Opening Moves (75 page)

“I have good news and bad news, guys!” Annie called. “The fighter's gone, that's the good part. Bad news is they'll need tweezers to identify us if we hit the ground at this velocity!”

“
I'll try to stabilize her,” Alexej cried and slammed a button, shutting off the alarms. “But the compensator's gone and its' really going to hurt. And it's still gonna be a crash landing. If there's a god you'd like to pray to, now might be the best time. Brace yourselves!”

As they fell through the cover of clouds and the ground raced closer, a city in the distance, Alexej fired the retro thrusters rockets. The sudden explosion of energy slammed into them like a steam hammer. The last things that went through Tarek's head before blacked out were the screams of his crew and the realization that they were still going way too fast...

Outskirts of Tanash Kutur

Tanith, Independent Star System, Pact of Ten Suns.

Chaos. Complete and utter chaos ruled in Tanash Kutur. It was as if some divine force had flipped an invisible switch in people's heads, turning them from sapient beings into animals guided only by the instinct to flee.

Sirens in a dozen different pitches and volumes howled over the rooftops from nearby and afar, but their cries had nothing on the cacophony that threatened to sweep away the packed streets below them. Pedestrians doing their daily chores and travelers from near and far transformed into raging currents trying to run for cover, make it to their vehicles, flee the city, get
somewhere
in their fright other than where they found themselves at the moment. Scratching, shoving, punching, shrieking. Samantha felled someone with the butt of her carbine and kicked another one away from her. Standing up to the maelstrom of tens of thousands of people was impossible, and at the first opportunity Sammy's squad pulled their local guide after them into back alley.

“
Jesus! Stampeding elephants have nothing on that!” 'Grunt' Kayser cursed.

Sammy was inclined to agree. If they hadn't stuck together from the first sound of the sirens onwards the panicked crowds would've swept them with them like leaves on a gurgling mountain stream. She kept her eyes on the near and far entrances to the alleyway, the carbine in her hands automatically following her every move. A few paces away Alyosha, their local human guide, sat huddled between two garbage containers, ignoring the rank smell. Her eyes were as big as saucers, and her head whipped around with every sound that pierced into the alley's twilight.

“Sarge, we can't stay here,” Samantha warned. She licked her lips to moisten them, then drew heavily on the small straw inside her helmet, gulping down the fluid.

Masters stared at her through his helmet's visor, then turned around and quickly scanned their surroundings. “Right, Lee. The streets are no option, but we've got to get the hell out of here before the Dominion's hammer falls. Grunt!”

The soldier inadvertently stiffened at the parade ground growl. “Sir!”

“
Make yourself useful for once and see if you can pull down that fire escape ladder!” Masters pointed at a rusty construction clinging to the wall of a nearby building. “We can't use the streets, but the roofs are open. I hope you people fondly remember your urban assault course. You're about to put the knowledge to good use.”

Even compared to Masters' usual dour tone that sounded ominous. But Samantha had no time to ponder the situation. With an ear-shattering screech the ladder came free of the probably decades of rust that had kept it in place, and slammed down on the paved ground.

Sergeant Masters' eyes whipped back and forth between the entries to the back alley, searching for any reactions. But the frenzy out in the nearby streets was too much and too loud for anybody to have noticed. Still, his eyes gave Grunt an invisible lashing before he jumped into action, leaning down to the cowering woman next to them. When he did, his voice was almost soft.

“
Alyosha, can you stand up, please? We need to move.” He gently reached out with his hand and held it there for a few seconds. Long enough for the frightened guide to focus on the situation, focus on him. Shivering, she took a deep breath and grabbed the sergeant's hand. He pulled her up to her feet. “Good. Lee!”

“
Sir?” Sammy kept her eyes pinned on the near entrance,

“
You've got point. Get your ass up that ladder. Grunt will cover our backs. The civvie is with me.” He shouldered his carbine. “Time's a wasting, people. Let's get moving!”

With a last glance at the roiling streets Samantha secured her weapon and began to move up the ladder. The building was three stories tall and evidently built from the local version of bricks. Age had made them brittle, and she cringed with every step she made as dust and small specks of stone broke from the foundations of the relic she tried to mount. It was more nerve wrecking than anything else.

At least getting up there wasn't truly physically exhausting, even with the backpack and equipment she carried with her. Even the standard infantry armor First Squad and the rest of Alpha Platoon wore was clad with an inner layer that stimulated and intensified the muscle strength and reflexes in the arms and legs of the soldier who wore it. A semi-rigid framework around back and shoulders also lessened the weight of the backpack and turned what was essentially a medieval knight in plate armor into a highly mobile fighting machine able to run long distances and climb obstacles as easily as any unburdened person.

She reached the top and pushed herself onto the roof, her eyes quickly taking stock of every nearby position that could be of use to her or used against her. The action came to her as instinctively as breathing did. Airborne troopers were trained and drilled time and again in multiple environments until processes like that one had become part of their very fabric. They had to.

Jamming herself against the outer base of the roof she pulled the ladder towards her, holding the swaying, decrepit construct as tightly as she could. Boots clanked on it below her and after a few seconds Alyosha's black-haired head peeked over the edge. Freeing one hand Samantha grabbed her shoulders and lifted her onto the roof. Grunt and Sgt. Masters, their uniforms making them indistinguishable from another for those who didn't know them, followed the civilian.

Without much further ado Sammy gave the ladder a series of powerful kicks. It gave in much more quickly than she had anticipated and slipped from its loose foundation, crashing down on the pavement fifteen meters below where it collapsed in on itself. Her heart made a leap. The ladder had snapped like dry wood.

Grunt leaned over the edge and looked down. “Well, that was close,” he deadpanned. “Good thing the big bad wolf didn't blow the house down as well. But keep huffing and puffing, Sammy. Might become useful one day.”

“
On that note, are you done puffing hot air, Private Kayser?” Masters looked down on both of them from farther up the gently sloped roof.

“
Just observing, Sarge,” Grunt shrugged.

“
Then observe more quietly in the future. Get up here, people,” he motioned them to come to his position.

The roof below was some sort of compound that gave way when they stepped on it, leaving a path of dents in their wake. Together with the state of the ladder, it drove home to point of the age and state of disrepair the whole neighborhood was in, something Samantha hadn't first detected on the ground level with all the people and apparently well-frequented businesses around. But for now she was just happy that the roof held them.

The brief moment of joy evaporated like ice in an oven. Their stint in the tumultuous chasms below had given them a glimpse into what was going on. It wasn't any prettier from their new vantage point. If anything, it was even more frightening, Samantha thought glumly. Thick black smoke from dozens, maybe even hundreds of small fires fanned a creeping twilight that was starting to cover the large metropolis like a silken shroud. Even over the turmoil below the thunder of explosions was clearly audible. Some of it came in the form of sonic booms of starship starting and accelerating, trying to leave Tanith's gravity well as fast as possible. But most of the explosions were real explosions brought about by mass hysteria as the air traffic control system went into emergency shutdown, leaving every air car inside Tanash Kutur's vast boundaries to its own devices, or when delicate industrial work was left unattended because the people attending it no longer where there, or because of half a dozen more reasons Samantha could think of. At that rate, the planet wouldn't even need to be attacked by the Dominion!

“
Good lord! All these people. The whole city is tearing itself apart! This is the worst thing I've ever seen in my whole life!” Alyosha sank to the ground next to Masters and began to sob.

Masters lowered his right hand from his ear, and the two soldiers could almost see him grimace behind his helmet's visor. Had the sergeant been very considerate before he now was back to being his usual gruff self. “You're about to see a whole lot worse if we don't move. Get up!” he barked, and Alyosha jumped back to her feet more in surprise than anything else.

Samantha and Grunt shared a quiet smile before their faces turned grim.

“
More bad news, Sarge?” she asked.

“
Base camp just called. They lost contact with JOHNSTON ten minutes ago. Seems the Ashani are blanket jamming the whole damn inner system. The Lieutenant is sending us a dropper but we'd better be at the extraction zone on time, people. There's a Dominion force descending on this little idyllic blue ball and we don't want to still be here when they arrive.”

“
Amen to that,” Grunt muttered. “So, where to, Sarge?”

Masters slid his fingers over the flat black surface of the uniform's material on the inner side of his left lower arm. A display lit up and quickly transformed into a map. Samantha was familiar with the symbols. The green dots marked their own positions. The pulsing dark blue spot showed their destination.

“That's our evac point. Three blocks to the northwest from here is a small public green space. A flowerbed, really. But it's flat and apparently large enough for the dropper to come down and pick us up. And we'd better hurry. We've got ten minutes,” Masters explained tersely and began to move.

“
Three blocks across rooftops in ten, Sarge?” Grunt whistled. “Can't they just fly in here and pick us up?”

“
Take a look around, man! No house here is as tall as the next one, and air traffic is as mad as an angry hornet's nest,” Masters pushed himself up the ladder and onto the next roof. “Do you want the dropper to shoot its way through a horde of frightened air cars? And even then: they can't land here, and the dropper can't hover in place because the engines would flatten every roof below it, and us right along with 'em. No, First Squad! We've got to get to an open space so that the flyboys can make a touchdown and we can get the hell outta here!”

“
And what about me?”

Everybody turned around to face Alyosha.

“Well, what about you?” Masters sounded genuinely surprised. “You'll accompany us.”

“
But... but I've got a home here. The woman I love lives here. My
home
is here, Sergeant Masters. I can't just leave!” She skimmed her fingers, but tears were already welling in her eyes again. “Not like that.”

“
Lady, I understand that's coming all too fast for you, but time is a luxury we simply don't have! The Dominion will be here, and you of all people are way closer to the rumor mill about them using all sorts of horrible engineered plagues on the planets they attack. And bastards that they are, they sure as it snows in Minnesota are going to nuke the crap out of this city. So you can either pull yourself together, make a run for it provided by the Union taxpayer, saving your life, or you can cling to your home and lose both it
and
your life.” Masters' voice had the cold, analytical tone of a man planning a move on the battlefield, something all of Alpha Platoon had come to know and respect over the innumerable war games and the handful of actual combat ops they had performed.

But that wasn't what was needed in such situations, and Masters, even on his best days, had the sensitivity of a hammer. Samantha could see the breakdown coming from a mile away. She knelt down next to Alyosha before the sergeant could say another word and gently held up her head with both her gloved hands.

“Your partner, Alyosha: What's her name?” she asked soothingly.

“
Tamara,” the woman answered between sobs. “Her name's Tamara.”

“
That's a beautiful name. Is Tamara in the city?”

The local guide sniffed away some of the tears and shook her head. “No. No, she's got family on Alsgar. The large southern continent, you know.”

“That's good, Alyosha!” Sammy tried to sound cheerful and reassuring. “That means she's out of harm's way for now. And that also means you don't have to worry about her. I'm sure she's a smart woman and knows how to lay low, right?”

Hesitantly Alyosha nodded. “Yes... right,” she added meekly.

“Good. But now we've got to get your to safety, too. Because this is the biggest city on the planet and the Ashani will attack it. Take my word as a soldier on that. So now we've got to get you out of here before we're attacked. Tamara surely wouldn't want you to stay here and get yourself killed, would she?” Sammy shook her own head and answered the rhetorical question. “Of course not. Homes can be rebuilt, and once this has all calmed down again you and Tamara will reunite. But you need to be
alive
for that!” She pulled their guide back to her feet. “Can you do that? For Tamara?”