Twisting his blaster-cane to self-destruct, he stepped from cover, walking quickly into the clearing between him and the cannon, blaster held loosely at his side, its rising shrill lost in the whine and crash of blaster fire, the explosion of another helicopter as the cannon spat again. The smoke, bedlam and his own surreal calm reminded McShane of Tarawa, a long time ago, crawling toward that pillbox, a grenade in hand.
At twenty feet he stopped, still unseen. Gripping the weapon by its muzzle, he spun it over his head, releasing it to land clanging against the gun console.
McShane had seen Scotar warriors in combat before. Their speed still amazed him. Whirling, the nearest three were out of their chairs before the blaster had barely touched the gray-mesh decking.
As the cannon shrilled again, two of them dove after the blaster, now screaming in terminal overload. Pulling his weapon, the third shot an unmoving McShane through the chest. Bob crumpled as a warrior scooped up his blaster-cane, tentacle arching to hurl it away.
Wah-whoomp! The blaster atomized the warriors and triggered the cannon’s chargepak, vaporizing the gun. The explosion lit the Potomac Basin, a searing white flash seen from West Virginia to the Maryland shore.
As the cannon went up, Sug-Atra flicked to the surface, blaster in tentacle. Form on me! he ordered, standing at the foot of Xanadu’ s stairs.
The ninety surviving biofabs rallied, the warriors taking cover along the midway, fronting Xanadu, their last transmute appearing behind them. Beside him stood Sug-Atra.
Why is that portal still open? he demanded as the biofabs opened fire on the Marines tumbling from their choppers.
The portal sentries were killed, said the other transmute. I’ve sent two more. The one who remains will report when— The M16-round ripped through his thorax, throwing his body across the stairs.
Cursing, Sug-Atra flicked to cover.
You have blasters to their slug throwers! he raged. Cut them down!
They are too many, said the senior warrior. We have no cover. Their infiltrators have our flanks pinned.
Blaster beams and bullets rent the air. Gunfire and blaster shrilling mingled with the screams of the wounded and dying.
The Scotar were keeping the infantry at bay, blaster fire raking the Marines’ position. The Terrans’ forward area was a charnel house—the blasted bodies of the point squad lay twisted among the smoldering wreckage of a chopper.
Sutherland staggered from the chopper, pistol in hand, blood oozing from a deep gash in his forehead. Running low, he zigzagged twenty yards to a light machine-gun position. “Where’s the CP?” he shouted at the lance corporal feeding the belt.
The kid pointed to a shallow concrete drainage ditch skirting the shattered picket fence. Riflemen were spread along the ditch, raking the Scotar line.
Sutherland dashed off, covering half the distance before a heavy fusion bean touched the machine-gun, scattering it and its crew like torn paper.
The CIA Director dived into the muddy ditch, azure beams crackling over his head. He looked up into Colonel Griswold’s flint-gray eyes. “We got our asses wiped enough for you yet, Mr. Sutherland?”
“What time is it, Colonel?” Sitting, he rested against the concrete wall, breathing hard, pistol across his knee.
Griswold glanced at his watch. “Twelve twenty-eight. We are twenty-eight minutes into this debacle.”
“Two more minutes, Griswold,” said Sutherland. “Then you can take them.”
Four men away, a gunnery sergeant dropped his rifle and fell backward, spasms jerking his body. His neck ended in a charred, smoldering stump.
The private to Griswold’s right started screaming hysterically. The colonel brought the muzzle of his .45 down behind the kid’s left ear. He crumpled into the ditch, unconscious. Griswold turned him over, getting his face out of the brackish water.
“Why?” demanded the colonel, turning back to Sutherland. “I’ve lost over two hundred men in this idiocy. Why?”
Sutherland touched his forehead, feeling the sticky clot. “Can’t hurt now. That building the Scotar are massed in front of?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a Kronarin commando unit infiltrating it from the rear.”
“They’re taking the bugs from behind?”
Sutherland shook his head. “No. We’re going to take them from the front. Those commandos will prevent the Scotar from accessing something in that building. Then they have a vital mission elsewhere. They’re not to be wasted in this operation.”
“And we are?” said Griswold, face pale.
“It’s necessary,” said Sutherland. “Otherwise, Colonel, in a few months, maybe sooner, you’d be fighting swarms of Scotar for this planet. And losing.” He checked his watch. “Time.”
Expressionless, the colonel spoke into his handset. “Red Pack Leader to Red Pack Pitcher. Tango one niner. Execute, execute!”
From behind them came the dull krump! of mortars firing.
“Fix bayonets!” shouted Griswold, looking up and down the line. “Fix bayonets!” He cocked his pistol.
“Bayonets! Bayonets!” The command echoed down the line. Drawing his combat knife, Griswold stepped from the ditch, bracketed by blaster fire. “Follow me!” he cried, voice high above the din. “Forward!”
Kismet, thought Sutherland, as the line surged forward. I’m going to die fighting bugs in an amusement park.
Taking an M16 from the dead, he joined the charge.
The first mortar barrage fell short of the Scotar line, turning two concession stands to matchsticks.
The next six didn’t, exploding among the warriors, halving their numbers, splattering Xanadu’s red walls green.
Through his one remaining eye, Sug-Atra saw the marines coming, bayonets gleaming through the smoke and flames.
Assault! he ordered the warriors.
A ragged line, the Scotar charged, weapons blazing.
Bleeding in a dozen places, Sug-Atra tried to teleport inside. Nothing. A piece of shrapnel had done something profound to his abilities. Turning, he limped painfully up Xanadu’s stairs. As he reached the top stair, Hanar Lawrona stepped through the doors and shot him dead, tumbling his body back down the stairs.
The margrave stood looking out over the carnage for a moment, watching the olive-drab wave roll over the Scotar, then went back inside.
Along the midway, Marines with dripping combat knives stooped low, taking wergild from the Scotar.
“You could have taken those bugs from the rear, Captain,” said Griswold quietly. He looked too exhausted to be angry.
“We’d have been exposed to your fire, Colonel,” said Lawrona earnestly. “Worse, we’d have exposed this building to it. A single ember falling through to the wrong place, and every man who died today would have died in vain.”
“You’re a hard man, Lawrona.”
“True.”
The two stood on Xanadu’ s steps, backdropped by the amusement park’s smoldering ruins. Firemen hosed the hot ash and twisted metal that had been weapons positions and kiddie rides, their lines snaking in from the yellow pumpers out on the MacArthur Boulevard. From the parking lot came the whirr of medevac choppers as triage teams hurried down the long rows of stretcher cases. Wounded with the best chance of survival if medevac’d now would go first. The rest would either go later or in the fleet of ambulances clogging the far end of the parking lot. Many would die where they lay. The Scotar lay where they had fallen.
To the west, a blood-red sun shone through the smoke and haze.
“I lost a lot of men today, Captain,” said Griswold, looking over the midway.
“We lost billions fighting those things,” said Lawrona.
“I want to see that portal, Captain,” said Griswold, turning back to Lawrona. “I’m entitled.”
“How did you know about the portal?” Lawrona frowned.
“Sutherland.”
“Ah. Well, you’re right. You are entitled.” He opened a door, motioning Grisw
old in. “We’re leaving in a few minutes. You can see us off.”
“This is bigger than the Maximus portal,” said John, staring at the pit filling Xanadu.
“How much bigger?” asked Lieutenant Satil.
“Twice, at least. They must have widened the other end.”
Looking at that too dark pool, John felt what he’d first sensed on the side of the portal—deep, rippling power, lurking just below the surface—a power somehow controlled by a slim machine a universe away.
The portal nearly filled Xanadu. The building itself was façade, a slice of Hollywood on the Potomac. The back could be rolled open, two great doors that trundled on rubber casters across a cement apron. First seeing that, John had had a vision of something huge, gray and monstrous coming up from the pit, abristle with fusion turrets, moving silently out into the night on n-gravs, force field shimmering faintly in the moonlight.
The stench of burning men and machines wafted through the ragged blaster hole in the left door.
Led by Lawrona, the commandos and the three Terrans had slipped in from the woods between Glen Echo and MacArthur Boulevard, the battle along the midway covering them as they’d moved through the fence, under the roller coaster and up to the building’s rear. Blasting a hole through the wall, they’d poured in—there were no Scotar inside. Taking up positions, they’d waited, silently killing the four Scotar who came in.
The biofabs lay in a thick pool of green beside the door, necks slit by broad-bladed assault knives. The commandos lined the side of the pit, blastrifles at port arms, every other man facing out. Pacing slowly behind them, Lieutenant Satil impatiently tapped the M11A’s long barrel against her hard, slender leg. John stood to one side, away from the door.
“What are we waiting for?” he asked.
“Lawrona,” said Satil.
“Major Harkness,” called Sutherland, spotting Griswold’s XO. “Where’s the Colonel?”
Young, black, the untreated cut across his left cheek still bleeding, Harkness turned from the radio, eyes glazed with fatigue. “Behind those concessions stands,” he said, waving toward a charred heap near the Ferris wheel.
Sutherland headed down the midway, treading carefully past the dead. Bodies often entwined, marines and warriors lay where they’d fallen, knives, bayonets and guns against knives, serrated mandibles and blasters.
Sutherland tried not to look at the faces. The assault had been bad enough, but it had been fast, a blur of motion: shoot, move, shoot, move. For the first time since Korea, he’d used a bayonet, performing a clumsy but tenable parry-and-long-thrust series. This was worse, he thought, stumbling over a helmet. Something out of Goya, those young, dead, tormented faces staring sightlessly, throats ripped out, necks broken, holes you could put your fist through. And everywhere the stench of burnt flesh and clouds of flies come to feast.
He found Griswold behind the concession stand, face down in the dirt, neat round holes piercing his temples. There was no blood—just a dead man, his mind stolen.
Sutherland turned in time to see Lawrona and Griswold enter Xanadu, a good hundred yards away. Communicator lost in the downed chopper, he cursed and began running.
The Terran colonel paused at his first sight of the portal then advanced gingerly to the edge, peering down. Brushing past the commandos, Lawrona followed.
“This is it?” asked Griswold, looking at Lawrona.
The captain nodded. “A hole in the heart of the universe.”
“Ever hear of George Bernard Shaw, Margrave?” asked the colonel.
Lawrona shook his head.
“A brilliant, crusty man. He said, ‘The devil has all the best lines.’ It’s true.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll give you an example, Lawrona.” Follow me and die.
Lawrona fired as the transmute leaped into the portal. Sutherland burst through the door. “Transmute!” he gasped. “Griswold!”
Lawrona pulled his knife and jumped after transmute.
“Go!” shouted Satil.
John and the commandos plunged into the portal.
Sutherland stood alone in Xanadu, breathless, watching the ripples fade in the black pool.
He was still watching when the portal flicked off, leaving a deep raw gash in the red clay and sand.
Chapter 12
“How’s he doing, Qinil?”
The words drifted distantly, touching and slowly stirring his consciousness. Kronarin, he thought. Bluff, gruff.
Detrelna.
McShane opened his eyes.
“He’s coming around now, Commodore.”
Detrelna stood at the foot of the bed, round face concerned. Beside him, thin and detached, Medtech Qinil was checking life readings off the unit’s medscan. The three were alone in a small, cheery room, walls done in warm earth tones with matching bed coverlet.
“I didn’t die,” said Bob hoarsely.
“Close,” said Qinil. Stepping around the bed he poured water from a carafe into a disposable cup, handing it to McShane.
Nodding his thanks, the professor downed it in two loud gulps. “How long have I been out?”
“Two weeks,” said Detrelna as Qinil took the cup, tossing it into the disposer with an economical flip of his wrist.
“You took a blaster bolt through the chest,” said Qinil. “Plus shock and some complications. Otherwise, you’d have been up sooner.”
Bob pulled open the front of his green bed gown. A patch of curly gray chest hair was missing, but the skin was smooth and seamless. “What complications?”
“Some of your cells became malignant and ran riot,” said Qinil. “Surely you knew?”
“I have cancer,” said Bob. “Is that what you mean?”
“Whatever you call it,” said Qinil. “We flushed it with a tumor based antigen injection.. Very elusive, very adept at hiding from the immune system. Altering one of its proteins, though, strips its camouflage. We introduced an antigen that did that, then kept you under while your body cleaned up.”
Bare feet slapping onto the cold gray deck, McShane was out of the bed, gripping a surprised Qinil. “My God, man! You can cure cancer?”
“If we couldn’t, would you be bruising my arm?”
“Sorry,” he said, letting go. “It’s just that I expected to wake up dead, as my granddaughter says.”
“Nothing wrong with our right hand,” said Qinil, rubbing his left triceps. “How’s the rest of you feel?”
“Great. Wonderful!” Vibrant, his voice filled the room. “Better than I have in months.” He threw his arms above his head, then bent to touch his toes. “I couldn’t have done that a few weeks ago. Are there side effects?”
Qinil nodded somberly.
“What?” asked Bob, voice suddenly tight.
“You may experience some flatulence.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” said Qinil. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, others await my healing touch.” He left, the door hissing shut after him.
Bob sat down on the edge of the bed—sat down hard and was silent for a moment. ”I’m alive and others are not,” he said finally, studying the backs of his hands. “Is it because we’re friends, Jaquel?”
“You are alive. Others are alive,” said Detrelna, “not because we’re friends, but because the Fleet of the Republic has extended aid and comfort to all casualties of the Battle of the Portal.”
McShane smiled ruefully. “Sorry, Jaquel. I’m a pious old coot.”
“You’re not that old.”
“You are going to release this discovery to Terra?”
“Sent it down to Liaison in New York five days ago,” said Detrelna. “They’ve forwarded it to all accredited Terran Legations.”
Bob shook his head. “There are parasitical pharmaceutical firms with a vested interest in not having this released. Unless pressure can be brought . . .”
Detrelna smiled his Cheshire smile.
“What have you done, Jaque
l?”
“I felt a senior officer should personally transmit this life saving discovery to Liaison. In the absence of Captain Lawrona, I undertook the task. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with some of the communications protocols. The transmission was in the clear, in all known Terran languages on every operable voice and data frequency.”
“These things happen,” said Bob, eyes sparkling.
Detrelna nodded sadly. “True. I will no doubt be reprimanded, should anyone be stupid enough to complain.”
“And the reaction?”
“Tumult. Jubilation. Crowds. Demands. Qinil says the antigen is easily made and will work on all variants. Clinics are being set up to supplement existing medical facilities. Three months”—he puffed his cheeks—“poof. No more cancer.”
“You’re a good man, Detrelna,” said McShane.
“I am,” said the commodore. Turning to the wall locker, he tossed boots and brown duty uniform onto the bed. “Get dressed. Fresh Kansas steak awaits in my quarters.”
Tugging the boots on, McShane was suddenly aware of his gnawing hunger.
“Wine, Bob?”
“Just a tad. I’d better not overdo it. Flatulence, you know.”
Detrelna poured from the graceful, long-necked bottle, topping McShane’s delicate crystal goblet. Dining alone, the two sat at the big traq wood table in Implacable’s spacious flag quarters.
“Exquisite,” said McShane, savoring the wine’s rich, tangy bouquet. “From what strange vineyard under what far, exotic sun?” he asked. Holding the goblet up to the armorglass wall, he watched the crimson liquid catch the starlight.
Detrelna glanced at the label. “South Australia.”
“A passable cabernet,” said McShane, setting the goblet down. “So, they got through the portal and that’s all we know?”
Nodding, Detrelna sliced off another wedge of medium-rare porterhouse. “That’s all we know. Portal’s still down, Fleet reinforcements are due shortly.” He frowned, steak halfway to his mouth. “I don’t know how long I can hold that flotilla here. The Confederation’s a mess. Liberated planets are in dire need of everything, Scotar ships still attack understrength convoys. We even have pirates.” He chewed the steak.
The Battle for Terra Two Page 11
