Shadow of the Xel'Naga, page 10
It was after midnight when Octavia careened past the low barricade fence and down the street into the village. Sounding the alarm, she drove poor Rastin's field crawler directly to Mayor Nikolai's house at the center of town and roused him out of a sound sleep. Despite his bleary eyes and the rumpled state of his spiky blond hair, he came instantly awake as Octavia related what had become of Old Blue and Rastin.
“I don't know what those creatures are, Nik, but they're alien—and they were following me.”
He groaned. “Octavia, I've never known you to have an overactive imagination. But how many times have you come running into town now, raising the alarm about aliens?”
She dragged him over to Rastin's field crawler, where he saw the dozens of poisonous spines protruding like a pincushion from the back wall. The last set of monsters had shot them at her. The man could not deny the evidence of his own eyes.
Leaving Octavia to notify the people in the village proper, Mayor Nikolai excused himself and spent the next two hours at the communications station inside his home office, trying to contact families at outlying farms via the short-range comm system.
Octavia rousted Cyn McCarthy as well as Kiernan, Kirsten, Wes, Jon, and Gregor from their beds. She sent the young men out as runners from house to house in Free Haven to let the other colonists know of the approaching danger. Then she ran to the storm siren and turned it on to alert the surrounding farms as quickly as possible, even though they wouldn't know yet what kind of danger they were in until the runners got to them.
By the time the first hundred or so colonists had gathered on the street outside the meeting hall, Octavia was pleased to find that Abdel Bradshaw was already inside. His wife, Shayna, instead of arguing or criticizing, had taken it upon herself to begin setting up cots and laying out medical supplies.
“In case we have wounded,” she explained.
Octavia nodded. “Let me know if you need any help.”
While Cyn and Kirsten stayed to help the Bradshaws, Octavia went out to the street to speak to the sleepy-eyed colonists. A crowd had gathered around the damaged field crawler, muttering in fear and amazement. A boy of about twelve reached forward to one of the protruding spines, but Octavia snapped at him to stop. “Those could be poisonous!” she said. The others stayed away.
Next, she organized the waiting villagers into task groups, each with a different assignment. She sent a dozen of the younger teens into the meeting hall to take care of the colony's youngest children so that their parents could go about their duties without worrying.
For what felt like hours, Octavia issued orders, answered questions, took suggestions, made snap decisions, and directed traffic as villagers brought supplies and weapons to the central gathering area. She sent Cyn with a work crew to fortify the fences on the perimeter of the village. After a couple of hours, Mayor Nikolai came out of his house, looking very disturbed.
“Did you reach everyone?” Octavia asked.
He frowned. “Most of them, except for thirteen families. Those, I couldn't contact at all.”
Octavia's stomach clenched. She had seen what had happened to Rastin and his dog, somehow infested with the alien menace. Had other colonists met the same fate already?
“Maybe a few of them heard the storm siren,” she suggested, knowing it was a long shot.
Mayor Nikolai glanced around at the bustling colonists. Although dawn was over an hour away, the village was wide awake and embroiled in frantic activity. “I certainly don't see any of them.”
“You've got to keep trying,” Octavia said.
Just then, her runners returned from their errands and raced up to Octavia, waiting for their next instructions.
“Jon, you're good with machinery. Go to the mayor's comm station and keep trying to reach our missing families until you've raised someone. Wes, you have good eyes. I want you up in the observation turret. Kiernan and Gregor, go find all the people who brought their robo-harvesters into the village and fix any boulder-blasters and flame throwers that aren't functioning properly. Make sure that at least one of our big farm machines is stationed on each of the main streets just inside the eight gates to the village.”
The young men ran off on their separate errands. Cyn McCarthy returned to report in, addressing both the mayor and Octavia at once. “The fence around Free Haven is reinforced, but they're still using several of the robo-harvesters to dig a trench around the perimeter.”
Mayor Nikolai gave a grim nod. “Good thing I was able to talk the colonists into being prepared. Yes indeed.”
Octavia and Cyn exchanged a look, but before Octavia could reply, Wes gave a shout from the observation turret. “Here they come! Aliens! You'd better get up here and see this for yourself.”
Mayor Nikolai, Cyn, and Octavia ran to the turret and climbed the metal-runged ladder to the lookout tower. With dawn just beginning to break over the horizon, they were able to get a good look at the approaching menace.
No more than two kilometers away, a wave of creatures marched, scrambled, skittered, and loped toward the village.
The mayor swallowed convulsively.
“It's . . . it's an army,” Cyn whispered in horror.
Hard, glossy carapaces provided armor for some of the creatures. Smaller ones raced forward like lizards with red eyes, lashing long tails. Some flew in the air, spreading wide leathery wings like dragons. Every type seemed to have more claws and teeth than any reasonable living creature needed to survive.
These monsters had been bred for only one thing.
As daylight brightened, the settlers could see that a good score of the shapes approaching them were distinctly human—or once had been. The colonists were infested by the creatures, just like Rastin. They all sported extra limbs, tentacles, eyes.
Sick at heart, Octavia said, “I think we know what happened to our missing families.”
In stunned horror, Mayor Nikolai watched the relentless army approach. “There must be thousands of those things out there. How can we fight against that?”
Octavia gritted her teeth. “I don't think we have any choice.”
CHAPTER 22
WHEN GENERAL DUKE'S BATTLECRUISERS PLOWED into the space battle in orbit, it reminded him of an expert break in a game of billiards.
Protoss craft and Zerg minions scattered in all directions, reeling from the sudden strike of the unexpected Terran forces. General Duke broadcast no warnings and requested no surrenders, just ordered his Marines to inflict all the damage possible on the aliens.
He let out a loud whoop as the first shots were fired.
The Yamato guns blasted quickly, taking out Zerg Overlords and one of the damaged Protoss Carriers. Before the big energy weapons could recharge, General Duke launched his full fleet of impressively maneuverable Wraiths.
He paced the bridge of his flagship, keeping an eye on the tactical displays, getting updates from Lieutenant Scott and occasionally watching the battle through the viewport windows.
“Have you ever seen so many explosions in your life, Lieutenant? Witnessed so much carnage?” Actually, Duke knew that Scott and the rest of Alpha Squadron had seen the dark and dirty side of war during their battles against the Zerg in the defense of Mar Sara. But that didn't diminish his exhilaration one bit.
He turned to the comm officer. “Contact the settlers down there. We need a tactical update from the surface. I can't imagine how it can be any worse in the colony town than it is up here, but I need to set my military priorities.”
“Yes, General.” The comm officer bent over his station and tried to open a channel to the colonists on Bhekar Ro.
The Wraiths launched from the Terran fleet immediately cloaked before engaging a harried group of visible Protoss Scouts. The alien ships had superior air-to-air firepower, as Alpha Squadron knew from previous engagements in the recently ended war, but the Scouts were obviously at a disadvantage against an adversary they could not see.
The Wraiths pounded them, damaging their shields and hulls, taking out a handful of the vessels with their Gemini Missiles. After heavy pummeling from the Terran weapons, the Protoss Scouts retreated, inadvertently passing close to a mass of dragonlike Mutalisks that completed the slaughter with an attack move that Duke's earlier briefings had called a “Glave Wurm,” expelling waves of symbiotes that chewed and sliced their way through any hull they touched. The Protoss Scouts were doomed.
Their work done, the Wraiths streaked off to engage more alien targets.
From the bridge of the Norad III, General Duke raised his fist with a shout, cheering the victory. The bridge officers applauded.
“Our Yamato gun is recharged and ready to fire, sir,” Lieutenant Scott said. He tapped a voice receiver in his ear and acknowledged, then turned to look at the general. “Battlecruiser Napoleon also says their Yamato is ready to fire again.”
“Good. Let's both target the same Protoss Carrier,” the general said. He stared at the broad selection of targets on the tactical screen. Dancing his fingers through the air, he muttered, “Eenie, Meenie, Minee, Mo,” and jabbed his index finger forward. “That one.”
“Targeting, sir,” Lieutenant Scott said. He opened a link to the Napoleon. On cue, both Terran warships fired their powerful guns, intense magnetic fields focusing a small nuclear explosion into a cohesive beam of energy. The concentrated onslaught hammered through the Protoss shields. Within seconds, the Carrier's hull failed and the giant alien vessel exploded.
General Duke let out another victorious hoot. “Who'd have thought those things could come in so many different pieces!” Next he watched the Wraiths take out four more Protoss Scouts. He rubbed his stubby hands together and looked around at his bridge crew. “I think we can pretty much rest assured of a victory here, men.”
Lieutenant Scott frowned. “Perhaps that would be a bit premature, General.”
Two Protoss Arbiters moved toward General Duke's fifteen clustered Battlecruisers. Duke looked at them with a sneer. “And just what do they think they're doing? Move the fleet forward. Take the Napoleon and the Bismarck closer with a squad of eight Wraiths to mop up the mess.”
But as the two Battlecruisers separated from the rest of Alpha Squadron, the darkness of space suddenly wavered. The Arbiter fired a stasis field, an unfolding energy blanket that captured both Battlecruisers along with three of the Wraiths. Although the Napoleon and the Bismarck couldn't be attacked while seized by the stasis field, neither could they make any moves of their own.
With the stasis field in place, the five Protoss Carriers and eight Scouts—all of which had been cloaked by the Arbiter—moved forward to attack the now-exposed Wraiths like angry hornets pouring out of a nest that a foolish child had beaten with a stick.
The Wraith pilots attempted to cloak, but remained vulnerable when a Protoss Observer exposed them again, stripping away their invisibility. The human pilots had no choice but to fire all their Gemini missiles in a last-ditch attempt to drive off the alien attackers, but streaking Protoss Interceptors defended their ships. Without mercy, the alien fleet destroyed the five Wraiths and moved into position, ready to open fire again as soon as the stasis field wore off. . . .
The commanders of the Napoleon and the Bismarck howled at the treachery and launched their weapons. Once the stasis field was gone, forty more robotic Interceptors spilled out of the uncloaked Carriers and hammered like shotgun pellets into the two separated Battlecruisers. The Interceptors would normally have been little more than a nuisance, but in such a concentration they managed to inflict heavy damage.
Then, before General Duke could come to the defense of his ships, the Zerg attacked Alpha Squadron's flank without so much as letting up in their offensive against the Protoss. Flying through space, the hideous living creatures struck the Terran ships.
Additional squadrons of Wraiths rallied around General Duke's ships, trying to change their tactics to deal with the new threat, but the flying Zerg Mutalisks launched repeated, insidious Glave Wurm strikes. A Glave Wurm struck one Wraith, ripping into the systems, then ricocheted off to another single-man fighter, causing primary and collateral damage.
The squadron commander of the Wraiths responded immediately by cloaking. After the ships vanished, they were able to turn the tide of the strike and return fire against the Mutalisks. A Zerg Queen and swarms of smaller self-destructive Scourges detached from the main battle against the Protoss and spread through space, searching for the rest of the cloaked Wraith squadron.
Duke was proud to see his own small fighters continue to blast the Zerg scum out of space, wreaking terrible damage. The dark vacuum was filled with broken carapaces and flash-frozen alien slime.
“Sir, the Zerg Overlords are catching up with us,” Lieutenant Scott said. “We know they can breach our cloaking fields. They'll expose all of our Wraiths. Should we withdraw them now?”
General Duke scowled. “Not on your life, Lieutenant. Just look at the damage we're doing to the enemy.”
Meanwhile, the barrage of Protoss Interceptors had managed to cripple the Bismarck, and the Battlecruiser Napoleon could not find enough power to retreat to safety. When the Overlords drew close to the unseen Wraith squadron, they exposed the swift Terran fighters so that a Zerg Queen could close in and choose her target. Thrashing herself into position, she launched a wide, rapidly spreading web of greenish goo. The thick resin splashed into the ion intakes of the fast fighters, dramatically slowing the Wraiths' controls, overloading their detectors, and clogging their weapons. Dragonlike Mutalisks attacked with even more frenzy than before.
Then the hordes of small but suicidal Scourge's slammed into them. The tiny Zerg beasts were like living cannonballs, thinking bombs that chose their targets and crashed against hulls, exploding and wiping out Wraith after Wraith.
“General!” Lieutenant Scott shouted, and Duke could no longer deny that he needed to reassess the situation.
“Pull back the fleet!” he said. “We need to regroup.”
Anticipating the command—or perhaps praying for it—Lieutenant Scott sent out the order before the general finished speaking. No crew member aboard would dare comment on General Duke's overconfidence, though they all must have been thinking the same thing.
With the Bismarck dead in space and the Napoleon trying to limp back under continued attack, General Duke drew together what remained of Alpha Squadron. “Send a Science Vessel to scan the main cluster of Protoss ships. I want to know how many more are out there hiding like spiders in a woodpile.”
As two Science Vessels glided forward, they employed their signature weapon, an electromagnetic pulse that rippled across space and washed over the battlefield like a tidal wave. The EMP removed the energy shielding from all the Protoss ships, leaving them vulnerable—if not to the weapons of Alpha Squadron, then at least to the Zerg.
General Duke swallowed hard and concentrated on covering his own ass, since his flagship was taking a pounding. “I want another Science Vessel to deploy a defensive matrix over the Norad III. Keep us safe!” He quickly realized his verbal blunder. “Uh, and the matrix should cover any other Battlecruiser within range, of course. We need to protect our men. All of them. We've got to stay alive even if it means retreat,” he said, though the words caught in his throat like a chunk of rotten lemon.
He fumed as he stared at the tactical screen, realizing that his forces might be in for a tougher fight than he had counted on.
CHAPTER 23
THE COLONISTS' DESPERATE PREPARATIONS WERE completed none too soon. The alien monsters attacked at dawn.
Octavia stood inside the fence near the steel-walled prefabricated buildings at the perimeter of Free Haven. She was exhausted. Her eyes felt scratchy. She had not slept for two days, but could not imagine resting right now.
They might all be dead in a few hours.
A robo-harvester blocked each gateway to the village. Two of the rock-crushing mining machines could be put into service as makeshift tanks, if the situation got desperate enough.
Once she got a look at the approaching Zerg in the first rays of sunlight, heard the humming, clacking rumble of the hordes, and saw the clouds of dust they churned up while marching across the flattened agricultural plains, Octavia knew that their situation had become desperate indeed.
Next to her, Mayor Nikolai took a step back in astonishment. “My God.”
The settlers had distributed their stockpile of homegrown weapons, small projectile launchers, pulse pistols, and rarely used hunting guns. Some of them gripped farm implements—large scythes and sharpended weeding tools. A farmer with tough muscles could use them as effectively as any warrior used a spear.
Gasping, the other colonists gripped their weapons as if they were lifelines. Although Octavia herself had sounded the warning about the aliens, the menace of this swarm was orders of magnitude more powerful than she had imagined. The monstrous creatures seemed limitless.
“The perimeter fences are our first line of defense!” she shouted. None of the settlers had military experience, but she knew they had to stop the first wave, or all would be lost. “We have to keep them from getting into the town. Don't hold back on your weapons. If our lines break and we scatter, we'll each end up fighting by ourselves. They'll pick us off one by one.”
Ignoring her, two of the settlers bolted for the dubious shelter of their homes.
“Stand and fight!” Octavia yelled to the rest.
Mayor Nikolai muttered something about needing to check on the children, but Octavia grabbed his arm and held him in place.
The first scout ranks of aliens, low runners with sharp razor-limb sickles, reached the perimeter of the settlement. About the size of a dog, the aliens looked like big lizards with red eyes, sharp claws, and multiple rending arms. In a massive wave, they raced across the dirt with a pattering thunder like giant hungry crabs.
The colonists' first shots rang out, many of them going wild because the weapons were poorly aimed. But because of the sheer number of alien scouts, most of the shots struck something. The other scout aliens stampeded over their fallen companions, either ripping them to shreds with razor-limbs or ignoring them in their death throes. It looked like an unending wave of hideous death.
