The Legend That Was Earth (48 page)

"You think it could really work?" Davis asked dubiously.

"You want wait for blender instead?"

While the instructions were being relayed to the far end of the field, Hudro told Davis to begin heading back to where the C22-E was parked. The Marine private opted to stay with them. They inched their way agonizingly toward the edge of the field, Hudro remaining outwardly impassive, the Marine white-faced and rigid. Davis had to stop three times to calm his nerves. They had about fifty yards to go, when a desperate voice called out to them. Davis stopped. They looked around. "There," the Marine said, pointing.

It was Koyne, lying in the grass behind a mound of sand where he had taken cover—presumably on his way back from the workshops, where he had gone to check for some parts. "Are you hurt?" Davis called over. Koyne shook his head in a short, jerky motion, then inclined it to indicate a spot to the side of him. A drone was lying there, just a yard or two away. It was yellow with black markings, about the size of a crow, but at close range looking more like a malevolent giant insect.

"Oh shit...." Davis hissed.

"Is okay if you move slow," Hudro called over, striving to keep his voice calm. "But careful." In a lowered tone he muttered to the other two, "More close, gets riskier."

But Koyne just shook his head again. "I can't." Clearly, he was petrified. He must have been pinned there for over thirty minutes.

Hudro looked around. There was a fire extinguisher behind the seat on the Hummer's passenger side. "Give that," he said to the Marine, motioning with his head. The Marine moved warily, as if he were picking up Koyne's terror, unclamped the extinguisher and passed it forward. Hudro took it, removed the pin, and clasped the activating lever in readiness. Then, moving in carefully controlled slow motion, he straightened up from the passenger seat to place one foot outside the vehicle, following it slowly with the other.

Davis, the Marine, and Koyne watched barely daring to breath as the alien took what must have been five seconds to complete one step, then did the same again with the other foot as if approaching a coiled cobra. Koyne looked up, rivers of perspiration running down his face, while Hudro drew nearer until he was standing immediately over the drone. Keeping his movement just as slow, he raised the nozzle of the extinguisher and covered the drone in foam.

"Is safe now," he told Koyne.

It took Koyne a few seconds more to move. He rose slowly and backed away toward the Hummer, unable to take his eyes off the drone. Hudro gave it another blast of foam and then followed.

"You okay?" Davis asked Koyne as he climbed shakily into the seat behind.

Koyne licked his lips and nodded. He looked disbelievingly at Hudro as Hudro got back in up front. "I guess those people were right.... Some of you guys are okay. That took a lot of guts. Thanks."

"Is we Hyadeans who make drone and bring here. What else I can do?" Hudro replied.

* * *

They were in the form of immense, flattened pyramids, five times as wide across the base as they were tall, glinting a peculiar bronzelike luster between black ribbing and casement structures in the light of the late afternoon sun. Armor-piercing shells skidded harmlessly off their angled faces. Proximity-bursting missiles seemed to have no effect. They advanced in a line several hundred feet above the ground, generating a zone of boiling light and fire beneath that progressed like a wall. Nothing stood up to it. Gerofsky had watched tanks, armored personnel carriers, gun emplacements, consumed like paper balls thrown into a furnace. A wing of the newest supersonic F-19s that went in against them had been picked off like ducks by beams of some kind directed from unseen sources above.

In the positions among the crests of the overlooking slopes, order was starting to break down, with troops getting jumpy, some already falling back, commanders frantically talking into field radios and pleading for orders. Gerofsky could feel himself verging on panic. Yet Nyarl was actually standing, his face expressionless, training his camera, catching everything. The task had become an obsession with him. Suddenly, he looked at Marie, crouched behind the edge of the trench they were occupying ahead of the battery, clutching her useless submachine gun. "Come out and stand up," he called to her. "I want you in the foreground. A Terran woman facing Chrysean war engines that are destroying her world." Marie stared at him, as if checking that his sanity hadn't snapped. He gestured and smiled humorlessly. "I know the psychology of Hyadeans.... No, don't put the gun down. Keep it in your hand. Defiant to the last, eh? They'll love it." Gerofsky watched as Marie climbed out from the trench and complied. "The world that invented painting and music, philosophy and dreams," Nyarl went on as he lined up the camera. "Einstein and Mozart. Both crafters of realities that captivate the imagination but could never be."

Surely, Gerofsky thought, if Nyarl could get this one shot back to Chryse, it would be enough to stop this. It was obscenity, not war. For the first time in his career, he found himself wondering if there had ever been a difference.

Bolts of plasma began coming down from the sky and exploding among weapons positions, defense lines, supply dumps. There was nothing for the targeting radars to register on, nothing to be done if they could. The troops entrenched along the crests began falling back; then the support units. Soon, everything became a scramble to get away to the rear. Gerofsky halted the ammunition carrier that they had ridden out on, now jammed with troops, just as it was pulling out and bundled Marie and Nyarl aboard. A half mile down the road it became bogged down in a jam tailing back from some kind of obstruction ahead. It would be a death trap when the next attack came in. Gerofsky ordered the other two out. Hauling a radio after him, he stumbled with them across the slopes toward a dirt track rising to follow a ridge. It was bumpy and not all that wide; but it ran straight. Before very much longer there wouldn't be any other chance.

* * *

The smoke swirled by outside as an opaque fog. From behind Powell, Cade watched the lights of the transport ahead vanish as if they had been switched off. Powell counted off fifteen seconds and then gunned the C22-E's engines. The plane headed into a black wall hurtling by at increasing speed. Cade felt his hands and back going clammy, wishing he could share the faith in technology of the two seated in front of him. Powell concentrated on the ILS readouts, while Koyne read off the instruments. Cade didn't want to think about the consequences if something had screwed up invisibly ahead of them. There could be no ground control. Visibility from the tower was zero. Finally, they were at liftoff speed. Powell hauled back the stick, and moments later they emerged into evening. Leveling out low, he banked into a broad right turn that would take them over the hills toward the east, where ominous black clouds towered over the skyline.

They had waited while the evacuation proceeded, following Hudro's crazy plan. With an attack expected at any time, Powell had set a time limit, after which the safety of the aircraft would have to come first. They would leave and endeavor to make contact with the others again later, somehow. Despite his sickening visions of being parted from Marie yet again, Cade had been unable to argue. Gerofsky reached them on radio minutes before the deadline was up. Now, all they had to do was find him.

"Okay, we're airborne, turning your way," Powell said into his mike. "Keeping it down, just above stalling. Let us know when you have visual."

"Jesus, it's a mess down there," Koyne said, craning on the other side of the cockpit. "Whatever happened up front? They're streaming back everywhere." Cade stared down. How could the confidence that had been everywhere this morning have degenerated to this in one day? Hudro looked out sadly, shook his head, and said nothing.

They took a slow, winding course, banking to sweep left and right. Suddenly, Powell announced, "They've got us!" Then, into his mike, "Roger, Major. I read you. Turning as directed.... Yes, I see a ridge with a track. Okay, got it.... I'm going to have to go around again and line up...."

It was a bone-shaking landing, but they made it. Nyarl climbed in first, still with his camera. Marie followed, and then Gerofsky. With them were three young, frightened soldiers they had run into on the way. Powell took them aboard.

Marie collapsed into Cade's arms before the plane had even commenced its run. She was pale and gaunt, with a look in her eyes that Cade had never seen before—the kind of look that might never completely go away. He looked at her and shook his head uncomprehendingly, not sure what to say. She leaned her head against his shoulder for what seemed a long time. "Oh God, Roland," she managed finally. "It was horrible. I thought I was tougher than this by now.... This has become insane."

"Was always insane," Hudro said neutrally from his seat farther back.

Cade pulled her close and pressed her head against him. "We don't split up again," he told her. "Through whatever happens, wherever it leads. We're together until the end now."

THEY FLEW WEST INTO THE NIGHT, heading north of Tulsa toward what had seemed to be a major staging area. Koyne reported air activity in the vicinity and registered numerous radar contacts. There were many fires along the route: some isolated and confined, suggesting burning vehicles or downed planes; others covering whole areas. In one place a sizable town looked to be ablaze from end to end. With the navigation aids disrupted, it was difficult to say exactly where it was.

The snippets coming in over the radio were garbled and panicky. A Union spearhead was already halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City, with another thrusting north along the Mississippi valley and threatening a massive left hook at Chicago, which would cut off the Federation armies that had advanced into Indiana and Illinois—assuming they hadn't been annihilated already. To the south they were reported to be near Shreveport, and the Dallas area was under attack. Gerofsky shook his head in bewilderment as Nyarl read off the details. "How is it possible? Under combat conditions? Nothing could move that fast."

"I tell you, you don't have mobility," Hudro said. "They don't move like you think. Hyadeans unroll carpet from sky." Twenty minutes later, Nyarl proved it with a shot he had received from somewhere along the Missouri valley, of Union armor emerging from huge, lumpy, gray vessels, looking like wedge-shaped landing craft, that had descended from the sky. "They're the size of battleships!" a commentator's terrified voice jabbered. "The defense is just coming apart! We've got a total rout on our hands here."

There were some heroics to record. West of St. Louis, a Federation Ranger force drew a detachment of Hyadean ground troops that had been landed on a flank into a classic ambush with pre-targeted mortars and prepared mines, and wiped them out. A pair of aging F-15s destroyed one of the flying pyramid-fortresses at Texarkana—and Nyarl got a clip of it. But the overall picture was grim. But still there seemed to be no word from Sacramento to call it off. Gerofsky's guess was that events had happened so quickly, and communications were in such chaos, that nobody there had grasped the enormity of what was going on.

"Darn it, look at that!" Powell exclaimed suddenly, at the same time banking the plane sharply to port.

"What is it?" Gerofsky called from behind Cade.

Koyne half turned his head, keeping his eyes on the outside. "Tracer coming up. Friendly fire."

"I guess there must be a lot of trigger-happy people down there tonight," Powell growled.

"Let's hope they're nervous enough not to shoot straight," Marie said. Even as she spoke, a series of flak bursts lit up ahead.

Powell throttled up and went into a tight, diving, starboard turn. "This is getting serious," he muttered. Moments later, there was an explosion outside close enough to light up the inside of the cabin, and the plane shuddered under a hail of impacting fragments. Wind whipped through the cabin from a rent in the skin somewhere. Powell straightened out but held the dive, shedding altitude for ground cover. Something was beeping up front. From where he was sitting, Cade could see alarm indicators flashing and lighting up all over the instrument panel. Powell and Koyne went into an emergency check routine. "Losing fuel on one engine," Powell called. "We're going down. Be ready for fire." Behind him, Davis broke out an extinguisher from a bulkhead rack. Marie found another at the rear of the cabin. Powell switched to emergency band and began sending out Mayday messages for a landing ground.

They found haven at a airstrip that was being used for night operations. A young Officer of the Watch who met them informed them they were twenty miles southeast of Wichita. The strip's combat aircraft were being evacuated before dawn; then it would be handling ambulance flights for as long as possible. Apart from that, he didn't know too much except that things seemed to be a mess everywhere. He sounded as if he was from New York.

The three soldiers that the C22-E had picked up left to find a unit to attach themselves to. While Powell and Davis began checking over the damage to the airplane, the others shared a beef stew supper with a maintenance crew in an Air Force trailer. Afterward, Gerofsky and Hudro borrowed a jeep and drove off in the direction of Wichita to seek news at the headquarters of an armored corps stationed in the area. A little over an hour later, a corporal from the signals unit serving the airstrip telephoned the trailer to report that he had Gerofsky on another channel with a data connection open, and could Nyarl get over with the material to be transmitted? Cade and Marie went with Nyarl to the sandbagged dugout that the CO's staff and signals unit were occupying, close to the airstrip's few buildings. Gerofsky had a landline connection to the Southern California Military Command in Los Angeles, and from there had succeeded in getting through to the Catacombs. So, finally, they were able to send through the recordings that had been accumulating. Yassem and Vrel were at the other end. Having spoken with Hudro and Gerofsky already, they had recovered by now from their anxiety at hearing nothing for two days.