The Stars at War Page 27

  He'd felt a brief, terrible guilt as those aircraft disintegrated, but he'd made himself shake it off. Far more of the People would pay with their lives for the Faith's lies before it ended.

  Now Angus MacRory slithered quietly over to him with the major, and Lantu tried to ignore the silent presence of the Orion who came with them. Kthaara'zarthan had never been out of easy reach, and he was coldly certain of the reason.

  "Huark's favorite HQ," he murmured. "We've made good time."

  "I can see why he feels secure here." M'boto made certain his glasses' scan systems were inactive, then raised them and cursed softly.

  A wide barricade of razor-wire fringed the inner edge of a cleared hundred-meter kill-zone, and heavily sandbagged weapon towers rose at regular intervals. The entire base was cofferdammed by thick earthen blast walls, and there were twelve hundred black-clad Wardens inside the wire and minefields, supported by two platoons of GEVs. Lantu eyed the vehicles bitterly, remembering his fruitless efforts to pry them loose from the Wardens. "How deep did you say those bunkers are?"

  "About forty meters for the command bunkers, Major."

  "Um." M'boto lowered his glasses and glanced at Angus. "The outer works are no sweat, Colonel. The HVMs'll rip hell out of them, and the blast will take out most of the open emplacements and personnel, but forty meters is too deep for them." He sighed. "I'm afraid we'll have to do it Admiral Lantu's way."

  "Aye," Angus agreed, and settled down to await the dark while M'boto and Lantu briefed their squad leaders.

  * * *

  Warden Colonel Huark sat in his bunker, staring at the small touchpad linked to the switchboard, and his fingers twitched as he thought of the mass death awaiting his touch. There had been no further word from the infidel admiral. Did that mean he would force the colonel's hand?

  Huark stroked the touchpad gently and almost hoped it did.

  * * *

  " 'Tis time," Angus said softly, and Lantu nodded convulsively. The Orion beside him muttered something to M'boto in the yowling speech of his people, but the major only shrugged and extended a weapon to Lantu.

  He took the proffered pistol. It was heavy, yet it didn't seem to weight his hand properly. Dull plastic gleamed as he opened his uniform tunic and shoved it inside.

  "You'll know when it's time," he said, and Angus nodded and thrust out a hand.

  "Take care," he admonished. "Yer no sae bad a boggit."

  "Thank you." Lantu squeezed the guerrilla's calloused, too-wide hand. Then he slipped away into the night.

  * * *

  Warden Private Katanak snatched at his rifle as something moved in the darkness. He started to squeeze the trigger, then made himself stop.

  "Sergeant Gohal! Look!"

  The sergeant reached for his pistol, then relaxed as a stocky, short-legged shape staggered from the forest into the glare of the perimeter floods.

  "Call the lieutenant, Katanak. That's one of ours."

  * * *

  Lantu tried not to show his tension as he stumbled up to the gate. His hunched shoulders were eloquent with weariness, and the artful damage his human allies had wreaked on his uniform should help. But nothing would help if Huark had learned the truth about his "kidnapping."

  "Who are—" The arrogant young lieutenant at the gate broke off and stared. "Holy Mother Terra!" he whispered. "First Admiral Lantu?!"

  "Yes," Lantu gasped. "For Terra's sake, let me in!"

  "B-b-but, First Admiral! We—I mean, how—?"

  "Are you going to stand there and blither all night?" Lantu snarled. "Satan-Khan! I didn't escape from a bunch of murdering terrorists and sneak across a hundred kilometers of hostile territory for that!"

  "Forgive me, sir!" The lieutenant's sharp salute was a tremendous relief. "We thought you were dead, sir! Open the gate, Sergeant!"

  The gate swung, and Lantu stepped inside past the metal detector. The weapon inside his tunic seemed to scorch him, but there was no alloy in it.

  "Thank you, Lieutenant." He injected relief into his thanks, but kept his voice tense and harried. "Now take me to the CP. Those Terra-cursed terrorists are planning—Never mind. Just get me to the colonel now!"

  "Yes, sir!" The lieutenant snapped back to attention, then turned to lead the first admiral rapidly across the compound.

  * * *

  "He's in," M'boto murmured. "I hope he's been straight with us."

  Angus only grunted, but Kthaara hissed something unintelligible—and unprintable—in the darkness.

  * * *

  Lantu let his feet drag down the steep bunker steps, playing his role of exhausted escapee. The guards by the main blast door looked up boredly as the lieutenant hurried over, then whipped around to stare at Lantu under the subterranean lights. One of them—a captain—crossed to him quickly.

  "First Admiral! We thought you were—"

  "The lieutenant told me, Captain," Lantu said tiredly, feeling his heart race, "but I'm alive, thank Terra. And I must see the colonel at once."

  "I don't—" The captain paused under Lantu's suddenly icy eyes. "I'll tell him, sir."

  "Thank you, Captain," Lantu said frigidly. The officer disappeared, and seconds were dragging eternities until he returned.

  "The colonel will admit you, First Admiral."

  Lantu grunted, ignoring the insulting phrasing, and followed the captain into the bunker's heart. The smell of concrete and earth enveloped him as his guide led him swiftly to Huark's staff section.

  "Sweet Terra, it is you." Huark sounded a bit surly—apparently he'd been less than crushed by his succession to command.

  "First Admiral!" Another voice spoke, and he turned quickly, eyes widening as Colonel Fraymak held out his hand. Lines of weariness and worry smoothed on the colonel's face, and Lantu tried to smile as a spasm of bitter regret wracked him. Why in the name of whatever was truly holy had Fraymak had to be here?

  "Colonel. Colonel Huark. Thank Terra I reached you! I have vital information about the terrorists' plans."

  He made himself ignore Fraymak's flicker of surprise at his choice of words.

  "Indeed?" Huark leaned forward eagerly. "What information?"

  "I think it would be better if I shared it with you in private," Lantu said, and Huark's eyes narrowed. Then he nodded.

  "Everybody out," he said curtly, and his staff filed out. Lantu watched them go, willing Fraymak to accompany them yet unable to suggest it. Huark's eyes swiveled to his rival and he started to speak, but then he stopped, and Lantu's heart sank. Of course the Warden wouldn't risk his ire by ordering his most trusted subordinate to leave.

  "All right, First Admiral," Huark said as the inner blast door closed behind his staff. "What is it?"

  "The terrorists are planning a major attack," Lantu said, stepping back and casually engaging the blast door's security lock. "I stole one of their maps," he went on, reaching into his tunic, "and—"

  His hand came out of his tunic with a bark of thunder.

  * * *

  "Now!" Major M'boto said harshly as a cluster of Wardens suddenly surged towards the HQ entrance. If Lantu had failed, three million human beings were about to die.

  * * *

  Colonel Huark lurched back, shocked eyes wide. Blood ran from his mouth as it opened. More frothed at his nostrils, and then he oozed down the wall in a smear of red.

  Lantu ignored him. He was on auto-pilot, locked into the essential task he must accomplish, and his weapon barked again. The touchpad on Huark's desk shattered, and the main com switchboard spat sparks as he fired into it again and again, braced for the thunder of Fraymak's pistol. But when he whirled to face the colonel at last, his weapon was still holstered and he held his hand carefully away from it.

  "F-First Admiral—?"

  "I'm sorry, Fraymak. I couldn't let him do it."

  Fists battered at the locked blast door as Fraymak stared at him.

  "Terra!" he whispered. "You didn't escape, you—"

  "That's righ
t," Lantu said softly, and the world exploded overhead.

  * * *

  HVMs scored the night with fire, and gun towers vomited concussive flame. Blast and fragments scythed through exposed flesh like canister, sweeping the life from open gun pits as assault charge rockets snaked through the wire and mortar bombs thundered across the motor pool. Shocked Wardens roused in the perimeter bunkers and streams of tracer began to hose the night, but the HVM launchers had retargeted and fresh blasts of fury killed the guns. Flames roared from broken GEVs, and the mortars shifted aim, deluging the shredded perimeter wire in visual and thermal smoke.

  * * *

  "CIC confirms explosions on Target One, sir." Major Janet Toomepuu looked up from her com station aboard TFNS Mangus Coloradas, hovering above Huark's HQ in geosynchronous orbit, to meet General Shahinian's eyes. "No sign of nuclear explosions anywhere on the planet."

  "Does Scanning report any signs of large-scale troop movements?"

  Toomepuu relayed the question to the big assault transport's combat information center.

  "No, sir," she said, and Shahinian nodded.

  "Land the landing force," he said, and the assault shuttles of the First and Second Raider Divisions, Terran Federation Marine Corps, stooped like vengeful falcons upon re-education camps and Theban military bases scattered across the face of New New Hebrides.

  * * *

  Huark's stunned Wardens staggered from their bunkered barracks, rushing to man their positions, but the enemy was already upon them. Half-seen wraiths swept out of the smoke behind a hurricane of grenades and small arms fire, and the defenders died screaming as human assault teams charged through the bedlam towards assigned targets.

  Angus hurdled a dead Warden, and his grenade launcher slammed on full auto as a Shellhead squad erupted from a personnel bunker. Fists of fire hurled them back, and he reloaded without breaking stride. Return fire spat out of the darkness, and he cursed as Davey MacIver went down at his side.

  The HQ bunker entrance loomed before him, and a machine-gun swung its flaming muzzle towards him, but a Raider dropped a grenade into the gun pit. Another Raider seemed to trip in mid-air as his head blew apart, and the high-pitched scream of Clan Zarthan's war cry split the madness as Kthaara emptied a full magazine into the bunker slit from which the fire had come. A Warden popped up out of the HQ bunker, gaping at the carnage, and Angus pumped an AP grenade into his chest. The Shellhead flew apart, and Angus dodged aside as a Marine sergeant and his flamer squad inundated the steep passage in a torrent of fire. Screams of agony answered, and then he and Tulloch MacAndrew were racing down the shallow, smoldering steps, leaping over seared bodies and bits of bodies, with the Marines and Kthaara'zarthan on their heels.

  A rifle chattered ahead of them, and Angus threw himself head-long down the stairs, grenade launcher barking. Three Marines went down before the bursting grenades silenced the enemy, and Angus tobogganed down the stairs on his belly, firing timed-rate as he went. The reek of explosives and burned flesh choked him, but he hit the bottom and rolled up onto his knees.

  Tulloch charged through the open blast door. Dead Thebans littered the bloody floor, but interior partitions sheltered live ones. The lights went out, muzzle flashes shredded the darkness, and Tulloch upended a map table for cover as he fired back savagely. A thunderous explosion roared deep inside the bunker, and Angus cringed as he crawled to Tulloch's side under the whining ricochets, reloading and bouncing grenades off the roof and over the head-high partitions.

  The defensive fire slackened, and Kthaara bounded forward, the Marine sergeant cursing like a maniac as he tried to keep pace. Their weapons swept the bunker, and Angus followed them, slipping and sliding in a film of blood. There was a fresh bellow of automatic fire, and then, impossibly, only sobs and moans and one terrible, high-pitched, endless keen of agony that faded at last into merciful silence.

  Angus straightened from his combat crouch, turning in a quick, wary circle to search out possible threats. There were none, and he stepped quickly into the short passage to Huark's offices.

  "First Admiral?" he called, listening to the faint thunder still bouncing down the bunker steps from above, and a voice answered.

  "Here, Colonel MacRory! Come ahead slowly, please."

  Angus eased down the passage, flinching as the scattered, surviving emergency lights clicked on. A haze of gunsmoke hovered above at least a dozen Shellhead bodies, all faced away from the main bunker towards the sagging armored door a blastpack had blown half off its hinges.

  But it hadn't gone down entirely, and he squirmed past it, then jerked his launcher up as he saw the Theban colonel, smoke still pluming from the muzzle of his machine-pistol. Lantu sat on the floor, holding one arm while blood flowed through his fingers, and his face was pale, but he shook his head quickly as Angus's launcher rose.

  "Don't shoot, Colonel!" Angus and the Theban both looked at him sharply, and the admiral laughed a bit wildly, then hissed in pain. "I meant you, Colonel MacRory. It seems I had an ally after all. Colonel MacRory, meet Colonel Fraymak."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A Gathering Fury

  "I spoke to Admiral Al-Sana at BuPers about you, Andy," Howard Anderson said.

  "You did, sir?" Ensign Mallory looked at him in some surprise.

  "Yes. You'll be a full lieutenant next week, and he's promised you a transfer to BuShips or Second Fleet—your choice."

  "Transfer?"

  "Personally," Anderson said, peering out the ground car window, "I think you'd probably learn more with Admiral Timoshenko, but if you go to Second Fleet, you should arrive in time for the Theban invasion, and combat duty always looks good on a young officer's record, so—"

  "Just a minute, sir." Young Ensign Mallory had matured considerably, and he broke in on his boss without the flustered bashfulness he once had shown. "If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to finish the war with you."

  "I'm sorry, Andy," Anderson turned to him with genuine regret, "but it just isn't possible."

  "Why not? When you get back from Old Terra and—"

  "I'm not coming back," Anderson said gently. "I'm resigning."

  "You're resigning now? When everything's finally coming together?" Mallory looked and sounded shocked.

  "As you say, everything is coming together. The production and building schedules are all in place, the new weapons are a complete success—" Anderson shrugged. "Admiral Timoshenko can manage just fine without me."

  "But it's not fair, sir! You're the one who kicked ass to make it work, and some damned money-gouging industrialist'll grab the credit!"

  "Andy, do you think I really need the credit?" Mallory blushed and shook his head. "Good." Anderson reached over and squeezed the young officer's knee. "In the meantime, there's something I have to do on Old Terra, and I can't do it as a member of the Cabinet."

  Mallory glanced at him sharply as the car braked beside the shuttle pad. Then his brow smoothed and he nodded.

  "I understand, sir. I should have guessed." He got out and held the door. Anderson climbed out and thrust out his hand, and Mallory took it in a firm clasp. "Good luck, sir."

  "And to you, Lieutenant—if you'll forgive me for being a bit premature. I'll expect to hear good things about you."

  "I'll try to make certain you do, sir."

  Anderson nodded, gave his aide's hand a last squeeze, and climbed the shuttle steps without a backward glance.

  * * *

  Federation Hall had changed.

  Anderson stood in an antechamber alcove, and the faces about him were grim. He wasn't surprised, for every newscast screamed the same story. The classified reports had leaked even before he reached Old Terra, and though he couldn't prove it, he recognized the hand behind the timing. It seemed unlikely the war could last much longer, the next elections were only eight months away, and the LibProgs were looking to the ballot box. Pericles Waldeck wanted to lead his party into them with a resounding flourish to head off any embarrassing
discussion of just who had gotten the Federation into this mess, and the "bloody shirt" was always a sure vote getter.

  Anderson snorted contemptuously and stepped out into the crowd, nodding absent replies to innumerable greetings as he headed for the Chamber. He was reasonably certain Sakanami hadn't been a party to the leaks. Not because he put cold-blooded political maneuvers past the president, but because Sakanami couldn't possibly want to further complicate the closing stages of the war, and one thing was certain—the news coverage was going to complicate things in a major way.

  Anderson couldn't blame the public for its outrage. Of six and a half million people on New New Hebrides, nine hundred and eighty thousand had died during the Theban occupation. The same percentage of deaths would have cost Old Terra one and two-thirds billion lives, and the newsies had been quick to play up that statistic. It wasn't as if they'd died in combat, either; the vast majority had been systematically slaughtered by the Theban Inquisition.

  Humanity's anger and hatred were a hurricane, and it would grow worse shortly. Second Fleet had not yet moved into Alfred . . . but Anderson had read the abstracts from the New New Hebrides occupation's records.

  He shivered and settled into his seat, cursing the weariness which had become his constant companion. Age was catching up with him remorselessly, undercutting his strength and endurance when he knew he would need them badly. Ugly undercurrents floated through the Assembly, whispers about "proper punishment" for the "Theban butchers," and Anderson had heard such whispers before. Some of his darkest nightmares took him back to the close of ISW-3, when the Federation had agreed to the Khanate's proposals to reduce the central worlds of the Rigelian Protectorate to cinders. There had seemed to be no choice, for the Rigelians had not been sane by human or Orion standards. The Protectorate had never learned to surrender, and invasion would have cost billions of casualties. Almost worse, occupation garrisons would have been required for generations. Yet when the smoke finally cleared and the Federation realized it had been party not simply to the murder of a world, or even several worlds, but of an entire race . . .