They crashed through into the enclave, drives howling in torment as they threw full power into deceleration. Even Imperial technology had its limits, and they were still moving at over a hundred kilometers per hour when they smashed through the trees in the central park and plowed into the apartment blocks. The hapless Terra-born traitors in their path had mere seconds to realize death had come as the buildings exploded outward and the shuttles slammed to a halt amid the wreckage, no more than thirty meters apart. Their passengers were battered and bruised, but assault shuttles were built for just such mistreatment. The hatches opened, and the waiting troops charged out.
One or two fell, but only a spattering of fire met them. It was no trap, Colin thought exultantly. No trap!
He activated his jump gear, vaulting over a heap of smoking rubble, his own energy gun snarling. Only a handful of armed security men confronted him, and he bared his teeth as he blew the first unarmored enemy apart.
A tremendous boom of displaced air burst out of the tunnel as the next pair of shuttles shot into the enclave, and then the true madness began.
Anu dashed onto Osir’s command deck, cursing his henchmen for the unrealiability that had spawned his distrust and made him order the other warships deactivated. Not even Osir’s crew was permitted to live on board, but she was his command post, and he skidded to a halt beside the captain’s console, activating his automatic defensive systems. They were intended to deal with an uprising among his own, not a full-scale invasion, but maybe they could buy his minions time to get into action.
Concealed weapons roused to life throughout the enclave. There was no time to give them precise directions even had Anu wanted to; they opened fire on anything that moved.
Ganhar tumbled from his bed as the alarms shrieked, and his eyes lit. Doubt, fear, and anguished uncertainty vanished in a blaze of triumph, and he laughed wildly. There, maniac! Let’s see you deal with these people!
He dragged out his own combat armor. He was going to die, he thought calmly, and unless there truly was an afterlife, he would never know why he’d permitted this to happen, but it no longer mattered. He’d done it, and it wasn’t in him to leave any task half-done.
The last surviving shuttle crashed into the wreckage and disgorged its troops, and Nergal’s people began to die. Energy beams raked the park, attracted by movement, and the Terra-born could detect neither the targeting systems nor the weapons that killed them. But their Imperials’ armor scanners could find both, and they moved to engage them.
Colin wanted to weep as Rohantha vaulted onto a wreckage-bared structural beam, exposing herself recklessly, energy gun ripping two heavy weapons from the cavern wall before they could rake her team of Terra-born. She almost made it back into cover herself, and Nikan, her cabin mate and lover, blew the gun that killed her to rubble.
Colin spun on his own toes, dodging as an energy bolt whipped past him and tore a twenty-centimeter hole through an Israeli paratrooper. His own weapon silenced the Israeli’s automated executioner, and he dashed on, racing for the battleships while a corner of his mind tried to remember the dead man’s name.
Three of Anu’s stealthed fighters abandoned concealment, screaming through the heavens under maximum power as they stooped upon the clumsy gaggle of cutters and pinnaces and tanks still streaming towards the enclave. Their tracking systems found targets, but the lead pair vanished in cataclysmic balls of flame before they could fire. The third flight crew had a moment to gape at one another in horror as their instruments told them what had happened. Hyper missiles—shipboard missiles!—which could only have been launched from vacuum!
They died before they could warn their commander that Dahak was not dead.
Anu grimaced in hate and triumph. Even the computers could give him only a confused impression of what was happening, but he felt armory lockers being wrenched open aboard the transports while his weapons spewed death outside them.
Yet his triumphant snarl faded as the intensity of the fighting grew and grew. The attackers weren’t human! They were demons out of Breaker’s darkest hell, and they soaked up his fire and kept right on coming!
A surge of Nergal’s raiders swept up the boarding ramp of the transport Bislaht, and a trio of French Marines set up a fifty-caliber machine-gun in the lock. Their teammates rushed past them behind Nikan, racing for the armory before Bislaht’s mutineers could find their weapons.
They almost won their race. Barely half a dozen defenders were in armor when they crashed out of the transit shaft. Nikan roared in fury as he cut two of them down and charged the others, his energy gun on full automatic, filling the air with death. A third armored mutineer went down, then a fourth, but the fifth got his weapon up in time. Nikan exploded in a fountain of blood and a crackling corona of ruptured energy packs, and the SAS commando behind him hosed his killer with a grav gun.
Smoke and the stink of blood filled the armory, and the Terra-born commandos, now with no Imperial to lead them, crouched for cover just inside the hatch and killed anything that moved.
Ganhar stepped out of the transit shaft inside Security Central aboard the transport Cardoh. Security men shoved past or bounced off his armor as they funneled towards the transit shaft, heading for the armory below, and he waded through them like a Titan. Jantu’s outer office was deserted, and he felt a momentary surge of disappointment. But then the inner hatch licked open, and Jantu stood in the opening, an energy pistol clutched in his hand.
Ganhar smiled through his armored visor, savoring the wildness of Jantu’s eyes. It was worth it, he thought coldly. It was all worth it, if only for this moment.
He lifted his grav gun slightly, and Jantu’s crazed eyes narrowed with sudden comprehension as his implants recognized Ganhar’s. The Operations head saw it all in that fleeting instant, saw the recognition and understanding, the sudden, intuitive grasp of what had really happened when Ramman came to him.
“You lose,” he said softly, and his gun hissed.
Colin went flat on his face as an armored form tackled him from behind, and he rolled over, snatching out his sidearm before he recognized Jiltanith. The reason she’d hit him became instantly clear as an energy bolt whipped above him, and he raised himself on one elbow, sighting back along its path. The unarmored security man was lining up for a second shot when Colin’s grav gun ripped him to shreds.
Dahak felt almost cheerful, despite a gnawing anxiety over Colin. His scanners showed that the northerners had breached the enclave. One way or the other, that shield would soon fall.
In the meantime, he busied himself locating all of Anu’s deployed fighters as they abandoned stealth mode to streak back south. He tracked each of them precisely, allocated his hyper missiles with care, and fired a single salvo.
Twenty-nine more Imperial fighters died in a span of approximately two-point-seven-five Terran seconds.
The huge cavern was hideous with smoke and flame as more southerners found weapons and armor, emerging as isolated knots of warring figures that sought to link with one another amid the nightmare that had burst upon them. They were badly outnumbered, but they were all Imperials. Even without combat armor, they were more than a match for any Terra-born opponent. Or would have been, had they understood what was happening.
Most of Anu’s automatics were silent now, for both sides were equally at risk from them, and both had been taking them out from the start. But they’d blunted the first rush while more of his people got themselves armed. It was helping, but they’d yielded a dangerous amount of ground. So far he’d lost touch completely only with Bislaht, but fighting raged aboard three other transports, and six more were surrounded, their hatches under intense fire.