Worlds in Chaos (125 page)

The scarp they were on faced east, overlooking an expanse of sand and broken rock that lay flat for a mile or two before rising to a line of craggy uplands. They were about twenty miles behind the forward positions that they had seen being prepared yesterday, looking down over rearward missile and gun emplacements, antitank defenses, and staging areas for reserve armor. Over the ridge behind them would be the long-range artillery, antiaircraft positions, command bunkers. Cade was getting to know the pattern already.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind. Cade turned to find Gerofsky in a combat jacket and helmet, accompanied by a couple of troopers, coming down from the ridge, where he had gone to learn the latest at brigade HQ. The troopers went off toward their own unit. Gerofsky came to the edge of the parapet and stepped down to join Cade. He looked grim.

“Forget any ideas of a breakout west from the Rockies. They’ve as good as closed the ring. This is the last act, right here. Or something has to change pretty drastically somewhere.”

“Nothing from Sacramento?” Cade asked.

Gerofsky shook his head. “Not much from the West Coast at all. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean. Orders are to hold out with maximum effort. I don’t know what with, though. Our air support is practically nonexistent. They still have satellite cover. We’re like ducks in a barrel.”

Cade didn’t reply. Nyarl, stirred by the talking, sat up, rubbed his eyes, mumbled something incomprehensible, and began removing frosty wrappings from his equipment. Behind him, Marie was coming across from the kitchen, carrying a metal lid as a tray for steaming coffee mugs. Slowly, the scene around them was coming to life. Troops began appearing out of the ground to congregate around spots dispensing heat and breakfast. Some tanks away to the right were moving out from their parking area. A jeep scuttled by busily below, raising a train of dust. But beneath the appearances of calm ran an undercurrent of tension everywhere, waiting for the first shocks and rolls of thunder that would signal the opening assault at the front. Or would it begin as a sudden saturation from the sky by some unknown form of destruction?

Marie arrived and passed the coffees around, setting one down by Nyarl. Davis joined them from the far side of the dividing parapet. Gerofsky repeated for their benefit what little news there was.

“Nothing on what’s happening in China?” Davis inquired.

“I’m not even sure there still is a China,” Gerofsky said.

Davis watched Nyarl laying out components and checking them into pockets in his various carrying cases. “What’s the point, Nyarl?” he asked. “Whatever you get, who’s ever going to see it? LA might not be there.”

“I’ll see it through to the end. It’s what Luodine would have wished.” Nyarl thought, then added, “Terran sentiment. I thought you’d understand.”

The sound of jets flying low came from far away to the left. Heads turned, but the aircraft were out of sight. A lot of birds were aloft and making agitated noises, disturbed by all the unfamiliar activity. A loud hailer somewhere back over the hill was reciting something in a monotone unintelligible at the distance. As Cade watched, a field radar sited near the top of the rise to command the forward approaches tilted to maximum elevation, probing directly above.

Marie moved closer to Cade as he stood, warming his hands around the mug. “You finally look the part—a soldier,” she told him. “There was a time when I’d never have believed it.”

Cade glanced at the automatic rifle he’d been given, standing propped against the parapet next to where he had slept. Marie and Gerofsky had shown him what the various knobs and catches were for, but he had never gotten around to actually firing it. Some soldier!

He gazed back out over the terrain. “You know, now and again you find yourself wondering how it will be in the end . . . when it’s checkout time. You hope that when it happens it won’t be too drawn-out and messy. I never imagined anything like this: stuck on some mountainside in Colorado, in a place I’ve never heard of.” He shrugged. “You’d have thought that after the life I’ve lived, I could have managed something with a bit more style, wouldn’t you? You know, lots of friends at the funeral, big speeches. . . .”

“I thought all that really mattered was that we were together,” Marie reminded him.

He turned, and looked at her, checking himself. Then he put an arm around her and drew her close. “Yes. A pity we won’t be able to do a hell of a lot with it. . . . But I’m glad it worked out in the end. Do you always do things in such roundabout ways?”

“Why just me? You got here via China too, as I recall.”

Cade pulled a face, couldn’t argue, nodded, and conceded the point. “And Australia,” he said, as if that somehow made a difference. He stared moodily for a while, content with the feel of Marie pressing against him. “It was a shame about Mike Blair. He shouldn’t have put off going over there to work with Krossig. They were getting into such great ideas on what life ought to be about trying to understand. . . .” Cade motioned briefly with the hand holding the coffee mug, indicating nothing in particular. “Instead of whatever it is we’re blowing each other up over. As if any of it mattered . . .”

Cade’s voice trailed off as he registered alarmed voices around them. Faces were turning skyward. He looked up, and at the same instant felt Marie tense. An object that looked like a blunt, black arrowhead had appeared overhead, silhouetted against the brightening sky. It appeared about the size of a dime held at arm’s length, hanging practically stationary but getting perceptibly larger—evidently descending. A second became visible behind and to the side, smaller but also enlarging. Then a third. More . . . They were unlike anything that had ever emerged from assembly shops on Earth. Cade felt his mouth turning dry, a knot tightening in his stomach as the realization came that the rest of his life might be measured in minutes or less.

Klaxons and alarm sirens were sounding in all directions. Across the slopes below, figures scattered to take cover in foxholes and trenches. In the gun pits and antiaircraft emplacements, barrels and missile racks were swinging to near vertical. Nyarl was already unslinging his camera, resolved to see it through to the last, whatever the futility. “Looks like they’ve decided to save Washington’s ground forces the trouble,” Davis commented dryly. Beside him, Gerofsky just stood staring upward incredulously, at a loss for coherent words.

Still the shapes were enlarging, now taking on a sinister aspect, with rows of bulges, nacelles, studs and rodlike protuberances becoming discernible along the dull black of their undersides. As finer levels of detail continued to resolve themselves, awareness came over Cade slowly that these structures were
huge
. He had thought of them as aircraft and unconsciously assigned them a comparable scale. But although just covered by the palm of his hand now, they were still high up. “Large warship” might have been a better comparison; or even small town. A dull pulsing, hinting of immense power being contained and ready to unleash, throbbed in his ears and seemed to permeate his body through his legs from the ground, as if the entire basin to the far wall of mountains were resonating. A second formation was becoming visible above and beyond the first, diamond-shaped this time.

A series of
whoosh
es sounded from somewhere along the ridge to the left. Cade jerked his head away to see a salvo of missiles streaking upward from some hidden battery. Then more came from immediately behind. They were antimissile types, with fearsome acceleration; even so, seconds passed by with the flaming tails dwindling as they climbed toward the shapes looming above, telling of the distance that still intervened. The first salvo exploded in a string of crimson bursts like a fireworks display. Cade watched, looking for some sign of damage inflicted; then he realized that they had never gotten close but been destroyed by some kind of shield or defensive beam. The second salvo fared no better, nor the others that followed. The shapes were impregnable: self-contained battle units built for combat of a different kind, on a scale that was incomprehensible.

A flight of aircraft appeared from the rear. Nyarl turned to catch them releasing their missiles and breaking away, and then followed the missiles toward their targets until they exploded harmlessly like the rest. He moved his face away from the eyepiece of the camera to look up at the craft directly for a few seconds. He seemed puzzled. Then he peered through the sighting lens again. Finally, he looked away toward Hudro, still at the field kitchen, and shouted something in Hyadean. Cade saw then that Hudro had been looking up with the same bemused expression. Nyarl called again. Hudro looked toward him, seeming to hear for the first time, and called something back. There was a brief exchange in Hyadean. Nyarl saw Cade looking at him. “The markings on those craft. They’re not of any Chrysean military units, Roland. They’re Querl!”

Only then did what should have been obvious become clear: The ships weren’t engaging in any acts that were hostile. Everything they had done was defensive. Gerofsky was the first to snap out of the trance that had gripped all of them. Not saying anything, as if unwilling to come to any premature conclusion as to what it might mean, he climbed the parapet out of the entrenchment and set off almost at a run back up the ridge toward the brigade headquarters. Hudro and Koyne were already heading across the slope to meet him higher up. Cade and Marie followed Gerofsky. Davis grabbed Nyarl’s carrying case as they brought up the rear.

They arrived at the brigade communications post, sandbaggged under a camouflage net awning. Radios were chattering, operators calling reports from consoles and battlefield displays, figures rushing excitedly among the tents and trailers. On one of the screens, Cade saw a flotilla of daughter vessels descending from one of the mother ships toward the basin that they had just been overlooking. Another screen showed the head and shoulders of a Hyadean in a military-style tunic. Gerofsky, breathless, was with two staff officers. He turned toward Cade and Marie as they approached.

“Word from the front is that all Union forces are standing down! Washington has called a truce!” he told them. The look in his eyes was still disbelieving. “The government on Chryse has collapsed. Their military here have disengaged. It’s over!”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

A Querl landing craft, looking something like the personal flyers but larger and sleeker, brought a deputation of officers from the command ship down to brigade headquarters after preliminary landings had ascertained its location. Since Querl were not accustomed to dealing with Terrans and had little experience of English, Nyarl acted as interpreter. It turned out that the news clips sent by the brigade’s communications unit to Los Angeles the previous evening had made it through Cairns and been received by the Querl relays. Querl intelligence located the military unit that the two Hyadeans shown in the recordings—Nyarl and Hudro—said they were attached to, and the Querl leaders directed the initial landing to the area where it was operating.

There was something more dynamic about the Querl compared to what Cade had come to accept as typical of Hyadeans. Their manner was more expressive; they walked with more bounce; their uniforms had more style. These were the bad guys? It dawned on him how much he and probably just about all Terrans had been influenced by the Chrysean propaganda image—practically as much as any unquestioning, xenophobic Chrysean. The commanding general of the Federation forces in the central area was being rushed by helicopter from divisional headquarters some miles to the rear. In the meantime, Nyarl summarized events to Cade and the others, along with a mix of weary, red-eyed staff officers, many still struggling to grasp that a last-minute reprieve had been granted them. Behind them, the Querl war craft hung like geometrically fashioned islands in the sky, while life began showing itself again across the hills and the plain below as news spread that the war was over.

“After the AANS attacks on Chrysean craft in orbit, the Chryseans began launching punitive strikes against China and elsewhere. It was a panic, overreaction, and ill-judged in the light of the other things that had been going on back at Chryse.” Nyarl paused to check something in Hyadean with a couple of the Querl officers. “We don’t have all the details yet, since these people have been here in your Solar System for the last week, but unrest has been sweeping over Chryse since the Querl started broadcasting what has been taking place on Earth.” He looked across to Cade and the rest of the group to address them specifically. His voice caught. “She did it! It worked the way Luodine planned—the way we carried on. It bypassed the controls that had always operated in the past. The Chrysean population learned the truth.” Nyarl indicated the Querl deputation. “Until just now, even these people didn’t know where the reports were originating from. But they caused an upheaval on Chryse that was unprecedented. The whole Chrysean system has fallen. The people are calling for the Querl to take over. Their ships are moving in there now, even while I’m speaking. A standoff between Querl and Chrysean military forces has been going on around Earth, the Moon, and as far out as the orbit of Mars, for several days now. But without political legitimization from Chryse, the Chrysean military here has ceased operations.” Nyarl finished with a helpless gesture that said he was having trouble enough absorbing so much in so little time, too. “And the same seems to be happening here. Deprived of its Chrysean backing, the Globalist Coalition is in disarray everywhere. Washington is on stand-down, waiting for terms from Sacramento. Europe is in chaos. Nobody has any idea where it might all lead.”