Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (47 page)

***

Stormhaven:

“We’re ready to launch,” Dave said from the
Draco
. Sophie, behind him in the
Raphael
, was already hovering.

“Confirmed,” Mica said. “I have under ninety seconds before the gravity laser fails. You will have sixty seconds to get into position.”

“I’ll break left ten degrees,” he said. “You go right. Let’s see if we can catch them flat footed.”

“Roger that,” Sophie said. “Two-G on your command.”

The doors opened and the bullets roared in, laser beams of tracers dancing off his front windows. Almost thirty seconds of hammering before he could move, but when he shot out of the hanger he made up for lost time.

***

Outside Stormhaven, The Northern Front:

“Here they come,” someone shouted. Two mountains of shiny gray leapt out into the dull morning light. Barely visible in the semi-dark, they lunged forward, skimming the ground and kicking up dust like two charging rhinoceros the size of buildings.

Sixty people scattered, diving for the dirt and screaming. A lone man, standing in the back of a Humvee at his gun, refused to budge. Unfortunately, his head was almost nine feet from the ground and the
Draco
cleared the ridge by less than four. The top of the vehicle sheared off against the mono-carbon hull, along with his body, about three inches above his knees.

***

Army of the Holy Right Encampment:

Erik swore as he stretched wires under the control console. He’d once been an electrical engineer, and had gotten into production only after he’d worked his way up through the ranks at one of the superstations back east. He knew transmitters inside and out. He also knew how to hotrod one by bypassing huge sections of fragile electronics that did little or nothing.

If he could get the signal modulator routed directly to the transmitter’s power FETs, he’d be able to quadruple the output strength. With God’s help, maybe it would hold together long enough to take out those ships.

***

Above Stormhaven:

“We have lost the gun,” Mica announced. Almost instantly the Army surged forward on that quadrant. The two Archangels that had not been involved in the scrape-off maneuver were just coming into position. The ships also served another function in drawing most of the weapons fire off of the minies, a relief on the strained eardrums of the pilots. As Dave pulled up in a loop and leveled out five thousand feet above the battle, one of the mini pilots radioed in. “Thanks for the help,” he yelled, still having trouble hearing his own voice. “I was praying they’d run out of ammunition.”

“Yeah, apparently they’ve got a lot to burn,” he said. “How you holding up?”

“Not bad,” he said. “Got a screaming headache and I—“ The com signal exploded into a roar of white noise.

Dave looked at his AI Situational Awareness and saw the mini he’d been talking to was dropping like a stone.

“I’ve lost engine control,” he came back on a second later. As Dave watched, the small craft lurched forward dangerously close to the ground. It was upside down and tumbling, but whatever had caused its drives to fail had seemed to have fixed itself. He watched the pilot fight to get it back under control, but he was about twenty feet too low when he corrected his attitude.

He plowed in hard, bouncing between two machine gun positions and rolling forward in a tumbling flip that ended on top of a knot of their troops. Bodies blew outward like bowling pins in front of a cannonball.

“Go get him!” Dave hollered to his pilot, the
Draco
nosing down even before the words came out of his mouth. “Weapons, clear the field, we’re going in.” The
Draco
was the only one of the armored carriers that had been equipped with a full-size gravity laser. It was usually kept folded between the upper trusses, but as they started into their dive they used it to hammer the ground around the fallen mini, their smaller guns clearing up any missed targets.

“Are you alive down there?” Dave asked, expecting there was little hope of getting an answer.

“Yeah,” the pilot responded, groaning as he spoke. “I can’t move.”

“Hang on, we’re coming to get you,” he said, as the ship leveled out and settled toward the ground. Around the perimeter of the cleared area there was still a lot of activity. It wasn’t going to be safe going outside, but Dave hadn’t thought that far until he saw four sparks streaking inward toward the damaged ship.

“Missiles!” he barked as they converged directly on the mini. It had a mono-carbon hull, but there were several places where the structure was merely composite. It shattered, unzipping at the corners like a tin can on a fire.

The
Draco
bucked as the shock wave sent a shudder through it. “Holy shit,” his pilot squawked, gaining altitude quickly. Another explosion, this time much closer, jolted them sideways.

“Missiles inbound from the southeast,” Tom said, over the com, his voice tight but sounding strangely unstressed. Just a matter-of-fact statement. “We’re going to take some hits out of this one.”

They pivoted as they climbed, and Dave saw what Tom was talking about. There had to be a hundred missiles streaking toward the buildings in that one quadrant alone. He felt helpless as they slammed forward, and all three of their guns went to work. The first missile hit the roof of the Biome, sending a ball of flame and smoke skyward even before they’d pushed their target down. He knew the Kevlar roof was strong, but if they hadn’t spent the time with the polycon reinforcement, there was no way it would have survived.

Another one hit the edge of a concrete arch, scattering pieces for twenty yards. All four ships concentrated their firepower, but there were too many coming. Wave after wave. At the same time, from further back, another string of launches rose upward toward the ships themselves. Dave’s pilot devoted so much time to dodging missiles their gunners couldn’t keep a lock long enough to defend the community.

“We can’t hold them,” Dave said, watching another mini twist in mid-air in a strange convulsion. It recovered several hundred feet above the ground, and the pilot leapt upward, trying to get altitude before the engines had another seizure.

“Say again
Draco
,” Tom said. “We’ve got interference and your transmission was gar—“ the hissing that had cut off the com on the downed ship drowned him out. Dave looked around and saw the
Gabriel
shudder and swoop sideways. It did a complete barrel roll and then recovered less than ten feet off the deck.

“We’re losing ground out here,” he said. Another explosion lit the top of the Biome, this time the black smear it left looked torn and ragged.

“There’s damage on the east end of the Biome,” he said, watching another missile arcing for the same place. A group of people had crammed themselves into the blind spot about three hundred yards from where the blasts were tearing the roof open.

“We copy,
Draco
,” Shapiro said, apparently taking over the com duties. “Breach in the Biome roof. We’re sending—“ Hiss. And suddenly they were falling sideways. Control systems went out all over the bridge.

An explosion thundered right against their forward windows and they slammed backwards. Dave saw his pilot crash into the wall, and bounce like a rubber ball into a crumpled heap. He smashed face first against the console in front of him, and his head spun faster than the room. His display flickered on and the AI made a noise not dissimilar to a loud belch.

“Reconfigure to pilot controls,” he gasped, swiping an arm across his forehead and noticing blood on his coverall. He slapped his palms down on the thruster controls and they launched upward, upside down, at almost four-G. Dave’s knees hung beneath the edge of the console and somewhere against the ceiling he heard someone scream in pain. The restraints built into the adaptive seats were not intended for acrobatics.

“I’m going to turn us over,” he shouted, with the AI alerting everyone else in the ship that the floor would be returning to its traditional orientation.

“
Draco
are you still alive out there?” Shapiro asked. “Mica just reported that your AI reset.”

“I don’t know what happened, but we got the shit kicked out of us. We’ve got casualties all over the ship,” Dave said.

“Do you need assistance?” Doug asked.

“I’m flying now,” he said. “We’ve still got crew to fill the seats. What’s your status?”

“Tom just ordered the evacuation of all non-essentials to the
Michael
. We’ve deployed the Flight Infantry to cover the exit route.”

“No problems with machine guns out back?” Dave asked, watching as two medics staggered toward his pilot and the Gunnery Officer, who had broken his leg when he’d fallen into the ceiling.

“Not since you pulled that lawn mower trick—“ Another burst of static and Dave expected to be plunged into chaos again. Instead, he saw a second mini go down onto another crowd of people. This time there was no bouncing roll, just a straight-in dive. There was nothing inside a mini to explode, so it just sat there in a cloud of dust and mud. Crushed. Dead.

***

Unity Colony, Eastern Mare Frigoris:

Bradford Stone stood on a slight rise, one of only six journalists covering the signing of the Unity Treaty. Officially he was the pool reporter, but Xinhua and Euronet had also sent representatives. Nichole Thompson-Taylor, as she now called herself, had pulled strings to get him one of the last transports to the colonies. He’d been in Seattle working on a GNS series called
Ghost Towns on the Rim of Destiny
when the plague broke out, and most of the flights had been cancelled. She managed to sweet talk Dave into taking the
Draco
into the evacuation zone to pick him up.

Nichole was also here as a representative of Independent Stormnet News Service. She stayed just out of camera range, letting Brad do his thing, speaking quietly into the microphone, giving the play-by-play of the proceedings. They were feeding the ceremony live to the Earth networks even though they didn’t expect anyone, other than the President-Elect and his Cabinet in the Mount Weather White House, to be watching.

Unfortunately, they’d been preempted everywhere by the far more dramatic arrival of Antu. They could see the asteroid as a visible spark through the transparent dome of Unity and almost lost behind the Earth. A bright spot of darkness, barely 600,000 miles away and a fitting backdrop to the proceedings.

“Ambassador Kuromori is approaching the table,” Brad was saying in a hushed voice. “His will be the first signature on the Treaty, and represents the newly established nation of Stormhaven. When this is all done, each colony will have three official autographs on the document.”

He felt like he was covering a golf tournament, and Nichole almost laughed when he winked at her. The cameras were on the table, so his face wasn’t going out with the broadcast, and it was a good thing because he sure didn’t feel like he was giving it the gravity it deserved.

Here comes Kuromori, lining up on the birdie putt on the eighteenth green and ... oh ... he sinks it! (golf-clap, golf-clap).

“Help me out here Nichole,” he said, covering the mic with his finger and suddenly looking serious. “I’m losing it.” His eyes looked strange, like he was fighting back an unexpected monster that had reared up and was eating his soul.

He pulled the headset off, and handed it to her without waiting for her to agree. She looked at him, then glanced at the table. Kuromori was just standing up and bowing to Helen Troianne, who was coming around the larger table to take his seat.

“This is Nichole Thompson-Taylor, taking over the coverage of the signing ceremony of the Unity Treaty of Lunar Peace and Cooperation. As you can see, Ambassador Kuromori of Stormhaven has just put his signature on the paper and is passing the pen to Unity Colony’s Chief Administrator, Helen Troianne.” She paused, slipping the mic clip over her head. She nodded at him and he turned, almost running away.

Inside he was unzipping. It had all caught up with him. Here he was, trying to sound cheerful and upbeat while three hours from now the world, and everything he’d ever known and done, would be pointless. He’d spent the last month walking the empty streets of civilization. Talking to ghosts and those that soon would be because they’d stayed. A hundred faces rushed at him. A hundred million tragedies. Driven down to dust.

He collapsed against a rock, gray and alien, and cried. A quarter million miles from home. Forever.

***

Stormhaven:

Tom looked at Doc Winston and watched as he gave Colton an injection. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, but it should keep him from noticing what was happening around him. The doctor saw through the window that Tom was standing outside, and gestured for him to come in.

“Are you going to be able to handle him?” Tom asked. “We’re going to have to make a dash across the open to get to the
Michael
, and it might be tough if he goes sideways.”