Of Fire and Night (49 page)

124

GENERAL KURT LANYAN

A
board the beleaguered
Goliath,
Lanyan yelled for his weapons officers to fire indiscriminately. “Plenty of targets to choose from. Just shoot anything that’s shooting at us.” He wished he knew what the hell was going on.

First, all the Ildiran warliners had turned against the EDF, then they’d turned again, throwing themselves at the warglobes in a suicidal melee such as Lanyan had never seen. Nearly seven hundred ships had sacrificed themselves all in the space of a few minutes—what a monumental massacre!

The drifting wreckage of incinerated warliners and exploded hydrogue spheres had turned the battle zone into a demolition derby. Flaming fuel chambers, heavy engines, and rotating hull plates flew past like a meteor storm. Continuing explosions spangled space, as if the
Goliath
sat in the middle of a Coronation Day fireworks show. Lanyan’s ships had to fly evasive maneuvers and dodge shrapnel while they continued to fire. Any hope of rigid battle formations had gone straight out the airlock.

And then there were the damned Soldier compies and Klikiss robots to contend with. An overwhelming number of hijacked EDF vessels plowed into the fray, looking exactly like Lanyan’s own ships. It was hard to know which ones to shoot at.

Tactical officers scrambled to keep track of ID blips, but the hijacked vessels plunged and wove through the disordered fleet until no tracking systems could maintain a lock. “They’re swarming around like a cloud of drunken gnats.”

“General, each one is transmitting the same IFF signals.” Kosevic wiped sweat from his face. “Our targeting computers think
all
those ships are EDF vessels.”

“We know they’re
not,
so start shooting at them. Now! Fraks and carbon-carbon slammers might not work against warglobes, but they’ll sure as hell rip the guts out of an EDF ship.” His eyebrows knit together, and his cold, pale eyes focused on the screen. “And please try not to take out our own ships while you’re at it. We don’t have many to spare.” Still, he saw no way around it.

Close in among the EDF ships, the robot-controlled infiltrators blasted away. The concentrated jazer volley tore a Thunderhead weapons platform into a mass of broken deck plates and a cloud of venting atmosphere.

Lanyan lurched to his feet. “All right, there’s a bloody target for you! Put a marker on every ship that opens fire on one of ours.”

The
Goliath
swiftly destroyed the attacking Manta. Marching back and forth between the Juggernaut’s weaponry stations, Kosevic rallied the gunners to shoot at other likely hostiles, but the targeting computers were overwhelmed. “General, now that we’ve opened fire as well, nobody can tell who’s attacking and who’s defending.”

Lanyan slammed his fist down on the arm of the chair.

On the screen, the images of two grid admirals—Peter Tabeguache and Kostas Eolus—overlapped with frantic signals. “General, why are you firing on us? We recaptured some of our ships, and we’re here to help the Hansa!”

Lanyan regarded the images with a gimlet eye. “Oh, really? Then why did you start opening fire?”

“We thought
your
craft were the ones hijacked by compies,” pleaded Eolus.

“We had no way of knowing,” Tabeguache said.

Lanyan blanked the comm transmission. “Hit Eolus’s signaling tower with an EM burst. I want to rattle that ship.” He saw his exec’s hesitation. “I was tricked by Admiral Wu-Lin once. I don’t trust either of those Juggernauts any farther than I can throw them.”

After the weapons officer sent out the precision scrambler burst, the image of the Grid 5 admiral dissolved on the screen. The hologram vanished, revealing instead a sinister Klikiss robot hunched over the
Eldorado
’s bridge controls.

“Doesn’t look like Admiral Eolus anymore,” Lanyan said, not surprised. “Now you’ve got another target. Go!”

Officers raced to their stations, and jazers and fraks pummeled the turncoat Juggernaut, damaging its engines, ripping holes through its hull. Admiral Willis’s ships also swept in and opened fire. At Lanyan’s signal, more grouped EDF ships pounded the flagship that had belonged to Admiral Tabeguache.

Flying erratic patterns to evade the counterattack, the hijacked ships continued to swoop in among the EDF defenders. As the
Goliath
wrought plenty of mayhem, one more robot-controlled Juggernaut hurtled toward them, unleashing a barrage of projectiles. Lanyan saw the vessel coming and shouted for evasive action. The
Goliath
pivoted on its axis, but the compy-controlled vessel struck home. Two of Lanyan’s main engines exploded. A jazer lance slashed through the starboard hull, splitting open seven decks.

“Put everything into the weapons and shoot at that damned Juggernaut—everything we’ve got left!”

A flurry of slammers hit the underbelly of the robot attacker with enough force to send the hijacked ship reeling off course.

“Jazer banks are almost drained, but I’ve got one engine online, enough to maneuver us out of here,” Kosevic said. “We’ve got to retreat, General. We’re a sitting duck.”

“We’ve still got a few weapons, Mr. Kosevic, and I intend to keep causing damage until my last breath. Figure out which grids these vessels came from, contact the Mars base, and get me someone who can provide their guillotine protocol codes. We’ll pull the plug one way or another.”

He turned and snapped at a frozen weapons officer. “You! Did I tell you to stop firing?” The startled crewman scrambled with his targeting systems and launched the rest of his fracture-pulse explosives.

Even though the ship’s intercom was damaged and his signal could go to only a handful of the surviving crew, Lanyan said, “Let me be perfectly clear: If we surrender here, then we surrender Earth—and that’s not going to happen today.”

125

CHAIRMAN BASIL WENCESLAS

E
ven inside the Hansa’s war room with the doors guarded and the walls reinforced, Basil did not feel safe. If the hydrogues got past General Lanyan’s defenders, they would come straight to the Palace District. A single hydrogue barrage could obliterate this building.

Basil sat at the main observation table while tactical experts and ground-based EDF officers clamored for updates, studied real-time reports, and tried to stay one step ahead of the battle occurring in space. He hid his clenched hands under the table. “It’s not as if this was a surprise! We had plenty of time to prepare for this. Humanity failed itself.”

Even paler than usual, Deputy Cain flitted from station to station like a grim ghost. “There was nothing else we could have done, Mr. Chairman.”

“We should have known!” Basil raised his voice. “Every living human being in the Terran Hanseatic League was aware of the threat—so why didn’t they give me their best work? Now it’s their own damned fault. They knew what was at stake. I was trying to lead them, but my plans can’t succeed without a little cooperation. Why do people keep letting me down? One”—he raised his fist from under the table and pounded it down—“after another”—he pounded again—“
after another
!”

Tactical experts enlarged the images on their screens, trying to keep track of the myriad moving vessels. “Three complete EDF battle groups have just arrived at Earth. But they’re shooting at General Lanyan’s vessels.”

“Of course they’re shooting—it’s the battleships stolen by the damned compies! The Klikiss robots must have had an alliance with the hydrogues all along.”

Cain locked his hands behind his back. “We can’t determine exactly
what
is happening, Mr. Chairman. At first it seemed as if the Ildirans had betrayed us, but then they launched against the warglobes. From these energy signatures”—he pointed to glowing smudges of static—“hundreds of ships have already been destroyed: EDF vessels, Ildiran warliners, and hydrogue spheres.”

Basil could understand little from the flurry of blips. It looked as if someone had smashed two wasps’ nests together and then stepped back to watch the resulting flurry. He turned to a rabbit-faced comm officer. “Get me General Lanyan on the speaker right now.”

“Sir, he’s blocked all but—”

“I’m the Chairman! Don’t tell me you can’t arrange a priority override.”

“Yes, Mr. Chairman. Of course I can.” Skittering fingers across the control pad, the meek comm officer shouted into the voice pickup, then switched over the screen.

Basil rose to his feet and addressed the EDF commander. “General Lanyan, I need to understand what’s going on up there. Have the Ildirans—”

Gruff and harried-looking, Lanyan flicked his ice-blue eyes at Basil. “I’m busy right now. Can’t you see we’re in the middle of a battle?”

“We can see very little, General. I want a full summary—”

“You’ll get your report when this is over, sir.” Abruptly, he cut the channel.

Basil was left staring at a blank screen. He felt as if someone had punched him. “How dare he terminate the conversation!”

Cain was at his side. “Mr. Chairman, the General needs to concentrate on the battle. In the meantime, I advise that we evacuate to our safe bunkers.”

“No guarantee those are hydrogue-proof either. I need to be in the thick of things, for better or worse.” Basil shook his head as he raised the questions to himself. Even if he could survive the destruction of Earth and the decapitation of the Hansa,
why
would he want to? Running the government was his entire life. If he’d had anything else to do, he could have retired long ago. And since he no longer seemed to have an acceptable successor, Basil had no choice but to remain in his role. If need be, he would stay here and go down with his ship.

But he wouldn’t be the only one.

An idea spread like sunrise across his features. “Go find King Peter and Queen Estarra . . . in fact, bring Prince Daniel as well. I want them all here.”

Cain readily agreed. “They can record a brave speech. We’ll stand together and show history the defiant end of Earth, if it comes to that.”

Basil squeezed a fist again, then forced his clawlike hands to uncurl. “Regardless, they’re going to be here waiting just like the rest of us.”

But no one could raise Captain McCammon on the local communications net. The guard team stationed outside Prince Daniel’s quarters also failed to respond. Was no one in the universe reliable? Had even the royal guards abandoned their posts?

He threw orders like sharp knives at the guards standing outside the war room. “Go to the Whisper Palace and personally bring me the King, the Queen, and the Prince.” Hearing the rough-edged threat in Basil’s voice, the uniformed men bolted.

The Chairman continued to watch the storm of battle. The blips, images, and projected courses were impossible to decipher. Basil had no way to tell who was winning. While he waited for the runners to return with his sham royal family, he counted down the seconds.
Why does everything take so long?

Finally, one of the guards reported back over the intercom. “Inform the Chairman that we’ve arrived at the Royal Wing. The King and Queen are not in their apartments, but we discovered Captain McCammon and another guard unconscious. Apparently stunned. The guards’ twitchers are gone.”

Basil leapt to his feet. “Impossible!”

The second group of men responded. “We just found the same thing at Prince Daniel’s quarters, Mr. Chairman. The guards were knocked out and hidden in a storage room. They’re still pretty groggy. No sign of the Prince, either. Maybe somebody kidnapped them.”

Basil’s legs turned to water, as if someone had hit
him
with a twitcher. He dropped back into the chair. “Nobody kidnapped them. They escaped.” It was too much! Peter had defied him over and over again. No matter what the Hansa did for him, no matter what Basil threatened or promised, Peter still lashed out at him like an ungrateful dog. Now it was all failing because everyone had betrayed him.

His vision went red and his eyes burned. He heard a loud sound, felt a tearing pain in his throat, and realized that
he
was making the noises. He howled with rage, screaming inarticulate curses—and then he caught himself. Deputy Cain stared at Basil in astonishment. All the tactical experts and comm officers had turned from the dramatic battle screens to look at the Chairman as if he had gone insane.

Embarrassment came down on him like a freezing rain, and Basil forced his breathing to calm. He remained statue-still, demanding that his face resume its normal calm façade. If they were all going to die, then he would do it in a dignified fashion.

126

CESCA PERONI

R
oamer commando groups had spread out to dozens of known hydrogue haunts. For the initial strike with her own team, Cesca had chosen to fly one of the enormous Plumas water tankers alongside others flown by the Tamblyn brothers. They had a long list of infested planets to visit.

Meanwhile, her other teams set off to separate targets, following starcharts that marked the lairs of hydrogues. The deep-core aliens were being hit on hundreds of planets, all at the same time.

Cesca’s small squadron spiraled down to the indistinct edge of atmosphere high above the gas giant Haphine. She had never visited this cool, storm-swept world before, though she knew its historical significance. One of the first two skymines the Roamers ever leased from Ildirans had been deployed here. Haphine was also the site of the fourth hydrogue attack against humans; six thousand Roamers had died here.

Now the tables were turned. Cesca directed her team to disperse their wental cargoes and begin the recapture of another hydrogue stronghold.

Caleb Tamblyn sounded conversational on the comm, but Cesca detected his underlying anxiety, a nervous need to talk and distract himself from the upcoming engagement. “Clan Tamblyn has always been the best at shipping and delivering water where it’s needed.”

“You could consider this all part of a day’s work,” Cesca added.

Then they dumped part of their wental supply. The energized water penetrated the thick, bluish-gray clouds, diffusing deeper into the planet.

The cacophony of wentals in Cesca’s cargo hold filled her senses and talked inside her head. She could feel the clash surging through the winds, and she could feel the imminent victory. “The wentals are already dissolving Haphine’s transgate to bottle up the drogues. The enemy can’t get away.”

As if hearing an invitation, three diamond battleships rose from the contaminated clouds, already crackling with energy bolts. Their crystal surfaces were pitted and stained, scoured by corrosive wental vapors in the atmosphere. Mist smothered the warglobes, clinging with caustic droplets, as if the fog itself were conscious.

Caleb Tamblyn flew his tanker close to hers. “That means we get to deal with those warglobes ourselves?”

“Isn’t that what we came here for?” asked Wynn from his own ship.

From below, at the edge of the planet’s atmosphere, Torin Tamblyn came racing upward. He had already dumped his load of wentals, but even the lightened water tanker was not able to outrun the three warglobes that came howling after him. “They’re on my tail!” he transmitted. “Everybody either help, or get out of my way.”

His two brothers altered course and plunged down toward him with their heavier tankers. Torin tried to escape the blue lightning storm that came lancing out of the diamond spheres.

Cesca’s own tanker was still filled with Charybdis water, and she could feel the contained wentals pulsing through her, through the cargo hold, through the entire ship. She could see immediately that the hydrogues were going to destroy all of the tankers. “You Tamblyns—scatter! You can’t fight this.”

Caleb cried, “But they’re after Torin!”

“Then let them go after me instead.”

As the water elementals vibrated into the hull of the large tanker, Cesca’s ship accelerated, roaring between Torin Tamblyn’s fleeing vessel and the oncoming warglobes. The hydrogues had no idea what they were facing.

As the trio of diamond spheres shot toward her, still barreling after the Tamblyn ships, Cesca pulled up to expose the tanker’s lower hull like a submissive animal baring its belly. When she released the cargo bay doors, the wentals lunged out like a hurricane made of living water.

The rolling cloud of vengeful fog expanded into an insubstantial barrier before the warglobes. When the spiked spheres tore through it, they were suddenly swathed in clinging, destructive mist. Cesca had time only to see the water elementals begin to do damage, a caustic film sizzling through the supposedly indestructible diamond shells.

The hydrogues careened left and right. Two of them cracked into each other, then ricocheted like billiard balls. Cesca’s tanker was right in the path of all three blinded warglobes.

When the impact came, the flash of light and fury was all around her. She felt as if her entire body were a gong being pounded by a band of cruel gremlins with hammers. Then she was falling, floating, spinning within a shooting gallery of hull shrapnel, freezing air vapor, and energized water.

The wentals kept her alive. Cesca had not meant to test her indestructibility, had not thought about putting herself or the valuable tanker in harm’s way. She had done what was necessary. She turned to see the three tankers flown by the Tamblyn brothers circling around. She floated alone, without a radio or any means of communicating with them.

To her grim satisfaction, though, the three warglobes were blotchy and leprous, mortally wounded. When the spheres shattered, curved fragments glittered in the distant sunlight, beginning a slow orbital spiral back down toward the clouds of Haphine. The wental mist, moving of its own volition, swooped down past the wreckage like a swarm of angry hornets to the clouds, where the other wentals were already spreading destruction.

Experimenting, Cesca found that she could make herself move, impelling herself through the vacuum simply by willing herself to do so. Caleb, Wynn, and Torin Tamblyn must have thought she had been killed in the explosion, for as she rose in front of one of their cockpit windows, waving her hands, she could see Caleb’s jaw drop. He grabbed the communications transmitter, excitedly spreading the news to his brothers.

She grinned and mimed that she wanted to be picked up through one of the hull hatches. Now they had one less tanker—and one less hydrogue world to recapture. But they had plenty more to do before the day was over.