"Surely they'd look more like us." Hark had a thought. "Maybe the Yal took them from the Earth when they were first forced to leave it." "The Earth?"
"The original world. Our original world."
Rance walked slowly over to where Hark was standing. "What do you know about the Earth?"
Hark gave a slight shrug. "A woman told me."
"You shouldn't believe everything women tell you."
It was the worn-out topman response, and the moment Rance had said it, he felt a little stupid.
Hark just looked away. "I believe this."
Renchett was bending over one of the bodies. "You know what I think?"
"What?"
"It was probably these assholes that skinned those corpses back in the jungle."
Renchett had his knife out. He was about to carve off an ear. Rance stopped him.
"There'll be no more mutilation."
Hark was still deep in thought.
"You all know what else this means," he said slowly. "It means that we've started fighting our own kind. There are men on both sides in this damned war. Men are fighting each other for aliens that most of them will never even see."
"It sucks."
Hark was suddenly deeply angry. "Goddamn right it sucks. It makes it all totally meaningless."
The thought was still sinking in when the sky was lit by a blinding flash on the horizon.
"Nuke!"
"They don't have no nukes left!" "That's a fucking nuke."
They all threw themselves flat. The fireball was climbing into the air like a fast-rising sun.
"They must have had some stashed."
"Maybe the men were stashed, too."
"That was probably another e-vac area."
A voice from the command dome came into their helmets. "It was in the right direction for the Fourteen River base, the one that the dynes were shipping out from."
"How soon will the shock wave hit?"
The minutes passed agonizingly as the base waited for the shock. When it arrived, it came with the force of multiple hurricanes. Eddies of debris, dust, and smoke sped across the cleared ground like twisters. Men clung to the earth as the wind threatened to lift them clear off the hilltop. The shriek of static in their helmets threatened to deafen them. The ones who had remained on their feet either were whirled into the air or rolled through the mud. A gunsaucer was turned over, and panels were torn from the control dome. There was panic inside as the pressurization was lost and the men grabbed for their masks. The fury passed as swiftly as it had come, leaving behind a strange battered calm. The white mushroom cloud stood on the horizon like a terrible epitaph to the whole doomed, fruitless campaign. Nuclear weapons, although crude and ancient, were still viewed with fear and awe. Their destructiveness was so all-encompassing that their use remained a matter of desperate last resort. Touching off what amounted to a small sun on the surface of a planet was a frightening gamble.
Men readied their weapons, fully expecting an enemy ground attack. When none came, there was a distinct feeling of unease. It wasn't like the Yal to pass up any opportunity.
"If they can nuke that base, they can nuke this one."
An e-vac came down with is retros screaming. It looked as if it, too, had taken a beating from the nuclear shock wave. As soon as its landing legs touched, Rance sprang to his feet.
"Everybody up! Let's go! We're getting on that crate, and nobody's going to stop us."
Fifteen
The Anah 5 felt as if it were being torn apart, and maybe the whole universe along with it. The shields had already failed on two of the ships in the cluster, and those two were being battered to pieces by the guns of the Yal. The coordination that made the cluster a single entity had been lost. They were now thirteen solitary ships fighting for their individual survival. The Yal battleships had arrived ahead of schedule and before the cluster could jump to safety. The Anah 12 was slowly and majestically being turned into a shapeless cloud of gas and debris by a chain reaction of explosions. The shocks were felt on all the other ships. It was unlikely that there were survivors of any kind, but even if a few unfortunates remained drifting in space, nothing could be done for them. The green clouds of Yal fire came on relentlessly, and only three of the cluster ships had sufficient power to fire back.
None of the surviving troopers had thought much about what would happen when they actually arrived back on board. As they'd stormed onto the e-vac, gunning down three field police in the process, simply getting off the planet in one piece had been the all-consuming goal. It had remained so during the go-for-broke takeoff that had them running the gauntlet of a sudden storm of enemy ground fire. It was only when they were in space and could see the dozens of tiny craft shuttling in between the thirteen big ships that they started to remember that they might well have jetted from frying pan to fire. Collectively, the shuttles seemed to be moving with such a desperate frenzy that it was obvious that the cluster was in the throes of a major alert.
The bombardment began while Rance's troopers were just emerging from the blue room decontamination process. The ship shuddered, and the floor tilted. A number of men fell on their faces. There were muffled explosions in another part of the ship. Farther down the corridor, a duct burst and superheated steam roared from the breach. This in turn caused a short in a power transfer, and a shower of blue sparks cascaded through the clouds of swirling vapor. The ship lurched again, and there were more explosions. Smoke billowed down the corridor. Fire alarms were ringing. Rance clung to a doorjamb and tried to organize the men under his command. Their equipment was still on the conveyer, coming out of decontamination. Without a helmet, it was hard to make himself heard.
"Everyone suit up!"
The ship now seemed to be tilting steeply toward the bow. Rance knew that this was probably a localized illusion. The floor grav control in this sector had probably been jarred off line, and no one had yet managed to reset it. The knowledge didn't make the experience any easier to stand.
Dyrkin crawled up the sloping floor, dragging himself with one hand. His suit and helmet were tucked under his other arm. "So what are we supposed to do?"
"Get into your suit. The ship's going to jump before too long, and we've got to get back to our coffins. If we don't, we're going to be pulp."
Most of the survivors were at the bottom of the angled corridor, piled against an emergency bulkhead that had closed immediately after the first series of shocks. They were grazed and bruised, and a couple had been scalded by the steam, but otherwise the men seemed to be more or less intact. Rance clawed his way to the conveyer offload. He grabbed the first suit to emerge, slapped it against his chest, and let it crawl over his body. He fitted his helmet and then started sliding the rest of the suits and helmets down to the men.
"Dyrkin, get up here and help me!"
The floor righted itself, but the lights went out. A half dozen helmet lights came on in the gloom.
"Get that bulkhead open."
"Controls don't respond. It must have shorted out." "Somebody rig a bypass."
Hark's voice came over the communicator. "I got it."
The bulkhead rolled back. There were still lights in the next section of corridor. A public address was trilling urgently in nohan. The ship slammed sideways as if it had received a blow from a giant hammer. The men were thrown up against the left-hand wall. Those who were still struggling into their suits were thrown down on the deck.
"That's got to be a direct hit."
"You wouldn't know about a direct hit."
"The screens got to be buckling, though."
Rance hurried them along. "We've got to get back to the coffins if we don't want to make the jump on bare floor."