Crucible (28 page)

They descended on the city from all directions, pushing power systems to the max to get there in time, coordinating among themselves and forming up into loose convoy waves for some measure of mutual protection. Facing them were the unknown terrors of the crucible.

The Southers had completely lost air control over the city. Their ground-based anti-air defences had been utterly destroyed. No Souther gunship or fighter craft flew patrolling missions there. The Nort air forces had free rein, ruling the skies above Nordstadt, striking at will against any Souther targets still moving on the ground. Nort high-altitude fighters prowled the night airspace, lying in wait for the shuttle waves which they now knew to be heading their way. Souther radar operators picked up their presence on their screens. Souther radio operators relayed their comrades' warnings to the shuttle crews. The pilots now knew what was waiting for them, but still kept on going. The Miracle of Nordstadt had lasted this long, so maybe it would last longer still.

It did. Like their pilot brothers in the shuttlecraft squadrons, the pilots of the Souther fighter squadrons had heard Gabe's message. Like the shuttle pilots, they weren't slow to respond. There were shouts of excitement in radar stations and comms-rooms all over Nu Earth as the operators there picked up the radio signals and radar signatures of wave after wave of Souther fighters now following the shuttles in to Nordstadt.

The fighter pilots opened up with their afterburners, sending hailing signals to the shuttle crews as they sped past them, diving down towards the enemy craft now appearing all over their target screens. Battle was joined, and the first blazing wrecks of Nort Grendel and Gorgon fighters fell tumbling from the skies.

With the first wave of fighters engaging the Norts and the next wave flying on their wings as escorts, the way ahead down to Nordstadt was open for the shuttles.

Gabe's signal was still being heard all over Nu Earth. It wasn't just the pilots who were listening.

"I'm sorry, general, but I can't concur with your decision. We have no way of knowing if this signal is really authentic."

General Ghazeleh resisted the urge to reach for his sidearm and pistol-whip his executive officer to the ground. "Gut instinct tells me it's authentic, Colonel Garr. That and twenty years of soldiering on this bastard planet, and having to listen to one bastard lie after another from those lying bastards at Milli-com. No, my orders stand. We're still the nearest friendly forces to Nordstadt. We stop here, roll out the welcome mat and let everyone who's listening know there's a safe landing zone waiting here for them. If the reports coming in about this shuttle evac are true, then there's going to be a lot of pilots looking for a safe place to put their crates down on the ground when they get out of that bastard city."

Gabe's signal was still being heard all over Nu Earth. It wasn't just the Southers who were listening.

"Damn it, Daniels! What's happening down there?"

"I-I'm not sure, sir," stammered Daniels. "The Norts seem to be pulling some of their reserve forces back out of the city's suburb zones. I suppose they could be reacting to that rogue signal that we're hearing reports of from our Nu Earth listening posts."

Cohen's reaction was instantaneous and predictable. "You suppose, Daniels? You're supposed to be chief planning officer on this operation. There's obviously been a security leak of some sort on Hammerfall, and now there's going to be a thorough investigation when this is all over, I promise you that."

Daniels looked helplessly at the display screen. Every few minutes that passed saw another Nort infantry or armoured division icon disappear off the edges of the screen, signifying another ten thousand or more enemy troops retreating back out of Hammerfall's area of effect. As Daniels watched, Hammerall's projected enemy casualty count, the vital figure that its success or failure depended on, continued to fall with every passing moment.

Cohen's next statement was also equally predictable. "I won't sit here and see Hammerfall fail. You hear me, Daniels? We launch the damn missiles now and salvage what we can from this balls-up."

Daniels hesitated before answering, possibly seeing the rest of his career flashing before his eyes. "I-I'm afraid that won't be possible, grand marshal. The Hammerfall platform position is fixed in space. They can't launch until Zero Hour when the planet's rotation brings the target zone back around into range of the missiles."

Cohen stood stock still for a moment, digesting this information. Then he stood up, turned on his heels and stalked off back towards the elevator bank. With every step he took, Daniels could actually feel another part of his own career shrivelling up and dying.

"I'll be in my quarters, Daniels. Keep me appraised of the situation. Let me know when Hammerfall's been completed."

TWENTY-FOUR

Hanna and Artau picked a path through the ruins. Her chem-suit wasn't equipped with anything in the way of IR night vision capability, and she didn't dare use a flashlight in case its beam gave away their position to any hidden watchers. The only thing they could depend on to find their way and avoid any hidden shell craters, tox-pits or booby traps were the intermittent flashes of the battle raging a couple of kilometres in front of them. Hanna had a vague plan to keep heading towards the fighting. What they were going to do when they got there, since Hanna was fairly sure that they were now technically behind the Nort front line, and how they were going to make contact with whatever was left of the other Souther forces still fighting in Nordstadt, was something she had not yet figured out.

The main battle seemed to have swept through or completely bypassed the area they found themselves in. They saw a few freshly artillery-pulverised buildings and came across the still-burning wreckage of a crashed flyer, but there was little other immediate evidence here of the battle still raging elsewhere in the city. Twice now they'd had to crouch down in cover as they heard gunfire from close by, waiting for several minutes to see if it came any closer. Both times, it had faded away into the distance again. Hanna imagined squads of Norts prowling through the ruins, making sport of hunting down small, scattered groups of survivors just like her and Artau. She had heard what often happened to female Souther soldiers in the Nort prisoner of war camps, and had secretly decided that if the worst came to the worst, there was no way she was going to allow herself to be taken alive.

Gunfire sounded again, this time coming from a lot closer. Too close for comfort, in fact. Hanna grabbed the surgeon and pulled him down into an ancient shell hole, signalling for him to be quiet. A few seconds later, the same gunfire sounded again, coming from what seemed to be the same direction and range, about three hundred metres somewhere to their right, she estimated.

A third burst from the same gun. Artau looked at her, puzzled. He might have hated guns of any kind, and his field hospital might have been situated kilometres behind the front line, but he still knew something about the individual sounds of a gun firing.

"That's not a regular Souther las-carbine," he whispered to her. "Must be Norts."

Hanna shook her head. She'd heard the distinctive sound of that gun firing before, and very recently. "No," she answered. "Not Norts. That's a GI rifle."

Silently, she led Artau into the darkness, heading for the sound of the gunfire.

Venner heard the sound too, as he stalked the battlefield in pursuit of his dual targets. It sounded wild and panicked, so he assumed the traitor still had the GI's rifle and was using it against its original owner. The sniper checked his sensor readings, seeing that the traitor, marked by the single biochip signal, was stationary at a point three hundred and eighty metres away, hiding amongst the broken pillars and rockrete slabs of a collapsed elevated roadway. The twin biochip signals that indicated the Genetic Infantryman's location were moving towards the traitor's position, the GI using the rubble for cover and the traitor watching and waiting for his approach, firing off bursts of shots every time he thought he caught sight of his opponent through his weapon's night vision sight.

Venner smiled, delighted to see that both his targets were deliberately bringing themselves into the same killzone. He scanned the surrounding terrain, looking for a suitable concealed vantage point from which to make his shot. Idly, he wondered what the chances would be of the two targets getting close enough to each other to allow him to take them both out simultaneously. Now that would really be something, he decided. The mark of a true master sniper, and one with more than a touch of irony about it. The Rogue Trooper and the Traitor General, killed together, by the same single shot.

Rogue moved forward, making optimum use of the surrounding darkness and hard cover, homing in on the traitor's position. Even if Helm and Bagman weren't able to lock onto Gunnar's biochip signal, he would still know where the traitor was hiding, from the direction and muzzle flash of the bursts of shots being fired at him.

He ducked as another hail of las-fire spat into the rubble around him. He was close enough now to throw a plasma sphere straight into the traitor's position, or for Bagman to obliterate the place with a scattering round of micro-mines, but Gunnar was there too, and Rogue couldn't risk doing anything that might damage or destroy the fourth member of his squad. No, his best chance, he decided, was to go low and circle round behind the traitor, getting in close enough to take him by surprise from a direction different from the one he would be looking in.

"Can you hear me, Rogue Trooper?"

It was the traitor's voice, coming from one of Helm's open comms-channels. He must have patched into it through Gunnar's comms-signal. "Yes, I think you can. I know you are out there somewhere, crawling through the darkness towards me. Is your new ally out there too, I wonder? Did he say he would watch your back while you came after me? I expect he probably did. Let me tell you something about this ally, Genetic Infantryman. His name is Venner, and he is a very special kind of assassin, working for an S-Three officer called Marckand. He is here to kill me, Rogue Trooper, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has orders to kill you too..."

The traitor's voice whispered on, but Rogue had already tuned out, knowing that the traitor was probably just trying to distract him and throw off his concentration. "Helm, you recording all this?"

"Every word, Rogue, for what it's worth."

"Good, then you can give me the edited highlights after I cut his head off and put it on the end of a stick to take back to Milli-com with us."

Rogue kept crawling forward, his attention fixed on the traitor's position. Helm counted down the range that Gunnar's biochip signal was now coming in from. "Twelve metres, Rogue... nine metres... seven... Hell, we're almost on top of him. Can't you see him yet?"

Rogue paused, scanning the shadows with his enhanced vision. There, in amongst the jagged sections of rockrete, he saw him. A chem-suit silhouette crouching low in cover, facing the direction he thought Rogue would be coming from and holding the familiar shape of Gunnar in his hands. Rogue tensed his leg muscles and sprang, clearing the intervening rubble barrier and covering half the distance between them in one move.

He hadn't even landed before he realised the potentially fatal mistake he'd just allowed himself to make.

Venner saw the sudden flash of movement in the killzone and raised his rifle to fire. The biochip signals were so close together now that he couldn't tell which target was which. The challenge of trying to hit both targets with one shot was still a tempting one, but he decided on caution over showmanship. Two shots, two kills, and he would be free to make his way to the extraction zone, where the shuttle Marckand had sent would be waiting for him. In fact, he could already hear the sound of shuttle engines somewhere in the sky above him. He hoped it was his craft. The sooner he got out of Nordstadt, the better.

"Getting a final fix on the Rogue Trooper's position, Rafe. He's in those ruins right below."

"Copy, Gabe. Taking us down now."

Rafe checked the ground radar readings, looking for a safe landing area amongst the ruins. Other than the lock-on signal beamed back by the biochip called Helm, they had been running on radio silence throughout their final approach to avoid being detected by Nort air defence systems. She just hoped they were still going to make it onto the ground in time to help Rogue.

It wasn't the traitor. It was the body of a dead Nort soldier, propped up in the rubble, the decoy made all the more complete by the fact that Gunnar had been carefully placed in the corpse's hands. The traitor must have known about the biochip's locator signal, using it to lure Rogue forward. Which meant he must still be somewhere close, waiting to spring the trap.

Rogue saw and realised all this before his feet even hit the ground. After that, he was too busy concentrating on making it alive through the next few seconds to worry about anything else.

The first shot, aimed too hurriedly as he jumped through the air, missed him as he hit the ground and rolled for cover. The next shot, just a second later, was closer, hitting the ground near his head. Rogue felt the burning heat of it even through the protection of his GI skin. Rogue continued the roll, knowing the traitor's third shot would almost certainly be on target. His enemy's first two shots had given Rogue a fix on his location, however. GI reflexes and instincts did the rest.

He came out of the roll, hurling his vibro-knife in the traitor's direction. Thrown blind, it still managed to hit its target, sinking hilt-deep into the shoulder of the traitor's gun hand. The traitor managed to get a shot off just before the gun fell from his nerveless fingers.

The shot hit Rogue in the side, breaking three of his ribs and burning and blowing away a portion of flesh. He staggered back under the impact, leaving himself open to the traitor's follow-up attack. The traitor didn't try to recover his lost pistol. Instead, snarling in rage, he simply launched himself at his enemy.