by David Weber
"Yes, sir."
* * *
Litanil wiped out Private Pak's team and raged off after fresh targets. Ahead of her, half a dozen bioenhanced Terra-born construction workers armed with steel reinforcing rods and Imperial blasting compound began working their way around the flank of a second assault group.
Quang poked his head up. This was taking too long. But there would still be time. His men were in position at last, and he barked an order.
"Down!" Germaine shouted, and Hatcher and Tsien dropped instantly as the stubby grenade launchers coughed. Two grenades hit short or exploded against the outer wall; the third headed straight into the door, and Germaine's left hand struck it like a handball. The explosion ripped his hand apart, and shrapnel tore into his chest and shoulder.
Agony stabbed him, but his implants stopped the flow of blood to his shredded hand and flooded his system with a super-charged blast of adrenalin. The first wave came up the ramp after the grenades, and he cut them down like bloody wheat.
Hatcher fired as a head rose over the edge of the scaffolding. His first shot missed; his second hit just above the left eye. Beside him, Tsien was flat on his belly, firing two-handed. Another attacker dropped.
A sudden burst of explosions ripped the dusty smoke as the construction workers tossed their makeshift bombs. The attack squad faltered as three of their number were blown apart. A fourth emptied a full magazine into a charging man. He killed his assailant, but he never knew; the steel rod his victim had carried impaled him like a spear.
His six surviving comrades broke and ran-directly in front of Litanil's power bore.
Eight more of Quang's men died, but a ninth slammed a heart-rupturing burst into Allen Germaine. Major Germaine was a dead man, but he was a bioenhanced corpse. He stayed on his feet long enough to aim very carefully before he squeezed the trigger.
Gerald Hatcher swore viciously as his aide toppled without a sound, grav gun bouncing from his remaining hand. Bastards! Bastards! He squeezed off another shot, hitting his target in the torso, then dropped him with a second.
It wasn't enough, and he knew it.
Quang's number four attack squad had a good position between two huge earth-movers, but there were no more targets in their field of fire. It was time to go, and they began to filter back in pairs, each halting in turn to provide covering fire for their fellows. It was a textbook maneuver.
As the first pair reached the ends of their shielding earth-movers, a pair of bioenhanced hands reached out from either side. Fingers ten times stronger than their own closed, and two tracheas crushed. The twitching bodies were tossed aside, and the crouching ambushers waited patiently for their next victims.
Quang popped his head up and saw the grav gun lying two meters beyond the door. Now! He clutched his assault rifle and rose, waving his surviving men forward, and followed up the ramp in their wake.
A last attacker crouched on the scaffolding. He'd seen what happened when his fellows exposed themselves, and he poked just the muzzle of his rifle over the edge. It was a sound idea, but in his excitement he rose just too high. The crown of his head showed, and Gerald Hatcher put a pistol bullet through it in the instant before the automatic fire shattered both his legs.
Litanil swung her power bore again and knew they were winning.
The attackers had achieved the surprise they sought, but they hadn't realized what they were attacking. Most of the site personnel were unenhanced Terra-born, but a significant percentage were not, and those who were enhanced had full Fleet packages, modified at Colin MacIntyre's order to incorporate fold-space coms. They might be unarmed, but they were strong, tough, fast, and in unbroken communication.
And, as Litanil herself had proved, a construction site abounded in improvisational weapons.
Tsien Tao-ling was no longer a field marshal. He was a warrior alone and betrayed, and Quang was still out there. Whatever happened, Quang must not be allowed to live.
Tsien tossed aside his empty pistol, his mind cold and clear, and rose on his hands and toes, like a runner in the blocks.
General Quang blinked as Tsien exploded from the control room. He would never have believed the huge man could move that quickly! But what did he hope to gain? He could not outrun bullets!
Then he saw Tsien drop and snatch up the grav gun as he rolled towards the scaffolding. No!
Assault rifles barked, but the men behind them had been as surprised as Quang. They were late, and they tried to compensate by leading their target. They would catch him as he rolled over the edge of the scaffolding into cover.
Tsien threw out one leg, grunting as a kneecap shattered on concrete, but it had the desired effect. He stopped dead, clutching Germaine's grav gun, and the bullets which should have killed him went wide. He raised the muzzle, not trying to rise from where he lay.
Quang screamed in frustration as Tsien opened fire. Three of his remaining men were down. Then four. Five! He raised his own weapon, firing at the marshal, but fury betrayed his aim.
Tsien grunted again as a slug ripped through his right biceps. A second shattered his shoulder, but he held down the grav gun's trigger, and his fire swept the ramp like a broom.
Quang's last trooper was down, and sudden terror filled him. He threw away his rifle and tried to drop down the ramp, but he was too late. His last memory on Earth was the cold, bitter hatred in Tsien Tao-ling's pitiless eyes.
Gerald Hatcher groaned, then bit his lip against a scream as someone moved his left leg. He shuddered and managed to raise his eyelids, wondering for a moment why he felt so weak, why there was so much pain.
Tao-ling bent over him, and he bit off most of another scream as the marshal tightened something on his right leg. A tourniquet, Hatcher realized dizzily... and then he remembered.
His expression twisted with more than pain as he saw Allen Germaine's dead face close beside him, but his mind was working once more. Poorly, slowly, with frustrating dark patches, but working. The firing seemed to have stopped, and if there was no more shooting and Tao-ling was working on him, they must have won, mustn't they? He was rather pleased by his ability to work that out.
Tsien crawled up beside him. One shoulder was swollen by a makeshift, blood-soaked bandage, and his left leg dragged uselessly, but his good hand clutched Allen's grav gun as he lowered himself between Hatcher and the door with a groan.
"T-Tao-ling?" the general managed.
"You are awake?" Tsien's voice was hoarse with pain. "You have the constitution of a bull, Gerald."
"Th-thanks. What... what kind of shape are we... ?"
"I believe we have beaten off the attack. I do not know how. I am afraid you are badly hurt, my friend."
"I'll... live...."
"Yes, I think you will," Tsien said so judiciously Hatcher grinned tightly despite his agony. His brain was fluttering and it would be a relief to give in, but there was something he had to say first. Ah!
"Tao-ling-"
"Be quiet, Gerald," the marshal said austerely. "You are wounded."
"You're... not? Looks like... I get my... implants first."
"Americans! Always you must be first."
"T-Tell Horus I said... you take over...."
"I?" Tsien looked at him, his face as twisted with shame as pain. "It was my people who did this thing!"
"H-Horse shit. But that's... why it's important... you take over. Tell Horus!" Hatcher squeezed his friend's forearm with all his fading strength. It was Tsien's right arm, but he did not even wince.
"Tell him!" Hatcher commanded, clinging to awareness through the shrieking pain.
"Very well, Gerald," Tsien said gently. "I will."
"Good man," Hatcher whispered, and let go at last.
* * *
The city echoed with song and dance as the People of Riahn celebrated. Twelve seasons of war against Tur had ended at last, and not simply in victory. The royal houses of Riahn and Tur had brought the endless skirmishes and open battle over possession of
the Fithan copper mines to a halt with greater wisdom than they had shown in far too long, for the Daughter of Tur would wed the Son of Riahn, and henceforth the two Peoples would be one.
It was good. It was very, very good, for Riahn-Tur would be the greatest of all the city-states of T'Yir. Their swords and spears would no longer turn upon one another but ward both from their neighbors, and the copper of Fithan would bring them wealth and prosperity. The ships of Riahn were already the swiftest ever to swim-with Fithan copper to sheath their hulls against worms and weed, they would own the seas of T'Yir!
Great was the rejoicing of Riahn, and none of the People knew of the vast Achuultani starships which had reached their system while the war still raged. None knew they had come almost by accident, unaware of the People until they actually entered the system, or how they had paused among the system's asteroids. Indeed, none of the People knew even what an asteroid was, much less what would happen if the largest of them were sent falling inward toward T'Yir.
And because they did not know such things, none knew their world had barely seven months to live.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Colin MacIntyre was not afraid, for "afraid" was too weak a word.
He sat with his back to the conference room hatch as the others filed in, and he felt their own fear against his spine. He waited until all were seated, then swung his chair to meet their eyes. Their faces looked even worse than he'd expected.
"All right," he said at last. "We've got to decide what to do next."
Their steady regard threw his lie back at him, even Jiltanith's, and he wanted to scream at them. We didn't have to decide; he did, and he wished with all his soul that he had never heard of a starship named Dahak.
He stopped himself and drew a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, the shadows within them had retreated just a bit.
"Dahak," he said quietly, "have you got anything more for us?"
"Negative, Captain. I have examined all known Imperial weapons and research. Nothing in my data base can account for the observational data."
Colin managed not to spit a curse. Observational data. What a neat, concise way to describe two once-inhabited planets with no life whatever. Not a tree, not a shrub, nothing. There were no plains of volcanic glass and lingering radioactivity, no indications of warfare-just bare, terribly-eroded earth and stone and a few pathetic clusters of buildings sagging into wind and storm-threshed ruin. Even their precarious existence said much for the durability of Imperial building materials, for Dahak estimated there had been no living hand to tend them in almost forty-five thousand years.
No birds, he thought. No animals. Not even an insect. Just... nothing. The only movement was the wind. Weather had flensed the denuded planet until its stony bones gaped through like the teeth of a skull, bared in a horrible, grinning rictus of desecration and death.
"Hector?" he said finally. "Do you have any ideas?"
"None." MacMahan's normally controlled face was even more impassive than usual, and he seemed to hunker down in his chair.
"Cohanna?"
"I can't add much, sir, but I'd have to say it was a bio-weapon of some sort. Some unimaginable sort." Cohanna shivered. "I've landed unmanned probes for spot analyses, but I don't dare send teams down."
Colin nodded.
"I can't imagine how it was done," the biosciences officer continued. "What kind of weapon could produce this? If they'd irradiated the place.... But there's simply nothing to go on, Captain. Nothing at all."
"All right." Colin inhaled deeply. "'Tanni, what can you tell us?"
"Scarce more than 'Hanna. We have found some three score orbital vessels and installations; all lie abandoned to the dead. As with the planets, we durst not look too close, yet our probes have scanned them well. In all our servos have attended lie naught save bones."
"Dahak? Any luck accessing their computers?"
"Very little, Captain. I have been unable to carry out detailed study of the equipment, but there are major differences between it and the technology with which I am familiar. In particular, the computer nets appear to have been connected with fold-space links, which would provide a substantial increase in speed over my own molecular circuitry, and these computers operated on a radically different principle, maintaining data flow in semi-permanent force fields rather than in physical storage units. Their power supplies failed long ago, and without continuous energization-" The computer's voice paused in the electronic equivalent of a shrug.
"The only instance in which partial data retrieval has been possible is artifact seventeen, the Fleet vessel Cordan," Dahak continued. "Unfortunately, the data core was of limited capacity, as the unit itself was merely a three-man sublight utility boat, and had suffered from failed fold-space units. Most data in memory are encoded in a multi-level Fleet code I have not yet been able to break, though I believe I might succeed if a larger sample could be obtained. The recoverable data consist primarily of routine operational records and astrogational material.
"I was able to date the catastrophe by consulting the last entry made by Cordan's captain. It contains no indication of alarm, nor, unfortunately, was she loquacious. The last entry simply records an invitation for her and her crew to dine at the planetary governor's residence on Defram-A III."
"Nothing more?" Ninhursag asked quietly.
"No, Commander. There undoubtedly was additional data, but only Cordan's command computer utilized hard storage techniques, and it is sadly decayed. I have located twelve additional auxiliary and special-function computer nets, but none contain recoverable data."
"Vlad?" Colin turned to his engineer.
"I wish I could tell you something. The fact that we dare not go over and experiment leaves us with little hard data, but the remotes indicate that their technology was substantially more advanced than Dahak's. On the other hand, we have seen little real evidence of fundamental breakthroughs-it is more like a highly sophisticated refinement of what we already have."
"How now, Vlad?" Jiltanith asked. "Hath not our Dahak but now said their computers are scarce like unto himself?"
"True enough, 'Tanni, but the differences are incremental." Vlad frowned. "What he is actually saying is that they moved much further into energy-state engineering than before. I cannot say certainly without something to take apart and put back together, but those force field memories probably manifested as solid surfaces when powered up. The Imperium was moving in that direction even before the mutiny-our own shield is exactly the same thing on a gross scale. What they discovered was a way to do the same sorts of things on a scale which makes even molycircs big and clumsy, but it was theoretically possible from the beginning. You see? Incremental advances."
Jiltanith nodded slowly, and Colin leaned his elbows on the table.
"Bearing that in mind, Dahak, what are the chances of recovering useful data from any other computers we encounter?"
"Assuming they are of the variety Fleet Captain (Engineering) Chernikov has been discussing and that they have been left unattended without power, nil. Please note, however, that Cordan's command computer was not of that type."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning, Captain, that it is highly probable Fleet units retained solid data storage for critical systems precisely because energy data storage was susceptible to loss in the event of power failure. If that is indeed the case, any large sublight unit should provide quite considerable amounts of data. Any supralight Fleet combatant would, in all probability, retain a hard-storage backup of its complete data core."
"I see." Colin leaned back and rubbed his eyes.
"All right. We're five and a half months from Terra, and so far all we've found is one completely destroyed Fleet base and two totally dead planets. If Dahak's wrong about the Fleet retaining hard-storage for its central computers, we can't even hope to find out what happened, much less find help, from any system where this disaster spilled over.
"If we turn back right now, we'll reach S
ol over a year before the Achuultani scouts, which would at least permit us to help Earth stand them off. By the same token, it would be impossible for us to do that and then return to the Imperium-or, at least, to move any deeper into it-and still get back to Sol before the main incursion arrives. So the big question is do we go on in the hope of finding something, or do we turn back now?"
He studied their faces and found only mirrors of his own uncertainty.
"I don't think we can give up just yet," he said finally. "We know we can't win without help, and we don't know there isn't still some help available. In all honesty, I'm not very optimistic, but I can't see that we have any choice but to ride it out and pray."
Jiltanith and MacMahan nodded slightly. The others were silent, then Chernikov raised his head.