Trial by Fire - eARC (74 page)

First Voice made a sound as though he were spitting out a bone that had gone down sideways. “You will send your forces to secure
us
? For what reason?”

“To ensure your safety against reprisals by the insurgents. Once in Confederation hands, your troops will be treated according to the human conventions for handling prisoners of war.”

First Voice turned to Hu’urs Khraam. “This conversation must end.”

Hu’urs Khraam bobbed apologetically. “It cannot.”

“You are discussing surrender. You simply haven’t spoken the word yet.”

“I am saving our lives.”

First Voice reared up very tall, his crest flaring dramatically. “First Delegate Hu’urs Khraam of the Arat Kur Wholenest, the Hkh’Rkh will have no part of this. I refuse to be present, to be accused of giving even that tacit approval, to your discussion of surrendering to these
s’fet
. And if you do so, I do not wish to hear you do it. For then I would have to not merely renounce our alliance, but name you as our betrayers: enemies more profound and lasting than the humans. I shall leave two of my retinue here to witness what transpires.”

Darzhee Kut sounded forlorn. “And where shall you go, First Voice?”

“I go where I should have gone hours ago: to the field of battle. Where I will fight, for your honor as well as my own, until I have no kinsmen or blood left.” He pointed a claw at each of the two huscarles who were still just behind Caine and left with the remainder.

Downing’s voice was the first sound to break the silence. “First Delegate, am I to understand that you and the Hkh’Rkh are no longer allies?”

“Mr. Downing, I am uncertain myself. I believe that if I surrender to you, they consider themselves at war with us. At any rate, I cannot make any promises for the Hkh’Rkh. I cannot guarantee that any will surrender. Indeed, if they feel their foes utterly without honor, they may affect the appearance of capitulation simply in order to trick you, to conduct an ambush when they seem to be relenting. I fear that their rage at the insurgents has made them ungovernable.”

“We fear the same thing about the insurgents in relation to your troops and the Hkh’Rkh, First Delegate Khraam. That is why we are sending in our forces to establish control. If Arat Kur do not fire at our inbound forces, those forces will not fire at Arat Kur. I cannot guarantee the actions of the units that began the day already on Java. Their radios are inoperative, and we have only one overtaxed fiber-optic link sending updates to a limited number of infiltration teams.”

“I understand and accept that there may still be attacks on our compounds until you reestablish general communications. And what of my rock-siblings who are operating outside the compounds?”

“Those you can reach should be told to hide, stay put, and to set their suits to broadcast distress signals, if they still function. We will home in on those and presume they indicate the wearer’s intent to surrender.”

“But most of them have lost their radios to the virus or the EMP strikes. I cannot reach enough of them.”

“Those are the fortunes of war. And I am sorry to rush you, First Delegate, but judging from the proximity of our missiles, you have approximately ninety seconds to decide if you are actually surrendering to us.”

Hu’urs Khraam slumped into his couch. “Mr. Downing, you have made the decision for us. We return this place to your control.”

Beneath the Presidential Palace compound, Jakarta, Earth

O’Garran leaned back down into the service shaft. “All clear.”

Opal double-timed it up the ladder, pushing back the thermal imaging goggles as she did. There were lights on overhead. She emerged into a relatively tidy subbasement, quickly moving aside so the other thirty surviving tunnel rats could swarm up and out behind her. “No sign of security cameras?”

O’Garran pointed at a human model mounted high in a corner of the room. It was probably thirty years old, and had some kind of Arat Kur relay unit attached to it. “Well, there’s that—but it’s as dead as a doorknob.”

“Unattached?”

“No, that’s the odd part. It’s still warm from current going through it. But its control elements are gone—and I mean
gone
. I hooked up a loop-generator, so that if the Roaches brought it back online it would keep showing the same boring picture of an empty room. But none of its electronics would turn on.”

“Fried by the EMP?”

“Nope. Its logic circuits carry current just fine. It’s more like somebody wiped the Arat Kur controller that was retrofitted to it.”

Opal nodded. “Maybe someone
did
wipe its circuit board, and a whole bunch of others to boot.” She turned to Wu. “Anything on the fiber-com about—uh, a computer virus being used against the Roaches?”

Wu looked over the commo traffic again. “Nothing, Major. But there is a garbled mention about a high-priority extraction subject here in the compound: OPCOM apparently has telemetry on his location.”

“Telemetry?” Opal frowned. “How the hell do you get telemetry when you don’t have any satellites left?” Very suspicious. Definitely beyond the capabilities of what little human technology was still functioning in Indonesia. Not necessarily beyond the Dornaani and their technomagic mojo, however. “So, who’s the bag job?”

Wu scanned, read. “The extraction subject is a human diplomat named Caine—”

“—Riordan,” she finished.
Oh, there is a god in heaven, after all. Hold on, Caine.

I’m coming to get you.

Near the Presidential Palace compound, Jakarta, Earth

Trevor Corcoran looked up the street that ran between the buildings they were going to blow down. Where they ended, eighty meters away, stood the nearest walls and buildings of Jakarta’s extended presidential compound. Which, if all went according to plan, were also going to be blasted aside. “Ready?” he asked.

Lieutenant Christopher “Tygg” Robin looked back across the round, dark heads of two-score semiuniformed insurgents who’d spent some time in the military, and were now hunkered down in ranks. “Ready, Trevor.”

Trevor looked at Stosh, whose grin was as large as ever as he asked, “Can we kick some alien ass now, Captain?”

Trevor stared at him, made sure his own eyes did not show fear. His abject, utter fear.
How does Stosh manage to hold life so lightly in his hands? Why haven’t I, after dozens of combat missions, mastered that skill? Will I be fearful
all
my life?
Trevor just nodded, ducked his head. He heard, did not see, Stosh begin the attack:

“Sync detonator leads to the master timer. And five, four, three, two—fire in the hole!”

Chapter Fifty

Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Earth

Downing’s voice was low and respectful. “We accept your surrender, First Delegate Khraam. But I must ask that, for the record, you explicitly agree to all our terms, not just a capitulation on the ground.”

Darzhee Kut saw the two Hkh’Rkh rear up, move past Caine, their claws flexing. One of the Arat Kur computer techs—having nothing else to do—noticed their ominous approach, wormed a claw surreptitiously into the leg-brace-appearing grip of his sidearm. Darzhee Kut glanced at him, made an affirmatory gesture toward the computer tech’s weapon, and then looked back at the two Hkh’Rkh—who stopped, uncertain of what to do.

Hu’urs Khraam’s response to Downing was reedy, ancient. “I surrender our fleet and all other units under my command, according to the terms you offered. But again, since I am still unable to communicate with all of my forces, I cannot assure you that—”

The First Delegate was interrupted by an abrupt rumble that, in rapid steps, became a roar—like the approach of a supersonic freight train. Which seemed to explode into the command center, the right side of the room shearing away in a whirlwind of sound, flying masonry, shattered glass, discorporating consoles and screens. The blast that had amputated one wall of the room sent debris spinning against and through the three remaining walls—and through many of the beings that stood between them.

Darzhee Kut, already deafened, felt the shock waves hit, went with rather than resisted them, let himself roll under an unused human conference table. The largest chunk of rebar-studded wall finished its shallow arc directly atop the couch occupied by Hu’urs Khraam. Darzhee Kut heard the sickening crunch quite clearly and felt his upper digestive tract squirm. Nearby, he saw one of the Hkh’Rkh sway drunkenly, stare down at his chest, discover the protruding chair leg that had impaled him from the rear, try to pull it out, dying as he fell, tugged down by his own hand. Riordan, unharmed, had evidently been in the shielding shadow of the Hkh’Rkh. Rising, he took a quick look around; his eyes stopped on another figure just getting to its feet. The second Hkh’Rkh. Riordan bolted into the roiling dust as the Hkh’Rkh pulled his weapon, fired, and leapt after him into the gaping hole that had been the fourth wall, pursuing the human.

Presidential Palace compound, Jakarta, Earth

“There you are, Advocate!”

Yaargraukh, weak from multiple wounds and blood loss, swayed around. Across the cratered courtyard, Graagkhruud loped at him swiftly. He stopped a leap away. “You have been busy, Advocate.”

“There is much work for a warrior today.”

Graagkhruud almost seemed to forget his contempt of Yaargraukh, evidently pleased by the ritual response. Then First Fist’s normal, contemptuous tone returned. “You will now be my direct assistant.”

“Odd. I expected I would be your next victim in Challenge.”

Graagkhruud considered him carefully. “Had the Arat Kur not ruined us this day, your expectation might have been accurate. But now we have time only to serve the race and its First Voice. We must now take matters into our own claws.”

“Stranger still. I was just told that we have capitulated and that the combat air patrol—or what is left of it—is grounding.”

“Yes, when First Voice sent me to find you, the grubbers were beginning to think such craven thoughts. What you have now heard confirms his worst fear. That they would betray our alliance if our situation became grave. And so sent me after you, since you have several technical skills which will be essential if we are to carry out our contingency plan.”

“Which is?”

“We must reach our own grounded troopships. They were powered down when the human virus infected the grubbers’ systems, and so are still serviceable. First Voice foresaw that the Arat Kur might fail us, even feared they might have tried to infect our ships with a disabling virus that they could trigger at will. So he kept our ships’ systems unreachable by them.”

“And what are we to do with these ships?”

“Return to orbit, gain access to and man our own interface attack craft.”

“To what end?”

“To hold this world hostages to our nuclear weapons.”

“Before we go, why not gather some actual hostages, such as the human workers here in the compound?”

Graagkhruud stared at Yaargraukh. “It is a sound tactic. We shall do so.”

By my patriarchs, the impenetrable shit-scraper thought me serious!
“You are deranged by the stress of this day. My suggestion—and these plans—are nonsense.”

“Have care, Advocate. By a prearranged signal, First Voice sent me after you not only to secure your assistance, but to afford you the opportunity to fully redeem your honor—or to forever lose it. So, I repeat, we
shall
use hostages—cities as well as individuals—to finally cow the humans, and so, save our brothers, this invasion, and our race’s honor.”

“And what if the Arat Kur have surrendered not merely on the ground, but in orbit also?

“We shall hunt that
st’kragh
when we encounter it.”

“If we encounter that
st’kragh
, it will be our death. Without the orbital supporting fire from the Arat Kur ships, we are lost.”

“Which only proves that First Voice was—from the first—right about how to fight the humans. We should have crushed them the moment we could. Bomb their greatest cities directly, force them to capitulate, to agree to all our terms.”

“Oh, yes, we could have achieved that. And we would have been the puppets of the Arat Kur forever after.”

Graagkhruud’s eyes disappeared for a full second, so disoriented was he by this sudden redirection of their argument. “What do you mean?”

“Can you not see it? Even if we triumph here, we cannot reach the human star systems on our own. Our ships do not have the shift range to cross the gap from our worlds to theirs. But, deposited by our Arat Kur allies as occupation forces, we would now have colonies in the midst of the human spheres.”

“We would crush the humans and take their worlds.”

“Can you seriously think it? Have you seen this planet? Their cities, their factories, their infrastructure? They have managed to build and preserve, while we are always trapped in the process of rebuilding what was destroyed in the most recent Family War. And with the humans unified by a hatred of us, by an unquenchable thirst for vengeance, they would build so much, so quickly, that they would overwhelm us.”

“Not if the Arat Kur prevent them.”

“And so you make my point: we are dependent upon our allies. What will occur if, later on, we should dare to disagree with them over some policy? Will they not threaten to withdraw their support of our colonies in human space?”

“No, for they will wish to keep us strong there, as an aid in controlling the expansion and power of the humans, who will hate the Arat Kur just as much as they hate us.”

“Do not think it. The Arat Kur have been almost invisible on this planet’s streets. Overwhelmingly, the humans have seen
us
killing their insurgents and burning their towns.” He aimed his calar talons at either side of his head. “This,
this
is the face the humans will remember and hate. And as we grow stronger, the grubbers will find it useful for the humans and us to weaken each other in wars. They will play us one against the other. They baited the trap of this alliance with the promise of green worlds that were not ours. And what have we gained? Debt and a pointless waste of the blood of the brave.”