The Parafaith War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Hisin, DefCom missed the revs, and they’re on the ground, but no one knows where. We’re shielding now—except for the power fans. With all the new revvie toys, they could be on top of us before the scanners register.”

  “Keeping the shields up is fine by me, ser.”

  “I’ll let you know. That’s if they don’t announce their arrival otherwise.”

  “Maybe they’ll pick on someone else.”

  “I think they’ve decided not to play favorites. We’re all the targets.”

  “You are cheerful, ser.”

  “I try, Hisin.” Trystin broke the link to the tech console and immediately checked the satellite plot, the scanners, even the EDI system—which usually wasn’t much good for anything short of a spacecraft’s energy discharges. He got nothing, except a growing tightness in his guts, probably compounded by drinking too much Sustain.

  He felt better about his decision not to have Hisin shut down the defective precracker. If the revs attacked, and Trystin couldn’t stop them, then the precracker didn’t matter. If the revs attacked someone else and made a mess, no one would care about it, either. Not with four shielded paragliders that no one could track. He tried to concentrate on the screens.

  As the minutes passed, Trystin kept focusing on the one screen, the full optical view, which only showed the few native cacti bending in the rising wind, and a few centimeters of grit scudding along the hillsides. Every so often, he tried the full energy scan screens. Nothing changed.

  The storms built to the east, and then subsided. The wind rose and fell, and the odor of ammonia and weedgrass irritated his nose. Every so often, he sneezed, and his nose hurt more.

  “Lieutenant, ser? Have you heard anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The precracker’s stalled out, ser.”

  “Well … it’s not going anywhere, and you didn’t have to disable it.”

  “The mobility module’s probably shot, too.”

  “Blame it on me.” Trystin shrugged. That’s the way it would come out. Officers were there for people to blame so that the techs didn’t have to worry about it. He went back to four-screen, but still found no signs of the revs.

  Hsssttttt … A thin wave of static singed the net. Trystin studied the metplot, but, by all indications, the afternoon storm was fading early.

  Cling! Trystin let the message scroll through his mind.

  “All PerCon Stations. DefCon One remains. DefCon One remains. Anticipate perimeter station attacks at any time. Anticipate attacks at any time. DefCon One. DefCon One …”

  Wonderful. PerCon anticipated attacks. Where along the two-thousand-kay perimeter did PerCon anticipate the attacks?

  He took a small sip of Sustain and stood, stretching. Under DefCon One, he had to remain in “close physical proximity” to the command console, but he needed to stretch tight muscles, especially if the revs were indeed coming.

  After stretching, he walked behind the console and looked into the locker. His armor was there, and so was the slug thrower. He unsealed one clip and set it by the weapon that wasn’t supposed to be loaded inside the station unless station integrity were broken. PerCon did not like careless officers punching holes in the station. The revs and Mara itself presented enough problems.

  Trystin slowly walked back to the command seat and settled back down.

  At 14:59.03, he spotted the puffs of dust barely rising above the hilltop to the northeast. He immediately dropped the scanners to the lowest band frequencies to find the distorted images of the rev missionary troopers.

  This time, though, there were no images near the perimeter lines—only hints near the top of the hills beyond the perimeter line, and nothing clear, just intermittent puffs of dust that couldn’t be natural. But the scanners didn’t show what caused the dust puffs.

  Trystin licked his lips, and checked all the defense systems, trying to compute a rocket trajectory for the backside of the hill.

  Crumpt! The impact of the first heavy shell reverberated through the station, and at 15:01.12 alert-red spilled through the net. Trystin snorted. “A lot of warning from all this hardware.” Then he hit the alarm for Hisin. “Revs! They’ve set up behind the hills, and it looks like we’re in for a few shells. I can’t see any signs of a troop assault.”

  “Friggers!”

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  Despite the additional impacts, since they were barely above the soil line, Trystin held off lifting the shields for the power fans—for the moment—and fired off a quick attack report.

  “PerCon, this is East Red Three. Desoll. East Red Three receiving fire. East Red Three taking fire. There are no revs in view or registering on any system … .”

  Crumpt! Another shell exploded, this time in the soil less than three meters from the station’s lower wall.

  Trystin released a three-rocket spread.

  Two more shells plowed into the station’s composite armor, well away from the fans or the defense systems.

  Trystin frowned. Why were the revs targeting that section? He called up the station schematic, noting that the fuel cells were beneath and behind the heavy lower walls there.

  A gout of dust rose, barely clearing the hilltop, and Trystin froze the schematic, and released a pair of rockets.

  Crumpt! The station shivered ever so slightly from the impact of the incoming shell.

  Trystin split screens, but nothing showed—nothing but incoming rounds illustrated in screaming pink on screen three—the representative screen. Not even a single flickering image appeared on any band width. The revs were definitely not mounting their typical suicide-style approach, and that bothered Trystin.

  Another alert-red flashed through the system, and Trystin’s mouth opened as he watched all four screens. Three wide plumes of dust appeared on the one-screen, and before each what appeared to be a miniature hovertank with a comparatively oversized gun, made visible only by dust flowing around it. Absently, Trystin noted that the tanks had no turrets, probably to reduce weight, and used the hover fans to turn the whole tank.

  “Hisin! Get into armor and get into the bolthole on the north side away from the fuel cells. Understand?”

  “But—”

  “Do you understand? There are three damned tanks out there, heavy guns, and I don’t know what else.”

  “Bolthole?”

  “The armored caisson!”

  “Stet.”

  Crumpt! Crumpt! Crumpt! The entire station shook.

  Trystin, even as he was hurrying to the locker and pulling on his armor, was redirecting the gattlings, so that all the firepower was concentrated on the center tank.

  He could sense the tank wobbling some, and as an experiment, targeted a pair of rockets into the low slope in front of the tank. The tank swerved, and both rockets exploded harmlessly across the composite armor.

  “Shit!” Half into the armor, Trystin disabled the autoseek on the rockets and cut the gattlings. He didn’t want to hit the tanks. The rockets wouldn’t do a thing to that armor, not before the station was so much junk.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  The station shivered again, and amber telltales began to flash across the maintenance board.

  Trystin directed three more rockets into the dirt in front of the center tank. With his armor in place, he grabbed the helmet and dropped back into the command seat as more shells shivered the station.

  “PerCon, this is East Red Three. Under attack by light armor—all hovertanks—class unknown. Repeat, under attack by light armor.” He added a few frozen screen images to the message and pulsed it off.

  Crumpt! The station shivered once more under the impact of the little tanks’ heavy shells. How had the revs gotten them planetside? He aimed another pair of rockets in front of the middle tank.

  Crumpt! Crumpt! A single telltale flashed amber on the maintenance panel, but Trystin didn’t check it. There wasn’t a lot he could do.

  Trystin’s rockets exploded in the soil before the lead
tank, and gouts of fine soil shrouded the hovertank. It nosed down into the small crater created by the rockets.

  Trystin aimed the gattlings at the soil around the front of the tank, and dust billowed up and around the vehicle. Trystin grinned as the unknown tanker overrevved his fans, and more dust swelled into a swirling plume.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  The grin vanished as the station shook again, and several more amber telltales flashed red. The remaining two tanks were less than four hundred meters away, their guns aimed point-blank at the wall above the fuel cells.

  Trystin grounded more rockets in front of the left tank, and dirt and dust flew, but the tank swerved and kept coming, throwing more shells at the station’s rapidly degrading composite armor.

  Another brace of rockets went into the ground—and another …

  “East Red Three! East Red Three, this is PerCon. Interrogative status. Interrogative status.”

  “PerCon, trying to repulse hovertanks. Will report later. Out.”

  Idiots! Automated direct-feed or not, he could only split his attention so many ways.

  Another telltale went red with the next set of shells that rocked the station, and the upper bank of fuel cells began to lose power. Probably cracked cells, reflected Trystin. Perimeter stations hadn’t been designed to undergo continuous heavy shelling.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  The station lights blinked, and flashed, momentarily, as the power load shifted to the accumulators. Trystin realized that the fans were still unshielded, and he left them open. He was going to need all the power he could get. As he shut down all the nondefense systems, he released another set of rockets, and followed with a pointed burst from the gattlings. The background hissing of ventilators died away.

  Dust and plastic fragments filtered down around him from the ceiling and probably everywhere else, mixing with ammonia and weedgrass.

  Kkkheewcchew! He sneezed, and an errant rocket flared into the hillside as Trystin rubbed his nose.

  The left tank pitched nose down into a rocket crater, and fans whined. Dust rose, higher and higher, and the tanker tried to rock himself out. Trystin permitted himself a tight grin as smoke curled out from the ghostly looking tank. The grit of Mara and the revvie tanker’s impatience just might have cooked that tank’s systems.

  Crumpt!

  Trystin checked his status—and wished he hadn’t. He had less than a dozen rockets left and perhaps twenty percent of his gattling rounds. Surely, he couldn’t have gone through an inventory that fast!

  But he had to stop the damned tank, or he wouldn’t have a station left. Another pair of rockets exploded into the ground in front of the last tank. Before long, it would be too close for his rockets.

  Crumpt!

  With one tank left, the odor of ammonia was stronger, and the number of amber and red warning telltales had gotten too numerous to count. Another system check indicated that the gattlings were down to ten percent, and that he had nine rockets.

  Where were the rev troops? There had to be some—somewhere.

  Another shell from the single functioning tank rocked the station. Above him the armaglass window cracked—probably from the flexing of the upper station walls under the pounding of the tanks’ guns. Minitanks, at that.

  Trystin studied the remaining mobile tank, which had suddenly turned and swept back toward the badlands. Then he nodded. His slim stock of remaining weapons had to be reserved for the troops that would follow.

  The station shook, and Trystin licked his lips. The remaining tank stood back beyond the hill crest and lobbed shells into the lower walls. The fuel cells were plastic and twisted metal and spilled organonutrient—if that.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  AIR SYSTEM INTEGRITY LOST!!

  With the holes in the lower levels, any vestige of breathable air was rapidly dissipating. Trystin jabbed the suit’s external tube into the seat pak. He didn’t want to use suit supplies any sooner than necessary, and he didn’t want to leave the control center yet. He wanted a shot at the rev troopers, and the station’s armor would hold out for a few more direct hits from the tank’s shells.

  Then he pushed the console jack into the suit’s wrist slot, since, when he closed the helmet, he’d lose much of the implant’s speed and range without the amplifier.

  As more ammonia rolled into the room he closed the helmet. Somehow, the screen images felt metallic. That was the only way he could describe the sensation. Now, he could sense the flickering images of suited revs slipping from cover beyond the perimeter. They seemed to know that the command center was collapsing under the continued attack from the single damned tank.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  How many shells did the damned little tank carry?

  Trystin licked his lips again and waited, checking the immobilized tanks. Both remained nearly gun-deep in fine red soil.

  The revs, whose flickering images looked to be nearly eight squads, poured down the hillside toward the apparently dead station as more shells smashed into the collapsing armor. Trystin forced himself to wait, even as he noted the fire in the fuel cells, hoping he could hold on for just a while longer.

  With a last shell, the hovertank swung wide and toward the south side of the station. Trystin understood that. The tank would use its shells to blast through the armor over the vehicle door.

  He waited, calculating where the tank would station itself, and pretargeted the rockets.

  The revs slipped closer and closer to the station.

  The hovertank seemed to turn and center itself on the door. After refocusing the one-screen on the tank, Trystin felt as though he were looking right down the muzzle of the tank’s gun.

  The shells crashed against the armor shields of the big door.

  Had the maintenance board been on-line, it would have been bright red, Trystin knew, but he watched and calculated, watched and calculated, as the shells hammered their way through the vehicle-door armor, pounding an opening through composite and metal.

  Then he triggered the last blasts of the gattlings, mowing through who knew how many revs, sensing vaguely, rather than really seeing, bodies falling across the shellchurned red powder that had been soil. As an afterthought, he also triggered the antisuit bomblets. They might get a few revs—maybe.

  All nine rockets went off, one after the other, right in front of the tank. Trystin had counted on the tanker moving forward, in rage or reaction, and he had guessed right, as the tank dove into the pit.

  Without waiting to see the results—with little power and no rockets or ammunition left, there was nothing more Trystin could do from the command center—Trystin unplugged the system jack and ran for the locker where he grabbed the slug thrower and the clip bag. He jacked his reflexes up one notch and bounded down the stairs.

  Dust and soot and heat swirled through the lower layers of the station, hot enough that Trystin could feel it through the heavy armor. He made it to the lock doors to the vehicle bay, where the heat died away with the distance from the burning fuel cells.

  Slowly, he cracked the door into the vehicle bay.

  Spang!

  The bullet ricocheted off the fragments of the outer door, where shredded metal framed a rough oblong in the metal. Fragments of composite armor formed a low barrier in the middle of the opening.

  Trystin skidded and dived behind the largest pile, hoping that he didn’t rip something vital in the armor. It was supposed to be tough, but so were perimeter stations and shell-shredded composite fragments.

  He squinted through the helmet and through a narrow opening between two fragments of composite armor at the indistinct images. One rev was crouched behind the eastern corner of the station. Several appeared to be firing from where the last grounded tank lay silent.

  Spang!

  Trystin waited, the slug thrower ready. And waited. And waited. Finally, the rev behind the corner peered out. Trystin still waited. The rev lifted his head slightly, just enough, and Trystin fired.

 
; The one shell ripped the juncture between neck and chest, and the rev pitched forward.

  “Lousy, lucky shot,” mumbled Trystin to himself, resigning himself to waiting, and checking his suit supply as he did.

  Who would run out of air first? The rev suits used a concentrator and a supplement system, but he had no idea when they’d last been resupplied.

  Spang! Spang! Bullets ricocheted through the garage.

  There had to be at least a dozen of them outside. He checked the clips. More than enough ammunition for the moment. He squeezed off two rounds toward the figures around the last grounded tank.

  They scrambled or sprawled deeper into the grit.

  Another rev figure shambled, almost drunkenly, around the corner of the station—respirator problems or lack of oxygen, Trystin thought. Or a brush with a suit bomblet. Tough. Trystin brought him down with a single shot.

  Then he waited, watching as another figure scuttled through the dust. The revs were low on air, and they intended to sneak around, trying to attack from both sides, and maybe from the tank all at once. It was a lousy plan, but they didn’t have a lot of choice if they were short on air. Trystin frowned. Did they have grenades, or something like that?

  That might make things less desperate.

  He waited, still watching, as Parvati crept closer to the horizon, the sun’s image getting redder and redder. He didn’t like his minimal cover, so close to the door, but if he drew back into the bay, he couldn’t see, and they could corner him inside.

  So he stayed flat, rifle ready.

  Then three revs exploded from holes, from somewhere, toward the door Trystin guarded. One of the running revs hurled something, and Trystin fired once, bringing him down, but the cylindrical object flew over Trystin’s head and deeper into the vehicle bay.

  Thwump!

  They had grenades.