Except, of course, that it was too late.
“I don’t think it would do any good,” he said now, softly. El-Hiri looked at him, and he shrugged.
“They’ve made up their minds,” he said. “And it’s not just us—not just you and me—and you know it. The Shongairi we’ve interrogated made that clear enough. Oh, you and I’ve been unmitigated pains in the ass as far as they’re concerned—I don’t doubt that. And from what those bastards had to say before we cut their throats, they’ve had more trouble here in North America than anywhere else. Course, that may be because this is where they decided to concentrate, which meant we just naturally had more shots at them than anybody else did. But that’s my point, really. Even if we stopped—you and I, I mean—and handed ourselves in tomorrow, the rest of the human race wouldn’t. It’s not in us, Abu Bakr. Hell, look at the way your own lunatic fringe was still making IEDs and still walking into mosques and synagogues wearing suicide belts when the Shongairi got here! I know as well as you do that most Muslims would never have dreamed of doing anything like that, but the true believers, the hard-core radicals, did. Because they were committed. Because what they were committed to was more important than anything else they could imagine.
“Human minds work that way. It’s who we are and the way we think and feel and believe. No matter what we do—no matter what the Shongairi do—there’s always going to be some human somewhere who’ll be perfectly happy to die as long as he gets to cut one Shongair throat first. God knows different groups of humans have given one another plenty of reasons to hate each other over the centuries, and I think we’ve pretty amply demonstrated that we can hate each other for a long, long time, even over things that are pretty frigging silly, when you come right down to it. But these bastards have killed better than half the entire human race when none of us—none of us—had ever done a damned thing to them! Do you seriously think anyone, anywhere on the face of this planet, is ever going to forgive them for that?”
El-Hiri looked back into his eyes, then drew a deep breath and shook his head.
“Guess not,” he said, and Torino nodded.
“I’d have to say that, for interstellar conquistadors, the Shongairi seem dumber than rocks when it comes to really understanding other species, but I think they’ve finally got that part figured out in our case. That’s why it’s not going to make any difference in the long run. They’ve decided to wipe us out, and they’re going to do it. So it seems to me that about the only decision left to us is whether or not we’re going to make it easy for them. And I’ve got to tell you, Abu Bakr, I’m not. It may not make one damned bit of difference in the end, but if they’re going to murder my entire species, then before they do, I am damned well going to kill every single one of them I can.”
“Put that way, it makes sense to me,” el-Hiri said, “but I still say you shouldn’t be driving any ‘suicide truck bombs.’ I mean, think about your image, man! The hero of the Air Battle of Washington going out as a suicide bomber? That’s the kind of thing us lunatic towel heads are supposed to be doing, not you calm and collected infidels.”
“No way in hell,” Torino shot back. “The only way we’re going to get this”—he twitched his head at the enormous weapon they’d forged—“inside their main base is in a real truck, and the only kind of truck we’re going to get past their perimeter security is one of their own. And there is no way in hell somebody as tall as you are is going to fit into one of their trucks well enough to drive it.”
El-Hiri glowered at him, yet there was a certain unanswerable logic to his argument. They’d captured three of the Shongair cargo vehicles, and figuring out how to operate them hadn’t been all that difficult. In fact, their controls were downright simpleminded. Humans found the peculiar “tiller” steering arrangement a little hard to get used to, initially at least, but it wasn’t that hard for a competent mechanic to swap it out for a human-style steering column.
The real problem was that there just wasn’t very much room for the driver. The wiry Shongairi were shorter and far more slender than the average human. That probably could have been adjusted for, but their limbs were also double-jointed and the joints didn’t even come in the same places they did for humans. By the time a cargo truck’s controls were altered for human operation, no human much over five feet tall could fit into the available space with any degree of comfort. Torino could cram himself into it, but it wouldn’t be anything remotely like comfortable for him. For that matter, although he wasn’t about to admit it to el-Hiri, he was a little afraid the cramping would be bad enough to affect his ability to control the vehicle during the approach. He wasn’t worried about simply slamming down the accelerator and driving it into its target when the time came; he was concerned about getting it to the target and through the outermost ring of sensor posts without attracting Shongair attention by driving erratically.
But if it might be a problem for him, it damned well would be a problem for el-Hiri, who was almost seven inches taller than he was.
El-Hiri glowered at him, then looked back at their bomb which, Torino thought, was probably the biggest Claymore mine anyone had ever built. It was essentially a huge triangular-shaped form, as if they’d chopped off an old-fashioned barn’s peaked roof, covered first with explosives and then with thousands of nails, bolts, nuts, and screws scavenged from abandoned hardware stores and building supply centers all over North Carolina. The angled shape would direct the blast upward, and the explosion alone ought to suffice to destroy the cargo bay he’d selected for his target at the base of the Shongair ground base’s central structure. He was pretty sure destroying the bay would bring the entire building down—despite everything, he couldn’t quite get the vision of the collapsing Twin Towers out of his head when he thought about that—but even if he was stopped short of his ultimate target, he was confident the shrapnel, blasting through the flimsy fabric cover over the flatbed cargo area, would kill every exposed Shongair within a hundred yards or so.
“You’re both wrong,” another voice said, and the two of them turned to face the speaker. It was a young black man, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. “You’re both too tall,” he continued. “Whereas me. . . .”
He shrugged and indicated his own height . . . which was four inches shorter than Torino’s five feet eight.
“Forget it, Muad,” Torino said instantly. “I am not sending a fifteen-year-old kid in with a suicide bomb!”
“I’ll be sixteen in another month and a half,” the young man replied levelly. “Or I would be, anyway. And I ain’t no ‘kid,’ either!”
Torino opened his mouth, then paused.
Muad had a point. Two of them, really. The odds of his ever living to be more than sixteen were nonexistent, anyway, given Fleet Commander Thikair’s decision to exterminate the human race. And even if that hadn’t been true, he was scarcely a “kid.” He’d killed his first six Shongairi before he and his brother ever met up with Longbow Torino. And he’d shot down more of the Shongair recon drones than any other two members of Torino’s band combined. In fact, his skill with the Stingers had earned him the nickname el-Rumat—“the Archer.”
But even so, even now, something inside Dan Torino cried out against sending someone so young on a mission of death which could end only in his own death even if he succeeded.
Sure you don’t want to do it, a voice told him. But how much of that is worry about Muad, or even about what losing Muad would do to Abu Bakr, and how much of it’s the fact that you want to do it? You want this. Admit it. Everything you just said to Abu Bakr is true enough, but what it comes down to is that you personally want to kill these bastards. And there’s a part of you that wants to be dead, anyway. So why not wrap it all up in one great big package with a bow on it? Kill as many of them as you can and kill yourself at the same time? “Happy Birthday Longbow!”
“Look,” he heard himself say, holding up both hands in a stopping motion, “let’s not the three of us get carried aw
ay here. I mean, we haven’t even got it in the damned truck yet. We don’t have to make up our minds tonight about who gets to drive it in. Except, of course, that it can’t be you, Abu Bakr. You’re still too damned tall!”
“So are you,” Muad shot back.
“I don’t think so. But I am big enough to kick your butt if you try to drive it!” The young man glowered at him, and he shrugged. “Hey, I’m not saying that’s the way it’s going to be. I’m just saying we don’t have to make our minds up tonight. I’m sure we can settle it in some civilized fashion when the time does come, too. If we can’t do it any other way, we can always do rock-paper-scissors or something to decide, okay?”
“This has to be the craziest conversation I’ve ever sat in on,” el-Hiri said. “And I’ve sat in on some weird ones.”
“Don’t even tell me,” Torino retorted.
“Well, that’s—” el-Hiri started, then paused as someone else poked his head into the garage.
“There’s someone here looking for you, Longbow,” the newcomer said.
“Who?” Torino asked.
“Didn’t give his name. Big black guy, though—taller’n you, Abu Bakr. And he says he wants to talk to you guys about attacking the base.”
. XXXIX .
Fleet Commander Thikair felt a thousand years old as he sat in the silence of his stateroom, gazing at the blank display screen and cursing the day he’d ever had his brilliant idea.
It seemed so simple, he thought almost numbly. Like such a reasonable risk. But then it all went so horribly wrong, from the moment our troopers landed. And now this.
First, Ground Base Seven—Shairez and all her personnel, dead.
Then, three of the humans’ weeks later, it had been Fursa’s turn and Ground Base Six and every one of its troopers had died. In a single night. In the space of less than one day-twelfth, two fully alert infantry brigades and an entire armored brigade—one that had been made up to full strength, despite the expedition’s losses in GEVs and APCs!—had been just as utterly slaughtered as Ground Base Seven.
And they’d still had absolutely no idea how it happened.
They’d received a single report, from a platoon commander, claiming he was under attack by what looked like humans. But humans who had completely ignored the assault rifles firing into them. Humans who’d registered on no thermal sensor, no motion sensor. Humans who could not have been there.
Thairys had to have been right about that, Thikair thought now. Whoever it is who’s helping the humans, they must be projecting holo images to distract and confuse—and terrify—our troopers. Of course our warriors fired at the threat they saw without asking themselves if perhaps the reason it wasn’t appearing on their motion sensors or thermal sensors was because it wasn’t really there! These humans have been such a nightmare to them from the very beginning, it’s no wonder the rumor mill is starting to call them outright night demons! And while our troopers are busy shooting at electronic ghosts, our real enemies, the ones operating under stealth, are slipping right past them.
He told himself that yet again, but deep inside, it didn’t really matter. Not anymore.
Not now that Ground Base Two Alpha had gone the same way as Ground Base Seven and Ground Base Six. And this time, there hadn’t been any reports from inside the base. Only a sudden silence, more terrifying than any report. And instead of moving instantly, on his own authority, to relieve the base—or at least find out what had happened to it—Thairys had commed him to ask for orders. To ask for orders! A senior ground force commander of the Shongair Empire whose troopers had been attacked had asked for orders before responding.
Thikair never knew how long he simply sat staring at the display. But then, finally, he punched a button on his communicator.
“Yes, Fleet Commander?” Ahzmer’s voice responded quietly.
“Bring them up,” Thikair said with a terrible, flat emphasis. “I don’t care who’s down there helping them. I don’t even care if there’s no one at all down there helping them, Cainharn seize them! If there is, they can go the same damned way as the humans. I want every single trooper off that planet within three day-twelfths. And then we’ll let Jainfar’s dreadnoughts use the Dainthar-cursed place for target practice.”
• • • • •
It wasn’t that simple, of course.
Organizing the emergency withdrawal of an entire planetary assault force was even more complicated than landing it had been. But at least the required troop lift had been rather drastically reduced, Thikair reflected bitterly. Well over half his entire ground force—including maintenance and support techs, not just combat troops—had been wiped out, and he’d be bringing back less than one in twelve of his combat vehicles. However small his relative losses might have been compared to those of the humans, it was still a staggering defeat for the Empire, and it was all his responsibility.
He would already have killed himself, except that no honorable suicide could possibly expunge the stain he’d brought to the honor of his entire clan. No, that would require the atonement of formal execution. Even that might not prove enough, yet it was all he could offer the Emperor. And perhaps—just perhaps, threadbare though the hope might be—if he was right and the Shongairi’s enemies had deliberately arranged this disaster, his execution might offer the Emperor some flimsy cover. A way to assert that all of it, from first to last, had been the consequences of a single, feckless utter incompetent’s having exceeded both the letter and the intent of his orders.
It wasn’t much. It was simply all he had to give.
But before I go home to face His Majesty, there’s one last thing I need to do. Jainfar’s main batteries will reduce this accursed world to asteroids. If there are any Kreptu or Liatu hiding down there, they’ll never have expected that or prepared their hideouts to survive it, so. . . .
“Are we ready, Ahzmer?”
“We are according to my readouts,” the ship commander replied. But there was something peculiar about his tone, and Thikair looked at him.
“Meaning what?” he asked impatiently.
“Meaning that according to my readouts, all shuttles have returned and docked, but neither Stellar Dawn nor Imperial Sword have confirmed recovery of their small craft. All the transports have checked in, but we haven’t yet heard from either industrial ship.”
“What?”
Thikair’s one-word question quivered with sudden, ice-cold fury. It was as if all his anxiety, all his fear, guilt, and shame suddenly had someone else to focus upon, and he showed all of his canines in a ferocious snarl.
“Get their commanders on the com now,” he snapped. “Find out what in Cainharn’s Ninth Hell they think they’re doing! And then get me Jainfar!”
“At once, Sir! I—”
Ahzmer’s voice stopped abruptly, and Thikair’s eyes narrowed.
“Ahzmer?” he said.
“Sir, the plot. . . .”
Thikair turned to the master display, and it was his turn to freeze.
Six of the expedition’s seven dreadnoughts were heading steadily away from the planet.
“What are they—?” he began, then gasped as two of the dreadnoughts suddenly opened fire. Not on the planet—on their own escorts!
Nothing in the galaxy could stand up to the energy-range fire of a dreadnought. Certainly no mere scout ship, destroyer, or cruiser could.
It took less than forty-five seconds for every one of Thikair’s screening warships to die . . . and every one of his transport ships went with them.
“Get Jainfar!” he shouted at Ahzmer. “Find out what—”
“Sir, there’s no response from Squadron Commander Jainfar’s ship!” Ahzmer’s communications officer blurted. “There’s no response from any of the other dreadnoughts!”
“What?” Thikair stared at him in disbelief, and then alarms began to warble. First one, then another, and another.
He whipped back around to the master control screen, and ice smoked through his ve
ins as crimson lights glared on the readiness boards. Engineering went down, then the Combat Information Center. Master Fire Control went off-line, and so did Tracking, Missile Defense, and Astrogation.
And then the flag bridge itself lost power. Main lighting failed, plunging it into darkness, and Thikair heard someone gobbling a prayer as the emergency lighting clicked on.
“Sir?”
Ahzmer’s voice was fragile, and Thikair looked at him. But he couldn’t find his own voice. He could only stand there, paralyzed, unable to cope with the impossible events.
And then the command deck’s armored doors slid open, and Thikair’s eyes went wide as a human walked through them.
Every officer on that bridge was armed, and Thikair’s hearing cringed as a dozen sidearms opened fire at once. Scores of bullets slammed into the human intruder . . . with absolutely no effect.
No, that wasn’t quite correct, some numb corner of Thikair’s brain insisted. The bullets went straight through him, whining and ricocheting off the bulkheads behind him, but he didn’t even seem to notice. There were no wounds, no sprays of blood. His clothing rippled as if in a high wind, but his body might as well have been made of smoke, offering no resistance, suffering no damage.
He only stood there, looking at them. And then, suddenly, there were more humans. Three of them. Only three . . . but it was enough.
Thikair’s mind gibbered, too overwhelmed even to truly panic, as the three newcomers seemed to blur. It was as if they were half transformed into vapor that poured itself forward, around and past the first human, streaking through the command deck’s air with impossible speed. They flowed across the bridge, enveloping his officers, and he heard screams. Screams of raw panic which rose in pitch as the Shongairi behind them saw the smoke flowing in their direction . . . and died in a hideous, gurgling silence as it engulfed them.
And then Thikair was the only Shongair still standing.
His body insisted that he had to collapse, but somehow his knees refused to unlock. Collapsing would have required him to move . . . and something reached out from the first human’s green eyes and forbade that.