Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (178 page)

Silence hung for an endless, frozen instant. She dared not breathe.

Is that you, Dad?

Not truly, milaya. It is a fragment, a whisper, a shadow left behind. But perhaps that is enough, yes?

Yes. It is so much more than enough.

50

ROMANE

I
NDEPENDENT
C
OLONY

T
HE
O
RION
EMERGED FROM SUPERLUMINAL
to find a planet under siege and a sky at war.

Malcolm had known what awaited him, for contrary to what they had hoped the Metigens had not held off until all their brethren arrived before initiating their assault on Romane. Instead, on reaching the planet they had taken advantage of the fact not all the Alliance ships dispatched to defend the colony were in place yet either and launched their attack.

Now the defenders found themselves knocked back on their heels, on the defensive and scrambling to play catch-up. Nevertheless, at first glance they appeared to be doing a moderately good job of it. At least ten superdreadnoughts were limping badly and debris of several more littered the scene. But this still left—Malcolm blinked and double-checked the number—fifty-one fully operational. Slightly fewer than expected unless many had already been destroyed, but…damn.

Colonel Jenner:  Admiral Fullerton,
EAS Orion
reporting for duty and requesting instructions.

Admiral Fullerton (
EAS Jefferson
):  Welcome,
Orion
. Hook up with the 26
^th
Squadron on the left flank.

Colonel Jenner:  Understood. It seems as if the enemy fleet is smaller than we were expecting.

Admiral Fullerton:  Nope. The rest of them are planet-side.

He frowned; perhaps matters weren’t so well in hand.
Are we engaging them below as well?

Admiral Fullerton:  I sent the 21
^st
Regiment down to bite at their flanks.

Colonel Jenner:  Sir, shouldn’t we be working to protect the infrastructure and lives on the ground?

Admiral Fullerton:  Which we’ll do by wiping out these bastards up here. Now get over to the left flank.

Colonel Jenner:  Is Mia Requelme onboard the
Jefferson
?

Admiral Fullerton:  That freak of nature they sent here to ‘assist’? Hell, no. I pawned her off to the governor.

Malcolm cringed, physically bit his tongue, then opened his mouth anyway.
Sir, I’m taking the
Orion
in-atmosphere. I request the 7
^th
Platoon to accompany me.

Admiral Fullerton:  Son, are you under the impression I take orders from Colonels? Because I assure you, I do not.

Colonel Jenner:  Of course you don’t, sir. However, Admiral Rychen
ordered
me to assess the situation when I arrived and, if I felt it necessary to defend Romane on the ground, to do so. I feel it is necessary to defend Romane on the ground, and I need the 7
^th
Platoon to do so.

A period of silence preceded the response.

Admiral Fullerton:  Rychen said that, did he?
The tone suggested Fullerton harbored a healthy fear of the man.

Colonel Jenner:  Yes, sir. Right before I departed the
Churchill
.

Admiral Fullerton:  Well, hell. Fine, take your ships and get down there, but don’t come begging for help when things go south.

Colonel Jenner:  Acknowledged.

He let go of the breath he’d been psychologically holding. “Comms, contact the vessels in the 7
^th
Platoon and instruct them to rendezvous E 20° of Corridor #5 for atmospheric entry.”

Smoke and raging fires rose from multiple locations as they neared Romane’s largest metropolitan region. Two superdreadnoughts cruised above it, and the swarmers made the sky look as though a plague of locusts had invaded.

Malcolm turned to his XO. “You have command of the
Orion
. Work together with the other ships to implement the strategies we’ve discussed. Have the tactical assault detachment meet me on the flight deck.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best to take care of her for you. Godspeed.”

“And to you.” With a salute he departed and headed below.

His requisition of the 7
^th
Platoon had not been random. Not all cruisers carried a tactical assault detachment, but like the
Orion
the two cruisers belonging to the 7
^th
did. Given thirty-six men behind him, perhaps he could make a difference on the ground.

The shuttles dropped the squads as close as safety allowed to the governor’s bunker in the heart of downtown. He didn’t intend to strike out across the city blindly; he needed to know what defenses were in play and at their disposal.

They navigated the intervening two blocks swiftly and without incident. He set the others to assisting survivors in the vicinity while he and the three detachment commanders entered the bunker.

What he found twenty meters below ground was a working command center as state-of-the-art as any the Alliance enjoyed. Three-dimensional dynamic maps of the city and the planet dominated the far wall. Hyper-crisp screens lit multiple workstations, and two dozen or so people conferred with one another or scurried between the stations.

It took several seconds for their presence to be noticed, but after multiple gestures in their direction a striking woman in a taupe pantsuit looked over. “Gentlemen, you are a welcome sight.”

“Governor Ledesme?” At her curt nod he strode forward and extended a hand. “Alliance Colonel Malcolm Jenner. We’ve got a hundred ships in-atmosphere engaging the enemy and thirty-six Marines here on the ground—not to mention the considerable force keeping the rest of the alien vessels occupied in space—but we need to know what our options are.”

“Our Defense Chief is otherwise engaged at the moment. I’ll have him give you an overview as soon as he’s done. We have a couple of tricks available to us, but using them from the bunker has proved problematic since the Metigens took out most of our relay stations and half the power grid.”

“We’ll work around those difficulties, ma’am. Is Mia Requelme here?”

The governor jerked her head toward the rear left corner of the bunker. “If I understand the current state of affairs, you may be exactly what she needs.”

A woman in black pants and a matching turtleneck leaned over the shoulder of a disheveled-looking older man working at a large data screen. Two additional men huddled at the edges of the screen as the woman pointed in restrained agitation at it, then crowded in on the first man. “No, it has to be—would you just let me do it? It’ll be far faster and it might actually work.”

“I am not giving you control of our defense arrays. That authority belongs in human hands.”

“Oh, for the love of—”

He cleared his throat. “Ms. Requelme?”

She pivoted as she straightened up, sending long, sleek black hair whipping past her shoulder. Like Alex, her irises shone a luminous silver to create a dramatic contrast against her olive skin. She arched an eyebrow. “A Marine? Interesting.”

He offered his hand once more. “Colonel Malcolm Jenner. Alex told me to help you if I could, so how can I do that?”

Mia:  Alex, nanosecond scoop on Colonel Jenner?

Alex: Honorable and trustworthy to an occasionally annoying fault. Prefers to be on top—thinks he’s being a gentleman.

Mia:  Got it.

She eyed the Colonel with a hopeful expression. “I don’t suppose you brought any programmable shoulder-fired SALs with you?”

His head cocked to the side; it was apparently not the response he’d expected. “Uh, yes, as a matter of fact—three of them.”

“Fantastic. Will you let me touch them? Because nobody here will let me touch anything.”

He gave her a casual shrug, a motion starkly out of sync with the grinding tension of the bunker. “If you can present a convincing argument as to why you need to touch them, yes.”

Modifying the signal pattern for single, directed use. Should we burn a disk?

Nah, we’ll just hotwire it. It’ll be fun. It’s been over a decade since I hotwired hardware.

She placed a hand on Jenner’s arm and guided him to the quietest corner of the room, relatively speaking. “I’ve worked out a signal beam I believe will completely nullify an alien vessel’s shield for so long as it is continuously directed at the vessel. They won’t let me reprogram the defense arrays—what’s left of them. Either they don’t believe it will work or they think I’ll use the access to take over the arrays and do who knows what.”

“When you say ‘I,’ you mean you and…” his hand gestured awkwardly toward her head “…the Artificial in your brain?”

“Yes. I mean ‘we.’ Is that a problem?”

“No. But I got the impression Admiral Fullerton wasn’t happy to have you around. You’re not getting much support in here, either?”

“Ledesme trusts me a little—or she did before I became a cyborg. Now, the verdict’s still out. Fullerton is a four-star ass, however. So are you in? Will you help me test this signal on a live target?”

“I will. Grab a ballistic jacket and helmet. It’s ugly out there.”

“Oh my.” Mia froze at the exit to the street, stunned by the scope of the destruction to what hours ago had been a vibrant, shining city center, one many claimed represented the pinnacle of civilization itself.
Meno, our home….

We will rebuild. Humans always rebuild, and the result is invariably better than what came before.

Jenner was on his comm, issuing orders in the clipped growl military always seemed to use; they must teach a class on it in officer training.

Morgan:  No, only a couple of ‘you’ll die in ten seconds unless you spew out these fifty words as the timer ticks down to zero’ scenarios for practice. That and the constricting body armor—flexible my ass.

A minute later a group of twelve soldiers rounded the corner a block away. He ordered them into the alcove of the bunker entrance and out of the direct line of fire, then relieved one of the soldiers of a bulky SAL and turned to her.

“Okay, Ms. Requelme, what now?”

She ignored the suspicious stares of the soldiers to run her hand along the length of the weapon until she found the removable panel then yank it open to reveal a tiny control board. She jiggered it out of its slot so she could reach the fibers connecting to it.

“Sir, what is she doing?”

“Stand down, Lieutenant.”

Then she ripped off one of the fibers and replaced it with her index finger.