people will be able to fi?nd them. Dismissed.”
By the time the second platoon, and the newly designated third platoon pulled back into the relative security of the encampment that Amoyo and her people had prepared, a full-fl?edged blizzard was under way. Weather so cold it was necessary for sentries to work the actions on their weapons every two to three minutes or risk having them freeze up. But there was one good thing about the storm however. . . . And that was the fact it would be just as hard on the enemy. Because no matter how many battles the two sides fought— winter would always win.
13.
Tragedy is by no means the exclusive province of the lowly.
PLANET EARTH, THE RAMANTHIAN EMPIRE
It was raining as the Ramanthian task force swept in over Seattle. What had once been a discrete city was now part of the sprawling metroplex that began in the old nation-state of Canada, and ran all the way down to Baja, California. For reasons not entirely clear, the Seattle area had been especially hard to pacify. This meant it had been necessary to repeatedly punish the animals who lived there. A process that eventually turned what had been gleaming high-rises, fl?oating sea habs, and carefully manicured streetscapes into a cratered wasteland. The destruction was plain to see as the Queen watched the vid screen on the bulkhead before her. Though capable of in-system spacefl?ight, the Reaper was classifi?ed as a combat assault platform, and intended for use inside planetary atmospheres. As such the fl?ying fortress was heavily armed and, thanks to a spacious fl?ight deck, could launch and retrieve smaller vessels at the same time. As the airborne fortress approached the city from the south it was traveling at a scant twenty miles per hour, a fact that somehow made its presence over the city that much more ominous.
As the monarch looked down onto the surface, she saw an arrow-straight line of craters, each measuring exactly one hundred feet across, which had been etched into the planet’s surface by OTS (orbit-to-surface) cannons fi?ring from outside the exosphere. Thousand-foot-high skyscrapers had been cut down like trees. So what remained looked like a thicket of fi?re-blackened stumps, many of which were still smoking, because of fi?res that continued to burn below street level.
What resembled old lava fl?ows were actually rivers of previously molten metal and glass, which followed streets down to a large bay, where cold water transformed them into something resembling stone. Everything else was a sea of fi?re-blackened wreckage occasionally interrupted by islands of miraculously untouched buildings. As the Reaper began to slow, the royal spotted tiny pinpricks of light down below, followed by an occasional spurt of light-colored smoke. “What,” the monarch wanted to know, “are the animals doing?”
Captain Ji-Jua was standing at the royal’s side. He was a serious-looking offi?cer with a reputation for probity. “The humans are fi?ring at us, Majesty,” the naval offi?cer replied gravely. “They have a quantity of shoulder- launched missiles looted from human military bases—and it may have been a lucky shot from such a weapon that brought the transport down.”
“I fi?nd it strange that when we manage to destroy an enemy ship it’s always ascribed to skill—but when they do it we refer to it as ‘luck,’ ” the Queen observed tartly. “And where is the transport? I expected to see it by now.”
“It’s diffi?cult to see because of the rain,” Ji-Jua replied tactfully. “The stern is half-submerged in that lake—but the bow is resting on dry land.”
The Reaper shuddered gently as a surface-to-air missile exploded against her screens. The ship’s combat computer ran a lightning-fast series of calculations and fi?red an energy cannon in response. The blue bolt slagged everything within twenty feet of the point from which the rocket had been launched.
But the royal was oblivious to such details as the crash site came into full view. There were hills to the left and right as the task force slowed and hovered above the wreck. The Queen knew, as did everyone else, that roughly half of the three hundred troops traveling on board the transport had been killed on impact. The survivors were not only alive, but still fi?ghting, as wave after wave of murderous humans attacked them. And, as smaller ships spread out to suppress enemy fi?re, a task force led by the Queen herself was about to rescue the beleaguered troopers. Video of that was sure to raise morale throughout the empire. Pictures that would look even better if taken on the ground rather than inside a warship. The Queen stood. “I will lead the rescue party myself,” she announced. “I’ll need my armor and a rifl?e.”
Captain Ji-Jua reacted to the statement with undisguised alarm. “Majesty!” the offi?cer said. “Please reconsider! The situation on the ground is extremely unstable. . . . I could never allow you to risk your life in such a manner!”
“You not only can, you will,” the royal responded sternly.
“Or I can replace you here and now. . . . Which will it be?”
Ji-Jua wanted to resist what he believed to be an extremely poor decision, but the force of the monarch’s personality combined with a sudden fl?ood of pheromones, was more than the offi?cer could overcome. “I’m sorry, Majesty,” he said contritely. “It shall be as you say.”
Thirty minutes later the Queen was aboard an assault boat headed for the surface. The plan was to secure a landing zone, hold it long enough to load the beleaguered soldiers, and take off as soon as possible. Which, given total command of the air, should be relatively easy to do. Thanks to the monarch’s reassuring presence, plus their natural feelings of superiority, morale was high as the boat put down three hundred feet west of the wreck. The stern ramp made a loud thud as it hit the ground. A trio of fl?ying vid cams went off fi?rst, followed by the Queen and four members of the Imperial Guard. As the Ramanthians shuffl?ed out into a cold rain, the lake was only twenty-fi?ve feet to their left, which should have been a good thing. Except that sixteen SCUBA-equipped freedom fi?ghters chose that moment to surface and open fi?re! Half of the humans had never fi?red a weapon in anger, and their bullets kicked up spurts of dirt and rainwater, as they held their triggers down. The original plan had been to attack the downed transport from the water side, but with a group of Ramanthian soldiers directly in front of them, the humans had no choice but to attack or be attacked. The Queen was wearing body armor, but one of the fi?rst bullets the animals fi?red found the seam between the stiff collar that protected her neck, and the material that cloaked the rest of her elongated body. The projectile punched a hole through the royal’s chitin and nicked her posterior nerve bundle before exiting through the other side of her body, where it slammed into her armor. The whole thing came as a complete surprise to the Queen, who being all-powerful in every other respect, believed
