“If you gave it enough time,” Veitch said, “I don’t think there’s much it couldn’t do.” Then he studied the tank again.
“At present rate of descent, weapons will engage in… forty-five seconds.” He looked anxiously at the others.
“There isn’t much more we can do here. Maybe we should get below again?”
“Missile inbound,” Saavedra said, with dreamlike calm.
The display showed the missile streaking down from the cutter, leaping though the intervening atmosphere with ferocious acceleration. Any faster and friction would have incinerated the warhead before it reached its target.
“Guns retargeting,” Saavedra reported.
“Engaging.”
The room tremored. Dreyfus heard a low, rolling report, like distant thunder. He shuddered to think of the energy that had just been dissipated only a few hundred metres over his head. The weapons would have blasted their way out of concealed bunkers, just like the guns buried in the Nerval-Lermontov rock. But that had taken place in vacuum, not under a smothering methane-ammonia atmosphere. On the planet’s surface, it would have looked like a series of choreographed volcanic eruptions, as if fists of molten fire had punched through the very crust of the world.
“Missile intercepted,” Saavedra said, though they could all see the result for themselves.
“Second incoming. Third incoming. Guns responding.”
The room tremored again, the earthquake-like rumble longer than before. There was a moment of silence as the guns retargeted to intercept the third missile, then the noise recommenced.
“Second missile destroyed. Partial intercept on third,” Saavedra announced. The room shook again, but Dreyfus knew that the guns would struggle to shoot down the third missile on the second attempt. It had been damaged, but it was still arcing down towards the facility.
“Brace,” Veitch said.
The missile’s impact came a fraction of a second later. Dreyfus felt the shock-wave slam through his bones. There was a roar louder than the guns, loud enough that it felt as if he was out there, standing under Yellowstone’s poison sky with his eardrums naked to the air. He felt a violent shove, as if the room and all its contents had just lurched several centimetres to one side.
“One emplacement out,” Saavedra said as the appropriate icon pulsed red and faded to black.
“Fourth missile inbound. Guns acquiring.”
The roar of the anti-ship weapons sounded more distant now: Dreyfus guessed that the disabled emplacement had been the nearest one, taken out in a direct hit by the damaged missile.
“Tell me you have an intercept,” Dreyfus said.
“Partial,” Saavedra said.
“Attempting re-contact.”
The guns droned. The room shook. The sense of helplessness Dreyfus felt was suffocating. Machines were running his life now: machines and software. The system running the anti-ship emplacements was locking antlers with the system controlling the cutter’s onboard weapons. Like familiar adversaries, the systems had a thorough understanding of their mutual capabilities. In all likelihood, his survival could already be ascribed a fixed mathematical probability. One participant knew it would eventually lose, but was still going through the motions for the sake of formality.
The fourth missile had lost much of its effectiveness when it struck home, but still retained enough potency to do real damage. The noise was a continuous deafening avalanche of sound. The room shuddered, chunks of ceiling material crashing down. A deep crack jagged its way down one wall, dividing the eight carved heads. The room’s illumination failed, leaving only the pale-green glow from the holographic display, which was itself faltering.
“Generator complex is down,” Veitch said, with grim resignation.
“We should have buried it deeper. I said we should have buried it deeper.” He began to tap instructions into his bracelet.
“Back-up generator should have kicked in automatically. Why isn’t it working?”
“Fifth missile inbound,” Saavedra said as the holographic display flickered.
“Guns attempting to acquire. Two emplacements down. What about that backup generator, Veitch?”
“I’m doing the best I can,” he said through gritted teeth.
The roar of anti-ship guns was like a distant avalanche.
“Intercept?” Veitch queried.
“Partial,” Saavedra said.
Dreyfus was about to ask something when the fifth missile came slamming in. There was no sound this time; it was too loud to register as noise. It felt like a cosh to the skull. Deafened, but with scarcely a moment to register the fact, Dreyfus observed events compress themselves into a single frantic instant. The room darkened, filling with choking black dust, scouring eyes and skin, burning throat and lungs. His last glimpse gave the impression of the ceiling bowing down, riven with cracks. He saw a similar crack rip through the already damaged wall. And then there was neither light, nor sound, nor consciousness.
CHAPTER 32
Dreyfus came round to a world coloured in degrees of pain. He was cognisant of the pain map of his body, traced in his mind’s eye by a flickering green mesh. There was a knot somewhere around his lower right leg, the contours bunching together until they formed an angry little eye. There was another knot in his chest, to the left of his sternum. A third on his upper right arm. The rest of him was merely aflame with discomfort. His throat felt as if it had been etched with acid. When he breathed, it was as if the lining of his lungs had been replaced by powdered glass.
And yet he was breathing. That was more than he’d expected to be doing.
He remembered the attack, but had no sense of how much time had passed since the arrival of the final missile. Everything was very still now. Not exactly silent, for his ears were ringing, but when he moved slightly he could hear his own groans of discomfort, so he had not been entirely deafened. He must have screamed at the end, he thought. He lay still, breathing heavily, ignoring the stab of pain that accompanied each breath, until he had regained some clarity of thought.
He forced his eyes open. At first he could see nothing, but then he became conscious of a faint glow. One of the holographic panes was still flickering, casting insipid green light around the wreckage-strewn room. Most of the dust and debris appeared to have settled, suggesting that more than a few minutes had passed since the assault. His eyes were stinging, watering, but slowly Dreyfus became accustomed to the gloom and began to pick out details of his surroundings. He was lying on his back on the floor, with his legs and hips pinned under the table, which had collapsed when the ceiling thrust down upon it. As the table gave way, the cluster of display panes had toppled to the floor to Dreyfus’ right, including the one unit that was still aglow. He was trapped, and he could only speculate as to the true extent of his injuries, but he knew that he was very lucky to be alive at all. Had the table not shielded him, he would have been killed by the rubble that had crashed in through the ceiling. He tried moving his right arm again. The knot of pain had died down slightly, and as the arm moved he drew some comfort from the fact that it was probably not broken.
He flexed his fingers, watching them move like pale wormlike things, seemingly disconnected from his own body. His left arm felt intact, but he could not reach the edge of the table from where he was pinned. Groaning again, pain flaring in his chest, he tried to move his right arm enough to begin to lever the table, hoping to lift it away from his trapped lower half. But as soon as he applied pressure, he knew it was hopeless. The pain in his arm intensified, and the table did not move at all. Dreyfus realised that he would not be able to escape unassisted.
He looked to his side, trying to distinguish between rubble and bodies. He began to fear that the others had been killed in the attack. But slowly he realised that the only other body in the room belonged to Simon Veitch. Of Sparver and Saavedra there was no sign.
