33

Leonov watched the television with growing alarm, although he kept it well hidden. The 2nd Red Army was still camped in Volgograd. He had planned to continue their march to Moscow that morning, but the assault playing out on the TV was impossible to ignore. There wasn’t much to see of the space battle. But the ground war was playing out live to the world, as a few reporters were still broadcasting scattered, confused coverage from Washington. It was impossible to tell propaganda from truth. Maybe it always had been. He doubted anyone could track everything that was happening right now.

His own spies reported that the cannon in Moscow was firing nonstop, apparently targeting the alien ships up above the planet. The General had gone dark for the moment. Leonov’s men remained loyal and obedient. No desertions. They were waiting for orders. For guidance. He knew he couldn’t remain glued to the TV or wait around for his laptop to buzz much longer. He suddenly realized the satellite that provided the computer’s connection might have been destroyed. Rodchenko and a few others were in the room, and their gaze was locked on the flickering, fiery images, just as Leonov’s was. They didn’t have the burden of command. They didn’t have to make decisions.

Deciphering the correct next move was difficult, given the destruction unfolding on the TV screen. The reporters and their cameras were having a hard time grasping the flow of the battle on the ground. Part of it was that they were afraid to get too close to the firefight. Several reporters had already been killed in the crossfire, live on the air. It was like nothing Leonov had ever seen. One idiot reporter, decked out in military-style cargo pants and a blue bulletproof vest, had accompanied a squad of soldiers directly to the front. The journalist had been incinerated where he stood when a group of alien soldiers materialized out of thin air and launched a flurry of green fire at the American detachment. Leonov suspected the unsecured wireless transmission from the camera back to the studio had drawn the enemy fire, but it was impossible to know. At any rate, he couldn’t believe the United States military would allow reporters into battle, and broadcasting live!

Still, he had to admit he could not tear his eyes from the calamity unfolding on the screen before him.

It should have been a rout. The Americans were obviously outgunned. They were nevertheless fighting an effective, orderly retreat, inflicting heavy losses as they fell back in formation. Their weapons were clearly primitive compared to those of the enemy. And yet, every time the smoke cleared on a skirmish, alien bodies and shattered alien weaponry were nearly as numerous as American casualties. The American military wasn’t that good. The human with the alien machines in his body must be among the defenders. There were glimpses of a shape flitting through the chaos, quick fire directed toward the aliens and then a second volley from hundreds of meters away just seconds later. It was far too fast for any human infantryman to move.

Leonov couldn’t get a clear look. The reporters and camera operators obviously had no idea what was happening. All they saw in the retreat was defeat. They couldn’t grasp the tactical brilliance of the maneuver or the heavy toll it was taking on the mrill. The media then babbled their gibbering ignorance out to the world. Still, even the TV idiots understood where the mrill were going. The cameras occasionally cut to shots of the defensive cannon sending thunder and lighting up into the night sky, another security violation that Leonov found both bizarre and enlightening. It looked like the mrill didn’t have enough troops to make it before the last of them were destroyed. This American soldier with the alien technology was obviously good at his job.

Leonov looked down at the chunk of debris he had rescued from the destroyed station in Gorkovskiy. He was an intelligent man, educated and well-traveled. The technology at play here was slipping beyond the grasp of human understanding. He wondered if even the Americans were truly comfortable with the weapons and tools they had been given. What was that saying? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?

“Arthur C. Clarke,” Rodchenko said, and Leonov was startled from his reverie, thinking for a moment his friend had read his mind. “That quote is from the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.”

Leonov realized he must have muttered the phrase quietly as it had run through his head.

“I didn’t know you read such decadent literature, Vanya,” Leonov said with a friendly smile.

Rodchenko shrugged, not looking away from the TV.

“It always seemed a bit ridiculous to me . . . apparently I was wrong.”

They were quiet for a moment. On the table, two cups of long-ignored tea had gone cold. Leonov absently picked up one of the cups, sipped, and grimaced at the taste.

“There must have been truth to the reports,” Rodchenko added, nodding toward the screen. “The Americans should have been defeated otherwise.”

He handed Leonov a flask without looking away from the TV, and the older man poured a splash into the tea cup. A sip, then a sigh, and he set it back down. Later.

“And they must have more than one of these guardians,” he said. “We cannot see the space combat, but if the Americans have engaged the aliens up there as well, then they must have a similar force piloting their space craft.”

He thought for a moment.

“But they must not have many of these men. Otherwise, we would see more of them on the ground in Washington. They’re fighting an effective tactical retreat, but they are losing many lives. Americans are always eager to send technology to do a soldier’s job when possible. If they’re sending the soldiers instead, then the technology must be spread very thin.”

Rodchenko nodded.

“Very soon, I would expect these aliens to concentrate all their fire on these upgraded men. They’re the only real threat, no?”

“And if they’re defeated, the Americans will have no choice but to turn their nuclear weapons on their own cities. Although perhaps the aliens will have countermeasures for that, as well,” Leonov replied.

Rodchenko, uncertainty etched on his face, leaned forward so only Leonov could hear him.

“Yuri, are we fighting the wrong enemy? We can still take Moscow and overthrow the bureaucrats, but we cannot stand against that,” he said, gesturing at the TV. “Maybe we should form an alliance with the United States?”

Leonov stared at the screen for a long moment.

“No, Vanya, I think we stick to our plan. You’re right. I don’t think we can defeat this force. But maybe the Americans can. We let them exhaust themselves against this foe, and we step into the vacuum. Russia still needs saving. We must be on our way soon.”

“And if the aliens win?” Rodchenko asked.

The light from the fierce battle on the TV flickered across Leonov’s face, leaving reflections of orange flame in his eyes.

“Then, Vanya, we die for the Motherland.”

Ben couldn’t believe how close the news reporters were getting to the battle. He tried to protect them as well as he could, but the mrill separated their forces every time he did, sending the larger detachment on to attack the cannon near the White House, which Ben had to pursue. The hapless reporters were soon destroyed. Ben got on his own secure line to Rickert and yelled at him to keep the media back.

“We’re trying,” Rickert said. “Things are falling apart. There’s major panic all through the New York, Boston, DC region, and we’ve had to deploy National Guard, Army, Marines, everything, just to prevent 30 million people from stampeding in every goddamn direction.”

“And the reason they’re panicking is because these TV news idiots are covering everything we’re doing,” Ben said. “Of course they’re panicking! I’m sure it looks like a fiasco on TV. You’ve got to cut that shit off.”

“Even if I could, it wouldn’t matter,” Rickert said. “The news crews are just a tiny part of it. You’ve got maybe a thousand people with cellphone cameras broadcasting all over the internet—at least the parts of it that are still working. There are even a couple guys flying personal drones, the two-hundred-, three-hundred-dollar jobs out over the battlefield, live streaming from their onboard cameras. Or they were, anyway. Apparently they got taken out in the bombing run by the B-2s.”

“Those guys make it back to base safely?”

“Yeah, most of them. Looks like the mrill managed to shoot one down. We’re not sure if the crew was able to eject. I’m like that damn Dutch kid trying to plug a million leaks with his fingers and toes.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. What’s your status?”

Ben fired three shots from his rifle, toggled over to a timed explosive round that he launched into the side of a building near a mrill squad, and sprinted down the street, hurtling over wreckage and sliding to a stop beneath the jagged roots of an overturned tree. Hot shards of shrapnel embedded in the tree, surrounding cars, and concrete smoked and smoldered.

“We’re holding a quarter mile from the White House, and I think I can stop them here.”

The timed explosive round detonated. The force of the blast shoved one of the concealed mrill out into the street, and Ben blew it apart with two quick shots. It fired wildly into the air as it tumbled to the ground. The mrill didn’t seem interested in even rudimentary battlefield tactics. They didn’t bother to establish overwatch or sniper teams to protect their main force. No advance scouts. They just massed and charged, like some seventeenth-century European army blundering across an open field. All that’s missing are the drums and fifes. Not that it mattered against most of the defenders. The military forces simply couldn’t touch their technology. Ben, on the other hand, was dancing around them like a wasp around a bear. It had obviously been a long time since the mrill had faced anything like an equal foe. Even the brin had been overmatched.

The mrill’s arrogance was the most effective tool in Ben’s arsenal. Even with their signal jammed, they still assumed their numbers and better guns would overwhelm the defenders. He thought about how the US had stomped into Iraq and Afghanistan. Night vision and motion detectors and body armor and drones and satellite surveillance against malnourished mountain men wrapped in raggedy gowns and clutching AK-47s older than some of the soldiers they were trying to shoot. Turkey shoot. Cakewalk. Some fifteen years later, and the US had staggered out in some kind of bloody-nosed, ill-defined draw. You didn’t need technological parity to defeat your enemy. Sometimes, close enough was close enough.

A pair of A-10 “Warthog” jets rumbled in low over the horizon for an attack run. Ben found their radio link through the tangle of wireless communication threads nearly choking the sky overhead. He sliced through the relatively primitive encryption around their signal. There was no time for pleasantries.

“US ground force to approaching A-10s, this is Lieutenant Ben Shepherd. I’m on the ground engaging the enemy. You’re also patched in to US Army General Tom Rickert. I need you to listen very closely and quickly. You’re about twelve seconds out from the enemy position. I’ll mark target with smoke. If you waste time with questions, you’ll probably be shot down. Out.”

He didn’t wait for a response, ordering the marines who’d gathered near him to pop smoke grenades on the mrill position while he provided cover fire. Everyone moved without question. They were too tired to do anything but obey at this point. As the smoke grenades arced through the air and Ben fired and ran, he noted briefly that this smelled unlike any battle he’d ever been a part of.

The flames and smoke were familiar, though other elements were radically different. The smell of gunpowder lingered in the background, the result of the conventional weapons fired by the military units; the old black brew of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate that had been the hallmark of every battlefield Ben had ever known. But his own weapon and those of the mrill forces produced an odor, or really a lack of odor, that Ben could only think of as alien. Even though he knew the basics of the hydrogen ionization process that formed the heart of his rifle, the total lack of noticeable smell was still jarring. Goldberg, the excitable engineer, had explained that hydrogen was odorless, and his weapon would not produce any kind of trackable smell when fired. That chubby savant had assured him that was a good thing, as it was one fewer way for mrill sensors to detect Ben’s movements. It was also more proof how much everything had changed.

Ben noted almost subconsciously that the humans were winning, at least down here. There were three mrill fighters and one robot left. They were still doing heavy damage to everything around them, but their pace had slowed. Ben could hear the regular pulse of the cannon behind him, now no more than a thousand yards or so, and a blanket of red light fell over everything each time it fired. These bastards are going to die within sight of their objective, Ben thought with savage satisfaction.

And then the A-10s arrived.

Each opened their massive, nose-mounted 30 mm “Avenger” Gatling guns. The cannons burped and delivered a mix of armor-piercing and incendiary rounds, aluminum slugs wrapped around a depleted uranium core. The supersonic shells landed before the sound even reached the ground, screaming through the yellow smoke.

The banana-sized bullets ripped through the mrill position, obliterating the robot and one of the mrill troops.

The A-10s peeled off. One of the remaining mrill troops fired at the receding aircraft, catching the tail of one of them. The aircraft broke apart and spiraled into the ground, but not before the pilot ejected. A ragged cheer went up from the US ground forces closing in on the mrill position. Two Abrams tanks clattered into view from an adjacent street, firing as they came, while Ben directed two of the Chinese drones that had just shot down a pair of mrill drones to circle back and engage as well. This would be over in moments. And the sun was rising, Ben noticed. We’re winning, he thought.

Ben felt Nick opening his internal communication link.

“Shit, watch out below, boss. Major incoming. And we’ve got our hands full up here.”

Ben looked up just in time to see forty mrill drones escorting three mrill drop ships punch through the orange-tinged clouds. The drones rained green fire in every direction, emerald beams sending up yellow and orange fireballs—all of it reflecting off the low-slung clouds. Even as he was mentally rallying the Chinese drones and readying his own rifle, Ben thought it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.