Trial by Fire - eARC (55 page)

On the ship where the unusual explosions had given rise to equally unusual smoke—probably from a carefully controlled fire of wood and old tires—men and material were now pouring over the sides. Some of the objects plunging into the water were sealed black plastic bags. Winfield squinted. He watched one of the bags sink, leaving a thin line and a fishing bob trailing behind it on the surface. He smiled, wondered how many of the “desperate deckhands” jumping in around that bag were something other than merchant mariners.

As a SEAL, he also knew to look for the too-straight line of almost invisible bubbles that approached slowly, casually. More slowly and more casually than any fish ever did. Making sure his undersized mechanic’s overalls covered his composite-armor shin guards, Winfield moved to the edge of the wharf, miming an anxious search around the base of its pilings. Within seconds, down at the limit of his vision, a pair of dive goggles appeared, ghostlike in the oily water. He crouched closer, still acting as though he was searching, searching, searching, and thought,
go ahead, check me out. But don’t take too long about it.

The goggles disappeared. Winfield counted off four seconds before a man dressed as a deck hand swam up and broke the surface, gasping for air and sputtering, splashing his arms about in a frenzy of desperation. Winfield reached down, caught the upper sleeve of the man’s light denim shirt and dragged him up onto the wharf where he proceeded to cough and retch mightily. “Don’t overdo it,” Winfield muttered.

The man kept his face toward the planking as he apparently coughed up bay water, but managed to say, “Are they watching?”

“Hell, no. You’re about the two-hundredth semidrowned boater or sailor they’ve seen today. And they’re too busy worrying about the missiles coming from the ocean in front of them and the armed mobs in the city behind them.” Winfield stopped to look at the man again. “You Indonesian?”

“No. Why?”

“You look pretty…convincing.”

The man looked directly up at Winfield. His face was broad, brown, round-cheeked. “What do you mean?”

“Yeah. You know, you look like a local.”

“Yeah? Well,
mukha ng tae
.”

“Huh?”

“He said ‘and you look like shit.’ In Tagalog,” added a new voice. Another face—this one spitting out a slimline rebreather and as distinctly Nordic as the other was Micronesian—appeared over the lip of the wharf. Winfield didn’t find the turn of phrase amusing. Mr. Blonde, Blue-eyed, and Square-Jawed detected the signs of disapproval and offered a sheepish rationalization. “Well, you don’t look like a
local
, anyhow.”

Winfield pointed a dark coffee index finger straight at the second fellow’s ski-ramp nose. “And you do?”

The man smiled as he hauled himself up onto the planks and crouched next to the other two. “You’ve got me there, sir.”

“Sir? How’d you—?”

Square-Jaw gave him a sidelong look. “Moment an officer starts talking, you know he’s an officer—
sir.
” He stuck out an immense, and equally squared-off hand. “Chief Edward Barkowski, Team Three.”

“Lieutenant Jacob Winfield—” He stopped, remembering. “Well, retired—sort of.”

The smaller man sat up, coughed one more time, nodded to Barkowski, who threw a child’s bath toy into the water. “I’m Alfredo Ayala, Lieutenant Commander, currently CO second stick, Joint SpecOpCom. I don’t remember your name on the contact lists, Mr. Winfield.” Another half-dozen men, all dressed as deck hands, surfaced near the floating toy and dragged themselves up onto the wharf. Dripping and coughing, they affected exhaustion: damn poor actors.

“My name wouldn’t be on your pre-infil contact lists. We came in under separate authority.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Winfield showed him the magic card that Trevor Corcoran had loaned him.

Ayala stared at it, then at Winfield. “Your CO is Nolan Corcoran’s son? No shit?”

“No shit.”

Ayala’s voice was suddenly tight with ready resentment. “Is he commandeering my teams?”

“No, sir. Unless my CO guesses wrong, we have the same objective.”

Ayala’s eyes narrowed. “And how would
you
know about my objectives?”

Winfield repressed a sigh of exasperation. “Look, Commander, I got the same ‘suspect collaborators’ training you did. But today, there are two kinds of humans out in the streets: live insurgents and dead insurgents. If there are any collaborators, they’re indoors and staying there.”

Ayala nodded, smiled. A little sheepishly, Winfield thought. “Okay, Lieutenant, I’m just an FNG here, so cut me some slack. What’s your CO got for a target?”

“The Roach motel.”

“The what?”

“Sorry. That’s what we call the Arat Kur HQ. The presidential compound at the northwest corner of Merdeka Square. They’ve put up curtain walls, paved over some gardens to make a half dozen vertipads.”

Ayala nodded. “Yep. That’s where my team—and almost everyone else—is headed. I know the prewar layout, but have only seen a few recent photos.”

Winfield smiled. “Whereas
we’ve
got prime intel: current floor plans, hardpoints, and duty rosters. Updated within the last forty-eight hours.”

Ayala’s eyes were suddenly bright. “You have agents inside?”

“Yeah. Domestic staff, delivery personnel.”

“Outstanding. We’ll follow you to your CO.” Ayala waved the last members of his still-surfacing stick to join him in the lee of a smoking warehouse that fronted the bay. Once there, with Barkowski keeping watch, he huddled at their center. “Okay. Weapons out.” Each man reached behind and under his shirt. Waterproof adhesive tape tore noisily away from back skin. The small, flat plastic bags that were in their reappearing hands sputtered as they were ripped open. Within five seconds, each man had readied a small, Unitech ten-millimeter liquimix machine pistol, held in the narrow, shadowed margin between his body and the building. Ayala had not stopped giving instructions. “The lieutenant here is going to guide us to a safe house. We go single file. Weapon mix set to maximum. Single shots only. Never more than thirty meters, or you’re not going to get penetration. You won’t anyway, with the Arat Kur. With the Hkh’Rkh, aim for the articulation points in their armor. And work together. Saturate targets with fire. If you don’t penetrate right away, the multiple kinetic impacts should stun them. Then close in and pour it on.” He turned back toward Winfield, paused, frowned. “What are
you
smiling at?”

Winfield nodded at the Unitechs. “You sure you want to use those popguns?”

The captain looked like he’d taken a swig of vinegar. “You got something better?”

Winfield shrugged. “How about the assault rifles I stashed in a dumpster about twenty minutes ago?”

The men looked up, eyes wide and hopeful. Ayala looked suspicious. “Some old, raggedy-ass AK’s aren’t any better than—”

“Commander, I’m talking eight-millimeter CoBro liquimixers with extended bullpup feeds and integral RAP launchers. Double load of ammo, heterogeneous mix. Extra hotjuice canisters so you can shoot fast and hard all day long. Interested?”

The newly arrived SEALs were not merely interested. The looks on their faces were more akin to ravenous fixation. Ayala allowed himself a small smile. “Sure, Lieutenant. Seeing as how you’re throwing them out anyhow, we’d be happy to take them off your hands.”

Wholenest flagship
Greatvein
, Earth orbit

R’sudkaat clattered over as soon as Tuxae raised a claw. “What is it, Tuxae Skhaas?”

“Fleetmaster, the humans continue to fire missiles from their ships.”

“And we continue to destroy both.”

“Yes, Fleetmaster, but while our orbital interdiction assets are destroying their cargo ships, they cannot be tasked to ground targets.”

“The delay will be brief. Almost all their ships are sunk.”

“With respect, Esteemed Fleetmaster, additional ground suppression is required not only in and around the cities, but at a number of other sites. Sensors confirm pilot reports that insurgents and more organized forces have invested the margins of our airbases and vertipads with small teams firing portable fire-and-forget missiles. Between these and the cluster bomblet munitions that passed through our PDF systems, air operations are sluggish at Jakarta and stalled in Surabaja.”

“How many craft have we lost?”

“Only one or two so far.”

“Then there seems little problem.

“I harmonize, R’sudkaat, but our aircraft are constantly having to take evasive action, thereby diverting from scheduled landing or takeoff vectors. Air traffic control is unmanageable. Consequently, by the time they have avoided, decoyed, or interdicted the ground fire and sortied, their targets have left the coordinates called in by our ground forces.”

R’sudkaat studied the data streams on Tuxhae’s screen, the map in the holotank, then swerved away. The order he tossed over the collar-rim of his carapace sounded like gravel in a sifter. “Redeploy the airphibian craft. They must suspend their subsurface patrol duties and join our air assets as quickly as possible.

“Fleetmaster, the human submarines—”

“—need not be patrolled for so aggressively. They will be destroyed by orbital fire if they rise to launch depth.”

“R’sudkaat, if we were so sure of that outcome, would we have developed these amphibian aircraft? Would we not have simply relied on our orbital interdiction batteries?”

“The airphibian attack craft were a second tier of defense against submersibles, an assurance against other failures. We cannot afford that luxury for the duration of this battle. We must maintain our combat air patrols and tactical air support. Order the airphibian systems to terminate their submarine picket duties and transition for atmospheric operations.”

“With respect, R’sudkaat, the fighting is also shifting to the major food-shipment cities—Jakarta, Surabaja, Semarang, Cilacap, and Banywangi—and a few other of the larger metro centers, particularly Bandung, Bekasi, and Depok. How do you plan to use the tactical air support and not kill thousands of civilians? Our rules of engagement—”

“—no longer apply.”

Tuxae felt his lenses grind together then spring back in shock. “With respect, Fleetmaster—”

“Assistant Shipmaster, hear and follow this unwavering note. Today, there is but one rule of engagement. Find and destroy the enemy.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Near Bakau Heni, Sumatra, Earth

Sanjay Thandla watched Lemuel Wasserman try to hide himself behind a palm tree to urinate and fail miserably. Although arguably the world’s most brilliant living physicist, he seemed unable to figure out how to pee discreetly in the wild.

But of course, Lemuel’s problem was not ineptitude. It was fear. Lemuel was fearful of everything. Just as his reluctance to enter the jungle made it impossible for him to empty his bladder in privacy, his various anxieties imposed other restrictions upon his behavior. He avoided the local food. He never emerged into the sun unless protected by a long-sleeved shirt, cargo pants, and a floppy hat that made him look like a maiden-lady gardener. He would not swim out beyond ten meters for fear of sharks; and he asked incessantly about the intercept capabilities of the Arat Kur PDF systems. He had arrived twelve days ago, questioning everything, yet accepting no one else’s experience as useful information—with the peculiar exception of Thandla himself.

Thandla smiled as Lemuel emerged from behind the too-narrow tree he had selected as cover. Hapless, brilliant Wasserman. Thandla had not expected his odd, awkward, and decidedly barbed fellowship. Upon going their separate ways after returning to Earth from the Convocation, Sanjay believed the American did not like, or even particularly trust him. But here, just a few kilometers south of Bakau Heni, on the southeast tip of Sumatra, Wasserman had become a puzzling and pugnacious fixture at all of Thandla’s activities and meals. He even forsook the company of his own countrymen, for the region was thick with tall, drawling Americans who were impatient to joint the fight on Java.

They, and their European and Russian counterparts, had been gathering for the better part of three weeks. They arrived by truck or coastal barge, never in units larger than fifteen personnel and two vehicles, collecting here and in a dozen other coastal enclaves, well away from major towns or cities. Thandla and Wasserman had been assigned to go to Java in the second wave, with what the Americans incongruously called their “Air Cavalry.” Sanjay would have expected an ornate Pegasus as the unit symbol, but it was simply a black-rimmed gold shield which was adorned by (in the language of heraldry that he had learned during an early fascination with the age of chivalry) a bend sable and a chief sinister couped horse head, also sable. The other unit concealed here at the water’s edge, a German troop of high-speed VTOL drone controllers, was the first wave. How any of them were to survive getting airborne had not yet been explained.

Lemuel had stopped to speak with one of the American pilots before he finished his journey back to Thandla. “They say it shouldn’t be long now. Maybe an hour, maybe half. Maybe less.”

Thandla smiled, looked east across the water. He heard Wasserman’s feet shift in the sand: a noise that signified suppressed irritation. It was the greatest exertion of self-restraint that Wasserman seemed capable of. “Yes, Lemuel? What is it?”

The foot-scuffling stopped. “Well, yeah. I just want to know why you’re smiling. I mean, what’s to smile about? In a few hours, we’ll be—”

“We’ll be doing what we have trained to do, ever since returning from the Convocation. Once we are in Jarkarta, I will be trying to glean data from a hopefully intact Arat Kur computer. You will be searching for any files or technology which will better help us understand their shift and antimatter drives. Are you not eager to begin?”

“Well, yeah—but no. I mean, look at this place.” Wasserman waved back at the vehicles of the second wave. They were low, wedge-shaped deltas with sleek turrets and menacing secondary weapon blisters. The intakes for their ducted-thrust engines were broad, thin slits, reminiscent of a shark’s mouth when cruising for prey. Two of the vehicles were larger, boxier vehicles bristling with sensor and communication pods and antennae. All were in an aqua-blue mottled camouflage scheme that would shift to green-grey when they finished their run across the Sunda Strait to Java. “You feel safe riding in
those
?” Wasserman asked.