Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (40 page)

The entire nation was in a state of total disarray, and the worst of it was that he couldn’t afford to give his entire attention to the people he was responsible for. The Drasin were digging in all across the world, and they had to be
stopped
everywhere, or it was all over.

The biggest power of the Confederate forces was spread across the planet, with the strongest concentrations being in the Middle and Far East, along the edges of the Block territories. Those were also the areas they were the most needed now, as the Block cities had taken some of the hardest hits of any places on Earth.

With population densities as high as a hundred times the most densely populated regions in the Confederacy, cities like
New Delhi and Beijing were a near constant shooting gallery now. Confederate task groups were fighting constantly over former enemy airspace, just trying to keep the blasted aliens from hitting the ground in the hopes of giving the Block’s beleaguered ground forces some kind of reprieve.

And they’re running out of weapons to fight with
.

That thought inevitably brought his attention back to the situation shaping up in Detroit and the hopes they’d all been forced to pin on Eric Weston and his rather ragtag company of police and Guardsmen turned full-time warriors.

The five factory complexes in Detroit were not the only defense industries in the Confederation, of course. But they’d already lost the three complexes in Mexico when the infestation of Mexico City turned into such a rout that the local commander called in a tactical strike on his own position.

Conner closed his eyes. The image of the nuclear mushroom over a Confederate city would never fade from his mind, of that he was sure, not least because he’d authorized it personally.

There was no telling how many people had been in the city when the strike happened, but it was certainly far too many. The maddening thing, as tragic as that was, was the loss of the manufacturing campuses that cost them the most. Without the facilities in Detroit, he doubted they’d be able to hold out another week at this point.

Facilities in the Block were producing weapons as fast as they could, but many of those had taken hits as well, and they didn’t exactly have much cross-compatibility with Confederate systems. Without the Detroit facilities, the Confederation might as well just pack it in, and Conner had little doubt that if that came to pass, then the Block would shortly be overwhelmed as well.

“Mr. President?”

Conner looked up, nodding to the CSS agent standing there.

“There’s an update coming through from DARPA’s New Mexico facility.”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, getting up. He took a moment to smooth down his suit, the only thing about him right now that was as immaculate as a President should be. Apparently, the invasion had not yet overwhelmed his caretaker’s sensibilities.

The New Mexico office of DARPA had been tasked with the job of building the tachyon waveguide components they needed to take the fight right back to the aliens orbiting so high above them. Right then, he’d give almost anything for a chance to remind those bastards that they weren’t untouchable, and the way to do that was through DARPA right now.

Not that it would matter much if they lost Detroit.

What good were cannons if you didn’t have any shells to put through them?

New Dehli was a smoking ruin, though it was something a cynical Westerner might suggest was completely normal. Large sections of the city had been razed, however, burned out either by the invaders or the defenders, with neither offering nor accepting quarter in the vicious street-to-street fighting that had gone on over the last month.

The newer sections, built to a more modern code, were mostly recognizable as the fires there hadn’t spread. The buildings that fell tended to collapse inward by design rather
than topple to the side and take out an entire block in the conflagration. The older parts of the city were all gone, however, burned to cinders and then trampled by alien drones or Block soldiers.

For all that, however, little had been decided in the run of a month of fighting.

Both sides poured reinforcements into the breach, seemingly caring nothing for individual lives, and that had resulted in an effective stalemate. The Drasin were unable to procure a solid foothold, their numbers being annihilated as fast as they could reproduce. But their rate of reproduction combined with the influx of new forces from orbit prevented the Block soldiers from reclaiming the city.

It was a state of affairs that could not last forever, and the longer it drew on the more time and numbers would favor the Drasin, who were quite content to cannibalize their own in order to gain a few more soldier drones.

The only real advantage the human defenders had was that they fought under a friendly sky, with two out of three orbital landers being blown to hell before they could touch the Earth, courtesy of the Confederation Navy and the NACS
William J. Clinton,
which was parked a hundred miles offshore.

On the ground, though, they could only rely on themselves and what they could find in between material airdrops from the Block Air Force. Forces all across the world were on definitive search and destroy, and no one could spare them much, if anything at all.

For the people of New Delhi, however, suffering under an invading force was an old and familiar story. Those who couldn’t handle the new reality died quickly, but they were the minority. The people of India were used to hardship, and
given a common enemy they could easily identify, they quickly came together and turned their city and its environs into quite possibly one of the most hostile places in all of history for an invader to be.

It was a scene that would play out similarly across the planet, as the Drasin found that those who were to give up easily did so and died early. After thirty days on planet Earth, those people were gone.

Those who were still alive fully intended to stay that way, and if the price was the total obliteration of every alien they saw . . . well, that was a price they were
very
happy to pay.

Ben Sahid swore as he leaned into the ruined wall he was sheltering behind that he could hear the stomping of the beasts as they rummaged through the rubble. He still remembered the first time he’d seen them doing that, how confused he’d been. Confusion had evaporated after watching for the first time the demon things birth one of their own.

He didn’t know how they did it, but the threat was clear. The things fought and ate, and when they ate enough, they produced more of them to fight and eat.

He gripped his assault weapon closely, edging up to peek over the edge of the jagged wall.

There they are. Five of them, this time
.

He swallowed. He didn’t think he had enough ammunition for this job, but that wasn’t going to matter. He palmed a grenade from his pack, one of two he had left, and looked across the field to where a few others were waiting for him to make his move.

A flash of light and smoke passed by overhead, causing Ben to hesitate a moment and wait for what he knew was coming. The sonic boom of the aircraft tore through the air. That was the signal he was waiting for.

When Ben jumped out from his cover, he was gratified to see that the beasts were looking up and away, clearly on the watch for any sign of aerial assault. It was one of the first times Ben had ever been glad that the Americans (he still thought of them as Americans) existed. They’d dropped so many tons of explosives on his country and countrymen that more than once he’d wished that they would simply vanish from the face of the planet.

And they were still dropping bombs on his country, but now he was grateful. It was mind-boggling, but that was perhaps the world he lived in and the world his children, and theirs, would have to grow and thrive in.

As he charged, the roar of gunfire magnified around him and he saw others jump up and empty their own weapons into the enemy, giving him the cover he needed as he ran.

Faint cries of “Ayo Gorkhali” and “Jai Bajrang Bali” reached his ear, along with other rejoinders that had once been the calls to strike fear and horror into his heart. Now, though, they buoyed him as he ran. Ahead of him, an unspeakable horror, behind him old enemies now turned allies, offering what protection they could.

Perhaps this is best,
he thought fatalistically as he charged across the field.
I am too old and set in my ways for a world as changed as my sons will live to see
.

The idea that there may
not
be a tomorrow for his children didn’t enter his mind as he tossed the explosive sphere and palmed the second one, pulling the pin on it before wrenching his rifle up one-handed and opening fire as he ran.

Another cry filled the air, this time a British voice screaming about God and country as the heavy assault weapon hammered the drones, the explosion of the first grenade blowing the leg off one and collapsing another. The heavy rounds of his rifle perforated the hard shell of a third as the beasts finally reacted to his charge. The snap and sizzle of the beast’s weapons charred the air, filling his nostrils with ozone as the beam that could slice through tanks caught Ben just above the knee and took his right leg almost in its entirety.

He hit the ground in a sprawl, rolling to a stop just feet away from the drone that had taken his leg. He smiled up at it as he threw the second grenade, bouncing it off a drone thirty feet away, then threw himself toward his chosen target as he drew a detonator from his belt and jammed his thumb down on the button.

“Allahu Akbar,” he said just before the explosion tore him to shreds right along with the beast he had charged.

It collapsed on him, leaving only two remaining, as a rain of automatic fire tore through them and ended the battle.

Other eyes watched and noted his sacrifice, but they didn’t have time for either mourning or celebration. There were more monsters to fell, and everyone present knew that there would be more sacrifices to make.

The dust slowly settled, the blood soaked into the ground, and elsewhere in New Delhi an explosion gave notice that the battle may be won, but the war continued.