trying to push him back.
“That was a collision…” Wolford said helplessly, trying to analyze the data that was coming into the newly- activated sensor.
“No kidding,” Bevins muttered.
“Shut the hell up,” Lee hissed at Bevins with venom in her tone and her eye and the young man blanched, swallowing hard. “Where is the ramship, Wolford?”
“I can’t find her…” Wolford admitted, shaking his head. “Ma’am… I think we must have taken down her drive field, then she hit the
“Thank God,” Franks said softly.
“We’ll come back for the lifepod,” Lee decided. “Set a course for the last ramship: we have to take her out before she can get near the survivors.”
“Aye, Captain,” Bevins said, happy to have an order to follow to take his thoughts off her previous anger. “Setting intercept course.”
“She’s still seven minutes out,” Wolford began, then frowned as he pulled up a section of the sensor display. “Ma’am, I have another Eysselink drive signature coming in, but it’s not coming from the gate in the Belt.” His eyes grew wide. “And it’s a lot bigger… Captain, I think it’s one of our cruisers! I can’t tell which one yet.”
“What’s her heading?” Lee asked, face lighting up with the hope that they might actually get some help.
“Oh shit,” Wolford blurted, “she’s heading straight for the ramship!” He looked from the display to Captain Lee. “She’s coming up broadside on her… only two minutes from field collision!”
“Okay, this is workable,” Lee said, leaning forward, her hands clasped in concentration. “When they have the field intersect, both their fields will be down; we’ll fire a Shipbuster at the ramship…”
“Hold on!” Wolford exclaimed. “There’s something…” He looked back up at Lee. “Captain, the ramship’s drive field just went down! I think that cruiser used a gravimetic emitter on her!”
On the main screen, Franks could see the avatar representing the Republic cruiser, its drive field still intact, move right through the disabled ramship, ripping it into component atoms in its wake.
“I guess,” Franks said as a smile passed over his face, “we have to tell Commander Infante she might not be the only engineer in the Fleet to have that idea after all.”
“The cruiser is dropping out of Eysselink drive,” Wolford said.
“Deactivate our drive field, Mr. Bevins,” Lee said. “Lt. Reno,” she addressed the Communications officer, “try to raise the cruiser, find out who we’re dealing with and let them know about the survivors-we can use the help retrieving the shuttles and lifepods.”
“They’re already contacting us, ma’am,” Reno told her. He looked at Franks. “But Lieutenant… I think it’s for you.”
Franks glanced at him, confused, but then looked at the main screen. Projected there was a full body hologram of Jason McKay, looking-Franks thought-very iconic in his Intell blacks, hands clasped behind his back.
“Franks?” he said, one eyebrow raising in surprise. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
“Saving the planet at least once, sir,” acting Captain Lee interjected and Franks felt a surge of gratitude. “Not to mention all our lives.”
“There’ve been a few changes since you left, sir,” Franks spoke up, trying not to be intimidated. “Oh, by the way, you’re a General now.”
“Well hell,” McKay snorted. “I should have stayed away longer… they woulda’ made me President.”
“Oh no, sir,” Franks shook his head vigorously. “I think you came back just in time…”
Chapter Forty-One
Ari Shamir ran with breakneck speed fueled by desperation, his legs pumping as he ignored the burning in his lungs and the dragging weight of his armor and weapon. Another APC flew into the air not fifty meters from him, throwing him down to one knee as the ground quaked and a mushroom of dirt and superheated gas climbed into the sky. Clouds of burning metal hung in the air and screams rang in his ears, some coming over the cacophonous roar of the communications channels, some from men and women who had pulled off their helmets in the throes of panic or agony.
Most of the troops had heeded the warnings from Colonel Stark and General Kage and had abandoned their vehicles in time, but here and there were bodies and parts of bodies in scorched black armor. Even those not touched by the constant fall of the tungsten thunderbolts from orbit were huddled in the tall grass, frozen with shock, trying to shut out the explosions and the screaming.
When Ari came to an intact vehicle, he leaped onto it, ignoring the shouted warnings of the CeeGee troopers around him, and dropped down through the open roof hatches to grab armfuls of shoulder-fired missile launchers from a rack in the back wall. With a heave that strained his back muscles, he threw the launchers out into the grass, then climbed out behind them, kicking free of the vehicle and taking the fall in a shoulder roll.
Scooping up the anti-armor weapons, he jogged as fast as he could with the heavy load into the tall grass where the vehicle’s crew was lying on their bellies, hands covering their helmeted heads. Coming up on the designated squad leader-he could tell by the chevrons on the back of the man’s helmet-he dumped the launchers right in front of his face, startling the man into a crouch. Ari hesitated as he read the name tape across the man’s breastplate and saw that it was Lieutenant Matienzo.
“Distribute these to your squad,” Ari told him, using the public-address speakers on the outside of his helmet, not trusting the comm channels that were still jammed by panicked reports from inexperienced officers. “Get them up and get them arrayed there,” he pointed down the road, where he could see several dozen other troopers getting into positions, led by General Kage and Captain Odawale. “If we don’t get into a defensive position, the enemy will run right over us!”
“But, but…” Matienzo stuttered, eyes flicking back and forth.
A tungsten rod sliced into the APC behind them and the explosion slammed Ari into the ground beside the CeeGee trooper, the overpressure flattening the dozen troopers into the hard-packed ground and stealing the breath from their lungs. Ari came up first, gritting his teeth and forcing his brain to work as he got his legs underneath him and pushed himself to his feet.
“For fuck’s sake, you stupid shits!” He screamed at them, his PA speakers turned up to their maximum. “Do you want to stay here by the vehicles and die like bugs? Get your asses out there and die fighting!”
Matienzo grabbed his rifle from where it had fallen and used the buttstock to lever himself to his feet. His eyes were wild through the slit of his faceplate as he looked at Ari, then turned back to face his squad. “Get up, Goddamn you!” he bellowed, half in anger and half in fear. “Grab the missile launchers and move!”
Ari nodded in satisfaction and moved on to the next intact vehicle…
Shannon crouched in the middle of the meadow, ignoring the instincts that screamed at her to take cover, trying to ignore the chaos and panic all around her as she concentrated on the voice coming over her helmet headphones.
“…was Dominguez!” President O’Keefe was telling her. “We’ve just seen the security feed from the Control Center!”
“How the hell did he do it?” she demanded. “I thought we had security measures in place to prevent this?”
“He used them against us, Colonel,” General Rietveld said bitterly. “He didn’t take control of the weapons from the center; instead, he accessed the targeting system remotely, then manually inputted a virus at the center’s physical mainframe that shut out any remote access from that point on.” He paused, and she could hear him taking a breath to try to control his temper. “Then he destroyed the whole place with orbital weapons.”
“Well, where is he now?” Shannon asked. “We have to get his tablet or whatever he’s using for remote access… if we get it, he’ll be shut out just like us.”
