by Terry Mixon
“That’s quite simple, my lord. They took the spaceport from us, so we should take the New Zealand base from them. We have a number of ships in the area, including a submarine with conventional cruise missiles. I propose that we counterstrike and remove our enemy’s access to the universe at large in response to their temerity.”
“This Humanity Unlimited seems likely to have access to other gates,” the man said with a note of disapproval. “This will not deny them access to that which they already have.”
“True, my lord. However, the United States is a lesser partner in this alliance. They only have access through the gates in New Zealand because they have not been informed of other locations on the planet.
“Not only will this hamper the United States, it will make it more likely that further activity will eventually highlight the location of other bases on Earth that we can capture for ourselves.”
The line was silent for several long seconds. “Your plan comes with numerous risks. It is completely possible that the situation will spin out of control and China will find itself at war with the rest of the world. While that is a battle we could likely win, I do not believe that the Masters would thank us for handing this planet to them in such poor condition.”
“If we do nothing, we will never hand it over to them at all,” Chen said, risking disagreement. “The decision is yours, my lord, but I urge you to be bold.”
The other man sighed. “So be it, but on your head the results lie. If this plan is successful, you will have somewhat redeemed yourself. If it fails, you will not have another chance to make things right. Choose wisely and execute well.”
The call ended without another word, and Chen put his phone away. This plan was very risky, but without bold moves, he would be eliminated from the great game, and that was unacceptable. Let the world burn, so long as he lived.
27
Harry studied the aerial map they’d put together and turned his head to gauge the degree of sunlight in the valley below the hill. It wouldn’t be long before the aliens decided to test his defenses. If he wanted to avoid a protracted siege, he needed to set them on their heels fairly quickly.
There was one side of the hill that would be easier for them to climb en masse. It had a path, but there were also several fairly gentle slopes that were amenable to climbing. That was the area in which the Asharim slaves were gathering below.
If Harry had been limited to operating with regular troops, that might be the only area he could utilize to get them down too, leading to a head-to-head fight that would be bloody and protracted. It would be much better to descend where the enemy weren’t holding themselves in strength.
To that effect, Krueger had had his specialists run rappelling lines down the steepest part of the hill while it was still dark. They’d cleared out some of the worst obstacles, but there was still plenty for a person to get hung up on, so they couldn’t just move down in the darkness. They had to wait for the light.
Now that they could see where they were going, all they needed was a decent distraction to get the aliens looking elsewhere while he moved a force into position to flank them.
The distraction was easy. They had drones in the air that were capable of firing missiles of relatively impressive power. The aliens didn’t seem worried about attacks at this time, based on the way they were clustered together. The missiles would be deadly.
“Is everyone ready, Commander?” he asked Krueger over the dedicated command channel.
“We’re ready.”
“Have the drones launch their payloads into the largest concentrations of the enemy. Try to keep the shots from an altitude where the drones aren’t visible from the ground. I’d like to be able to do this again if an opportunity presents itself.
“As soon as you fire, I want all of our long-range shooters to engage any of the enemy still on this side of the hill. Take down anyone that looks like an officer or senior noncom. As soon as we’ve that done, send the lead teams down the ropes. They’ll secure the base of the hill while the rest of us come down.”
“Copy that.”
They wouldn’t be taking all their forces down, and they certainly wouldn’t be moving the Volunteers via rappelling. That would be a real mess. They also had to defend the hill, and once they started shooting up the enemy formations, Harry expected the aliens to start boiling around like disturbed ants.
The explosions on the other side of the hill were distant enough that they were just loud booms, but Harry felt the ground shake and could faintly hear screams and shouts wafting up on the breeze.
The dedicated snipers began firing at targets below, their suppressors keeping all but the supersonic crack of the bullets themselves to a bearable level. Clearing out the visible officers and noncoms took less than a minute, so the lead teams were headed down the ropes in short order.
As much as he wanted to be out front for this, Harry knew that he couldn’t be. That was Karl Krueger’s job, with Rex’s competent assistance. He’d secure the beachhead below and start directing the initial deployment based on the plans they’d made a few hours ago.
The aliens hadn’t expected to be shot from this distance. That and their shock at the rapid descent of his troops via the ropes kept them from counterattacking in a cohesive manner, putting the aliens at a disadvantage. Krueger’s forces reached the bottom of the hill and dispersed to cover the entire area around where the rest of their forces would be congregating, opening fire on any of the alien slaves they could as they moved from cover to cover. Rex took one side while Krueger took the other.
When it came time for him to head down, Harry hooked his D ring around the rope and made certain that his harness was secure. Using heavy gloves to help control his descent and slow him where needed, he made his way down, dodging small shrubs and jutting rocks.
Once he reached the base of the hill, he unhooked from the line and moved forward so that no one behind him would have to worry about running into him.
The fighting was getting heavier as the Asharim slaves advanced and tried to stop his people from expanding into their area of operations. This was where their modern Earth firearms proved decisively that Harry’s troops had very little to fear on a case-by-case basis. The black powder rifles couldn’t reload with any speed at all.
That still didn’t mean that there were no casualties among his people. The man immediately to Harry’s right took a hit from a heavy slug fired by one of the black powder rifles and went down hard.
Harry moved to check on the man’s condition and perform first aid but saw immediately that the wound was far too serious for him to make a difference. While the man wasn’t dead yet, even with body armor, his chest had been caved in. There was no way that Harry could do anything about that.
“Medic!” he shouted, looking over his shoulder at where they should be setting up a makeshift triage area under what cover they could find. Two of them immediately darted toward Harry and the downed man.
Harry started to turn back toward the fighting when he saw Jess unclipping herself from the rappelling line. Someone had given her body armor, but he’d just seen how useless that could be.
With a curse, he started toward her. That was when a large group of aliens came around the base of the hill and engaged his troops guarding that quadrant of the perimeter. They seemingly came out of nowhere, so they engaged quickly and overwhelmed the troops defending the area.
Harry immediately called for reinforcements and raced toward Jess. She was directly in their path, and they’d mow her down if he couldn’t get her clear right now.
Brenda Cabot walked through the massive control center situated on one of the lowest levels of the base. Her base. It rivaled the size of the control room she’d seen at the NASA Johnson Space Center that had guided the space shuttle into orbit back in its day. Actually, it was probably a bit larger.
What had it been like back when it had been fully manned? What had all the people done? What had they monitored? What had be
en their goal in being here at all?
She wished she could’ve brought it back online but lacked the requisite computer system. Harry was unlikely to give up any of the ones he had access to. Why would he disable one of his bases just to give her a leg up, after all? She’d just have to make do.
Her phone rang, surprising her. It shouldn’t be able to receive a signal this far down without something in the base providing a relay of some kind. However, when she pulled it out of her pocket, it was still dark. Another ring came from her pocket.
Ah, it was the quantum phone they’d given her. She supposed being underground wouldn’t be an inhibiting factor for something that was supposed to be able to call someone on the other side of the universe.
“Cabot.”
“Miss Cabot, this is Molly Goodwin. Mister Rogers left me his phone, and we have something of a situation and require your assistance.”
“What kind of situation and what can I do to help?”
“I don’t have a lot of time to explain all the details, but I’ve just received word that someone has fired a number of missiles at the base I’m standing in,” Molly said. “They’ve also done something to the communications in the area. The only way I can call for assistance is via this phone.
“We need to evacuate the New Zealand base immediately, but the only operational gate in this facility is hardwired so that it can only call Volunteer World, and that’s currently a war zone. To get anywhere else, someone will have to call us. We desperately need you to do so.”
Brenda headed out of the room at a run. It wasn’t far from where she was to the gate rooms.
“What kind of time frame are you looking at? I can have a gate open to your location in a couple of minutes.”
“The last word we received before all communication ceased indicated that we had approximately eight minutes. I called you at once. I’d deeply appreciate it if you could hurry.”
“Text me the gate address, and I’ll get it open as quickly as I can.”
She disconnected from the call and dug her radio out of her pocket. “Victor, tell me they you’re somewhere near the gate room.”
“Not exactly, but I can get there pretty quickly,” he answered a few seconds later. “Why?”
Brenda ducked into one of the stairwells and started down toward the gate rooms. “I need you to open a gate right now, because we’ve got impending visitors that need to get here in a hurry.”
“On my way. I’ll call you as soon as I get there.”
The quantum phone updated with the gate address. Brenda resisted the urge to call Victor back, because it wouldn’t do any good if he couldn’t enter the code immediately. With twenty Asharim characters, that wasn’t the kind of thing that one just remembered.
When she was about thirty seconds away from the gate rooms, Victor called her back. “I’m ready.”
She stopped running, took two deep breaths, and slowly read him the gate address. This wasn’t the time to make a mistake because she was in a hurry.
“Gate activating,” he said as soon as she’d finished. “We have a good connection. There’s a bunch of people coming through. A lot of them are in uniform and armed. What do we do if they try to take over?”
“These are allies of our allies,” she said. “They asked for our help and we’re giving it to them. They’re not going to stick a knife in our backs.”
She fervently hoped that was true.
By the time she arrived in the gate rooms, over fifty people had made their way from the New Zealand base. Most of them were soldiers of one kind or another, but Brenda saw a sprinkling of civilians in the mix. She also saw Molly Goodwin heading her way with a determined stride.
“Are you going to be able to get your people through in time?” Brenda asked.
The other woman nodded. “We should be able to shut the gate down at least a minute before the missiles arrive on target. It has to be the Chinese, though I’m uncertain why they suddenly felt the need to start a war with New Zealand and the alliance.”
As Brenda watched the gate, she saw a new flood of civilians coming through. A number of them were pushing large crates on hand carts or carrying other artifacts. They were probably trying to salvage what they’d found in the base.
“I understand that you’re not formally a member of the alliance,” Molly said, “and I appreciate your assistance. Trust me when I say that if you want a more formalized relationship with us, I’d wager that you could get it.”
The woman looked around. “Good Lord, I thought Harry had said that you only had a temporary base and gate. This looks more like the Mars base.”
“Our circumstances have changed,” Brenda said smoothly. “We can talk about all of that once we get your people in here and know what’s going on. If China—and by China, I mean the Dragon—has decided to go to war, we need to know why and figure out what we can do to counter them fast.”
The trio of people in military uniforms came through the gate and waved their arms toward Molly.
“That’s it,” she said, glancing at her watch. “We’re still ninety seconds away from the projected impact, but perhaps we should close the gate down now. If they say we’ve gotten everyone out, then we’ve gotten everyone.”
“Victor,” Brenda called out. “Shut the gate down.”
Moments later, the gate closed, leaving the abandoned base in New Zealand to its fate.
Brenda turned toward Molly and gestured for her to walk with her. “The first thing we need to do is get your people situated. We have access to a relatively large base, but the primary services other than life-support are offline. It doesn’t have a computer.”
The other woman smiled. “Then we just might be able to help you out. A number of those crates over there hold the computer that was left in the New Zealand base. It was sealed in a room and protected from the elements. It may be functional enough to serve your needs.
“I’m certain that the alliance is going to be peeved at me, but I’m willing to gift it to you in exchange for the service you’ve just performed for us. I feel quite confident that we can find another one someplace out in the universe with your help. If this is useful now, we should use it now.”
Brenda smiled. “Molly, I think we’re going to get along just fine. We can have some coffee while we wait for news from New Zealand and talk over a more formal alliance.”
28
Jess had expected there to be consequences for coming down from the hill while the fighting was still taking place, but she hadn’t expected a bunch of alien warriors to break through the lines right where she was coming down the ropes.
Her initial inclination was to haul ass in the other direction, but there were still people coming down from the top of the hill, and they were vulnerable. She wasn’t going to see the enemy warriors just tear them apart.
She wasn’t stupid enough to come to a battle unarmed, but she wasn’t sure exactly how much use her little flechette pistol was going to be. Well, it was better than nothing.
Just the inclination to draw her weapon was enough to send her hand darting down to the holster at her waist. Muscle memory that she hadn’t earned quickly drew it and had it lined up on the lead alien.
This was the first good look she’d gotten at an alien species firsthand. The bugger was tall—probably a bit more than two meters—and wide. He wasn’t as stout as a heavy-worlder, but he’d be strong. She had no doubt of that.
His skin was the color of pewter and looked rough to the touch. Almost scaly but not quite. He wore what looked to be some kind of leather pants and a rough-spun shirt. He wore a harness holding a number of things that she couldn’t identify across his wide chest.
His face had very little in common with humans. While he had two eyes, they were set wider apart than a human’s would be, and he had no nose.
Instead, he had a wide mouth with a lot of very sharp-looking teeth. She could see them quite clearly because he was screaming at her as he raised what looked like
a flintlock rifle that he intended to use as a club.
She took that all in as she was raising her pistol. As soon as it was lined up, she fired a burst into his chest. Neither his harness or his skin proved to be an impediment to the lethal projectiles, and blood flew everywhere as the alien went down.
To say that enraged his companions would’ve been something of an understatement. Whereas before they seemed to have been looking for any target to take down, now they all focused on her. That was so unfair.
She planted her feet into a wide stance and continued firing short bursts at each of the aliens in turn. They’d get to her before she could possibly take them all out, but it wasn’t exactly like she had a choice at this point.
Just as they were about to overwhelm her, someone off to her right fired an automatic weapon made on Earth and cut a number of the aliens down. She didn’t have time to see who it was, but she mentally thanked them as she swapped her nearly empty magazine for a fresh one and resumed firing.
Together with the other shooter and a few additional people who joined in, they quickly took out the aliens that had penetrated their lines. Even counting the fight in the sewers just a few days ago, this was easily the grisliest scene she’d ever witnessed. There was blood so dark it was almost black, guts, and other horrible-looking things scattered all around the bodies. And the smell almost made her throw up.
A few of the dying aliens still twitched and groaned. She wondered what she was supposed to do about their suffering. Could her people even perform any kind of surgery on an alien?
“What the hell are you doing?” Harry demanded from beside her. “You shouldn’t be here.”
With her hands trembling slightly, she replaced her partially spent magazine with a fresh one and holstered her weapon. Only then did she turn to face her enraged partner. It must’ve been him that had been shooting into the aliens, so he’d saved her life. Again.
“I had to be here,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t just stay up there and watch the fighting.”