Meredith felt his eyes narrowing. “About what?”
“I don’t know. But he’s being very polite.”
Meredith focused on Chang. “Can you put me through to the Pathfinder on a tight beam? I want Captain Radford.”
“Just a minute, sir.”
Chang took a step toward Meredith. “Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t know yet,” the colonel told him shortly.
There was a crackle and Radford’s voice came from the phone. “Radford here. What’s up, Colonel?”
“Had anyone on Earth leaked news of our cable before you left?” Meredith asked. “Specifically, had they leaked it to the Ctencri or the other aliens?”
“As far as I know, it was still a dead-dark secret,” Radford said slowly. “Why would you think … the Rooshrike ship?”
“Yeah. I find the timing highly suspicious, given they’ve been ignoring Astra entirely for the past three months.”
There was a short silence. “I thought the idea of bringing the cable down there was to keep anyone from trying to filch it.”
“It was.” Meredith let his breath out in a hiss, tapped a button on his phone. “Brown?”
“Yes, Colonel?”
“I want you to patch me through to the Rooshrike. You and Captain Radford are to listen in and make recordings of the conversation. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give me a second to set up the tamper-proof recorder,” Radford added.
Meredith was suddenly aware that all activity and conversation in the cable shelter had ceased. Chang was looking slightly befuddled; but Witzany and his assistants had nothing of uncertainty in their expressions. They knew something was up.
The phone beeped. “You’re through, Colonel; go ahead,” Brown told him:
Meredith brought the phone a bit closer to his mouth. “This is Colonel Lloyd Meredith. I’d like to speak to Beaeki nul Dies na.”
“I am Beaeki nul Dies na,” the response came immediately. “I speak for my people.”
“Uh, yes—I also speak for my people. I’d like to know the purpose of your visit.”
“I wish to discuss trade with you.”
“I see. Trade for our sulfur, I presume?”
“You need not seek to deceive,” Beaeki said. “I offer you free information as a sign of sincerity: we know of the advanced technology which you have discovered and of the cable it has produced. We wish to purchase a length of the cable for examination; depending upon its properties we may be interested in trading for usable quantities of it.”
Meredith stared at the phone for two heartbeats, his thoughts racing. “How did you find out about the cable?” he asked, more to gain time than anything else.
“We obtained the information from the Ctencri, who intend to act as agents for Earth in future sales. My people feel a more mutually equitable arrangement may be possible by trading directly with you.”
“I see.” So Earth had made a deal with the Ctencri without even bothering to tell him … or had the Ctencri set up the whole thing unilaterally? Or, for that matter, were the Rooshrike making the Ctencri connection up in hopes of pushing Astra into a hasty and ill-considered contract? Meredith hesitated, knowing that to appear indecisive might be the worst thing he could do, and wishing like hell he had a little more information. “As far as selling you a piece of the cable, I’m afraid I cannot permit that at present. However, we will sell you the data we have collected, either now or in a few days when our new test equipment has been set up.”
Beaeki’s answer might have helped Meredith figure out what was going on; but as it happened, the Rooshrike was never given time to reply. “Colonel, we’re picking up another ship,” Brown cut into the conversation, his voice tense: “Just shifted into the system—we caught the flash. About one point four million kilometers and coming toward Astra.”
“Colonel, we just picked up a second flash,” Radford announced. “—Make that a second and third.”
“Confirmed,” Brown said.
“Are those yours, Beaeki?” Meredith asked sharply.
“No,” the alien replied. “It is possible a trade delegation from another people—”
“I doubt that seriously,” Radford cut him off. “Trade delegations aren’t likely to arrive in flanking maneuvers.”
Flanking maneuvers. Uh-oh. “If those aren’t yours I suggest you get out of here fast,” Meredith said.
The Rooshrike didn’t answer; but suddenly the phone erupted with a low whistle. “There he goes,” Radford reported. “Like a bat with afterburners … there—he’s shifted. Intruders still coming.”
“Major? Try to raise them.”
“Right.” There was a long pause. “No answer. Either they ignore all the supposedly standard frequencies or else they haven’t got a translator that handles English. Or they don’t want to talk.”
“I don’t think there’s any real doubt as to which it is,” Meredith said quietly. “I think we’d better prepare for an invasion.”
“Agreed,” Radford said, his voice icily calm. “The Pathfinder’s at your disposal, Colonel.”
“Thanks, but I don’t know what you can possibly do except get yourselves blown out of the sky. I suggest you pull back-way back—and wait to see what happens. If they threaten you directly, you’d better run for it.”
“I unfortunately agree. All right. Pulling back now and going to communications silence. Good luck to you.”
“Thanks. Brown?”
“Sir?”
“Red alert, all units. You might as well make it a general announcement; the civilians are in this with the rest of us and might as well have as much time as possible to prepare.”
“Yes, sir. Announcement going to all centers now. Deployment orders?”
Meredith paused for thought, and as he did so noticed for the first time that the others in the room had quietly gathered into a semicircle behind Witzany and Chang. To a man, they all wore the same expression: scared and edgy, but with a spring-steel resolve beneath it all. He’d seen that expression only once before, on Egyptian villagers preparing to defend their village against the Libyan war machine rolling toward it. It was a shock; he hadn’t realized that in just three months his men could start thinking of Astra as home.
Or, for that matter, that he himself could.
“Squad-level dispersal,” he told Brown. “It doesn’t make any sense to try and hold Martello or the admin buildings. We’ll split into guerrilla-size groups and try hit-and-run tactics once whoever-they-are have landed.”
“Not much cover for that.”
“I know, but if we stand and fight they can wipe us out from the sky. As many men as possible should head for the Kaf Mountains or the hills near Teardrop Lake. Someone should take the flyers into the Kafs, too.”
“What about the cable, Colonel?” Witzany asked.
“Leave it,” Meredith said. “If that’s all they want, they can take it and go.”
“What?” Chang exploded. “Colonel, that cable is priceless—”
“What’s priceless is the machinery that made it,” Meredith cut him off. “And I’m betting that’s what they’re really after.”
“Colonel,” Brown spoke up. “Orders are out, but we’ve got a glitch re the flyers—one of them is at Olympus with Hafner’s group.”
“Damn.” Hafner’s daily attempts to locate the cable-making machinery had become so routine that Meredith had clean forgotten them. “Better have them stay put.”
“Right. Flyer One is heading for the mountains now.”
Meredith mentally crossed his fingers—Flyer One hadn’t been up since limping back to base from its encounter with that high-gee field—and then put the matter out of his mind. Valuable as the flyer was, it held just two lives in its grip—two out of the nearly ten thousand Meredith was responsible for. “All right. I’m heading back to Unie; I’ll pick up coordination from you when I get there.”
He had just passed Wright and hit r
eal road once again when the inevitable ultimatum came. “They won’t identify themselves,” Brown relayed tensely, “but they order us to halt all aircraft and ground vehicles and to assemble outside our buildings.”
“Any ‘or else’ come with that?”
“Not explicitly, but it seems pretty self-evident.”
“Yeah. How’s the evacuation going?”
“Slowly. The civilians just aren’t moving fast enough.”
Meredith swore under his breath. “Are the invaders close enough to spot car traffic yet?”
“Depends mainly on whether they know where to look, I’d say. One of the ships is already below geosync; the others are hanging back. So far they’re ignoring the Pathfinder.”
“Um. All right. Tell the aliens that until we have their identity and full intentions your commander refuses to knuckle under. Use as much slang as you can—out-of-date slang, if you know any. That plus having to run their messages through you may buy us a little more time.”
“Right. Even so, I don’t think we’ll be able to get everyone out of the towns. Permission to set up defensive positions?”
“I suppose we’d better. The admin buildings are probably your best bet—you can use fertilizer sacks in lieu of sandbags. “
“Already thought of that. Do you want to set up deployment now or wait until you’re back in Unie with secure lines?”
Meredith hesitated. He very much wanted to handle that personally, but he had few illusions as to how long they could stall the enemy. “You’d better do that yourself,” he told Brown. “Give the local commanders autonomy, consistent with the goal of defensive holding action. Use the computer net as much as possible—they’ll at least have to work hard to tap into that.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll funnel the final plans through to your office; I think we can keep them confused up there until then.”
Meredith wasn’t at all convinced of that; but whether through confusion or a simple desire to take a good, long look at the landscape, the invaders did hold off long enough for the colonel to reach Unie. He was in his office, skimming through Andrews’s hastily prepared defensive setup, when Brown informed him the close-orbiting ship had launched two craft. Bare minutes later a low rumble became audible, growing quickly to a sonic-boom crash as one of the craft shot directly overhead, heading east. Through his window, Meredith watched it brake to a midair halt on its repulsers and settle to the ground somewhere between Unie and Crosse. He tensed, waiting for the sound of gunfire … but for the moment, at least, there was just a watchful silence.
So here we go, Meredith thought, reseating himself at his desk. The Battle for Astra has begun. I wonder what our chances are.
But that line of thought was unprofitable. Flipping on his phone, he began checking to see which of his communications lines were still open.
Chapter 13
“THEY’RE ROLLING OUT SOME kind of flyers now—bigger than ours,” Hafner announced, adjusting the focus on his binoculars a bit. “Looks like they’ve got four of them. The rest of the troops are still fanning out toward Crosse and Unie.”
Standing beside him, Carmen shaded her eyes with one hand as she peered off to the west; the other hand, pressed to her side, was clenched into a fist. Two-thirds of the way up Olympus’s south face, Hafner’s expedition had found themselves in a grandstand seat for the alien ships’ landing—but for Carmen, at least, the ability to see but not to help was an almost suffocating combination. I should be down there, she thought over and over. I should be helping run tactical programming. I take off one day to run Peter up here and the whole world falls apart. “Shouldn’t we call and warn them about the flyers?” she asked Hafner.
Binoculars still at his eyes, he shook his head. “I’m sure both Colonel Meredith and Major Barner have scouts within sight of that ship. No, if we radio anything now we’ll just advertise our presence here. I’d rather save that for something really important.”
“But we can’t just sit here twiddling our thumbs,” one of the others objected. “Isn’t there something we can do with our flyer? A bombing run, evacuation—anything?”
“If you can whip together some bombs out of moissanite rock, be my guest,” Hafner said tartly. “And as for evacuation, you wouldn’t get half a kilometer before you’d have all four of those things on your back. …”
He trailed off. “An idea?” Carmen asked.
“Maybe.” He lowered the glasses and frowned off toward the south. “Do you remember the spot where the other flyer crashed, our first day here?”
“Flyer Two? Um … I’ve got a rough idea.”
“They never did find an actual cause for it, did they?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “we know now that this mountain has some incredible collection of machinery underneath it. Could it be that the fields in the flyer’s repulsers triggered a—oh, I don’t know; a resonance or feedback type of reaction in something underground?”
She thought about that a long moment. “I suppose it’s possible,” she conceded. “But I don’t know what good that would do us. Besides, it seems to me we’ve flown over that spot ourselves, so whatever happened must have been a one-shot event.”
Hafner was still gazing south. “Perhaps. …” Abruptly, he took a deep breath and turned back to the west. “At any rate, that gives us an idea of the scale involved here. The aliens won’t be able to just pack everything up in a suitcase and take off with it.”
“Un-huh.” But that’s not what he was thinking, she told herself, studying his profile suspiciously. He’s got something else in mind. What?
But for the moment, at least, he didn’t seem inclined to talk about it. Swallowing her curiosity, Carmen turned her thoughts back to the drama unfolding to the west, wishing she were there.
Meredith had rather hoped the alien commander would use the communicator’s vision attachment, but wasn’t overly surprised when the screen remained blank. Though off-planet radio was being thoroughly jammed he’d seen enough of the aliens to know they preferred to err on the side of caution. Of course, concealing their identity could also mean they were planning to keep their victims alive. It was a thought worth holding.
“I’m sorry, Commander,” he said, for the fourth time in half that many minutes, “but many of my people do not carry personal phones. I simply cannot whisk them back to their digs on a second’s notice.” A note from Major Gregory in Wright appeared across his computer screen: the second landing craft had set down in the fields just east of Wright and was disgorging spacesuited troops at an alarming rate. Preliminary estimates—
The alien’s reply cut into his reading. “You seek to slow me with dialect variants, but such tactics are pointless. I do not intend to harm your people unless absolutely necessary. I similarly do not intend to allow them free movement. If necessary I can use infrared and composition sensors from low orbit to locate them individually. You have one planetary rotation to return them to their towns. After that they will be considered as challengers to my rule and dealt with accordingly.”
Meredith’s throat felt very dry as he swallowed. He had no idea how accurate the aliens’ sensors actually were, but he doubted any of his troops could burrow underground deeply enough in twenty-seven hours to escape them. I should have started building defenses as soon as we realized the size of what we had here, he berated himself dully. But, damn it all, this trading association is supposed to be politically stable.
“Commander, I await your decision,” the alien said.
“Yes. Uh … what guarantees do you offer for the safety of my people?”
The other began to speak … but Meredith never heard the answer. A short message from Major Barner appeared on his screen, grabbing his full attention:
FORWARD SPOTTERS REPORT ALIEN LANDING CRAFT RESTING ON METAL REPEAT METAL LANDING SKIDS.
Meredith stared at the screen, his mind racing. Barner’s implied suggestion was obvious … but how did the
major expect Meredith to put it into effect? No one knew how the thing had been triggered the first time, and there was certainly no time to experiment now. He would have to gamble, and hope Astra was on their side for once.
The alien stopped talking and Meredith licked his lips. “Very well,” he said. “If you will lift your jamming, I’ll broadcast instructions to as many of my people as I can.”
“The jamming has ceased.”
With fingers that trembled only slightly, Meredith keyed in all the broadcast channels available, not forgetting the phone systems. “This is Colonel Meredith,” he announced. “To avoid unnecessary killing, I’m ordering all units to surrender to our unexpected guests. As a gesture of good faith, all fertilizer bags being used for shelter are to be immediately slit open and their contents dumped onto the ground. Repeat, all fertilizer to be dumped onto the ground immediately.”
“You did not give instructions for assembling in towns,” the alien said as Meredith shut down the transmitters.
“That’ll keep,” the colonel told him. Surely they couldn’t know too much about humans. “When we undertake an act of good faith, we are duty-bound to complete it before other activities may be started.”
He waited tensely, but the alien remained silent. Nothing to do now but wait, he told himself, wiping ineffectually at the perspiration on his face. If it doesn’t work we’ll have to surrender. If it does … they’ll probably start shooting.
“You heard the order, soldier,” Major Barner said, nodding to the bewildered sergeant at his command-post barricade. “Start slicing. And be sure and spread the fertilizer evenly over the ground.”
“Yes, sir.” The man still didn’t look happy, but the order he barked to his squad was forceful enough. Holstering their pistols, they produced trench knives and got to work on the thick plastic.
Raising his binoculars, Barner focused on the top of the alien lander, all he could see of it with Crosse’s buildings in the way. If this worked, it should start at any time. …
It took Carmen nearly a minute of straining before the intervening kilometers of air calmed enough for her to glimpse the underside of the distant landing craft; but once she had seen it she had no doubts left. “Landing skids,” she told Al Nichols, who had moved up beside her. “No rubber wheels. Almost certainly bare steel or something equally vulnerable.” Lowering the glasses, she offered them to him.