Authors: Bennett R. Coles
He’d eavesdropped on the Army circuit for a while as he sailed out to the center of the lake, but the chatter had consisted of the routine, almost bored exchanges of seasoned soldiers getting ready for an exercise. Kete had even gone so far as to stretch out to the orbital communication network, just in case there were any unplanned warship movements. All vessels were at stationary alongside Astral Base One, and no orders had been issued over the past few days.
The only ship that might have concerned him, the
Armstrong
with her specialized sensors, had been neutered thanks to a Terran purge. An unqualified sublieutenant was running the show in orbit, and the new captain was here on the surface and heading his way.
As he withdrew his mind from orbital movements, he picked up Breeze’s Baryon radiating continuously as she arrived on the boardwalk. He looked up and spotted her easily in her duty uniform, walking among the civilian pedestrians. It was unusual for her to stay in uniform once out of the base, but he’d convinced her that for today’s date it would be fun for her to show off her new rank and position.
His real target, though, was the standard-issue pistol on her belt.
Remembering that he was supposed to be in love with this woman, he waved to her and strode up the dock to greet her with a quick but intimate kiss. She restrained herself, as a uniformed servicewoman should in public, but the emotion in her luminous eyes was unmistakable.
“So,” she said, starting to stroll along the dock back toward the boats, “I assume you’ve brought a vessel worthy of carrying me?” Her tone was light, but even so Kete had to fight down the disdain. Her face was so fresh and young—far too young to be flanked by the four silver bars of a captain in the military. She’d even pinned the star of command to her tunic, above her single medal.
Well, she could have her moment of fun.
“Oh, I think even you’ll be impressed, madame,” he replied with equal humor. They strolled along in the brilliant sunshine and gentle breeze. Overall visibility and weather were well within limits.
Stopping alongside his rented boat, he made a grand gesture. “Captain Brisebois, your command awaits.”
She eyed the launch with her best haughty expression, then gave him a regal nod.
“You have done well, sir.”
He gave her a quick kiss—which she returned a bit more passionately this time, holding him tight with one arm—and then invited her to board. Grasping his proffered hand she stepped aboard and settled comfortably into the far seat as he untied the lines and pushed off. Activating the engines, he steered them quietly away from the dock. The boat churned through the water as light wind and spray freshened the air around them.
He glanced at his watch.
Ten minutes to go.
He wanted to be on the far side of the lake when Judgement Day arrived. The thought caused him to smile. In the next thirty minutes, the core of Terra’s infrastructure would be destroyed, and he was
personally
going to supervise the destruction of Astral Force Headquarters.
Pushing open the throttles, he grinned at Breeze.
Jack felt the old pit of excitement in his gut as he fastened the straps over his space suit. It seemed an age since he’d piloted a Hawk, but the mixture of fear and anticipation that churned within him suddenly seemed like an old friend. He glanced back over his right shoulder.
“You ready to go?”
Amanda was white in the seat. Staring at her console, helmet already fastened but faceplate up, she took a deep breath.
“How the
hell
do you stay so calm?”
He was tempted to make some wisecrack about combat experience, but then he remembered how, not that long ago, he would have been ready to soil himself in this sort of situation. He wondered if he’d been just as pale before his first real combat mission, and tried to recall the advice he’d been given.
“Just focus on your job,” he said, damping down his enthusiasm. “Keep a close watch on the sensors, and find me that jump gate signature. We’re just doing a routine surface delivery—down and back.”
She turned her head to fix him with a penetrating gaze.
“If it was routine we’d be taking the elevator. We’re going to be a man-made meteor over one of the biggest cities on Earth, with an atmospheric velocity greater than an emergency crash landing. With our beacon off, we’ll be prime targets for paranoid aerial sentries who’ll get all of a bunch of nanoseconds to visually identify us before they shoot.”
He smiled. “Don’t go all scientific on me. I just drive the bus.”
She laughed slightly, the intensity of her gaze lessening.
“How many times have you done this?”
“What, a high-speed atmo entry?” He thought for a moment, counting down on several fingers, then smiled brightly. “Once.”
“I’m really glad you’re so confident.”
“Hell, yeah,” he replied. “When we get back this evening I’ll even help you prep for your thesis defense.”
She laughed again. “I look forward to that.”
Lowering the faceplate of his suit helmet and locking down, Jack turned back to his checklist and scanned through the PLANETARY portion. He remembered that flying “in atmo” was akin to trying to walk underwater, and that the Hawk would be sluggish in its responses. Airspace over Longreach was likely to be crowded, too, but he figured by the time they launched he wouldn’t have to worry much about civilian craft.
Besides, at the speed he’d be going, everything would draw left and right anyway. They’d be crazy not to.
He keyed the special, secure circuit Sergeant Chang had provided both him and Thomas.
“Apollo, this is Eagle-One. Radio-check, over.”
“
This is Apollo, roger, over
.” Thomas’s reply came from the lab. He glanced at his console to remind himself of the callsign of the cruiser
Admiral Bowen
, berthed aft of
Armstrong
on the spar. “This is Eagle-One, roger, break. Windmill, this is Eagle-One. Radio-check, over.”
The response from
Bowen
was equally smart, and Jack wondered just how many people were closed up on the cruiser’s massive bridge. Considering how few people aboard
Armstrong
even knew the bird was manned and ready, he imagined
Bowen
’s bridge being nearly deserted. That seemed like an awful lot of people, entirely in the dark, but then again, he’d never done a Special Forces operation before.
“All units this is Eagle-One.” The excitement in his gut returned. “Entering airlock and standing by for launch.”
* * *
Katja crouched on the rooftop, watching the swift motor launch blaze a white path across the calm blue surface. She’d tracked Breeze’s Baryon down to the docks, and had zoomed her vision to maximum magnification to catch sight of her quarry. Sure enough, she’d just been able to make out the man who’d greeted Breeze with a kiss and taken her down to his waiting boat. They’d cast off quickly enough, and were moving at speed across the lake.
Scanning the far shoreline, she tried to guess their destination. That side of the water was lined with skyscrapers of the commercial district. Were the Centauris planning some kind of cyber-attack on Terra’s financial infrastructure? She signaled her observation and hypothesis to Korolev at the command center below.
He acknowledged but didn’t comment.
The temptation to enter the Bulk and chase after Kit Moro burned within her, but she forced herself to remain calm and stationary. Her orders were to observe and report. The Centauris were nothing if not devious—for all she knew Moro was purposefully trying to draw their attention away on a red herring.
Another glance at her watch.
Thirty seconds to 17:00.
She cast her gaze around the lakefront one more time, then closed her eyes and tuned in to the electronic noise—into the Cloud—all around her. Civilian traffic was normal. Security chatter was minimal. Astral circuits were—
An electronic scream exploded in her mind.
Piercing white light blinded her inner vision. She instinctively covered her ears and ripped her eyes open, vaguely aware that she was on her back on the hard rooftop. The pain faded as she rolled onto all fours. She tried to refocus, but her mind refused to reach out to the Cloud again. Staggering to her feet, she looked out toward the lake.
To her right, one of the 30-floor government buildings on the waterfront exploded outward from its middle stories. The blast wave rolled past her a moment later, followed quickly by the dull roar. The next building to the left shattered an instant later, and she recognized the explosion pattern caused by a projectile, rather than a static, planted bomb.
Someone was
shooting
at the buildings.
She stared out at the lake, looking for any telltale puffs of smoke from one of the many boats. Kit Moro’s launch was barely visible as it dropped speed on the far side of the lake, white wake fading away to a ripple as he maneuvered. She zoomed in, watching for any sort of movement indicating a weapon.
The roar of another explosion tore her gaze back to the panorama, and she watched in horror as a third building erupted, then a fourth.
People ran pell-mell in all directions as burning pieces fell from shattered towers, flames leaping skyward through columns of thick, black smoke. The entire waterfront on that side of the lake was ablaze, debris scattered and burning across the boardwalk and docks. Two more explosions tore through buildings a block inland, the blasts smashing windows on the surrounding towers.
She looked back out at the lake. All movement had stopped, resulting in an eerie tableau of horrified onlookers on their tiny pleasure craft. Then, amidst the sudden stillness, she saw the ripple of air just above the water—caught sight of the puffs of vapor and spray of surface water that revealed supersonic movement.
She’d seen a ripple in the air like that before.
She forced her mind back into the Cloud. Blocking herself from the blinding light and deafening noise of the Astral network, she focused solely on feeling her way to Korolev.
Katja pulled back for a moment, unable to bear the light and noise of the jamming. Focusing her eyes back on the lake, she saw the ripple again. Sunlight flashed off a silvery object, then another.
Then more. In the time it took her to draw a breath, the air over the lake was flooded with small, fast, silver flying machines. The swarm grew as more and more poured through the pulsing jump gate. The giant cloud of robots seemed to pause for a moment, swirling over the lake, before spontaneously darting outward as each machine cleared the water and swooped down on the city.
Each machine opened fire with short-range energy weapons. She threw herself down as bolts struck indiscriminately all around her. She heard the crash of crumbling facades, of screaming far below her. Crawling up to look again, she realized that the war she’d fought in Sirius and Centauria had followed her home.
Anger lit inside her, fueled her. As she quickly assessed the situation she embraced the anger, and felt a remarkable calm.
She had to strain to understand Korolev’s response.
Zooming her vision over the Astral College grounds, she saw lots of abandoned equipment, but no soldiers.
She cast her gaze over the grounds again, spotting slight movement among the weaponry and behind the buildings. So maybe the Army weren’t such pussies after all. She could just imagine her father standing over the soldiers, daring any one of them to try to run from danger.
He might be a bastard, but he wasn’t a coward.
She reached tentatively into the Cloud again, focusing on civilian communication circuits and staying clear of military channels. Searching, searching, she found the network that carried Baryon signals, and drilled down into it to isolate the number of Storm Banner Leader Emmes.
Would he answer in a situation like this?
Only if he thought the caller could help him.
Discarding any thought that he’d pick up for his daughter, even if she had been missing for over a week, she scanned the database for a title that sounded official. Hoping he was as addicted to his device as every normal human seemed to be, she signaled under the identity of “Territorial Command.”
The line rang. Then, amidst the din of background rumbling and urgent shouting, she heard the Voice.
“Hello?”
She stopped herself, remembering that the Centauris had probably bugged the entire network. She needed a simple code that he’d be sure to understand. Then she smiled slightly. What better code than a language like no other in history, spoken by less than two million humans and only on Earth itself?
“Storm Banner Leader,” she said in rapid Finnish, “this is Astral Special Forces. Your entire storm banner is armed with live ammunition. Engage the Centauri swarm.”
There was a pause, during which she could hear scuffling.
“Say again?” he said in English.
She repeated her message, staying in Finnish, then added, “Terra is under attack. All military comms are down. Your unit is the only one in a position to respond. Engage the Centauri swarm.”
“Understood,” he replied in their native tongue. “Wait one.”
She opened her eyes and watched the silvery machines circling in chaotic patterns, covering the area around the jump gate as larger Centauri flying units began to appear. Lumbering in flight she recognized these silver beasts—AARs, or anti-armor robots. More than two dozen had appeared during her brief conversations. Already they were forming up and moving toward Astral Headquarters and the irreplaceable space elevators.