She was alone except for Cetewayo, the Zulu commander. Cetawayo had issued strict orders. The only Zulu south and west of the Nqutu Plateau were those who had put up the token fight at the kraal and retreated quickly as soon as they were engaged, a time-honored Zulu tactic to draw the enemy in. It was so time-honored that Cetewayo had hesitated to use it, until Shakan assured him that the British commander would not know of it.
Shakan had spent most of her life alone. Her mother had taken her far to the north, out of the Zulu territories and beyond the reach of any who might want to harm the daughter of Shaka if they learned she existed. They lived simply, off the land, having little to do with the people in the area. Takir had died when Shakan was twelve, leaving her alone. But just before she died, Takir had led Shakan on a strange journey.
To a cave four months’ journey away, in the very north of Africa. A cave where another old woman had been, as if waiting for them. A woman with white skin. But also with the Sight. Shakan had known that as soon as she entered the cave. The old woman had taken Shakan into darkness and beyond. A journey that had both frightened and thrilled the young girl. That was when she had received the first of her instructions from the voice.
Standing here on this escarpment with the king of the Zulus was near the end of a long journey, one that she knew needed to be over with soon. Beyond the coming battle, she could not see nor had she been shown or told anything.
“They are slow,” Cetewayo said, echoing her thoughts.
“But they will keep coming,” she assured him.
“There is one good thing about their slow movement, though,” Cetewayo said.
“And that is?”
The Zulu king smiled. “They will not be able to retreat quickly either.”
Two more soldiers had been killed on the second jump, colliding in midair and becoming entangled in each other’s chutes. Chamberlain had reluctantly decided that enough was enough. He wasn’t even sure their assault would be an airborne operation. The Oracles had never · been very specific about exactly what form the Final Assault would take. For all he knew, they might have to walk into battle.
Into battle was one last thing they needed to do, a time-honored practice for soldiers about to go into battle: prepare their weapons.
When the final battles against the Shadow had been joined, the human armies had been dismayed to find that their projectile weapons did not work well against the Valkyrie armor. Bullets, even large caliber, bounced off. The Valkyries’ own spears could cut through the armor, but to get the spears, they had to first kill a Valkyrie, something that occurred rarely. By the time they managed to capture some of the Valkyries and investigate the armor, the war was over and the gates were closed.
They’d discovered, too late, that the Shadow used nanotechnology in the makeup of the armor, and that projectiles fired at high velocity actually imparted energy to the molecules that made up the armor, giving them the power to stop the projectiles. A slow-moving projectile — almost a contradiction of terms to a traditional weapons expert — however, could penetrate. The problem was how to make such a projectile?
The answer was a weapon that had to be able to do two things: fire a projectile to hit the Valkyries and then contain a secondary load that could penetrate the suit armor slowly.
Attached to each member of the First Earth Battalion, on the shoulder of their firing side, was the M-6. Each one was three feet long, cylindrical, going from six inches in diameter where the circular magazine was, tapering to a two-inch-thick barrel from which the rounds exited. The n itself slaved to receptors on the suit forearm of the firing arm where sighting was integrated with the suit cameras via the computer. An infrared aiming point was projected from the gun’s barrel and picked up by the cameras. The gun also drew power from the suit because unlike guns that came before, it did not use gunpowder to fire the projectiles but rather an electromagnetic rail system built into the length of the tube.
The cylindrical magazine held eight rounds, which were the key to defeating the Valkyrie armor. Each round was just under two inches in diameter so it could slide down the barrel without having metal-to-metal contact, kept in the exact center and accelerated by the electromagnetic field produced by the barrel on each firing. It took about a second for the barrel to recharge so the rate of the fire of the gun was thus limited.
Each round was a pointed sabot, a casing that held the secondary round that would do the actual armor penetration. The sabot would impact the suit armor and come to a complete halt, stopped by the reactive nanotechnology. A millisecond after being halted, the sabot would split open, revealing the secondary round, which was an inch in diameter. It was a flat-nosed slug that contained a thermal charge that the scientists had discovered could momentarily burn a hole in the armor. The opening was very brief, less than half a second before the nanotechnology repaired it, but it was enough, for behind the thermal charge was the part of the round that killed whatever was inside the Valkyrie suit: a shell that exploded right after the thermal charge, sending a cluster of flechettes through the hole. It was a very complicated system that had taken years to perfect and had yet to be proven in combat.
Chamberlain and his soldiers lined up fifty meters from the base of a long ridge. Engineers had placed targets, both stationery and moving, along the base, and the battalion spent a day firing.
Chamberlain had never gotten totally used to firing the M-6 after being initially trained on conventional firearms. The silent operation as the round was accelerated down the tube and exited it was strange to him. The only sounds came when the round hit a target and the thermal charge went off followed closely by the flechettes charge, a strange double-pop that was slightly preceded by the flash of the thermal charge as it ignited, then the sound wave reached the fire.
As the brutal sun went down, Chamberlain finally called a halt. They were ready. Now it was a question of when they would get the opportunity that decades of training and development had prepared them for.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dane watched as they lowered the dolphin that was to be his link into the larger tank. It looked none too pleased at being encased in the black suit and rolled a baleful eye at Dane as the derrick put it in the tube filled with thick green liquid. A woman in a wetsuit was on the edge of the tube, holding the large black helmet that would cover the creature’s head.
“What’s the green stuff?” Dane asked which he figured was a reasonable question given that he would soon be in it.
“We call it embryonic fluid,” Talbot said. ‘’The tanks are important because we use them to reduce to almost zero the physical sensation coming into your brain, allowing you to focus on the mental task at hand.”
Dane watched as the woman slid a tube into the dolphin’s mouth. The creature did not seem to like what she was doing, thrashing back and forth, occasionally hitting the surrounding glass with a solid thud.
“What’s going on?” Dane asked.
“She’s putting the breathing tube in,” Talbot said. He paused, glanced at Dane, then continued. “That’s not the worst part. Watch.”
The tube appeared to be in and the woman gave a thumbs up to the scientist manning the console between the two tubes. He hit a button. The dolphin thrashed even more wildly for almost a minute before becoming still.