Then, even before the cruiser was out of sight, explosions began to rock the earth.
Tremendous geysers of flame, dirty black smoke, and debris shot high above the housetops. In the street, people began to scream and run for any cover they could find, cowering under trees and in doorways. Dogs barked madly between the disruptor bursts while panicked Atalantans ran wildly out of their houses and then back in again. At the for end of the park, an old woman flung herself blindly into a stone wall screaming one of the Norchelite chants Brim had heard only a short time ago at the monastery. He ran to help her, but before he could catch up she disappeared into the street again.
Ignoring his own safety, Brim scanned the skies for some trace of attackers. There.... In the distance at great altitude, he could just make out three squadrons of starships streaking in from the polar regions on an arrogantly straight run over the base. On the moment, Defiant's grim silhouette sliced down among them from the clouds, powerful disruptors flashing and strobing like an avenging storm. Instantly, two of the Leaguers disappeared in roiling fireballs that hung in the sky dripping flame and debris while the other ships scattered in every direction. A third attacker trailed sudden flame and smoke, then broke at the center, its two halves tumbling through the air trailing wisps of smoke like spent holiday fireworks.
Clearly, the Leaguers hadn't counted on the presence of a new light cruiser-or had badly underestimated the power of her disruptors.
Abruptly, more explosions rocked the ground nearby. Startled, Brim scanned the skies for their source, but failed to spot even a single starship in the vicinity. And he considered himself an expert spotter-although, he acknowledged, all Helmsmen considered themselves expert spotters. Moreover, starships weren't exactly the smallest machines one. might look for, either. He frowned. All the explosions going on around him had to come from somewhere!
By now, he was clearly trapped in the open park. Reacting at the last possible moment to his own precarious situation, he flattened himself in the grass near a tree-sheer milliclicks before two stunning explosions shook the earth and collapsed a house across the street in an angry wave of fierce beat and choking dust. The violent blasts sent a blizzard of deadly stone splinters whizzing in all directions as the tall building collapsed with a hideous, grinding crash.
He could still hear bone-crushing detonations from the direction of the base, but where in Gratz's name were the Leaguers who had been tearing up the scenery where he was? He crawled away from the trees to get a better look, but the adjacent sky still looked empty and quite blameless.
Then suddenly, a muzzy area materialized for only a moment as it streaked directly overhead toward the foot of the hill. Brim could hardly credit his eyes when the indistinct specter suddenly defined itself into a pair of doors that opened into thin air itself. And even as the apparition disappeared beyond Atlanta's rooftops, a succession of tear-shaped objects dropped from its mysterious "opening." Moments later, the park heaved spasmodically as a whole succession of new explosions raised geysers of smoke and flame a few blocks away.
Impulsively, Brim grimaced and snapped his fingers. So that was what benders looked like! And how they attacked. No wonder Collingswood hadn't seen energy beams during the predawn raid. The damage had been caused by bombs! Old-fashioned, aerial bombs.... He shook his head. Outdated they might be, but he couldn't think of a single defense against them, either. He squeezed his eyes shut while another cascading series of explosions tossed the ground violently and covered him with a veritable shower of leaves and branches.
A dead dog came looping through the air to leave a bloody smear on the pavement nearby.
He nearly cried out in helpless frustration as superheated air from still another blast singed the hair on the back of his neck like a great torch, then ground his teeth in anger as a second deduction formed in his head. The bastard Leaguers! They were using their conventional strike on the harbor as a cover for the benders that were carrying out the real raid-a terror attack on the Atalantian civilians, without whom the Imperial base would cease to operate.
As be lay helplessly amid the Leaguers' frenzy of destruction, familiar thunder again filled the air, drowning out other noises of the attack. A moment later, Defiant appeared overhead, riding parallel to one of the Leaguer attack ships. Suddenly, the cruiser's starboard side erupted in a glowing mist of green flame as she loosed a whole broadside of 152-mmi disruptors. Her opponent, a powerful NF-110 destroyer, abruptly stopped flying as if it had been smashed by a giant mallet. An instant later the Leaguer starship exploded in a brilliant eruption of yellow and green flame that flashed blindingly from every seam. Shortly thereafter, it disappeared in a large puff of gray cloud as Defiant thundered steadily out of sight over the trees.
The mind-numbing local explosions continued for at least another ten cycles before Atalanta's battered cityscape fell quiet again-except for the still-frenzied barking of neighborhood dogs and an angry cacophony from the trees as Haelic's birds returned to the remains of their nests. Presently, sirens-sounded, and soon afterward people gradually began to reappear in the debris-fouled streets-along with racing emergency vehicles of every size and shape.
Stunned by the violence, Brim shakily started off downhill to report what, he'd seen, but now it seemed as if he had entered a different city-in a different Universe. Bloody corpses lay everywhere in grotesque attitudes that only the dead can assume. A smashed child's hand still gripped the leash of a whimpering puppy. Gritting his teeth, Brim waved a swarm of flies from the tiny, dead face. Then he released the frightened animal-which immediately scurried off to its doom in the blazing shell of a nearby house.
Farther along the smoke-filled street, he encountered the shattered ruins of a large apartment building that had collapsed into the street. Nearby, a silent crowd watched rescue workers desperately sitting through the rubble. Medics were just carrying a young woman-mauled over every part of her body-to a sidewalk depository when Brim passed on the street. He stopped in his tracks as the stricken woman looked up at him with terror-filled eyes and opened the bloody gash that remained of her mouth as if she wanted to speak.
Totally consumed with pity, he knelt and took her hand. "Say it," he whispered. "I won't leave you-I'll listen...." But before she could utter a word, her mouth overflowed with blood. For a moment, her eyes became large as saucers. Then suddenly they lost their focus and her hand went limp. Moments later, the air filled with the telltale odor of feces.
Flies were beginning to cover the corpse 'even as Brim numbly resumed his way down the hill again, tears blinding his eyes.
Later, as he crossed the intersection where he once planned to board the coach, he gasped and shook his head in dismay. No more than a few irals back along the alleyway, a fire-fighting unit had just extinguished the charred remains of an interurban car. Rescue workers were now sifting through the twisted wreckage for survivors-but it was clear to Brim they were wasting their time. Not much remained of the big vehicle except a blackened fragment of one end that mounted a large, broken headlight and the brass numerals "312."