Jarmo swiveled his great head. “If we give up the rest of the terminal now, they will gain a great morale boost. We need to hold until either they break, or the Mechs arrive.”
The Governor paced back and forth in the security center reception area, fuming. Sergeant Manstein, Jun and Jarmo all watched him. Finally, he gestured impatiently. “All right, all of you go up, but keep your heads down! Just hold them until the Mechs land.”
The tactical squad had carried the fight down to the second floor and now the fighting was desk to desk, door to door. A gigantic leg, blown clean off, was draped over the escalator handrail. A headless suit of body-shell lay nearby.
When Jarmo committed himself and the last of his reserves, it was too much for Captain Qing. He had already lost half his men and there seemed to be no sign of a break in the enemy defenses. The security center in particular, should he even manage to get that far, looked impregnable.
He called an orderly retreat, which combined with Jarmo’s last ditch charge to turn into a rout. Men danced in their body-shell armor as countless rounds struck them. Upstairs, the militiamen had just triumphantly entered the terminal, expecting little resistance. The sight of the tactical squad in full retreat, dragging their wounded, set up a panic. Jarmo, with the handful of giants and security men still standing, chased them from the building and back into the relative safety of the parking lot.
Jarmo sat halfway up the escalator, his great chest heaving. Through a bullet-shattered skylight overhead he examined the night sky. The mechs should have arrived by now. What could have stopped them?
* * *
The first flakes of snow fell as Steinbach stood behind a lifter with his field glasses leveled on the terminal. Every militia trooper was engaged in the assault, except for Steinbach himself, who preferred to survey the battle from a more comfortable angle.
He startled when Major Drick Lee appeared at his side. He grimaced, turning slowly to face the man, whom he was rapidly coming to despise.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought I ordered everyone into the attack.”
Major Lee snorted and said nothing.
Steinbach returned his eyes to his field glasses. He ground his teeth. “Just because you’re related to a senator doesn’t make you God, Major. You’re a soldier out here, just like the rest of us.”
“Look, General,” began Major Lee, “I don’t want trouble with you, but if you think I’m charging through that parking lot just to save a building, you’re out of your mind.”
“We aren’t fighting for a building, Major.”
“Then let’s just blow the place up! Unlimber the big batteries and have done with this little fiasco. Then we’ll have another eight to ten years of profits before the Nexus bothers to ship the next fool out here.”
Steinbach jumped a bit at the mention of the missile batteries. He swiveled to examine the walls of Fort Zimmerman, just visible on the horizon. He looked for smoke trails, but as yet there were none. It was only a matter of time, however. Whatever had possessed him to put his satchel into that locker?
“We’ll do this my way,” Steinbach told him.
Major Lee shrugged disinterestedly. “Suit yourself, but count me out of the heroics.”
Fifteen minutes later, the tactical squad was repulsed and came staggering back to the lifters. Medical corpsmen shouted and rushed about. Steinbach slumped down in the seat of his limo, defeated. The missiles would have to come now.
They waited, regrouping and applying first aid, until midnight. Steinbach kept a sharp lookout on Fort Zimmerman, and tried to get a hold of someone over there on his phone several times without success. He kept waiting for the batteries to wind up and snap off their missiles, but nothing happened. Hours passed and Steinbach became increasingly apprehensive. He had just sent a cruiser up to the fort to see what was going on when Major Lee sauntered over to his car.
“Reports of fighting up at the fort are coming in over KXUT,” remarked Major Lee. He had been sitting in one of the lifters, idling the engine to run the heater. “They say some kind of riot is going on. Maybe the banquet got seriously out of hand.”
Steinbach looked up the hill to the fort, noting for the first time that the floodlights on the guardtowers were out.
What was going on up there?
* * *
One of the few official events that Governor Zimmerman truly enjoyed attending was New Grunstein’s annual militiamen’s banquet and ball. Held in the central hall of Fort Zimmerman, he always found the food excellent and the entertainment reasonable. Moreover, each year he was asked to make a speech, which was always well-received by the agreeable crowd. Sitting at the high table mounted on the stage, he argued good-naturedly with a militia officer, his mouth full of Garmish polar cod.
“Females are best at the age of fifteen, I tell you, and I speak from vast experience,” expounded Zimmerman. His face was florid from too much hork-leaf wine. “These days I will have nothing to do with a paygirl who is over sixteen. After that, it seems to me that something of the glow of youth begins to fade from them. It’s difficult to put your finger on, but it’s there.”
The officer made a polite gesture of agreement. “Isn’t it about time for you to address the assembly, Governor?”
“Quite right, quite right,” said Zimmerman. He stood ponderously, his ample belly brushing the table edge as he heaved himself erect.
“The stairs are right there, Governor,” said a deputy, taking his elbow. “I’ll just help you put on this throat-mike.”
The Governor and the deputy fumbled with the microphone for several seconds before it was in place. Zimmerman pushed the larger man away in irritation and mounted the steps on unsteady legs. The deputy followed to stand beside the podium, his thick arms crossed and his autoshades in place.
Zimmerman rattled the hardcopy of his speech for several seconds. “Ah, yes. At last we meet again, and I am honored to thank you all for another year of exemplary service to the colony. And I do mean all of you: wives, husbands and children of the officers present are included. The families of militia officers are just as worthy of praise as are the officers themselves.”
He paused for the applause that must surely come. It did, right on cue. How could it not, after he had complimented their families? Get your audience applauding early and often, that was his motto.
“Among the notable accomplishments of militia officers this year I must include...” he went on for several minutes, listing the names of each officer awarded a major certification of achievement. A line formed at the steps, where the honored officers were given ribbon-bound hardcopies of their citations and a warm handshake from the red-faced Governor. The deputies critically eyed each of the officers in turn, inspecting each as a possible assassin.
Before the line-up had gone through half its length, however, there was an interruption. A commotion began at the back of the hall, where the corridor led out to the restrooms. A woman burst through the doors, screaming with terrific force. In hot pursuit, a bizarre creature like a giant caterpillar humped into the hall after her. Too surprised to react instantly, the officers at the door simply watched with gaping mouths as the six-foot long thing caught up with the woman and sprang onto her back, bearing her down to the floor. With startling speed, the shrade wrapped itself around her torso and convulsed with all its fantastic strength, crushing the ribcage. Ribs and vertebrae crackled and popped loudly. The woman’s eyes bulged and she wheezed a final cry of agony.
By this time the nearest armed officers managed to drag their guns out and get to the fallen woman. Although it was obvious that the woman wouldn’t survive, they made an effort to avoid shooting her, firing at the head of the thing that rode her still-jerking body. Shots rang out and people the length of the hall began to scream and duck. The shrade was hit in the head three times, but still it managed to disengage itself from the woman and rear up, as would a snake preparing to strike. The guns sounded again and the shrade finally slumped down, pumping dark ichor onto the dead woman and the carpeting.
Governor Zimmerman stood on the stage; his hand still outstretched to provide yet another congratulatory handshake. He gaped at the confusion at the back of the hall, unable to see exactly what had happened. He waved the line of officers back and returned to the podium. “There seems to be some kind of interruption, but I’m sure that the officers on duty can handle it. Will everyone please take their seats.”
One of his deputies moved to his side and whispered harshly in his ear, “It could be a terrorist attack, sir.”
Zimmerman’s eyes showed fear. He pursed his lips, then waved his deputies forward to stand in front of the podium, presumably between him and any assassin’s bullet. Standing with knees bent slightly, so that less of his form showed over the podium, he spoke to the nervous crowd again.
“If we can continue with the program now, please,” he said, tapping his stylus on the mike to get their attention. Why did something like this always have to happen when he was really enjoying himself? He hated nothing more than unexpected interruptions.
Before he could utter another word, however, more shrades chose that moment to drop from their hiding places in the hall’s great chandeliers. Falling onto the circular tables stacked high with polar cod and roasted air-swimmers, the things tackled the nearest armed humans and wrapped them in deadly embraces. One man’s head was squeezed cleanly off his body to thump and roll down the main aisle. Horror-struck, people leapt to their feet and scrambled for the exits. An amazing level of noise arose.
Even as the shrade attack began the flooring directly in front of each of the major exits heaved upward. Violent tremors shook the hall. Then there was a quiet moment, a lull, during which the crowd milled in fearful anticipation. The swelling numbers at the exits hesitated, uncertain. What might lurk in the darkened corridors? Even Zimmerman found himself crouching down behind his podium, listening to the floor, watching the swaying chandeliers. Everyone waited with pounding hearts for whatever new form this bizarre attack might take.
Finally, the moment came. Like surfacing whales, the heads of the great umulks burst through the maroon carpet, spraying plumes of dirt and dust. Tables were overturned, tossing their contents and the people sitting at them about like toys. With earth and bricks rolling from their huge heads the umulks took the opportunity to snap up fallen men, women and children where they lay. The crowd surged forward then realized the exits were blocked by these new monsters and fell back. In their midst more wriggling shrades dropped, tackling anyone they could catch. Utter panic swept the hall.
To their credit, the militia officers were somewhat faster to react to the unexpected attack than perhaps your typical group of humans might have done. Working in teams, they counterattacked the shrades, pulling them from victims, stabbing them with forks and table knives. Many had brought weapons; pistol shots and the booming of Wu hand-cannons reverberated from the walls. Many of the shrades were destroyed, but only after leaving dozens of crushed corpses in their wake.
Then the great umulks withdrew their fantastic snouts, sliding back down into the earth like worms slipping into their burrows. For a few seconds there was a pause, during which an enterprising few undertook to escape through the exits. Only a handful managed to dash into the kitchens or reach the corridor leading to the visitors lobby before squads of killbeasts boiled up from the great black holes. Moving with terrifying speed, teams of killbeasts shredded everyone near the holes then stood guard while more squads climbed up into the hall and formed up ranks.
The humans took this time to maneuver. The officers armed themselves as they could and moved to the front, forming a circle around the spouses and children. Here and there a militia officer shouted orders; crude incomplete barricades were thrown up using the long banquet tables. Several marksmen, getting over their shock, put their pistols to good use by squeezing off round after round into the growing mass of killbeasts.
Then a different sort of alien appeared at the mouth of one of the holes. Strange bulbous pods, assumably optical organs, extended up from his misshapen head, waving about disconcertingly in their cusps.
* * *
The nife surveyed the scene with neural thrills coursing through his frontal lobes. Here was a glorious victory for the Imperium in the making. The human fortress had been breached and the core of leaders taken almost without a fight. The nife felt sure that his brain would experience chemical euphoria later tonight due to this great military coup. His genes would see to it that he was rewarded for masterminding this bold stroke.
He hesitated only a moment before sending the amassed killbeast squadrons to slaughter the enemy. Something about the aliens and their variations in preparedness concerned him. He could understand why they had virtually no defenses against underground invasion, as they were clearly arboreal descendants. But why had the spaceport been so obviously gearing for combat while the central defense fortress itself was apparently engaging in festivities? The unpredictable vertebrates seemed astoundingly clever one moment and pathetically idiotic the next.
Unable to answer the riddles inherent in the actions of the enemy, the nife decided it was time to finish the taking of the fortress. With a single chirrup of code, he signaled the killbeasts to perform their prime function. The gray leaping forms moved to their tasks with relish. The crude barricades were bounded over or simply plowed through. The reptilian killbeasts kicked out with their deadly bladed feet, neatly decapitating and disemboweling anyone that resisted their advance.