Fear the Survivors (49 page)

But as they broached the suburbs, Bohdan was receiving new information, and new orders. They had none of the vagueness of their current standing orders. They were very precise.

“Sir,” Bohdan called to the team leader over the noise of the well-used diesel engine, “you need to review the subspace data packet that just came in, immediately.”

Hektor opened the packet with his mind, tensing as he read the simple order. He could not reply directly. He could not verify. He could not send anything through subspace for risk of alerting the Russians to their presence. But it didn’t really matter anyway. The order did not require any further clarification.

Dr. Neal Danielson, CO Terrestrial Allied Space Command:
‘recon team two. new primary mission parameter: locate russian premier yuri svidrigaïlov. confirm identity and terminate.’

Chapter 44: The Hot War

The time for subtlety was passed.
They were coming in fast, and even the darkest of nights could not have hidden the shout of the sonic booms reverberating in their wake. They knew they would get to Rolas before it would have any of its StratoJets home to roost. Now there was just the small matter of the two thousand men and women of the allied naval fleet between them and their mark.

Far ahead of them, a band of destroyers, cruisers, submarines, and frigates were forming into a line, arraying their manifold ordnance at the eastern horizon and preparing for battle.

“Captain Bhade,” said Admiral Cochrane, from the fly bridge of the
Dauntless
, “please have your teams pick and assign. I want target batches dispatched to the fleet as soon as they are ready. Fire At Range.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the captain, “we are assigning now, Admiral. Fire control, you have clearance. Attach Fire At Range to all packets.” The order echoed throughout the bridge, and onward by radio to the fleet still taking their final positions in the firewall.

“Comms,” went on Admiral Cochrane, “orders for Admiral Takano: please tell the admiral his submarines are cleared to engage at outside range. I want them to deploy their entire surface-to-air salvos in the first wave and then dive. There is no need for them to be exposed to this.”

No one commented on what that meant for the surface fleet. In most modern conflicts the cruisers, frigates, and destroyers that made up Admiral Cochrane’s taskforce represented the safest possible place to be during an engagement. Usually they were far from the hot exchange of bullets, and any enemy craft foolish enough to approach them would be torn to shreds by the array of weaponry the big ships bristled with.

But this was no ordinary war, and no ordinary enemy, and though they had actively upgraded the systems aboard the fleet, they had never anticipated such a force as this.

The Japanese submarines did as they were ordered with neither complaint nor gratitude. As the fleet launched its first massive salvo of missiles at the coming Ubitsyas, the subs were more active than most, firing off every anti-air missile they had and then sealing and emergency-diving.

For his part, Admiral Takano looked on stoically from the bridge of the lone Japanese destroyer in the fleet, aware of his imminent fate. He did not flinch. He sufficed himself with mentally urging on the nearly thousand missiles the fleet had just launched at the coming flotilla and tried to maintain a sense of calm for the men and women sharing his bridge.

The first barrage was a throng of big, hulking rockets; their longest-range ordnance. The biggest was the Aegis, designed to leave the atmosphere if it had to, a variant of it among those that had killed one of the Mobiliei satellites months beforehand. But now they pursued smaller, faster, but less well-armed prey. Maybe some would find what they sought.

Now, with the tables turned from the night before, the allied navy mimicked the Russians tactics from the bloody fight in Hungary. As they closed with the coming enemy, the first wave of missiles performed the same random exercise in murder as the Russian wasps had, singling out unfortunates from among the Russian swarm and converging on them.

Above Cameroon, the skies became dark as the two great clouds came together, the bank of oncoming jets and the wave of missiles blocking the sun. They approached each other at stupendous speed, and the sparse population below watched in awe and horror as a hail of return fire came from the coming Ubitsyas like blurred lines of energy, warping the air between the two supernatural forces in the brief moments before collision.

The detonations began as notes in the stanza, missiles detonating as they were killed by the Ubitsyas’ guns, then it grew and grew as the Ubitsyas fought to thin out the massive destructive force coming at them.

Everyone watched as the two sides met, and the explosive noise rose to a crescendo of stellar proportions.

Neal, Barrett, Ayala, and Madeline watched with keen anticipation. The crews of the allied fleet watched with a hope bordering on delusion, almost against their will, not wanting to see how much of the coming death-dealers would make it through their first and largest salvo. And their captains and admirals watched with focused stoicism, their chests out, their eyes hard. Knowing the danger their crews faced but refusing to give in to despair.

And Mikhail watched, not from the front line, but from his own plane, if you could call it that. Well behind the main fleet, commanding it, close enough to maintain subspace communications, but far enough back that he could stay safely outside the maelstrom.

The noise was heard beyond horizons. A thunderous rumble that shook the earth, settling sand dunes, rustling trees, sending wildlife scattering, and raining down a molten hail of debris across a vast plain.

Two hundred Ubitsyas entered the fray, and out of the billowing vortex of flame and shrapnel a hundred sixty-two emerged.

Admiral Cochrane’s heart sank, as did every commander’s across the fleet, but still they tried not to let it show.

“Comms, to all units,” said Admiral Cochrane with stern command, “fire at will, engage and destroy.”

“Comms, to General Milton,” he went on a moment later, “General, you are cleared to bring up the air wing on Captain Bhade’s mark. We will continue to fire until you enter the kill zone.”

The orders were relayed and acknowledged.

Finally, Admiral Cochrane picked up a handset at his console and opened a channel to the strange artificial intelligence that he had been told responded to the name Minnie.

“Minnie, this is Admiral Cochrane,” he said, unaware that she knew with machine precision exactly where and who the call was coming from, “I have reviewed your request to take over fire control on our linked anti-air gun network. Given the statistics you provided, and the accompanying testimonies of General Milton and others, I have only one question for you before I agree: do you think it will make a difference?”

Minnie was quite capable of lying; that machines would for some reason lack the capacity for falsehood was a fallacy, a poorly conceived fiction. She was as capable of lying as she was of creating any text or speech, and she was capable of doing that in nine languages and counting. But she did not lie now. Out of her growing understanding of the concept of respect, she gave the man the most honest answer she could.

“Do I think I can manage the systems better than your human teams aboard the fleet? I am sure of it, Admiral. Do I think I can save all of the ships that now stand between Rolas and the coming armada? I am afraid I cannot promise that. Maybe I can save some, but even that I cannot guarantee.”

The admiral flinched as even his inclination toward brutal honesty was tested, but then she finished by saying, “But I can say with certainty that, based on the damage done by the first missile salvo, I will be able to make them pay very dearly for coming here. Very dearly indeed.”

He smiled, the adrenal rush of cold vengeance filling his veins.

“Comms to all units,” he said in a loud voice, “I want all fleet arms to give automated anti-air unit control to Rolas, per order set five-twenty-nine. They will coordinate autocannon protocols from there. Please acknowledge.”

Captain Bhade locked eyes with the admiral looking for some measure of solace, but found only fortitude. They nodded at each other. So be it.

- - -

The second missile salvo was sent and collided with the same brutal but inadequate lethality as the first. Then it all came to a head with shocking speed. The storm would not be stopped. The cyclone was coming for them. They had loosed their arrows, and now the titans came in with savage haste.

The big ships launched a torrent of lead into the air in front of them along with every remaining missile they had. Minnie had forgone piloting one of the three inbound StratoJets for a chance to reap bloody murder with the combined might of the fleet’s autocannons. She used them to form an interlaced web of death for the Ubitsyas, trying to eliminate any avenue for them to pass through.

But the Ubitsyas were far from passive participants, and their commander far from simple, and as the true fighting began, Mikhail fanned them out, forcing Minnie and the fleet to dilute their fire while he could still focus his.

An American destroyer was the first to go, its entire forward superstructure folding in on itself as a thousand hypersonic copper bullets slagged a huge gash in its hull. Minnie felt the loss of fire as its systems went quiet, explosions ripping along its length as the once powerful ship tore itself apart. Another ship was not far behind, this one a missile frigate, Mikhail wisely focusing on the smallest ships first, quickly bringing down the volume of allied fire as they sank.

Mikhail’s forces were falling as well, though. Minnie especially was shredding them, weaving her web to entrap and destroy two or three at a time. She was actually frustrated by the rocketing arrival of General Milton’s bank of fighters on the scene, even though they forced the Ubitsyas to shift their fire from the ships as they came in hard. Mikhail’s Ubitsyas were close now and this would have been where she could have done the most damage, but she had to silence her guns as General Milton’s planes came in.

It was not a pretty sight, and all who witnessed it vowed a private curse upon the Russian and Chinese fighters as they butchered the slower, softer European and American jet fighters. They got some blows in, their once impressive AMRAAM missiles and forward guns ripping open fourteen more of the Ubitsyas. But fifty-five of them died in return, their bloodied carcasses falling, burning from the sky, some whole, some in pieces, all ablaze.

No one below gave voice to it. To the sacrifice they had just witnessed. Without a verbal order, the ships just began to open fire again, Minnie leading the charge. But now the Ubitsyas had closed the distance to the big ships and they came on in a series of strafing runs that wreaked havoc on the fleet, so slow, so big, so vulnerable as they shuddered from the pounding of their hulls being hit and the echo of their massive guns lighting up the atmosphere. Big, rolling waves washed outward from their waterlines as they shook, like great battle drums sounding out the charge.

The men and women of the fleet fought with fervent diligence, and for a moment it almost felt like they might carry the day. But where the Ubitsyas fell in a steady flow, the fleet’s losses came as great blows. The USS Port Royal, the biggest ship in the fleet, suddenly erupted, her deck awash with flame. One of her big forward guns had been targeted by four Russian fighters and had come dislodged as it fired, ripping a great wave of molten steel along her decks. When the fire breached the armory beneath, the explosion sent the mighty three-gun turret flying backward, through the bridge, crushing three hundred men in an instant and killing the command and control systems of the big ship.

Still the fleet seemed determined, but only a moment later Admiral Tokano’s flagship seemed to implode, her entire deck folding in on itself. Minnie had seen it coming only a moment before. She had been targeting an Ubitsya inbound on the destroyer, but when she winged it, it did not try to flee, but instead accelerated.

It was a kamikaze maneuver, and it had its desired effect. The fleet began to lose its cool. They began to fray, and Minnie sensed their fire beginning to falter.

Mikhail saw it to, they were failing. He smiled. It had not been a kamikaze attack at all. Mikhail had seen the foolhardy way the pilot had flown right into Minnie’s firewall and had decided the plane was now best used as a missile, rather than as fodder for Minnie’s sharp knives. So he had commandeered the plane remotely, ratcheted up its thrusters and flown it right into the bridge of the destroyer even as it continued to fire, softening the ship’s armor before impact.

The Russian pilot had screamed as he was sacrificed.

But Mikhail had smiled. These were just pawns after all. Pawns in his great gambit. And he was so close to checkmate.

- - -

Barrett:
‘the fleet is all but destroyed. and there are still more than forty russian fighters surviving. at this stage i think the stratojets would be best used as part of a strategic retreat, rather than a counterattack.’

Neal:
‘no! i will not abandon rolas.’

Barrett:
‘i am not sure what choice we have, neal. they have broken the line, we have three stratojets almost at the base but the next reinforcements will not be here for forty more minutes.’

Neal:
‘i know that, barrett, and we must do what we can to fend them off till the main fleet arrives. only a few more minutes, that’s all we need.’

Barrett:
‘neal, while we may be able to delay them slightly, there is no way we can maintain a perimeter around the elevator. no matter what we do they will be able to get close enough to fire on it, neal …’

Neal did not want to hear it. But Barrett said it anyway.

Barrett:
‘… neal, the cable is coming down. there is simply nothing we can do to stop that now.’

Neal screamed. He screamed as hard as he could, the walls of his office barely containing the sound as it reverberated around him. He did not respond to Barrett, and in the absence of a counter order from Neal, Barrett’s words became action.