Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (19 page)

“Have you destroyed the guns yet?” General Wan asked. “How close are you to achieving your objectives?”

“Three of the weapons are heavily damaged and are probably unrecoverable,” he said. “We are concentrating our fire on the center turret and the small building at its base. We have already destroyed the main operations center for the complex.”

“Are you still engaging the Stormhaven forces?” Wan asked.

“We have been unable to attack them directly,” he said. “We are focusing our efforts on the installation. We have not encountered the American forces yet, but my concern is they will come up behind us. We are exposed to the south.”

“Can you concentrate your fire on the Stormhaven command vessel?” Wan suggested. “If it can be eliminated, the fight will go out of them.”

“We can try, General,” he said.

“Good,” he said, turning to face Colonel Yao. “Get me Director General Jiang.”

“I cannot do that General,” she said. “Jiuquan has gone offline.”

“Offline? What does that mean?” he snapped.

“It is like the facility does not exist,” she said. “There are no communication signals, no radar beams, no transponders, nothing. It is like it has been erased electromagnetically from the Universe.”

***

New Hope Colony, Plato:

“Jesus Christ, we’re getting hammered out there,” Susan said. “Where the hell are our people?”

“They’re loading into the rovers, and will be in the battle in under a minute,” Randy said. “It’s only been nine minutes since they landed. We’d already sent our troops up the crater wall, so they started out well behind the colony.” He pointed at the chronometer to show her he was right.

“It looks bad,” she said, feeling helpless and listening to the sound of explosions rumbling through the floor.

“It’s the Ivory Tower,” Tony said. “She wants a report.”

“Fuck her,” she snarled, instantly regretting what she said. “Tell her we’re busy dying.”

“It’s ok,” he said. “You already did.”

***

Bridge of the Draco, above Prometheus Ridge:

“We’ve got incoming missiles,” his pilot and the AI said simultaneously.

“I see it,” Dave said, targeting the last missile and driving it to ground before it hit the fourth tower. “Got it!” he said, blowing out a breath of air he’d been holding in for way too long.

“No boss,” she said. “I said
WE’VE
got incoming missiles. At us.”

“Evasive maneuvers,” he said. They lurched sideways and up in two brutally quick snaps.

“They’re still tracking,” the pilot said.

“Ok, I’m about to take this personal,” he said.

“Ten seconds to impact,” the AI said. The ship danced sideways again, and then dove past the missiles, shooting down toward the surface and flattening out to skim away from the guns toward the southwest.

“Nice jinking,” Dave said. “Bring us around and sweep over the craters where those bastards are hiding. We’re already in too deep. I think it’s time we used some deadly force and ended this.”

He cranked his guns up to full push and they began their strafing run. He tried not to think about what he was about to do to the astronauts down there on the ground. Sometimes it was just smarter not to look at the world from the bug’s perspective.

***

New Hope Colony, Plato:

“
Draco
to New Hope operations,” Dave said over the com. “We’re putting down near the Control Center to look for survivors, but it doesn’t look good. The building is pretty much toast.”

“We only had three out there,” Susan said. “And I know at least one of them was in a suit.”

“Copy that,” Dave said. “We’re looking.”

Susan felt hollow, empty. She knew there was nothing more that could have been done, but when she looked out the window across the field and saw the twisted ruins, she knew they’d reached the end of the road. The two towers that remained would never be enough to drive Antu off its course.

“We’ve got three more landers ascending from the rim,” Randy said quietly. “Looks like they’re running for home.”

“Do you want us to give chase?” Dave offered. “We can drag them back.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “It’s over.” She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. She wanted to cry, but the hollowness in her soul robbed her of tears.

“Come on Sue,” Dave said, able to recognize her resignation even through the radio. “We’ve still got work to do out here. Suck it up for now, and let’s get through what we’ve got in front of us. We can both fall apart later.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said, steeling herself with a deep breath, and squaring her shoulders.

“Operations, this is Security Unit One. We’ve got a lot of survivors out here. They’re surrendering. What do you want us to do with them?”

“Shoot them,” she whispered, rage swelling to fill the emptiness in her heart.

“Say again, Commander?” the officer asked. “I didn’t copy that last transmission.”

“Stand by, Security One,” she said, “let me get back to you on that.”

***

Chapter Twelve:

The Harder Path

Mount Weather, Virginia:

“Governor Winslow, I’d like for you to give the Cabinet your assessment of the current situation up there,” President Hutton said. She sat alone in her office with the faces of the other Cabinet members and her Science Advisor projected on the screen along her wall. She’d started calling this her Cabinet even though it was only the ones directly involved in the mitigation effort. She would have called it a War Council, but she really wanted to avoid the feeling that they were at war. At least for the time being.

Susan nodded, taking a deep breath. She glanced off to the side, then started. “Approximately fifty minutes ago, a strike team from Chang Er began an assault on the Prometheus facility. They initially shelled the area between the ridge and the colony. Although we don’t know for sure, it appears that this was a diversionary tactic to draw our security forces up onto the crater rim and away from Prometheus itself.

“As our forces worked their way up to the mortar emplacements, four landers took up positions around the guns. These Chinese units were armed with RPGs and some type of heavier shoulder fired missiles. At that point, the volunteer forces from Stormhaven’s Sentinel colony arrived, and engaged the assault forces. Our own units were still more than ten minutes away from the ridge and were not able to close with them.

“The Stormhaven personnel destroyed two of the Chinese landers and killed somewhere around thirty of their troops. We don’t have firm numbers, because some of the dead were in or around the two landers when they exploded. We do have fourteen Chinese prisoners in custody. Three landers retreated from their positions above the rim of the crater shortly after their assault was turned back. We did not give pursuit, but could tell that they returned toward Chang Er.

“Stormhaven lost no one, although three of their personnel were injured slightly in the battle. Our own forces never got into the engagement, but reestablished a security perimeter around the surviving gun turrets. We have three missing members of the Prometheus staff, including Dr. Anthony, who arrived at the Prometheus Control building shortly after the mortar attack began.” She stopped, sucking in her lower lip to chew on it. “Stormhaven is assisting us with the search, but the area of the Control Center took several hits, and there’s a lot of debris scattered there. We’re hoping they were not in the building when it took the hits.”

She cleared her throat and forced herself to continue. “We have to assume that their objective was to destroy Prometheus, and not an attack on the colony itself. There are no injuries or damage reported here.”

After a long pause to make sure she was through, the President said, “Is Prometheus recoverable?” She knew the answer from the expression on Susan’s face.

“No ma’am.” Susan looked down at the console in front of her and shook her head. “Two of the projectors appear to be undamaged, but the Power Distribution Grid took a serious pounding. One of the reactors received a direct hit, and its transformer building was destroyed.” She paused again, but continued. “Without Dr. Anthony I can’t give you a complete assessment, but his engineers are out there now, as part of the search team, and they’ve given us a fair estimate of the extent of the damage. We don’t think there’s any way to rebuild.”

“If two of the guns are still in good shape can we use them?” John Herman asked.

“If we can repair their portion of the power grid, and set up a new Control Center, theoretically they could be used,” Susan said.

“The problem is with only two operational guns, there’s no way we could generate sufficient thrust to get enough deflection,” Donna Jacoby said. “All we’d be able to do is move the point of impact slightly to the northwest of where it is.”

“And where is it now?” Dick Rogers asked.

“In the Pacific ocean, sixty miles off the coast of Washington, due west of Puget Sound,” she said.

“Madam President?” Susan interrupted. “There’s nothing else I can tell you at this point. Would it be possible to be excused? I have pressing matters to attend to.”

“Of course, Governor Winslow,” the President said. “Thank you for taking a few minutes to give us your assessment.” At that, the screen she’d occupied blinked off.

“So what do we do now?” Sylvia said. The thick and dark weight of the universe hung over her shoulders, smothering her.

“Pray for the
Zhen-Long
,” Dick said with no trace of sarcasm in his voice. “It looks like it’s our last hope.”

“Do we have the firepower to back the Chinese up if they fail?” she asked, looking at Gene for an answer.

He shrugged. “I think our entire arsenal has a combined explosive potential of about eighty gigatons, and that’s spread out over more than two thousand warheads.”

“Not enough,” Donna said. “All we’d end up with is the shotgun blast that Dr. Anthony talked about.”

“But isn’t that what the Chinese will do too?” President Hutton asked.

“Possibly,” she nodded. “Their warhead is orders of magnitude bigger than anything we’ve ever tried to build. There would be forces unleashed at that level that would be closer to stellar mechanics than nuclear physics. We’re talking about being within spitting distance of creating a miniature singularity.”

“Singularity?” John asked.

“A black hole,” Sylvia said. She’d read enough science fiction as a kid to know that much. “So you think they might be able to eliminate the asteroid entirely?”

“If they can time the detonation accurately enough, it’s within reason,” she said. “But that’s a big if.”

“May I address another aspect about our conflict with China?” Secretary Herman asked. “It looks like it’s not going to calm down anytime soon. They’re howling for blood. They’ve put their military on full-alert and they’ve closed their borders. We’ve been given twenty-four hours to evacuate our Embassies and any American citizens in their country. I don’t know what you did, but it was a lot more than just get their attention.”

“We did take action against the Launch Center in Jiuquan,” Gene Reynolds said, giving no more information than he must.

“The way they’re screaming, you’d think we nuked them,” John said, glancing at the screen that held the Secretary of Defense’s image. He sat stone-faced. “We didn’t, did we?”

“No, we didn’t,” the President said. “We used something else.”

“It was very effective,” Gene said.

“Fine, I don’t need to know what it was, but what did it do?” he asked.

“It took out the Launch Center,” he said.

She could see the muscles in the John’s jaw clenching as he sighed heavily. “That’s all you’re going to say; ‘it took out the Launch Center.’ How much of the center? All of it?”

“Yes,” he said. “All of it.”

The blood drained from Secretary Herman’s face. The President could see he was trying to remember how big the center was. He opened his mouth to talk, but his jaw just hung open, making a slow flapping motion.

“Perhaps we hit them a little harder than we should have,” Sylvia said. “They were attacking our only—“

“So how many people did we kill to get their attention?” he asked.

“We don’t know for sure. Probably everyone.”

***

New Hope Colony, Plato:

It didn’t take long to find Carter Anthony, and it took even less time to find the two engineers that had been with him. Most of what was left of them was still in the Control Room as a grisly red patina covering the front wall and most of the floor. Dave had been the first to enter the damaged structure, and he spun quickly and bounded back out, gasping in several deep breaths to try to keep from losing his last meal inside his helmet.