This damned fog—
Hoofs thudded. Danielis half drew his sidearm. But the rider was a scout of his own, who raised a drenched sleeve in salute. “Colonel, an enemy force about ten miles ahead by road. Big.”
So we’ll have to fight now. “Do they seem aware of us?”
“No, sir. They’re proceeding east along the ridge there.”
“Probably figure to occupy the Candlestick Park ruins,” Danielis murmured. His body was too tired for excitement. “Good stronghold, that. Very well, Corporal.” He turned to Lescarbault and issued instructions.
The brigade formed itself in the formlessness. Patrols went out.Information began to flow back, and Danielis sketched a plan that ought to work. He didn’t want to try for a decisive engagement, only brush the enemy aside and discourage them from pursuit. His men must be spared, as many as possible, for the city defense and the eventual counteroffensive.
Lescarbault came back. “Sir! The radio jamming’s ended!”
“What?” Danielis blinked, not quite comphrehending.
“Yes, sir. I’ve been using a minicom—” Lescarbault lifted the wrist on which his tiny transceiver was strapped—“for very short-range work, passing the battalion commander their orders. The interference stopped a couple of minutes aga. Clear as daylight.”
Danielis pulled the wrist toward his own mouth, “Hello, hello, radio wagon, this is the CO. You read me?”
“Yes, sir,” said the voice.
“They turned off the jammer in the city for a reason. Get me the open military band.”
“Yes, sir.” Pause, while men mumbled and water runneled unseen in die arroyos. A wraith smoked past Danielis’ eyes. Drops coursed off his helmet and down his collar. The horse’s mane hung sodden.
Like the scream of an insect:
“—here at once! Every unit in the field, get to San Francisco at once! We’re under attack by sea!”
Danielis let go Lescarbault’s arm. He stared into emptiness while the voice wailed on and forever on.
“—bombarding Potrero Point. Decks jammed with troops. They must figure to make a landing there—”
Danielis’ mind raced ahead of the words. It was as if Esp were no lie, as if he scanned the beloved city himself and felt her wounds in his own flesh. There was no fog around the Gate, of course, or so detailed a description could not have been given. Well, probably some streamers of it rolled in under the rusted remnants of the bridge, themselves like snowbanks against blue-green water and brilliant sky. But most of the Bay stood open to the sun. On the opposite shore lifted the Eastbay hills, green with gardens and agleam with villas; and Marin shouldered heavenward across the strait; looking to the roofs and walls and heights that were San Francisco. The convoy had gone between the coast defenses that could have smashed it, an unusually large convoy and not on time: but still the familiar big-bellied hulls, white sails, occasional fuming stacks, that kept the city fed. There had been an explanation about trouble with commerce raiders; and the fleet was passed on into the Bay, where San Francisco had no walls. Then the gun covers were taken off and the holds vomited armed men.
Yes, they did seize a convoy, those piratical schooners. Used radio jamming of their own; together with ours, that choked off any cry of wanting. They threw our supplies overboard and embarked the bossman militia. Some spy or traitor gave them the recognition signals. Now the capital lies open to them, her garrison stripped, hardly an adept left in Esper Central, the Sierrans thrusting against her southern gates, and Laura without me.
“We’re coming!” Danielis yelled. His brigade groaned into speed behind iim. They struck with a desperate ferocity that carried them deep into enemy positions and then stranded them, in separated groups. It became knife and saber in the fog. But Danielis, because he led the charge, had already taken a grenade on his breast.
East and south, in the harbor district and at the wreck of the Peninsula wall, there was still some fighting. As he rode higher, Mackenzie saw how those parts were dimmed by smoke, which the wind scattered, to show rubble that had been houses. The sound of firing drifted to him. But otherwise the city shone untouched, roofs and white walls in a web of streets, church spires raking the sky like masts, Federal House on Nob Hill and the Watchtower on Telegraph Hill as he remembered them from childhood visits. The Bay glittered insolently beautiful.
But he had no time for admiring the view, nor for wonderinng where Laura huddled. The attack on Twin Peaks must be swift, for surely Esper Central would defend itself. On the avenue climbing the opposite side of those great humps, Speyer led half the Rolling Stones. (Yamaguchi lay dead on a pockmarked beach.) Mackenzie himself was taking this side. Horses clopped along Portola, between blankly shuttered mansions; guns trundled and creaked, boots knocked on pavement, moccasins slithered, weapons rattled, men breathed heavily and the hex corps whistled against unknown demons. But silence overwhelmed the noise, echoes trapped it and let it die. Mackenzie recollected nightmares when he fled down a corridor which had no end. Even if they don’t cut loose at us, he thought bleakly, we’ve got to seize their place before our nerve gives out.
Twin Peaks Boulevard turned off Portola and wound steeply to the right The houses ended; wild grasses alone covered the quasi-sacred hills, up to the tops where stood the buildings forbidden to all but adepts. Those two soaring, iridescent, fountainlike skyscrapers had been raised by night, within a matter of weeks. Something like a moan stirred at Mackenzie’s back.
“Bugler, sound the advance. On the double!”
A child’s jeering, die notes lifted and were lost. Sweat stung Mackenzie’s eyes. If he failed and was killed, that didn’t matter too much ... after everything which had happened ... but the regiment, the regiment—
Flame shot across the street, the color of hell. There went a hiss and a roar. The pavement lay trenched, .molten, stroking and reeking. Mackenzie wrestled his horse to a standstill. A warning only. But if they had enough adepts to handle us, would they bother trying to warn us off? “Artillery, open fire!”
The field guns bellowed together, not only howitzers but motorized 75s taken along from Alemany Gate’s emplacements. Shells went overhead with a locomotive sound. They burst on the walls above and the racket thundered back down the wind.
Mackenzie tensed himself for an Esper blast, but none came. Had they knocked out the final defensive post in their own first barrage? Smoke cleared from the heights and he saw that the colors which played in the tower were dead and that wounds gaped across loveliness, showing unbelievably thin framework. It was like seeing the bones of a woman murdered by his hand.
Quick, though! He issued a string of commands and led the horse and foot on. The battery stayed where it was, firing and firing with hysterical fury. The dry brown grass started to burn, as red-hot fragments scattered across the slope. Through mushroom bursts, Mackenzie saw the building crumble. Whole sheets of facing broke and fell to earth. The skeleton vibrated, took a direct hit and sang in metal agony, slumped and twisted apart.
What was that which stood within?
There were no separate rooms, no floors, nothing but girders, enigmatic machines, here and there a globe still aglow like a minor sun. The structure bad enclosed something nearly as tall as itself, a finned and shining column, almost like a rocket shell but impossibly huge and fair.
Their spaceship, Mackenzie thought in the clamor. Yes, of course, the ancients had begun making spaceships, and we always figured we would again someday. This, though ...