“Did it occur to any of you, anyone at all, to consider the consequences if, say, the O’dai king, or some revered religious leader, or possibly a Civilium Scrutineer we haven’t known of, had been standing behind that door?” A deafening silence followed the Admiral’s question. Kirrah felt herself swallowing uncomfortably, even from the sidelines.
“No one? Then perhaps it would be prudent to briefly review the chain of command for joint LAS - Marine missions. PO Thornlea!” The flight engineer actually flinched visibly as the Admiral’s attention turned unexpectedly to her.
“Aah! Yes, ma’am?”
“Who was in command of that shuttle and everyone aboard her this morning?”
“Ahhh, ahhh, Ensign Piersall, Ma’am.”
“That would be my understanding as well,” the Admiral said dryly. Kirrah could not help admiring the scalpel-like clarity with which the woman was separating fact from fantasy.
“And what change in command followed, when Lieutenant Warden’s party deplaned, Mr. Cavanaugh?”
Gary took a breath, squared his shoulders and stepped forward. “Ma’am, that would be a bifurcation of command. Once on the ground, the Marine force was under the independent command of Lieutenant Warden, with the shuttle crew acting in a support role. Ma’am.” He stepped slightly back, looking just a little relieved at having a ready answer.
“Very good, Mr. Cavanaugh. So perhaps you could explain to me why you fired your vessel's weapons in response to a request from someone on the ground, who was neither in your chain of command, nor under probable threat from enemy action?”
The young man’s Adam’s apple was bobbing visibly in his throat as he recognized where the Admiral had allowed him to go. “I apologize, ma’am. I believe I acted improperly.”
“We are agreed, then. You are hereby demoted to Petty Officer and fined one month’s pay. You two are dismissed for now, I want a word with Ensign Piersall.” Two very snappy salutes signaled the near-lightspeed exits of the two Navy enlisted personnel. A very pale young pilot remained standing at attention in front of the vid.
“Well. Ensign Piersall. What was your worst mistake today?”
“Ma’am, ahh, I believe that would be not countermanding the order to fire on the door of that building, ma’am.”
“Incorrect, Ms. Piersall. That was a mistake, but not your worst one. I will assist you by quoting relevant portions of the mission log, which I have had the advantage of reviewing in some detail.
“First, we have the resourceful commander of our allies, asking Lieutenant Warden whether she might have the use of your shuttle’s heavy beamers. Then we have his speculation that it might be within the mission’s terms of engagement. Then, we have your gunnery officer asking whether she’d like ‘one big bang or a slow burn’, I believe was his phrase. What was your worst mistake, Ensign?”
The thoroughly miserable pilot looked about ready to run, or burst into tears. With a visible effort she squared her shoulders and looked directly into the vid pickup. “Ma’am, I can think of so many possibilities I don’t know which one was worst. I am fully prepared to accept whatever punishment Ma’am considers appropriate.”
“Margaret, look at me. Look right here, at my eyes. Good. I want you to understand that, while appropriate punishment shall fall on you, I am even more interested in teaching you something. So let me ask you this: At exactly what point in this morning’s mission did you relinquish command of your vessel to its passengers?” The young ensign’ jaw actually dropped as the Admiral’s point found its mark. She goggled a moment, swallowed, started to speak but fell silent as her Admiral continued.
“You are a damned fine young pilot. You also happened to be in command of one of my shuttles. Your worst mistake, Ensign Piersall, was that you were still thinking like a pilot, when you should have been thinking like a commander. Everything that followed, rests on that lapse. If Ms. Roehl had not had the presence of mind to ask your gunnery officer for a warning flash, twenty or thirty helpless indigs would have been permanently blinded by your weapon’s firing. Then the drek would have fallen on you and Mr. Cavenaugh, but it would have been you the Navy would have held responsible, Ms. Piersall. Why is that?”
“Ma’am, because I was in command of the vessel.”
“That is correct, Ms. Piersall. May I trust you will remember that, if I let you have one of my shuttles again?”
“Ma’am! Yes, Ma’am!”
Kirrah had not thought someone’s eyes could actually shine like that. Study this Admiral, she noted to herself. This is what real command looks like - that immaterial but decisive thing that was thrust on me here, that I’m making up, barely, as I go along.
“Very well, Ms. Piersall. As to your punish… What was that!”
Simultaneously the late afternoon sunlight was overwhelmed by a bright white flash stabbing through the shuttle’s side windows. The warning whoop of at least three different alarm systems began to clamor on the shuttle’s flight deck, and one from the Argosy, audible over the comm. Kirrah and Margaret both instinctively grabbed the nearest solid object for support, and in another two seconds the shuttle shook and rocked on its oleos as a shock wave rolled over it. As fast as the door could cycle, Kirrah was outside and looking to the southeast, where a quarter-kilometer-wide column of dust, smoke and glowing debris was climbing into the glorious blue-green sky, feeding a growing, distinctive, dark mushroom cloud over the southern part of the city. Her city.
“Tac-nuke!” Kirrah screamed, “That goddamned lizard left us a mini-nuke!”
Chapter 44 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-nine): Kaena’hachk
“We will either find a way, or make one” - Hannibal Barca, 2nd century B.C. warrior and General; Carthage, North Africa, Terra.
Kirrah fought down her black anger again, enough that she could at least think and see. The school courtyard was serving as a clearinghouse for the damage reports still pouring in, and as an emergency government seat, and as one of several hospitals. The Kruss bomblet, now estimated at a 0.37 kiloton blast, had leveled an area of the city some eight blocks across, centered on the waterfront. Imagery from the Argosy’s sensors showed heavy to moderate damage in a ring three to four blocks wide around the direct blast zone, just brushing the palace. An eighty meter wide crater marked the center of the fireball, where Kirrah had stood on the waterfront watching the Kruss drag Akaray onto the raft eight hours earlier.
A decontamination team from the Utterson had landed less than an hour after the blast and reported very minor radioactive fallout from what seemed to be a pure fusion explosion. The team’s best guess was that the Kruss had somehow rigged a small fusion bottle, and found some way to override its failsafes. A device no larger than a loaf of bread, and an explosive yield that could have been anything from a warm sputter to three or four kilotons. So we were actually lucky, Kirrah had commented bitterly. It could have been ten times the blast it was.
Luck. Luck was king in the city tonight. Everything depended on one's position at the moment of detonation. Were you on duty at a tower on the north wall? Lucky, you lived. Did you happen to be facing south on that tower? Sorry, unlucky. Blinded.
Were you standing behind a solid wall, one of the thick defensive walls that crisscrossed the city? Lucky, you lived. Did you happen to be crossing the street at the wrong second, exposed to the waterfront? Burned to the bone. Unlucky.
Were you one of the people at the Stone-in-a-River school at the critical moment? Just outside the blast zone, and protected by a defensive wall. Lucky. Unless you happened to be passing out the school’s west gate, like Kirrah’s bodyguard Corporal Mastha’cha, and looking south down the street at the wrong time. Alive, but definitely not lucky.
Were you one of the few people working near the waterfront? Unlucky. Incinerated, or smashed to pulp by the blast wave. Or perhaps you were in the industrial section and not looking west, or in the south end of the farming section and not looking east. Lucky.
Now she could
actually thank the Kruss for the plague-of-screams. The smartshots had killed, but only a few each night. But they had forced the evacuation of the entire south half of the city. Over eleven thousand inhabitants, more than half the city’s population, were still in tents on the plains along the Upper Geera, waiting for the Navy volunteer teams to sweep up the last of the smartshots.
Kirrah shuddered to think what the casualty list would have been, if the south-central vai’athoz had been fully occupied as usual. Easily seven thousand more would have perished.
Her fleet was gone. Every ship in the harbor or on the lake was blown to flinders, or washed up like so much kindling on the south shore by the huge tidal wave from the blast. Except for the four steamships she had sent down-river, under Captain Og’drai’s command. Lucky. Alive.
Casualty list, yes indeed. The cavalry, safely away escorting the O’dai column to their border, lucky. Half the military quarter was inside the circle of total destruction, all of it had sustained significant damage. Two thirds of the resident horses dead, burned or blasted to shreds or buried under rubble. Major Doi’tam, asleep in his quarters, finally, after thirty hours or more on duty, unlucky. Eighteen of her Wrth warriors, at practice in the yard, unlucky.
Lord Tsano, sitting at his desk in the palace when the windows blew in. He’d end up with a few more fine white scars on his face. Lucky. Delima shu’Maakael, Guildmaster, looks very young for a hundred five indig years, don’t you think? Sitting in a meeting room at the Guild Hall, one city block closer to ground zero. Crushed with three others under a collapsed wall, unlucky.
Opeth shu’Teeklae, Armsmaster, experienced military guide and tutor, friend. Wrong place, wrong time. Unlucky. Janna’tha shu’Paddo, Kirrah’s young page, sorter of papers, reader of minds. Just starting to get the hang of a wristcomp. Drawn to a window in Kirrah’s second-floor palace offices by the bright flash, just in time for the blast wave to drive daggers of glass into his face and throat. Unlucky.
Maka’ra the shipwright, missing. Do’thablu the carpenter. Unlucky. Wai’thago, the big, hairy, cheerfully skeptical blacksmith. Missing. Irshe, off on some gods-beknownst errand somewhere, missing.
The Regnum embassy and two shuttles on the ground, lucky. Hullmetal skin, and the best armor of all, distance. The afternoon shift of Navy volunteers busy sweeping the city for smartshots: mixed results. She could thank the smartshots for the full combat armor that protected some of the teams where a Talamae would have been flayed alive. Lucky. Others, working in the wrong vai’atho, dead even in their suits.
Where is Irshe?
Kirrah paced back and forth in the narrow space between two of the outdoor dining tables now serving as gurneys in the school’s courtyard. Peetha stood nearby, self-appointed replacement for her Warmaster’s newly blinded Talamae bodyguard. Doris Finch looked up from beside one of the tables, her face grimy and streaked with a smear of blood from the casualty she was working over. She ran her fingers through her black hair, gave Kirrah a grim smile and bent back to the medpack screen. Half a dozen other Regnum personnel and more of the medpacks from the three destroyers overhead were working in the courtyard and adjoining rooms, alongside the blue-robed Talamae healers. Two other Talamae schools and the Regnum embassy were similarly engaged.
The casualty list will easily top three hundred dead, Kirrah thought grimly. Plus God knows how many injured, plus others we’ll be digging out of the rubble for the next few frantic days. And what’s happening to Akaray this night? And where is Irshe?
More litters bearing injured were being carried in even as the thought crossed her mind. She strode over to the east entrance, directing the cart and three cloth stretchers onto the last area of open flat ground, in the northeast corner beside the remains of the damaged Kruss flier. She kicked several pieces of the wrecked vehicle aside to make room. Issthe and another priest came over and began examining the wounded. Kirrah looked down at a middle-aged woman with skin crisp and peeling from half her face, hair scorched and melted into a gruesome helmet. Probably she had just returned to one of the vai’athoz on the south side of Slow Water Road, cleared of smartshots that very afternoon. Unlucky.
Issthe rose from beside one of the other litters, was standing beside her, one hand lightly on her right shoulder.
“Kirrah. Kirrah,” she said softly.
“Yuh. Yes?” Her voice sounded dull and listless, seemed to be coming from someone else’s grief-clogged throat.
“He will live. Come.”
“What?” Her brain felt fogged, shut down. Issthe’s slim, strong fingers lifted her wrist, gently urging her forward.
“Do not fear the blood. It has stopped leaking. His ath’la is intact, and with the help of Reg’num care, I believe his skin will heal.” Kirrah stepped forward robotically, looked down on the pile of filthy rags on the stretcher, the blood-encrusted dusty black hair, the raw, glistening meat where skin should have covered the back of a neck.
“Here, aska.” Issthe’s voice was gentle, like a mother’s. “Come to this side. Have a care, bones are broken.” Kirrah stepped around the other side of the litter, careful not to touch the injured person lying there. The tall, pale, dark-haired man. She sank to her knees before Irshe’s body, her chest suddenly locked tight in mid-breath, her very heartbeat feeling suspended. In a face bruised and smeared and crusted with blood and worse, a pair of gray eyes opened, wandered a second, focused on her face.
“Hor…” A cough, obviously painful. A small gasp, another shallow breath.
“Horse. Threw me. Never…” Another cough, more carefully.
“Hap’n before. Stupid. Hurts. T’irsty.” Kirrah barely stopped herself from flinging both arms around him and hugging him fiercely, despite his injuries. Her right hand rested on the stretcher, cupped itself around his tangled bloody hair. Issthe took Kirrah’s left hand and placed it in Irshe’s left, then held her own hand briefly over the two. Kirrah could feel her own warmth seeping into Irshe’s cold fingers. Issthe’s hands flowed in two graceful arcs down the injured body, sweeping from head to toe, once, twice. Irshe groaned, took a deeper breath, let out a sigh.
“Better,” he whispered. “Hnk you. Back hurt. Akaray. Not good. Aska…” His fingers squeezed Kirrah’s hand slightly, two tears made clean lines sideways down his grimy reclining face. Kirrah found her own face was wet, her ears buzzing. Everything seemed far away. Something dark and powerful was pushing again at her ragged sense of control, pushing hard.
“Sleep now,” Issthe said, holding her hand over his brow. His breathing gradually eased, his body relaxed.
Something black, Kirrah could feel it. Something now full-grown, and strong, so strong, and ready. Her control seemed to tear, like cloth ripping. Like a cocoon opening. Her voice was surprising to her, sounding soft and clear, almost like a stranger's:
“I will take care of it, Irshe-aska. Rest now. I must go, work to do. See to him, Issthe.” She stood, beckoned across the macabre cluttered courtyard to Peetha, and missed seeing Issthe’s eyes on her, widening in a rare look of surprise.
“Ask Doris to my quarters,” she said quietly. When the Wrth girl tapped on her shoulder, Doris looked up, followed the hand gesture. She saw Kirrah’s face, turned her medpack over to another Regnum officer just coming on duty, and accompanied the two women into Kirrah’s sitting room at the south side of the courtyard. Issthe moved decisively, swiftly beckoning another healer to oversee Irshe’s injuries, and hastened to follow the other three women.
Kirrah sat wearily behind her desk for the second time that day. She let out a tired sigh, and gestured Doris and the priestess to two of the chairs, and Peetha to close the door.
“What…?” began Doris, but paused when Kirrah raised her hand.
“They just brought in Irshe,” Kirrah said. Her shipmate made a little gasp, one brown hand lifting in front of her open mouth.
“Is he…”
“He will live. With a month’s regen and half a square meter of skin grafts,
but he’ll live.” Doris winced sympathetically. Kirrah sighed, shuddered a little, drew a deep breath.
“Doris, there’s at least three hundred more out there, who won’t. This has to be stopped. The Kruss have to be stopped. You know what they’ll do to a planet like this, given even the smallest toe-hold.” Kirrah’s eyes searched the woman’s dark face.
“You and Peetha were right, earlier today. The Kruss with Akaray has something it needs, back in O’dakai. That’s the soft spot, the place to strike. I’m going to put an end to this, and I desperately need your help. I’ve never asked you for anything remotely as important as this.”
Doris made a little gesture with one hand, said, “Anything, Kirrah. You know I’d do anything to help you with this.”
“Before I go any farther, I need your promise that you won’t tell anyone what I’m planning, even if you decide you can’t help. We could get in a lot of trouble. Especially if we succeed.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time following you has landed me in a tank of drek… what’s on your evil little mind, then?”
“Promise.”
“Gods, you’re scaring me now, kiddo. Okay! I promise!”
Kirrah watched her friend’s face cycle through several emotions, waited until one became dominant. Sober attention, good. She took a deep breath and said the words that had been burning in her mind since rising from beside Irshe: “I’m going to steal a shuttle.”
Doris sputtered a moment, finally regained her composure enough to respond coherently. “A shuttle? Steal? You’re… that’s… you can’t do that! Admiral Dunning will crucify you! Besides, they’re guarded!” she added, taking in the adamantine look in Kirrah’s eyes.
Her shipmate replied, “They’re expecting us to transport a meal to the damned Kruss, sometime before dawn. Lieutenant Warden set it up already. I have friends here, Doris, who’ll help us, who’ll follow my orders without question.”
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