[1100 HOURS LOCAL TIME]
[OLD US EMBASSY, CANBERRA]
“ACOG are taking your request under advisement.” Bilal sounded worried and frustrated on the speaker.
“Request!” Barnard exploded. “It’s not a request. Don’t they understand that they are picking a fight they can’t possibly win?”
“Barnard’s right,” Price said. “It’s mass suicide.”
“I explained it in words of one syllable,” Bilal said. “They’re asking for proof, but frankly, the impression I got was that ACOG are so determined to show off their new military might, to teach the Bzadians a lesson and tear them a new asshole, that they won’t change their minds.”
“Proof?” Price said.
“They are looking for these bombs of yours,” Bilal said. “They’re interrogating all the captured Fezerkers. They are taking this seriously.”
“Not seriously enough,” Price said.
“I’ll keep trying,” Bilal said. “What’s your plan? What are you doing with Azoh?”
“Azoh seems to believe that if she addresses the High Council, she can convince them not to retaliate.” Price said. “Chisnall and Brogan are trying to get her there.”
“Do you trust her? Is she on our side?”
“She’s on nobody’s side,” Barnard said. “She’s Azoh.”
“Pukes moving up to the main gates,” Wall yelled.
“Gotta go,” Price said. She cut off the call. “Okay, kids, time we showed them our teeth and claws. Lock the gates and arm the weapons.”
“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” Barnard said.
“What?” Price asked.
“Never mind,” Barnard said. “Here they come.”
The big screens showed the compound and its grounds from all angles. The gardens, once manicured, were now overgrown under the reign of the Bzadians: the tennis court, the swimming pool, emptied and disused.
The black-suited Nzgali and the grey uniformed regular soldiers were advancing steadily across the open ground, using what shelter they could find: trees, shrubs, fences. Some glided across the ground on T-boards.
“Let them keep coming,” Price said. “Let them think this is going to be easy. We’ll start with the machine guns and keep the Bofors as an ace up our sleeves.”
Still the tide of Bzadian soldiers flowed towards the old ambassador’s residence.
“Hold your fire,” Price murmured. “A little further.”
The first of the soldiers was almost at the doors when Price said, “Now!’”
The chatter of machine guns came about three seconds later. On the video screens they could see circular plugs of grass rise up out of the lawn, at first unnoticed by the Bzadian troops, then the stream of fire as the high velocity bullets squirted from the muzzles.
Soldiers fell. Some merely stunned, protected by their armour. Others injured.
As soon as the Bzadians identified the threat, it was gone. The pods melded seamlessly back into the grass, leaving just a drifting pall of smoke, a ghostly presence over the battlefield.
The alien soldiers scanned around desperately, seeking targets, trying to return fire. But there was nothing to fire at.
“Count to three,” Price said. “Now.”
Just as the soldiers began to restore some sort of order, a different set of guns emerged and the thunder began again.
There were clear signs of panic among the regular soldiers, but the Nzgali were too good for that. They were calm and controlled under fire. Price nearly lost a pod when a Nzgali grenade exploded on the ground just after she retracted the pod.
A third set of pods opened up and the troops retreated; unsure where the next attack would come from, they dragged their wounded and their unconscious, perhaps dead, comrades with them.
“Boo-yah!” Monster cried.
“They’ll be back,” Price said. “And it won’t be so easy next time.”
“Scream Leader to Scream Team, we got a lot of wildlife ahead of us,” Shaw said. They had just crossed the coastline and her radar scope was bright with targets. The air was uneven and the cockpit of her jet was jolting around like a car on an old dirt track. She glanced out at the wings, above and below the plane, and wondered exactly how much of this they could take. The scream jets had been developed in furious haste, without the usual time for testing and refining. If the wings were going to fail, now was when they would find out. And at mach 5, ejection was not an option.
“Scream Four to Scream Leader. I’m counting at least seven Dragons over Canberra.”
“Then make like St George,” Shaw said. “It’s nothing we can’t handle. On the first pass focus on the air cover. We’ve got Type Ones and Type Twos as well as those Dragons in the air and that means a lot of ordnance coming our way. Stay high, that will give the SAMs a longer ride. The Dragons are going to be our biggest problem. As soon as they fire, go vertical; their rockets will never catch us. Drop your countermeasures as you go and reverse-fire your air-to-air missiles. Once we’ve cleared the sky, we’ll come back for the SAM sites. We need to cut the spikes off this cactus before we go for the juicy bits. Are we clear?”
She got a chorus of assent from the other members of the team.
Ahead of them their long-range cameras showed a fiercely burning fire line less than a kilometre from the city. A grey pall of smoke covered almost all of the target area.
“Scream Two to Scream Leader, do you see those tanks on the thermal scope? Whole bunch of them at our ten. They appear to be heading towards the old US Embassy. Isn’t that where the Angels are?”
“Solid copy and confirming, Scream Two. That is the safety point for the Angels,” Shaw said.
“Do you want me to light ’em up?” Scream Two asked. “Give those Angel kids a helping hand?”
“Negative, Scream Two,” Shaw said. “It’s too dangerous while the Pukes still have air assets in our vicinity. Concentrate on the fighters.”
The next attack was by a smaller force, Nzgali only, the regular soldiers confined to the perimeter. They came in armoured cars, charging through the gates on three sides of the compound.
“Can we play with the big guns now?” Wall asked.
“Yes, keep the pods down,” Price said. “They’re waiting for them.”
Teams with rocket launchers were creeping in behind the armoured cars, trying to identify the sites of the pop-up machine guns.
“Hit the vehicles as soon as they’re within range,” Price said.
“No, wait,” Wall said. “Those cars are heavily armoured. But when they reach the building the sides will drop to become ramps for the assault troops.”
“Okay, wait for the ramps,” Price said.
She armed her first Bofors gun, and somewhere in a dusty garret, a heavy metal screen drew back and the long snout of the automatic cannon protruded.
Six of the armoured cars skidded to a halt at the building’s main entrance. The sides dropped and suddenly Nzgali were everywhere.
“Now!” Price shouted and the crack, crack, crack of the huge guns filled the air, shaking the walls of the safe room.
The results were devastating.
Even if the armoured walls had been up, Price doubted they could have withstood the volume of fire that encased each of the armoured cars. With the walls down, the vehicles disappeared in a teeth-shaking series of explosions and balls of flame as their fuel tanks ignited.
“Pods!” Price shouted. “And turn the Bofors on the rocket teams.”
The Nzgali, thrown to the ground by the force of the explosions, were just starting to pick themselves up when the machine guns started. Even the finest troops of the Bzadian army could not cope with the smoke, the firing of the guns, the shock and disorganisation. They broke and ran for their lives. Those on the ground stayed there.
Price saw a rocket team lining up on one of the pods and switched to her second Bofors, which had a clearer angle at them. She aimed just in front of the team and hit the firing button. Dirt and lawn erupted, scattering the soldiers like tenpins.
Another team, another burst from the Bofors, and the rocket teams were in full retreat also.
“Run like the wind, mother-shippers!” Wall yelled, standing and punching the air.
“Next time it will be tanks,” Barnard said.
“Not as long as they think Azoh is in here,” Price said. “And Azoh-zu as well.”
She glanced around. “Where the hell is Azoh-zu?”
The boy was no longer in his seat. In the middle of the excitement, perhaps scared by the gunfire, he had disappeared back into the tunnel.
“Dammit,” Price cried. But there was nothing she could do about that now. She readied herself for the next assault.
“Azoh!” Dequorz cried. “They just took out our last Dragon!”
Eighteen Razers and seven Dragons had already been destroyed without the loss of any of the intruders.
“Pull back the remaining fighters,” Kriz said. “Get them out of there!”
“And leave the capital defenceless?” Dequorz asked, horrified.
“We are defenceless already against these new jets,” Kriz said. “It is suicide sending in more planes. Wait for the reinforcements to arrive from Amberley, then attack en masse. Their planes are small; they must have a limited supply of missiles.”
Kriz looked up at the giant screen that was their video link to the council chamber. A heated debate was underway.
“Report from the communications centre,” Dequorz said. “The tanks are in position and awaiting orders to move in.”
“Hold them there,” Kriz said, still staring at the video screen.
Field Marshall Leozii was standing in the centre of the chamber. “Human warplanes fly with impunity over our heads, while our mighty Dragons fall from the sky,” he was saying. “We can no longer defend the capital. In fact we can no longer guarantee to defend any Bzadian city or base. We have nothing to match these new jets. This war is now lost, unless we take action.”
“We came to this planet to make a home for our people,” a councillor said. “Not to destroy its inhabitants.”
“Yet the natives will wipe us out, if we don’t take direct action,” Leozii said. “We came offering friendship and new technologies. They spurned us, tried to quarantine us, and now they try to kill us.”
Another councillor spoke up, a female, completely bald, the oldest of all the councillors. “Leozii is right. For all our best intentions, it has come down to us or them. There is no room for both species on this planet.”
Kriz’s radio buzzed with an urgent message. She answered without taking her eyes off the screen. It was Jazki.
“Azoh is no longer at the communications centre,” the young captain said.
“You are sure?” Kriz asked.
“I have a flybot following her, with two of the infiltrators, along a tunnel that leads away from the building,” Jazki said.
“What about Azoh-zu?” Kriz asked.
“There is no sign of him,” Jazki said. “No, wait! He just passed through the tunnel in front of us.”
“I will be right there,” Kriz said.
She turned back to Dequorz. “The tanks can commence their assault. Azoh and Azoh-zu are no longer in the building. I have to get back to the tunnel. Inform me of any developments.”
Dequorz nodded.
As Kriz left, she glanced again at the video link to the High Council chamber. A vote was being held: whether or not to use the positronium weapons. She did not wait to see the result.
Once they passed the vote – and it would pass –the last human territories would be only a few minutes from total annihilation.
“Tanks moving up on the south side,” Wall yelled. “Time we were Oscar Mike.”
“They won’t fire,” Price said. “They still think Azoh is in here.”
Almost immediately the sound of the tank’s main gun, resounding distantly through the walls of the room, proved her wrong. On the video screen there was a flash from the tank’s muzzle then the image disappeared into grainy static.
The whole building shook and all the lights flickered. The video screens went blank for a few seconds before recovering.
“What the hell?” Wall shouted. He touched his firing button and on the remaining screens they saw the tank light up like a Christmas tree as the forty-millimetre shells exploded uselessly on its spinning hull. The tank’s gun traversed and lifted then fired. There was an explosion somewhere overhead and the boom-boom-boom of the Bofors stopped.
“Leave it,” Price shouted. “We are out of here!” She followed the others, running for the tunnel entrance. Monster swung the heavy door back into place behind them.
“What now?” Wall asked.
“I don’t know,” Price admitted. “Try to link up with the others.”
“How are we going to do that without radio contact?” Wall asked.
Barnard had already reached the base of the stairs. She stopped running, skidding to a halt on a loose patch of stones. The beam of her helmet flashlight lurched around the walls as she regained her balance.
The others stopped too, looking back at her.
“No radios,” she said.
“We’ll figure something out,” Price said. “The radios can’t work through solid rock. I …”
She trailed off, looking at Barnard who was staring back at her, open mouthed.
“What is it?” Price asked.
“I am so stupid,” Barnard said.
“What are you talking about?” Price asked.
“No radio contact. How are they going to detonate the positronium bombs?”
“I don’t know,” Price said.
“They can’t set them off by radio,” Barnard said. “They are too far away for that. Even Chukchi is out of radio range. They don’t have satellites. So how are they going to detonate the bombs from here?”
“Maybe the Fezerkers set them off. Suicide bombers,” Wall said.
“I thought they caught all the Fezerkers,” Price said.
“Maybe there are more,” Wall said.
“Even if that’s true, they’d still need to contact the Fezerkers,” Barnard said.
“So how do they set off the bombs?” Price asked.
“I can only think of one way,” Barnard said. “We have to get back to the embassy, now!”