Alone in the Night Page 10

  “Ensign,” Corrigan said, turning to Singh, “explain that to them. Offer them a chance to break off. If they drop their missiles cold, I won’t fire on them. There’s no need for them to die today.”

  “I’ll try, sir, but I doubt they’re going to be in…” Singh paused, looked up, and said, “Helm, evasive, now!”

  Mercifully, Novak obeyed, throwing the ship to port with all thrusters burning, just as the orbital station ahead exploded, the shock wave hurling debris in all directions, destroying all the satellites within range. The fighters instantly abandoned their hopeless attack, instead opting for simple survival, trying to get out of range as rapidly as they could, trying to dodge the debris that raced towards them.

  “Get us the hell out of here, helm,” Corrigan ordered.

  “Way ahead of you, sir,” she replied, throwing the ship around, tail pointed at the shockwave, engines roaring as she threw them into a lower orbit, down into the upper limits of the atmosphere where Avenger could survive but the debris could not.

  “Christ, it’s going to wipe every satellite out of orbit,” Dixon said. “How did you know, Ranj?”

  “Power spike on the freighter,” Singh replied. “They were building up to something, so I ran a scan of their cargo compartments. Uranium. Lots of it. Far more than they could ever safely store, and enough to make a rather nasty bomb. I estimate a twenty-five megaton yield. Possibly other charges on the station.” Turning to Corrigan, he said, “This was no accident.”

  “We’re under the blast radius,” Novak said. “I’m bringing her back up. By the time it’s gone around the planet it should have dispersed sufficiently that we won’t be affected. Worst case, Crawford will have to play his games with the particle beams again. We seem to have run out of offensive targets.”

  “What about the fighters?” Corrigan asked.

  “Six destroyed, the rest damaged and drifting,” Dixon reported. “There’s no way in hell anyone is going to be able to pick them up.” He looked at Corrigan, smiled, then added, “Our search and rescue drones, on the other hand, should easily be able to manage a safe intercept.”

  “Get them moving,” Corrigan ordered. “Usual drill. Take them to a secure location, have medical kits standing by, and isolate them from the rest of the ship until I can speak with them myself.”

  “No escape pods,” Singh said. “And the communications traffic made it clear that the station was fully manned. Commander, I think about eight hundred people just died, most of them civilians.”

  “On a Belter installation,” Crawford replied.

  “Including families. Children.” Singh shook his head, and said, “This isn’t war. This is terrorism.”

  “Do you demand that all the people we help are angels?” Dixon asked.

  “Maybe not, sir, but this is…”

  “War,” Corrigan asked. “We’ve got a job to do. Icarus will be here any second now. Get those pilots to safety, and see if there are any other survivors. We can’t bring back the dead, but we might be able to keep the death toll down at least a little.” He looked at the viewscreen, and with a bitter voice, added, “I think we can categorically state that orbital space is now secure.”

  Chapter 14

  Carter looked at the display, waiting for the red light to wink on that would announce a successful return to normal space, would tell her that Icarus had reached its destination and that they were cleared to begin their approach to Atlantis. She looked across at the other members of her crew, Malone’s eyes locked on his sensor controls, his hands poised to begin his work as soon as they launched. Ulyanov was more distant, his face pale, his eyes darting around. She mentally revised her estimation of his age down. He was just a kid. He didn’t have any business being here.

  The light winked on, and she felt the familiar shudder as Icarus returned to normal space, the viewscreen bursting into life to reveal the planet below, the desolate wasteland towards which they were about to descend. With a loud clunk, the docking clamps retracted, and the shuttle fell away from the side of the ship, engines firing automatically to hurl them down to their pre-selected target.

  “Landing in four minutes, thirty seconds,” she said. “Hold on, people. It’s going to be a pretty damned rough descent.”

  “Getting sensor data now,” Malone reported. “Christ, the station’s gone. Totally destroyed. There’s a debris field sweeping orbital space, but we should be well clear of it long before it can reach us.” Turning to Carter, he said, “What the hell did Avenger do?”

  “They didn’t,” Ulyanov replied. “It was part of the battle plan.”

  “Destroying the station?” Carter asked.

  Nodding, he said, “We had to clear orbital space, and we didn’t know whether or not we were going to have any help. Everyone should have been evacuated before detonation…”

  “I’ve got news for you,” Malone said. “There are no escape pods in orbit, no shuttles, and the explosion was recent enough that I’m still picking up heat sources.” He turned to the rebel, and said, “Aside from a few fighters that Avenger seems to be picking up, everyone in orbital space is dead. If anyone was heading down to the surface, we’d have seen it. Why weren’t we told?”

  “I thought you had been,” Ulyanov replied, his eyes widening. “They said that nobody would be hurt. Except for a few Belters, maybe. They said that the station would be evacuated.” Shaking his head, he added, “Maybe they got them off first, well before the bomb was detonated.”

  “Maybe,” Malone said. “There’s a lot of biomass out there, though.”

  “Coming up on atmospheric entry interface,” Carter said. “We’ll have to get back to this later. Rest assured, Specialist, that we will get back to it, though. I want all the sensor data you can gather collated and transmitted to Avenger, tight-beam and encrypted.”

  “No,” Ulyanov said. “It’s got to be a mistake. Maybe…”

  “You’re not even convincing yourself, kid,” Malone replied.

  The shuttle hammered into the atmosphere, heat building up on its lower hull, and the sensors briefly winked out as Carter carefully guided her ship onto trajectory, easing her down as they passed deeper, down into the thicker atmosphere, letting gravity do all of the work to ease the strain on the engines. Up above, the rest of the shuttles belatedly launched, and as the sensors came back on, she saw another launched from Avenger, heading around the planet.

  “All going by the manual so far,” Carter said. “Malone, see if you can get any information about our target. The rebels should have put up some sort of landing beacon for us to home in on. I’d hate to have to set her down inside the compound itself.”

  “Got it,” Malone reported. “Local surface-to-air defenses are live, so we might have a hot time getting down to the ground. Laser cannons only, no missiles as far as I can see. I can’t see…” He paused, then added, “I’ve got the beacon, ma’am, close to the main entrance. Heat signatures suggests that there’s a gunfight in progress.”

  “Great,” Carter said. “A nice hot LZ.”

  “Smoke rising in two places,” Malone added. “Though I think that’s for us. I’m loading all the local atmospheric data I can find into the computer. Looks like quite a storm building down there, but we’ve probably got a couple of hours before it breaks.”

  “Probably?” Ulyanov asked.

  “Not much weather in space, kid. I’m not exactly an expert.”

  “Get suited up,” Carter said. “And get yourselves armed. I’m going to bring us down hard. Once we hit the surface, you and Ulyanov will stay back and protect the shuttle.” Turning to Malone, she added, “Now get this straight. I’ll go with the rebels and snatch the Man Who Would Be President. You will wait for either twelve minutes, or until the fire gets too heavy, and you will then leave. I’ve plotted a course that should take you back to Icarus.”

  “Lieutenant…,” Malone protested.

  “I am not risking your lives for a decoy mission!” she yelled
.

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing?” Ulyanov asked.

  “Commanding officer’s privilege,” she said with a smile. “Get set. We hit the surface in ninety seconds.”

  “Lieutenant…,” Malone repeated.

  “Damn it, Specialist, get your head into the game! We need to make this look good, and make it cost as few lives as possible,” she replied. “This is how it is going to be. Clear?” Shaking her head, she guided the shuttle down to the surface, weaving from side to side as the garrison fired its laser cannons into the sky, megawatts of energy pumped into the air all around her, setting off a series of proximity warning alerts.

  She waited as long as she dared to fire the landing thrusters, looking down at the rough ground beneath her, twin columns of smoke rising into to sky as a primitive marker. The Belters were hanging close to the entrance, using carefully-prepared cover to protect themselves from the firepower of the rebels, bodies scattered all around in the wake of a failed assault.

  Of course, their cover was useless against the superheated steam firing from her landing jets, and she kicked the shuttle back, dangerously close to a cluster of jagged outcrops, then fired a blast at maximum power, the shuttle rising into the sky briefly as the Belter guards below were roasted alive by her improvised assault.

  Then, at last, she let the shuttle drop, reaching up for her respirator and struggling into her bulky cold-weather gear, thankful at least that the conditions on the surface didn’t require a spacesuit. While Atlantis was no beauty spot, the pressure and gravity were within tolerance, and even the weather was barely survivable. For a while. A short while, anyway.

  As the shuttle’s landing claws settled on the ground, she rose from her seat, throwing a control to begin the pre-launch procedures for the automatic return to Avenger, and made for the rear cabin, where Ulyanov and Malone were already opening the hatch, sending a blast of cold racing into the air as she tugged up the seam of her jacket.

  There was a low rumble from outside, and she paused for a moment before realizing that the battle was still raging, someone likely throwing a grenade close to the hull. It was strange to be on a world other than Earth where there was any sound at all, transmitted through alien air.

  A man stumbled up the ramp, blood spattered on his arm, the faceplate of his respirator battered and worn, and said, “You Carter?”

  “That’s me,” Carter replied.

  “Welcome to Shangri-La. I’m Teddy Clarke. Local rebel leader. I understand you’ve got some guns for us?”

  “In the back,” she replied. “That’s not why we’re…”

  “I know, I know, you’re here to rescue the President, but I’ve got priorities of my own, and one of them is to make sure my men have the means to keep this fight moving.” He gestured to his rear, and said, “We’ll get them unloaded and distributed. Right now we’re trying to hold a defensive line. They’ve got us pinned down, though that move with the landing jets helped one hell of a lot. Nice flying.”

  “Have you managed to get into the compound?” Carter asked.

  “No, ma’am,” he replied, shaking his head. “And I’ve lost a good third of my men making the attempt. The bastards were already on maximum alert. Someone must have warned them that we were coming. I don’t see how we’re going to get through.” Looking around the cabin, he asked, “How many can you carry, Lieutenant?”

  “Ten. Twelve if we really push it.”

  “Not enough,” he said. “If this thing could hold twenty-five, we’d be on our way out of here, but I’m not going to leave half my men behind.” Another explosion erupted behind him, sending snow and rock into the air, and he added, “Though I think that might not be a problem soon enough. If we can’t change the game, this battle is over.”

  She looked at him, sighed, then said, “The reason they were alerted was because this mission was intended as a decoy operation. Something I found out for myself less than two hours ago.”

  “What?” Clarke yelled. “Ten of my people are killed, and…”

  “And all the protests and fury in the world will not bring them back to life. I agree with you. I agree completely. But we’ve got to work out a way to make this work. If only because I’m beginning to suspect that the Belters are not the only ones who don’t want President Bellini to get free.”

  “Christ,” Clarke said. He looked at the shuttle, and said, “No way you can operate over the compound?”

  “Only for about two seconds before the laser cannons find their mark,” she replied. “Think harder.”

  “This ship doesn’t have any guns on it?” Clarke asked. At her glare, he added, “Sorry. Had to ask.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ulyanov said. “Maybe it does.”

  “Boris…,” Clarke began.

  “No, no, hear me out. You can blow a hole in the gates with the engines. If I reset the systems to below standard minimums, and you fire the thrusters full forward, it’ll be like hurling a flamethrower at the enemy.”

  “I like the way you think, kid,” Clarke said. “That’s just about crazy enough to work. Lieutenant, what…”

  “Are you sure you can set the shuttle properly?” Carter asked. “That’s not something that’s in any manual I’ve ever read.”

  Nodding, Ulyanov replied, “I’ve done it, ma’am. Refitting engines for suborbital transfers. We used to do it all the time on the transit shuttles, modifying bigger engines to keep the shipments moving.”

  “Make it happen,” Carter said. “And fast. It’s only a matter of time before our friends out there decide to bring up some heavier weaponry and wipe us off the map.” Turning to Clarke, she added, “Make sure those weapons are properly dispersed around your troops. We can’t afford any mistakes. Not at this stage. As soon as we set off the engines, all hell will break loose. We’ll have a window to break into the compound. Probably not a large one.”

  “Whatever it is,” the rebel said, “you can rest assured that we will take maximum advantage of it.” He looked at Ulyanov, and said, “Make this good, kid. We’re counting on you.”

  Ulyanov smiled, then turned to the controls, hastily reconfiguring the engineering consoles, Carter looking over his shoulder, watching his work, every step of the way, nodding in periodic approval.

  From outside, she could hear a series of periodic booms, the Belter forces bringing up heavier equipment. Nightmares of a dismounted laser cannon flashed haplessly into her mind, but there was nothing they could do about that worst case, nothing at all. Trying to hurry the young Ulyanov would have potentially disastrous consequences. That wasn’t an option either.

  “We’re there!” the engineer yelled.

  Glancing out of the hatch, Clarke added, “We’re ready.”

  Taking a deep breath, Carter said, “Fire.”

  There was a thunderous roar, louder than anything she had ever heard before, and a row of red lights flickered on the control panel. It was all over in less than a second, the entrance of the compound a flaming ruin, bodies scattered in all directions. The snow continued to fall, sending a column of steam rising into the air, and Carter looked at Ulyanov, shaking her head.

  “Not bad, kid. Not bad.” Turning to Clarke, she said, “Let’s move.”

  “My God,” the rebel said. “My God.”

  “Now, damn it, before they can recover!” Carter yelled. “We can still lose this battle unless we move out. Now!”

  Chapter 15

  “We’re beginning to get some reports from the surface,” Singh reported. “Insurrections in every settlement. Some of the smaller ones have already declared for Free Atlantis, and there’s fighting in Plato City. The local power grid is running on auxiliary power, and the computer network is still down. That’s going to have some pretty major consequences if they don’t get things up and running soon.”

  Nodding, Dixon added, “Losing all of their satellite constellations is just about as bad. They’ve managed a clean sweep. There’s nothing left. I suppose they can us
e Icarus as a relay for a while, but…”

  “We can help with that, at least,” Crawford suggested. “We’re sitting on a collection of sensor drones, all of which have estimated operational lifespans of twelve months or higher. If we seed them in orbit, then they’ll at least provide some sort of atmospheric data for the meteorologists down there, and while they won’t be able to handle anything like the bandwidth of the original commsats…”

  “Anything is better than nothing,” Corrigan said. “Make it happen. Have we heard anything from Lieutenant Carter?”

  “Not a thing, sir,” Singh said. “I tracked all of the shuttles safely down to the surface, but I don’t even know which one she was on, and none of them are responding to my hails. To be fair, I suspect they’ve got more important things to do right now than provide a play-by-play.”

  “True, but there’s a lot we might be able to do to help them if we just know what was happening down there.”

  “Icarus still isn’t talking either,” Dixon said. “All I can get is some low rank communications technician telling me that everyone is tied up at the moment. Damn it all, we’re meant to be their allies, and…”

  “Are we?” Corrigan asked. “I’m beginning to wonder about that.”

  Looking up at his panel, Dixon added, “Todorova is asking for launch clearance, sir. She wants to go to the same landing site as Shuttle Seven. That’s a maximum-security installation used for political prisoners.”

  “Maybe she’s got friends down there,” Novak suggested.

  Corrigan frowned, then said, “If she does, it’d be the first trace of actual humanity I’ve observed from her.” He paused, then added, “Let her go. But make sure we get a good data feed from the shuttle, and I want a tap on her communications and sensors.”

  “Oddly enough,” Dixon said, “I already arranged that.”

  “Then let her run,” Corrigan ordered. “Don’t assume that she’ll give us any assistance whatsoever, though I figure Major Rojek will do everything he possibly can to keep us up to date.” He looked at the surface of the planet below, and said, “Singh, I want a full sensor sweep of Shuttle Seven and its target. Let’s see what’s going on down there.”