The fight has been much more intense, more difficult than predicted in initial assessments, but the situation appears to be well in hand. The most serious problem encountered thus far is the Aetryx predilection for using tactical nuclear weapons in a recklessly indiscriminate manner. Blast and thermal effects have turned many of the Caernan cities along this portion of the coast into rubble, and radioactive fallout has contaminated vast reaches of the landscape. While these conditions will not significantly hamper my operations on Caern, they will considerably magnify the difficulty that human forces will face when they arrive with the second wave.
With no immediate threats apparent, I concentrate on collecting combat reports from other members of the regiment.
Invictus reports that the planetary defense bastion at Dolendi has been reduced after fierce fighting among the ruins. Ferox has landed safely at Kanth and reports little in the way of enemy activity. A fortress and a supply depot there appear to have been abandoned. Third Battalion has landed at the base of the Eloma Peninsula just south of Losethal. Terribilis is moving into Losethal proper, while Fortis strikes out southeast, toward Paimos. Both report heavy but ineffectual resistanceinfantry and heavy armor, but nothing a match for a Bolo combat unit. I wonder why I have encountered the only enemy Bolos thus far. Is the Enemy holding back for a major offensive later?
I again attempt to establish contact with Space Strike Command. I pick up some disjointed and heavily jammed communications from several vessels but cannot raise either the fleet flagship or the 4th Regimental Command Craft.
The communications fragments, those I can decode and reconstruct, are disturbing.
"Ranger three! Ranger three! Bogies coming in on your tail!"
"All units. Rally in Sector seven-five-five by nine-one-four by one-three-two."
"Veloceras reporting. Stardrives are out. We're not going anywhere. . . ."
"Emynian has been hit! I say again, Emynian is hit!"
"God in heaven, look at her burn! . . ."
"We need to stop those gunboats! The KKMs are killing us! . . ."
It does not sound as though the fighting in near-planetary space is going well. I must face the possibility that I and my fellow combat units may soon be on our own, with no hope of orbital support or reinforcement.
I elect to use a narrow-band search radar in brief bursts of no more than .01 second each to attempt to locate Heritas, Denever or the 4th Regimental Command Craft. I detect large amounts of wreckage, much of it falling toward the surface and deduce that several capital ships have been destroyed already. I cannot tag the IFF beacons for Heritas or Denever and fear they may be lost. I do, however, locate the command craft, which appears to be damaged and falling toward Caern. I estimate it will enter the planet's atmosphere within the next two minutes. Since its communications appear to be out, I have no means of determining whether or not those on board are still alive.
As I expected, the main body of the enemy fleet is still well beyond even the range of my primary Hellbores. Several enemy fighters are within range, but my attacking them will do little good strategically and may impair my own mission by calling unwanted attention to my position. I decide to wait before intervening in the space battle, at least until I can coordinate with the other Bolos of my regiment.
A bright meteor streaks through the predawn sky overhead, followed by another, two more . . . and then a shower of them; I count thirty-two within the next five seconds. Debris from the battle is already beginning to enter Caern's atmosphere and burn up from the friction of entry.
My Commander, my Battalion CO, the regimental commander, and other senior staff personnel will face the same threat very soon, if any are alive now in that tumbling hulk.
And there is nothing I can bring to bear that will help them.
In some ways, Streicher thought, technology had complicated things. With contra-gravity, you didn't need to park warships or communications relays in orbit. You could balance them against the planet's gravitational pull on phase-projected CG waveforms and not worry about losing line-of-sight with a point on the surface when you passed over the horizon.
But relying on fallible technology rather than infallible physics carried a risk. When the CG projectors went off-line, you fell, because you weren't moving at orbital velocity.
Streicher's cranial implants included a tiny math coprocessor that, among other things, let him picture in his mind a math problem and have the answer come back to him, in his thoughts. He pictured the problemand could see in his mind the equations as they stroked the numbers and turned them into life . . . or death. Beginning at a relative speed of zero, five hundred kilometers above the atmosphere, s = s0 + v0t + 1/2at2, what mathematicians would call trivial. Streicher had always had trouble with math and knew he would be lost without his implant.
Time equals the square root of (2 * 500 * 1000 / acceleration), which for Caern was .74g . . . and as the numbers filed through his thoughts, he saw the result: 368 seconds.
Six minutes, eight seconds, to fall five hundred kilometers.
How fast would they be traveling at the end of that time? They'd been motionless with respect to Caern's surface at the beginning, so it became another of those trivial problems: v = v0 + at, with velocity equal to 7.4 meters/second * 368 seconds equals 2723 m/s.
When they began hitting the upper reaches of Caern's atmosphere, they would be traveling at 2.7 kilometers per second. Streicher was surprised. He'd not realized that a steady .74 gravities would build up that much velocity in that short a time.
If they'd been in orbit, the disabling of the command craft's drives wouldn't have been a major problem . . . at least, not an immediate problem. The complications of applied technology.
Hell, he wished now he hadn't run the numbers through his implant. There was another case of too much technology for one's own good . . . or at least for his peace of mind.
Not that not knowing would have been that much easier. He had only to look at the now-restored panorama on the compartment's circular walls to see how Caern had begun expanding with breathtaking speed, until it completely filled an entire half of the encircling sky, and the silver-gold curve of its sunsward horizon was rapidly flattening itself toward a straight line.
I need another euph. Damn it, he'd just had one a little while ago, but it was almost as though the little blue tablet hadn't worked at all. It hadn't cut the pain of his thoughts of Aristotle.
How much longer? The coprocessor also acted as timekeeper, and the answer surfaced in his thoughts almost without his thinking about it. Five minutes thirty-four seconds since they'd begun their fall.
Which meant they were now less than a hundred kilometers up, plummeting through ever-thickening wisps of the planet's atmosphere. He could imagine the outer hull already beginning to warm, imagine he heard the first faint hiss of tenuous winds grasping at the crippled saucer's form as it continued its slow tumble.
A definite shudder rumbled through the craft's hull, and he heard metal creak. A pen adrift from someone's pocket drifted in a slow curve until it hit a bulkhead, bounced slowly, then clung there. Someone in the circlehe thought it was Filbywhimpered.
Streicher was envious of Carla. At least she would be doing something, wrestling with emergency repairs to the drives, struggling to cheat the Fates, fighting, when the end came.
He knew there wasn't enough time to complete those repairs.
Another shudder . . . and then a third, accompanied now by a distant thunder from outside. The pen on the wall dropped to the deck with a clatter as the falling craft's pitch changed sharply. The viewscreens appeared to be hazing over a bit. Not much longer, now . . .
I continue to probe near-planetary space with short bursts of high-energy radar. The picture I am assembling is not good.
An enemy fleet, evidently, either dropped into the system out of hyper at very close range or has been hiding somewheremy guess would be within the atmosphere of the gas giant Dis, using contra-gravity to counteract the planet's strong gravitational pull. Had they emerged from hyperspace, they would have needed to do so considerably farther out in this system's gravity well, and the Confederation forces would have had ample warning of their approach.
As it is, their surprise appears to have been nearly perfect. I estimate that no fewer than nine Confederation vessels have been destroyed, based on the amount of debris present and by backtracking the trajectories of the major fragments.
The other ships are accelerating clear of Caern, now. Fifteen vessels are well beyond Dis and its moon system and appear to be preparing to enter hyper. Others are scattered throughout near space. The Enemy's victory in space appears complete.
Enemy fighters are decelerating now a few hundred kilometers above the surface of Caern. Two, I notice, are maneuvering to take out a communications relay satellite orbited by the Confederation fleet. Two more are entering the planet's atmosphere. I project their trajectories and discover they are on an intercept with the 4th Regimental Command Craft, now falling almost directly overhead at an altitude of 90 kilometers.
I turn my primary turrets One and Two, traversing to 095 and elevating to 78 degrees. I fire, and the Hellbore bolt catches the lead fighter like an insect in a blowtorch, disintegrating it utterly. My second shot .15 second later hits the second fighter, with identical results.
I continue to track the command vessel's descent, weapons ready to vaporize any enemy asset that poses a threat.
My efforts are almost certainly in vain, however. They appear to be in uncontrolled free fall and are doomed either to burn up in the atmosphere or impact on the surface within the next few minutes. . . .
And then gravity reasserted itself with a vengeance, a hard, wracking, rumbling vibration that filled the ship, and a sudden weight pressing down on Streicher from toes to face. They must be decelerating now at . . . what? A couple of gravities, maybe, as they began to encounter serious friction from Caern's atmosphere.
But the weight pressing Streicher down into the couch continued to build, as though three or four people were lying squarely on top of his body. Filby screamed . . . Voll cursed . . . but Streicher felt an almost peaceful inner quiet. He didn't want to die, not yet . . . but there were ghosts that had haunted him since the scorching of Aristotle, and he was realizing only now that it would be good never to have to face them again.
He felt so heavy now he couldn't move. All he could do was stare up at the compartment's ceiling. His vision was contracting, with a blood-shot darkness closing in from the periphery of his field of view. It was definitely warmer in here now, as the haze outside thickened to a glowing orange-pink curtain permitting only brief glimpses of the horizon beyond. Their tumble appeared to have stabilized, with down toward the deck.
Odd. He hadn't expected the decelerative forces to be this strong. . . .
"Okay, people!" Carla Ramirez's voice called over a speaker. "We have at least partial maneuvering power, enough to give us a chance! Hang on, and if you know any good prayers, say 'em!"
Prayers? Eudaimonics had little to do with deities, though some practitioners acknowledged a kind of overall cosmic god of bounty, blessing, and luck. That was it. Obviously the people on the bridge had jiggered something together that might give them a chance. What they needed now was luck, and lots of it.
What was that old saying? There were no atheists in foxholes.
The weight began to leave him again. They were slowing, though the orange-pink haze in the viewscreens hadn't thinned much if at all. The heat inside the compartment was stifling, but it didn't seem to be getting any worse, at least for the moment. Streicher's uniform was drenched with sweat, and he wished he could at least remove his tunic, but they were still descending at a couple of gravities at least. After that peak acceleration a few moments before, he felt too battered and bruised to try anything as strenuous as sitting up.
The haze cleared. They were descending through a sky of deep ultramarine. At this altitude, the sun was still visible just above the gold and silver bow of Dis. Caern's seas spread out in the near-darkness below, enormous circular bites taken out of rugged land. He could see now directly the pinpoints of burning cities, see the flicker and flash of combat still going on.
The view was not half so spectacular as the singular realization: they were going to live after all! . . .
The falling command craft appears to have righted itself, and its decelerative vector appears greater than can be explained by friction with the upper atmosphere. I surmise that either repairs have been effected, or the pilot was using extreme maneuvers to fool enemy fighters into thinking the craft was a dead piece of debris. If the latter, the ruse was not entirely successful, since some, at least, of the Caernan fighters were attempting to close with the crippled vessel.
It looks as though the command craft's main drives are out of action, and the pilot is attempting a landing using maneuvering thrusters alone. The maneuver is a dangerous one, especially if the repairs are jury-rigged and less than robust. Still, the fact that people remain alive on the vessel is encouraging. I mount guard, scanning the skies in all directions, ready to thwart any further attempts to attack the falling vessel. To do so, I open my radar transmissions to full aperture and power. This will attract unwanted attention, but the risk is worth it.
My Commander may yet survive this.
Streicher found he could sit up after all. His weight at last returned to normal, then dropped a bit more, until he weighed about three quarters of what he was used to in a standard G-field.
Carla came in through the bridge door, looking tired and battered, but radiant. "We did it, Colonel! I found a circuit module that fried with the power surge when they hit us."
"You found it?"
She shrugged as if in modesty, but her eyes were gleaming. "Told you I used to work on K-74s. They use the same microcircuit boardsten-twenty-one-fourteensthat these command craft use for balancing the maneuver thrusters. Damned things always burn out when the CG system goes, so it wasn't like I didn't know what to look for!"
"Have a seat. You look fragged."
"Comes from lying on the deck at seven gravities, instead of in a nice, cozy acceleration couch." She lowered herself into her seat. She was favoring her right arm, Streicher noticed. They would have to check that, once they were down. He wondered how the aides had fared during entry.
"This . . . this means we're going to make it?" Filby asked.
"It means we have a fair chance of touching down more or less gently anywhere we want," Carla told him. "Maneuver thrusters weren't meant for flying, but they've given us enough control over our descent that Lieutenant Cavese ought to be able to jockey us in for a more or less gentle skid-landing someplace. We need to tell him where."
"Someplace flat," Streicher said. "And close to one of our Bolos."
"We need to reestablish contact with the regiment," Jaime Bucklin pointed out. "It would be best if we didn't come down in the middle of a firefight."
"I'm appointing you regimental communications officer," Streicher told him. He needed something to do, now that his Bolo was gone, shot down before it had even reached the surface. "Get on it."
"Yes, sir."
They'd been out of the warout of the real war down there on the surfacefor over eight minutes, now, an eternity when it came to combat . . . or to the superhuman speeds at which Bolo combat units thought and acted.
Almost anything could have happened down there. They needed to get back in touch and find out what.
He wondered if he dared slip away to his locker below decks and crunch another euph.
The 4th Regimental command craft is coming down now in a series of loops and twists and turns obviously designed to bleed off speed. With the main drives out of action, only maneuvers such as these can reduce the craft's velocity in order to allow a reasonably gentle landing.
"Thunderstrike, Thunderstrike, this is Cloudtop. Do you copy?"
It is the voice of Lieutenant Bucklin. Communications have been reestablished.
"This is Bolo of the Line 837986, Victor," I reply. Thunderstrike is the tactical codename for 4th Regiment; Cloudtop the code for Space Strike HQ. "I have your vehicle in sight and am providing covering fire." Ten thousand kilometers out in space, an enemy fighter is entering a trajectory which, I calculate, could bring it into the atmosphere in my general vicinity. I fire a Hellbore and hear the momentary burst of static hissing over the communications channel.
"Very good, ah, Victor. We need to get this thing down in one piece. Can you assist us?"
"Affirmative." I consider the situation, checking data from my far-flung BIST remotes. "There is a flat stretch of open groundsand dunes, marsh, and open grasslandten kilometers west of my current position. I can guide you in for a landing there."
"Is the LZ hot, Victor?"
"Negative. Enemy forces have been suppressed, though they have been emerging at random intervals from underground tunnels. The open ground to the west is well clear of artificial structures, however, and is not likely to mask underground shelters. The main threat will be from air-space fighters, and I will have no trouble keeping those at bay."
"Sounds good, Victor. We'll see you in another ten minutes or so."
"I will move to the landing zone and be awaiting your arrival."
"Roger that, Vic. Cloudtop out."
I begin transiting the ruins, making my way to the newly designated LZ. I am pleased to be able to help but am worried as well.
The planetary beachhead is still tenuous in the extreme, and the surface battlefield a poor environment for unprotected humans. With some areas now contaminated by highly lethal radiation, and the probability of further enemy counterstrikes, it will be extremely difficult to provide adequate protection.
And harder still to provide such protection while simultaneously carrying out my mission objectives.
The kids had returned to the sim deck a few moments after Carla's grand entrance, not too much the worse for wear after the high-G trauma of atmospheric entry. They'd not had time to complete a full inventory, but they reported that there were ten Model 48 E-suits available in the command craft's storage lockers.
It would have to do.
Full sim-linkage was restored moments before the command craft made its final velocity-killing turn and arrowed in toward the grassy plain identified by Victor. The command craft banked above a ruined city the ship AI identified as Kanth, then began descending in a long, flat glide toward the northwest.
Streicher had been watching through the viewscreens, but he could see more linking into the data feed from the landing approach optical feed from the bridge. The walls of the ship became invisible, and he was flying unaided across the darkly shadowed land.
East, the suns were just beginning to rise above the vast, dark dome of Dis, its globe bisected by the eastern horizon. High-level clouds were catching the morning sun in golds and pinks and oranges, though the ground itself was still deeply shadowed. Ahead, he could see Ghendai; it looked like the thermal pulse from a Trixie nuke had set fire to the center of the city. Most of the buildings had been flattened in the center of the city and toward the west and north, and he could actually see a broad, savagely churned path leading up out of the sea, across a low cliff, and into the northwestern outskirts of Ghendai that must have been the path left by Victor when he came ashore. A large, burned-over area of right-angled ruins to the north was probably what remained of the storage depot and C3 facility that had been Victor's primary objective.
It looked like Victor had shot the hell out of the place. Streicher didn't see a single building, communications tower, or gun platform still standing. A crater near the center, still steaming, marked where the orbital bombardment had dropped a fair-sized slug of depleted uranium with a yield of a few kilotons or so, but the place had been worked over very thoroughly since then, leaving an eerie, cratered-moon appearance, like the two-dimensional photos he'd seen once of the region called "no-man's land" between the trenches of an ancient, prespaceflight war on old Earth. There were places where whole hectares of ferrocrete paving had simply been obliterated, replaced by broken stretches of plowed-up dirt, deep craters filling with water from underground pipes, and only the odd twist of an obliterated building's internal skeleton to show that humans had ever built here.
The scene reminded him forcefully of Aristotle, of the way New Athens had looked as he'd passed over in the Alexander's shuttle. The memories of that return to his homeworld surfaced vividly and horrifically. He had to bite down hard to force back the bile rising in his throat.
And then the command craft had passed the ruined military base and was descending low above an open plain. "Brace yourselves, everybody," Lieutenant Cavese said over the linkcomm. "Off-link and snug in tight. This is going to be rough!"
Streicher cut the simulation feed, opening his eyes to the stifling interior of the command deck. The compartment was like an oven after the entry maneuvers, and Streicher's uniform was now sodden with sweat. He began checking his harness, tightening self-lock buckles, as other members of the command staff emerged from the sim and began doing the same. No one spoke. Likely they'd been silenced by their flyover of the Caern military base. They'd all seen it, of course, earlier, from space, but the low pass they'd just experienced had an immediacy of detail and emotional impact that long-range data feeds from high-altitude remotes and BIST data simply didn't provide.
For a long moment, they sat there in silence, waiting . . . waiting . . .
And then a jarring crash grated through the deck, and they were thrown back and forth against their seat harnesses. For a handful of bone-rattling seconds, the command craft scraped and bumped and violently shook as it plowed across the field, and then the deck yawed sharply and the craft came to rest with a final, tooth-loosening jolt that killed the lights and the viewscreens.
For a moment, no one said a word in the steamy darkness. Even the emergency lighting was out, which meant the ship had been pretty badly torn up. The sim deck was intact, however, and that was something.
"Thank God!" someone muttered. "We're down!"
"Anyone hurt?" Streicher asked the darkness. "Any injuries?"
"Some bruises," King said. "Nothing serious." Other voices chimed in with battered agreement.
"Any landing you walk away from," Major Voll said, "is a good one."
With that, they began unbuckling. "Everyone stay in your seat until we get some light in here," Streicher ordered. "Lieutenant O'Hara. You were closest to the main hatch. See if you can make it to the bulkhead and use the manual controls to open the inner door."
"Yes, sir."
"Watch yourself." The deck, he estimated, was canted at about a thirty-degree angle. He wanted one person at a time moving around in the darkness. Footing was going to be treacherous.
The main hatch opened through an airlock; the lock's outer door, he remembered, had a small porthole in it. With the inner door open, a little light might filter through to the ink-blackness that filled the downed vessel now. He heard Shauna O'Hara scrambling across the tilted deck, heard her fumbling for the manual override access. A moment later, the door squeaked open as Shauna turned the recessed manual control, and a trace of light spilled through from the slowly brightening sky outside, enough that they could see one another again, at least. They began clambering out of the couch.
The bridge hatch cranked slowly open, and several crew personnel entered, Lieutenant Cavese in the lead with a hand flash. "Everybody okay back here?"
"As well as can be expected. Nice landing, Lieutenant."
"First time I ever tried it without a spaceport to touch down on. Not too shabby if I say so myself." He flicked the flash beam about the compartment. "We need to start moving out of here. This ship will be a target."
"As ranking officer on the ground," Streicher said, "I'm taking command. We have a combat unit on the ground outside who will provide cover . . . and we only have ten E-suits."
"The air reads okay, Colonel," Cavese said. "And the background rads are low in this area. We won't need suits."
"That's good, but a battlefield is still a remarkably unhealthy place for flesh and blood. There are other things out there to kill unprotected humans besides radiation. I recommend you stay with your ship while I and some of my people establish direct contact with our Bolo."
"Very well." Streicher heard the tightness in Cavese's voice and knew the order wasn't exactly appreciated . . . but the man had sense enough to keep his gripes to himself. Good.
"Okay. This is Kelly's unit, so you just volunteered."
"Yes, sir." She sounded excited.
"Carla? I want you along too. Check and see what we have in the way of hand weapons."
"Right, Colonel."
"One more . . . Lieutenant Bucklin?"
"Yes, sir."
"Shouldn't you stay here and let us do the recon?" Ramirez said.
"Negative. I want to see things for myself. Major Voll? You're in command while I'm gone."
"Yes, sir."
"Okay. Kelsie? Break out four of those suits. Let's get moving."
Because Cavese was right. Their landing, hard as it was, would have been noticed. And it wouldn't be long before the enemy decided to do something about it.
One thing was needful, though, while the others were getting their gear together.
He needed to get below, find a flash, and get to his locker.
He needed another euph, needed it bad. Needed it to stop the tremble in his hands, stop the sweating, help him focus, help him cope.
Just one more. It wouldn't hurt.
He awoke, stretching . . . and then the fear hit him in deep, shuddering waves, like the icy surf at Gods' Beach. The last thing he remembered . . . no . . . what was the last thing he remembered? Memory eluded him, like fragments of a dream.
Elken opened his eyes, and this time he could see immediately. He was no longer embodied within the armored-mountain hulk of a Bolo! But . . . but he hadn't been destroyed that he could remember, hadn't even gone out for another try at the Sky Demon Bolos, nor had he completed his part of the bargain that would give him the long-cherished shot at immortality. What was going on?
He reached out with a trembling hand . . . and it was a trembling hand, but not his own. The appendage he saw before his blinking eyes was human in shape, but massive, powerfully muscled, and covered with a supple layer of green-gold scales.
We are trying something a little different, this time, the god's voice whispered in his mind. You have been downloaded to a different body. A warrior body. <proud achievement>
Rising slowly, he found he was lying on a couch of sorts, with a helmet on his head trailing bundles of black wires and cables. He was in a room, high-ceilinged, dimly lit, with machinery of various descriptions humming behind armor-shielded pylons and inside the walls themselves. A technician, a human, helped him remove the helmet; she seemed a little hesitant to approach him. When he looked past her at a different tech helping another form sit up on its couch, he saw why.
A warrior-soma. A troll, armored and fanged, with large red eyes deeply recessed beneath the jutting brow that supported the weight of two up-curved horns. No one really liked them, the idea of them . . . but they'd been created by the gods and had their place within a properly functioning society. A place for everything, everything in its place . . .
The other soma massed perhaps three times what a normal human massed, standing a third again taller, with legs like tree trunks to bear the extra weight. The muscles were powerful and faster reacting than human, the eyes designed to see in near-darkness, the chest and throat and back thickened with extra armor, like leather toughened into something as hard as bony plate. There were other improvements to the original human genome as wellan extra heart in reserve, key arteries embedded in leathery internal armor, retractable claws, a skeleton that used iron, tin, and hafnium as well as calcium, other changes too numerous to mention.
He looked down at his hands again, turning them over as he examined the leathery skin and claw tips. He was a monster. . . .
Not a monster. <reproving> A highly potent, carefully designed warrior.
"But . . . why? I was just getting the hang of being a Bolo." The sound of his own voice surprised him. It was deeper, raspier, with an unpleasant gargle behind it.
There are tasks beyond the brute-force capability of a Bolo combat unit. <patient explanation> Capturing a crashed spacecraft, rather than obliterating it, is one.
"A ship? A Sky Demon ship?"
It made a forced landing close to the area where you had your previous encounters. There may be personnel still alive on board. Our intelligence indicates that it is a type of command-control craft. Any survivors may provide useful information under interrogation.
"Prisoners!"
Exactly. You will lead the combat team that will secure them. <confidence>
His troll hands closed into hard-muscled fists.
It would be good to come to grips, face-to-face, with the real enemy at last. . . .