Attack on Thebes
Page 23
“I count a hundred dropships at least,” Brandt said. “Good stuff.”
A strong gust of wind blew past, and Tanis eased back around the corner, glancing over at Ayer and Johnny, who were stacked along the wall behind them. Both were looking worse for wear, but still resolute. Still determined to survive.
After ten days on the ground, struggling through the sewers, maintenance tunnels, and alleys of Jersey City, Tanis felt like she’d lived here half her life.
The first spaceport—the small civilian one north of the city—had been a bust. The Nietzscheans had blown it to bits. From there, they’d worked their way to the harbor, searching for a boat that could get them further north to Ventara, where scattered radio signals told of a strong resistance against the Niets.
Unfortunately, most of the boats in the harbor were gone by the time they arrived. The only ships left were fishing rigs under heavy guard by the Niets.
Captain Ayer had suggested they try to go inland to Huntsville, but when they got halfway, they encountered a refugee camp that told of the city’s complete destruction.
Niet patrols had picked up at that point, and it had taken five days to get back to the edge of Jersey City.
Compared to the destruction they’d heard of in other places, be it from refugees or scattered communications from holdouts, it seemed like Jersey City and the surrounding areas were taking the least punishment from the Niets.
Tanis knew that meant one thing: they were looking for her, and believed she was in the vicinity.
She’d already harbored the suspicion. The fact that the turncoat Theban cruisers hadn’t fired on them during their descent was the first clue. The building-to-building searches through Jersey City were another.
Which was why Tanis had no intention of going back into the city.
Luckily, this Nietzschean staging ground lay on southern edge of the metropolis. Even better, it was mostly unoccupied, at present. The dropships arrayed on the hard-packed dirt represented the only noteworthy group of ships within hundreds of kilometers.
Ayer had warmed up—a bit, at least—over the past few days. She hadn’t spoken further of how they’d left General Mill behind, not after Tanis reminded her that the lives of everyone else who had died were worth just as much.
Despite her words, Tanis felt especially bad about the pilot’s death. Maybe if the woman hadn’t been knocked out, she would have survived.
Even though she was less grouchy about Mill and the situation in general, Ayer had been starting to make comments doubting the rescue Tanis was certain would come.
Tanis looked up at the thousands of Nietzschean ships, clustered in bands encircling the planet—enough of them to be visible in broad daylight. The ships hadn’t changed formations in any meaningful way over the past week, which meant that the ISF was not yet headed insystem.
Ayer caught Tanis looking at the sky and she shook her head. “Hard to believe so many warships could assemble in one place—I mean, it’s not busier than normal insystem traffic, but these things…it’s different.”
Tanis nodded slowly, still staring at the sky. “I’ve seen larger formations a few times. But they were either on my side, or I had a way to take them out.”
“You’ve been around, Admiral Richards.”
“I have. Stars, what I wouldn’t give for even one Terran Space Force carrier and its fighter complement right about now.”
“Fighters?”
Tanis nodded. “Back before a-grav, fighters were a big deal. Couldn’t pull gs like ships can now, but what would you do if a million single-pilot fighters armed with nukes came your way?”
Ayer laughed. “Probably surrender.”
“That’s how it worked,” Tanis replied as she held up her left arm, signaling her armor to retract. Most of the flowmetal her left arm consisted of was gone. Only enough remained to form a single rod connecting to her hand—which was also skeletal. Within the cavity the flow armor had encapsulated lay a jumbled mass of small, articulated limbs.
Tanis turned her arm upside down, dropping small bots to the ground. They skittered around the corner and headed toward the Nietzschean compound.
“OK, that’s just gross-looking,” Ayer shuddered, staring at Tanis’s arm. “You’re practically a mech.”
“I reviewed your mech models on the way here,” Tanis replied as her armor sealed back up around her arm, stretching across the support rod and lightwand within. “Well, the Genevian models, I should say—not ‘yours’. You’d be interested to know that I think that most of them may actually be more organic than I am.”
“I believe it,” Ayer replied quietly. “Though it’s a lot harder to spot with you.”
“Better living through technology.”
“That’s not been my experience.” Ayer shook her head and then closed her eyes. The mercenary leaned back against the shed and slid down to a seated position.
Tanis took it as a signal that the conversation was over. She saw that Johnny was asleep, and Brandt pointed at Tanis and placed her hands against her head, miming laying on a pillow.
“Yes, Mom,” Tanis mouthed silently, and followed Ayer’s example, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. A bit of shut-eye before the mission was just what the doctor—or commandant, in this case—ordered.
STEALING A RIDE
STELLAR DATE: 08.26.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Edge of Jersey City, Pyra
REGION: Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Tanis opened her eyes and stretched languidly, her vision overlaid with the readouts from nano sensors around their hiding place and the staging area at the bottom of the hill.
“EM’s getting crazy in the sky again,” Brandt commented. “Let’s hope a belt snaps.”
“Wind’s picking up even more, too,” Johnny said. “I wonder if the ships are what’s affecting the weather.”
“Maybe,” Tanis shrugged.
Angela informed Tanis on the combat net.
“Unless the cruisers are running active scan on this whole region—which they could be,” Ayer replied as she stood up and stretched.
Tanis, Brandt, and Johnny activated their flow armor and disappeared. Ayer was still plainly visible in her lightly armored uniform, and the plan was to have her walk in the midst of the others. Angela would link the flow armor’s stealth systems, bending light aro
und all of them as much as possible, and shield the Marauder captain.
They eased around the corner of the shed and began their approach.
The Nietzschean staging ground was only a kilometer away, but the going was slow. Tall grass and brush covered the hillside, and they did their best to avoid bending stalks and branches as they went.
Fifteen minutes later, they were only a hundred meters from the base, and it was at that moment that one of the van allen belts above the planet snapped, dumping accumulated EM radiation down onto the planet’s poles, which then cascaded through the atmosphere.
Tanis saw her armor’s readouts jump as the air ionized around them.
Tanis only gave a mental snort in reply, feeling Angela navigating the enemy network, altering sensor readings, and making it appear as though no one was anywhere near the staging ground.
The Niets didn’t have any perimeter patrols out, but she could see a group of mechanics working on a dropship, midway through the field, and another pair of guards patrolling amongst the dropships on the same side as Tanis’s group.
The vessel was two rows in and was out of sight of the building the Niets were using as their main base of operations. So long as the patrolling guards kept on their current route, they wouldn’t pass by it, either.
Just as the group passed the first row of ships, the ramp lowered on one, and a Nietzschean soldier stepped out, stretching and squinting as he looked around in the noon light.
Tanis stopped. So long as they held still and obscured Ayer, they were invisible. But with the wind gusts, they couldn’t use any sound dampening nano to mask their footfalls. It was best to wait for the man to pass.
Then someone in the group shifted slightly—Tanis didn’t know who—and a rock popped out from under their boot, skipping across the ground.
The Niet turned his head their way, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight.
She glanced down and saw that the wind was blowing eddies of dust around their feet, creating a strange, clear space in the air. If the man spotted it, he’d come to investigate.
The Nietzschean continued to stare in their direction. He was only sixteen meters away, and Tanis considered just shooting him and moving on, but then another man came out of the dropship from behind him, grinning as he fastened his pants and buckled his belt.
Steady, Tanis thought, praying that the new arrival would do something to distract the other Nietzschean.
Finished with his belt, the second man turned to the first as a gust of wind picked up, blowing even more dirt and debris across the landing field.
Clearly outlining the stealthed figures.
“Hey!” the first man yelled, reaching for his sidearm, only to find that it wasn’t there.
Thankfully back in the ship, along with his belt, Tanis suspected.
She didn’t hesitate to fire a pulse blast at him, bowling him over and knocking his friend back.
“Move!” she yelled, as an audible siren sounded, echoing amongst the ships. They raced ahead as a shot struck a hull nearby, passing the second row of ships and reaching the designated dropship a few moments later.
Ayer looked back at Tanis, sadness in her eyes.
Tanis was about to reply, when the Marauder captain dashed out of cover and ran to the left, moving around to the far side of the ship the Niets were hiding behind to flank them.
Ayer nodded in Tanis’s direction as she ran past the gap between the ships. Then she waved for Tanis to go. “Get out of here!”
Tanis made out the words on her lips, though the wind whipped away any sound. Then the Marauder was gone.
Tanis backed into the ship as the ramp closed, and turned to see Brandt settling into the cockpit.
“Ayer’s in that dropship the Niets were banging in. She’s powering engines,” Johnny said from one of the external monitors. “It’s lifting off.”
Tanis watched on the holo as the other ship began to lift off, then Angela brought theirs into the air.
“Stars. Good luck, Ayer,” Tanis whispered, as both ships poured on max thrust, boosting up into the air.
Ayer’s ship veered to the north, while Angela wove through the small hills south of Jersey City, headed to the coast.
“Another dropship is lifting off, in pursuit of Ayer,” Brandt called out. Tanis watched in silence as the two ships continued north, appearing and disappearing from scan as they dipped in and out of valleys.
Then a beam of light streaked down from the sky and hit Ayer’s dropship as it crested a rise. One of the dropship’s engines exploded, and the craft angled sharply toward the ground.
“Fuck!” Brandt cried out as Ayer’s ship disappeared from view, its passage marked by a cloud of smoke.
Angela increased the randomness of her flight pattern, exceeding what the internal dampeners could manage, rocking the three passengers from side to side.
A bright light flared off their port bow, and then a peal of thunder shook the ship.
“Close!” Johnny cried out.
Angela said.
“Do it,” Tanis said through clenched teeth.
The ship veered left, headed toward the edge of Jersey City, half of the buildings below nothing more than smoking ruins as they flashed below the dropship.
The dropship dipped and plowed into the side of a high-rise and came out the other side, falling like a rock before slowing at the last minute, only to smash through the front of another building and stop in its lobby.
Tanis shook as she pulled herself upright, and saw Johnny do the same.
“Well, shit,” Brandt muttered as she tore off her harness. “We’re right back where we fucking started!”
MARAUDERS
STELLAR DATE: 08.27.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Pyra
REGION: Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Four dropships slipped out of the Fury Lance and began their descent toward the planet below. Inside one of them sat Priscilla. She was on the bench in the troop bay, along with a dozen Marines and Colonel Smith.
One of the dropships contained another dozen ISF Marines under Lieutenant Sal, and the other two held Rika and her SMI-2 mechs.
Each of the four craft would set down in different parts of Jersey City, and begin combing the ruins for any signs of Tanis and the others.
So far as Priscilla was concerned, there was only one objective: find Tanis Richards. Even Brandt, a dear friend to be sure, was secondary. A sacrifice that would be made if they had to.
Th
ese were Bob’s directives. She was to save Tanis, no matter the cost. Everyone else, including herself, was expendable.
The Marauders—General Mill and Captain Ayer—who Rika desperately sought to rescue were barely on Priscilla’s radar. Nothing other than leads that could bring them closer to finding Tanis.
Priscilla turned her attention to the ship’s feeds and saw that, outside the dropships, space was chaos: hundreds of thousands of civilian ships trying to get further outsystem, the ruins of Appalachia Station—in ever deteriorating orbits—and Nietzschea’s own ship-to-ship, and ship-to-surface traffic.
The end result was that the four ships didn’t even have to get permission from an STC to drop; no one questioned another four dropcraft headed to Pyra, when thousands had already made the journey.
Priscilla watched as they came down over one of Pyra’s oceans on approach to Jersey City. From what they’d been able to tell from comm traffic, the Niets considered Jersey City to be one of the most likely places Tanis had landed. She didn’t know if they’d picked up Angela’s transmission, or if it was just a lucky guess.
Over fifty thousand Nietzschean soldiers combed the city and the surrounding countryside, searching for the admiral and her group.
“Putting her down at the southwestern corner…looking for a nice, open plaza,” the pilot, a talkative man named Ferris, called back.
“Just not too close to any enemy activity,” Colonel Smith called up.
As they lowered through the atmosphere, Priscilla made contact with terrestrial wireless networks. A few were automated systems that had managed to stay up during the attack, carrying some civilian chatter and service data—which mostly consisted of alerts that everything was out of service.
What she was more interested in was the Nietzschean comm channels, where messages about the search for Tanis Richards abounded. There was not, however, any mention of General Mill, and Priscilla suspected why.
The enemy was calling Tanis by name, which cemented Priscilla’s belief that Oris had been in on this attack, and that it had been intended to catch Tanis.