Bolivar was waiting at the edge of the cleared landing zone, and he saluted as she approached.
“I heard we might have a solution, sir?” he asked.
“We’ve got two,” she told him—but she couldn’t keep the exhaustion out of her voice. “Mages can neutralize them nonlethally, and we think we might be able to disable all of the nanites.
“But it’s going to disable everything else in the city. You should have got a heads-up from Huntress?” Roslyn hoped the Guardia had received an update from Huntress. She certainly didn’t have the energy to walk Bolivar through everything that needed to be shut down for safety. Or to warn the Marines that their armor was about to get shut down—but they, too, should have received an update from Huntress.
“We did,” he confirmed. “Multiple high-power electromagnetic pulses? That’s…going to be bad, sir, but if it works…”
“Everything we have says it should,” she said. “And I need to sit down.”
“Are you all right?” Bolivar asked.
“She took a Mage combat drug to deal with the crowd of infected that nearly reached the park,” Lieutenant Herbert explained before Roslyn could attempt to make up a story. “The aftereffects are harsh, I’m told.”
“Come with me,” Bolivar told them, offering Roslyn his arm to lean on. She gratefully accepted the gesture, supporting herself on the Guardia officer as they made their way to a section of the park with chairs.
Bolivar helped Roslyn seat herself, an apparently half-unconscious gentlemanly gesture that contrasted with the armor both of them were wearing. The folding chair creaked under the weight of Roslyn’s gear, but it held her up.
She looked up at the darkening sky and realized it was twilight. Less than a day. Everything that had happened since she’d entered the Orpheus lab had taken less than a day.
“It’ll be soon,” she told Bolivar quietly. “The perimeters are secure?”
“Your Marines have been leading them on a merry dance,” the Guardia officer said, bringing up the same holographic map she’d been staring at all afternoon. “Closest infected are at least fifteen hundred meters from the line. I don’t know how long that will last if this doesn’t work.”
“Long enough for Huntress’s Mages to get down afterward,” she promised. “We have a backup plan.”
“That’s appreciated,” he told her. “I’m afraid, Mage-Commander. This is my city. These are my people. I have…hope now, I suppose. But there are so many people injured, lost, afraid. Who’s going to help them?”
“The Cardinal-Governor has doctors, nurses, soldiers…the entire Planetary Army and every medical practitioner he could beg, bribe or blackmail into coming. They’ll be here twenty minutes after we’re clear.”
“And if we’re not clear?”
“There will be more Navy ships and more Navy Mages on their way,” she said. “It’s not over yet, Victoriano, but we know the dance steps now.”
“Chambers, this is Daalman,” the Mage-Captain interrupted via the channel. “This is the last chance I’m going to get to say anything before we blow up the sky, so this is your heads-up.
“Firing sequence commences in sixty seconds. We have two shuttles still up here that will be dropping immediately once the firing sequence completes. You, Mage-Commander, are going straight back to the ship and into the medbay.
“I do not trust Exalt. I understand why you needed it, but I still don’t trust that shit.”
Roslyn chuckled. Daalman was far from alone in that sentiment. Every Navy Mage and Marine Combat Mage had access to the drug. From what she understood, less than ten percent had ever used it—and that was after the Martian military had fought a war.
“Understood, sir. We’ll stand by for the light show. Any idea when we’ll have confirmation when it works?”
“When I get down there, one way or another,” Daalman said. “And, Chambers?”
“Sir?” Roslyn was too tired to object to the Mage-Captain coming down herself if the zombie plague wasn’t resolved. She was too tired for much of anything at this point.
“You did good.”
The chair was uncomfortable, but it was still a struggle for Roslyn to stay awake. But she managed it until a blinking icon on her HUD informed her the firing sequence had started.
“Look to the sky, Captain Bolivar,” she told the Guardia man next to her. “It’s going to be a hell of a light show.” She paused. “We have told people without auto-darkening optics not to look up, right?”
“Yes,” Bolivar confirmed, looking upward himself. “Everyone knows. I’m not sure I believe in salvation by nuclear weapons, but I’ll take whatever God sends me today.”
For a few seconds after they both looked up, there was nothing. Then Roslyn’s faceplate darkened as the sky flashed bright white, the first EMP bomb detonating directly above the quarantine zone.
Everything shut down. The heads-up display on her helmet vanished without much fuss, though the faceplate remained dark, making it hard to see in the twilight around her.
Roslyn sighed—and the second sequence of bombs detonated as she finished the exhalation. Multiple flashes lit the entire sky above Nueva Portugal in brilliant flares of multicolored light as nine EMP bombs went off simultaneously.
She hadn’t seen the firing program, but she could guess. They would overlay the pulses to cover the entire city, but the first detonation had been a test to let them estimate the coverage.
The next Talon Ten detonated all ten of its warheads simultaneously, a crash of light and thunder that descended on the park like a falling god. Seconds after that, another ten EMP warheads went off.
“How many?” Bolivar asked loudly, clearly feeling at least a little deafened.
“Nine more,” Roslyn said. “Twelve in total. Enough that we should be definitely below replication levels across the entire damn peninsula.”
Another round of bombs lit up the sky as the Guardia officer parsed that. He leaned back and looked over at her.
“It’s impressive, if nothing else,” he told her.
“Worst-case scenario is that we only temporarily disable the infected,” Roslyn said. “Even that opens options.”
More explosions lit the sky
