The Siege of Earth (The Ember War Saga Book 7) (23 page)

A metal blast door rose in front of Hale, Yarrow and Dane. The clink of chains and thunk-thunk-thunk of metal on metal drowned out whatever Dane was saying until it ground to a halt.

“—fourteen more civilian pods like this one beneath Camelback and Mazatzal mountains. More scattered under Phoenix. Ibarra’s proccies have all been military-aged men and women. All the families and children are from the original Saturn colony.. We had enough warning to get everyone off the streets, at least,” Dane said as pushed his way through a lighter set of double doors.

Bright lights embedded in the ceiling cast a uniform glow across a cavernous room full of cots. Restroom pods the size of cargo containers and thousands of people lined up along a makeshift pathway delineated by nothing but a strand of rope the width of Yarrow’s finger.

A cheer went up as Hale walked into the room. The Marine took a step back, his hands jerking toward his rifle before he caught himself. Thousands of civilians waved and called to Hale and Yarrow. Parents held children up on their shoulders. Yarrow had never seen so many people so happy, so full of hope.

“What am I supposed to do?” Hale asked.

“We’re broadcasting this to the other pods. Just get to the end. Show your face and tell them we’ll win,” Dane said to Hale before he turned to Yarrow. “Same to you. They know you from the movie.”

Yarrow swallowed hard. He’d caught only a few minutes of
The Last Stand on Takeni
. Whatever actor they had under the holo skin might have looked like him, but he hadn’t sounded like Yarrow at all. In Yarrow’s opinion.

Hale went to one side of the line, shaking hands and smiling at everyone.

Yarrow went to the other side, nodding and pretending to care about whatever the civilians said. He moved quickly, searching for a beautiful woman with lavender hair and a little girl. He made it through half the room with no sign of them.

The corpsman caught sight of an elderly couple sitting on a cot and recognized them both.

“Enzuna, Belit!” Yarrow waved to them. The old man glanced up. A wide smile came across his face and he tottered to the line. “Move aside. Let him through.” Yarrow tried to push the packed crowd aside gently, then shoved them away with a push from his power armor.

“Forgive Belit, young one,” Enzuna said. “She’s still angry we never got to see Lord Mentiq. I keep telling her, ‘They were going to kill us,’ but she doesn’t believe me.”

“Where is Lilith? Is she here?” Yarrow asked.

“Oh no…they’re in the Scottsdale pod. Eight or nine
beru
away from here,” Enzuna said.

Yarrow’s heart sank at the news. He nodded slowly.

“Ah, look, Belit wants you.” He pointed to the old woman. She raised a hand to Yarrow and gave him the finger.

“We saw that in your movie,” Enzuna said.

Yarrow gave him a pat on the shoulder and moved on. He answered a few questions on what Bailey was really like and if Orozco was single, trying to put on a good front for the civilians.

The children got to him. All the scared faces, toddlers clutching at their parents, some had little plastic action figures of Marines and armor soldiers. He’d spent more time with Dotok children than human. This was the first time he’d been around humanity’s future, and seeing it up close and personal made him proud of what he’d done as a Marine. The larger purpose of all his pain and suffering came into focus when he looked into the face of a newborn baby.

If only his child was here.

They got to the end of the line and went through another set of double doors.

Dane held up an Ubi hand slate, and a bright camera light shown over both Hale and Yarrow.

“Anything to say to Earth, Captain Hale?” Dane asked.

Hale’s mouth worked for a second before he said, “We’re in this together and we’ll win this day.”

Dane angled the Ubi at Yarrow.

“Lilith, Mary, D-D-Daddy loves you and I’ll find you when this is all over,” Yarrow blurted out.

The major tapped the screen and went to open the blast door.

“You…what?” Hale asked Yarrow.

“Sir, Lilith and I…during shore leave—”

“I can figure that part out. When did you know about...Mary?”

Yarrow went bright red and tugged at his collar. “There was—I mean Egan found a way to open comms with Earth and email came through so…I know there was a commo blackout but my bank account—”

“Stop.” Hale squeezed his temples with one hand. “I’ve been a company commander less than a week and there are already baby issues. I will get you to them once this fight is over. I promise.”

“Thank you, sir,” Yarrow said.

“We’re done with the grip and grin,” Dane said. “I’ll get you back to your company.”

“Don’t we need to stop somewhere, Yarrow?” Hale asked.

“Sir?”

Hale looked at his injured arm.

“Yes! A field station. Doctors. Antibiotics. Absolutely the reason I came with you, sir.” Yarrow pointed down a hallway without any idea of where it led to.

“This way.” Dane went the opposite direction of Yarrow’s finger.

****

Landing Zone Baker 7 was a hollowed-out section of the Superstition Mountains. The flight deck was a dome sixty yards wide and almost as tall. The armored doors, big enough to get a Destrier transport in with a reasonable amount of skilled flying, were sealed shut.

Eagle fighters and Condor bombers, all being worked over by crew that looked like they hadn’t slept for days, faced the outer edge of the circle.

Standish walked up to a craft much larger than a Condor, turret balls on the upper and lower sections of its stubby wings, rotary gauss cannons slung under the cockpit and dual rail cannon vanes in the fuselage. A crewman stood on the outside of the cockpit, a welding torch in her hand and sparks flying from where it touched the hull. More crew worked on the upper hull, all welding plates over cuts from Xaros beams.

“What the hell is this?” Standish asked. Bailey, Orozco and Egan looked over the giant machine, all as unsure as Standish.

“Tail number 29,” Bailey said. “This is our assignment.”

The crewman jumped off the bridge and ripped off a welding helmet. She had short blond hair, a soot-stained face and pilot’s wings on her coveralls.

“You’re the replacements?” she asked. “Which of you is Egan?”

“That’s me.” Egan raised a hand slightly.

“You’re Mule rated?”

“I’ve got my wings for that and small craft, not for…what is that?”

“Osprey. Where the hell have you guys been? Even the doughboys know what these are.” She wiped a sleeve over her face and managed to make it even dirtier. “Don’t matter. You can fly a Mule you can co-pilot my Osprey. Control setup’s the same. What’s your call sign?”

“Gooey,” Standish snapped. “His call sign is Gooey.”

“Woah. Hold on…” Egan raised a finger in objection.

“I’m Firecracker,” the pilot said. “I suggest the rest of you get something to eat and hit the head in the next ten minutes because we sortie in thirty. Pick a turret and get comfortable. Come on, Gooey. Let me explain our girl’s quirks.”

****

Standish attached air and data lines to the base of his helmet and wiggled against the turret chair. Aegis plates bolted to the side of the turret took away a bit of his view but none of his firing arc as he maneuvered the twin gauss cannons through their full range of motion. Counters popped up on his visor, showing each cannon with a little more than nine hundred rounds available.

“Ball two up and ready,” Standish said.

“Three, good,” Orozco said.

“One, hoping this goes better than Takeni,” Bailey said.

“What’re you complaining about?” Standish asked. “So your turret had to eject and you landed in the middle of a bunch of banshees who wanted to eat your face. How could this go worse?”

“Wait,” Firecracker said, “you’re
that
Bailey? And
that
Orozco? I thought it was some sort of coincidence.”

“And
that
Standish!” He slammed a fist against the turret wall winced in pain.

“Orozco…would you sign a little something for me later?” Firecracker asked.

“
Si, mamacita
,” Orozco said in his Castilian Spanish.

Standish heard a giggle and rolled his eyes.

A whine went through the ship as its batteries cycled to full power. Standish felt his limbs grow heavy and his stomach do its routine flip-flops before combat.

“My body is ready,” Standish said to himself.

“Getting updates in from the tower,” Egan said. “Drone swarm broke atmo off the California coast. They’re coming in low from the west. Orbital support’s trying to thin their numbers but we should expect ‘serious’ contact.”

“Here I was hoping for noncommittal contact, maybe just a passing contact,” Standish said.

“He always talk this much?” Firecracker asked.

“Never shuts up,” Bailey said. “Just yak-yak-yak since the minute we met.”

The aegis doors opened and a crack of sunlight filled the hangar. An Eagle rose off the landing pad and shot through the doors, banking aside to squeeze by before they finished opening. The entire floor rotated clockwise, bringing the next fighter to the exit.

“That’s new,” Orozco said.

“Faster deployment time,” Firecracker said. “Whole mountain range is full of pockets just like ours.”

Standish watched as fighters and bombers tore out of the hangar until his and one other Osprey were left. Their craft rose off the deck and accelerated into a sky full of red and orange as the sun set to the west, shining through the tops of clouds pregnant with rain.

Eagles and Condors flew high overhead, forming into squadrons stacked on top of each other. The Osprey banked to the side and flew over a canyon, maneuvering better than any Mule Standish had ever rode in.

“Aren’t we going to join the party?” Standish asked.

“Not our job,” Firecracker said. “We cover the city, take a swing at any big boys that show up.”

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the sheep,” Bailey said, “would you look at that.”

Standish swung his turret around. Over the Superstition Mountains, bright streaks descended through the atmosphere, too fast and too narrow to be a dying spaceship. Standish couldn’t prove it, but he swore he felt the Earth shake each time the burning lines passed over the horizon.

“Kinetic strikes,” Orozco said. “Never thought I’d see that on Earth. There hasn’t been an orbital bombardment since the Chinese wiped Hong Kong off the map.”

“There’s nothing human west of the mountains,” Firecracker said. “Free-fire zone.”

A shockwave buffeted the Osprey enough that Standish slapped his hands against the turret ball to steady himself.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Air bursts,” Orozco sounded almost giddy. “I see the fireballs rising over the mountains. Big guns upstairs set the k-strikes to go off way above ground level, slap the drones right out of the air. If only I could be up there.”

“That means they’re close, doesn’t it?” Standish shifted his turret around to face the mountains. Streaks of rail cannon shots burned through the sky from the Eagles and Condors overhead, all leveled at the distant peaks.

“Here we go,” Bailey said.

“Hold your fire until they’re too close to ignore or I say otherwise. Garrison command wants us as a knockout punch, not throwing jabs,” Firecracker said.

A dark shadow crested over the Estrella Mountains and flowed down the leeward slopes. Standish zoomed in and saw Xaros drones flying so close to each other their stalks nearly touched. He glanced at the round count on his guns and felt a wave of dread pass over him.

The first rail cannon shots reached the Xaros wave. Quadrium munitions exploded into chain lightning, burning hundreds of drones from existence instantly and sending many times that into freefall against the jagged rocks below.

The barren land between the mountains and Phoenix’s outer limits came alive with tracer rounds as hundreds of bunkers rose up out of the desert and gauss rotary cannons fired so fast Standish thought they were sweeping laser beams through the Xaros.

“Doughboys,” Firecracker said. “Every bunker down there’s full of doughboys. Damn things are too dumb to be anything but brave.”

A rail cannon shot seared past the Osprey. Standish’s head snapped to the side to follow it and watched as the round blossomed into flechettes and tore a burning chunk out of the Xaros advance. He traced the round’s path back to a gun emplacement embedded in the side of Camelback Mountain that looked like it belonged on a battleship.

“Construct!” Firecracker called out. “Got a cruiser analog coming over the Estrellas. Time to shine boys and girls.”

The Osprey swooped up and pulled into a half loop before Firecracker rolled the craft over. Eagle fighters shot past the Osprey, gauss cannons blazing as they fired into a wall of drones massing between Phoenix and the Estrella Mountains.