“Okay, I’m leaving a dozen of my men with you. Wu, you and your detachment stay here: provide security. And if they need your radio, let them use it. Within reason.”
Darzhee Kut bobbed. “I thank you Major, but I must ask one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you have any medical supplies?”
“I’m not sure our supplies would be of any help to you.”
“Actually, a few of your more common anesthetics are somewhat effective on our biochemistry as well.”
“What do you need them for?”
“For administering to First Delegate of the Wholenest, Hu’urs Khraam.”
“How bad is he injured?”
“He is dying.”
Presidential Palace compound, Jakarta, Earth
Barr turned to say something to Rulaine when Caine heard the saw-toothed supersonic ripping noise again. Chunks of the work-shed’s double-layered sheet metal were suddenly flying like buzzsaws around the interior. Several hit Barr, whose head bounced off the back wall, his falling torso sliced open from the left clavicle to the right floating rib. Daylight—suddenly present in the last two minutes—streamed in the holes like spotlights.
Caine looked up. “Jesus Christ.”
Trevor rolled up to one knee and peered out one of the larger holes, his body behind an empty oil drum. “Damn coil gun. Wonder where they have it mounted?”
Caine started moving to better cover. “Might not be mounted. I’ve seen some Hkh’Rkh elites big enough to carry them dismounted as squad-support weapons.”
Stosh’s eyes widened but he said nothing.
Trevor crouched down again. “Pretty quiet.”
Caine agreed, then silently amended, Too quiet.
A few rounds banged in from the front, followed by another spray of the bug-zapper rounds which ripped the door clean off its hinges. Then silence again.
Caine low-crawled to Barr’s body, took the hotjuice canisters out of his gun, scavenged the ammo and other canisters off his web gear, started tossing them to the others, always glancing toward the shed’s small rear window.
Trevor must have seen him looking that way. “What are you thinking?”
“That last volume of fire was pretty weak, compared to the stuff that got the last of the insurgents, and now, Barr. At first it sounded like they had two coils gun out there, but we only heard from one just now.”
Trevor nodded. “They’re flanking us, putting one of those damn bug zappers at our rear. Caine, you and I—we’re going to cover the back entry of this little deathtrap.” Trevor went prone, started low-crawling over long-unused rakes, hoes, and hoses. “If Tygg doesn’t find us soon, this could get a lot worse before it gets better.”
“Oh, I think you can count on that,” smiled Stosh.
“Stop scaring the new guy,” muttered Cruz.
“Don’t worry about me.” Caine wiped sweat, flicked a shower of it into the dust as he crawled behind Trevor. “I’m about as scared as I can get.”
Stosh was remarkably cheery. “Guess we’ll see about that.”
Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Earth
“Major, my real GPS is working now.” O’Garran frowned at the unit. “Although God knows how.”
“Bet they seeded this part of low earth orbit with station-keeping geosync-emulators as soon as the Arat Kur lost orbital control,” Opal speculated. “What’s the good word, Miles? Do we have Riordan’s telemetry, now?”
O’Garran nodded, poked his head out the rear floor door of the largely shattered HQ building, evidently blasted by the last of a long daisy chain of demo charges that had started out beyond the walls of the compound. He squinted across a broad tree-framed esplanade and pointed. “One hundred forty meters that way. My best-guess map puts him in that old garden shed you can just see over there.”
Opal came erect out of her crouch. “That’s where we just heard a shitstorm of fire.”
“That’s right, ma’am. And there’s another problem on the way.” He handed her his binoculars, pointed to the northeast. She looked.
At least a dozen Hkh’Rkh were flanking the tool shed the long way around, staying off the esplanade and behind a facing row of low buildings. One was carrying a ponderous coil gun eminently capable of cutting the shed into tin strips. Shit.
Before Opal was fully aware of it, she was giving orders. “Little Guy, set up squad two as the base of fire to cover our advance across the open ground toward the shed. Squad one is splitting into three fire teams: number one with me, number two with you, number three with the squad’s senior remaining NCO. Running leapfrog advance. Propellant mixes at the hottest and grenades—
“Major?”
“What?”
“That’s what I want to ask you: what? As in, what the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I—we—are going to rescue Cain—Mr. Riordan.”
“Major, all due respect—because I know you’re bulletproof—but that’s almost one hundred forty meters of open ground.”
“Which we can cross before those Hkh’Rkh get that coil gun in position to hit the shed, if we move now.”
“Seems like we could be sticking our necks way out on this one. We could take a lot of fire.”
“Why? Have they seen us yet? Do you see any other forces?”
“Well—”
“Right. Me neither. Whatever force is still hitting that shed is probably just a light pinning unit with regular assault rifles, keeping our guys pinned down while those other Sloths bring up their one big piece of artillery to finish off the humans they’ve trapped.”
O’Garran looked out at the esplanade, saw the Hkh’Rkh disappear behind the building that would screen them from being seen by the humans in the shed, but which would also screen the tunnel rats from being seen by them. “Seems right, but there’s a lot we don’t know.”
“Little Guy, there’s always a lot we don’t know. That’s where luck and boldness come in.” Opal looked at the Chinese fire team behind her. They were alert, terribly afraid, even more terribly committed. “On me. Run when I run. Drop when I drop. Got it?”
One of them nodded. The other two looked at him.
O’Garran looked at the hedges and arbors framing both the north and south edges of the esplanade. “Ma’am, I just don’t know about—”
Poor Little Guy. Such an old lady. She didn’t hear the rest of O’Garran’s tactical reservations. She was out the door and into the swirling dust, with one sharp phrase tossed over her shoulder:
“Cover me!”
Presidential Palace compound, Jakarta, Earth
Trevor had extraordinary eyes. “I’ve got movement, back by the Arat Kur HQ.”
It took Caine a moment to see it. A small group, running directly toward them. Humans, from their size and their gait. Then they dropped, and a second group of four persons appeared running behind them, moving about twenty meters beyond the first group before dropping. Then a third was visible—
“Looks like reinforcements,” commented Trevor, sounding like he was trying to control a surge of ecstasy and relief.
It did indeed look like reinforcements. And as the first group moved up and ran beyond the third, now no more than fifty meters away, it also looked like they were being led by a woman. A woman who looked remarkably like—
Caine stood: shit. “Opal!”
* * *
Opal? Where? Ohmigod—“Jesus, what the hell is she doing here—?” Which is a bullshit question because you know the answer: she’s here to save Caine’s sorry ass.
And she’s coming across too fast, too directly, not sending scouts into the arbor she’s paralleling. Jesus Christ, Opal. Get down, get under some cover!
Caine’s shout was a duet with his thoughts. “GET DOWN! COVER!”
* * *
Opal heard a voice roaring at her from the shed. That’s Caine! But—
He’s calling for cover. He probably needs covering fir
e. Shit. They must be rushing him from the rear! We’ve gotta flank the shed, get around it to draw down on the bastards—
She didn’t wait for the third team to advance past her. “Follow me!” she shouted and rolled up into a sprint toward the concealment of the south arbor.
* * *
Trevor saw Opal jump up to lead the first group in an off-sequence advance—and saw her go down just as quickly, suddenly obscured by a blood-red mist.
* * *
Caine barely heard the thunder-splitting drill of the coil gun which the Hkh’Rkh had evidently positioned in the south arbor.
He thought as he moved. Out the door, selector switch on the grenade tube to full automatic, pull the arming distance back to zero: contact detonation.
The first step carried him out the doorway, with good momentum.
I’m out of time.
His second step became a forward roll. The supersonic crackle of more coil gun projectiles sped over and past him. He rolled to a stop, facing in the direction of the fire and, with a slight sideways jog of the gun, squeezed the trigger. The three grenades arced into the south arbor’s clutter of bushes and trees with a rapid foomfoomfoom.
The three answering explosions were a bit more ragged. Some rounds hit a harder surface than others. But they erupted as a rough row of smoky orange flashes—one followed almost immediately by a short, loud sputter of similar blasts: secondary explosions. Someone’s ammo had gone up. That buys me one second, maybe two—
Riordan yanked a smoke grenade off his web gear, nulled the fusing timer, heaved it a third of the distance to Opal. It was fuming and pluming as it left his hand. Then a quick roll to the left, and another grenade, thrown farther along that same trajectory—just as the splintering cracks of coil gun rounds started spatting overhead again. Another roll to the left that ended with him coming up into a crouch and a first low, sprinting lunge toward—
* * *
Trevor jumped up as the three tube-launched warheads went off, saw Caine heave a grenade. Good: he’s putting down a path of smoke to get to her. “Stosh: get up here now!” Gotta wait, watch—Caine threw another smoke. Still no counterfire from the south arbor.
Keep waiting…
Just as Stosh came shoulder to shoulder with him, the coil gun resumed its shrill screaming. Trevor heard the crackling of the supersonic rounds, made his eyes follow the path of the sound his ears had detected, saw disturbance in the underbrush. Dumping his clip at it, he yelled. “Suppression!”
* * *
The volume of human fire erupting from the shed flowed into a high tide just as the skies broke again and the rain came down in sheets. Opal could sense, more than see, feet running past her, streaming up into the south arbor that had hidden the second squad of Hkh’Rkh and their coil gun.
And then a face was over hers, close, almost nose to nose. That nose was dripping rain onto her nose. It was a nose she knew as well—maybe better, now—than her own nose. She smiled. “Caine.”
Then the firing, which had apparently moved around to the other side of the shed, ebbed, died away like a tired tide. Good. It’s going to be all right, just as soon as I get my breath back—
Oh Christ, I’m such a liar. Even to myself.
* * *
The smoke from the grenades swirled around them, the drifts struggling up against the battering rain. It washed the dirt off Caine; it washed the blood away from the two gaping holes in the front of Opal’s right torso. It kept washing more blood away. He forced himself to smile, touch noses—she liked that—and lifted his head to call for help, hoping he’d discover a way to do so without alerting her to the severity of her wound.
Trevor came up, took one look, turned away, cupping his hand over the audio pickup on his headset, speaking urgently.
Looking down, he saw she was smiling. “Caine,” she said again, her eyes very bright, brighter than he had ever seen them, other than the time in the deputation module, right before her first interstellar shift, right before they first made love.
He held her hand. “We’ll get you something for the pain.” Caine held her hand more tightly. “And don’t worry; you’re going to be all right.”
She tried to laugh through her tears, couldn’t, gasped against the pain. “Not me—not me that I’m crying for.”
“Then who—?”
She shook her head. “For the baby.”
He hadn’t heard her correctly. “For the what?”
“For our baby.”
His eyes and nostrils suddenly ached and stung all at once, and his vision became as blurred and indistinct as the world seen through the windshield in a rainstorm. He wiped a hand across his eyes, leaned over to smile reassuringly.
But she was dead.
* * *
Trevor looked at Opal, at Caine kneeling, back to him, the rain hammering his soaked shirt flat against him. And all he could think was:
You never deserved her. It was bullshit—pure, irrational bullshit—to think that, to feel that. But that was all he could think or feel.
“Trevor. Here, mate. Look who I found!”
It was Tygg’s voice, speaking to him from the end of some long tunnel.
Trevor turned, saw Tygg, whose ready smile seemed to shoot off his face sideways, all at once, as if slapped out of existence. “Trev, what is it? What’s happ—?”
And then another face was in front of Tygg’s. He thought he might be hallucinating, but then he saw that this face was just as rainsoaked, as tired, as his own. “Elena.” He didn’t think to say it, but he heard his voice make those sounds.
She looked at him, then over toward Caine and the body, and back to him. She closed her eyes, turned away.
“Sir”—it was Winfield, now—“we’ve got things under control. We—that is, Commander Ayala and your sister—linked up with Lieutenant Tygg in the first courtyard and got the drop on the Sloths that were working their way behind you. I think we’ve pretty much secured this part of the compound.”
“Good.”
Trevor felt Elena’s hand rest gently on his shoulder. He wished he didn’t need it, was glad she had placed it there, wished it was his father’s.
Winfield didn’t stop. “Rulaine went back with Cruz to reorganize the insurgents, assign some new leaders to replace the ones we lost. Where’s Stosh?”
“Back in the shed.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Nothing. He’s dead.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Earth
Darzhee Kut watched as the human called Wu rose, apparently receiving a call from his superiors. As soon as he had moved out of ready earshot, Hu’urs Khraam spoke weakly. “Darzhee Kut, come closer. I cannot see you.
“I am here, Hu’urs Khraam. Here is the claw of your rock-son.”
“Would you had been. No matter. This day, you are. Is Urzueth Ragh there as well?”
“I am, Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam.”
“Then bear witness to what I decree. Darzhee Kut, I name you Delegate Pro Tem, plenipotentiary in regard to our presence in this system. It is to be explicitly understood that this confers authority over the fleet as well, just as I possess. Urzueth Ragh, forgive me for not naming you to this responsibility, but at this hour, the song we need is that of a diplomat, not an administrator.”
“I harmonize, Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam.” Darzhee thought that he had never seen Urzueth Ragh look so nervous, or relieved, in all the years he had known him.
“Darzhee Kut, it falls to you to perform the final task we must perform.” The old Arat Kur was silent.
“Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam, I do not know the task to which you refer.”
“Do you not? Darzhee, they—the humans—they must never learn what we know of them. They must never learn it of themselves. This is a mercy to both our races.”
“But Hu’urs Khraam, when you surrendered our ships, surely you understood they could not help but learn. They would go through our comput
ers, our records, and they would discover that—”
“And that is why you must give the order, the Final Directive, that will protect the secrets kept in the deep caves of the Homenest, Darzhee Kut. And you must remind your rock-siblings what the Wholenest needs of them in this dark hour.”
“Hu’urs Khraam, I cannot do this.”
“Darzhee Kut, you must. You must—and it is late. My father sings; I have not heard him for so long. I know the harmony. It is a minor—”
Hu’urs Khraam breathed in sharply. The breath escaped slowly, as it will from a corpse.
Darzhee Kut looked up at Urzueth Ragh. “He could not mean it, rock-sibling.”
“Certainly he did, rock-sibling.”
“But our promise to surrender to the humans, and all the lives of our own—”
“Rock-sibling, Darzhee Kut. They matter not. The fleet must be destroyed.”
Presidential Palace compound, Jakarta, Earth
Caine looked up from Opal’s bone-white face, turned to look for people he knew—for Trevor in particular—but he was surrounded by insurgents, some Australian commandoes, some very short Chinese soldiers. So where is everyone I know? Are they all dead? Who are these people? How long have I been here, with her?
He saw the garden shed, remembered it: maybe, with the rain coming down, Trevor and the others had gone back in there. Caine rose, remembered his weapon, reached down slowly, lifted its strap over his shoulder. He let his feet take him to the shed and through the doorway he had sprinted out of to try to save her life ten minutes or ten hours or ten days ago.
The only person he saw was Stosh. Dead Stosh, with his tongue protruding slightly from his faintly smiling lips and a hole where the base of his neck had been. There was no light except for the dark gray haze that came from skies heavy with clouds and smoke. Rain drummed on the tin roof and he went to look out the back door.
“Caine.”
It was a strangely familiar voice. He turned, saw Elena sitting on a gardener’s stool, behind one of the empty oil drums.
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