“Hurry it up, Rodriguez,” Major Elijah Simpson, the regiment’s intel officer, snapped. Many said that his intelligence was directly proportional to his patience. He was a very impatient man.
“What an asshole,” Lauren Nathanga, a tech from the regiment’s intel company who was Rodriguez’s passenger, said over the intercom.
“No arguments here,” Rodriguez sighed.
Their little jeep crossed over the lip of the crater about one hundred meters above the glass-smooth rim.
“This is really incredible,” Nathanga said. “The power it must have taken to do this, and yet we don’t have a single reading except some residual heat from whatever cut through the rock.”
“Anything yet?” Simpson interjected.
“Still scanning, sir,” Nathanga replied, shaking her head. “We’re… What is that?”
“What’s going on?” Simpson demanded over the radio, but neither Nathanga nor Rodriguez heard him.
The two explorers had suddenly found themselves encased in a web of blue light that seared their flesh. They thrashed and writhed, screaming in agony as their skin began to burn, as if they had suddenly been cast into a furnace. The last thing Lauren Nathanga saw was Rodriguez’s smoking body bursting into flame. Then Nathanga was herself consumed by the cleansing fire.
Back at the command post, Major Simpson watched and listened in horror to the screams and the nightmarish video coming back across the comms link. First Rodriguez, and then Nathanga suddenly exploded into human torches, burning so bright and hot that the jeep’s control panel must have begun to melt, because the video abruptly cut off. Thankfully.
Simpson got exactly two paces across the regimental command post before he retched on the floor amid the other shocked members of the intel section.
Undamaged except for the crew compartment that lay smoldering from the flames that had left only husks of carbon where once there had been human beings, the skimmer continued on its way across the crater, eventually crashing into the ocean over two hundred kilometers away.
***
“So,” Nicole said, “what you are telling us is that we will be too late.”
The Gneisenau’s chief intelligence officer nodded grimly. “I’m afraid that about sums it up, CAG. Even if the Kreelans don’t have any ships heading to Erlang that might be closer than the ones our scouts have detected, the estimated on-orbit time of the first enemy battle group will still be at least an hour ahead of our own ETA.”
The faces around the table, real and projected, frowned. That meant the Kreelans would have time both to start their assault on the planet and array their ships in a defensive posture for a Confederation counterattack that they knew must be coming. While the humans still had some degree of tactical surprise on their side, it probably would not be enough to make a difference. While the Tenth Fleet task force – of which Sinclaire’s Gneisenau was the flagship – had eleven battleships, two carriers, and a host of cruisers and destroyers, the Kreelan defenders would hold most of the cards in what was shaping up to be the biggest fleet engagement in decades.
If only we had more bloody ships! Sinclaire cursed to himself. “What do you think, Nicole?” he asked her. He hated calling Fleet Captain Carré “CAG” – Commander, Aerospace Group. He respected the position and the tradition, but to him the acronym sounded like some kind of affliction.
“It all depends on what we are up against,” she said, noting the Hood’s CAG nodding agreement. Nicole and Jodi had only recently completed their tours as instructors at the Fighter Weapons School on Earth, and had both accepted combat assignments on the newest fleet carrier, Gneisenau. Jodi had taken over one of the new ship’s squadrons, finally accepting the responsibility and grade that she had so long avoided, while Nicole had assumed the post of senior pilot and aerospace group commander. “We have one-hundred sixty-three fighters and attack ships on Gneisenau ready to fight, plus another one-hundred and thirty-five on Hood. But we have no idea what the enemy will show up with other than the seven capital ships – two in the superdreadnought category – that STARNET was able to confirm before the Kreelans jumped. And we do not know, out of those, how many carry only guns and how many carry guns and fighters both.”
“I would venture to say,” said Captain Amadi, Gneisenau’s commander, “that we should expect the worst. There is some compelling and unknown reason why the Kreelans are going to Erlang. They have never done this before, spontaneously converging on a colony from so many different quadrants. I suggest that we go in with the fighters and destroyers screening forward, followed by the main combatants in wedge abreast, and the attack ships and cruisers held in reserve to the rear.”
Sinclaire nodded. It was a standard tactical formation, and for good reason. It would give them a lot of flexibility in an unknown situation, meaning that they could bring a lot of power to bear in any quadrant very quickly. Or retreat with a minimum of losses, he thought grimly. “Comments?”
“What about sending a recon in ahead of the van?” the captain of one of the destroyers, a young woman who was always looking for a fight with the enemy, said.
Sinclaire smiled at her eagerness. She was a good destroyer captain, aggressive and fearless, one of a breed that was increasingly hard to find. Destroyer captains and their crews did not usually live very long. “Given that we know little of what we’ll be facing,” he said, “I don’t think we can afford to give the enemy the least advantage over us, more than they have already. Surprise is all we’ve got right now, and I won’t surrender it without good reason. Maybe next time, Captain Dekkar.”
The woman frowned, disappointed, but she nodded understanding.
“Have we been able to contact the colony yet?” someone else asked.
“No,” the intel officer answered. “The comms people believe that the subspace signals are being blocked by an ion storm that came up within the Grange cloud. Until we’re past it, we won’t be able to reach them.”
“Any other ideas? No? Then that’s it. We’ll go with the overall attack plan as suggested by Captain Amadi. The flag ops officer will issue formation and launch orders to your commands by twenty-two forty-five Zulu for the jump in-system at oh-five seventeen tomorrow.” He looked at the chronometer on the wall of the conference room. “That gives us a tad over nine hours from now until we arrive at Erlang, people. Let’s not waste a second of it.”
***
“Brooding isn’t going to help,” Enya said.
Reza opened his eyes and looked at her. He seemed utterly calm. “I am not brooding,” he said quietly, offering her a gentle smile. “I am thinking.” He looked to Ian Mallory, who sat against the wall across from him. Mallory’s left eye was swollen shut, his split lip still bleeding slightly. The Territorial Army contingent that had arrested him and the other seniors of the Mallory Council had beaten them badly. “We must find a way to get a message to your people,” Reza told him. “They must get out of the cities and towns, away from anywhere the Territorial Army or Thorella’s troops might stand and fight the Kreelans.”
“What difference would it make?” the older man said quietly, his open eye blazing with anger and bitterness. “They’ll be slaughtered either way. I’m not like most of this flock,” he said, gesturing with a hand that boasted two broken fingers. “I’ve been off-world. I’ve seen what happens during a Kreelan attack. The TA has oppressed us for many years, but I can’t justify asking our people to abandon the only hope they may have for survival. The Territorial Army troops are the only defense any of my people have.”
“Listen to me, Ian Mallory.” Reza said urgently. “If they do not leave, if they are anywhere near troops who will fight the Kreela, you condemn them to certain death. The Kreela do not come to your world now to fight as they usually do, seeking to honor the Empress in battle. They come to take the First Empress home. Any resistance will bring instant devastation. There will be no landings or ground battles. Kreelan warships will simply obliterate every defensive position o
n this planet from orbit, and every defended human settlement will be annihilated. This is more important to them than any other event in the last hundred thousand years, and they will take no chances. They will spare nothing, no one, who raises a hand against them.”
“And they’ll spare unarmed people?” someone scoffed. Reza had noticed that the mood of the Mallorys had changed dramatically since he had appeared in his Kreelan garb, the aura they projected verging on open hostility. Only Enya’s word and their own fears of what he might do in retaliation held them in check.
“If you do as I say, yes, your people will be spared.” He looked at Ian. “But there is a price that must be paid.”
“I knew there must be a catch,” Ian grumbled. “How much blood need be spilled?”
“Seven hundred,” Reza said. “If you wish your people to live, you must find exactly seven hundred souls who are willing to fight and die for the rest. Men or women, it makes no difference. They must assemble in a single line upon the plain on the far side of the mountain of light, with no weapons other than those that may be hammered in the forge or carved from wood.”
“Why seven hundred?” Enya asked. “And what are they supposed to accomplish other than satisfying Kreelan bloodlust?”
“There must be seven hundred because that is the number of the host that accompanied the First Empress here after she died, after her spirit inhabited the vessel, the crystal heart that was awakened by your touch,” Reza explained. “The Seven Hundred who brought her here were the ones you found in the burial chamber, the Imperial Guard. The number will not be lost on the warriors who are coming here; they will understand.” He looked around at the others in the room. “As for what your volunteers are to accomplish, they will fight for your world,” Reza said, “against an equal number of Her warriors, similarly armed. Theirs shall be a sacrifice for the rest of your people, those who survive the destruction of the cities.”
“We could not hope to win against trained warriors,” Ian said.
“It is not a battle that is meant to be won, Ian Mallory. It is a sacrifice, a showing of the honor of your people, that the Kreela will understand and respect.”
“I take it, then,” Ian asked darkly, “that the seven hundred who go forward onto the Plain of Aragon may all expect to die?”
Reza nodded. “It is the only way.”
The room was deathly silent. As they spoke, the others of the Council had gathered around the trio, the uninjured helping those who were. Even imprisoned and under sentence of death without a formal trial, the Mallory Council still held the future of their people in their hands.
“I say we put it to a vote,” Enya said, looking at Ian. “We’ve got nothing left to lose, except the lives of everyone on this planet, Raniers and Mallorys alike.”
“Let the Raniers die!” someone hissed like acid eating through metal.
“Don’t say that!” Enya retorted. “Not all of them are like Belisle. There are–”
“You cannot save them,” Reza said quietly. “If you give them warning, Belisle will find a way to turn it against you. He would confine the Mallorys in the cities where they would be killed, and evacuate the Ranier families to the forests, although that would not save them in the end. Only those who choose to fight on the plain have the power to save your world, but the Raniers must also bear their share of the price of your planet’s survival; it is they who shall be sacrificed to the guns of Her warships.”
The faces around him were grim. Even the most hardened of the Mallorys here knew that there were innocents among the Raniers, people who had helped them in some way, or who simply had no control over the planet’s course as Belisle led them through tyranny. Men, women, children, they would all die in the cities. They would have to, that the rest of Erlang’s people might live.
“I say do as he says,” growled an older woman who had suffered more hardships than she cared to recount. “Better to make a stand than to just wait and get shot, either by the aliens or by our own.”
Ian nodded respectfully. Her words were well thought of in this circle. “And you, Markham?”
“Aye,” a big man, an equal in physique to Washington Hawthorne, said easily, as if he made these kinds of decisions every day. “I’ll raise an ax and a little Cain any day. All the better that it be for a good cause.”
“Waverman?”
“Aye.”
And so it went, around the room. The vote was unanimous. They would fight.
“Does that meet with your satisfaction?” Ian said to Reza after the last of the council had nodded her head. “Will that be enough blood for you?”
“Ian!” Enya said, dismayed. “He offers us a way to survive, after trying to help us against Belisle. You have no right to treat him that way.”
“We’re the ones who’ll be dying, girl. He has no stake in this.”
“You are wrong, my friend,” Reza said gently. He could feel Ian Mallory’s pain and trepidation, and was not resentful that he was the focus of the man’s anger. Mallory did not – could not – understand the Way or the fulfillment of the Prophecy. But there was no other course for them to take.
“How’s that?”
“Because I am the one who will lead your people into battle.”
Ian only looked at him.
“Why you, and not one of us?” someone else demanded.
“Because only one who wears the collar of the Empress may declare such a combat,” he explained.
“How much time do we have?” Enya asked in the silence that followed.
“I do not know exactly,” Reza said, “for I do not know where the closest Kreelan warships might be. But I would say that we only have a few hours to act.”
“A few hours isn’t enough time,” Ian said pointedly.
Reza fixed him with a stony gaze. “It is all that you have.”
***
The next step, getting the Council’s instructions out of the Parliament building and to the Mallorys outside, was not as difficult as Thorella or Belisle would have liked. One of the guards was a Mallory sympathizer known by Ian to be trustworthy, and he was passed a message in code, written on a stained sheet of paper that had once been a shopping list for the company store in Laster, a town far to the north. The guard, in turn, passed it to the servant of Mallory City’s mayor, who passed it to someone heading out of the building. In less than an hour, the instructions had been transmitted over the inter-city communications networks to every village on the planet.
The orders were viewed with incredulity by many, but there was no mistaking Ian Mallory’s coded signature, and they knew that he would die long before he revealed it to Belisle’s minions. While there were a few who refused to believe it, thinking either it was a trick or that the Council simply did not know any more what it was doing, the vast majority of Mallorys did as they had been instructed.
It was fortunate that the message had been sent late in the evening, for it gave the Mallorys the cover of darkness to carry out their instructions. Evacuation plans were on hand for every township, and in the darkness the Mallorys began their exodus, taking with them only a prescribed bundle of things essential for survival – a few tools, a good knife, some food – to avoid arousing too much suspicion from the periodic Territorial Army patrols. Since most of the townships were ringed by forests that the villagers had known since childhood, finding their way to the designated rendezvous points was not a problem. Moving in silence, carrying the very young and the old or infirm who could not walk or keep up, the Mallorys disappeared by the thousands from their homes.
By first light, when the horns blared at the mines signaling the start of another twelve-hour shift, only the Ranier shift supervisors had appeared, wondering what had happened to all their workers. In the meantime, the miners who were streaming from the mines headed quickly toward their ramshackle homes… and then vanished.
Thirty-Five
“What the devil do you mean, ‘No one’s showed up to work?’” Belisle sh
outed into the comms terminal.
The man at the other end shrank back. “Just what I said, Mr. President,” he stammered. “There was no one at the gates except the supervisors, and the miners working the night shift practically ran home. We tried to find them, even sent in TA patrols, but there wasn’t anyone there. Anywhere. The whole township’s empty.”
“That’s impossible! People can’t just vanish into thin air! Where did they go? Surely you idiots can find a few thousand people wandering about!” He stabbed at a button on the comm link, and the man’s image disappeared.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Mr. President,” Wittmann, the mayor, said quietly behind him, as if afraid he would be beaten for bringing more bad news.
“How can it?” Belisle snapped angrily, his mind unconsciously figuring the monetary losses for every hour that even a single mine lay idle.
“I just got a report from the chief at Promontory Mine,” Wittmann said uneasily. “He reports the same thing. The Mallorys are all gone. They just vanished into thin air. Food still on the tables, fires burned cold in the kitchens with pots still hanging over them. That sort of thing.”
Belisle just stared at him. Promontory Mine. That was Erlang’s most productive source of income. Even the time that they had spent standing here talking had cost them over a million credits. “Find them!” he yelled. “Find them and get them back to work, or you and your family will be down there breaking rock!”
He turned to Thorella, who sat casually in one of the office’s chaise lounges, a look of contemplation on his face. “They’ve finally gone and done it,” Belisle said, spittle flying from his mouth. “They’re openly rebelling. What are you going to do about it, colonel?”
“Well,” he said casually, scrutinizing the nails of one hand, “there’s not much we can do with your miners until they’ve been found.” He smiled in spite of himself. The planning it must have taken to allow hundreds of thousands of people to disappear overnight under the nose of the Territorial Army was indeed impressive, even to Thorella. Hunting them down would be a real challenge, he suspected, which was something he always enjoyed. “But we can certainly inquire among your friends in the basement about the matter, as I’m sure they have something to do with it.”
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