“And a sea of blood has been spilled over it since then,” Emma said absently. It took her a moment to realize she’d made Heydar frown and look away.
His response didn’t come right away, but when it came, Emma realized how deliberate it was. “That is why the world needs the Confed.” His solemn eyes shifted back to her. “You may think us opportunists with all this—” He waved his hand out at the pilgrimage-funded skyline. “—and we are. I won’t deny it. But we’re also the only force in the galaxy that can hold this region together in peace. We’ve kept the Levant from war for almost a hundred years, longer than its gone for centuries. Isn’t there value in that?”
Emma held his gaze for a long time. She didn’t know what to say, what to think. Much as she cherished the Voluntarist Network, she recognized that it couldn’t do what the Confed had done. In fact, the VN shared something in common with this throng of pilgrims—they both needed the power of the Confed to keep them safe.
The scuffing of fast footsteps interrupted her thoughts before she could give an answer. A half dozen of Heydar’s aides and bodyguards—all in suits but distinguishable by their physiques—cut through the crowd toward them. Something was wrong.
“Heydar,” one of the thinner men said in a tone grave enough to capture attention. He leaned into Heydar and whispered a few short sentences in Arabic.
Heydar’s eyes lit up in alarm. He jerked toward Emma and grabbed her by the arm. “We have to go.Now.”
“Go where?” Emma asked. “What’s going on?” She politely resisted Heydar’s grip, but he wouldn’t let up.
“I don’t have time to explain.”
His patronizing tone broke down all will for politeness.
“No, youwill explain,” Emma insisted, halting herself and yanking her arm away. “Or I’m not going anywhere.” She felt a little childish, but so did being manhandled.
Heydar glanced around to see if anyone was watching them, then whispered, “We’re being attacked. Sagittarian battleships are inside our borders.”
“What?” Emma gasped.
Heydar looked at one of his bulkier men. “Rashid, get her back to the spaceport,” he said in Anglo, presumably to prevent having to say it twice. “Go with him, Miss Scarlet. Do as he says.”
Before she could find the words to respond, the huddle of suit-clad Arab men disappeared back into the crowd with Heydar.
Rashid looked Emma up and down in her fitted pantsuit and uncovered, shoulder-length hair. Decidedly different than the women of his culture, but he didn’t seem to care. He began to reach out for her arm, perhaps out of instinct, but Emma gave him a look that made him think twice about it.
Instead, he rumbled in his thick accent, “Stay close,” then wheeled around and moved toward one of the exit ramps with surprising swiftness.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sagittarius Arm, near the Orionite border, on the spaceship Cygnus . . .
Velasco glowered on the other side of the holo field. The lordly, black-painted prongs pressed toward each other angrily above his pinched eyebrows. Freyz felt it, too—watching the massive and frenzied scene of destruction rendered in the display, the nerve-scorching tension of witnessing Swan ships fragment and shatter under relentless punishment and having no ability to alter their fate.
Three Swan Dreadcasters—their newest, heaviest battle cruisers—had become pocked by bolt hits and scuffed with laser burns and now hid behind the remains of the titans. Their captains made the right decision, in Freyz’s estimation. They faced four times the number of Confed capital ships plus a hoard of smaller and mid-size craft. They had already spilled out their entire cache of lancers, which dwindled in numbers amidst the Confed SCDs and gunships. All of it another convincing distraction from the sidelong strike forces of lancer and troop carriers curving into the Confed fleet’s ribs like a boxer’s hook shot.
Velasco stirred as two clusters of SCDs broke off from the main swarm to meet the incoming strike forces. Lancers ejected from their slots en masse in response. Rounds flashed from the drones’ guns on both sides, showering each other in a deadly, two-way deluge of lead. Flimsy SCDs splintered easily, transforming into an equally dangerous hail of jagged, fast-moving debris. The lancers evaded valiantly, but some were still captured by the SCDs’ rounds or detritus. They pulled together into a spearhead pattern and used their uninterrupted flow of machine gun rounds to punch through. The troop carriers followed in the mostly cleared path.
“Your infiltration strategy was foolish,” Velasco said, measuring his volume for his lord general’s ears only.
Freyz’s pulse jumped, but he forced himself not to argue. “Too late to change it now. We have to rely on our warrior-born.”
“You expect too much from them,” Velasco said. “We should have pushed in with our Dreadcasters first, matched their strength with strength.”
Freyz couldn’t hold back this time. “You can’t match firepower with a defensive fleet one ship at a time, my lord. It takes finesse to break—”
“Apparently, finesse can’t stand up to them any better than strength,” Velasco said, gesturing at the three mighty Dreadcasters cowering behind crumbling asteroids.
Freyz bit his tongue. “Give our warriors a chance to work.”
Already a few dozen had penetrated the hulls of two Confed battleships and were fighting through the corridors to join up with each other. They were about to get reinforcements.
The screwdriver of lancers plowing through the oncoming throng of SCDs petered out, several being picked off every passing second. Their cylindrical column thinned. Troop carriers began taking fire and ejected their husks, but they had a sizable distance to cover to get to the Confed battleships. One of the Dreadcaster captains evidently saw the problem and moved his ship out of cover, firing a volley into the mid-size craft between the flying husks and their battleship targets. Guided missiles and railgun-fired bolts connected to their targets, ripping chaotic holes through frigates and wresting gunships in half. But the Dreadcaster paid the inevitable price—a harsh return fire of streaking lasers and heavy railgun rods. Its deflectors struggled to parry the projectiles but only managed to divert a few. Titanium rods traveling over three kilometers per second could not easily be pushed off course, even by a few degrees, even with an advanced deflection array.
Freyz watched as tens of millions of dicars’ worth of damage were dealt to his Dreadcaster. But the ship’s misfortune acted as his warriors’ fortune, a benevolent diversion. Husks zoomed through the constellation of ship wreckages with scarcely more than a handful of machine guns firing at them. They bit into the Confed capital ships like a stream of angry insects. Twenty, thirty, forty successful attachments. Forty-five. Forty-eight.
Freyz’s lips cracked in a smile. He had a thought.
“Have you ever heard of the Earthen insect called the ‘termite,’ my lord?”
Without lifting his eyes from the holo display, Velasco muttered, “Educate me.”
“Tiny creatures,” Freyz said. “No bigger than grains of rice. Legend has it they will infest buildings, feed on the timber structures, erode them from the inside out.”
Velasco’s eye flicked up when he caught Freyz’s meaning. Long moments passed as he searched his lord general from across the table, and his lord general watched with utmost pleasure as more troop husks punctured the outer hull of Confed battleships. Blazer drills heated up and spun and burrowed.
“M’lords, we have a helmet cam feed from the team leader inside ship B-Five,” one of the techs announced from across the bridge.
“Bring it up in a window on the main holodisplay,” Freyz commanded.
“Yes, m’lord.”
A breath later, a square appeared at the bottom of the holo field showing shaky footage of a dim corridor. The table speakers played the audio. Shouting reverberated through the hermetically sealed tunnel, perforated by brief instructions spoken inside the team leader’s helmet. The camera perched atop the warrior’
s head, peaking over the open flex-steel bracer shield extended above and below the team leader’s forearm. A recess in the shield allowed him to aim his gun forward and pick off the Confed soldiers who emerged from cover to fire futile rounds into the impenetrable flex-steel.
The team of five held their bracer shields together, covering their forward and rear, moving through the gunfire-filled tunnel without taking damage. Freyz grinned at the sight of Confed crewmen bodies floating lifelessly in the corridor, their thinly armored vacuum suits riddled with holes leaking blood.
“Go forth, my termites,” Freyz said with glee.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Orion Arm, on the planet Earth . . .
Siraj slung his weapon over his shoulder and rushed into the Defenders’ makeshift control room—their compound’s twelve-car garage lined with plastic folding chairs and tables and outfitted with portable air conditioning units and standing fans and a few tall server shelves. Combat rifles leaned against concrete walls and two armored vans—the only vehicles parked in the garage. Computer screens, both vertical and horizontal, crowded the space atop the tables, where twenty or so of Siraj’s techs worked.
Qasim, the Defenders’ bespectacled, salt-and-pepper-haired lead computer technician, was leaning over the chair of a younger tech, pointing at the flat holo screen, explaining something.
“Attention, everyone,” Siraj announced. “Stop whatever you’re doing.”
The room quieted and all eyes turned to him. Qasim peered over his wire-frame glasses.
“The Confed is being invaded by the Sagittarians.”
Some of the techs exchanged looks without saying anything. No one knew whether this boded well or ill for the Defenders.
“I just spoke with our advisor,” Siraj said. “He wants us to start the offensive.” Eyes widened as that sunk in. “Qasim, are you ready to use the master keychip from the OCSS?”
Qasim sighed, stood straight, took off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He made his way around the table to his own work station, where the keychip protruded from a port in a small computer tower. Siraj had high hopes for that little device—if for no other reason than to make Fayyad’s martyrdom purposeful. Of course, the young man’s death was successful in killing apostates and damaging the Confed’s defense systems, but if the keychip could do all Qasim claimed it could . . .
Qasim worked the keyboard in front of her vertical screen and brought up a map of Jerusalem. A scattering of tiny, blue dots appeared all across the city. “I’ve gotten into the security cameras and the public announcement system,” Qasim said in his faintly whistling lisp, “so we can use that, but I haven’t managed to get anything else.”
“The security drones?” Siraj asked. “The sentry guns?”
Qasim pursed his lips and shook his head, standing straight again. “If I had more time, I might be able to—”
“We don’t have more time,” Siraj snapped. “We need to attacknow, before the Confed locks down the city.”
“But we can’t use any of their weapons against them,” Qasim objected. “That was the main reason we went through the trouble of getting the keychip.”
“We have the PA system,” Siraj said. “We’ll be able to broadcast our message. Others will join us. We can start the momentum while you hack into their weapons systems.”
Qasim wasn’t convinced. “When the fighting starts and our message is blaring through their PA system, they’ll know we’ve gotten into their secure network. It’ll be ten times harder to take over the rest.”
Siraj stepped to his lead tech and grabbed him by the shoulders, captured his eyes. “You can do this, Qasim. Youhave todo this. Some things are outside our control. You have to focus on the things thatare in your control.”
Qasim sighed and looked away. “Our advisor says it has to be now?”
“Yes,” Siraj replied. “While they tighten their grip on the city.”
“But he’s a foreigner,” Qasim whispered. “He’s not one of us. How can we trust him?”
Siraj let his hands fall away. “He wants to see the Confed destroyed. That much I believe. Beyond that, I don’t trust him any more than you do.”
“Fayyad didn’t martyr himself for a PA system.” Qasim’s softly spoken words pierced Siraj like nothing else could.
The leader of the Defenders stepped away, looking down, thinking. Wounded with the memory of that young man who walked into the Old City Security Station and ended his life for their cause. It reminded him of what really mattered, of what they fought for and died for.
Siraj looked at his roomful of techs—two Christian brothers from Brazil, another Christian from China, three Jews from devout families, several fellow Muslims from the hills of the West Bank, and many others from across the Levant. Unlikely allies, working together for the same cause, fighting the same enemy. All of them had sacrificed their lives, in a sense, to defend the glory of the Sacred Land. The glory of God.
“I want all of you to pray,” Siraj said. “Then . . . call the district captains. All of them. Give them the order. We’re initiating Operation Hilltop.” He glanced at his watch. “Beginning in thirty-eight minutes. On the hour. Got that? Thirty-eight minutes. God be with you.”
Chapter Thirty
Emma glanced up from her cell to the screen between the front seats of the auto cabin. It showed the path the self-driving vehicle was taking them through the city, a solid red line behind them and dotted line in their projected path. The three-dimensional map rendered buildings with startling accuracy, disappearing as the angled camera moved past them.
Rashid, sitting in one of the front seats facing her, watched her in silence with his fingers interlocked over his lap. He tried not to make it conspicuous, shifting his eyes away whenever Emma would look up, but his efforts weren’t successful.
The aerodynamically shaped auto swerved sideways, up a concrete ramp, and onto a curving overpass. Emma gazed out the window as they rose above the two-story superhighway, one story awash in the orange glow of artificial lights, the next exposed to the sunlight, both cluttered with fast-moving autos. Most of them were owned by some Confed affiliate or another—yet more income to spread around the globe.
Her cell chimed. A vizchat request from Mitchell. She answered, and in moments his worried face filled the screen.
“Hey, Mitch.”
“Where are you?” he asked, wasting no time.
“In an auto,” she said. “On the way back to the airport. Something’s going on.”
“No joke. We private?”
Rashid sliced his eyes at her as she plucked the narrow earpiece out of its slot at the top of the cell and planted the bud in her ear.
“Yeah.”
Mitchell let out heavy sigh and shook his head. Now his audio only piped through her earpiece. “This shit’s real, Emma. Sadge is pushinghard into Confed space. My contact at their command center says their defenses are cracking. They’re not sure they can hold ‘em back. And the Sagittarians just keep coming.”
“Figured,” Emma said.
Mitchell furrowed his brow at her. “Why are—you’re with someone, aren’t you?”
“Right,” Emma said, keeping her tone even and calm.
“Of course,” Mitchell said. “Confed people. Heydar still with you?”
“No. He had to go.”
“Got it,” Mitchell said with a nod. “They’re pulling all their VIPs.”
“Any idea why?”
His eyes lit up. “Well, there’s the news dump about Upraad. Have you seen that?”
“No,” she said, trying not to show the interest that she felt. “What was it?”
Mitchell took a breath. “The Sagittarians released a bunch of data about the battle on Upraad. The commoner uprising.”
“What about it?”
“It seemed pretty obvious an outside force was supplying the commoners.” He paused, then said a little quieter: “Emma, there’s a lot of evidence it was the Confed.�
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Emma almost gasped. “My God . . . how—how strong is it?”
Mitchell gave a noncommittal shrug. “I haven’t gone through all of it, but it looks legit. I mean, there’re pictures of the Confed symbol painted on a plane. They tried to cover it up, but it’s visible.”
“Couldn’t anybody do that?” Emma asked.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Mitchell said. “But that’s not the only thing. If you take it all together . . . either somebody went through a hell of a lot of trouble to set them up, or it was the Confed.”
“What would this mean for us?” Emma asked, then decided to clarify: “The DDF.” To hell with it if Rashid suspected something.
Mitchell shook his head again and took a while to find an answer. “Georgio’s gonna want to distance us from them.” He stared straight into the camera. “You really need to get out of there, Emma.”
“Will do,” she said. “We’ll link up in orbit, figure out where to go from—”
Red lights flashed in the ceiling of the cabin, and the vehicle engaged the breaks for a quick slowdown. The seatbelt dug into Emma’s breast. The screen between the front seats displayed a banner that read, “Heavy Traffic Ahead. Remain Seated.” Out the windshield, beyond a line of autos, a wreckage of scrap metal and burning tires blocked traffic. People filed out of buildings past the jagged barrier and pointed at it, talking amongst themselves. A huge e-banner built into the curved corner of a high-rise showed a Confed propaganda commercial full of smiling faces.
Rashid torqued himself around in his seat to look through the windshield. As soon as he saw the burning rubble, his hand flinched to open his jacket and remove his handgun. He aimed it down at the floor and jerked his head around to scan their surroundings.
“Mitch, I gotta go.” Emma ended the vizchat. She took out her earpiece and reconnected it to its slot on her cell.
Horns of the Ram (Dominion Book 2) Page 14