Hive war, p.26
Hive War, page 26
part #4 of Galactic Liberation Series
Straker was pleased and smiled. “They are. Ah, one more thing. I need to see Roslyn and my child.”
Drake’s face turned bleak and wary. “I will get her.”
“And my child? Is it a son or a daughter?”
Drake didn’t answer, only turned his back on Straker and walked toward the village.
Straker followed, running to catch up with the tall Calarian’s stride. When the two men approached the huts, shutters opened and people stepped out of doorways, watching silently. Where before he’d been cheered, now the Calaria only watched, perhaps apprehensively sensing momentous changes once more.
Inside the largest of the huts Roslyn waited. She stood, her hands clenched together, within the simple open room that formed the crude, barn-like building. Her face was blank, or perhaps pained. It was hard to tell in the light that reached through the small windows.
“How far we’ve fallen, while you rise,” she said bitterly as Straker stopped in front of her. “I was a fool to let you go.”
“Like I told Drake, there’s no guarantee I could have helped if I’d have stayed. It took a lot of luck to get home. Life is full of chance. Sometimes it sucks—it’s miserable and difficult, that means. I’m here now, though.”
Drake spoke up. “The Azaltar has arranged peace with the Bortoks. We will have our lands back.”
“You have power indeed.” Roslyn smiled suddenly, changing her attitude like she changed a cloak. She swayed forward, reaching toward him. “Yes, I was a fool to let you go.”
Straker grabbed her wrists before she could embrace him. “Stop with your games, Roslyn. I don’t want you. I never did—and you don’t need to persuade me to help your people. I only want one thing now—to see my child.”
Roslyn jerked her hands loose and smoothed her tunic. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s gone.”
“It? Is it a son or daughter?”
“Neither.”
“Neither? How can it be neither?”
“Because it’s dead.”
Chapter 25
High mountains, with the remnant of the Calaria, Terra Nova
Straker wanted to grab Roslyn and shake her when she told him their child was dead, but he mastered himself. “Explain. What happened?”
“I barely survived the fighting at High Tollen. Once they broke our defenses, the Bortoks butchered us. Drake and I and a core of knights fought a rearguard action to save what we could and escape to the high passes where the Bortoks hate to go. For three long days we fought—with no food, little water, and even less hope. I was bruised and exhausted. On the third day, I miscarried. What came out of me was too small to know its sex.”
Angry, Straker turned to Drake. “What kind of bullshit is this?”
“Bull-shit?”
“Lies, stories, half-truths. I can’t believe anything this woman says, but I trust you. Is my child dead?”
Drake nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. I truly am.”
Straker turned away. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. He’d been looking forward to seeing his child, no matter what its origins or circumstances.
Now, that was all snatched away. He told himself he should be relieved. Roslyn’s trick to get pregnant and hold the resulting offspring hostage had failed, and now he didn’t need to explain to Carla why he had a kid by another woman.
Instead, it was as if his guts had been ripped out. He felt Drake’s hand on his shoulder, and didn’t shake it off.
“I’m sorry too, Derek,” Roslyn said.
Straker took a deep breath and turned to Roslyn again. “And I’m sorry—sorry this all happened, sorry you are who you are, sorry you drugged and seduced me, sorry we created a life that died. But I’m not apologizing for anything I did. If I’d never shown up, the Bortoks would’ve overrun you anyway.” He punched his fist into his palm. “I can’t be everywhere and I can’t control everything. Shit happens.” He knew he was trying to convince himself, not her.
“Shit happens…” Roslyn echoed hollowly. “The past is past.”
Straker sighed, feeling defeated and sick. “I’m done here. Drake, walk me out.”
Drake accompanied him past the staring people to the dropship, where they stopped. “What will you do?” Drake asked.
“What I have to. Fight my war. My people are under attack.”
“Yet you came here.”
“I was selfish. I wanted to see my child.”
“Any man would do the same.”
“I also came here to enlist the people of this planet in my war. To divert my enemies. I’m using you. That’s even more selfish.”
“A king must do what’s best for his own people—not for others.”
“I’m no king.”
“You look like one from where I’m standing.”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
Drake took a deep breath, spread his hands helplessly. They stood for a time that way, each staring past each other, not knowing what to say.
Eventually Drake broke the silence. “We must say goodbye, Azaltar.”
“Call me Derek, or Straker. Everyone else does.”
Drake smiled wanly. “Derek. Drake. Two kings, both miserable. Not so different.”
“Guess not.” Straker clasped Drake’s hand. “You might be the better man.”
“A pointless argument. I suppose I’ll need to be, to handle Roslyn.”
That made Straker laugh. “Apparently I’m a horrible judge of character.”
“Why do you say?”
“Because when I first met each of you, I thought Roslyn was honorable and straightforward, and you were underhanded and treacherous.”
Drake shrugged. “We are what we are, but it’s not always obvious. We make mistakes. Such is life.”
Straker struggled to shove his depression aside, concentrating on the facts and the job in front of him. “If you approach the Bortoks under flag of truce you should have no problems. Everything’s changing now, and the Mak Deen’s not a bad guy. He’s honorable, and he spoke well of you. Did you know you’re much admired by your enemies?”
“Feared, perhaps, though they’d never admit it.”
“No, really—admired. The Bortoks love a fighter, even if he’s on the other side.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Do that.” Straker raised his palm in farewell. “So long.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means see you later. It may be a while. I have a lot more war to fight, to put the Opters back in their place.”
“I’m sorry I can’t give you warriors, but we are so few...”
“No worries. It’s time for you to be a king now, not a warrior.”
“And when is your time to lay aside the sword, Azaltar?”
Straker took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That’s a damn fine question. Not yet, I guess.”
With that, he boarded the dropship.
Straker rode in the back this time, his eyes closed, thinking. The child he believed he had here, a subject that had occupied his thoughts for the better part of a year, turned out to be a mirage.
Then he started to wonder. Could the whole thing have been a trick, a ploy between Roslyn and Gorben to try to bind Straker to the Calaria? Gorben told him Roslyn carried his child just before he pushed him into the river. What better way to get the Azaltar to come back? Even Drake wouldn’t know.
It hardly mattered now. As Roslyn had said, the past is past. The Calaria would make their own way. He didn’t owe them anything.
Besides, he had a new woman problem—Zurenia, and Carla’s reaction. If he was lucky, the tryst wouldn’t take, and he’d never have sex with her again. If he was really lucky, he could convince the Mak Deen to annul the marriage after a while, especially if the Bortoks’ circumstances changed enough. They’d be busy exploring the adjoining dizzes and trying to find their place in the new world of technology and modernity.
In other words, maybe Nazeer would let him off the hook.
The landing on the Richthofen’s flight deck jarred him out of his thoughts and sparked new ones. He checked his chrono. Seven hours until the op kicked off. He found Loco, Heiser and a dozen Breakers in one of the vehicle bays, planning and rehearsing to take the polar fortress.
Auburn and one other miner were there, a woman. Straker shook the foreman’s hand. “Great job against the Skinners,” he said.
“We did our part, but the fur people did most of the work and got the most killed. That was some vicious fighting. I don’t think they took many Skinner prisoners.”
“Can’t blame them, the way they’ve been treated.”
“Then your Breakers led the takedown of that security pyramid. Those battlesuiters, and Loco in that mechsuit—damn, that made us miners feel like amateurs.”
“Everyone has his specialty. We couldn’t have done it without yours.”
“Thanks,” Auburn said. He turned to the woman next to him. “This is Shiela Van Doren, my best boomer.”
“Boomer?”
Auburn mimed an explosion. “Boom! Demolitions.”
“Right.” Straker shook the woman’s hand. She was another heavy-worlder, with a grip like a vise. “Nice to meet you.”
She smiled a gap-toothed smile. “Likewise, Liberator.”
“So, where’s your other boomer?”
Auburn grinned and hooked a thumb at himself. “Yours truly.”
“You sure you’re not just trying to get in on the action?”
“Who, me? No, you asked for my best two boomers, and we’re it. You want my third-best? I can always go back down to the surface. Got plenty of work to do.”
Straker gazed at the wide man for a moment, wondering if his first taste of combat had made him an adrenaline junkie. That happened to a few soldiers, especially when their first action went well, like gamblers who win big at their first visit to the tables. “No. You’re the expert. Carry on.”
By the time to load into the Darter, Straker was confident in the plan. Like all the Breakers, he’d donned his battlesuit. They’d ended up with only nine—Straker, Loco, Heiser and six other battlesuiters. The two miners were in rock suits—not armored for war, but heavy-duty models designed to keep them alive in the roughest conditions.
“Launching,” Zaxby said. The skimmer floated gently off the flight deck and out into space. Its interior had been drained, if not dried, from its usual water-soaked state in order to accommodate the humans.
After several minutes of no maneuvering, Straker keyed his comlink. “What’s the holdup, Zaxby?”
“First, I’m waiting for confirmation the Derekite mission made it through the interchange and is on its way to the north pole with its approach permissions intact. Second, the longer my sensors have to calibrate, the more precise we’ll be in our drop. It’s not easy, as I’ll have to continuously match the rotation of the planet in three vectors.” Zaxby paused. “You do know that we are relying entirely on unconfirmed information. If the reported position of the tunnel is off by more than a meter, you may all die.”
“The plans were precise, right?”
“Precise, yes… but accurate? That’s unverified. It’s possible to be precise, yet completely wrong.”
“We know the risks.”
Eventually, the comlink beeped. “I have confirmation the Derekite train is approaching the north pole,” Zaxby said. “Underspace dive in three, two, one, mark.”
Straker felt the sudden chill. He didn’t turn up his heater. The trip would be short. Within seconds, the Darter was flying through the planet itself in underspace, marked only by a point of congruency with normal space.
A few seconds later, Zaxby announced, “Drop in one minute. Prepare yourselves.”
The eleven infiltrators unbuckled their harnesses and stood. They faced forward and shuffled toward the open drop tube. Its autoloading mechanism that normally transferred float mines from the magazine to the launcher had been removed, allowing direct access.
With its hatch open, the tube looked like a cylindrical metal pit in the floor. Its bottom hatch slid aside and Straker, first in line, now gazed down into the strange black void of underspace. Spacers’ tales said that you could go insane if you stared at it long enough, but to Straker it only looked like liquid darkness held back by the protective field generators.
The darkness retreated and turned whitish. Zaxby’d explained that meant the field was extending itself into normal space like a periscope rising from the sea, thinning the barrier to nothing. Straker stared at the drop light affixed to the bulkhead. When it turned green, he stepped into the tube.
The polarized gravplating yanked him downward. He felt an instant of intense cold, and then he popped out into a dim tunnel and fell to its floor. Here at the cargo dock, the passageway was flat and horizontal for ease of loading.
Fortunately, all was quiet—there was no train at the station. One hurdle passed.
Loco hit the floor next to him, and then Heiser, Auburn, and Van Doren. Straker held his breath as he watched the rest of the battlesuiters pop into existence above the floor, their exit points coming closer and closer to the tunnel wall.
The last man didn’t make it. He emerged partly in the concrete itself. The molecular interaction created intense heat, so he died almost instantly as his battlesuit slagged and ignited. Its batteries and capacitors released their energy as well, and Straker’s faceplate auto-dimmed to compensate. Alarms flashed.
“That’s torn it,” Loco snapped. “They’ll be alerted and have eyes on this area. Get moving!”
Straker leaped up and raced for the cargo bay door, firing his blaster as he ran. The others did the same, and the thin metal vanished in a storm of hot plasma.
Inside the empty cargo bay, which was a spacious area intended for offloading and handling of the fortress’s supplies, Straker destroyed the surveillance vidcams. He waved the boomers to the main loading lift. “Get it open!”
While they worked on the lift, Straker found the auxiliary stairs. He sent two Breakers up it in hopes of catching the defenders flatfooted. They raced upward three floors to the top of the stairs. “It’s locked. Blast it open,” one said.
A flurry of shots followed, and then Straker heard, “Crossfire, crossfire. They’ve got the door covered. Prepping grenades.”
Explosions shook the stairway. “No joy. They’re entrenched. Maybe an autogun.”
Straker let out a string of vulgarities and said, “I’m taking the crawlspace. Auburn, keep working on that lift.”
“Working.” Auburn and Van Doren opened the lift doors and cracked the control panel.
Plan A had been to take control of the lift and send up Breakers to try to break through any defenses, but the two Breakers in the stairwell had already shown that the enemy was alerted and fighting back. Because the lift would debouch near the stairs, anyone inside would run into the same things the others had.
“Prep Plan B,” Loco said.
While Auburn bypassed the lift controls, Van Doren prepped Plan B. She slapped shaped charges on the inner lift doors and set other charges at certain places on the walls and doorjambs. When the lift reached its destination, the defenders would get a nasty surprise. The explosion should take out anything within twenty meters. Then, Breakers could climb the lift tube and try to advance through the resulting mess.
Straker stripped off his battlesuit, leaving only his airtight skinsuit, its facemask, and its half-hour reserve oxygen supply. When he’d finished and picked up his blaster, along with a satchel of cutting charges and a belt of grenades, he noticed Loco imitating him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re not part of Plan B!”
“Boss, why do you even argue with me? You think Heiser can’t handle one squad? We’re the two best shooters on this team, and you’re gonna need backup.”
“Fine. Watch my back, then.”
“Don’t I always? Come on.” Loco held open a hatch to the maintenance crawlspace.
The crawlspace gap ran through the walls, providing access to the systems at the cargo and passenger stations. The designers hadn’t been idiots, of course. The crawlspace didn’t connect directly with the fortress above, but Sinden had identified a spot where only a meter of concrete separated it from the fort’s own crawlspace.
Straker scrambled fast, his brainlink’s internal HUD guiding him unerringly toward the thin spot. Twenty meters back and around a corner, he set down his weapon and grenades. “Stay here,” he told Loco.
At the thin spot, he placed the satchel on the floor and laid out the shaped charges. They were self-tamping and unidirectional, so ninety-nine percent of the blast would go into the concrete. Still, what the wall-ripping energy would do after that was unclear. Straker placed all six, reasoning that getting the job done in one go was the lesser risk.
Retreating around the corner, he nodded to Loco and faced away from the set point. “Fire in the hole!”
The shockwave knocked him and Loco to the floor, and the crawlspace filled with smoke and dust. Straker immediately checked the blast site. “Crap. It’s blocked with chunks.”
“Cut through or blast again?”
“Blast again. Bring your charges.”
Loco brought his charges and they set up another round, this time aiming them to blow the debris out of the way. They did it quick and dirty, and in thirty seconds they again retreated around the corner and set them off.
This time, the amount of debris that flung through the crawlspace, even around the corner, was much greater, peppering the two men with ricochets. Straker grabbed his weapon and grenades and led the way to the blast site again.
Now it was clear enough for Straker and Loco to move into the crawlspace of the fortress itself. They scrambled through the narrow passages on hands and knees, following their HUDs toward the command center itself.
Straker heard pops and pings, and then felt a burning sensation in one leg. “They’re firing into the crawlspace!” he barked, redoubling his speed. Like a desperate spider running from a determined housekeeper, he scurried forward. Another shot ricocheted and struck him in the side of his head. His vision swam, and his HUD disappeared. The skinsuit provided a light layer of ballistic armor, but that one had almost taken him out.
