She moved at a full sprint alongside Lange, and they were within 10 meters of the PAC base, the spotlights of the facility cracking through the dense foliage that abutted its immediate perimeter.
“Listen up, soldiers! We've got a problem. Some of these bastards are masked from our barrier scans. Watch your goddamn backs!”
“Copy that,” came the simultaneous response of most of her unit.
“Use full spreads on the SCH's and shred the bastards if you can! Conserve laser mallets as much as possible. We'll need them for the biggest target.”
One thing that was discernible – and to some degree of comfort – was the diminishing sign of life along the western perimeter. Most of the concentrated forms that were Guardsmen had dissipated, and only a few scattered life signs remained aside from her own people. The spiral laser launchers of the Sprints were her design, and she always knew that in theory, a well-targeted volley would incinerate whole units quickly and brutally. It was obvious the launchers worked as designed.
“Dance1 to Dance2, what is your status?”
“Still under heavy fire, but we have established a bulkhead and enemy is pinned.”
“Get your Sprint in there and prepare for immediate extraction. You've done your job.”
“Copy that, Dance1.”
She heard shouts inside the facility. The words were incoherent over the weapons fire, but Janise knew time began to accelerate. The brush opened up, and she saw Hammerstein and Mickelsby. They were crouched, firing at will into the jungle, their weapons exploding in a thunderous fusillade of streamers.
“Lange! With me!” She pointed to the deep jungle from which came retaliatory fire, and they advanced swiftly.
Three of the enemy came into view, and she pulled back on the full-spread rod of the SCH, then pressed the trigger button. The spray of death that poured from her gun and that of Lange's met the targets broadside, and they jerked back, the initial volley only stunning them. But as they repositioned themselves in confusion, realizing they were overwhelmed, they turned to face Janise and Lange, exposing their already-battered frontal armor. Even as they screamed out of both determination and a realization that they were staring at the final seconds of their lives, they were able to level their weapons, and they fired. Bullets hit Lange, and he stumbled, but maintained control of his weapon. The Guardsmen became as helpless as rag dolls as their chest armor shattered and the bullets blew apart their innards.
“Great timing, sir.” Mickelsby said over the comm. “We're moving in on the pylon now. We've determined that py.. aaagh!”
“Down!”
A single laser mallet – a cylindrical flare of yellow energy packing enough punch to blow apart the side of a small building – came down at a sharp angle. It tore a hole into Mickelsby's back the size of a basketball, disintegrating the man's armor and splitting his body apart. His waist and legs crumbled, and the rest of his body flung into the dense brush adjacent to the facility.
“Get down, dammit! Hammerstein! Down!” Janise and Lange scrambled as well, trying to determine the origin of that shot.
She tried to get answers from her viop support, and the only movement she saw was along the northern perimeter, where the Guardsmen stationed east were now moving in to trap them. This was an anticipated maneuver, but she knew the shot could not have come from them. Hand-held mallet launchers could only effectively be fired from close range. Their kick was damned strong, even for the most battle-tested soldier.
“Hammerstein, how close are you to the pylon?”
“I'm showing 9.4 meters.”
“I suppose you couldn't just blow the fucker from there?”
“Negative, sir. I have to get right up to it so I can determine the assignment frequency. Otherwise, my mallet will just explode around it as if I were shooting right into the fry wall itself.”
She knew all of that. But there was obviously a sniper very close by who was ready to pick off the next man who stepped within range of the pylon.
“Dammit, Lange! Why we can't see this bastard on the scan? What are they using to block us?”
“You've said it yourself before, sir. They've got about eight years on us in the tech department. They must be employing something we've never encountered.”
She was pissed. “You think so, Lange?”
“Grant, Palmerston,” she called to the others in Dance1. “What's your status?”
“Twenty meters west of Hammerstein. Four targets down.”
“Advance and provide full spread cover for Hammerstein. If you've got good range on a target, hit the bastard with a launcher. We're almost there, soldiers. Let's finish this!”
She turned to Lange. “We need to get a bead on this sniper. I want you to track 20 meters north, curl back. The shot came from about a 45-degree angle. This is definitely heads-up, Lange!”
“Yes, sir.”
As the young soldier marched into the jungle, Janise entered the canopy of foliage where three Guardsmen had just been terminated by herself and Lange. For the first time, she felt the warm trickle of blood inside her bodysuit, but she could not tell just how badly the bullet hole was leaking. The pain was still nothing more than a nuisance, and her breaths were no shorter than she would have expected during such a moment of high anxiety. She moved on, her night vision peering through whatever cracks in the jungle she could find. She knew the sniper would be extremely still, heavily camouflaged.
A voice rang out of her comm.
“Dance2 to Dance1, commencing extraction! All targets on western perimeter have been terminated. What is your status, Dance1?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but something caught her eye. It was nothing but the movement of a leaf. Or so she suspected.
Snap.
Her movement was swift, her feet twirling in unison, and her firing hand reaching immediately for the launcher. She grabbed, aimed, pressed the trigger button as she turned and saw the barrel of an enemy launcher tip downward from a mahogany branch not 10 meters to her north.
The laser mallet disintegrated the branch, set the tree on fire, and the Guardsman yelped in horror as he tumbled. Janise raced from out of the canopy and aimed her weapon at the wobbly soldier who was groaning at the base of the tree. But before she could press the button, several rounds of bullets connected with the man's neck, and his head was blown off his body. It rolled away, still inside the helmet.
Lange emerged.
“That's two,” she told the young man who had more than exceeded her expectations. “You're on a roll, Lange!”
“No trouble at all, sir. I ...”
His words stopped at the same instant daylight seemed to ensnare the night. A bright beam highlighted Lange against the tropical background and the flaming mahogany tree next to him.
There was a voice over the comm. “Mother of God!”
Janise feared the worst before she even turned to face the light, and when she did, her heart sank.
The lights were brilliant and moved in pairs over the side of Mount Hillaby, their beams trained toward the perimeter of the base, hunting.
Behind the lights were the indistinguishable hums of Sprintjets.
“Holy fuck!” Lange said. “It's a fleet.”
He was right, and Janise felt both anger and dismay. She had begun to sense that something wasn't right, that even the resistance they faced along the northwestern perimeter was stronger than it should have been. But this ...
The Sprints closed in rapidly, firing a volley of laser mallets. Cabbage palms, instantly set on fire, became 20-meter torches in the night.
She cursed not because she now realized there was one possible outcome, but because they fooled her. Again. Led her into a firefight that should never have been. Again. Somehow defied reliable reconnaissance which said this facility was not heavily defended.
Lange joined her. “Sir, what do we do? Sir?”
She was seething, her viop support indicatin
g the northern perimeter was quickly being invaded by Guardsmen.
You won't do this to me again.
She turned to Lange, and she felt sympathy for him.
“We get to go to hell, Lange. But they will, too.”
56
C
ol. Dana Travert had immaculate teeth, their ivory perfection evident as they were displayed through her broad, rapturous smile. She was clearly ecstatic as she stood before the viop sphere's display of the battle that was in full chaos outside the facility. She especially seemed to focus her delicious excitement upon the northwestern perimeter, where ground troops were advancing rapidly against the invaders, and where the bulk of her Sprint fleet was closing in, blistering the landscape with bursts of laser mallets.
The lieutenant whose name continued to escape her stood close by, his jaw agape by what was transpiring.
“You knew this was going to happen, sir?” He asked gently.
“I'd answer that question if I didn't consider it so incredibly inane, lieutenant,” she said, laughing. “Certainly your mind is not that dense.”
The lieutenant did not reply, and Col. Travert placed her hands to her hips and puffed out her chest as she viewed the spectacle, then called for an SS link, tapped her Fountain. As the hologram appeared inches before her, she said, “Cross-relay assignment order TravertR1, clearance verification 0001-DTravert-Gold-link. Engage order on my mark.”
The lieutenant saw a rapid-fire array of schematic boards racing over the top of each other within the hologram, but he could understand nothing, only that the smile upon his colonel's face was one of immense satisfaction. She turned her head just a tad, and she winked at the lieutenant.
“Engage order! Now!”
Instantly, the hologram vanished.
“What's happening, sir?”
“Take your seat, lieutenant. You have yet one more part to play. We can have fun, even inside a black hole.”
“Begging the colonel's pardon, but I would prefer you tell me what is going on here.”
She took the stance that made him most uncomfortable, draping one seductive arm around his shoulders, while kissing him gently upon the top of his head. “It's the final stratagem before checkmate, of course. Now, I want you on your comm-set. You are to order an immediate launch of the shuttle.”
The lieutenant, stunned, whirled about and away from the colonel. “No, sir! That's beyond bounds. We have a firefight fully engaged out there. The shuttle could easily be blown out of the sky.”
She rolled her eyes and her smile vanished. Her free hand grappled the man's neck and pressed hard into the flesh. He gurgled. “Understand this, lieutenant. When the woman who is willing to provide you with after-dinner treats gives you an order, it is generally wise to obey it. I could do this myself, but why should I take all the credit for checkmate? I like to spread around the spoils. Now give ... the goddamn ... order.”
The lieutenant swallowed hard, and then he complied.
57
A
t that instant, Dr. Adam Smith was mentally prepared to strangle a man to death, and if he had to listen to much more of Sam Raymonds' ominous ramblings, he might kill the traitor.
He was enraged, he was terrified. And all he wanted from this man were specifics, none of which seemed forthcoming.
But suddenly, those details didn't weren’t as significant when a familiar voice exploded over a comm.
“Smith, McNichols and Dr. Solomon report to command pod immediately. We have an emergency. Repeat: Smith, McNichols, Solomon immediately to command. This is an emergency!”
Adam and Rand saw horror in each other's eyes, and they jumped up from their interrogation of Raymonds, who remained on the floor, crumpled on his side.
At the entryway, Adam stopped, repelled Rand with a hand to the chest. “No. You stay here. Find out everything from that man. We have to know what he's done. We may not have the time to come back to this.”
Rand nodded decisively, and they both looked back upon the traitor, who released a long, loud sigh of impatience.
“Bastard,” Adam whispered as he raced from the war room and made his way swiftly into the command pod.
From the top of the staircase, he was shocked by what he saw and the cries of pain that he heard bouncing off the high walls of the chamber.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Communications supervisor Michael Straczynski yanked his Fountain from its berth upon his face and tossed it away in disgust. Only a few feet away, a crowd had huddled around another tech, this one squirming in uncontrollable pain, his hands clasped firmly over his ears. He was moaning.
“Dear God,” Adam shouted as he raced down the stairs and joined Straczynski. “What's happened?!”
“Fuck,” Straczynski said between hard grimaces, and Adam could see tears in the man's eyes. “They did it. We lost everything.”
Before Adam could probe further, and as Dr. Marissa Solomon broke through the huddle and attended to the injured tech, certain alterations became apparent. The giant, omnipresent viop balloon that hung over this monitoring net was gone. Most of the operators took a stance away from their workstations, many of which were inactive.
“Tell me, Michael. What has happened?”
“Over here.” He pointed to one of the few working viop spheres. It displayed a maze of glittering grids spanning the entire Western world. But before Michael could speak, Adam noticed one particular region that was dark – an ovoid of tiny, silhouetted landforms around which the glittering maze abruptly stopped.
“It's an interface disruption called a black hole,” Michael began. “We thought it was theoretical technology, but one has been activated over the entire Caribbean grid. No signals going in or coming out. At the moment it happened, there was a feedback loop through MassGrid. It must have been a program executed by nanite hunters to purge any operators transmitting into the Grid. Richard here took it especially hard.” He pointed to the downed tech.
“I didn't think this was possible on MassGrid,” Adam said.
“It's not supposed to be. It would take an order from the highest possible security clearance to initiate a black hole. And even then ...”
“Our people? You were monitoring the assault?”
“Yes. I'm sorry, Dr. Smith. We saw a heavy engagement on the ground, and an anomaly came into range of the base and then ...”
“Yes?”
“We lost everything. And there's no chance we could work around this. Not until ... whoever ... lifts the black hole.”
Adam looked again at the schematic that illustrated the region-wide jam, and as he sorted through Michael's words, he felt like the world's biggest fool.
Highest possible security clearance. We thought it was theoretical. Anomaly came into range.
And then, as everything began to make perfect sense, he remembered the words of the traitor, spoken only minutes earlier:
“History has already been rewritten, and you have been removed.”
He stared into the viop sphere, even as he felt his legs buckling, and he looked not at the Caribbean grid, but at the enormous maze spanning the entire continent of North America. How tiny are we against this?
“Raymonds.”
His voice was hard, devoid of hope.
58
B
ryan Drenette raced through the Caribbean underports of MassGrid, looking for nothing in particular, debating whether to return to verboten territory and monitor what was happening on Barbados, when he saw the black hole.
It leaped across the wide expanse of hexagons and glittering towers like the coming of midnight, a coal black vacuum swallowing the electronic world before it. After a split second of stark terror, Bryan broke from his paralysis and ran.
“Disengage all links to underports! Release program order ...”
Before the Fountain's hologram could disappear, Bryan heard the sounds of night screams. They came like the shrill wails of thous
ands of dying children, their echoes spraying out of the enveloping shadow, beyond the stream chip and into Bryan's mind.
And in the final second before the black hole disconnected him, Bryan was sure he saw the signature shadows of genetic chasers.
He reeled as the link was broken, yanking off his Fountain and falling to the carpet in excruciating pain. The screams rebounded against his skull, and the throbbing crippled him.
For the next few moments, he lay on the carpet in a virtual fetal position. He thought only of how to make the pain go away.
59
J
anise counted more than a dozen Sprints, and they rained fire upon the island, dumping laser mallets indiscriminately as they advanced in a phalanx.
“Hammerstein, get to the pylon! Now! Do it! Grant, Palmerston, reposition for cover fire to the north! Lange, with me! We're going in as soon as the pylon is down!”
The mallets exploded ever closer, and the ground trembled.
Janise knew there wasn't enough time for them to disengage the pylon before the enemy Sprints would be on top of them.
“Dance1 authorization 006-Albright,” she spoke into her comm. “Initiate auto-flight assignment 101, full spread on forward spirals. Engage!”
A computer voice replied: “CONFIRMED. LAUNCHING.”
Although she could not see it through the fog of smoke that was rapidly enveloping the perimeter, Janise knew that the Sprint that had brought her to Barbados was now in flight. The difference was that it would not be arriving in seconds to extract her unit, as had been the original plan once the PAC shuttle was destroyed. Extraction, she understood, was no longer a consideration. Rather, the Sprint would serve only to buy time.
A familiar voice rattled over the comm. “Dance2 to Dance1, we copy your situation and we're moving to intercept!” There was decided fear in the voice of Dance2's commander, and it softened as he continued: “Here's to you, Captain! Go get them, sir!”
No more than a second later, she heard the hum of Dance2 as it passed high above, its running lights off as it beared down upon the phalanx. She thought she caught a brief glimpse of the basal weapons ports reflected off the light of the raging fires.
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