Margaret smiled sweetly. “That, Commander Foley, is your problem.”
Two days had passed since Margaret had entered Foley’s office and placed the Ramanthian head on his desk. Since that time, Foley had requested all of the information that his Intel people could provide on Ramanthian health problems, the status of their medical-support system, and an estimate of how many troopers were dying of natural causes versus combat-related trauma.
Hard data was difficult to come by. But some operatives believed that the Ramanthian mortality rate had increased even though they had a firm grip on the planet and combat-related casualties should have been down. So if the anecdotal evidence was true, there was a very real possibility that the bugs were losing a significant number of personnel to the fungus that Margaret and her team referred to as “Ophi.” But what if such reports had been exaggerated by amateur operatives who were eager to believe the worst?
That was a significant danger. Foley was determined to go out and get a firsthand look at what was taking place. So he was following a local named Pete Sawyer along a drainage channel in almost complete darkness. It was dry and would remain that way until spring, when the rains might or might not fall. In the meantime the floodway functioned as a nocturnal highway for rodents, coyotes, and the occasional human. Although, except for a few hardy souls like Sawyer, there weren’t many people who were brave or foolish enough to venture near the enemy-occupied town of California City. Prior to the war, it had been a bedroom community for nearby military bases. Now the bugs lived there.
With no moonlight to go by, Sawyer was forced to use occasional blips from a handheld torch to confirm their position. And when one such check revealed the wreckage of a human shuttle lying crosswise over the channel, he held up his hand. “This is where we go up and over,” Sawyer whispered. “The best vantage point is the old water tower. The bugs left it intact. Probably on purpose. So we put a hole in it about three weeks after the city was overrun. Now they store their water underground. The point is that they don’t care about it. So there aren’t any guards. Bit of a climb, though . . . Have you got a head for heights?”
Now you ask me, Foley thought to himself. “I’ll be fine,” he lied. “Lead the way.”
So Sawyer led the way up the concrete slope to the point where a ragged hole had been cut in the security fence. After crawling through on hands and knees, Foley followed Sawyer on a zigzag path that took them between abandoned houses, through a much-looted minimall, and up to the base of a duracrete tower. Foley assumed there was a globular tank higher up. But he couldn’t see it. Sawyer said, “Wait here,” and vanished into the night.
Foley’s hand rested on the silenced pistol that rode under his left arm until Sawyer returned carrying an aluminum ladder over his shoulder. “I keep it hidden,” he explained. “No point in letting the bugs know what I’ve been up to.”
Then, with the ease of someone who had plenty of practice, Sawyer put the ladder up against the support tower and checked to make sure that it was solid. “Okay,” he said hoarsely. “Follow me up. The rungs start about ten feet off the ground. After that, it’s a climb of 130 feet or so. Oh, and one more thing. If you fall, try not to scream. That could attract the wrong sort of attention.” And with that, Sawyer disappeared into the gloom.
Foley looked up, swore softly, and followed. It was easy at first, and because Foley couldn’t see much, the height didn’t bother him. But his legs weren’t used to that kind of exercise, and it wasn’t long before he began to feel the burn. Then he saw the scattering of lights that represented the Ramanthian base and realized that he was at least fifty feet off the ground. That triggered fear—and it took all of his willpower to keep climbing.
Don’t look down, Foley told himself. Look up. And it worked. To some extent at least, as the resistance leader forced himself to reach, pull, and push. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a strong hand took hold of his wrist and pulled him up onto a circular walkway. “There you are,” Sawyer said. “What took so long?”
“I had to pause every now and then to shit my pants.”
Sawyer laughed softly. “So you don’t have a head for heights. Well, you have balls, that’s for sure. Come on . . . Let’s walk around to the other side of the tower. The sun’s about to rise, and it should be quite a sight.”
As the men watched, a horizontal ribbon of pink light appeared in the east, followed by the first rays of sunshine as a new day began. But before the sun could part company with the horizon, Sawyer led Foley around to the south side of the bulbous tank. It was painted green, and as Foley craned his head to look upwards, he could see the jagged hole where a human missile had struck. “The show’s about to start,” Sawyer said. “We’d better sit down, or the bugs might spot us. Did you bring a pair of binoculars?”
Foley was wearing a knapsack. He shrugged it off and lowered himself onto the grating. The glasses were inside, and he took them out. It was hard to ignore the fact that he was more than a hundred feet off the ground, but Foley did the best he could as he brought the device up to his eyes.
Seated as they were, Foley could see under the metal railing. That gave him a nearly unobstructed view of a large crater and the road that spiraled up around a cone-shaped hill to the fire-blackened grating on top. It was loaded with hundreds of plastic-wrapped bodies all stacked like spokes on a wagon wheel. Heads in and feet out. And as he watched, more dead Ramanthians were being unloaded from a truck. There were so many that it was necessary to layer the corpses.
“It’s like this every Thursday morning,” Sawyer put in. He was seated with his back against the tank, peering through a pair of beat-up binoculars. “Except that the bugs are processing more bodies every week. And there’s one more thing. Look at how they’re dressed.”
Foley looked and saw what Sawyer meant. The Ramanthians were wearing the bug equivalent of hazmat suits! A sure sign that they were concerned about a contagious disease of some sort. “So they didn’t wear protective clothing before?”
“Nope. And the bodies were wrapped in something that looked like linen rather than plastic.”
The reports were true. And he was looking at a very generous supply of Ophiocordyceps unilateris. Foley felt a rising sense of excitement as the last body was unloaded from the truck before it pulled away. The vehicle circled the hill, crossed the crater, and passed through a gap in the rim. What might have been an honor guard of roughly a hundred Ramanthian troopers was evenly spaced around the top of the depression.
The truck vanished for a moment, then reappeared as it made for the base beyond. As Foley scanned the fortress, he saw a defensive ditch, weapons blisters, and high walls. The hint of a duracrete dome was visible beyond that.
That was impressive enough. But the knowledge that the base was like an iceberg, with most if its mass located below the surface, was quite sobering. Because any attempt to rush the crematorium and hijack the bodies there would be met with a counterattack from within the walls. Foley’s thoughts were interrupted by Sawyer. “Now watch this,” the civilian said. “They always do it the same way.”
Foley heard the faint squeal of something akin to bagpipes, followed by a sequential round of rifle shots from the troops stationed around the crater, and a loud whump as a tongue of fire shot up from deep inside the cone-shaped hill. Smoke poured up into the sky as the bodies began to burn. And the flames were so hot that all of the corpses were fully cremated in less than five minutes. “The ash falls down through the grate into some sort of bin below,” Sawyer explained. “They empty it every couple of weeks.”
Once the ceremony was over, the honor guard shuffled down off the rim of the crater, where they boarded a waiting truck and soon left for the base. The military funeral was over. “Well,” Foley said, “that was very interesting. Thank you for bringing me. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Sawyer’s face was brown and wrinkled from years spent working outdoors. His eyes were blue, and, judging from the look in t
hem, he thought Foley was crazy. “No can do. They’d spot us for sure. As the sun comes up, we’ll move west to place ourselves in the shadow thrown by the tank. It’ll be cooler that way. Later, once it gets dark, we’ll climb down. That’s why I told you to bring water and something to eat.”
Foley sighed. It was going to be a long, hot day.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
It was Wednesday morning. Six days had passed since Foley had climbed to the top of the water tower and been witness to the mass cremation in California City. Now he was eighty miles south of there, belly down on a hill, looking west as the sun rose behind him. The HOLLYWOOD sign had been rebuilt many times over hundreds of years. The first five letters still stood off to his right. The others had been destroyed during the invasion. But that was the least of the damage.
Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Alhambra, Monterey Park, and Montebello were history. And there, at the very center of a blackened crater, was an enormous starship. So large it would never be able to lift off. Foley assumed that the vessel had been intentionally sacrificed to provide the Ramanthians with an instant fortress.
The ship had a black, slightly iridescent skin that shimmered in the early-morning light. Artificial lighting crackled around it from time to time, killing any bird unfortunate enough to venture close and suggesting that the ship’s defensive screens were still operational.
Dirt ramps had been constructed so that hover vehicles could drive up into what had originally been the vessel’s launch bay, and all manner of prefab structures had been set up around the brooding globe. As Foley swept his glasses across them, he saw what looked like supply dumps, temporary mess halls, and rows of perfectly spaced troop habs.
The whole thing was more than impressive. It was terrifying. Because there, right in front of him, was the very core of the Ramanthian presence on Earth. And to touch it was to die. But that was exactly what he and thousands of others were about to do. Not because they had any real hope of conquering the beast, but in order to throw a scare into the invaders and get them to rush reinforcements into the area. Reinforcements from places like California City.
During the process, Foley hoped to kill a lot of Ramanthians—while suffering as few casualties as possible. And this time he had been careful to seek advice from key subordinates and plan for every imaginable scenario. Or so he hoped.
Foley and his security detail were all clad in precious ghost camos, which, along with some other specialized gear, had been shipped in for the occasion. They were covered with special netting that was designed to conceal both their heat signatures and a certain amount of electromagnetic activity.
Would the special-ops gear work? Foley hoped so as the radio reports began to come in. Each voice represented a group of resistance fighters, some of whom were at war with each other for one reason or another but had agreed to a temporary truce in order to participate in what promised to be the first really important attack on the Ramanthians.
They weren’t aware of the real purpose behind the attack, however, and Foley felt guilty about that, even though security demanded that only a few people be in on the secret. Still, Foley told himself as the calls came in, we’re going to kick some Ramanthian ass, and that’s for sure.
Most of the groups were made up of civilians, which meant that they weren’t that big on military radio procedure. “This is Commander Marcos,” a booming voice said. “The Conquis-tadores are ready.”
“This is the Hammer,” another chimed in. “We’re ready to fall. Over.”
“The Rats are in position,” a female voice said. “Just say the word.”
And so it went until more than a dozen groups had reported in. Then it was Foley’s turn. “This is Shoshone One. I promised you a surprise, and it’s on the way. Keep your heads down. Over.”
What followed was a long, agonizing three minutes, during which nothing happened and all sorts of negative scenarios ran through Foley’s mind. What if the whole thing had been called off for some reason? Or some sort of technical glitch had occurred?
The possibilities ate at him, and he was just about to place a hypercom call when a clap of thunder was heard. Seconds later, the incoming missile struck the Ramanthian ship dead on and exploded. Shields flared, and some of the energy was dispersed, but the explosion was powerful enough to scorch the ship’s skin.
The capability had been there all along of course. Because if the Confederacy could send supply drones through hyperspace, it could send missiles, too; but it had been reluctant to do so, knowing that the slightest miscalculation could result in collateral damage. And even if each weapon landed on target, everyone knew that the bugs would react by placing hostages in and around any installation that might be worthy of an intersystem missile.
But now, with a one-of-a-kind strategic opportunity in the offing, Foley had requested and been granted an intersystem strike. There was another clap of thunder followed by a second hit. The missile struck the huge side hatch just as the bugs were starting to close it. The explosion slagged the door, scoured the vehicle park inside the warship, and triggered a series of loud booms. “This is Shoshone One,” Foley said over the radio. “So far so good. Stand by for one more. Once it hits, you will be free to attack. Over.”
Foley had requested nine missiles and been granted three, which, as Chien-Chu pointed out, cost five hundred million credits each and would require the Confederacy to sacrifice hyperdrives that otherwise could have been used in destroyer escorts or other ships of a similar size.
But all things considered, Foley was satisfied. Because even though he liked killing Ramanthians, the real prize lay elsewhere, and the completely unexpected attack would almost certainly have the desired effect.
The last missile missed the ship but fell in the middle of the encampment just east of it. The weapon went off with a brilliant flash and a resonant boom. Secondary explosions rattled like firecrackers, what looked like a firestorm swept hundreds of evenly spaced habs away, and at least a thousand bugs were killed. All things considered, that was better than a direct hit on the grounded vessel. Because, in spite of its size, the battleship’s weapons were designed for space battles. And there was no way to know where the incoming missiles were coming from and, therefore, no way to respond.
Smoke was pouring up into the air, and the destruction was still under way when the second phase of the attack began. Predictably enough, Ramanthian troops began to pour out of the ship like ants escaping a ravaged nest. Bloodthirsty resistance groups came after them. Some swept into the crater on light trucks with weapons blazing. Others, the Rats in particular, surfaced from Metro tunnels, which ran under the crater and were supposedly blocked off. All were supported by a wild assortment of aircraft that had been rolled out of their hiding places and launched for the occasion. Foley saw air cars with the word POLICE painted on the side, crop dusters, and even ultralights, all climbing, turning, and diving as they dropped hand grenades and homemade bombs on the aliens below.
But the battle was far from one-sided. The same aircraft were very vulnerable. And it wasn’t long before some of them were blown out of the air or simply shot to pieces.
The situation on the ground wasn’t much better. Brave though the resistance fighters might be, they were no match for heavily armored Ramanthian veterans, who were not only enraged by the sneak attack, but led by fanatical members of the Nira cult urging them to fight to the death. They met the humans and drove them back.
Foley put out a final message. “Shoshone One to all allied forces. Withdraw . . . I repeat, break contact and withdraw. A major battle was won here today. The Confederacy thanks you. Over.”
Then, having done all that a leader could, Foley threw the protective net off and stood. “Come on,” he said to the men and women around him. “There are wounded down there. Let’s collect as many of them as we can.”
CALIFORNIA CITY, CALIFORNIA
It was cold and dark—an early Thursday morning. Margaret was
scared as Pete Sawyer led the resistance fighters up the dry channel toward the Ramanthian base. According to the reports from Foley, the attack on the ship had been a success. Heavy casualties had been inflicted on the bugs, and the aliens had been forced to bring in reinforcements from as far away as California City. In fact, a convoy estimated to include at least three hundred troops had departed late the day before. So assuming that the adjoining base had been sufficiently weakened, then a force of about fifty security people should be able to raid the crematorium without too much trouble. The problem, Margaret thought to herself, was the words “should be.”
The column stopped suddenly, and Margaret ran into the man in front of her. He swore, and she whispered, “Sorry.” Then the line was moving again with nothing but the glittering stars to light the way. Her husband, Charles, was out there somewhere, on Algeron probably, fighting a war of words. And Christine? Well, she had followed in her father’s footsteps, even if her methods had a tendency to raise eyebrows. Wouldn’t they be surprised, Margaret thought, to know that she was packing a pistol and part of an effort to raid a crematorium!
Margaret’s thoughts were interrupted as the column turned left and scrambled up a steep slope. The line slowed as people were forced down on their hands and knees to crawl through the hole that had been cut in the fence. The empty pack on her back caught on the wire and had to be freed by the person behind her.
Once Margaret was through and back on her feet, there was a short wait while the rest of them arrived. Then the column surged ahead, and it became difficult to keep up as Sawyer led his charges between houses, down deserted streets, and past a fire-scorched high school.
The sun had started to rise by then, and Margaret could see the water tower and the volcano-shaped hill off to the right of it. The miniature mountain grew larger, and an embankment appeared as they arrived at the crater wall. The facility was unguarded. And why not? The bugs had no reason to think anyone would want to attack it.
A Fighting Chance Page 22