by Rick Partlow
The ship was only a couple meters off the ground and about to begin its ascent when the last missile left the scout car's launch rack and impacted the ship low, just above its portside nozzles. There was a small flash, barely visible through the eye-searing glare of the rocket blast, as the missile warhead detonated; and for a moment, Shannon thought the weapon hadn't had any effect. No sooner had those neurons fired, however, than a wide swath of black smoke billowed out of the portside engines and the huge vehicle began to waver in its flight, lurching gradually to port and angling slowly back toward the control building.
"This," Tanaka said, breaking a silence that had lasted since they'd set up the overwatch, "should be entertaining."
The starboard engines just weren't enough to keep the shuttle upright, and the gentle arc it had been describing turned into an abrupt plunge directly into the control center. The big ship pancaked into the control building and was engulfed in a fireball that rose up more than two hundred meters into the sky, the initial blast followed immediately by the almost inconsequential detonation of the charge that Vinnie and Jock had set.
The sound came next, a gut-level lion's roar that rumbled through Shannon's teeth, trailed swiftly by the shock wave. Pebbles danced wildly off the ground and a reddish haze of dust and sand rose up around them as Stark felt the stone beneath her quake like God had slammed His fist into it. Below Shannon and Tanaka, less than a klick away from the incredible blast, the scout and the APC were tossed about like life rafts in a typhoon, their passengers bouncing from one bulkhead to the other, saved from serious injury only by their armor and the padding that lined the vehicles' inner walls.
"Judas Priest on a pogo stick," Bobby Comstock swore softly, staring in awe at the destruction wrought by the exploding shuttle and the charges planted by the penetration team.
Where the control building had been was an immense, smoking crater topped by a huge mushroom cloud billowing high into the sky, nearly blotting out the harsh whiteness of Tau Ceti. Fiercely-burning patches of rocket fuel were scattered in a ragged circle over a kilometer in diameter, and debris continued to rain down, pattering off the roofs of the Marine vehicles like fiery hail.
"All right, you jarheads," Lambert growled, trying to bring them back to reality. "We've done all the damage we can for one day---let's get the hell out of here, top speed."
Watching from above them, Shannon saw the scout vehicle spin into a tight turn and lead the APC away from the carnage; and for the space of a heartbeat, she thought they had actually gotten away clean. Then, something moving so fast that she didn't actually see the object, only a blurred ionization trail, fell out of the sky like one of Zeus' thunderbolts and impacted the Marine scout vehicle. There was an explosion, so small compared to the blast of the shuttle that it seemed inconsequential, and the sleek scout car and the two Marines inside it were blown to burning vapors in an eyeblink.
"Jesus!" Shannon's mouth fell open and she fell from a crouch to her knees, staring at the scene below in disbelief. Tanaka lunged toward her, reaching for her comlink to warn the APC of the threat, but she came to her senses, shrugging him off and keying the device herself. "Gunny!" she transmitted. "They're targeting you with orbital weapons! Maintain radio silence, disperse smoke screens and run an evasion pattern till you reach the mountains."
Before she could finish speaking, clouds of dark, electrostatically-charged smoke were billowing from the APC's gas cells, concealing the vehicle from her view and hopefully guarding it from the optical and electronic sensors of the orbiting Invader ship. Even if the faceless enemy above couldn't see the carrier, they weren't afraid to waste a few of their kinetic-energy weapons to luck: over a dozen ionization trails streaked down into the growing smoke screen, and Shannon flinched as each one impacted with a far-away thump.
Behind her, Shannon could hear the buzz of cycle motors as Vinnie and the others reached their position, but her attention was frozen on the nightmare tableau before her. Looking down, she saw that it just wasn't going to work. There was too much ground between the APC's last position and any kind of cover, and the heat was dispersing the screen too quickly. The haze of dark smoke that floated across the mesa had already ceased to grow, confirming Shannon's fear that the gas cells had run out, and the missiles continued to rain down from orbit into the blanketing fog.
"We should clear the area." Tanaka's voice beside her was quiet but firm. "They may have homed in on your transmissions."
She shook her head, needing to know, needing her eyes to confirm what her mind had already concluded was certain. It didn't take too long. There was a heartbeat's pause in the orbital bombardment, and suddenly the APC was racing out of the rapidly-dispersing cloud, shooting across the plateau at full throttle, aiming for the network of draws and gullies that bordered it. Safety in the rock formations was less than two klicks away, so close from Shannon's point of view that she felt hope rise in her heart. Perhaps the Invader ship had depleted its batteries and was reloading. She almost let herself believe that they might make it.
Until one, final dart fell out of the firmament and straight into Shannon's heart---at least, that was how it seemed to her when she saw the personnel carrier vanish in a flash of liberated kinetic energy.
All the air went out of her along with any hope, and she thought for a moment that she might pass out. She let Tanaka pull her to her feet, vaguely aware that he was walking her back to the dune buggy, but all she could see was the vision of a dozen faces: men and women, all of them young, all of them looking to her for leadership...all of them dead. And all because of her.
Chapter Ten
"The world breaks everyone and afterward, many are stronger in the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you, too, but there will be no special hurry."---Ernest Hemingway.
Aphrodite's lesser moon was a white sliver that hung low in the evening sky above the faraway mountains, like a signpost leading Jason and Val toward their goal. McKay shook his head sharply, trying to keep himself awake despite the droning of the rover's motor and the gentle swaying of its suspension over the rolling sand of their path through the Wastes. It felt as if he'd been driving through the desert for days, though they'd only set out early that morning and had shared the driving chores.
Jason glanced beside him at Valerie O'Keefe, curled up in the passenger's seat, snoring softly. They'd spent the past two weeks living the Neolithic existence in their cave home, dragging it out a few days past the limit he'd set for them and stretching their supplies to the breaking point, simply because neither of them really wanted to leave. It had been a healing experience not having to think about the Invaders or the future or the loved ones they'd lost. They'd spent a lot of time talking, but it was small talk and childhood reminiscences: even now Jason was hard pressed to remember a word of it. Mostly, they'd spent their days exploring their surroundings and their nights exploring each other.
It was, he reflected with an ironic chuckle, every teenage boy's fantasy: stranded on a desert island with a beautiful woman and nothing but sex to pass the time. The problem was, he wasn't a teenager anymore, and it seemed somehow...empty.
McKay's reverie was brought to an abrupt end by the unmistakable glint of lights ahead. A few more curves in the road, and the glint solidified into the square-framed window of the Mendozas’ farmhouse less than a kilometer away. Jason slowed the rover's pace, cut the main headlamps, and leaned over to shake Valerie awake.
"What is it?" She rubbed at her eyes, sitting up.
"We're here," he announced, nodding towards the cracked windshield.
"Thank God," she sighed, grateful at the prospect of being able to get out of the rover.
Jason shook his head. "Don't be thanking anybody yet. It looks like they've got company."
She followed his gaze and immediately noticed the shape of an old, beat-up utility t
ruck parked at the side of the dome-shaped farmhouse.
"There are not many of the farmers who could afford a vehicle," she noted, her voice sharing some of the concern McKay already felt.
"I'd better check this out," Jason decided, angling the rover off the dirt road and taking it over a butt-busting course across the rocky, sandy ground.
He guided the vehicle in a wide arc around the farmstead and came up on it directly behind the barn, out of sight of the main house. Cutting the engine, he let the rover coast down the last twenty meters or so to the rear of the barn, cut the wheel around, and pulled in with the passenger side against the unadorned, buildfoam wall.
"Wait here," he told Valerie, sliding out of the vehicle and drawing his pistol from its shoulder harness. "If I'm not back in five minutes, or if you hear anything, get out of here."
"I won't leave you," she insisted, shaking her head.
He shut the door, hand resting on the open window. "If I'm not back in five minutes, there won't be anything to leave."
"Be careful, Jason." She covered his hand with hers. "I love you."
"I...I'll be careful," he assured her, pulling away and heading out into the night.
McKay moved cautiously around the curve of the barn, trying to concentrate on watching for threats, but he couldn't quite suppress the question nagging at the back of his mind.
Why, he wondered helplessly, couldn't I tell her I loved her?
Because I don't, came the obvious answer. But, even so, in this situation where anything could happen, why couldn't he mouth the words, just to make her feel better? Maybe it was just that, despite the obvious physical attraction between them, he couldn't bring himself to feel anything for her---or feel anything at all. Was it because of Shannon? Had she gotten to him that bad in just a few days? Maybe.
And maybe, he told himself angrily, I should forget that kind of psychobabble and get on with what I'm doing before I get myself killed.
As he came around the side of the barn that faced the farmhouse, Jason saw that the rear of the building was dark but for the built-in chemical striplight over the back door, glowing in green solitude. No one was in sight and the rear windows were unlit, but the depthless night around them could be concealing legions for all he knew. Deciding enlightenment wasn't about to strike momentarily, Jason pushed off the barn wall and sprinted across the gap between the buildings, braking against the side of the farmhouse with his free hand, trying hard not to lose his balance and smack into the wall with his shoulder.
Jason found, to his disbelief, that he was close to hyperventilating.
Here I am, he shook his head, about to piss my pants over what's probably nothing more than a bunch of farmers guzzling moonshine and bitching about the weather. Gripping his pistol tighter, he fought to get his breathing under control before he moved again. The cool night air tickled his throat and he had to struggle mightily not to cough, but finally he was confident enough to edge slowly around the curve of the farmhouse, keeping low, his sidearm at the ready. He felt his boot brush against something weighty and giving and nearly jumped out of his skin before he saw that it was only a half-empty bag of fertilizer.
As Jason glanced back up from the intruding sack of manure, a faint glow from around the arc of the side wall brought him up short, and he found himself suddenly less than a meter from the side window, its clear-plastic pane opened inward. Back against the wall, he inched toward the portal, straining to make sense of the muffled rumble of male voices within.
"You have disappointed us, Jorge," one of the men inside intoned in a Central American dialect of Spanish that McKay, trained in high Castillian with a smattering of Mexican, could barely make out. "The O'Keefe assault was planned for over a year. It required us to call in every favor, exhaust every resource and commit our best men. Had it worked---had Gomez gotten access to the orbital shuttle---we might have acquired the resource our movement has dreamed of for the past ten years: a starship." The man's voice seemed oddly familiar to McKay, but the dialect and the machine-gun pace with which he spoke made it difficult for Jason to place.
Whoever the speaker was, his words raised the hackles on McKay's neck. So that was what Gomez had wanted. Now the attack made much more sense. With O'Keefe as a hostage, the terrorists could conceivably have reached either the Mac or, more probably, one of the freighters refueling insystem.
"How can you blame this on me?" McKay heard Jorge Mendoza's plaintive reply. "It was your 'soldiers' who failed. I was not brought in on your plan, I was not invited to participate, I was ordered at gunpoint. My wife and children were threatened! How can you hold me responsible?"
"If you were committed to our cause, we would not have had to force you, Jorge!" The other voice became strident, and even more familiar.
Curiosity overcoming his caution, Jason decided to risk a peek into the window. Edging closer, he turned away from the opening---putting his left shoulder against the wall, his head turned as far toward it as he could---then slowly leaned back until he could see inside through the corner of his left eye.
Besides the gently-glowing striplights built into the interior of the building, the only illumination in the living room came from a relatively high-tech lamp that Jason realized must have cost the Mendozas a pretty penny: he recognized it as a methane-burning device that could be fed raw manure to produce the fuel it used for lighting. The lamp threw heavy shadows across the communal room, and across the four men who occupied it. Jason immediately recognized Jorge Mendoza, pacing across the room, his expression reflecting a conflict of fear and indignation as he faced the others.
Two of them were muscle, plain and simple: big, menacing bruisers armed with Close Assault Weapons Systems---what the grunts in the Corps called "super-shotguns." The last man was much less physically imposing than the other two, not much bigger than Jorge, but clearly the leader from the tone of his voice.
"I have not come here to argue with you, my friend," the man continued, seemingly calmer. Jason struggled to get a glimpse of his face, but he was leaning on a corner table, his upper body wreathed in shadows. "The time has come for us all to band together and overthrow the bourgeoisie oppressors. We have been handed a golden opportunity and we must not hesitate!"
"But the aliens..." Jorge shook his head.
"The Invaders will not be an obstacle," the other man advised him. "We have had reports from scouts we've sent out that they have ceased their attacks and abandoned their looting of the city. Some of their troops still wander the streets of Kennedy, but they have no direction and many of them have died. Juan Ortiz travelled out to the port and found it completely destroyed. Now is the time! Before the Fleet can send reinforcements and crush us under their heel once again!" He rose from his leaning position to make the last point, gesturing emphatically with his fist, and finally emerged into the light.
The face that light revealed was weathered and cracked with age, maned with an unruly mop of salt-and-pepper grey. For a heartbeat, Jason still couldn't place the middle-aged, bearded face, but it was the fire behind those dark eyes that finally sparked the recognition. The man was none other than Miguel Huerta, the emigrant success story whom he'd met less than three weeks before as the chairman of the Independent Farmer's Council...and an old, dear friend of Valerie O'Keefe.
Shit. This, he knew, was not good at all. Grandfather McKay had an old saying appropriate to situations like this: something about getting the fuck out of Dodge, he recalled. He was fully prepared to follow that sage piece of advice when something interfered: something hard and unyielding that slammed into the back of his head. Jason's pistol fell from suddenly-strengthless fingers and he dropped forward to his knees, a polychromatic flare filling his vision, his head exploding with blinding pain. He swayed on his knees like a sapling in a gale, and then the unseen bludgeon cracked across his jaw and the spiralling colors faded to black.
In the beginning, God created Jason McKay's head. And the head was without form and void; and darknes
s was upon his thoughts. And then God sneered wickedly and said, "Let there be pain," and there was one hell of a lot of pain. For a moment, the pain was all that pierced the blackness clouding Jason's mind, along with the realization that he'd been sucker-punched. At least, a small, functional part of his brain thought, Valerie was safe.
That was when he heard the scream. His eyes popped open and his head jerked around toward the noise, igniting a blinding flash of agony at the base of his skull. Stars danced across his vision for an endless second, and even when they cleared the scene before him only clarified a piece at a time through his pain-fogged brain. He was, he saw immediately, inside the farmhouse---thrown into a dark corner of the kitchen like a sack of potatoes. His feet were stretched out before him, bound with cords, and he could feel the same rope biting into his wrists behind his back. Huddled in a corner across from him were Carmella Mendoza and her children, the woman seeming even more frightened and shaky than her two little daughters---not frightened of him, but of the scene that was playing out before them.
It was, as he had feared, Valerie who had screamed. She was being dragged into the house by two of what Jason now painfully realized were three bodyguards, while Huerta and the other gunman looked on. Jorge stood to the side, wringing his hands at this turn of events, while Huerta seemed almost cheerful, casually tossing Jason's service pistol from hand to hand.
"So nice of you to stop by, Ms. O'Keefe," he said, waving to her in mock greeting as his men brought her before him. "I never thought to see you again after our visitors from space burned down the governor's mansion."
"Miguel!" She recognized him for the first time, her eyes flying open, a look of relief coming over her face. "Thank God it's you! Tell them to let me go." She tried to jerk her wrists free from the men holding her, but their hold was too strong.
