He had to believe it was at once inspiring and curious.
“But some of it’s coming back,” he said. His squad would be one of those siege-boarding a Kel starship.
The kid loosened up. “It will be an honor to serve with you.”
Lindin squatted and stood—knees protesting even as the armor responded smoothly. He was getting old. He found himself smiling at the other’s young, eager expression. “You been in combat before?”
“No, sir.”
“Just finish training?”
The boy nodded. He was fresh-faced, clean-shaven, and had that inexperienced look Lindin had seen so many times before; eagerness to get to the fight, backed by the dim understanding that he had no idea what to expect and it would probably scare the shit out of him.
Lindin played to that.
“Keep that edge,” he said, twisting at the torso. Experiencing the fully human movement of the giant suits from a human perspective always took some getting used to. “Use it. You’re not the first to jump green into a fight for your life. Not even close. That brotherhood goes all the way back in time. Sometimes you get the luxury of an easy first skirmish, sometimes you don’t. This time the whole world is fighting for its life. In a way we’re all green. Take that fear and turn it into power.” No sense pretending, for the boy’s sake, that Lindin didn’t see through his mild bravado. Better to acknowledge and redirect the fear. “You’ll be so keyed up nothing will escape your attention. Trust me, it’s a good thing. Don’t let it paralyze you. Turn it out, not in.”
The kid nodded. He got it.
“Yes, sir.”
**
Yamoto remained in Venatres land following the briefing. He would be on hand as the first units leapt to the attack. The countdown had begun.
When the units arrayed on the field before him went they went with commanders who would orchestrate the battle. Once they left there would be no direct contact with Yamoto or any of the other senior leadership on Anitra. They would be on their own.
At the moment Yamoto stood atop the platform they’d used earlier for their final address, manning coordination stations that were active and in full swing, in communication with all units around the globe, the Skull Boys here in Venatres lands and the Astake back home in the Dominion, ready for the zero second when all would go. Each unit had its own custom-configured transit unit that would put them in the right spot on the other end, squads grouped together, dispersed around the other world, Earth, making a difficult and widely scattered target for the Kel, giving them time to set up and execute Phase Two:
The siege of the Kel fleet.
Each squad had a small locking unit that would come online once on Earth and flash-network with the others, finding Kel starships in orbit and setting new jump coordinates for the suits to leap aboard. Each operator had schematics of key Kel ships, and each, in turn, had learned how to operate those ships, ready to board and take what they could and bring those craft into the fight on the side of the humans.
Yamoto looked across the field to the mighty Reaver.
Timing was everything, and the ancient Kel starship would go right on the heels of the others, connecting everything, complete battlefield command and control, right there in one place, also tying in the Earth humans and implementing the very hack they created to lock the Kel long enough, it was hoped, to allow the Anitran units time to set that second set of coordinates and leap aboard targets. If they could jam Kel movement long enough then everyone would get aboard.
Even as Yamoto was mulling that sequence of events the Reaver lifted off in the distance. He turned his attention to the comm traffic on the various channels, control operators sitting at open-air consoles all around, their voices mixed with those coming over speakers. He found the console communicating with Nani aboard the Reaver, coordinating clocks as the dark mass moved silently into the air out there over the field. Yamoto had only seen the Reaver move a few times, and each time he was stunned by how that much bulk could move so quietly. The faint hum he’d observed before was lost in the distance behind the subtle sounds of machinery as hundreds of suits of Skull Boy armor stood ready on the field below, poised to jump; the nervous fidgetings of men preparing for the unknown and, now that the moment was at hand, impatient to get going.
This was a war for humanity. It seemed almost poetic to see so many rows upon rows of shiny black armored units, knowing others counted down to the same moment around the globe; Astake in their full war regalia doing the same in his native Dominion lands.
The Reaver moved higher, floating, higher still, moving off to prepare for its own leap to infinity.
The clock at the consoles reached zero and the command was given.
On the field a crackle of small yet infinitely powerful pops began. Peppering the air; a hundred tiny little bombs going off, a staccato of instant vacuums and the collapse of air in the wake of each. The Skull Boy units simply disappeared from sight, popping away at rapidly spaced yet random instants, each departing under its own direction, not yoked together for this phase at some central command; independent, each of them, yet essentially at the same time in response to the signal to go. The effect was a rapid-fire absence of the sharp black machines, front to back, left to right, in no particular order and yet all at once. The last pop smacked the air and where once had been an army was now an empty field, dust and grass swirling into the air in the vacuum of their departure.
BOOOOM! and the Reaver was after them. Yamoto snapped his attention to the sky but too late. She was gone.
Chasing them to war.
CHAPTER 53: ENGAGE
“Lock it.” Nani was in action.
“Locked.” Bianca too, moving fast over the controls with which she was now so familiar. The Reaver had just transited and was in Earth orbit. “Destabilization,” she reported; amped, on and checking all readings, trying to see everything at once. She calmed herself. “We’re clear.”
They’d just landed in the lion’s den.
“Got it,” Nani confirmed. “It worked. We’re good.” They’d jumped while just above the open plain on Anitra, dangerously close to the planetary mass, but the transit took, they were stabilized, and the Reaver was up and all systems were go.
Anitra was gone. Earth was now directly below.
“I’ve pinged all units,” said Nani, doing ten things at once, tagging and locking every Kel ship on hand.
“Shit. There’s way more than last time.”
It was immediately obvious the fleet had been bolstered. Bianca swallowed, and for a dangerous instant fresh fear paralyzed her.
“There’s the signal,” she shook it off; cross-checked and zeroed Willet’s response to the ping. Willet was on the ground, waiting for this moment along with the human resistance, anticipating the inception of the invasion, and he was pinging them back. Bianca spared a look at the overhead dome, in the direction of Willet's confirmed location.
Their first stop.
“Units are coming through,” said Nani. She overlaid the image of Earth on the domed screen with location blips for the Skull Boy and Astake units that were flooding through. The transition from Anitra was in full swing. Bianca watched Willet’s indicator, somewhere down there on the northern coast of France.
“How are the overrides?” Bianca asked.
“Holding. I just issued full lockdown across all command and control. The Kel fleet won’t be moving just yet.”
Their first use of the Trojan, and it was working.
**
“Hot shit I want one!” Pete could not get enough of the Skull Boy suits of armor. He and Heath had a decent idea what to expect, but there was no denying it was pretty hot shit to see the large powered armor units popping through.
“Whoa!” Pete exclaimed as a fresh pair popped into existence in mid-air with a sharp concussion. Off-center and high, they fired jump jets, short little bursts of blue-hot flames, punctuating the chaos with brief, intense roars as they corrected, landing solidly
. Pete pumped a fist and yelled, stepping back as the two Skull Boys hit with a crunch and joined the others.
The nearest units were firing open their helmet caps.
Pete greeted them. “We’re gonna fuck some shit up, boys!” he yelled up to their human faces, towering two feet above his own. Willet and Satori were part of the small group waiting on the arrivals, Darvon too, having escaped the safe house, and while there was no mistaking the grief-stricken posture of the pudgy family man there was also no mistaking the steel in his eyes. Heath had seen it before.
Darvon was ready, as Pete so aptly put it, to fuck some shit up.
“We’ll set up here,” Willet spoke to the freshly exposed faces getting their bearings atop multiple sets of broad, glossy-black armored shoulders. “Set the gear and let’s start the scan.”
Two of the Skull Boy units began setting up and assembling the scanning/locking devices. Squads like this would be popping up all over the world, each with a device to scan and lock a Kel starship, scan new coordinates and leap aboard. The leap would involve the same technology that got them here, and though Heath had already seen enough advanced stuff that he was no longer surprised, he was still in awe of this whole quantum transit thing.
He found Willet. The Anitran Spec Ops guy had the Kel tablet and was checking and confirming initial variables with the Reaver, which had arrived somewhere in orbit and would be coming to get them. He turned things over to Satori and she began instructing the new arrivals on how to set up.
Heath tried to stay out of the way. The scanning devices went together fast and Satori huddled with the squad leaders over their screens. Two men in giant black powered armor, bending over and concentrating on the devices with the red-headed human girl. It was a bizarre scene.
“We’ve got a lock,” Satori said almost at once. “Confirming our position within the network.”
Pete was standing beside Heath, watching.
“I want one so bad,” he said, indicating the powered armor all around. Then he sighed. “Too bad Steve isn’t here to see. He would love the shit out of this stuff.”
Heath agreed. “Yes he would.”
**
General Peterson sat in rapt attention with about a dozen others, staring at the row of monitors in their dingy war room. He wondered how long the power would stay up. Encrypted feeds were coming in from cells in the field, and what they were seeing were the arrival of hundreds upon hundreds of inbound armored units, the powered suits from Anitra coming to the rescue. They were dropping all over the planet.
Most cells had dispersed following the concerted operation by the Kel to root them out, and were scattered to new locations, helping where they could. Drake, in particular, and his masterminds, had taken up residence in an abandoned bank in a small town and were flooding the lines of the world with their hack. The control starship from Anitra was here, called the Reaver, and was pushing that hack and locking the Kel starships where they were.
So far it was holding.
Next step was to board those ships in orbit. Peterson didn’t pretend to understand half of the details of what was going on. At this point it was up to the men and women in the field executing these bizarre plans.
He had every faith in them.
**
Pete looked into the sky in awe. “It just keeps getting better.”
Heath stared with him, along with Satori, Darvon and Willet. The Skull Boy squad had locked their target and were off, popping away like a string of M-80 firecrackers. The scanning devices sat off to the side, having done their job, Willet was on the Kel tablet talking with the Reaver and ...
There it was. In the sky, giant and black and dropping like a stone. Wind became audible, howling around the edges as it plummeted at what had to be near the speed of sound.
Toward the end of its descent the speed of its descent scaled back, dramatically, and in seconds it was hovering over the trees. A flying building, and it was about to land.
**
“I’m going down,” Bianca jumped up from her console as the Reaver settled and she was heading down the ladder and the hall to the airlock. As she fired the outer door it slid back to reveal the bright sunshine of Earth.
It had been far too long.
But this was no return visit. They were picking up Willet and Satori, specifically to have them help run command and direct traffic among the attacking units—or even fly the fighter, if need be, to add one more set of guns to the fight.
“Satori!” Bianca yelled when she saw her red head rushing up the ramp. She accelerated the last few steps and met her midway, grabbing her in a hug. Satori wore an eye patch but otherwise she looked fine. Bianca was so glad to see her.
The decision to collect them wasn’t just practical. At this point if any of them were going to die they would do it together. Bianca was getting the band back together, in a sense, aboard the Reaver, and they would finish this the way they started. Side by side.
“Willet!” she grabbed him next. On the ramp behind him were Darvon and two Earth soldiers. Americans. She went from Willet to Darvon, a short but strong hug, then grabbed the two soldiers in turn, hugging each as if she’d known them all her life. They were from Earth, they were humans, they’d once fought to defend her country and most recently her world—to her they were as family as anyone could be, and they were getting an armful of her love and her gratitude and that was that. They didn’t seem to mind one bit.
“I’m Heath,” that one said as he hugged her back with as much enthusiasm. Then, as she grabbed the other: “Pete.”
She released and looked around.
“Where's Egg?”
**
“Come on,” Drake willed the little blips peppered all over his screens to leap out of existence; the Skull Boy and Astake units indicated on the map, finding and locking Kel starships in orbit, setting new coordinates and jumping aboard. Jumping wasn’t exactly what it was, he supposed—that was kind of a Star Wars or Star Trek kind of term, “jump to hyperspace!”—but in essence that’s what they were doing. Each suit of armor had a device similar to the one the Project found so long ago, similar to the ones used by Jessica, that could be set to “jump” aboard the new coordinates. Which, in this case, were Kel starships. Which they hoped to take control of. Slowly the blips were flashing away, less and less of them on the screen each second.
“Override holding.” Fang and his hackers sat around the room, the third floor of an abandoned bank building in this small town, watching. This was where they’d ended up and this was where they’d win or lose the war. They were on and tapping the lines of the world, propagating their hack in conjunction with the Reaver’s boosts, jamming its computing horsepower behind their code and making the Trojan created by Fang and crew hum. So far it was working, so far it was holding. Nobody expected it to last. Signs were already evident the Kel were sniffing out what was causing their loss of command and control and would, by Fang’s best estimate, reveal the source any moment, at which point the Trojan would become useless and their entire house of cards would come tumbling down. However, for the moment the Kel were on their heels, never expecting this influx of new signals—or a paralyzing clamp on their systems.
These were the most critical minutes. Timing was always critical, but this brief, brief window in which they could hold the Kel in place was crucial. The Skull Boy and Astake units need to move now.
He willed them to action.
**
Bianca couldn’t believe Egg was dead. The news punched her gut like a lead ball, no matter the intensity of the chaos demanding her attention, and it hadn’t changed. So wrong. Wronger than anything else that had happened, and a whole helluva lot had gone wrong since this whole thing began. She couldn’t shake it. When they told her on the ramp she looked at the oh-so-sad Darvon and grabbed him again and held him, so tight, and he squeezed her back and he cried and so did she, and there was no time for any of that, no time to process the sudden unreality of Egg’s dea
th, but Bianca didn’t care about any of that and the tears ran and she cried. The others let them be. Now she was piloting the Reaver, she was on edge and in the zone and the shit was so, so all over the fan and flying and there was no time for anything else, not now, not yet, but she was completely numb.
She worked to keep her focus where it belonged.
They were rocketing back to orbit at ultra-sonic speeds, the Earth falling further and further away, curving dramatically at the edges of the screen to reveal the black of space.
She had to focus. There was no longer any choice.
Everyone was on the bridge, the two American soldiers the most in shock. Of their little group they were the only ones that had never been into space, certainly never on a starship, and it was impossible to miss their stunned stares.
After the news of Egg they’d all come up hushed, each with their own thoughts, and Nani heard and they simply manned stations and took off. Willet sat with Satori.
The first inbound audio blurped and got everyone's attention. Bianca checked; it was Lindin.
“We’re locked,” he reported.
Nani nodded. “The network is still firing,” she checked multiple screens, coordinating the operation as Bianca flew. “Almost all are aboard and should be engaging. I expect combat calls any moment. Siege boarding and initial transfers should wrap in about three minutes.”
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 58