Stig reached the end of Arischal Lane, where there was a subway entrance on the corner of the road. He took the stone steps three at a time, before leaping down to the bottom. Olwen followed with a more nimble jump. They both sped forward through the lighted concrete passage to the central junction in the middle of the roundabout. It was set out like a small concrete crater, with polyphoto strips high on the walls. Rain poured down from the dismal sky to gurgle away slowly through drain grilles partially blocked by litter and dirt.
Images from the sneekbots showed Stig the Institute troops in 3F Plaza had finally been alerted to the massive airborne invaders heading toward them. Four Land Rover Cruisers drove into a protective arrangement around the MANN truck and its valuable load, their medium-caliber mounted weaponry ready, small sensor stalks swishing back and forth. The remaining Cruisers were fanning out across 3F Plaza, guns pivoting up to the thick rain clouds, tracking around in search of a target. Troops in flexarmor suits were bounding up the steps on the inside of Market Wall, their long hurdling movements agile in the low gravity. Sneekbots reported an ether thick with encrypted traffic. Scarlet targeting lasers stabbed out, foreshortened in the rain.
“They’re strengthening the force field over the gateway,” Keely reported.
“Good. I want it intact. Adam might still get through.” Stig sat down with his back to a wall, pants in the water trickling along the floor. Olwen knelt down beside him, and gripped his hand. He was glad of the contact. Everything they were dealing with was so remote, his virtual vision display reducing it to the level of some training exercise. “It’s about to begin,” he told everyone over the general band.
The blimpbot sailing along Mantana Avenue was the first to arrive at 3F Plaza. It was also the most easily seen as it began to lift higher just before it reached Market Wall. Institute troops who had it in their target sensors opened fire immediately. Ion pulses and kinetic bullets ripped straight through the fuselage fabric, punctured the forward clump of helium cells and streaked out through the upper fuselage. Occasionally, one would strike a carbon-titanium strut in the stress structure, and inflict a modicum of damage. But the geodesic was designed to retain overall integrity under major impact conditions, the load paths simply shifted around fractionally. Overall, it was like shooting a dense patch of air.
The huge blunt curve of the nose glided up over the Enfield entrance. Dispensers fixed into its cargo bays began to fire volley after volley of chaff, flares, and small electronic warfare drones. For a glorious minute, the gloom was completely banished as dazzling white and red stars swarmed over 3F Plaza, trailing thin lines of smoke. Secondary detonations flashed, and silver chaff scintillated across the sky, before sleeting down. Quieter, gray-blue drones zipped about like hummingbirds, impossible to see, sending out powerful disruptive EM pulses.
Troops on the wall were firing nonstop into the blimpbot as more and more of it slid out across 3F Plaza. Then the Cruisers on the ground opened up. Someone among the Institute officers had obviously taken charge. The heavier caliber kinetic and maser weapons were directed first at the ducted fans protruding from the fuselage, then the guns worked down the keel where the cargo bays were situated. Creases began to appear in the fuselage as the geodesic structure finally succumbed to the violence. Tears started to multiply, exposing the clustered helium cells strung along the interior, translucent white spheres like wax bubbles.
The second blimpbot arrived at 3F just as the flares from the first began to splutter out. Several troops shifted their aim, beginning to understand their targeting priorities. Land Rover Cruisers were firing into the cargo holds even as the dispensers began blasting out their ordnance.
Blimpbots three and four arrived simultaneously. By then, number one was sinking rapidly, the rear third of the fuselage twisting savagely as it fell toward the Enfield entrance. Only inertia kept it moving forward as the badly tattered fuselage fabric ripped into fluttering streamers in imitation of black flame. The nose dipped, angling down on one of the Plaza’s big ornamental fountains. Troops on Market Wall who were still underneath the tail end jumped and sprinted out of the way as its descent accelerated sharply. It crashed over the entrance in elegant slow motion amid a cacophony of snapping and splintering sounds from the geodesic struts as they burst apart. Cruisers and trucks raced away across the Plaza as if they’d just been released from a starting grid while the fuselage kept on collapsing, folding in on itself as though some terrible invisible force was intent on squashing the broken craft completely flat. Above it, white and red flares mingled with the rain, to cloak the slippery fuselage fabric in shimmering patterns.
By then blimpbots two and four were also mortally wounded. They started their uncontrollable descent into the Plaza. Two was swinging around as its tail disintegrated, popping the helium cells like party balloons, an abrupt loss of buoyancy that pulled the rear half down with alarming speed. Its nose punched into the middle of three, which bent the entire stress structure.
Despite the size and surprise of the attack, the Institute troops and equipment hadn’t actually taken any losses. Their vehicles were still careering around the Plaza dodging debris as it fell from the sky, and powering away from impact sites. Individual troops were more vulnerable, having to run and jump without any guidance other than looking up—this while maintaining their aggressive firing. So far none of the blimpbots had got near the gateway. A protective ring of Cruisers had drawn up around it, with more skidding into place. The trucks were taking cover in the bigger warehouses and archways along the base of Market Wall.
The firepower from the ground was intense, matching the deluge of flares in lambency. To anyone standing in the middle of the Plaza, the rain clouds were almost obliterated from view behind swirls of light and clots of darkness. Into this balletic graveyard of goliath craft, blimpbot number five arrived at high speed, rushing over Market Wall. Seven, eight, and nine were already drawing fire from the top of Market Wall as they sped inward.
“There are bombs in five and eight,” Stig said. He pumped his force field up to full strength, and wrapped his arms over his head. “Keely, crash the city net.”
Blimpbot five had hauled two-thirds of its length over the Plaza when the big cylinder dropped out of its front cargo bay, almost unnoticed in the antagonistic environment that the decoy dispensers had created. It tumbled down for a couple of seconds until it was below the lip of Market Wall, then an explosive charge inside detonated. The cylinder disappeared inside a dense vapor burst of ethylene oxide that looked like a bloated smoke cloud. A second, larger explosion was triggered by the bomb’s control array, igniting the cloud.
The fuel-air fireball produced a blast overpressure only slightly less than that of a nuclear weapon.
Stig saw it. He had his eyes closed, and his virtual vision on medium brightness, but the flash still penetrated his eyelids. It corresponded to every sneekbot image vanishing. Several seconds later the sound wave crashed overhead. His arms tightened up as the concrete wall shook.
When he looked up the sky was dark again, though the rain had gone. He could see curious smears high overhead. Small veiled shapes cruised through the night, as if a flock of bats were fleeing the scene. There were no bats on Far Away. When he stood up he could see a seething column of luminous air swelling upward from the direction of First Foot Fall Plaza. He realized he’d lost contact with half of the blimpbots in the second wave. A couple that did respond were recording zero altitude with their helium cells leaking prodigiously.