Conquest (Star Force Series) Page 13

  I keyed off the general command channel and eyed the clock. We had half an hour to wait.

  “Put the U. S. subs on the board, will you Major?” I asked.

  Sarin tapped at it expertly. Yellow contacts appeared. There was a loose ring of subs surrounding Andros as well as two tight groups of three subs further out in the deep ocean. The ring was made up of attack subs, while the two tight groupings were the boomers. We’d long ago read their small, but traceable, sonar signatures to identify them. Once you put a brainbox on the job with fast-learning neural net and good sensory input, they never forgot a given sub’s signature. The subs weren’t moving yet, but I kept hoping.

  “What’s going to happen, Kyle?” Sandra asked a few minutes later. “Is this crazy plan going to work?

  I shrugged. “The fans are on—let’s see which way the shit blows.”

  -18-

  Watching the action helplessly from my bunker was nerve-wracking. I found the situation almost intolerable. It gave me some perspective on why the Pentagon types hated me so much. My survival, in fact the survival of the entity known as Star Force, was now in the hands of faceless individuals that were so far out of reach I couldn’t even shout at them—not that it would do any good if they could hear me.

  Around me, Sandra and Major Sarin stood tensely. All of us muttered things like “Come on, come on,” and “Aren’t they firing late?”

  When the first round of tridents did finally launch from the western set of subs, I actually thought they were firing too early. But as I watched the missiles streak over my island, I realized they had to get up there and get that barrier of shockwaves going. Early was better than too late.

  Trident missiles are equipped with mirved warheads. As far as I knew this was the first time the weapons had ever been fired in combat. Each trident carried no less than eight independent warheads. The sub crews didn’t have time to be fancy with the targeting, they simply launched them into the path of the oncoming barrage in a somewhat scattered pattern.

  I had a panicky thought as I watched six yellow lines pop onto the screen, tracking the launched missiles. What if my laser turrets shot down the tridents? They weren’t targeting our island, but I knew the turrets were set to be highly paranoid.

  I keyed open the command channel. “Major Barrera?”

  “Sir?”

  “Make sure our turrets are set to allow those tridents to pass overhead. Don’t let them engage under—”

  “I already thought of that one, sir,” Barrera interrupted. “They’ve been configured to allow the subs to fire unmolested.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. “Barrera,” I said, “right here, right now, I’m promoting you to lieutenant colonel. You are officially second in command of the Star Force Marines. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I caught Major Sarin eyeing me. Had she expected to get promoted first? I had to admit, she had been key in our return to Earth. But I didn’t want that proximity to color my judgment. Arguably, Barrera’s feat of keeping a calm hand on the rudder back here on Andros while Crow ran wild for months was as big an achievement. I looked back down at the screen. I could still feel her dark eyes on me.

  I didn’t glance at her again. Competence wasn’t enough for commanding officers in my book. What Sarin lacked was personal initiative. If she wanted a promotion, all she had to do was save the world from destruction a few times. Barrera had just proven it could be done.

  I was vaguely surprised Sandra didn’t object to the fact Sarin was staring at me. There had been a time in the recent past where I’d been less than professional with Major Sarin—with Jasmine. That was in the past now, but I knew Sandra maintained a vigilant eye over the two of us and the nature of our relationship. She wanted to make sure it stayed cordial, but distant. I half expected a pinch or something from Sandra, but it didn’t come. She couldn’t have missed the pain on Jasmine’s face, so I calculated she knew it was all about the promotion and nothing further. Maybe Sandra approved of my passing over Major Sarin. I didn’t care. I’d promoted Barrera for performance, not emotional reasons.

  I looked at the clock again. There were two of them now, one in green digits that read 4:02 the second was in red and displayed 8:47.

  “And the new green timer is?” I asked.

  “Projected time until our missiles meet theirs,” Major Sarin said.

  I nodded. Sarin was very competent—she always provided quick, helpful operational support. But support wasn’t command. She was doing her job, but she’d never really run anything independently. I decided if we survived the next few months I’d worry about it then. Maybe I’d give her a command of her own.

  Still, I sensed her staring at me. Unbidden, the sensation of kissing Jasmine came into my head. I’d only kissed her once, but the tingle of it was sharp in my memory. I pushed the thought away. It had been a pleasant, brief moment, but now wasn’t the time to relive it, even if she was watching me with hurt eyes. Maybe she thought I should have given her a promotion as a final gift before we all died.

  I shook my head slightly, trying to clear it. Why was I dwelling on Jasmine? I was glad Sandra couldn’t read my thoughts. She’d want to murder me herself.

  I glanced at the green clock. We had two minutes to go until the opposing waves of missiles met up in the upper troposphere. Damn, this waiting was killing me.

  In the end, the sub commanders weren’t able to get all the missiles up, mirving and exploding like fireworks at the same time. But they did pretty well. The missiles from further away got there first and burst into sets of smaller contacts.

  “They’re going off too early,” Sandra said.

  Her fingers gripped the edge of the computer table so tightly I saw tiny fractures in the glass radiating from each thumb.

  “Relax,” I said. “They just released their eight warheads in a sprayed pattern. In a moment, the warheads will go off individually.”

  Then, as I spoke, they did blossom into white globes. Twenty-four airbursts. I hoped nobody was looking that way, as these bombs were high-yield. Each warhead had a potential yield of up to three point eight megatons. They were city-busters, not tactical warheads designed to destroy enemy forces.

  They’d gone off a trifle early, I thought. The green clock still said there was sixteen seconds until the enemy barrage arrived. Better early than late, I told myself.

  Seconds later, the next wave of missiles came in behind the first. These went off closer to our eastern shore. They were the backup wall, I realized, meant to stop the stragglers that got through the first wall of fire and turbulence. They lit up the sky with twenty-one bursts. Possibly, a few of the warheads had malfunctioned, or they had been knocked out by the blast waves from the first explosions.

  All over the map interlocking mass explosions blossomed white. We felt these last twenty-one strikes. They rocked the bunker. The ceiling was made of nanites, so no concrete showered dust and chunks down on our heads. But the roof did shift, bubble and sag ominously.

  “Is it going to cave in?” Sandra asked.

  “Not a chance,” I said confidently, although I had no way of knowing the truth. It either would or it wouldn’t.

  I stared at the screen. The front explosions were just beginning to fade when swarms of red contacts slammed into the barrier we’d created. They couldn’t change course now. They were going too fast, and were too close to their goal. As the red streaks met the white spheres, I found myself turning the point of view, spinning it around so we could see the cloud from every angle. Was there a hole?

  “Some of them must get through,” Sandra said.

  I sincerely hoped not, but I couldn’t argue with her logic. The green clock read 0:00 while the red clock still had thirty-three seconds to go. I wanted to gnaw on my lip, but resisted the urge. If we took a real hit, I’d have a mouth full of blood and torn flesh. We all squinted our eyes and gritted our teeth, bracing our legs under the table.

  The sirens we
re going off, air-raid sirens that warbled high and then low again. They had time for about three undulations before it was all over.

  A red streak came down right on top of us. It was decelerating, but still coming in very fast. I saw lasers streak up, meeting it, burning it. But they were too late.

  We were going to take a hit.

  “Brace yourselves,” I said unnecessarily. We were about to die. Bracing wasn’t going to stop a direct hit from a thermonuclear device. Neither was a hundred feet of sandy, wet earth. If anything, the soil here would transmit the shock of the explosion straight down to our bunker. If we lived, we’d be digging ourselves out.

  My last thought was for Kwon and his sixteen battle suited marines on the floors above us. I should have ordered them down deeper into the command post with us. But there simply wasn’t time now.

  -19-

  When the impact came, it barely shook the room. All of us looked at the walls and ceiling with wide eyes.

  “Was that it?” Sandra asked.

  “I heard it strike sir,” Major Sarin said. “It has to be down.”

  I nodded. “A dud. Or it was knocked out by all our counter fire and unable to detonate.”

  I thought fast for a few seconds. I watched the screen. A few more red streaks had made it through the barrier, but I saw less than a dozen. Those that went further over the island were shot at by more and more of my laser turrets as they came. They blinked and went out. Only two of the Macro missiles actually went off, and in both cases they were too high to do much damage. I figured the missiles knew they weren’t going to reach their targets and had self-destructed. Either that, or they were damaged somehow and misfired. In either case, the overall results were excellent.

  I began to smile. “We did it,” I said.

  “It actually worked,” Sandra said. Her voice was that of someone who could not believe they were still alive.

  “I thought we were dead, too,” Major Sarin said quietly.

  I glanced at her, feeling a pang of sympathy. Maybe that’s why she’d been hurt in those final moments when I promoted Barrera. To be passed up for promotion was never pleasant, but it had to be more poignant when you were convinced you were in your final moments of life.

  I felt a sharp jab in the ribs. Sandra smiled at me tightly when I looked down at her. She’d poked me with a pair of stiff fingers. I wasn’t sure, but she might have cracked a rib.

  I took in a sharp breath of air and looked away from Jasmine’s lost face. My side ached, but I managed to speak in a natural-sounding voice. “Connect me to First Sergeant Kwon.”

  Major Sarin came alive and did as I asked.

  I heard whooping and cheers. They came in a deafening chorus. I smiled slightly, it was hard not to.

  “Kwon?”

  “Yes, sir! The men here are celebrating. Can we go up yet?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. Get your helmets on. I’m going to suit-up as well. We have a piece of unexploded ordinance that came down in the base somewhere. You’re team is to seek and dismantle that weapon.”

  The joyful chorus died down. A babble of low voices erupted as Kwon relayed my orders. Once the helmets were on, I could only hear Kwon’s voice.

  “We’re on it, sir. I should have thought of that one. Please order the rest of the base personnel to stay underground.”

  I waved to Major Sarin, who put her hand to her headset and began contacting the other bunkers, emphasizing that the all-clear had not yet been sounded.

  As Kwon’s unit was the only team of marines on the base who had battle suits, I decided they were the logical ones to send up. If the warhead detonated, of course, their personal armor wouldn’t make any difference. But fusion warheads used smaller explosions to get the reaction that caused the big bang. As well, the systems engine might ignite or the entire missile might be set to self-destruct upon sensing approaching enemies. We just didn’t know how these missiles worked. We’d never been near an unexploded Macro missile before. I knew they had some level of machine intelligence. They were definitely smart weapons in every sense of the term.

  “I don’t want any surprises,” I told Kwon. “Use the utmost caution. Don’t let anyone play around with it.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “I’ll be right there after I’ve suited up.”

  I walked quickly to my battle suit and climbed up into it. The easiest part of putting one of these things on was getting your legs inside. The suit expanded everywhere and split itself open across the chest. The legs however, remained standing by themselves. The suit’s exoskeleton took care of balance and kept itself erect.

  I jumped up on top of it, and slid my feet down into the two vertical tubes of the legs by pointing my toes. Once inside, the armor plates slid closer forming a tighter fit around my feet. I shoved my hands into the armholes and felt the suit clamp down on them. Now that I was inside, the chest area began closing over my torso. It was a disturbing process, and made one feel claustrophobic.

  “A little help with the helmet, please,” I said.

  Sandra appeared in my face. “Are you crazy, Kyle? Why do you have to go up there?”

  “I want to see what a Macro missile looks like.”

  “So have Kwon take a video and check it out later.”

  “Helmet?”

  She made an exasperated sound and put the helmet on my head. I adjusted it and tapped the ‘seal-ready’ button with my chin. All the suit’s systems went live and I heard oxygen begin to flow around my face. I clanked up the stairs. Sandra followed me. I had to order her to stay behind.

  “When do I get one of these gorilla-suits so I can go with you?” she asked hotly.

  I thought about it, not liking the idea. “Many of your special capacities would be blocked by a suit like this. It would greatly slow you down. Why don’t you just stay here in the bunker and protect Jasmine for a while?”

  “Because she isn’t trying to play with a Macro bomb and get herself killed.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I said and clanked away. I could feel the two women staring after me.

  When I reached the surface, I paused in shock. The forest was on fire in dozens of spots. All around the base, up and down the beach, the trees smoldered and billowed with white smoke. The trees nearest the water had taken the worst of it. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. You couldn’t blow off forty-odd high-yield airbursts and not expect some damage. Fortunately, the blasts had been far enough offshore and high enough in the atmosphere they hadn’t knocked the entire base and the forest around it flat. There was damage here and there. The base buildings looked like they’d been through a hurricane. Debris was strewn everywhere, but I didn’t see any bodies.

  I turned around to check out my new headquarters building. Every window appeared to be blown out, except for the large ballistic glass windows of my office on the top floor. Three of those showed impact stars, however. I wondered if I’d live long enough to repair them.

  Tilting my helmeted head upward to the limits of the suit, I gazed at the blue-white sky. The wind was blowing westward, so I could see out over the water, despite the smoke from the burning trees. There were definitely some odd-looking clouds out there. A few of them looked like starfish, while others looked like puffy white doughnuts. I wasn’t sure what the meteorological conditions were, but I was sure there were going to be some funny-looking turnips growing in Russia or wherever those radioactive clouds ended up coming down.

  I goaded my suit into a trot and hopped over a barracks roof. I found Kwon’s platoon out among the landing pits where the Macro missile had fallen. His men were standing outside of pit ten, encircling the concrete walls. They watched over the top of the barrier while someone in a suspiciously large suit clanked around inside a crater in the middle of the pit.

  I engaged my gravity-repellers and sailed over their heads, landing in the pit with Kwon. I walked up and he turned awkwardly to meet me.

  “Colonel? I didn’t know you
were coming to this party.”

  “What have we got, First Sergeant?”

  “A hole sir. I can’t see the missile at all.”

  “Hmm,” I said, coming up to the smoking crater. I stood beside him and we both gazed down in a mass of molten, sandy soil. It was smoking and looked like a bullet wound in the surface of the island.

  “Let’s get a crawler out,” I said. “We’re going to have to dig it out.”

  A crawler was a new vehicle Crow had invented while I was away fighting for the Macros. It was similar to hovertank, but wasn’t designed for combat. They had no lasers, but instead had four nanite-arms and were equipped with a blade and a scoop they could use to mold the earth as desired. The crawlers had replaced vehicles such as bulldozers and backhoes on Andros. They were much more versatile. With their four incredibly powerful arms, they could lift cargo like giants. Working together, they could even move ships and small prefab buildings.

  We summoned two of the automated vehicles to the spot. One looked lightly damaged from the blast waves that had rolled over the base. It had one mangled arm. But we poured a fresh barrel of constructive nanites into its maw and within a minute or two it had rebuilt itself.

  “Now get in there and move the earth away from the metallic object in the center,” I told the crawlers. “Do not touch it, or cause it to shift. When you get close, we’ll go in and do the rest of the job by hand.”

  “Script written,” said the master crawler. “Executing.”

  The second crawler followed the first and aped its actions. They were linked together in what was known as a master-slave relationship, meaning the brainbox of the first unit controlled the actions of both crawlers. It took less coordination that way. It was similar to the manner in which a nanite swarm operated. Somebody had to have a plan and be in charge.

  The two crawlers worked their blades, scoops and arms impressively. They pushed back the circle of concrete walls in spots to get more room to work. Apparently, the Macro missile had sunk into the soil quite deeply. I wondered if we would find much more down there than a mass of twisted metal.