A Night Without Stars (4 page)

The spaceship struck hard, detonating in a massive seething mushroom of flame and smoke. Planes that were already retreating were caught in the blast wave. She saw wings crumpling; then the mangled fuselages began their long plummet.

The tannoys fell silent.

“Intruders two, four, eight, and nine are on the ground,” the chief air marshal said. “We've taken the rest out. Confirmed kills.”

“Get the squadrons out of there,” Laura said urgently. “Low and fast. If they're in the air, they're sitting ducks to the beam weapons.”

“Surely one last assault…”

“Would just be suicide. You'll achieve nothing and lose what remaining planes we have.”

Slvasta turned to look at the big atomic bombs on their trolleys, then back to the wormhole, which showed the edge of the desert where the invaders now sat. For kilometers in every direction the ground was smothered in flaming debris. “You'll have to use the nukes.”

“We can't,” Laura said wearily. “We only have three, and there are seven ships in the second invasion fleet heading for Tothland.
If
they fly close enough, and
if
I can open the terminus just right, three bombs might be able to take them all out while they're in the air.”

“But—” He gestured at the wormhole, which was still looking down on the edge of the desert where the invaders had landed. “You said they will be unstoppable if they land!”

“I know.” She took a breath and told her u-shadow to open a link. “I need you,” she sent.

“You have a Commonwealth force field,” Javier said. “Can you eliminate them?”

“I have to take out their planet,” Laura told him, pleased at how calmly she'd spoken that preposterous statement. “I can't fight four ships here as well.”

“So it is down to the regiments to defend us yet again,” Slvasta said gravely. “I will tell Master General Doyle to order full mobilization.”

“No,” Laura said.

“But we have nothing else! Bienvenido will be destroyed. You told us these aliens are worse than even Fallers. How can we—”

There was a commotion just outside the crypt doors. One of the marine sentries called: “Halt! You are not authorized to be here. I will shoot.”

“It's all right,” Laura said. “Let them come in.”

Kysandra walked into the crypt—an entrance that brought complete silence with it. Biononics, the tiny machines permeating every cell in her body, barely had anything to do with maintaining her youthful looks. She was still in her twenties, her Celtic-pale skin rich with freckles, and thick Titian hair falling halfway down her back. She wore a long brown suede skirt and a white blouse; a loose suede waistcoat with many pockets held a variety of small metal and plastic gadgets. A long black cylinder was carried on a shoulder strap—featureless, but everyone in the room knew it had to be some kind of Commonwealth weapon.

Marek and Fergus followed her in. They were dressed in identical gray coveralls made from some slick fabric, and they carried the same cylinder weapon as Kysandra. Even their height and build were identical, though Marek had darker skin and looked a good thirty years older than Fergus.

Laura acknowledged the visitors with a wry grin. You had to use a full biononic field function scan to tell the men were ANAdroids, not actual people. And she'd never seen versions with morphic features quite so human; their creators had done an excellent job. But then, they were part of Nigel's mission, and she knew no effort would've been spared.

Yannrith and Andricea immediately drew their pistols and aimed them at the newcomers with a steady double-handed grip.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Laura said in her most contemptuous voice. “They have integral force fields, like me. You can't shoot them.” Which was almost true. Kysandra's biononics did have that energy field function, while the two ANAdroids wore force field skeletons under their light armor suits.

“What in Uracus are
they
doing here?” Slvasta hissed.

“I asked them to help,” Laura said. “Nobody else can take out the invaders on the ground. Now will all the morons waving medieval weapons around please put them away before you hurt yourselves?”

Andricea flashed her a hateful glare before silently consulting Slvasta. He nodded, and the pistols were reluctantly holstered.

“Good to see you again, too,” Kysandra sneered at the prime minister. “Imprisoned any innocents yet today? Some kid complaining his state-issue shoes are too tight, maybe?”

“Uracus take you, Faller-whore,” Slvasta spat back.

“Oh, for—Nigel was not a Faller, you bonehead cretin!”

“He has given this world to them,” Slvasta shouted, spittle flying from his lips.

“Nigel freed us from the Void,” Kysandra said coldly. “He sacrificed himself in that quantumbuster explosion so we would have a chance of a decent future.”

“Falls have increased tenfold since the Great Transition.”

“Because the Trees that survived the quantumbuster blast are no longer confined to the Forest formation they were locked into,” Marek said calmly. “Now they have dispersed into a high orbit ring, and the temporal loop is broken, so they can release their eggs with greater frequency. It was an inevitable consequence of liberation from the Void.”

“Liberation! You call this being free?”

The ANAdroid produced an expression of mild puzzlement. “Yes.”

“Then I pity you.”

“It could have been freedom,” Kysandra said sweetly. “But then you took over from the Captain.”

“I am nothing like—!”

“Ha! Even your own wife saw the truth—eventually.”

“You corrupted her. It was your fault.”

“Enough!” Laura said. “Everybody, forget your political pissing contest. This is the day we face extinction, so let's not try to do that job for our enemies, shall we?”

Slvasta gave Kysandra a furious glare. She matched it with the most indolent stare, taunting…

“Kysandra, thank you for coming to help,” Laura said. “Four spaceships made it past the IA-505s—numbers two, four, eight, and nine.”

“The squadrons did a good job then,” Kysandra said sympathetically.

“Yes.” Laura gestured at the wormhole. “Can you handle them?”

Kysandra patted the cylinder she was carrying. “Count on it.”

“Okay, where do you want us to put you down?”

Marek had been studying the table map. “Are these landing positions accurate?”

“Yes,” the chief air marshal said.

“Okay, nine and four are close together. Laura, drop me between them. I can deal with both of them.”

“I'll take number eight,” Kysandra said.

Fergus grinned. “So I guess that leaves me with number two.”

“All right, stand by.” Laura's u-shadow sent a stream of encoded instructions to the gateway. The terminus started to shift.

“Can you really do this?”

The voice was soft, but anxious. Almost everyone in the crypt looked at Javier. The big man was staring at Fergus.

“We can do this,” the ANAdroid said. “Even Kysandra. She might look like an angel, but she can be quite the warrior when she needs to be.”

Kysandra winked at Javier.

The terminus shifted, coming down to ground level, revealing a level expanse of rock-strewn desert sand, with dunes rising high up ahead.

“Terminus is in the lee of a dune,” Laura said. “No sensor coverage. Picking up some low-level radiation out there.”

“The exhaust,” Marek said. “We believe they used nuclear gas core rockets.”

“That was my conclusion, too.”

“Okay, my armor can cope with that. Let me through.”

Laura sent a code to the gateway, and the force field became porous. Marek took it at a run, jumping through onto the grainy sand beyond.

“Clear!”

Laura shifted the terminus to spaceship two. This time the ground was covered in scrub bushes, but all of them had wilted. Some were smoldering. Then the terminus jittered, shifting up several meters then sliding sideways. Laura sent a flurry of corrections through her u-shadow, and it stabilized again. She checked her exovision schematics.

“It's holding,” she said.

Fergus sprinted through. He ducked behind some boulders as the terminus shifted away, but not before they all saw his coverall transform to the same color as the rocks. It would be stealthed, too, Laura knew, keeping him hidden from any sensors the invaders could deploy.

“Then there was one,” Kysandra said quietly as the terminus settled a kilometer from number eight.

“Good luck,” Javier said.

She turned to Slvasta, her red hair flowing over her shoulders, and took her time placing a wide-brimmed leather hat on her head. “I won't abandon these people you oppress,” she said. “I will always be here to help them. But never you.” With that she walked calmly through the gateway, taking the cylinder off her shoulder as she went.

“Arrogant bitch,” Slvasta grunted. But not before Laura had shifted the wormhole terminus once again.

“Don't underestimate her,” Laura said without looking at him. “And remember, I have exactly the same opinion of you.”

Nobody said anything; all the officers were suddenly busy studying their maps or clipboards.

“How are we doing with the second invasion fleet?” Laura asked.

“Estimated eleven minutes until landing,” the Space Vigilance Office liaison officer said. “They're entering the chemosphere.”

Laura reconfigured the wormhole, opening the terminus above Tothland—an island in the Sibal Ocean not big enough to qualify as a continent. Seven crimson patches of light shone bright above the nighttime landmass as the spaceships aerobraked. Her u-shadow analyzed the positions and trajectories. Their rocket exhausts started to fire, sending pale splinters of luminescence shimmering across the hidden mountains far below.

“Weapons Master,” Laura said. “Please prepare the bombs.” Three keys were hanging on slim chains around her neck. She passed them to him.

Slvasta handed over his three keys as well. The weapons master opened the control hatch on the first of the three atomic bombs and put the keys in their twin sockets. Laura was almost tempted to activate her biononic force field function, but if the damn thing did go off, a force field wouldn't protect her—not at this distance. The keys were turned simultaneously.

“Bomb one activated,” the weapons master announced solemnly.

Laura's u-shadow performed a quick calculation as she walked over to the crude metal cylinder, and she set the timer for a hundred seconds. She flicked the red switch, trying not to flinch. Three lights shone red, and she closed the little hatch.

Five Manhattan Project technicians wheeled the bomb into the middle of the crypt, directly in front of the gateway.

“Stand by,” she told them. The terminus shifted again, down into the stratosphere, close to the trajectories of three invaders. Silver light shone through, coming from somewhere above the opening. “Go!”

The technicians were all young and fit, chosen for their strength. They pushed hard, building speed quickly across the ancient stone-paved floor. The bomb weighed nearly half a ton, but it was moving fast when the trolley reached the gateway, and they gave it a final shove. Laura's u-shadow immediately moved the terminus away.

Theoretically, the bomb had a yield of forty-three kilotons. It would have been useless deployed in space against the invaders. For one thing, she couldn't hope to open the gateway terminus close to an accelerating spaceship and match velocity accurately enough. And for another, even if they could deploy the bomb close enough, a nuclear explosion in a vacuum was unlikely to be effective. There would be no blast wave. Yes, the spaceship would suffer the radiation spike, and the electromagnetic pulse, but she couldn't be sure that would kill it.

An atmospheric strike, however, was different. The ships were vulnerable during their descent phase, and it was the blast wave that would cause the real damage. Supersonic winds smashing into the spaceships in tandem with the radiation deluge and the electromagnetic pulse knocking out unprotected electronics and power systems…

With only three bombs it was their best chance.

“Bomb two activated,” the weapons master said.

She set the timer for a minute. The short interval was used to confirm the location of the invaders' ships. Looking down from four hundred kilometers above Bienvenido, they saw proof that the first bomb had exploded successfully, which brought a swift cheer around the crypt. The detonation flare was spent; now there was just a seething ball of star-hot plasma, cloaked in a shroud of ruined air. Tothland was fully illuminated by the devilish purple-white glare. Her u-shadow could just distinguish four spaceships still descending within the chaotic atmosphere.

The terminus switched position again. Bomb two was shoved through, six kilometers above the ground.

Bomb number three was deployed at a mere two and a half kilometers of altitude.

Please work,
she prayed as the five determined technicians let go of the trolley handle. It seemed to be the mantra she lived her life with these days. Everything she'd done since she landed had been nick-of-time kludges in the face of adversity. Every time she thought she was making progress, something would come along to challenge her satisfaction.

In a bizarre way she almost welcomed this invasion. If they destroyed the Prime, it would buy Bienvenido time. The planet's society might just start to change as newer technologies began to make life easier. She might live to see the Commonwealth once more.

Unlikely.

Not that there was anyone left for her in the Commonwealth, anyway. The majority of her friends and family had all been on the colony fleet.
But it has to be better than this.

The terminus opened again at five hundred kilometers above the radiation-saturated zone. Everyone watched anxiously as the three malevolent swirls of energy staining the air slowly subsided. Massive firestorms had broken out across Tothland as vegetation vaporized and entire forests ignited. Broiling hurricanes raced outward, bringing ruin with them. There was no sign of any spaceship rocket exhausts.