Authors: Bennett R. Coles
He surveyed the park that lay before them. Broad fields of neatly trimmed grass were dissected by winding paths fringed with brilliant flower beds. A few tall trees stood in splendid isolation here and there to break up the sea of grass, but mostly the thirsty giants formed a towering, leafy rim around the “natural” space. Predominantly flat, largely empty, and barely five kilometers away from the space elevators, this park was the perfect staging ground for the real attack to begin.
He adjusted the backpack on his shoulders. The final horseshoe felt heavy after such an extended run from the boat, but he knew his job was nearly done. Scanning the copses of trees that lined the park’s border, he spotted the particular grouping toward which he’d been heading.
Six trees stood close together, their smallish trunks weaving upward and dividing to create a tiny clearing that was, due to the rambling shrubs around it, well-hidden on three sides and wide open on the fourth. It was the ideal spot to activate the horseshoe and open the jump gate for the Second Centauri Army that waited on Abeona.
He crouched down next to Breeze, kissing her tenderly.
“Hey, Breezy. You okay?”
She smiled and rubbed her hand on his knee. “I’ve had better days. Next time don’t feel like you have to do so much to impress a girl. A boat ride would have been enough.”
He laughed in genuine surprise. Words actually failed him for a moment.
“How about you?” she asked. “I guess this is just a day at the office for an off-world journalist.” She suddenly looked at him strangely. “Hey, why haven’t you been filming all this? Isn’t this the story of a lifetime?”
The sudden glint of suspicion in her eyes alarmed him, and he noted the location of the pistol still holstered at her waist. He forced a mysterious smile to his lips.
“Who says I haven’t?”
Her expression turned to doubt, then turned to comprehension. “So you do have a proper implant, then?”
“You convinced me that I needed to take the plunge,” he replied. “But this spot feels too exposed, and I’d like to protect the new equipment while it’s still under warranty.” He pointed to the copse of trees. “We should find better cover.
“Let me go first,” he suggested, making an obvious show of examining the copse. “Although… I can’t quite see what’s waiting in there.” He glanced down at her. “Can I borrow that pistol of yours for a minute?”
Her hand covered the holster, eyes suddenly steel.
“Not a chance.”
He shrugged and adjusted his backpack. “Okay, but if you hear me screaming like a schoolgirl you better come running.” With that, he started to move away, keeping low.
“Deal.”
He tried to stick to a walk, but latent adrenaline and the sheer desire to complete his mission overcame him. He quickened to a light jog and covered the smooth ground in a matter of moments. Once behind the foliage he knelt down and tore open his pack. The bronze-colored horseshoe was more than twice the size of the ones he’d used earlier, and it would open a much larger gate. Four light years away, a full division of anti-personnel robots stood ready to burst out across this grassy parkland, securing the area for the heavy units and—if the attack went well—occupying forces.
He dropped the horseshoe onto the grass with a thud and began the activation process. Because of its power, he’d been told, it would take nearly five minutes to marshal its energy and open the gate. He looked out between the leaves at the masses of smoke rising into the cloudless sky.
Five minutes, then he would take a single step and return home.
Jack’s arm muscles burned as he fought to keep the stick under control. The visual was awash in orange as the Hawk slammed through the atmosphere, pushing a super-heated cone of air before it. The view was actually “backward” as the craft descended from orbit with main engines leading the drop on full burn against the orbital velocity, robbing the Hawk of speed and letting Isaac Newton take control.
Although he’d done it before, and he knew the science was sound, he wasn’t about to lessen his iron grip on that stick for a moment. There was a reason, he knew, why humans used elevators to get between orbit and the surface—that method had a higher survival rate.
Eventually the pounding eased to a shudder, and the orange air faded from view. Jack checked his radar and found a reasonably clear picture, with most contacts sticking to the standard commercial air lanes. The Hawk dropped below three kilometers before finally slowing enough for him to take positive control.
With the Great Barrier Reef visible below, he hauled the stick to port and vectored his craft toward Longreach. Climbing to ten kilometers he noted the strange silence on all radio circuits. Astral circuits had taken heavy jamming, even before they left orbit, but now it seemed as if
everything
was down.
Radar revealed a pair of contacts that broke away from the lanes and increased speed to intercept him. He doubted even the Special Forces had a way to tell these sentries what this little Hawk was doing, dropping out of nowhere.
He flicked on his beacon—the omnidirectional, encoded, agile-frequency identifier that would be immediately detected by the sensors on any State vehicle in range. Since it was designed for deep-space use, Jack was pretty sure it was burning through the detectors of every sentry aircraft from here to Vladivostok.
Better than getting shot at, though.
To his relief, the two approaching sentry aircraft veered off and continued their patrol. As the coast of Australia flashed past beneath him, he figured there would be more military units coming into play, so he decided the beacon was a good thing to keep on. Now that the engagement had begun, stealth dropped down his list of priorities.
“Amanda, you got that gate locked up?”
“Just a sec,” he heard her say through the suit comms. He didn’t glance back, but a moment later he caught her hand in his peripheral, reaching to adjust his hunt controls. “I’ve lost the feed from
Armstrong
, but I have the last recorded position, and I’m going to tweak your sensors.”
The Outback was a ruddy expanse beneath them. On the horizon Jack thought he saw black storm clouds dead ahead. He checked his range and dipped the Hawk into a gentle descent.
“Not much time,” he said. “I’m arming the weapon.”
“Just wait,” she snapped. “I haven’t optimized the sensors.”
He glanced at his 3-D display. “You have twenty-five seconds.”
What he’d thought were storm clouds were actually huge columns of smoke rising vertically until they hit the stratosphere, then diffused across the sky. On the leftmost edge of the column Jack saw the distant, flashing lights of the space elevators.
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. Get me that target.”
“It’s not that easy!”
He pushed the Hawk lower, still aiming for the center of the smoke. He didn’t dare turn off his beacon now as he lined up what could only be seen as an attack profile on downtown Longreach. Fifteen seconds. The first white towers of the suburbs were visible ahead.
“Get me that target, Amanda.”
“I’m refining it. Just wait.”
“No time. Take your best fucking guess.”
The suburbs were below him as the Hawk descended below two kilometers. He confirmed that the torpedo was armed and ready, and that all safeties were off.
“There are two of them,” she said.
“What?”
“There are two jump gates!”
The last ridge fell astern, and ahead of them Jack saw the destruction at the core of Earth’s gateway city. Black smoke filled the sky over a towering ring of fire. The lake where the jump gate was hidden was barely visible through the growing smog. He glanced at his 3-D display.
“Where’s my target?”
Two red symbols appeared in his display. Two, perhaps three kilometers apart. Amanda overlaid the raw sensor feed. One dark-energy gate was steady but the other, smaller one burned with higher intensity, and was growing.
Two targets. One weapon.
“What do we do?” Amanda shouted.
Jack pulled back on the stick and pushed his throttles forward.
* * *
Katja reached the last position on the Army line, barely ten seconds before the coordinated start time. As she’d done twenty-one times before, she sprinted toward the soldiers, waving her arms at her sides to indicate the lack of hostility.
As so many other soldiers had done, they stared at her slack-jawed.
“Special Forces,” she gasped, thrusting her tactical pad at them. “Train all your weaponry on the enemy position, and begin firing at minute two-zero exactly.” She pointed at the mobile air-defense battery, looming to one side of the soldiers’ dug-in position. “Start with those. Target the heavies, and then take the swarm-bots with everything you have. Right down to your pistols.”
Behind her, the roar of missiles echoed off the College grounds. She glanced at her watch.
It was time.
She stabbed at the missile launcher. “Open fire!” she shouted as best she could. “And keep firing until you have absolutely nothing left. You are the only line of defense for all of Terra—we’re all relying on you.”
They leapt into action, and she turned to start running back. The thunder of weapons over her head indicated the final position’s compliance with her orders. Within twenty seconds she was at the previous group. Their last missile soared up into the smoke even as she approached. The soldiers stood and watched it go.
She ran up and punched the nearest one in the arm. “Get your section weapon up, get your rifles ready. The next thing that’s going to happen is the swarm will attack and try to finish us off. Keep firing until every last one of them is down, and then you’ll start firing at the AARs.”
One soldier looked up from his pad, his expression showing utter disbelief.
“The heavies are out of range.”
She moved to stand where the entire section could see her, hands on her hips and feet apart.
“If we don’t stop this invasion force, the space elevators are gone. If they’re gone, this war is lost. You men are all that stand between us and total defeat. We need you to stand and fight. To the last survivor.”
The soldier she’d punched climbed behind the heavy-barreled section weapon and pointed it southwest. He opened fire into the smog.
Katja made it to ten more positions before the swarm descended.
The steady chatter of weapons fire was overcome by a low, buzzing sound that was felt almost as much as it was heard. This particular group of soldiers was using a crater to dig in, and she paused at the lip, drawing her pistol. The constant fire from other positions broke into short, harried bursts. The awful hiss of energy weapons cut through the noise, followed by distant screams. Around her in the crater, the soldiers stopped firing.
She stood up, punching the men on either side of her.
“Whatever you see flying in that smoke, you kill it. Do
not
stop, no matter what.” Without waiting for a reply she pulled herself out of the crater and sprinted forward through the smog.
The first swarm-bot was on her in seconds. A silver flash in the smoke above her. Burning heat against the left side of her head. She stumbled and fell, sliding along the rough ground. She lay on her side, gasping as the heat in her helmet faded. She forced her arms and legs to move slightly, to confirm they were still all there.
Reaching up to feel the charred outer surface of her helmet, she figured it was still mostly intact. Thank God the swarm-bot had taken a head-shot—her Bulk-suit wasn’t armored, and would never have survived an energy strike like that.
Four more swarm-bots flashed by overhead, bolts of energy streaking from them as they assaulted the next position. Rattling thunder indicated the wall of explosive rounds they flew into, and she saw two robots stagger in flight and crash down in heaps. Screams in the smog indicated the corresponding Terran casualties.
Hauling herself up, she staggered to the next position. Soldiers were sprawled across the ground by their troop carrier. Some struggled to rise but others were immobile, faces burned beyond recognition. The gun on the carrier was warped and melted. One of the section weapons, however, still looked functional. She looked at her tactical pad. At best they’d been able to draw a third of the swarm-bots away from the AARs—not enough to make the heavies vulnerable.
Katja grabbed an abandoned rifle and pulled one of the soldiers to his feet. An ugly burn mark slashed across the breastplate of his armor, but he seemed otherwise unhurt.
“Get on that weapon,” she barked. “Start firing at the heavies again.”
He stared at her dumbly. She pulled out her tactical pad and shoved it in his face.
“If the swarm-bots aren’t attacking you, then you’re not enough of a threat. We need them to stay here, on us.”
Still he didn’t move, his stunned gaze wandering over the casualties at his feet. She stepped back and pointed the rifle at him.
“Disobey me and you die,” she growled. “Get on that gun, and you
might
live. Now move!”
Training appeared to finally kick in, and he climbed up behind the big weapon. He swiveled it back toward the southwest and targeted the distant AARs. A gun of this size, Katja knew, could still cause damage, and would definitely draw fire.
She looked around at the rest of the position. Three more soldiers were at least moving. She hauled them up, one by one, and thrust rifles into their hands. The section weapon began thudding away, heavy slugs punching through the sky.
“Defend this position,” she barked. “Stand by for another swarm attack.”
The next three positions were in a similar state, but with the initial swarm attack having passed them, they were enjoying a moment of reprieve. By the time she’d finished, though, each one was brazenly firing toward the southwestern horizon. She watched on her pad as more swarm-bots broke away to deal with this nagging threat.
Come on, you bastards.
The crumbling walls of the College boat shed were in sight when she heard the low buzzing return. Flashes of gunfire from the shed windows revealed the intact defenses of that position. Energy beams erupted from the high smog, and she tumbled for cover into a low crater, still ten strides from the building. Staying low, she saw one swarm-bot swoop over with a steady, cutting stream of energy that burned through the thin roof. Another bot lowered on the far side and cast sweeping fire horizontally at the structure. Then a third lowered to a hover, barely off the ground, directly between her and the building.