“You will respect his privacy.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She stopped. The adrenaline rush that had supported her through the confrontation in Randtown had finally worn off. When she held a hand up there was no sign of any OCtattoo. “What about the convoy?”
“They have all reached the Highmarsh Valley.”
“But—the navy won’t evacuate them for days. That alien monster will kill every one of them.”
“It will attempt that, yes.”
“Open the wormhole back into the Highmarsh. We’ve got to get them out of there.”
“That is an impractical suggestion. This wormhole is small. The Randtown refugees would have to step through one at a time. The process would take hours, and provide MorningLightMountain with a perfect targeting opportunity.”
“Open it!”
Wilson’s tactical display showed him the electronic warfare aerobots launching from Treloar. Five of them flew out in a pincer movement through the smog to surround the Prime ground troops spreading out from Scraptoft. The alien positions were overlaid by webs of orange and jade as their strange communications flashed between them. Their intermittent, seemingly random bursts reminded Wilson of synaptic discharges between individual neurons.
Stealthed sensors showed him images of the armored Primes slipping through what was left of Scraptoft’s buildings. The way they moved told Wilson they had considerable practice with urban warfare. They’d already killed several humans who’d remained in the little coastal town, using weapons powerful enough to take out half a building with one shot. Media reports from other assaulted worlds had shown similar atrocities. The Primes weren’t interested in taking prisoners.
Over fifteen thousand armored aliens had poured out of the big ships to help secure Scraptoft. They were busy establishing a fortified perimeter with a ten-kilometer radius around the town. Several force field generators had been delivered by cargo flyers, along with weapons capable of shooting down any aerobot that ventured too close. At least that meant the protective formation of eight ships had finally splashed down; though the hot murky smog they’d created was taking a long time to disperse.
The four ships that had been the first to splash down had already launched again, flying back to the wormholes above the planet. Wilson didn’t like to think what kind of cargo they’d be bringing with them when they returned.
“EW aerobots going active,” Anna said.
The slim craft popped up over the horizon and began jamming the sensors of the perimeter weapons. Nothing shot at them. They flew closer, and began breaking into the multifarious Prime broadcasts.
“Son of a bitch,” Wilson said; it was the first time he’d smiled all day. The stealth sensors showed him armored Primes slowing down and moving about erratically, like clockwork soldiers that were winding down.
“Get the combat aerobots back in there,” Wilson told Rafael. “Hit the bastards.”
The EW aerobots widened their assault, targeting the communications links between the flyers and the landing ships out at sea. It was the same effect, with flyers soaring onward, or tumbling lazily out of the air.
A thousand kilometers above Anshun, eight Prime ships altered their descent trajectory so that they would overfly Scraptoft. The change flashed up in the tactical display.
“See if we can EW them as well,” Wilson said. “How many dedicated EW systems have we got?”
“I can only find another seventy-three listed in the governmental register,” Anna said.
“I want every one of them. Get them deployed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If we might make a suggestion,” the SI said. “It may be possible to use the surviving elements of planetary cyberspheres to produce a similar effect. The Prime signals seem remarkably susceptible to interference. Even nonmilitary systems should be sufficient to create a reasonable degree of disturbance.”
“Will you do that for us?”
“Of course.”
“Admiral,” Anna called. “The starships have arrived.”
Anshun’s First Speaker, Gilda Princess Marden, and her cabinet were in the civil emergency center twenty meters beneath the Regency Palace, trying to coordinate the capital’s evacuation with the navy’s requirements to deploy troops and aerobots. Consequently they had no view of the sky. Not that it would have mattered; the dreadful corrupted vapor was still swirling around the city’s force field, censoring any sight of space above the planet. But other cities on Anshun were clear of obstruction, as were the millions of people caught outside the urban force fields and still struggling to reach them. Even on the sunward side of the planet, they could see the fusion contrails of the Prime ships slicing across space as they rose and fell from the wormholes. Now new lights appeared, the bright turquoise of Cherenkov radiation flaring down as if small stars had suddenly ignited in orbit. There were five of them, spaced equidistantly three thousand kilometers above the planet’s equator. The warshipsDauntless, Defiant , andDesperado slipped out into real space; along with the scoutshipsConway andGalibi .
After that, it became impossible to look directly into the sky. Fusion drives scratched huge lines of dazzling fire across the constellations as they accelerated ships and missiles at high gees. Nuclear explosions blossomed silently, swelling to merge into a nebula brighter than sunlight that bracketed the entire world. Occasionally, energy beams would penetrate the atmosphere, becoming intense sparkling pillars of violet light tens of kilometers high, lasting for a second or more. Where they touched the ground, lethal gouts of molten rock would spew upward, adding to the wildfire that raced outward from the touchpoint. Huge radiation bursts inflamed the ionosphere, sending borealis storms spinning around the globe.
The battle lasted for over an hour, then the nebula faded away, its ions gusting out toward interplanetary space, cooling and decaying as they dispersed. In its wake, more Prime ships ventured out of the wormholes, again filling low-orbit space with their slender vivid exhausts. For hours, vast shoals of flaming meteorites fell to earth, trailing long ribbons of black smoke behind them.
Anyone still out in the open kept one fearful eye on the sky above, dodging the debris as they redoubled their efforts to reach sanctuary.
The Ables pickup truck bounced wildly as Mark gunned it along the stone chip road that ran the length of the Highmarsh Valley. He was leading the little band of vehicles carrying the surviving members of Simon Rand’s rear guard. A couple of kilometers up ahead, the bus convoy was racing along. He couldn’t see the MG, though he knew it was up there, well in front of the buses. They had a clear communications link with Carys; the network along the Highmarsh had rebuilt itself to a good thirty percent of its original capacity.
“We’re about at the junction,” Carys told them. Her voice coming from the handheld array was thin and strained. “Barry says it’s the road that takes us to the Ulon.”
“What do they do?” Mark asked Liz. “Do they go home?”
“Christ knows.” She tapped one of the icons on the array. “Simon, have you actually got any idea where we should be going?”
“I believe the Turquino Valley should be our first choice,” Simon said. “It is relatively narrow, with high walls, which will make it difficult for the aliens to fly in there.”
“But it’s a dead end,” Yuri Conant protested.
“There’s a track out to the Sonchin,” Lydia Dunbavand said.
“A foot track,” Mark said. “For mountain goats. Not even a four-by-four could use it.”
“Nonetheless, that is where we should proceed,” Simon said. “We just have to hang on until the navy opens a wormhole to evacuate us.”