Mutineer's Moon fe-1, page 25
part #1 of Fifth Empire Series
Shirhansu yawned, then took a quick turn around the camouflaged bunker. If Ganhar was right (and his analysts had done a bang-up job so far), they might see some more action soon. She hoped so. The shoot-out in La Paz, what there’d been of it, had been a relief despite the frustration of knowing so many enemies had escaped, and this time she’d left Tarban behind. Of course, there were always risks, but her own position was well protected, and she had plenty of firepower on hand this time. In fact, it would be—
“We’re getting something, ’Hansu!”
She stepped quickly to Caman’s side. He was leaning forward slightly, eyes unfocused as he listened to his electronics, and she glanced at the display beside him. Caman had no need of it, but it let her see what his scanners reported without tying into his systems and losing herself in them.
Active scanner systems were coming in from the north! So Ganhar had guessed right. The other side had no intention of being mousetrapped again, so they were probing ahead of their attack force. Now the question was whether or not they’d visualized the next moves as well as Ganhar had.
She watched a tiny red dot move above the small, perfectly detailed hills and trees of the holo display. The computers classed it as a cutter, but no cutter would be so brazen if it was unescorted. Their own scanners, operating in passive mode so far, had yet to spot anything else, but they’d find the bastards when it mattered.
Jiltanith had taken over Rohantha’s weapon systems as well as the flight controls for the moment, and her brain was poised on a hair—trigger of anticipation. The base in upstate New York was no Cuernavaca, and, though it had been on Hector’s list from the beginning, it had been carefully avoided to this point. It was juicy enough to merit attention—a major staging point for weapons and foreign terrorists aiming at targets in the northeastern states and Canada combined with the presence of southerner coordinators and a small quantity of Imperial technology—but it was also close to home, relatively speaking. More importantly, it was bait; they’d needed a target like this to set the stage for Stalking-Horse.
Rohantha was tense beside her as she concentrated on her specially—programmed computers. At the moment, she was “flying” both cutters and their fighter escorts via directional radio links. It was risky, because it meant placing the pinnace in a position to hit them with the radio beams, but far less risky than relying on fold-space links. And her directional links had the advantage of being indetectable unless somebody from the other side got into their direct path.
There were no words in the pinnace. Despite her own preoccupation, a corner of Jiltanith’s mind was open to the flow of Rohantha’s thoughts through their neural feeds as the lead cutter moved closer to the target, active scanners probing industriously, turning it into a beacon in the heavens.
“Got ’em, Hansu!” Caman said exultantly. “See?”
Shirhansu nodded. A second cutter had just blipped onto the display. Its coordinates were less definite, for it was using no scanners, but the fold-space link between it and the first vessel had burned briefly through its stealth field. So they had sent in the first one on its automatics, had they?
She raised a small mike, smiling. They’d used radio against her in La Paz and she hadn’t been ready for it, but this time she had a radio link, as well. They might be watching for it, but even if they spotted it, they couldn’t be certain it was being used by Imperials.
“First Team,” she said quietly in English. “Go.”
There was no reply, but far above the surface of the Earth, a pair of Imperial fighters swooped downward at mach three while they took targeting data from Caman’s scanners over the primitive radio link.
“Missiles!”
The unneeded word was dragged out of Rohantha, and Jiltanith nodded jerkily. The energy signatures of Imperial missiles were unmistakable as they scorched down out of the heavens, and ’Hantha’s plotting systems were backtracking frantically.
Both cutters went to pre-programmed evasive action as the missiles came in. It was useless, of course. It was intended to be, but it would have been useless whether they’d planned it that way or not. The missles shrieked home, and Jiltanith cringed as thermonuclear flame ripped the night skies apart. The southerners were using heavy missiles!
She paled as she pictured the radiation boiling out from those fireballs. They were barely a kilometer up, and Maker only knew what they were doing to any Terra-born in the vicinity, but she knew what their EMP would do to Rohantha’s directional antennae! Imperial technology was EMP-proof, but they’d counted on lighter weapons, with less ruinous effect on the electromagnetic spectrum, and she only hoped the targeting data had gotten through … and that the maneuvers in the drones’ computers were up to their needs. If they had to open up a fold-link while the southerners were watching…
Both cutters had vanished in the holocaust, and Jiltanith banked away from the blast as Rohantha reclaimed her onboard systems. She’d done all she could by remote control.
“Hard kills on both cutters!” Caman shouted, and Shirhansu crouched over his shoulder, staring triumphantly at the display.
That was one fucking commando team that would never hit a target! But her triumph was not unmixed with worry as her fighters clawed back upward, putting as much distance between themselves and their firing positions as they could without breaking stealth…
“Missile sources! Multiple launches!” Caman snapped, and Shirhansu smothered a curse.
Ganhar had been right again, Breaker take it! But there was still a good chance for her fighter crews. She watched the missiles climbing the holographic display, spreading as they rose. They couldn’t have a definite lock, but they’d obviously gotten something from the tracks of the missiles that had killed the cutters.
“Team Two!” She used a fold-space com, but the heavy EMP from Team One’s warheads would make it hard for even Imperial systems to spot it just now, and the need for secrecy was past, anyway. There was not even any need to tell her second fighter force what to do—they knew, and they were already doing it.
Shit! Erdana’s fighter was clear of the missiles seeking it, but those were self-guided homing weapons, and at least three had locked onto Sima and Yanu! She watched Sima go to full power, abandoning stealth now that he knew he’d been targeted. Decoys blossomed on the display and jamming systems fought to protect the fighter, and two of the missiles lost lock and veered away. One killed a decoy in a three-kiloton burst of fury; the other simply disappeared into the night. But the third drilled through every defense Yanu could throw out against it, and its target vanished from the display.
Shirhansu swallowed a sour gulp of fury, but there was no time for dismay. Caman’s scanners had picked out both of the firing fighters, and Team Two—not two, but four Imperial fighters—charged after them, missiles already lashing out across the heavens.
Jiltanith watched exultantly as one of the southern fighters disappeared in a ball of flame. That was more than they’d hoped for, and she was impressed by how well their unmanned fighters’ computers had done.
Now they were doing the rest of their job, and she angled the pinnace away, hugging the ground, covered by Hanalet and Carhana as they flashed back into the north at mach two and prayed their own stealth systems held…
Shirhansu watched the northerners react to her own incoming fighters. They went to full power, one streaking away to the west towards Lake Erie, the other breaking east and diving for the cover of the mountains. Decoys blazed in the night, dying in salvos of nuclear flame, and the west-bound fighter evaded the first wave of missiles racing after it. Not so the one headed east; three different missiles took it from three different directions.
She concentrated on the surviving fighter, praying that its crew would be frightened—and foolish—enough to flee straight back to Nergal, but those Imperials were made of sterner stuff. They turned back from the western shore of the lake, hurling their own missiles in reply, and she smothered an unwilling admiration for their guts as they took on all four pursuers in a hopeless battle rather than reveal their base’s location.
What followed was swift and savage. The single enemy fighter was boxed, and its crew were obviously more determined than skilled. Its weapons sought out all its attackers, splitting its fire instead of seeking to blast a single foe out of the way to flee, and its violent evasive maneuvers had a fatalistic, almost mechanical air. Her own flight crews’ defensive systems handled the incoming fire, and Changa’s fighter flashed in so close he actually took the target out with his energy guns instead of another missle.
The molten, half-vaporized wreckage spilled into the cold, waiting waters of Lake Erie, and the victors reformed above the steam cloud and flashed away to the south. Shirhansu let her shoulders unknot and straightened, only then realizing that she’d been crouched forward. She wiped her forehead, and her hand came away damp.
Done. The whole thing had taken less than five minutes, and it was done.
“Get me Ganhar,” she told Caman softly, and her assistant nodded happily.
Shirhansu drew a deep breath and crossed her arms, considering what to say. It was a pity about Sima and Yanu, but they’d taken out both cutters, the raiding force, and both stealthed escorts, for the loss of a single fighter of their own. That was a third of Nergal’s fighter strength, plus at least five of their remaining Imperials. Probably at least six, since there would have been one Imperial in the raiding force, as well, and possibly seven if they’d been foolish enough to use a live pilot in the lead cutter.
She let herself smile thinly. Not a single survivor—and no indication of a message home to tell Nergal what had happened, either. Their entire attack force had been gobbled up, and it was unlikely they’d even know how it had happened. It was the worst they’d ever been hurt. Proportionately, it made Cuernavaca meaningless, and she had been in command. She’d commanded both successful interceptions!
“I’ve got Ganhar,” Caman said, and Shirhansu let her smile broaden as she took over the com link.
“Ganhar? ’Hansu. We got ’em all-clean sweep!”
Jiltanith and Rohantha let themselves relax, knowing Hanalat and Carhana were doing the same aboard their fighter.
Their equipment losses had been severe, but that had been planned, and there had been no loss of life. Not theirs, anyway, Jiltanith reminded herself, and tried to turn her mind away from the Terra-born who must have been caught in the fireballs and radiation of the cross-fire. At least the area was thinly populated, she thought, and knew she was grasping at straws.
But the southerners couldn’t know the northerners had lost none of their own personnel, which meant that they would believe Nergal’s losses had been staggering enough to frighten them into suspending offensive operations.
They might actually pull it off, and she looked forward to returning to Nergal to report the mission’s success. Hector would be pleased at how well it had gone, she thought, but her lips curved in a small, secret smile, hidden from Rohantha as she admitted a surprising truth to herself.
It was Colin’s face she truly wished to see.
Chapter Twenty-One
General Gerald Hatcher stood beside his GEV command vehicle on a hill overlooking what had once been a stretch of pleasantly wooded countryside and listened to the radiation detectors snarl. The wind was from behind him and the levels were relatively low here, but that was cold comfort as he looked down into the smoldering mouth of Hell.
Smoke fumed up from the forest fires, but they were still far away and the Forestry Service and fire departments and volunteers from the surviving locals along the fringe of the area were fighting to bring them under control. Most of those people didn’t have dosimeters, either, and Hatcher shook his head slowly. Courage came in many guises, and it never ceased to amaze and humble him, but this carnage went beyond anything courage could cope with. Hatcher’s bearing was as erect and soldierly as ever, but inside himself he wept.
Red and blue flashers blinked atop emergency vehicles further out into the smoking wasteland, and the night sky was heavy with helicopters and vertols that jockeyed through the treacherous thermals and radiation. They would not find many to rescue out there … and this was only one of the nuked areas.
He turned at the whine of fans as another GEV swept up the slope, blowing a gale of downed branches and ash from under its skirts, and settled beside his own. The hatch popped, and Captain Germaine, his aide, climbed down. His battle dress was smutted with dirt and ash and his face was drawn as he removed his breathing mask and walked heavily over to his commander.
“How bad is it, Al?” Hatcher asked quietly.
“About as bad as it could be, sir,” Germaine said in a low voice, waving a hand out over the expanse of ruin. “The search teams are still working their way towards the center, but the last body count I heard was already over five hundred and still climbing.”
“And that doesn’t include the flash-blinded and the ones who’ll still die,” Hatcher said softly.
“No, sir. And this is one of the bright spots,” Germaine continued in bitter, staccato bursts. “One of the goddamned things went off right over a town to the south. Sixteen thousand people.” His mouth twisted. “Doesn’t look like there’ll be any survivors from that one, General.”
“Dear God,” Hatcher murmured, and even he could not have said whether it was a prayer or a curse.
“Yes, sir. The only good thing—if it’s not obscene to call anything about this bitched—up mess ‘good’—is they seem to’ve been mighty clean. The counters show a relatively small area of lethal contamination, and the wind’s out of the southeast, away from the big urban areas. But God knows what it’s going to do to the local gene pool or what the Candians are going to catch from all this shit.”
The last word came out of him in a half-strangled shout as his attempted detachment crumbled, and he half-turned from his general, clenching his fists.
“I know, Al. I know.” Hatcher sighed and shook himself, his normally sharp eyes sad as he looked out over the battlefield. And battlefield it had been, even if none of the United States’ detection systems had picked up a thing before or after the explosions. At least they’d had satellites in place to see what happened during the battle … not that the records made him feel any better.
“I’m heading back to the office, Al. Stay on it and keep me informed.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hatcher gestured, and his white-faced young commo officer stepped to his side. Her auburn hair was cut a bit longer than regulations prescribed, and it blew on the winds the fires ten kilometers away were sucking into their maw.
“Get hold of Major Weintraub, Lieutenant. Have him meet me at HQ.”
“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant headed for the command vehicle’s radios, and Hatcher rested a hand on Germaine’s shoulder.
“Watch your dosimeter, Al. If it climbs into the yellow, you’re out of here and back to base. The major and I’ll want to talk to you, anyway.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hatcher squeezed the taut shoulder briefly, then walked heavily to his GEV. It rose on its fans and curtsied uncomfortably across the rough terrain, but Hatcher sat sunken in thought and hardly noticed.
It wasn’t going well. Hector’s people had started on a roll, but they were getting the holy howling shit kicked out of them now, and the rest of the human race with them.
The first wave of counter-attacks had puzzled Hatcher. A handful of attacks on isolated segments of the aerospace effort, a few bloody massacres of individual families. They’d seemed more like pinpricks than full-scale assaults, and he’d tentatively decided the bad guys, whoever they were, were going after those few of Hector’s people they could identify, which had been bad enough but also understandable.
But within twelve hours, another and far bloodier comber of destruction had swept the planet like a tsunami. The Point, Sandhurst, Klyuchevskaya, Goddard … Eden Two.
Clearly the other side had opted for the traditional terrorist weapon: terror. Coupled with the reports from La Paz, which could only have been a direct clash between the extra-terrestrial opponents, and this new obscenity in New York, it sounded terribly as if the momentum was shifting, and his preliminary examination of the satellite tapes seemed to confirm it.
The first warning anyone had was the burst of warheads, but the cameras had watched it all. Clearly one side had gotten the shit kicked out of it, and judging by the warheads each had used, it hadn’t been the bad guys. Hector’s people had used only small-yield nukes, when they’d used them at all, but their enemies didn’t give a shit who they killed. They went in for great big bangs and hang the death toll, and his satellite people put the winning side’s yields in the twenty kiloton range, maybe even a bit higher.
Hatcher sighed unhappily. Other bits and pieces had come together as his analysts tried to figure out what was going on, and one thing had become clear: the nature and pattern of Hector’s people’s operations all suggested meticulous planning, economy of force, and conservation of resources, whereas their opponents were operating on a far vaster scale, their actions wider-spread and more often simultaneous rather than sequenced. All of which indicated the balance of force was against Hector’s side, probably by a pretty heavy margin.
History was replete with examples of out-numbered forces that had triumphed over clumsier enemies or those less technologically advanced than themselves, but right off the top of his head, Hatcher couldn’t recall a single case in which a weaker force had defeated one that was equally advanced, more numerous, and knew what the hell it was doing. Especially not when the stronger side were also the barbarians.
His command vehicle reached the highway and turned north, heading for the vertol waiting to carry him back to his HQ, and he rubbed his eyes wearily. He and Weintraub had to get their heads together, though God only knew what good it was going to do. So far, all anyone had been able to do was beef up civil defense and keep their heads down. They were too outclassed for anything else, but if Hector’s people went down, it was Hatcher’s duty to do what he could.
