Jim Baen, page 39
Anthea dashed inside the large building. Due to the attack, all the patrons had fled, and the library was like a hollow mausoleum. The homey, familiar scent of books surrounded them. "Hello?" Her voice echoed among the stacks.
Hearing her voice, a pot-bellied man with a blue-striped necktie strutted out of an office and came to greet them with open hands and a broad smile. "Hello, hello! Welcome to the library."
"Are you open? Can we come in here?"
"Oh, ma'am, we're certainly open for business. Didn't you see the library hours posted on the door?"
"I was afraid with the air-raid sirens and everything—"
The man made a dismissive gesture. "Tut, tut! The library hours are set in stone and have been followed for many years. We can't change things just because of an external distraction. Is there something in particular you were looking for? A reference book, perhaps? A good novel?"
Relief rushed through her. "Sanctuary. My baby and I need a place to . . . to wait out the attack. We can't go home."
"Ah, of course. I was hoping you might want to browse the shelves, but you're certainly welcome here. All are welcome."
The librarian had large, expressive eyes and heavy jowls that looked like hanging suitcases of extra skin. His straight hair was chestnut brown, but an inch or so near the roots was grayish-white, as if he had once regularly dyed his hair but had given up because it was too much effort. Round spectacles made his eyes seem larger.
"I'm Mr. Reynolds, the head librarian—apparently the only librarian who puts his responsibilities above personal fear." Reynolds scratched the jowl on his right cheek. "As soon as the bombs began to fall, my fellow workers became ill and had to go home. Apparently, something called an 'air-raid flu.' I intend to research it when I have a spare moment." He pushed his glasses up on his face. "Come into the central stacks and my administrative office. It's safest there."
They reached a room filled with shelves of bound reference books, neatly organized volumes of records and transcripts. "I keep our history section here. Fiction is on Floor 1, periodicals and study carrels located on Floor 2. Is there anything in particular I can assist you with right now? Since all of my co-workers have disappeared, I have gotten behind on my shelving work. But the patron always comes first."
Anthea felt intolerably weary. "I'd just like a chair to sit in and maybe a glass of water." Soon she would have to breast-feed the infant. She had no supplies, no diapers or bottles. I'm not a very prepared new mother, she realized. Then again, she hadn't expected to be hunted down like an animal, or for enemy ships to bombard the city.
Reynolds showed her a comfortable chair and dutifully brought her a cone-shaped paper cup from the gurgling water cooler. She took a grateful sip. Outside they could hear the rumbles of continued bomb strikes.
The librarian looked toward the window with indignation. "The enemy can destroy our buildings and kill our people, but so long as they do not eliminate our books, they cannot destroy our civilization." He smiled at her. "Without our historical and scientific knowledge, without our great tales and brave heroes, we would be giving up our very humanity."
Humanity, she thought, suppressing a shudder.
He saw the desperation on her face, the helpless baby wrapped in a powder-blue blanket. "Of course I will help you. Stay here, and I'll do whatever I can."
Then, as if to spite him, all the power went out. The racks of fluorescent lights died, plunging the stacks into darkness relieved only by the faint light from outside windows. The baby fussed and cried, picking up on Anthea's own anxiety.
Untroubled, Mr. Reynolds moved chairs and a metal cart like a blind man perfectly familiar with the layout of the room. Before long, he returned, struck a long wooden match, and lit several candles, which he placed in holders on the table. "Always be prepared, that's what I say. I would never want to be without the ability to read."
Carrying a candle in one hand, he rolled a book-laden cart through the stacks and, squinting in the dimness, continued to shelve volumes where they belonged. He piled reference tomes in the middle of a table so that all could peruse them.
Within moments, surrounded by unread books in the glow of candlelight, Anthea felt warm and cozy and safe for the first time in hours. She held the baby on her lap, kissed his forehead. He began to coo and make noises, not crying but simply experimenting with his vocal cords, his lungs.
"I hate to be a bother, but I must remind you that this is a library, ma'am." Mr. Reynolds pushed a battered old book back into place. "I will allow you to stay, but only if your baby remains quiet. We abide by strict rules here."
As soon as Reynolds had half-jokingly stated his conditions, the baby in her arms instantly fell silent.
CHAPTER 10
Guards and emergency-response personnel ran through the halls of the grand palace. Panicked civil servants scrambled for bomb shelters or tried to evacuate from the huge building, streaming to designated rendezvous points. Others frantically grabbed telephones to call their families and loved ones.
Despite the evacuation signal, many functionaries and bureaucrats remained at their desks, deluded into believing that their jobs were important to the survival of Earth. There was nothing they could do, but they remained at their posts transmitting orders, forwarding reports, filing forms, and monitoring the destruction outside.
In the midst of this, Jommy, Kathleen, and President Kier Gray were escorted under heavy guard to the main command-and-control center.
On the main display screens radar blips showed the swarm of invading ships. The size of the battle group was breathtaking. The enemy had been planning this assault for years, decades, even generations while they quietly assumed positions of power on Earth. The tendrilless had long held an impossible grudge against both true slans and humans, and they meant to wipe out their rivals.
"Give me a status report!" Petty called. His people inside the control room snapped to attention.
"Sir!" said technician Clarke. "We've tried to rally our forces, but it's mass confusion out there. We can't establish contact with our main power centers. The landing zones are hopelessly muddled, and we can't even launch most of our ships. The Air Center control towers are off-line. News stations are making their own announcements without even waiting for official word from us, so the public is completely confused."
The slan hunter regarded the President as if this were somehow all his fault. For years, staged air raids had sent the citizens of Centropolis into frenzied evacuations. Anti-aircraft guns mounted to skyscraper rooftops prepared to open fire against imaginary slan spaceships. "I thought you had defensive armaments and response squadrons in place."
"That doesn't help if the tendrilless have infiltrated our radio towers, the Air Center, and the news media. One or two disloyal commanding officers can easily sabotage the entire plan."
Clarke looked harried and dismayed as he stared at the readouts. He pressed a bulky padded headphone against his ear, listening to reports as they came in from the field. "Half of our rooftop anti-aircraft guns are non-operational. Several squads assigned to fire at the attacking ships have deserted their posts. Sixteen of the main batteries have failed disastrously—the big-bore guns exploded the first time they were used. Outright sabotage."
"That is the taste of betrayal," Gray said to Petty with a bitter smile. "I'm very familiar with it myself of late." He looked pointedly at the shackles on his wrists.
"We have to fight fire with fire." Petty stalked back and forth in the command-and-control center. "Launch Earth's best military forces—now."
"They still don't respond, sir."
"Then shout yourself hoarse. Make them hear. Make them respond. Find a way to get us out of this trap."
Gray stepped up next to Petty as if he could simply resume his role as President. "What about our ground forces? Have the tendrilless landed yet? We need to keep them from getting a foothold."
"A foothold?" Petty blinked at him. "They're blowing up every defense we have. We don't have any way—"
"Contact our space division. As President I set up a full-fledged military force with orbital and even interplanetary combat abilities. I planned ahead."
The slan hunter raised his dark eyebrows. "A space division? But we don't have the technology for—"
Gray looked at him mildly. "I'm the President. I have access to technologies that the public doesn't necessarily know about. Even your secret police couldn't keep watch over everything. Use this command authorization." He spouted a string of code phrases and numbers. Seeing nothing else he could do, Petty told the technicians to do as Gray suggested.
Across the continent, special sharp-winged ships rose up on lifting platforms from hidden underground bunkers. Heavy circular doors slid aside from unmarked paved areas to expose launchpads. The new ships carried the best weapons that humans had developed over the past fifty years.
During his administration, President Gray had secretly used black money in the budget to build defenses against the threat that he knew was out there, the threat he could never admit publicly. He trusted very few people, but he did use a handful of slan advisors and he did control the strings of many classified programs. While he staged enemy air-raids, while he pretended to receive communiqués from the mysterious leaders of underground slan forces, Gray had built his own space fleet. Just in case.
Wide-eyed, John Petty watched the live images piped into the command center's screens. He was both astonished and delighted to see hundreds of well-armed spaceships ready to launch. Earth spaceships.
Gray was pleased to note the man's surprise. "I knew you were spying on my every move, whether I was protecting Kathleen or maintaining the constant state-of-emergency. But I also knew how you were prone to the abuses of power, Mr. Petty. I wasn't going to let you in on all of the emergency preparations."
"Abuses? I did what was necessary."
"If we're supposed to cooperate for the time being, then let's not mince words. I had no choice but to take precautions without your knowledge. I needed some assistance from my small circle of slan advisors, and they designed these ships. It's decent technology, but probably not good enough. Our knowledge is out of date, compared to what all the tendrilless scientists have developed over the years."
As they watched, the heroic human spacecraft leaped into the sky like a school of angry fish, weapons primed and ready to take out the tendrilless vanguard. On the radar screen, the new set of blips rose toward the myriad targets still in orbit.
Jommy was thrilled to see this unexpected fleet of defenders. "For so long, we've been stuck on the ground with our space program decimated. That was why I built my own ship and used it to spy on the tendrilless preparations. I thought I was the only one who could figure it out."
The slan hunter shook his head, seeking a target for his anxiety. "Listen to the boy genius."
Jommy's eyes flashed. "This boy genius has flown away from Earth, infiltrated the enemy headquarters on Mars, and dealt with their representatives. I knew more about this threat than you ever imagined, Mr. Petty. That's why I came back here with a warning."
"And you arrested him," Kathleen said accusingly.
Jommy nodded. "You spent far too much time chasing pebbles while I was trying to stop a whole avalanche."
Petty seemed embarrassed. "I'd watch what you're saying, slan boy. You're still my prisoner."
"Only until the palace blows up around us," Kathleen muttered.
Jommy emphasized his point. "The tendrilless have taken over interplanetary space, and I know they've placed traps there. I ran into a deadly mine field myself during my explorations." He spun to the President. "Mr. President, you should warn your forces about the mines. The tendrilless won't allow you to simply—"
With a cry of shock, Kathleen pointed to the screen. The blips showing Earth's defensive spaceships began to flicker and flare. Over a quarter of them winked out in only a few seconds.
"Looks like they found the mine field," Petty said.
Jommy groaned. "Even I didn't think the tendrilless had distributed so many. They knew we had no real space program. What could they have been so afraid of?"
"Slans," Gray said. "They're worried about how much the hidden slans will fight back. They're not concerned about humans."
Jommy stared at the afterimages, knowing that each set of glowing phosphors represented a fully armed ship, now destroyed. Over a thousand human vessels had just been wiped out in a single blow!
But then the Earth forces fought back, blasting away with weapons built into their fleet. Even the human pilots did not know that some of their defenses were secret slan innovations; at the moment, they probably didn't care. Once the pilots learned how to detect and avoid the space mines, they launched into an incredible dogfight, plowing into the vanguard forces. It looked like a snowstorm of symbols swirling in incomprehensible patterns. Ships clashed with ships, and many of the tendrilless vessels were damaged or wrecked.
But not enough of them.
Knocking Clarke aside, Petty seated himself in the technician's swivel chair, as if he didn't believe his knees would continue to support his weight. To their continued horror, the blips showing the tendrilless fleet looped around and went after the remaining human defenses.
Many of the Earth ships' weapons failed, inexplicably. Their pilots shouted that navigation systems had just shorted out. They flew blind, but still pursued the numerous enemy vessels. Engines gave out, armaments failed to fire, guidance systems died, leaving the Earth space navy helpless.
"Do the tendrilless have some kind of jamming system?" Kathleen asked. "Can we get them on line again?"
As he listened to the cries of surprise and frustration—then the static of destruction—Jommy could only conclude that the answer had to do with sabotage. "If you kept this fleet secret from Petty, who was in charge of it?"
"Jem Lorry. My chief advisor." Gray looked deeply troubled. "Who has now vanished. Could he have been a tendrilless spy? Could his shields have been so powerful that even I didn't suspect him?" He could not tear his eyes from the screens.
The fleet from Mars still outnumbered Gray's surprise space force more than three-to-one, and the battle swiftly turned into a rout. The Earth ships fought to the last, knowing that they could not surrender. On the screens, blip after blip vanished.
The sweep of the radar arc showed little detail, but Jommy didn't need any explanation as the pinpoints of human spacecraft brightened like stars going nova, then faded into darkness. Dozens more of the tendrilless attack ships were destroyed, and then the Earth defenders were gone. Completely gone.
Gray looked astonished. "It's a massacre. I didn't think . . . I never knew the enemy was so powerful. Our best defenses are no more effective then leaves blown in the wind. The tendrilless have undermined us, disconnected our weapons, sabotaged our plans."
Kathleen put her arms around her father. Gray's shoulders drooped. He found a seat by one of the empty diagnostic stations and slumped into it, brushing aside the torn rolls of printouts, ignoring the chattering computers that still attempted to analyze the situation. "I have failed us all."
With the ground forces neutralized and the last vestiges of the Earth space navy annihilated, the tendrilless ships were ready to complete their destruction. The inbound ships came down, unhindered now, and streaked across the skies of the capital city. Earth was completely at the mercy of the tendrilless.
Jommy barked his words so loudly that even the stunned technicians and disoriented leaders took heed. "The grand palace is sure to be a target. Now that our defenses are gone, they're going to turn this entire place into rubble."
"The palace is the most secure structure in all of Centropolis. We're ten levels underground, and these rooms are reinforced against any aerial attack," said Petty, though he didn't sound convinced.
"Not reinforced enough. The tendrilless can level this whole structure. Once they've decapitated the government, they won't even need to bother with negotiating peace terms. They'll want to stand victorious on the rubble of the great government center."
Kathleen stepped close. "Jommy's right. We've got to get out of here, all of us."
Despite his handcuffs and his disheveled appearance, Gray still looked presidential. "There is no defeat while we still live. We must escape from the palace—now. We can become a government in exile."
"A government of what?" asked Petty.
"That is for us to define." Looking at his frantic rival, Gray extended a hand, letting it hang there in the air. "I suggest an alliance, Mr. Petty. I know of your plan to overthrow me. I know of your power plays with the secret police. But right now we face an enemy greater than either of us."
Kathleen chimed in. "It'll be the humans and the true slans against the tendrilless."
Jommy boldly pushed his way toward the door of the command-and-control center. "I have a means of escape—my advanced car is hidden in the forest on the other side of the river. Trust me."
