Savoign checked the shuttle’s progress and followed its proposed course within a hundred kilometers of the rising aliens. A close pass when one considered the normally vast distances associated with space travel.
“Very sensitive,” he promised. He glanced to the other side of Tranquillity Control, at the officers running their battle by remote. “I’ll take care of it.”
The major didn’t press. “Good enough. Icarus out.”
The first of the bloated creatures had actually escaped the atmosphere, though how they managed that at such a slow rise Savoign had no way of knowing. Freedom’s imaging systems showed them drifting out on a trail of frozen flesh and small crystals of expended gasses.
The creatures were fairly large now, twenty meters across, though the Seventy-first had gauged them at no bigger than two meters each when first they’d lifted into the sky. They were sloughing flesh and blood as they moved away from Earth, as if cannibalizing themselves and spitting out the detritus as a minor form of propulsion. Nearly disintegrated, the lead creature was barely recognizable.
A quick check of the numbers told Savoign all he needed to know. Most would hit the vacuum of space and likely die in a similar manner before the shuttle passed near. His only concern would be for the last two or three. They just might interfere with the shuttle’s passage.
Maybe the Neo-Soviet officer shouldn’t be allowed to see them. Or maybe he was looking for an excuse for target practice with more of Freedom’s weapons. Savoign smiled at the hit. Well, General Hayes had already authorized the use of deadly force against the alien, which could extend to any offspring, and Major Williams wanted the shuttle’s path “cleared.” It was a judgment call. That was enough.
Besides, what could it really hurt?
* * *
The trailing three seed-bearers burned the last of their reserves to strain against the hold of the planet below. Their antennae continued to generate lift against gravity, now completely taking over for the initial rise provided by a lighter-than-air mixture of gases. The plasma spark that fueled all necessary functions dimmed within them, ready to convert over to the time of consumption. Then their bloated bodies would begin to eat away at themselves in order to provide that final thrust into space. And as that plasma core snapped from existence, the Sleeper seeds would spread to the solar winds.
The tight beam of coherent light that speared them one by one lasted no more than a millisecond. It disrupted flesh and burned away the antennae providing its lift. The touch of plasma inside two seed-bearers flashed out of control, consuming them. The third managed an instinctual override of such a useless death, snapping the plasma from existence as it drained away its final strength to seed early. Deep inside, thousands of tiny motes, no larger than dust specks, erupted from their organ. Most were destroyed in the searing heat of the laser. But not all.
The seeds drifted out into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, already growing as radiation penetrated the shell to feed the life within. A Sleeper, every one.
And they slowly fell back toward Earth.
29
* * *
A ll said and done, the Seventy-first Assault Group was mauled but still alive. Still a functioning command.
The overcast haze above Gory Putorana had finally burned away by late afternoon, revealing the pale wash of a Siberian sky and the large, radiant scar that now commanded the day. A stiff breeze had risen, sweeping the smoke from the battlefield but unable to scrub the gagging scent of the dead Sleeper from the air. The occasional rifle shot punctured the stillness, the dying echo finally giving way to the sound of soldiers and vehicles on the move.
Colonel Raymond Jaquin Sainz made a rough head count as the unit slowly formed up into two short columns. Captains Searcy and Dillahunty had reassigned men as necessary to fill vehicles and maintain their subcommands at a rough parity. Matthew Dillahunty was functioning with a broken leg and four bullets pulled from his left arm and shoulder, but he refused medical relief.
Sainz knew that the Seventy-first was down to forty percent in equipment, most of which consisted of the Hydra troop transports so rarely fielded in direct combat. No Wendigo ag tanks had survived the final battle. Of the eight Aztecs, three would ride out under their own power, and the scraps of two more would be loaded aboard a Trojan supply carrier.
But Colonel Raymond Sainz would bring out better than sixty percent of his command, if just barely. Considering the unthinkable events of the last few days, that was better than anyone might have dreamed. He could live with that, and the personal price it had exacted.
His people massed in force at the lower end of the canyon draw, where the Sleeper had turned for Chernaya Gora in the face of the first Union and Neo-Soviet combined assault. This kept them away from the radioactive disasters of the colossal decaying corpse of the Sleeper and the now-smashed facility of Chernaya Gora. Only CBR specialists and their recruited help were allowed back into the area to search for any last survivors, be they Union or Neo-Soviet. Major Rebecca Howard was heading up those efforts, and now sought him out.
“We found them,” she said. “Coming down the draw.” There was no need to say who “they” were. Sergeant Tom Tousley was the only junior unaccounted for, and one of two left on the list of those for whom the colonel had demanded immediate notification. The other was Colonel Romilsky.
“Let’s see how Tousley is first,” Sainz said.
The sergeant lay on a stretcher, at the edge of the cordoned-off area the Seventy-first’s medics had appropriated for the triage. He was still covered with the lead-shielded blankets the CBR specialists had used in recovering him from the defile. Sainz and Howard knelt at Tousley’s side.
“They tell me you’re going to live,” Sainz said by way of greeting.
Tousley didn’t look well, his face pale with shock. He’d lost a lot of blood and had at least three busted ribs to go with a broken collarbone and possible concussion. The scrapes and cuts covering his exposed skin were too numerous to count. Despite the fog of pain, a hard intelligence showed behind his eyes. Sainz felt more than a little awkward trying to offer comfort to this man who’d made a habit of opposing his command of the Seventy-first, but it came with the job. And as Tousley had proved again, he, too, was a man who knew how to get his job done.
“You came through a tough spot, Tom.”
To Tousley’s credit, his question was not for himself. “My . . . squad?” he asked, the effort at speech seriously taxing him.
Sainz glanced over at Howard and nodded for her to field the question. “They’re alive,” she assured the sergeant. “Nash was broken up pretty bad, and Loveday took a heavy dose of radiation, but they’ll make it. Most everyone from the defile survived.”
Another medic stepped in and knelt at Tousley’s head, where the man couldn’t see him. He shook his head lightly, warning them off.
“Get some rest,” Sainz said evenly. “You did well, Tom.” He got up to leave, as did Howard.
“Colonel,” Tousley said weakly, and the two officers turned to look at him. His pain-shrouded eyes flicked up toward the head of the draw, toward the dead Sleeper and what was left of Chernaya Gora. “So . . . did you,” he said, just before his eyes drifted shut.
Sainz smiled sadly, finding solace in the words. He still ached for all he had lost in this fight, an almost unbearable feeling of emptiness. He nodded to Howard that they were done there, and the two continued their tour of the camp.
Union medics had set up a separate triage area for wounded Neo-Soviets, with a guard of several infantry squads. It was next to the section roped off to receive the few unwounded infantry they’d recovered.
“First and second columns are nearly manned and ready,” Captain Ryan Searcy reported as Sainz and Howard entered the area.
Rebecca Howard acknowledged for them both. “Search teams have three more bodies to recover from the men lost in the defile. Then we head out.” She looked to her commander. “Do we post Landvoy’s Aztecs as outriders?”
>
Sainz nodded his approval, and Searcy sketched a quick salute before returning to preparations for the Seventy-first’s departure.
By comparison with Tom Tousley, Colonel Katya Romilsky had come out of the upper draw both better and worse off. Her right arm was heavily bandaged up to the elbow. Two deep gashes on her left side were sewn together with butterfly sutures, while the compress covering her left eye was soaked with blood and fluid. Despite her injuries, she’d gotten off lightly, considering that she’d stood at ground zero during Freedom’s missile strike. She was probably in a lot of pain, but what showed in her open eye was anger.
“And here the great warriors come to gloat over the defeated,” she said in English, obviously for Rebecca Howard’s sake. Strapped into a stretcher, the closest thing the Seventy-first had to security restraints, she still refused to accept an inferior position.
“What is it to be, Sainz? Summary execution, or do the remnants of your honor demand a mock trial first?”
The colonel met her sarcasm with stony silence. Her words should have hurt, but Romilsky now seemed more a pitiful creature than the dedicated enemy officer whose opinion had once mattered to him. That person never really existed, though. She had been an illusion concealing a devious and vicious attack.
“Neither,” he finally said. “We’ll leave you with food and medical supplies so you can be recovered by whatever force your empire sends to investigate the destruction of Chernaya Gora.”
“And my Striker?” She glanced at the limited triage area and the even smaller holding site. “What’s left of it?”
Rebecca Howard pointed to a large stack of supplies protected by a rocky overhang. “Enough for you all,” she promised. “We’ve been assured you will be found within two days.”
Romilsky missed the implication, perhaps because of the single rifle shot that suddenly echoed down the draw. Then another. With a feral grin, she lapsed back into Russian.
“Some of my Vanguard resisting your roundup efforts?” she taunted. “I’d rather they went down fighting, so long as they take at least one of yours with them.”
Sainz shook his head sadly. “No, Katya Romilsky. Those are mercy shots.”
“Mercy shots?” The split second of doubt in her eye was quickly replaced by rage.
Major Howard nodded. “We are not recovering Rad Troopers or mutants of any type. Or any Vanguard who have obviously taken too much radiation. Colonel’s orders—they’re all being”—she paused for emphasis—“put down for their own good.”
Romilsky twisted under her restraints, glaring at Sainz.
“Vnebrachney,” she cursed, but then returned to English. “But you’ll never get away. At least I have that. How can you expect to escape the empire’s borders alive?”
Raymond Sainz’s opinion of Romilsky’s cunning rose another notch. Even in defeat she had the presence of mind to try to ferret out intelligence of military value.
“I think it would be most unwise to tell you any specifics, Colonel Romilsky. Let’s just say we have a native guide.”
“A prisoner? You said you would leave my people behind to be rescued!”
“Not a prisoner. He requested to accompany us, not shocked at all that we carried the day here. But then that probably doesn’t surprise you.” Sainz nodded toward his Hades command transport, which was grounded off to one side of the formed columns. In its shadow a frail, stoop-shouldered man waited, huddled against the cold metal, his arms wrapped around his body as if he were freezing.
The Neo-Soviet Mental.
“Nyet,” Romilsky whispered, more to herself than Sainz. Then, more forceful, “Nyet! I forbid this.”
She struggled violently against the stretcher restraints. The two Union officers backed off a step, watching dispassionately. “You cannot afford to leave me alive. I will hunt you at every step—strike at you in any way I can. Sainz, release me from this and face me on the field, damn you! If you have any honor left!”
He smiled sadly. “I have honor enough left, but not to be spent further on you. My mission was to facilitate the destruction of Chernaya Gora and return. And as you taught me so readily, Katya, duty rises above all else. Learning that cost me dearly, but I still accomplished half my mission. Teaching me that lesson cost you your command. That’s a net victory I’ll have to settle for.”
He nodded to end the interview. “Dos vedanya, Katya Olia Romilsky.” Sainz turned and walked away, and Rebecca Howard fell into step beside him.
“Mojet nekogda ne uvidesh dom snova!” Romilsky shouted at his back, mad with fury.
Sainz stopped short. He understood the words of her curse. He even knew its origin. Rebecca Howard looked at him strangely, but she let him be. A moment later he resumed walking, still lost in thought.
Mojet nekogda ne uvidesh dom snova . . . The curse came out of the Second World War, when the Soviets had faced the German war juggernaut. All of European Russia ravaged, all the way to the Volga. Leningrad besieged for two years. The cruelest thing to wish on a fellow soldier then: May you never see home again!
Not that he expected any superstition to prevent his forces from reaching rendezvous with the Leviathans. He could elude Neo-Soviet patrols, if they mounted any. A full day of hard travel would give them the coast of the Laptev Sea, just off Ust’-Olenek, and there they would meet up with Captain Fredriksson.
But a shiver of fear ran down his spine as he glanced up into the alien sky and that brilliant scar staring down on them. That they had survived the unthinkable over the last few days was wonder enough. If he could live through all that, no curse could keep Raymond Sainz from returning home.
If there was a curse, he knew it had nothing to do with getting home, only with what he might find when he got there.
E PILOGUE
* * *
B rygan Nystolov stood at the edge of a third-floor balcony in the Military Sciences and Technology Building in Moskva. He barely felt the freezing night of the Neo-Soviet capital, though his breath frosted in the air and rimed his beard with ice. Light traffic moved along Gor’kogo below. From his vantage he could see the Kremlin to the north, on the other side of Red Square. He stared south, ignoring the Taman Guards sentry who stood back along the wall. Instead he watched the thick sliver of moon as it hung over the Intourist Hotel.
There were no longer many stars to compete with the bright crescent’s dominance of Terra’s nighttime sky. The Styx Nebula would not be up for hours. Brygan knew that Randall Williams was up there, too, likely back to work at Tycho Base. Did he spare a thought now and then for the Neo-Soviet who had fled his offer of friendship? Brygan hoped so.
It was one of a dozen thoughts or more that he kept private. His debriefings were mercilessly repetitive, held every four hours to keep him at the edge of exhaustion. Still he was getting quite good at managing a system of half-truths and omissions, giving his countrymen everything they needed for the sake of Mother Russia and the empire, but refusing to let them dissect his thoughts.
If they had no direct use for Brygan Nystolov, what did it matter if they understood him?
By the second night of debriefings, Brygan knew he would not be among the group that would return to the rogue asteroid. He saw it in the way the MST directors behaved toward him, at turns suspicious or completely indifferent. They seemed to care more about his observations of Union positions and procedures on Luna than his work on Sputnik 23’s data or his observations and discoveries on the Union survey flight. The raw data from Icarus’s exploration flight they simply turned over to their own experts. And they fielded Brygan’s own questions with only vague replies. Would there be a mission to return to the asteroid and investigate the frozen aliens? Possibly. What about the battle he had witnessed? It was being investigated.
If Brygan had to guess, he’d say that a mission had already been launched to the asteroid base and its possible storehouse of treasures. Perhaps the hibernating aliens were it. Perhaps not. But the suspicious absence of key milita
ry operators these last twenty-four hours suggested that a mission was under way.
With one final look at Moskva’s skyline, Brygan turned his eyes toward the moon just long enough to whisper, “Dos vedanya, comrades.” Then he turned abruptly for the door leading back inside. He had made his decision, and now stood by it. No regrets; not this time anyway. And if it wasn’t a full life, it was an existence with purpose. In the empire, one could rarely expect more.
If Brygan Nystolov could hope anything, for now it would be that his sacrifice had bought the empire enough time to prepare.
* * *
Never enough time, Randall Williams decided, moving down the corridor of Tycho Base, in between labs and projects. With so much to oversee and accomplish in the two days since the Icarus’s return, he’d grown ever more annoyed with every wasted moment spent in tactical meetings and conferences with the Union military leaders of Luna. Even though Union Command had finally reestablished itself at Cheyenne Mountain down on Earth, there seemed to be no end to the nonscientific demands on his time.
Still, as he recognized the man waiting for him outside the next lab, this was one meeting he wouldn’t mind taking. Besides which, he trusted the captain to keep it brief.
Paul Drake stood leaning against the wall, arms folded over his chest. “I wanted to say good-bye,” he said as Williams came up to him. “The Icarus has been ordered to the Styx Nebula. Weapons R&D wants a closer look at its strange properties. I leave within the hour.”
Williams nodded. “Not back to the asteroid then?” He tried to keep the disappointment from his voice. The abandoned base they had surveyed could hold countless treasures, not the least of which was more information on the alien races they’d witnessed in combat.
“Nothing will keep the Neo-Soviets from reaching the base first. They’re burning in at four Gs. And Luna can’t spare the military assets to take the base by force.” Drake pursed his lips in thought, then admitted, “I have the impression that the Prometheus is being outfitted at Station Independence for just such a mission, though.”
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