compartments with throaty grumbles and a high pud-pud. The connecting hatches between the compartments slid shut, The lights were extinguished. The only thing
Mirsky's soldiers could see now were the queuing lights above the exit hatches and the luminous glows of their guide ropes.
"Check radios and locators," he said. Each soldier performed a quick diagnostic on his communications gear and the all-important beacon locator.
The queuing lights flashed at half-second intervals. Everyone made sure they were connected to the trolley which would guide and tug them around the compartments until it brought them to their exit hatch.
Ten seconds until hatch opening. The motion of the ship—jerking, pitching and rolling as its maneuvering jets fired unevenly—was beginning to affect even Mirsky.
He could no longer hear the pumps. They were in vacuum.
The hatches slid open abruptly and the queues began to spill out into darkness and silence.
Two squads destined for the first chamber—twenty men in all—went out in the first queue.
Mirsky was third in his queue. Ulopov went ahead and Mirsky held him by a strap attached to his thigh. Mirsky in turn was held by Zhadov, who kept the laser cannon strapped to his side. The trio gripped the hatch edge and kicked away in unison, as they had been trained, flying from the craft like a precision skydiving team, a little star of six legs in the vast darkness.
His eyes adjusted quickly and he switched on his locator. For a heart-stopping moment he thought all was lost; he could not hear even a whisper of signal. Then came the steady high-frequency CHUFF-chuff-chuff of the beacon, placed by some unknown compatriot—perhaps dead already, murdered by the Americans—in the bore hole leading into the second chamber.
And he could make out the tiny spot of light that was the opening to the first chamber.
Stuff floating around. Bumping, smearing. Dark drops fuzzing out. Large chunks of metal in his helmet beam, sections of torn bulkhead and rippling sheets of steel ... a ship!
Tangled in something invisible ahead, the wreckage of one of the heavy-lifters vibrated ponderously, fly caught in a web, surrounded by drifting bodies, most without helmets. Pieces of limbs and trunks drifted past.
A blinding nimbus surrounded them all. High-intensity spotlights played around the ships and their disgorged soldiers, de
ad and alive. Zhadov let go of Mirsky's strap, and Mirsky instinctively reached for the man's weapon but caught his arm instead. The suit squirmed in his grip and the body twisted fiercely, almost dragging Mirsky away from Ulopov. Zhadov's suit had been holed and the venting gas whirled him about like a released balloon. Mirsky reached out as far as he could and gripped the cannon. He handed it to Ulopov.
(As clear as reality—clearer, at the moment—he stood in a grassy field and contemplated this nightmare. He gathered his chute up from the yellow grass and shook his head, grinning at his imagination.)
Soldiers filled the bore hole, hundreds of them, and all around he could instinctively feel the invisible laser needles and projectiles searching, piercing, picking away.
Mirsky pulled Ulopov to him and swung his helmet beam around, looking for the wall they should be approaching. It was not visible. Zhadov's death had knocked them off course.
