by Eric Flint
The transmitted images showed the devastation of Centropolis in impeccable detail. At first the cameras tracked across the city streets: collapsing skyscrapers, flaming vehicles, panicked pedestrians. Then the view centered in on the towering palace. Like a flock of hungry raptors, the tendrilless attack ships zeroed in, exchanged orders, then swooped down in perfect formation. Their bomb-bay doors opened to drop load after load of weapons on the grand structure.
The detonations occurred simultaneously, shockwaves crashing against each other, reinforcing and amplifying the destruction. Flames roared to the skies. Ornate and spectacular towers that had stood as landmarks for centuries now toppled into rubble.
A hundred stories tall, highlighted with crystalline spires, parapets, and remarkable architecture, the ancient slan-designed palace collapsed under the bombardment. The Presidential quarters, the administrative chambers, staff rooms and records vaults, formal dining halls and galleries lined with state portraits. After the palace collapsed, secondary detonations spat out bright orange flowers, columns of black smoke and plumes of debris. The images zoomed in on the burning rubble and smoking pit.
Jem stood tall, supremely confident. "Right now, every surviving human in the city is staring in despair, weeping for what they've lost. Even I didn't expect their defenses to crumble so easily, though I did take care to make their small space navy ineffective. I'll bet President Gray was quite surprised."
Altus scratched his chin as he watched the replaying images. "We expected more resistance from Earth because we thought the true slans would come out of hiding at last. Are you sure there has been no sign of them?"
"None at all. If anything could flush out the snakes, this should have done it. It is time for the Authority to face the only possible conclusion: There are no more true slans. We've heard rumors for so long, but they're just that: rumors."
"Rumors? And what about Jommy Cross or Kathleen Layton?"
Jem covered his pained expression at the thought of Kathleen. With her true slan genetics and Jem's tendrilless bloodline, their offspring would certainly have been superior. But she had rebuffed his advances. What a fool the girl had been! No doubt Kathleen had been inside the palace when it was destroyed. His lips pulled down in a bitter frown. She could have been with him.
"The only slans left are insignificant throwbacks, one or two genetic mistakes. They belong in a museum with other extinct species."
Altus said, "You draw sweeping conclusions from a relatively small amount of evidence."
One of the other Authority members added, "We can't be too careful." The other old men nodded, mumbling to each other.
A flush of anger came to Jem's cheeks. The Authority—and his own father—seemed intent on stalling every bit of progress he made. "Our irrational fear of the slans has set us back by centuries! We were so sure they were hiding, building great weapons, preparing invincible defenses against us. We wasted generations establishing our fortified city here on Mars, building an invincible fleet. We laid down an extensive space mine field around Earth orbit to guard it—and from what? We've squandered a fortune and years of effort building bastions against an enemy that doesn't even exist."
"Thank you for your interesting report, my son. We will draw our conclusions once we've received a report from our operative on the scene." Altus switched off the display plate, and his fellow Authority members did the same. "She should arrive soon."
Jem blinked, feeling left out. "What other operative? I am in charge of this strike."
"Joanna Hillory. We have already dispatched her to Earth."
"On what mission? How dare you go around me?"
"We are the Tendrilless Authority. We decide what is best," Altus said in a patient voice. "We sent her to find Jommy Cross, whom we consider to be our largest threat. After we have interrogated that outlaw slan—by whatever extreme means necessary—we will discover all we need to know."
CHAPTER 15
The sleek armored car raced toward the outskirts of the city, escaping from the holocaust. Behind them, the palace was completely destroyed. Overhead, enemy spacecraft continued to criss-cross the sky in search of targets. Once they had leveled Centropolis, the tendrilless attackers would spread out to the fringe areas, the smaller cities and towns. The invaders would not leave the job half finished.
Jommy drove through the late afternoon, dodging rubble, and continued to accelerate. The thick tires hummed across the cracked and blistered pavement. His reflexes were sufficient to dodge stalled cars, an overturned wagon, even a wide crater made by a stray bomb.
"Jommy, are you sure we'll be safe where we're going?"
"I can't guarantee we'll be safe anywhere, Kathleen, but we've got a good chance." His fingers danced across controls on the dashboard, illuminating a map. "It should take us about five hours to get there."
"That's assuming the roads and bridges along the way aren't blown up," said John Petty from the back.
"If there are obstacles, we will deal with them," Gray said.
"Obstacles?" Petty said. "I'd say the end of the world as we know it is a pretty substantial obstacle!" Then the slan hunter slumped back into silence.
Jommy's special car hugged the ground, moving almost as fast as an aircraft. After they left the outskirts of the city and headed toward the farmland and forested hills, he began to feel safer.
The car roared along isolated roads, making steady progress on the map projected on his dashboard. The ranchers and farmers who lived in the rolling countryside had holed up in storm shelters and root cellars, hiding from the interplanetary attack. No one else moved about. The sun would set soon, and then they would be safer.
His unusual vehicle, moving alone, inadvertently called attention to itself.
Red lights flashed on his sensitive detection systems, and from outside he heard a whining tone. He gripped the steering mechanism and looked around wildly. "Proximity alert. Something coming closer." Flipping a toggle switch, he shifted the ten-point steel of the car's roof into its transparent phase so that he could look overhead. "There!"
Three dark craft swooped down, the blunt-nosed tendrilless cruisers. For many years in his youth, he had seen similar fast vehicles launched regularly from the rooftop of the Air Center. "They've spotted us."
"Worse—they've targeted us." Kathleen craned her neck.
Plunging like hungry hawks, the tendrilless cruisers dropped focused explosives. The bombs blasted craters on either side of the country road, coughing up thick plumes of dirt and smoke. Jommy swerved, squeezing more power from the engine, but even with all his technological improvements, he could not make the car go faster.
The tendrilless bombers curved upward in a graceful loop, as if to show off their aerial maneuvers, then they came back down like a trio of executioners' axes. They would never let the car get away.
Jommy narrowed his eyes, his senses alert. He had to time this very carefully. Once the tendrilless ships dropped their next array of focused bombs, he needed to react perfectly and unexpectedly. The invaders cracked through the air, and the cluster of bombs dropped down exactly where the car should have been.
Jommy swerved, spun the rear tires, and hoped he had built sufficient clearance into the armored vehicle. The car bucked off the paved road, kicked up gravel as it went over the shoulder and through the shallow ditch. He didn't slow for an instant, but careened across the fallow countryside into the roadless rolling fields and grassy hills. Dirt and corn stalks flew up in a roostertail behind him. Ahead, past a small marker fence, he saw a thick line of dark trees, a patch of forest that had regrown after the old Slan Wars.
As he hit boulders and ruts, soft dirt and gravel, Jommy had a hard time maintaining his grip on the steering controls. At full speed, he dove through a small pond, hoping it wasn't too deep. Muddy water gushed in all directions, and then he was clear, arrowing straight toward the line of trees and, he hoped, shelter.
The tendrilless bombers had turned about again and rac
ed after him, launching another volley. Coughing explosions left fresh craters in the field, but the tendrilless were overreacting. Jommy continued to dodge, spinning the wheels right and then left.
Petty, who had not properly strapped himself in, was thrown sideways into Kier Gray. The deposed President shoved him away in a tangle of arms and legs.
As the woods loomed in front of them and the tendrilless ships closed in, Jommy knew he would have to crash and dodge his way through the trunks, grind underbrush with his wheels, and hope the armor could withstand any impacts.
One of the dropped bombs exploded right behind the vehicle, and the concussion threw the car several feet in the air. After they crashed to the ground, Jommy spun and swerved, still accelerating toward the forest.
Flying low, the first enemy bomber streaked past the car, its pilot furious at having missed. He skimmed just above the speeding vehicle, as if he meant to smash the car's roof with his landing wheels.
Tall trees loomed up like a wall directly in front of the attacking craft. The tendrilless pilot pulled up frantically, but too late. Unable to clear the treetops, the attack craft scraped the high branches, which ripped out the underbelly. Hurtling out of control, the tendrilless fighter reeled, arced around, and plunged like a missile into the ground.
While the others in the car cheered, Jommy couldn't let his attention waver for a second. He drove headlong through the small marker fence and into the line of trees. Once in the forest, he was forced to slow, threading his way through the randomly spaced trunks. Branches crashed and crunched beneath him. He caromed off a thick spruce, ripping away a great chunk of bark, then he lumbered through a gully, spraying dry leaves. Ahead, the forest was even thicker.
The two remaining tendrilless bombers soared over the treetops, still searching. Now that their comrade was dead, Jommy knew they would never give up. The canopy was dense enough that they could not easily see the car, but they must have some kind of technological scanners that could pick up the heat of his engine or the ten-point steel of the vehicle's armor.
He knocked down a small tree, which did not even damage the reinforced fender. The gauges showed the engines overheating. He crunched along, plowing a path through the woods, all the while knowing he couldn't hide.
The two invader ships came back over the treetops in a methodical search pattern. When they spotted the car and homed in on it, they dropped another volley of aerial bombs. They meant to destroy the whole forest if they needed to.
Jommy saw them coming. "Hold on! We can't get away from this." Despite himself, he closed his eyes, hoping the armor would be sufficient against the destruction.
Like fireworks, a dozen explosions erupted through the woods. Fireballs knocked down trees; blast waves snapped trunks like toothpicks. All around the car, tall pines and oaks toppled. Boughs smashed across the car's roof and hood. A towering pine crashed immediately to their left, scraping and scratching with its needle-filled branches. A thick, shattered trunk fell on top of them like a sledge hammer, burying them.
But the car's armor held.
As the fire continued to swell and trees fell all around, the car was trapped under the avalanche of broken wood. Completely trapped. Even when the trees stopped falling, the blaze increased in intensity, rapidly becoming an inferno that spread through the forest. The car was immobilized, caught in the heart of a furnace.
Jommy shut down the systems. "There. We're completely safe."
CHAPTER 16
As the librarian stared at her baby's exposed tendrils, Anthea's own thrill of fear was echoed and doubled in her mind. The newborn somehow knew that he had been discovered—and instinctively understood the danger to both of them.
"Oh, my!" Mr. Reynolds took a half step backward. He raised his hands in a warding gesture, as if afraid he had touched something that might contaminate him.
Anthea tried to come closer. "Please, Mr. Reynolds! It's not what you think."
His eyes wide and round, the librarian jumped, as if he wanted to bolt out into the streets, regardless of the danger. "Not what I think? I think it's a slan baby!" He blinked several times, gaping at the child. "Yes, indeed, I'm sure it's a slan baby."
"Believe me, we're no threat to you—"
Outside, thunderous explosions made the walls shudder. The candles threw uncertain light and strange shadows.
The librarian made a quick move and dashed around the table. "Help!"
Anthea bounded in front of him, drawing strength from what she had been through, from what she knew might happen. She picked up one of the heavy tomes on the table. Without thinking, she swung it hard and bashed him on the back of the head. The hardcover hit his skull with a loud thump. Reynolds let out a heavy "oof," then sprawled face first on the polished floor. His round glasses bounced off his face and clattered to one side.
Anthea knelt beside him, her heart pounding. "I didn't mean that! I'm so sorry, but you didn't give me any choice."
The librarian groaned, though he remained unconscious. Anthea touched his head, then the pulse at his neck. "I think you'll be all right." She looked at the book with which she had hit him, noted the irony. The title was The Hidden Slan Threat.
On the table, the baby had turned his head so he could see her. She felt the continued strange connection with him. Her infant son seemed very aware of what was happening, and she felt a wash of secondhand relief coming from him, confident that his mother had taken care of the threat.
Anthea hated herself for hurting Mr. Reynolds. She had never been a violent person. She worked in a bank! Before today, she had never struck another person. But she had seen the doctor try to kill her newborn baby, and her own husband had been gunned down trying to protect them. When she'd fled, more people had tried to kill her. The city had been bombed, and now Earth itself was in the middle of a war. Anthea was fighting not only for her life, but for their child's as well. A slan child—a slan born from two apparently normal people.
She had been driven to do many extraordinary things this day, and she feared she would be forced to do many more.
In order to stay safe, she had to keep the librarian out of her way. Finding strength, she rolled Mr. Reynolds over, picked up his hands, and began to drag him down the slippery hall. Either through adrenaline or newfound physical strength, Anthea pulled the heavyset man along without difficulty. Conscientiously, she picked up his eyeglasses, folded down the bows, and tucked them into his pocket. She didn't want to inconvenience the man any more than she had to. Knocking him unconscious was bad enough.
The librarian's office was just outside of the archives wing. She could tie him up there, and she needed him safely out of the way before he regained consciousness. She hated to leave her baby alone even if the room was not far away, but she could sense that the child was in no immediate danger.
Inside the librarian's office, stacks of books and periodicals were on Reynolds's desk, on the floor, on top of filing cabinets. Neatly lettered labels on colored index cards identified each stack. Plastic wrappers and open cardboard boxes indicated that the man did much cataloguing of his new acquisitions here. For a large city library, Reynolds didn't seem to have very much staff. At the moment, she was glad that no one else was in the large building.
On a special table were five old books, dog-eared, their spines cracked and dust jackets torn. But they had been lovingly taped and bandaged, the bindings reglued. She could picture Reynolds spending hours under his bright desk lamp, like a surgeon performing an operation on these beloved and well-read tomes.
She wrestled Mr. Reynolds into the chair behind his desk, then looked around for something to tie him with. When nothing obvious presented itself other than cellophane tape on the desk dispenser, she removed the librarian's blue striped necktie and quickly lashed his wrists to the chair arms. Then she unthreaded the laces from his black Oxford shoes and used those to tie his ankles in place. When that didn't seem terribly secure, she also used the full roll of tape.
When he groaned, she felt sorry again for what she'd been forced to do. It seemed so unfair. Reynolds had been kind to her. She didn't want to hurt him. She had never wanted to hurt anybody—but the slan hunters had certainly changed that. With herself and her baby at stake, she couldn't trust anyone. But Anthea loved her baby far more than Reynolds could ever love his books. The man would be safe enough here until someone else rescued him.
Anthea took a sheet of paper from the desk and quickly scrawled a note. "I'm very sorry. We didn't mean to hurt you. I did not ask for this, but I had to protect my child. I hope someday you'll forgive us."
Rummaging in his desk drawer, she found a set of keys in a red envelope with a hand-written word. Archives. For the padlock that secured the combination wheels? She took the keys. Even without thinking, she knew she would have to open the vault and discover what secret information the government had hidden from the public. Why didn't they want anybody to know the truth about the slans?