Santana, Shootstraight, and Bozakov were standing on the partially extended ramp as the shuttle lifted off. It was hard to maintain their footing given how unsteady the ship was, but each man was secured to the Ramanthian vessel by a cargo strap, which allowed him to lean forward without falling off.
Within moments of taking to the air, Tanaka began to rotate the shuttle so that the stern pointed at the stack of cargo modules. That gave Santana a good look at the enemy’s position, as well as the rest of the bay and the shuttles parked there. There were no signs of activity around the other ships, for which the offi?cer was grateful. Bullets began to ping around the legionnaires as Tanaka backed the shuttle toward the Ramanthian stronghold, and energy bolts splashed the hull as the bio bods returned fi?re. And a devastating fusillade it was as the ship passed over the pile of cargo modules, thereby allowing the threesome to fi?re down on the bugs below. That sent the Ramanthians shuffl?ing every which way as the bio bods pursued them with short bursts of fi?re.
Santana suspended fi?ring just long enough to throw three well-aimed grenades before bringing his assault weapon back up again. The resulting explosions threw body parts and chunks of debris high into the air as Shootstraight fi?red shot after well-aimed shot into the maze below. Each bullet brought one of the enemy soldiers down as the shuttle slid back and forth above their exposed heads.
Howar wanted to surrender at that point, but knew he couldn’t, as the shadow cast by the shuttle slid across his face. So he struggled to remain upright in spite of the downward pressure caused by the roaring repellers, said a mental good-bye to both of his mates, and looked death in the eye. The human with the black hair fi?red, and Howar fell. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to end. The fi?ghting continued for another two or three minutes, but with no leadership, and having lost the high ground, it wasn’t long before the last of the enemy troopers went down. The shuttle landed shortly thereafter, which gave Santana an opportunity to inspect the battlefi?eld, but the sight of so many broken bodies brought him no pleasure, only a moment of relief, followed by a vast weariness and the knowledge that more work remained.
Having been alerted to the invasion by File Leader Howar, a group of Ramanthian naval personnel were quick to open fi?re on the cyborgs and their riders as they left the lift and turned into a corridor. And, like their peers in the launch bay, they were completely unprepared for what ensued. The barricade they had thrown across the passageway outside the cargo-handling facility did very little to stop the large-caliber bullets or the bolts of coherent energy that Snyder and Ichiyama fi?red at them. So it was only a matter of seconds before the ten-foot-tall invaders marched the length of the hall and killed the last defender. Though not fully operational yet, the space elevator was secured to a specially designed framework located just beyond the air lock the Ramanthians had attempted to defend. And having worked aboard the ship, the ex-POWs knew they wouldn’t be able to enter the airless space without pressure suits.
So it was agreed that the sailors would prepare the explosive charges, and the cyborgs would place them. Then, once everything was ready, the charge would be triggered from the hallway.
Having won the battle in the corridor, and with one of the demo packs dangling from her massive neck, Snyder felt confi?dent as she followed Ichiyama into the lock. Both cyborgs had to bend over in order to enter and were forced to remain in that position as the air was pumped out of the chamber.
The T-2s half expected to run into an ambush once the hatch cycled open, but nothing happened. That allowed them to enter the cavernous hold and look around. Roughly half the space was taken up by color-coded cargo modules. Various pieces of half-lit cargo-handling equipment were parked in the surrounding murk, and while some of them continued to radiate heat, there were no signs of Ramanthian personnel in the area. “It looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves,” Snyder said approvingly.
“Let’s get this over with.”
The head end of the space elevator was directly in front of them. It consisted of a massive framework that had been tied into the ship’s steel skeleton and supported a computercontrolled winch, which was there to keep the cable from becoming too taut or too loose. A system of guides kept the cable centered and prevented it from making contact with the surrounding hull.
Lower down, just below the crosspiece that supported the winch, Snyder could see the platform from which the specially designed self-braking cargo modules could be loaded onto the elevator. Ichiyama saw it, too, and immediately made his way out onto the ramp so he could place his charge. Knowing that one demo pack would be more than suffi?cient to sever the cable, Snyder was content to merely watch.
Such were the legionnaire’s thoughts as a giant pincer plucked the cyborg off the deck and lifted her up into the air. The loader was at least ten times larger than the T-2, and controlled from a compartment located in the machine’s blocky head, which was where a technician and inveterate slacker named Gontho was taking a nap until a series of radio messages woke him up. But rather than rush into battle, and potentially get himself killed, Gontho was content to remain where he was until the enemy cyborgs appeared below. At that point it was a simple matter to take the loader off standby and grab hold of the nearest war form. It was a feat the Ramanthian could accomplish with minimal risk to himself. Now, confi?dent that he could destroy the Confederacy cyborg, Gontho began to squeeze.
Snyder “felt” the huge metal pincers start to close and struggled to free herself. But the legionnaire soon discovered that she was going to die. Not like the last time, when the medics pulled her back from the brink, but for real. “Blow charge two,” Snyder ordered over the radio.
“And do it now!”
“What?” one of the gunner’s mates wanted to know. “I thought Ichiyama was going to plant the charge.”
The cyborg knew the bio bod couldn’t see them and was understandably confused. “He is,” Snyder confi?rmed, as her torso shattered under the unrelenting pressure. “But I want you to trigger charge two, and I outrank your swabbie ass. So, blow the pack now!”
The bio bod did as he was told, and the demolition charge attached to Snyder’s chest exploded. It destroyed the Trooper II and blew a large hole through the loader’s torso. Gontho swore as his controls went dead, the machine staggered, and tried to right itself. The Ramanthian hit his hatch release, but nothing happened, as Ichiyama called on the gunner’s mates to trigger his charge. That produced a fl?ash of light, but no sound to go with it, as the space elevator fell through the hole and into space. The signifi?cance of that registered on Gontho’s brain just as the technician felt the badly damaged loader topple forward. He screamed, “No!” but there was no one to hear as both the operator and his machine fell through the hatch and entered space. However, rather than follow the cable down as the tech feared he would, the War Gontho soon found himself in orbit. He screamed over a radio that no longer worked, watched his air supply continue to dwindle, and cursed his rotten luck. Gontho had an excellent view of Jericho, however, even if he couldn’t fi?nd the serenity to enjoy it, and was soon consumed by the surrounding darkness.
The space elevator didn’t fall at fi?rst because roughly half of it was still weightless. But without the dreadnaught to serve as a counterweight, it wasn’t long before the bottom half of the twenty-three-thousand-mile-long cable began to pull the top half down. And once that process began, the rest was inevitable.
The fi?rst hint that something was wrong came when the free-falling superstrong cable began to tug at its anchor point. Which, unbeknownst to the Ramanthians stationed around it, had been systematically weakened during the installation process. Metal clanged on metal, and the cable jerked spasmodically, thereby alerting the ground crew to the fact that something was wrong. However, it wasn’t until an upper-level jet stream took hold of the errant space elevator, and pulled the free end toward the east, that the Ramanthians realized the full extent of the danger they were in. But it was too late by then, as the
cable plucked the anchor assembly out of the pyramid it had been secured to and converted the heavy-duty hardware into a massive fl?ail!
A variety of competing forces caused the superstrong cable to whip back and forth across the adjoining airstrip. It leveled the terminal building with a single blow, made a loud cracking sound as it cleared fi?fty acres of jungle, and erased what remained of Camp Enterprise. Then, as Jericho’s gravity continued to pull more of the line down, the ground shook as if in response to an earthquake. The cable was falling in fi?ve-and ten-mile-wide coils by that time. Each loop scoured portions of the planet clean as it was pulled sideways and sent clouds of dust thousands of feet up into the air. And it all happened so quickly that Vice Admiral Tutha had no more than felt a tremor and looked up to see hundreds of fl?yers burst out of the Hu-Hu tree in front of his headquarters building than the free end of the cable destroyed 80 percent of his command. Including the prefab structure he was standing in. But by some stroke of luck, Tutha emerged from the debris almost entirely unscathed, to wander aimlessly through the wreckage of what had been the largest military base on Jericho. Later, after all of the damage assessments were completed, it would turn out that 7,621
Ramanthians had been killed by the collapsing space elevator.
Of course that wasn’t the worst of it. Somewhere, out in the jungle, tens of thousands of nymphs were about to emerge from the wilding stage. Which was the moment when teams of specially trained civilians were supposed to gather the youngsters in and begin the process of socializing them. Except that wouldn’t happen now. Which meant thousands of the Queen’s offspring were going to die, or worse yet, live like savages in the primordial jungle. The horror of that was too much to bear, and the offi?cer was busy searching the debris for a weapon with which to take his own life, when the energy stored inside a coil of cable located three miles to the north was suddenly released. The whiplike space elevator lashed out, erased a major river, and sent a tidal wave of soil fl?owing over the spot where Tutha had been standing. Meanwhile, many miles above the devastation, the Imperator fl?oated free.
19
Where law ends, tyranny begins.
—William Pitt, First Earl of Chatham
Speech in the House of Lords
Standard year 1770
ABOARD THE RAMANTHIAN DREADNAUGHT IMPERATOR
The Imperator’s spacious control room was located deep within the ship’s hull, where it was safe from missiles, torpedoes, and cannon fi?re. Everything except the least likely threat of all: a single alien armed with two pistols. But there Maximillian Tragg was, with a blood-splattered offi?cer lying dead at his feet, and a gun clutched in each fi?st. Ten Ramanthians of various ranks and specialties stood arrayed before him. Some were frightened, but most were angry, and ready to attack the human if given the chance. Also witness to the tableau, but invisible in the glare produced by the overhead lights, was a tiny sphere. It bobbed slightly as air from a nearby ventilation duct fl?owed around the device.
“Okay,” Tragg said levelly. “Now that I have your attention, listen up. In case you haven’t heard, a group of POWs murdered Commandant Mutuu, stole two of your shuttles, and landed one of them on this ship. Now, having cut the space elevator loose, they’re going to come here in hopes of taking control. A plan which, if successful, will land you in a Confederacy POW camp. Or,” the renegade continued, “you can take me where I want to go and return home safely. The choice is yours.”
None of the Ramanthians found either option to be very appealing as the ensuing silence made clear. “Let’s try it again,” Tragg insisted, as he shot a junior offi?cer in the head. “Either you will do what I say, or you will die!”
“All right,” one of the offi?cers said, as the reverberations from the gunshot died away. “We’ll do as you say.”
Batkin had been “watching” the scene unfold via the tiny marble-sized remote, which had threaded its way through the ship’s ventilation system and into the control room. “He just murdered another member of the bridge crew,” the cyborg said, as he swiveled his globe-shaped body toward Santana. “And the bugs are beginning to cooperate. That will allow Tragg to take the ship wherever he wants.”
The two of them, along with a combined force of legionnaires and ex-POWs, had arrived outside the control room, only to fi?nd that the access hatch was locked from within. Not by the Ramanthians, as they initially supposed, but by Tragg. Who, having been refused passage aboard a Thraki ship, had taken refuge on the Imperator.
“We have to get in there,” Santana said grimly. “Can your remote open the hatch?”
“Maybe,” the cyborg allowed doubtfully. “I could take a run at the door switch. But the remote is so small, it might not pack enough mass to close the circuit. And Tragg isn’t likely to give me any second chances.”
“But what if we could distract him?” Santana wanted to know. “So you could take two, or even three tries if that was necessary?”
“That would be wonderful,” the spy ball agreed. “What have you got in mind?”
“I will need access to the ship’s PA system,” the offi?cer answered. “So we can talk to Tragg. . . . As for the rest, well, we’ll see. Maybe the sonofabitch believes in ghosts and maybe he doesn’t.”
Meanwhile, knowing that the POWs had cut the space elevator loose, the Ramanthians threw everything they had at the Imperator. And, because it was going to take at least half an hour to bring her drives back online, the dreadnaught was an easy target for all of the fi?ghters, patrol boats, and destroyers that came after her. But at Tragg’s urging the bridge crew had been able to restore the battleship’s overshields—which meant none of the weapons thrown at her were actually hitting the hull. Not yet anyway, although that could change because the systems involved hadn’t been maintained in a long time. And the much-stressed force fi?eld could fail at any moment. That possibility was very much on Tragg’s mind as the renegade sat with his back to a corner and felt the hull shake as a torpedo struck the ship. The Ramanthians were forced to grab pincer-holds as one of the lights went out and particles of decades-old dust avalanched down from above. I won’t be able to keep all of them under control, the fugitive thought to himself. Not for two or three weeks in hyperspace. So it would make sense to kill four of fi?ve of the bastards the moment we get under way. But which ones? Such were Tragg’s thoughts as a female voice came over the intercom. “Max?
Can you hear me? This is Marci.”
Tragg felt ice water trickle into his veins. Did the voice belong to Marci? Who had returned from the dead? No! It was a trick! “You’re not Marci,” the renegade objected, as his eyes began to dart around the room. “Your name is Mary Trevane.”
Tragg wasn’t using the intercom system, but Vanderveen could hear him, thanks to an audio relay from Batkin’s remote. “No,” the diplomat replied. “Trevane is dead. You crucifi?ed her.”
The Ramanthian bridge crew looked on in alarm as the human stood and began to turn circles with both weapons at the ready. “You can hear me,” Tragg said suspiciously.
“But that’s impossible.”
“I listen to you all the time,” Vanderveen replied. “It gives me something to do while I wait for you to die. I’m looking forward to that. . . . Aren’t you?”
The hatch was locked from the inside, but by using the remote to strike the slightly concave pressure-style switch, Batkin could theoretically trigger the door. So while Vanderveen sought to keep Tragg occupied, Batkin sent the tiny device racing toward the switch. There was a loud clacking sound as the sphere made contact with the pressure switch, but the hatch remained stubbornly closed, and the spy ball knew it would be necessary to try again.
“What was that?” the renegade demanded suspiciously, as he turned toward the sound.
At least two of the Ramanthians had seen the tiny sphere hit the switch, bounce off, and sail away. But they weren’t about to say anything as the pistol-wielding madman fl?ew into a rage. “What are you staring at?” Tragg s
creamed at them. “Get this ship under way, or I’ll kill every damned one of you!”
Vanderveen chose that moment to switch personas.
“This is Mary Trevane,” the diplomat said over the PA system. “You can kill them—but you can’t kill me. Because I’m already dead!”
Batkin took advantage of the distraction to trigger the remote again. And because the robotic device was part of him, the cyborg went along for a virtual ride as the sphere sped through the air and smashed into the concave surface of the switch, a process that resulted in the electronic equivalent of pain.
But the results were worth it as the contacts closed, power fl?owed, and the hatch hissed open. Tragg heard the sound and whirled. But Santana had entered the control room by that time. Both men fi?red, but it was the soldier’s bullet that fl?ew true. It hit the renegade over the sternum, and while unable to penetrate Tragg’s body armor, packed enough of a whallop to throw the renegade down. Tragg fi?red both weapons as he hit the deck, but his bullets went wide as he slid backwards. A series of shots, all fi?red by Santana, struck various parts of the renegade’s body. One bullet creased the side of Tragg’s skull, two struck his right arm, and one smashed into his left. The mercenary’s pistols clattered as they hit the deck. That was the moment when a shadow fell across Tragg’s scarred face, and Vanderveen stared down at him along the barrel of a borrowed weapon. “My real name is Christine Vanderveen,” the diplomat said coldly. “This is for Marci, her brother, and me. More than that, it’s for all of those you murdered on Jericho.”
Tragg tried to fend off the bullets with his badly broken arms, but the projectiles went right through and pulped his face. The Imperator shuddered as if in sympathy as another missile exploded against her screens. That was when the president of the Confederacy of Sentient Beings arrived on the bridge. “Now that was a nice piece of diplomacy,” Nankool remarked approvingly as he looked down at Tragg. “Good work, Christine. Let’s go home.”
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