Crucible (27 page)

The display was on its standard strategy setting at present, showing a map of the entire city, split up into its different sectors. A checkerboard array of black, red and blue icons swarmed across the map, each representing a different Nort division so far identified by the Milli-com intelligence staffers. Blue for infantry, red for armour, black for elite units such as those belonging to the Kashan Legion. Unidentified enemy units still to enter the battle were gathered in clusters of glowing white icons around the fringes of the map, almost all of them advancing slowly but steadily towards its centre.

The Souther icons were highlighted in a matching mixture of green, orange and yellow. Pitifully outnumbered, they were being herded back into the ever-shrinking number of Souther-held sectors in the centre of the city. The Nort icons pressed in upon them from all sides. As Daniels watched, he saw another green-coloured icon flicker away and die, its position on the map replaced by two of the four enemy unit icons surrounding it.

"Forty-Seventh Tarrik Infantry Division overrun," the weary-sounding voice of a junior officer dutifully reported. "No communication received from them in the last ten minutes, following last-reported contact with advancing enemy forces. Unit is assumed to have been reduced to non-combat effective status."

Wiped out, you mean, whispered a rebellious part of Daniels's mind. Abandoned and left to die, isn't that what we're really talking about here?

Daniels did his best to quell such troubling thoughts. They had planned Hammerfall down to the last detail. Everything they had done, no matter how cold-blooded it might seem to others, was for the greater good. The big picture, that was all that mattered, and now was no time to allow these kind of faint-hearted doubts to come creeping into your mind.

"What's our status now, Daniels?" barked a voice from behind him.

Daniels turned, snapping to attention even before he saw the figure standing expectantly there. Grand Marshal Cohen. What was he doing here, Daniels wondered? The pompous old fool wasn't supposed to be due on the bridge until the Hammerfall countdown reached Zero Hour Minus One.

"Everything proceeding as scheduled, sir," he reported keenly. "We're at Zero Hour Minus Three Point Two Six, and I'm delighted to say the Norts are cooperating splendidly. They're advancing slightly faster than we expected through most sectors and in numbers even higher than we had hoped. Our latest intelligence estimates there are now almost one point two million Nort troops approaching or already within Hammerfall's field of effect."

Cohen clapped his hands in approval. If Hammerfall worked as well as it was intended to, he could expect another gold marshal's star on his collar to match the three already there, elevating him to a new rank position somewhere just barely below a seat at the right hand of God.

"Excellent news, Daniels. What about the evacuation of all essential personnel?"

"Completed, sir. The speed of the Nort advance caught us out in one or two places. The Charlie secure zone landing site fell an hour ago, and we haven't heard anything from Able in the last forty minutes, so we're assuming it's been compromised too, but initial reports suggest we've got at least eighty per cent of all listed essential personnel out of the city in time. I'm reliably informed that Field Marshal Vittus and his staff are already safely aboard one of the orbital stations."

Cohen clapped his hands in approval again. "More splendid news, Daniels. He's a good man, Vittus. He and I were at military academy together. I'm sure he'll understand the regrettable necessity of all this, once I sit down with him and explain it all."

"I'm sure he will, sir."

The grand marshal glanced round and a chair was brought forward for him. He settled himself into it, studying with relish the images projected onto the main screen.

"A great moment, isn't it, Daniels? Something to tell your grandchildren about, that you were there when we won the Battle of Nordstadt and turned the tide of the war on Nu Earth. And I won't be forgetting you and the others, Daniels. You'll get your share of the glory too, I promise you that."

"Thank you, sir. I just want to do my duty to you and to the Confederacy."

"Quite so, Daniels. Quite so."

Cohen eased himself back in his chair, beaming in self-satisfaction. The mission clock stood at Zero Hour Minus Three Point Two Three. The last act of the Battle of Nordstadt was about to begin.

TWENTY-THREE

Dropping down into Nordstadt was like dropping down into hell itself, thought Rafe. "The crucible" they called it, and that's what it looked like right now. An infernal cauldron where men and machines were melted down to nothing. Looking down on it from the night sky, it looked like the mouth of an erupting volcano. A ring of flame, alive with light and activity.

The salvage dealers' vessel's stealth capabilities had got them through the outer defences - there was a fleet of Nort Gorgon pilots out there somewhere who were probably still sweating at the thought of almost mistakenly shooting down what they had only at the last moment realised from its transponder signals was a shuttle carrying the Deputy Direktor of the Greater Nordland Political Kommissariat - but as they came closer to the ground, they would come within visual range of the forces there, and all the fancy alien stealth technology in the galaxy wouldn't convince a Nort anti-aircraft battery commander that he wasn't looking at anything other than an unrecognised and probably therefore hostile civilian shuttlecraft.

"Follow in the coordinates Gabe's fed through to your helm controls," Rafe told the body looters. "We'll land, pick up our people and be off the ground again before the Norts even know we're there."

Brass pursed his lips. Bland tutted in disapproval.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible, my dear. My partner and I have been considering the matter, and while we're delighted to help, we're also businessmen with a responsibility to maintaining our profit margins. The risk Mister Bland and I are incurring here is quite considerable, not just to our lives, but to our craft and the great deal of valuable merchandise it's carrying. It only seems fair that we should be compensated in some way."

"Quite so," broke in Brass. "This drone of yours, for instance, would fetch a good price on the open market. Perhaps you'd be willing to enter into negotiations on this matter? We'll give you a fair price, minus of course, the cost of helping you with this little endeavour."

"Sure, why not?" said Rafe in a reasonable-sounding voice, just before she aimed her las-pistol downwards and shot Brass once through the foot. "Here's my opening offer."

She had put the pistol's firing capacity on a low power setting. The shot barely scratched the salvage dealer, burning away the material of his boot and maybe vaporising one of his smaller toes. On full setting, it would have blown his foot off and burnt a melt-hole into the metal floor beneath.

If Brass realised how fortunate he was, he didn't show it. He howled in pain, falling out of his seat and clutching at his smouldering foot.

"Maurie!" cried Bland in alarm, vacating his own seat to tend to his injured partner. His attempts to treat the wound only brought more outraged howls of pain from Brass.

"Watch 'em, Gabe," instructed Rafe, taking control of the craft. "I'll bring it down myself."

"Something bothering you, toots?" asked Gabe casually, keeping the two salvage merchants covered with his drone-shell's inbuilt blaster weapon.

"You mean other than the fact we're flying into one big clusterfrag that's going to be nuked off the face of the earth in an hour or two, and that they're probably going to recycle my ass all the way back to the gene-vats for the number of regs I've already broken today? Yeah, Gabe, something else is definitely bothering me."

"You're thinking about all the other Souther troops still trapped down here, right, hon?"

"Read my mind, Gabe. We're going down there to pick up Rogue, but who's gonna pull those other boys' asses out of the fire?"

"You know, Rafe," observed Gabe innocently, "with those command codes I lifted and with the fancy comms-rig they've got on this crate, it wouldn't be very difficult to patch into the whole Souther radio network and beam out any kind of urgent message anyone wanted. Of course, my programming won't allow me to do that. Not unless someone orders me to."

"Gabe?"

"Hon?"

"Get to it. Send out a signal and tell anyone who's listening what's about to happen to Nordstadt. That's an order, by the way."

"If you say so, toots."

What happened next was the event Souther military historians would come to call the Miracle of Nordstadt.

A mysterious, apparently anonymous signal was beamed out across just about every known Souther comms-channel on Nu Earth, claiming that Nordstadt and the tens of thousands of Souther troops still trapped there were about to be destroyed by nuclear bombardment on the express orders of Milli-com.

In the Souther military command stations orbiting Nu Earth, comms staff worked feverishly to isolate the rogue signal and cut it off from the rest of the network, but as soon as they closed down one part of the net, the signal jumped frequencies to infect another part of it. Short of doing the unthinkable and imposing a blanket shut down of the entire Souther communications system on Nu Earth and handing an enormous strategic advantage to the Norts, the techs were powerless to stop it. There was also the possibility that some of them, secretly appalled by the enormity of what the rogue signal was telling them, didn't try too hard to stop its spread.

Bounced from satellite to satellite, boosted through hundreds of different relays and automated comms stations, Gabe's signal spread like wildfire across the Souther forces, appearing as flash traffic text on thousands of compu- screens, emerging from thousands of radio speakers as a spoken message, looped to endlessly repeat itself.

"This is a Souther friendly calling on open frequency to any Souther forces listening. In less than three hours, tens of thousands of Souther troops trapped in Nordstadt will be killed on the deliberate orders of Milli-com. If you don't believe this message, if you think it's a Nort trick, then listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you about Operation Hammerfall, and decide for yourself what you want to do about it..."

All over Nu Earth. Thousands of compu-screens. Thousands more radio speakers. Hammerfall's secret agenda was well and truly out in the open.

The Miracle of Nordstadt was about to begin.

Halmada was awakened by an urgent hammering on his bunkroom door. He didn't know how many hours he had been asleep, but however long it was, it still wasn't nearly enough. Exhaustion still filled him from the last few weeks of the almost non-stop shuttle runs down into Nordstadt, as well as from today's last hectic and drama-filled evac op. That exhaustion was also mixed with relief.

The reason for that relief was still clutched in his hand. A print-out of a private comms-signal from home. A letter from his wife, telling him that she had received word from the Souther forces in the Karthage system. Their youngest son Philippe had been reported missing in action, presumed dead, but now word had come through that he was aboard a hospital ship, wounded but still alive, and already on his way home. Halmada had fallen asleep with tears in his eyes, proud that his son had done his duty, but mostly just happy that his son's war was over and that he was coming home alive.

Halmada awoke to hammering on the door, and a voice calling his name. He wearily hauled himself out of his bunk and went to the door. It was his copilot, Matthews. Halmada blearily registered the fact that his friend was suited up in his flight gear and that the corridor outside was full of activity, shuttle crews rushing about and getting into flight suits of their own.

"What's up, Tom?" asked Halmada, still half-asleep. "I thought we'd all been grounded until this Hammerfall op was over?"

"Haven't you heard, chief? It's all over the comm-nets. There's something real big happening in Nordstadt!"

Matthews thrust a ripped-off piece of compu print-out into his hands. Halmada looked at it. What he saw there woke him up real fast.

Two minutes later, he had his own flight suit on and was running with the others towards the shuttle decks. They could hear the sound of shuttle engines already firing up ahead of them.

A squad of Milli-fuzz blocked their way. The most senior of them brandished an activated shock-baton and called out to them in warning.

"Go back to your quarters. The shuttle deck is off-limits to all personnel at present. Any attempt to disobey this order will be grounds for a court martial."

Halmada thought of his son Philippe on his way back home and then thought of all those other young Souther soldiers in Nordstadt who weren't going to get that same chance.

His punch caught the Milli-fuzz man square on the chin, laying him out cold on the deck. The other Milli-fuzz drew their sidearms and aimed them at the shuttle pilots. Halmada faced down the next most senior of them, a young, scared-looking corporal, probably no older than Halmada's son Philippe.

"Way I see it, son, you've got two choices. You can obey your orders and pull that trigger, or you can do the right thing and stand aside and let us do our job."

He stepped forward, locking eyes with the young Milli-fuzz man. "C'mon, son, what's it gonna be? Every second we stand here talking means another poor son of a bitch down there in Nordstadt isn't going to be making it back home."

A minute later, he was in the cockpit of his shuttle and prepping it for final takeoff. The Miracle of Nordstadt was underway.

All over Nu Earth, from ground bases and orbital stations, people responded to Gabe's signal. Hundreds of shuttle crews flew out on anything that the ground crews had managed to make ready for them in time. Cargo lighters, troop carriers, reconnaissance flyers, officers' yachts, civilian sloops, outdated and mothballed vessels, even a few luxury command craft reserved only for the use of senior command staff of the rank of general or above. If it could fly, and someone could get behind its controls and take off in it, then it was soon in the air and on its way to Nordstadt.