by Kent, Steven
“A thousand men with M27s; I’m not sure what good that will do.”
“My militia is five thousand men strong, and we have a lot more than machine guns. We have an exit strategy we’ve been saving in case of an emergency.”
“We have an army of indestructible aliens marching into town. I think that qualifies as an emergency,” I said.
“It sounds like an emergency to me,” Doctorow agreed. As it turned out, the Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow had a very good exit strategy indeed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Norristown did not have enough electricity for everyday life, but the city’s emergency generators produced more than enough juice to power the sirens. All around town, sirens blared, calling the militia to arms and warning everyone else to abandon the town. When it came to evacuation, I had little doubt that the general population of Norristown took their warning sirens seriously.
The sound of the sirens tore through the air as we crossed town, their moaning wail carried across the ruined landscape unobstructed by walls or towers.
I rode with the locals in a truck to go see the place that Ellery Doctorow described as “the darkest spot on Terraneau.” On the way, we would stop by the Norristown Armory. According to Doctorow, the locals had collected enough guns and bombs to put up a fight.
“Captain Harris, I found Herrington’s transport,” Hollingsworth radioed in over the interLink.
“Any survivors?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“I can’t tell from here. Do you want me to go in for a closer look?”
“No,” I said, seeing no reason for him to risk his life to confirm something we both already knew. With the ion curtain forcing us to fly low, our transports made easy targets for the aliens. “Do you see any sign of the aliens?”
“There’s some kind of glow coming off some hills,” Hollingsworth said. “Should I go have a look?”
“No!” My voice lurched as I yelled this, but I could not help myself. Hollingsworth had not been on New Copenhagen. He had no idea what he was dealing with. “That glow is the aliens. Mark the area on the map and get back to the airfield.”
A moment later, the positions came in on the virtual map in my visor. Hollingsworth marked the spot where Herrington went down. It was twenty-three miles west of town. He also marked the aliens’ position, approximately eighteen miles west of town. One thing about the Avatari, they moved at a glacial pace. I took off my helmet so I could speak with Kareem O’Doul, Doctorow’s right-hand man.
“The aliens are eighteen miles west of us.” I had to shout so that he could hear me over the blare of the sirens. “That gives us four or five hours.” Now that I had my helmet off, cool wind blew hard against my face. It felt good.
O’Doul was a small, dark man with nearly black eyes and skin the color of walnut shells. His hair was brown but very close to black. “What about your missing transport?”
“They found that, too.”
“Shot down?”
“Yes, they got it.” I surveyed the landscape and listened to the sound of the sirens. “Do your people know what to do when they hear sirens?”
“They know,” he answered. “We have a fleet of buses for evacuating town. When people see the buses, they climb on without asking questions.
“I’m more worried about giving them someplace to come home to.”
“You and me both.” I mumbled this far too quietly for him to hear me. We could not fight the Avatari. Even with the militia on our side, we could not engage them head-on. Instead of fighting like Marines, we would employ guerilla tactics, the old hit-and-run offense.
“How fast can your men rig the tunnels?” I asked.
“I’ve seen them do miracles. You’re talking about blowing a big area. If they had more time, they’d give you a real work of art.”
He sounded like a veteran. “Sounds like you have some demolitions experience,” I said.
“Army Special Forces,” O’Doul said. “I’m not your demolitions man. We have a couple of ex-Navy SEALs rigging the bombs.”
“SEALs?” I asked. About eight years back, the Navy phased out its natural-born SEALs, replacing them with a line of specially equipped clones. “Survivors from the alien invasion?”
“Retired,” O’Doul said.
“Old guys?”
“And they aren’t getting any younger. Good thing setting up charges is like riding a bike,” O’Doul said. “These boys will be hobbled and senile before they forget how to set a charge.”
“Good thing,” I agreed. If his demolitions men were former SEALs, we were in good hands. The Army and Marines had talented demolitions experts, but the SEALs were in a class of their own.
O’Doul drove through the broken city desert and into a ghost town where two- and three-story buildings stood untouched and abandoned. The doors of all of these structures hung open, and a few had broken windows; but for the most part, the war had passed them by.
“Welcome to the new capital city of Terraneau,” O’Doul said.
A network of squat five-story buildings spread out around the area like a maze. Sky bridges ran between the buildings, connecting them like a strand of spider’s web. There was no mistaking these for anything but government buildings, they were too ugly to be anything else.
“You stashed your arsenal in a government complex?” I asked.
“Under the complex,” O’Doul said. “We saw the aliens knocking buildings down and thought it might be safer underground.”
We made the same mistake on New Copenhagen. We placed our arsenal in a parking lot under a large hotel. The strategy backfired when the Avatari destroyed the hotel.
As we drove down the ramp leading underground, I checked back with Thomer and Hollingsworth. Thomer had found Herrington’s beacon and the mountain in which the aliens had dug their mines.
Having seen the enormous entrance carved into the granite face of the cliffs and read the meters showing the toxicity level of the air, Doctorow became as cooperative as a newly minted cadet. When I put him on the line with O’Doul, he gave the order to mobilize the militia.
When Hollingsworth’s transport touched down, the militia sent trucks out to the airfield to bring him and the rest of my men into town.
Holding on to the unreasonable hope that he might respond, I tried to reach Herrington as well. I could not adjust to the idea that I no longer had Sergeant Lewis Herrington watching my back.
Four men with M27s stood at the entrance to the parking lot. They opened the iron gate, allowing us to enter the first level of the garage. The sound of industrial generators echoed through the structure.
We drove down one level and parked outside a fenced enclosure. Looking through the chain link, I saw that Doctorow had indeed stockpiled enough weapons to start a galactic war. From outside the fence, I saw shelves covered with M27s and rocket launchers. Pallets with crates of ammunition lined a wall. Behind the shelves and pallets stood three rows of Jackals—fast-moving jeeps with overpowered engines, rear turrets, and light armor.
A dozen armed guards stood inside the fence. When they saw O’Doul approach, they unlocked the gate. I followed, entering the organized madness of an armory made by the kind of men who submit to an alien occupation.
The armory had stacks of combat armor, more likely salvage than surplus. A fleet of tanks sat in one corner of the garage. They had both gas-spewing Rumsfelds and powerful LGs. These vehicles would be worse than useless against the aliens, their slow speeds would make them easy targets, and their armor would offer no protection against Avatari light rifles.
Taking a cursory look around, I saw rocket launchers, grenade launchers, rifles, pistols, cannons, landmines, and robot defense units called trackers. “We’re going to need particle-beam cannons and handheld rocket launchers,” I said.
“We have enough rockets to send your men out with a thousand launchers each,” O’Doul said.
“And all of yours, too?” I asked. “I’m going to
need men and vehicles.”
“I’m not sending my men out there,” O’Doul said. Sending men to rig tunnels was one thing; sending men into battle was another.
“Doctorow told you to give me whatever support I need,” I said. “I need vehicles, I need drivers, and I need men to fight on the line.”
O’Doul did not like it, and I got the feeling he did not like me, but he knew I was right. He ordered his men to load trucks with particle-beam cannons and handheld rocket launchers, and the men went to work.
Hollingsworth arrived a few minutes later. Looking at the stacks of weapons, he gave a low whistle, and said, “Man, you have enough shit here to overthrow an empire.”
I hoped he was right.
The underground garage/armory had seven levels, but at this point in the mission, the back of the third level was what interested me.
The rear wall of the third level opened to an underground train station. There were no lights in the station, just a platform that disappeared into utter darkness.
“Welcome to the blackest spot on Terraneau,” O’Doul said.
“I’ve seen assholes more brightly lit than this place.” I noticed that as he relaxed around me and my Marines, he became more and more profane.
“Where’s it go?” I asked.
“It’s the Norristown subway system. Where do you think it goes?” He stepped onto the platform and shined a torch out toward the tracks. The light was not especially bright. It dissolved into the blackness a few feet in. The area in the beam was a gleaming, polished, magnetic railway system hidden under a blanket of darkness so dense I felt like I could breathe it.
“Hit the lights,” O’Doul yelled to the guards.
A string of bulbs lit up along the ceiling. Instead of illuminating the tunnel, they produced a series of dim bubbles that vanished in the distance.
I put on my helmet and stepped through the opening. Even with night-for-day lenses, I could not see very far. I saw the plasticized world around me clearly enough—twenty-foot-wide platforms on either side of the tunnel; six magnetic tracks laid out like stripes that rolled out as far as the eye could see; and dead monitors, which had not displayed train schedules for years. Without juice running through them, the magnetic tracks were simply four-foot-deep grooves.
“You’re going to use these tunnels to rig your charges?” I asked.
“Unless you have a better idea,” O’Doul said.
“How solid are the tunnels?” I asked. “Are you going to be able to get to the zone?”
“We’ve mapped every inch of these speckers, Harris. I know my way around these bitches better than the guys who ran the trains. You just deliver the aliens to the right place at the right time, and I’ll cream their asses.”
“How are we planning to get the bombs in place?” Hollingsworth asked. Like me, he had his helmet on. “There is no way in the world that these guys are going to power a big system like this with a couple of emergency generators.”
“You let me worry about that,” O’Doul said. “The bombs are my problem; the aliens are yours.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, the bombs are my problem, too,” Hollingsworth said. “My orders are to coordinate efforts between your militia and our Marines. I’m staying with you.”
“Speck. What the speck!” said O’Doul. Judging by his language arts, he had become totally at ease around us.
O’Doul, Hollingsworth, and a small army of drivers would shuttle the charges to the target area on the west side of town. They could probably have loaded all of the explosives into a single commuter train had the trains been running. Instead, they loaded the explosives onto the gas-powered sleds that the transit authority had used for tunnel maintenance.
Their job was to set the trap; my job was to kick the hornet’s nest. I was taking 73 of my 148 remaining Marines along with 200 men from the local militia to meet the Avatari. All we had to do was lead the specking aliens into O’Doul’s blast zone, then get the hell out of there before the bombs went off. We would definitely take casualties on this one. We were dealing with the Avatari, and the one thing you could count on with those bastards was death and destruction. But if we ran a hit-and-run offense, I thought we might limit the breakage.
I had my men stock up on rocket launchers and grenades. If we were forced into a close-range fight, we would use particle-beam weapons. That would be the last resort. When O’Doul asked me what weapons I thought his drivers should take, I gave it to him straight, “All they will need are body bags and Jackals.”
Then we loaded up and left the armory.
As we drove west through town, I looked back at my convoy. We had thirty-five jeeps and thirty-six Jackals, all borrowed from the armory and piloted by militiamen. Those Jackals were our best bet. They had rocket arrays set up on their front fenders, machine guns with armor-piercing bullets in their rear turrets, and hundreds of horses under their hoods.
We headed south, then west across Norristown, entering areas as desolate as the Martian desert, in which I did not see so much as a living plant. The streets were buried under slag and debris. The parks were nothing more than burned-over lots with the occasional stream running through them. Using the Geiger counter in my visor, I took radiation readings and found more than a few hot spots. The first Norristown defenders must have resorted to nuclear-tipped ordinance as the war wound down.
After leaving the downtown area, we entered a storm-torn suburb in which the occasional tree, or house, or chapel stood as a reminder of how life should have been. As the invasion began, the troops defending Norristown would have sacrificed this area the way doctors amputate a cancerous limb. They would have let the aliens in, then bombarded the place with everything they had. The pockmarked remains of expended minefields covered much of the area.
My men traveled in jeeps; the militia rode in Jackals. Jeeps were smaller and a lot more vulnerable, but you could hop in and out of them as fast as you liked. With their armored walls, Jackals were not so easy to enter. I rode in a Jackal, but it was only as a show of confidence. The guy doing the driving was a high-ranking member of the Norristown militia. O’Doul had designated him Jackal squad leader. I could see why—the son of a bitch showed no fear at all.
The Jackal leader flipped some switches on his dash, and said, “I have the aliens on radar.” He swung the screen over so I could have a look. The Avatari were still a couple of miles ahead of us. Their ranks showed up as a solid white block against the glowing green background of the screen.
“Do you know that part of town?” I asked.
He laughed, “I used to live there . . . had a nice house with a swing set in the back. They had good schools in this part of town.”
“I bet the schools aren’t much of a selling point anymore,” I said.
“But the house prices have dropped,” he said. The guy had a sense of humor. We were driving through the wreckage of his old neighborhood, but he could still tell jokes. I liked that.
“Know anyplace between us and them that might give us a high-ground advantage?” I asked.
He slowed the Jackal and pulled the radar screen over for a closer look. “There’s Hyde Park,” he said. “It’s not exactly mountainous, but the bluffs might work out.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
He used his radio to relay my orders to the other Jackals, and I sent my Marines the info over the interLink: “We’re headed to a park where we should have a slight elevation advantage.”
It took about three minutes to find Hyde Park, a long, terraced pasture with slopes overlooking the western edge of Norristown. The charred remains of a two-story community center stood in the middle of the park like a large chapel overlooking a cemetery.
The jeeps led the way, skidding to a stop at the edge of a ridge so my Marines could climb out. The Jackal leader pulled up near my men and stopped. I asked him if I could use his radio to speak to his men. He nodded.
Taking the microphone, I said, “You boys driving the Jackals, y
ou remember your job is to harass, not to fight.” Then I thanked the Jackal leader for the ride and wished him luck. From here on out, I would ride in a jeep.
I took my spot on the hill, pulled out my first rocket launcher, and prepared for the battle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Every last one of us on those hills was a Marine. We were the ones with the combat armor, the training, and the frontline experience. I listened in on my men when they spoke. I heard them breathe when they were silent. The only thing I could not hear was their thoughts.
You see them out there? Where the specking hell are those speckers?
They’ll be here soon enough. You in a rush to see them?
The iron-gray-colored horde appeared in the ruins below us. They were far away, small and indistinct. I did not think they had spotted us yet when I gave my final instructions.
“The objective at this stop is not—I repeat, not—to kill aliens,” I said over an open frequency. “I’m not handing out medals for kills. Got it? Fire off a rocket, and back away. The name of the game here is catching their attention, not holding on to real estate. Anybody who falls behind gets left behind, so do us all a favor and save the heroics.”
As I finished my piece, a trio of Jackals rushed in. They sped across the grassy shelf like a formation of fighter jets, speeding over the battered landscape firing shots, then rushing away. One of the Jackals bounced over a crater left by an explosion, lurched over the lip, and flew through the air. It landed as smoothly as a cat jumping from a ledge.
The militia made its first strafing run while the aliens were still three-quarters of a mile away. Their light-armor Jackals looked like toys from that distance, and the Avatari looked no bigger or more distinct than the bristles on a toothbrush. Zooming in for a closer look with the telescopic lenses in my visor, I watched as the lead vehicle fired three rockets into the horde, then made a skidding swipe, the gunner in its turret swinging around so that he could fire large-caliber bullets into the aliens’ ranks the entire time. Those bullets could drill a brick wall to dust. They would cut a man in half, but it took three shots to bring one of the aliens down.