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  She had to slow sharply, though, to see the targets. Swinging left slightly, she watched the red diamond of the targeting cursor slide over the icon marking a Turusch slug at the very limits of visibility and triggered her cannon. Rapid-fire rounds howled from her craft, as her gravs kicked in to compensate for the savage recoil of that barrage. Ahead, rounds slammed into the Turusch crawler, sending up immense plumes of dust and dirt, then a fireball erupting, then immediately snuffing out in the oxygen-poor atmosphere.

  The explosion an instant later flared white almost directly in front of her. She punched through the fireball, the shock wave jolting her fighter. Dropping her right wing, she jinked back to the right, targeting a second crawler, with a third five kilometers further off, on the bleak and fire-scourged horizon. Again, a stream of compressed matter shrieked from her high-velocity railgun.

  High-energy particle beams probed and snapped past her head. The mobile fortresses were swinging their weapons to engage this new threat coming out of the north.

  Blue Omega Seven

  Eta Boötis IV

  1429 hours, TFT

  Gray felt something slap against the back of his left leg. He looked down, startled, and saw one of the dark gray leaf shapes clinging to his calf. He reached down and tore it off; it peeled away from his e-suit with a ripping sensation, like it had been clinging to him with suckers, and as he held it up, it twisted and writhed in his grasp. The underside of the creature was covered with tiny tube feet, like a starfish of Earth’s oceans, with a central opening like a sucker, ringed by rough-surfaced bony plates.

  He threw the squirming leaf away, shuddering with a wave of revulsion. The thing reminded him of a terrestrial leech, but much larger and more active. The tube feet put him in mind of the far larger tendrils covering the swampy ground.

  Three more of the things hit him in rapid succession, two on his lower right leg, one on his left hip. He could feel the rasp of those ventral plates, grinding against the carbon nanoweave of his suit.

  Revulsion turned to gibbering panic. The atmosphere was toxic, and would kill him in minutes if his suit was breached. He ripped the creatures off and hurled them away. One, he saw, landed on its back three meters away, twisted over until it was upright, and immediately started gliding toward him once again. Dozens of the creatures were visible now in all directions, moving toward him with a fascinating deliberation.

  He started to unsling his carbine, then thought better of it. There were too many of the things, and none was bigger than his open palm and fingers. Shooting them would be like solving a roach infestation one bug at a time. Five slapped against his legs and clung there, gnawing at his suit. With a scream, Gray peeled them off, terror yowling up from the depths of his mind. There were too many of them, coming too fast!

  He started running.

  His spider pumped and throbbed with his movements, giving him better speed than he could have managed on Earth, to say nothing of the Harisian high-grav environment. He stumbled, but he kept running, his boots splashing through shallow ponds and mudflats and the sea of soft-bodies, orange vegetation that weaved and twisted in front of him; and the shadow-creatures followed, hundreds of them now.

  He was screaming as he ran.

  MEF HQ

  Mike-Red Perimeter

  Eta Boötis System

  1445 hours, TFT

  “General?” Major Bradley said. “They’re ready to come through the screen.”

  “Do it,” General Gorman said. “Watch for leakers and pop-ups.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The gravfighters of VF-44 had completed three wide sweeps all the way around the Marine perimeter, smashing Turusch slugs and ground positions and even small groups of enemy soldiers wherever they could find them. Up in space, three hundred kilometers overhead, more fighters were slamming missiles against the defensive screens of a large Tush cruiser. For the first time in weeks, the Marine perimeter was not under direct fire, and the terrain surrounding the base was free of enemy forces.

  He watched the main tactical display with its glowing icons marking the defensive dome and five incoming fighters. At a prearranged instant, one segment of the defensive screen wavered and vanished.

  Energy screens and shields were three-dimensional projections of spacial distortion, an effect based on the projection of gravitational distortion used in space drives. Shields reflected incoming traffic, while screens absorbed and stored the released energy.

  While screens were useful in relatively low-energy combat zones, they could be overloaded by nukes, and they weren’t good at stopping solid projectiles like missiles or high-energy KK rounds. With shields, incoming beams, missiles, and radiation were twisted through 180 degrees by the sharp and extremely tight curvature of space. Warheads and incoming projectiles were vaporized when they folded back into themselves, beams redirected outward in a spray of defocused energy. Warheads detonating just outside the area of warped space had both radiation and shock wave redirected outward.

  As the ground around the outside of the perimeter became molten, however, some heat began leaking through at the shield’s base faster than heat-sink dissipaters could cool the ground. When the projectors laid out on the ground along the perimeter began sinking into patches of liquid rock, they failed. The enemy’s strategy in a bombardment like the one hammering Mike-Red was to overload the dissipaters and destroy the projectors.

  The Marines were using shields and screens in an attempt to stay ahead of the bombardment, with banks of portable dissipater units running nonstop in the ongoing fight to keep the ground solid.

  It was a fight they were losing.

  “Perhaps it would be best to have these spacecraft remain outside the energy barriers,” Jamel Hamid said. “The Turusch could use this opportunity to—”

  “I know what the enemy is capable of,” Gorman snapped. “Get the hell out of my way.”

  He brushed past the civilian for a closer look at the 3-D display. One of the energy-shield facets—number three—winked off just ahead of the oncoming formation of fliers. The Starhawks glided across the perimeter, and the shield came up again behind them, flickered uncertainly, then stabilized. An instant later, a particle beam stabbed down from space. The Romeo had spotted the momentary breach and tried to take advantage of it with a snap shot, but the beam struck the shield and scattered harmlessly outward.

  “Shit, that was close,” a Marine shield tech at one of the boards said.

  “Cut the chatter,” Gorman said. “Watch those projectors.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  One reason the beachhead had been set up on a rocky ridgetop was that molten rock tended to flow downhill, not up into the perimeter and the shield projectors. Repeated shocks against the lower slopes of the ridge, however, were threatening to undermine the perimeter. Gorman had already given orders to set out two replacement projectors, for number five and number six, placing them back a hundred meters as the ground sagged and crumbled beneath the originals.

  Eventually, enemy fire would eat away the entire hill.

  “Number four is failing,” the shield tech reported. “I recommend a reset.”

  “How long do we have?” Gorman asked.

  “Hard to estimate, General. An hour. Maybe two. Depends on how soon they resume the bombardment.”

  Of course. Everything depended on the enemy. That was the hell of it. Gorman hated being trapped like this, stuck in a hole, forced to react to the enemy’s initiative, unable even to shoot back, since to do so the Marines had to drop one of the shields, which would mean a torrent of Turusch fire and warheads pouring through the gap.

  The respite the Navy zorchies had brought the defenders was the first breather they’d had in weeks, but it wouldn’t be long before more Tushie ground units moved into the area and took the perimeter under fire…or until more capital ships moved overhead and started pounding the beachhead again with nukes and HE-beams.

  “I still don’t see wh
y you’re letting those fighters come inside the shields,” Hamid said. “They can’t do any good in here.”

  “In case you weren’t paying attention, Mister Hamid,” Gorman said, choosing his words carefully, “those pilots have been giving the Turusch one hell of a fight. They’re out of missiles, and either out of or running damned thin on other expendables. They need to touch down and get their craft serviced. I imagine the pilots need servicing as well.”

  “Perhaps they should land in shifts, then….”

  “Mr. Hamid, I’ve had just about enough of your second-guessing and carping. Get off my quarterdeck!”

  “I remind you, General, that I am in command of this colony!”

  “And I am in command of the Marine Expeditionary Force. Bradley!”

  “Sir!”

  “Please escort this civilian off of Marine property. If he shows his face around here again, he is to be placed under guard and confined to his quarters.”

  “Aye, aye, General!”

  “General Gorman!” Hamid said, his face reddening. “I must protest!

  “Protest all you damned well please,” Gorman replied, shrugging, “just as soon as we get back to Earth!”

  “Your anti-Islamic stance has been noted, General! Sheer antitheophilia! This will all go onto my report to my government!”

  “Get him out of here, Major Bradley.”

  “With pleasure, General! C’mon, you.”

  Hamid started to say something more, seemed to think better of it, then turned and strode toward the CIC command center door. Bradley grinned at Gorman, then followed the man out. Hamid, clearly, was furiously angry, and there would be repercussions later. If there was a later. Gorman was willing to face the political fallout if they could just hang on long enough to get his people off this toxic hellhole.

  Gorman watched the civilian go, scowling. That crack about his being antitheophilic had been just plain nasty.

  But, of course, the colonists on Haris were Refusers—the descendants of Muslims who’d refused to sign the Covenant of the Dignity of Humankind or accept the enforced rewrite of their Holy Qu’ran. Gorman, too, was a Refuser—at least in spirit. His church had accepted the Covenant, but many of its members had not.

  Bastards…

  The five Navy zorchies were settling in on the landing field now, the fighter icons gathering at the field’s north end.

  “Carleton!” he growled.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Get your ass down there and get Stores moving on those g-fighters,” he said. “I want their tubes reloaded and those ships ready to boost, absolutely minimum on the turnaround.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” his adjutant said, heading for the door.

  Hamid had been right in principle, if not in execution. The faster they got those ships reloaded and out on patrol, the better.

  Another nine hours before the naval battlegroup arrived.

  It was going to be close.

  Chapter Six

  25 September 2404

  CIC, TC/USNA CVS America

  Eta Boötis IV

  2320 hours, TFT

  Rear Admiral Koenig walked through the hatch onto the Combat Information Center deck. He’d spent the last six hours trying to sleep, but not even the various electronic soporifics available through the ship’s medical resources had helped. He’d finally dozed off with a trickle charge to his sleep center, but he felt far from rested now.

  The battlegroup was now deep inside the Eta Boötean solar system, closing on Haris. He checked his internal time readout: twenty-seven minutes, fifteen seconds more.

  And then they would know.

  Traveling now at just over the speed of light, each ship of the battlegroup now effectively was locked up in its own tight little universe. They couldn’t see out, couldn’t see the starbow as they’d approached c, couldn’t even see the light of the local sun growing more brilliant ahead.

  “Captain Buchanan,” he said softly. The AI monitoring CIC picked up the words and linked him through to Buchanan, on the America’s bridge.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “How’s she riding?”

  “Twenty-seven minutes, and we’ll know the worst.”

  “It’ll be fine, Rand. There won’t be much scattering, not after a short hop like this.”

  In fact, he’d been surprised at how closely in proximity to one another the ships of the battlegroup had emerged out in the Eta Boötean Kuiper Belt early that morning after the thirty-seven light year passage out from Sol.

  “I know, Admiral. I’ve brought America to general quarters. We have all five squadrons set to launch as soon as we bleed down to Drift, one on CAP, four on strike. The keel weapon is charged and ready to fire. Battlespace drones are prepped and programmed, ready for launch.”

  “Very good.”

  Cut off from all contact with the other ships of the battle group, Koenig had to assume the other ship captains were following the oplan, bringing their crew to quarters and preparing for the coming battle. For the past several months, the battlegroup had been training, shuttling between Sol’s Kuiper Belt and Mars. Practicing the maneuvers necessary to break out of Alcubierre Drive in the best possible formations, allowing for both flexibility and strength in combat.

  There was no way to anticipate what the tactical situation would be in the inner system, and no way to guess how successful the initial gravfighter strike had been. The battlegroup might emerge to find Blue Omega in command of the battlespace, the Turusch vessels destroyed or having fled.

  More likely by far, they would find the Turusch bloodied but fighting mad, ready and waiting for the new arrivals. They wouldn’t know until they actually dropped out of metaspace and saw the situation for themselves.

  At least that damned Senate liaison had finally taken the hint and was staying out of CIC. That was one particular aggravation he didn’t need at the moment.

  Koenig had already lied to the Senate Military Directorate about one key aspect of this operation, and he wasn’t eager to face Quintanilla’s questions.

  That particular problem could wait its turn.

  Blue Omega Seven

  Eta Boötis IV

  2335 hours, TFT

  Daylight had come and gone with astonishing swiftness, and it was dark now. The optics implanted in Gray’s eyes allowed him to see by infrared, but he wasn’t used to working in an environment where you saw things by the heat they radiated, smeared and fuzzy and out of focus.

  He was exhausted. He’d been running, it seemed, for hours before the weaving tendrils underfoot had thinned out and he’d entered a scorched-bare and rocky desert. Scattered patches of surviving tendrils on the ground glowed with radiant heat, their movements an eerie shifting difficult for the eye to follow. Here, too, patches of bare rock glowed yellow-hot under infrared; he suspected that he might have entered the barren kill zone surrounding the Marine base, where the ground cover had been burned off by the ongoing bombardment by Turusch heavy weapons.

  He felt more exposed now, to Turusch scanners and observation drones, which were certain to be lurking about. He would have to move more cautiously here. At least those damned leeches, the gray, swift-gliding leaf shapes, appeared to have vanished once the orange ground cover had given out.

  What the hell had those things been? His e-suit was still intact, but he’d had the distinct impression that those things had been scraping away at the outer carbon nanotube weave of the garment. That material was incredibly tough, but Gray wasn’t about to trust the integrity of his environmental suit with those things swarming over it, not when a single tear could leave him gasping in high-pressure poison.

  Gray staggered to the top of a low, bare-rock outcrop and studied his surroundings. Somewhere to the north, across that empty desert, was the Marine perimeter. He needed to decide now whether to keep walking, or if he should hole up here and start transmitting an emergency distress call.

  The only way he was going to get through the Marine
shield would be if they sent a SAR—a Search and Rescue mission—out to get him. He had no way to get through the tightly folded space of the shield…and though his e-suit would protect him well enough from the radiation, it wouldn’t let him weather a nearby burst from a nuclear warhead, or a bolt of charged particles searing down from low orbit.

  On the other hand, the moment he started transmitting, he was likely to attract attention from Turusch battlespace probes, or even from enemy spacecraft in orbit.

  Shit. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

  He wondered how long he had before daylight. His implant RAM had a brief listing of planetary stats for Eta Boötis IV—Haris, as the human colonists called it. He knew the planet’s rotational period was short—only about fourteen and a half hours. But the planet also had an extreme axial tilt, literally lying on its side as it circled its hot primary once each four years. At the equator, daylight lasted about seven hours throughout that long year, followed by a seven-hour night. At the poles, the sun would disappear for a year at a time, alternating with year-long periods of sunlight, and with everything in between.

  What a freaking weird world!

  He wasn’t sure what the length of the day or night was at this point on the surface. Mike-Red, he knew from his briefings, was at 22 degrees north. He knew that this was late fall or early winter in the northern hemisphere. That suggested that the nights in this region were longer than the days, but he didn’t know how long that actually might be.

  Not that it particularly mattered. Whether he attracted the attention of a Marine SAR aircraft—or of a Turusch battle-cruiser—they’d see him, no matter how dark it was.

  The distant thunder of battle had faded away a long time ago. He wasn’t quite sure when the landscape had become eerily silent, but it had been before it had gotten dark. Did that mean the battle was over, or merely that there was a temporary lull in the fighting?