Reclamation (Book One of the Art of War Trilogy), page 40
Courte ran down the ramp and on to the plaza below, and was greeted by a violent mass of seething black cloud, crackling with lightning and intermittently spraying the City with bouts of rain. Beyond the surrounding thicket of talon-shaped rock, fourteen mushroom clouds slowly dissipated into the atmosphere, bringing with them turbulent, radioactive winds.
Minor but effective small arms fire began to fall around him almost immediately. Despite the starseeker’s best efforts, the City’s inhabitants were well armed and well trained, and the air was filled with the hiss-crack of railgun slugs and the occasional stony thud where one tore a deep gouge in the rock beneath his feet.
‘Get those Goliaths up, come on!’ he shouted to the men dashing from the hold. By their best estimates, they had somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes before an effective strike force reached their position and overwhelmed them – and that was heavily reliant on the assumption that the provar would consider a strike against the Zecad so preposterous, so beyond the bounds of contemplation, that they would not even have a contingency to deal with it.
Courte was not convinced. ‘Come on, just like we trained,’ he shouted, ignoring the slugs plinking about him. They had rehearsed the mission of course, for twenty months on and off, on a blackworld deep in the Trillian Veil. Buried into the superstructure of the starseeker’s hold were not just the Goliath’s component parts, but also their means of assemblage. Robotic arms seamlessly implanted into the interior, and exterior armour plating now whirred free so that the undercarriage of the ship resembled some monstrous sea anemone, twisting and unscrewing and cutting Goliath limbs free from ingenious hiding places and constructing them on what was, for all intents and purposes, a UNAF assembly line.
In truth, the men would only be required to do something if the automated systems went wrong. They had managed to reduce the Goliaths to six component parts for speed of assembly: the four limbs, pilot capsule and then the thrusters, the latter of which to be attached last since it was deemed the least operationally necessary. Every man and Xhevegan among them had then had rigorous training in troubleshooting, construction and maintenance in case they had to assemble one of them manually, or indeed, fix a broken one. But for the moment it was all they could do to take up firing positions around the ship and hope that their involvement was kept strictly unnecessary.
Courte grimaced as he checked the mission timer. They had been in the City for ninety seconds.
‘All right. Fitz, start getting ready,’ he said over wideband to his second-in-command, Daro Fitzroy.
‘Sir. Zulu, on me,’ he said, and fourteen men – nine UN and five Xhevegans, including Siun – peeled away from their firing positions at the side of the starseeker and sprinted across the fifty metres of plaza that separated them from the foot of the temple steps leading into the Zecad.
They passed the two-minute mark. Thick globules of black slush, highly radioactive according to Courte’s External Conditions Hostile Warning alarm, began to splatter down from the storm-wracked sky, peppering the stonework like diseased raindrops.
‘Kene, take Holt and Cedano up to that statue, and see if we can pick a few of these assholes off,’ he said, setting a waypoint marker via his IHD at the base of a statue a hundred metres away.
‘Yes, sir,’ Kene replied. She sped past him, grey Mantix on full exo-power, cradling a sniper-variant railgun. Holt and Cedano were not far behind, while above them, the seeker’s prow-mounted rail cannons cycled to maximum to provide two blinding crimson streaks of covering fire.
‘Three minutes,’ one of the Goliath pilots said. Courte turned back to the seeker to see that the first of the Goliaths was assembled. The squadron leader, Lance Kanova, immediately jumped in, and before the pilot’s hatch was even closed, was jogging down the disembarkation ramp in great, hulking strides, cycling his rotary railgun, phase cannon, CODOR pods, LAO battery and Hydra batteries in a martial parody of automata.
‘Vanguard One, up and running,’ Kanova boomed, the Goliath’s force shielding shimmering into life. Immediately it attracted the attentions of the distant provar, who despite the seeker’s best efforts insisted on firing at them. The shots bounced harmlessly off the naval-grade shielding, and Kanova barely turned before unleashing a three-shot salvo from his Hydra battery. The missiles streaked away in a near-invisible blur, smashing into the slowly crumbling network of buildings at the far end of the plaza in a trio of blinding white flashes. The provari small arms fire reduced markedly in intensity.
Courte nodded. ‘Stay put for now.’
‘Yes, Commander,’ Kanova replied, punctuating his response with a healthy dose of phase fire.
Another five minutes saw three more Goliaths assembled, all bearing the same dusty grey active camouflage over full refraction shielding to conserve power. They stood, aligned, running through their hardware, and not for the first time Courte was filled with an almost insane amount of jealousy. He had only ever had the pleasure of seeing one Goliath in action; now he had four, with another four on the way. Eight Goliaths could hold a continent without a stretch, and they had enough reserve ordnance jammed into the seeker to see them resupplied for six months. For the first time, he was beginning to feel a confidence which had, up until that point, not been forthcoming.
That was, of course, until the provar started to arrive.
‘Multiple contacts incoming,’ Kanova said warily over the comlink. ‘Five… no, six hostiles, rapid-insertion vectors, eighty kilometres and closing. They’ll be here in three minutes.’
‘Gah,’ Courte spat. He accessed the seeker’s VI. They could get three more Goliaths assembled in that time, including the one currently under construction. Seven was as good as eight. ‘All right. Start loading the spare munitions into the temple. Let’s move, go, go, go!’
All four Goliaths, as well as the remaining contingent of men and Xhevegans, scrambled for the hundred bulky crates of ordnance stacked in the hold: phase cannon emplacements, scatterlasers, micromortars, micronukes, rail cannon ammunition, phase cells, Hydra missiles, CODOR drones, millions of rounds of tungsten rail slugs, grenades of every type, as well as Goliath fuel cells, Mantix fuel cells, deployable hard shields, portable trauma units – everything down to ration packs. The Goliaths stowed their RRGs and phase cannons and sprouted forklifts. The men and Xhevegans powered their exoskeletons to full. Courte’s IHD informed him that the seeker’s railguns were down to fifty per cent ammunition.
‘Zulu, move in. Secure the entrance,’ he said and watched as they peeled away from the low stone wall at the foot of the temple steps and began to rapidly ascend, weapons up. By his Mantix there were a hundred steps, terminating in a wide plateau of smooth stone. Ten metres on, the curved façade of pillars concealed much of the squat, drum-shaped temple behind, and then, rearing out of the centre of that, the obsidian pyramid itself.
‘How are we looking, Kene?’
‘Lidded about five. Seeker must have hit thirty or so. Not sure how many cobs they’ve got stashed away in those buildings, but they’re running out, that’s for sure.’
‘Keep up the good work,’ Courte replied. Zulu team were at the top of the temple steps now, with four crate-laden Goliaths not far behind. The rest of the men, limited to a crate each, lumbered up at the rear, waiting for Fitzroy’s all-clear.
Another Goliath lurched off the assembly line; another pilot scrambled into the cockpit.
‘Roth, start hitting those incoming,’ Courte ordered, and the massive gauntlet of the Goliath clanked against its head in a cocky salute.
‘Roger,’ Roth replied. He extended his Hydra pods and fired off four CODOR drones, and Courte watched on his Mantix’s tac screen as they began immediately to jam up the spectrum with junk chatter. Moments later, his ocular units dimmed as the blinding flash of Hydra missiles seared from the Goliath’s shoulder-mounted pods and careened towards the incoming provari fliers, now – dismayingly – fifty kilometres away.
‘Going dark,’ Roth replied and, powering on his refraction shields, boosted a hundred metres into the air.
‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Courte replied and jogged back over to the seeker. Its rail cannons were now positively glowing, and a quick check of his IHD told him it was down to thirty per cent ammunition.
‘How are we looking, Fitz?’ he asked, looking over to the temple. The entirety of the Zulu team was inside now, while the Goliaths, each loaded with eight crates, waited outside the main entrance.
‘…eserted in here… can’t eve…ou copy?’
‘Say again your last, Zulu, scrub the channel, I do not read you,’ Courte said. He grimaced. The provar would be on them any time now. ‘Damn it. Kanova, dump the crates inside now, we’re out of time.’
‘Roger,’ Kanova replied, and the Goliaths powered into the temple. Mercifully, they were out seconds later, shed of their crates.
‘Getting all kinds of interference in there,’ Kanova said, igniting his thrusters on full burn. A few moments later he was back up the disembarkation ramp, along with the rest of the squadron, loading up.
‘Shit,’ Courte replied. ‘Keep moving. Yung, you and X-Ray team, start setting up the scatterlasers either side of the temple entrance, enfilading fields of fire. Forget the crates, Vanguard can do it faster.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Yung replied – his third-in-command, overseeing the remaining seven men and ten Xhevegans. They immediately began to set up hard points and emplacements. Fortunately the scatterlasers were straight out of the box, the crates acting as turrets. They anchored themselves into the ground via a quartet of fission bolts and were soon tracking wide arcs of fire across the plaza.
The static interference in the temple was something they had considered – they were EFFECT, after all, and considered everything – but it had been disregarded as a low risk. Given that the plan was for the entire mission team to remain inside the temple, he did not envisage it becoming a problem beyond these early stages of deployment, but it was an irritant, an independent variable on an operation that already hinged on a razor’s edge.
‘Kene, pull back. Get inside the Zecad. Tell Fitz we have dead comms. Now, please.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Kene replied and shot past him once again.
The seventh and penultimate Goliath was assembled now. Refraction shielded, they formed Vanguard Two under Roth’s command, as would the eighth – if they had time to complete it. The provar were under a minute away now, harried by CODOR drones but largely unmolested. They were close enough for Courte’s optic sensors to describe them in great detail: six atmospheric fliers, silver, delta-winged, big-bellied monstrosities, doubtless containing a host war machinery that would, in six conventional battles out of ten, wipe Courte’s relatively inferior team off the face of the planet in a matter of hours.
‘Let’s keep it moving, come on!’ Courte shouted over the wideband. Kanova and the rest of Vanguard One had all but a handful of the heavier crates inside the temple now, X-Ray under Yung had set up four scatterlaser emplacements, a shallow, semi-circular escarpment of diamond-coated, carbon steel firing covers, and Fitzroy…
Well, Christ knew what had happened to Fitzroy.
‘Kene? Where’s Zulu?’ he asked impatiently.
‘… again chief? Line’s… here.’
‘Fuck,’ Courte snapped. ‘Holt, Cedano, pull back to the temple, you’re done for now.’
‘Sir,’ came the reply.
He turned to watch the last Goliath being assembled, the pilot waiting, visibly apprehensive, on the ramp. Vanguard One was already shuttling back for the last of the crates.
‘Kanova, if you can’t get them inside in the next ten seconds, scuttle,’ Courte warned, jogging up the temple steps. He could see the fliers unaided now, surrounded by clouds of CODOR flak. Roth and the rest of Vanguard Two had chosen not to fire yet. To do so would give away their position, if the provari LRIS hadn’t already picked them up.
‘Roth, back to the gun line now, please,’ he said.
‘Yes, Commander,’ Roth replied, and Courte felt, rather than saw, the three Goliaths soar overhead to the temple entrance.
‘Number eight, forget it, back to the temple, now,’ Courte ordered the last Goliath pilot. ‘Grab a gun, there’s no time.’
‘Just ten more seconds,’ she replied.
‘Liza, that’s an order,’ Courte growled. She was now the last UN unit beyond the temple entrance, horribly exposed, even with the starseeker between her and the provar.
‘Just five more seconds, Commander, I can–’
The phase beam from the lead flier cut the seeker in half, finally silencing the prow railguns after eight minutes of solid firing. Liza was halfway up the disembarkation ramp when the ship exploded. Courte didn’t see her die, but her Mantix vitals flatlined instantly.
‘Vanguard on the gun line, right now,’ he shouted, as the seven remaining Goliaths formed up behind the hard covers, Hydra batteries extended, railguns and phase cannons primed. Around him, X-Ray team were kneeling, weapons up, covering behind their diamond hard points. The scatterlasers were still tracking, waiting for an IHD command to fire. Stacked up behind them were piles of terawatt power cells, and behind them, piles of one-shot disposable micromortars.
‘Kanova,’ he said over the wideband, ‘you have command. Buy me as much time as you can.’
‘Will do,’ Kanova replied.
Courte nodded and turned into the temple entrance.
DUPLICITY
‘I don’t believe anything any more, irrespective of how trivial it is. If my husband makes a passing remark on the weather, I have to go to the window and check it for myself.’
EFFECT Commander Renata Gaville
They had been sitting in silence for about thirty seconds before Haig spoke.
‘Look,’ he said slowly, fully exhaling afterwards as if that one word had been a plug in his trachea. ‘I don’t want to sound… I suppose ungrateful.’ He fidgeted, thinking of the best wording. ‘Having worked in UNIS for quite a few years, I’m… I suppose I’m having difficulty believing that you’re not going to hurt me.’
David’s brow creased in a parody of confusion. ‘I’ve already listed your options. You’ve chosen to co-operate. I told you that your co-operation would mean no pain.’
‘It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just–’
‘Karris, look. You’ve done a lot of very bad things. We know this. If you give me the information I want, you’ll come to no harm. I can’t make it any plainer than that. It’s more than anyone else gets, but I explained why we don’t use torture, didn’t I? You remember that part of our conversation? It wasn’t long ago.’
Haig nodded, but his expression betrayed him. For a brief second, David’s smile faltered.
‘Karris, remember what I said about time? Move past this please. You don’t have any choice anyway; you’re going to have to take me at my word. Some people find a lack of choice comforting.’
‘Sorry,’ Haig said, nodding, feeling like he was rapidly losing his mind. ‘Sorry, David. Yes of course. And thank you. I don’t want to annoy you, really I don’t, it’s just… can you guarantee that you’ll let me go after I give you the information?’
David’s eyes widened in genuine surprise. ‘Karris, obviously we can’t do that, can we?’ He laughed. ‘Permit me to say that you’ve already been quite fortunate. I think you can agree that this…’ He gestured to their environment. ‘… is considerably more than you deserve.’
Haig felt the false calm start to give way again. Instinctively he tried to access his IHD but found he couldn’t.
‘No, now remember you can’t access that without permission,’ David chided.
‘I wasn’t going to use it,’ Haig said quickly. ‘I wasn’t. I just… I–’
‘Why don’t you start from the beginning,’ David said. ‘Easy things. Where you were born, your family? Start with your name, if you like. Just be open and honest. I’m sure you know about Clairvoyant, yes?’
Haig nodded, swallowing. Clairvoyant was the UN intelligence community’s polygraph software. It was very, very sophisticated.
‘Good.’ He held up a hand. ‘One last thing before you begin. I am also obliged to tell you – sorry, this is boring – that you have been officially designated a United Nations-Born Terrorist and an Enemy of the State as defined under UN Hegemony Code 300686. That means your United Nations citizenship is hereby revoked along with all its attendant rights and privileges and your life is now, by law, a chattel owned by EFFECT. Do you understand?’
Haig understood. In his terror, he could only nod dumbly. He would have told David anything at that point in time, anything to get out of this claustrophobic computer simulation.
‘Great,’ David grinned. ‘Over to you.’
Haig cleared his throat. ‘Well… what do you want to know?’
‘You know what I want to know,’ David replied with a shade of irritation. ‘I want to know what you’ve been doing with the kaygryn. I want to know their plans. I want to know who’s involved and how long it’s been going on for. I want to know how you’ve managed to engineer a war with the Ascendancy that could spell the end of the United Nations. I want to know why. I want to know how your plan ends. Everything.’ He spread his hands. ‘But if it suits you, start with something smaller. Just remember…’ He winked. ‘…to be honest.’
Haig nodded slowly, trying to accept the calmness the program was forcing on him. They had been meticulous in their secrecy. How could EFFECT know so much? Iyadi must have told them everything he knew, but they had compartmentalised. Iyadi didn’t know everything. Had Josette been captured as well?
He stared out across the choppy sea, watching the wind whip spray off the waves. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he remembered swimming off the coast of Anternis, in the tropical waters out by the low-orbit anchor.
‘I was born on Quinn’s World in the Outer Ring,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the sea. He wondered how it would feel against his skin, whether the EFFECT processors would be powerful enough to render its brackish cold, the effervescence of each individual foam bubble, the silty murk of the sea floor. ‘My childhood was fine. My parents were… I don’t know, loving and hardworking. I attended the University of Gesscert and read Xenology. I joined UNIS on a graduate recruitment programme after hearing the standard bullshit. “Travel the galaxy” or whatever it was at the time. Ended up doing two years in a deep space relay in the Vadian Spiral listening to provari wideband chatter and eating freeze-dried roast dinner bars.’ He was surprised at how bitter he sounded.
