“Lieutenant Allen, are you also able to lift and land the Return?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You, Carter, and Specialist Martin will remain aboard. Dr. Jenner says she needs some supplies and specimens from the ship. I’ll send a FiVee to pick up whatever Carter thinks the scientists will need, everything suitably protected from contamination.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then—”
Jason’s earplant erupted into sound. “Colonel Jenner, Hillson here. Perimeter received a report of an attack on the Colin Jenner Settlement at the coast. New America ground troops. Play recording?”
“Yes. Allen, stand by.” Jason’s guts twisted. He’d insisted on providing Colin with radio equipment to contact the base if necessary. Reluctantly Colin had agreed to leave it hidden in woods beyond a bean field. The equipment had never been used before. Contact now meant that at least one person was outside the dome and that the attack was severe.
The recording came on. A woman’s voice, shrill and terrified, gunfire in the distance. “They’re here! They’re shooting at us, at everybody who couldn’t get to the dome in time… some people are dead—please come help! Please! Help us! They—”
A burst of automatic fire, deafeningly loud, and a dull thud. She was gone. Then Hillson’s voice. “Sir?”
“Any more intel? Did anyone on site say how big the attack force is?”
“No. That recording is all there is.”
Jason couldn’t risk quadcopters; New America had shoulder-launched missiles. He said, “Load the FiVees with two lockers of C-11w’s. Full complement of both infantry and medical. Have them drive to that flat place by the river three miles from the dome, unless New America is too close to there. If so, have them stop farther away at some largely open area and wait.”
“Yes, sir.” Hillson was too experienced to question orders, but Jason heard the puzzlement in his voice.
To Allen he said, “Belay previous orders. Do not leave the ship. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Prepare for liftoff.”
“Yes, sir. What—”
“Attack on the Settlement. FiVees are arriving with aerial bombs. The Return is now a warship.”
CHAPTER 7
Jason had never thought he would leave Earth for space. The era of space travel, like so much else, had died with the Collapse. And yet—here he was, on the bridge of the Return, watching on a wall screen as the ground fell away below. A thousand pictures over a lifetime, a hundred rotating holograms—none of it did justice to the reality. His world, blue and white, looking as pure and unsullied as if humans had never built and destroyed and polluted and warred over its forests, oceans, soaring mountains. Jason blinked hard.
“Sir?” Branch Carter said. “I don’t know how to do any evasive maneuvers.”
Jason turned from the screen to the pilot’s console, which didn’t look like any cockpit Jason had ever seen. Carter sat on a wooden bench that had once been a wooden table, facing screens, mostly blank, above an array of oddly shaped protrusions and recesses, most of which he never touched. Jason said, “We’re well above the altitude of any known enemy surface-to-air weapons. Lieutenant Li at the signal station will give you landing instructions. Be prepared to lift again immediately on my word, if we spot any ground activity. What is your fuel situation?”
“I don’t know,” Branch Carter said.
“And you are sure that this ship carries no air-to-ground weapons?” He had already asked this, along with everything else he needed to know, but the lab tech turned starship captain seemed to Jason so skittish that perhaps repeated questioning would elicit a different answer.
It didn’t. Carter said, “Not that I’ve found. It was a colony ship. And Kindred don’t believe in weapons.”
The river came into view, a shining ribbon. Open meadows, woods, then individual trees. No people. The Return set down, gently as a soap bubble, beside the river. It took the FiVees longer to arrive, and every minute was agony—what was happening at the Settlement? Hillson, at the base, had no more information. When the FiVees roared into sight, Jason and the two members of J Squad he’d had with him at the signal station ran from the ship’s airlock. Lindy leaped from the back of the truck crowded with her medical crew. Dr. Holbrook, so much older, climbed down more slowly.
Lindy said, “How bad is it?”
“Don’t know. Radio contact broke off and someone was laying down fire. The Settlement dome may or may not have been breached. Stay here until I call you.”
Goldman had taken charge of the FiVees filled with soldiers; Kowalski was overseeing the loading of ordnance into the Return airlock. Lindy stared at the carry-bot trundling crates marked DANGER—EXPLOSIVES. “Jesus. Aren’t we going to use the spaceship to move casualties to the base?”
“Only if we have to. Depends on the numbers.” Lindy nodded; she’d always been quick. Colin’s people lived in, walked through, breathed RSA. Their presence in the ship would contaminate it. But you could not intubate, suture, or operate through an esuit.
When the bombs were aboard, Jason returned to the airlock but didn’t open the inner door or close the outer one. He twisted the weird, curly protuberance that let him talk to the bridge. “Captain Carter, go.” Then he held his breath.
Jason hadn’t known if the ship would lift with the airlock open. It did. Everyone in the open airlock lashed restraining ropes around their waists and put on portable O2 masks.
Carter lifted the Return to an altitude higher than shoulder-mounted missile launchers could target. On the wall screen—and thank God the unknown aliens who’d designed this thing had put wall screens everywhere—the main body of the enemy came into view. Maybe two hundred soldiers, lounging by the river, probably laughing at how easy it was for such a small number of their fighters to slaughter unarmed farmers. Hatred rose in Jason’s throat, bitter as bile. He’d seen other raids. New America would kill the men, rape the women, take the youngest and prettiest with them. Portable R&R. Sometimes they murdered the children, sometimes left them to die.
“Carter, hover. Ordnance, first strike.”
He hoped the fuckers below had looked up, astonished to see a starship gliding above their heads. The ordnance specialist armed and dropped the bomb.
It exploded in a fireball that consumed the troops below. Swiftly Jason directed the ship to drop lower and fire out the airlock door at those fleeing. Most of the enemy dropped.
A missile left the ground; Jason had wrongly assumed that those would be with the main body of the enemy. “Lift!” Jason cried, and faster than he would have thought possible, the Return lurched and soared. If Corporal Olivera had not been lashed to the bulkhead, she would have been shaken out the door. The missile missed the ship, but not by much. Carter had told him that the ship could be damaged by an explosion—had been damaged that way on World—but not what would happen if it took that explosion while in the air. Nobody knew.
Swiftly he directed the rest of the attack. They flew over the dome, taking out all the enemy they saw. But some fled into the dome, which meant the farmers had not secured their airlock before the first of the New America troops were inside. Jason cursed and contacted Goldman. “Bring in the FiVees and prepare to take the dome. Medical personnel to begin aiding casualties in the field.” He could see bodies scattered among the field crops, along the river, at the kelp farm on the coast.
“Roger, sir.” The FiVees, which Jason could just see on the horizon, moved forward.