“Ah.” Finally some unexpected good news. Now he could limit the destruction necessary to regain control. Except this is Pham Nuwen you’re up against, and almost anything is possible. This could be some incredible masquerade. “Very good, Podcorporal. But for the moment, don’t use that automation.”
“Yes, sir.” Marli sounded puzzled.
Nau looked out the taxi’s window. Strange to be seeing raw nature with no enhancement. The L1-A lock was about seventy meters away now, deep in shadow. There was something strange about it… the lip of metal was highlighted in red.But I’m not wearing huds.
“Qiwi—”
“I see it. Someone is—”
There was a loud snapping sound. Marli screamed. His hair was on fire. The hull by his seat was glowing red.
“Shit!” Qiwi boosted the taxi up. “They’re usingmy electric jets!” She spun the taxi even as she jinked it back and forth. Nau’s stomach crawled up his gut.Nothing is supposed to fly like this.
The glow on the L1-A lock, the hot spot in the hull behind him—the enemy must be using all the stab jets within line of sight. Each jet by itself could only be an accidental, local danger. Somehow, Nuwen had ganged dozens of them to shine precisely on the two targets that mattered.
Marli was still screaming. Qiwi’s piloting jammed Nau up into his restraints, turned him as he came back down. He had a glimpse of the podcoporal in the arms of his fellows. As least he wasn’t burning anymore. The other guards’ eyes were wide. “X-rays,” one of them said. The splash from those electron beams could fry them all. A long-term peril, all things considered—
Still spinning the taxi, Qiwi swung them close to the hillsides of Diamond One. The craft was precessing now, a wild triple spin. No way could the enemy keep their guns on one spot. And yet, the glow in the wall grew brighter with each rev.Pestilence. Somehow Nuwen had full system automation.
The nose and then the butt of the taxi smashed into the ground, splashing snow up from the surface. The hull groaned but held. And now, in the floating haze of rising volatiles, Nau could see the beams of the ejets. The ice and air in their way exploded into incandescence. Five beams, maybe ten, they shifted in and out as the taxi spun, and several were always on the glowing spot in their hull.
Around them the swirl of vapor and ice grew thicker. The glowing spot in the hull began to dim as the snows soaked and diffused the murderous beams. Qiwi damped their spin with four precise bursts of attitude control, at the same time snaking their craft over the boiling snows toward the L1-A airlock.
Peering forward, Nau saw the lock approach from dead ahead, a certain crash. But somehow Qiwi was still in control. She flipped the taxi up, slamming the docking collar into its mate on the lock. There was the sound of bending metal, and then they were stopped.
Qiwi tapped at the lock controls, then bounded out of her chair, to the forward hatch mechanism. “It’s jammed, Tomas! Help me!”
And now they were locked down, trapped like dogs in a pit shoot. Tomas rushed forward, braced himself, and pulled with Qiwi at the taxi hatch. It was jammed. Almost jammed. Together, they pulled it partway open. He reached through, spent precious seconds clearing security on the L1-A hatch. All right!
He looked over Qiwi’s head at the hull behind them. The red spot was more like a bull’s-eye now, a ring of red, a ring of orange, and glaring white in the middle. It was like standing in front of an open kiln.
The white-hot center bubbled outward, and was gone. All around them was a cascading thunderclap of departing atmosphere.
Things had been very quiet since Victory Lighthill took the Command and Control Center. The Intelligence techs had been moved away from their perches. They and the staff officers had been herded back against Underville, Coldhaven, and Dugway.Like bugs at a slaughter-suck, thought Belga. But it didn’t matter. The situation map showed that much of the world was going down to slaughter now:
The tracks of thousands of Kindred missiles curved across the map, and more were being launched each second. There were target circles drawn across every Accord military site, every city—even the trad deepnesses.
And the strangeAccord launchings that had showed just after Lighthill arrived—those had disappeared from the maps. Lies, no longer needed.
Victory Lighthill walked up and down the line of perches, gazing briefly over the shoulders of each of her techs. She seemed to have forgotten Underville and the others. And strangely, she seemed just as horror-struck as CCC’s proper occupants. She wheeled on her brother, who seemed quite in another world, entertaining himself with his game helmet. “Brent?”
The big corporal groaned. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Calorica is still down. Sis… I think they hit Dad.”
“But how? There’s no way they could know!”
“I dunno. Only the low-level ones are talking, and by themselves, they’re never very helpful. I think it happened a while ago, just after we lost contact with the High Perch—” He paused, communing with his game? Light leaked from the edges of his helmet, flickering. Then: “He’s back! Listen!”
Lighthill brought a phone to the side of her head. “Daddy!” Joyous as a cobblie home from school. “Where —?” Her eating hands clasped each other in surprise and she shut up, listening to some extended speech. But she was almost bouncing with excitement, and her renegades were suddenly pounding on their consoles.
Finally: “We copy all, Daddy. We—” She paused, watching her techs for an instant. “—we’re getting control, just like you say. I think we can do it, but for God’s sake, route through someplace closer. Twenty seconds is just too long. We need you now more than ever!” And then she was talking to her techs. “Rhapsa, target only the ones we can’t stop from above. Birbop, fix this damn routing—”
And on the situation map… the missile fields across High Equatoria had come alive. The map showed the colored traces of dozens, hundreds of antimissiles, the long-range interceptors arcing up to meet the enemy. More lies? Belga looked across the suddenly joyous aspects of Lighthill and the other intruders, and felt hope climbing into her own heart.
The first contacts were still half a minute away. Belga had seen the simulations. At least five percent of the attacking missiles would get through. The deaths would be a hundred times more than during the Great War, but at least it wasn’t annihilation…. But other things were happening on the map. Well behind the leading wave of the attack, here and there, enemy markers were vanishing.
Lighthill waved at the display, and for the first time since the takeover addressed Underville and the others. “The Kindred had callback capability on some of their missiles. We’re using that wherever we can. Some of the others, we can attack from above.” From above? As if by an invisible eraser, sweeping northward over the continent, a swath of missile markers disappeared. Lighthill turned toward Coldhaven and the other officers, and came to full attention. “Sir, ma’am. Your people might be best at managing the amissiles. If we can coordinate —”
“Damn, yes!” chorused Dugway and Coldhaven. The techs rushed back to their places. There were precious lost moments, re-upping target lists, and then the first of the amissiles scored.
“Positive EMP!” shouted one of the AD techs. Somehow it seemed more real than all the rest.
General Coldhaven dipped a hand at Lighthill, an odd sort of reverse salute. Lighthill said quietly, “Thank you, sir. This isn’t quite what the chief planned, but I think we can make it work…. Brent, see if you can make the situation map completely truthful.”
…Hundreds of new markers glittered across the board. But they weren’t missiles. Belga knew the tags well enough to recognize satellites, though these looked like broken graphics. There were missing data fields and there were fields that contained nonsense strings. Moving off the north edge of the display was a strange rectangle. It pulsed with chevron modifiers. General Dugway hissed. “That can’t be true. A dozen size-chevrons. That would make it a thousand feet long.”
“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Lighthill. “The standard display programs can’t quite handle this. That vehicle is almost two thousand feet long.” She didn’t seem to notice the look that came over Dugway. She contemplated the apparition a second longer. “And I think it has just about outlived its usefulness.”
Ritser Brughel seemed pleased with himself. “We’ve done pus good even without Reynolt’s people.” The Vice-Podmaster came over from his Captain’s chair to hover beside his Pilot Manager. “Maybe we launched a few
