THE INVASION
Atalanta, from her perch on the superstructure, literally wired into the colony’s comm system, was monitoring nearby space for objects moving toward them. It was a simple matter to differentiate ships from the odd asteroid-field rock drifting past. The latter would be cold and moving with the colony in orbit, but a ship would be hot with plasma exhaust and cutting across the orbit. She knew what kind of ship it was instantly and where it came from.
Warning sirens sounded, and then Atalanta’s calm, mellifluous voice was heard everywhere on the colony and in the helmets of those at work on the asteroid. Miners in their runabouts shut off their equipment, left the half-devoured rock, and returned to the colony, where people in their homes and workplaces shut off their equipment and left.
“Attention, People of Friendship,” she said. “Please gather calmly in the Theater. This is not a drill.”
They did so calmly, inspired by her voice, taking their children and their pets, walking on the roads or on the catwalks, or filling the subway. At the same time, Atalanta spoke directly to Kelley: “Professor, the game is afoot.”
He and his team gathered up their weapons and set out for their prearranged places of concealment. In a mater of minutes, the colony appeared deserted. The only sounds were the click of equipment, the hush of air in the systems, the chirping of birds and the bleats of animals in their paddocks.
Professor Kelley and Aaron Ben David shouldered their rifles, walked swiftly to the elevator, and rose quickly to the center of the colony. There, looking out over the deserted landscape, they took their places at their sniper nests among the racked hang-gliders and used their magnetic braces to find a comfortable place to perch, one on each side of the Aerie, as it was called.
“Do you see Loris?” Aaron asked.
Kelley peered through the infra-red scope. In the forest were several small woodland creatures, rabbits or groundhogs perhaps, and some larger hot spots that must be deer. In a moment, he found Loris in a thicket by the side of the road through the woods.
“I see her,” he said.
Aaron was looking for Karil, which was somewhat easier as there were no other warm bodies in the village, the dogs having been taken to the shelter by their masters. Then he spotted him moving stealthily from one place of concealment to another in the village streets.
“I have Karil.”
The farmland, by contrast, was filled with the hot bodies of domestic animals, but experience told both of the sharpshooters that there were no humans among them. They hardly expected Cuchillo’s men to travel a road with so little possibility of concealment.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” Aaron said.
“If Cuchillo sends them down the roads,” Kelley said.
“Oh, he will. Once he sees the place is deserted and we pull our little surprise on him, he’ll guess everyone is in the shelter and he’ll definitely want to talk to them. He’s got—what?—forty or fifty men?”
“I believe the ship’s crew is 48,” Atalanta said in their earpieces.
“He won’t think there’s any real danger, but he’ll be highly suspicious, and he won’t put all his troops in one place. I wouldn’t. He’ll divide them up into squads and send them by different routes, and we’ve got them all covered.
***
Swift-footed Achilles hung in space just off the harbor of Friendship Colony. It appeared that all of the shuttles and flyers were berthed there, and the asteroid below had been evacuated.
“They’ve actually stopped working.” Montana said in his artificial voice.
“My guess,” said Cuchillo, “is that they’ve gathered in the shelter at the far end, hoping we’ll give up and go away. Do they think we can’t make our way to the far end and take down whatever door they’re hiding behind?”
“Why is the gathering place so far from the harbor?” Montana wondered out loud.
“Because most of the radiation danger comes from the sun. The colony is oriented so the mirrors face that way. The whole length of the colony provides more shielding. In a bad storm, a few animals might receive too much radiation, but the people would not.”
“They’ll still be listening,” Soldado said. “What do we tell them?”
Cuchillo spoke into the comm. “Nice try, people. Do you think we can’t blow that hatch to Hell and come aboard in our EV-suits? Open the goddamn hatch!”
The lights on the hatches winked on.
“You’ll pay for every inconvenience you put us through. You’d better have a full load of metal for us, or we’re coming to get you and destroying everything we pass on the way.”
The ship nosed forward and mated with the lock. Cuchillo and his lieutenants cycled through and found the place silent and deserted. There were a dozen magnetic sleds of nickel-iron and other metals ready for loading.
“Well,” Cuchillo told the listening devices, “You’ve just saved a number of lives and a lot of damage to your precious home. But do you think we’re going to load this ourselves? Send down some roustabouts and load this cargo.”
There was silence. Cuchillo began to lose his temper. “Respond immediately. If we have to do this ourselves, there’ll be Hell to pay. Trust me.”
For all that they could tell, the colony was deserted, but all the transports were in port and anyway, Cuchillo knew, they would never leave their sanctuary. Perhaps they had changed their philosophy and were waiting with weapons. If so, they were fools.
“All right then. We will simply take what’s ours, but you’re going to pay a heavy price for this inconvenience.” He turned to the open lock of his ship. “Get out here and load this cargo. That’s an order.”
Grumbling under their breath, the soldiers left the ship and began loading. Montana was amused at their reluctance to perform manual labor. The sleds moved of their own accord and there was no hard work involved. They had only to be steered into the ship’s cargo hold and battened down. Typical soldiers, he thought.
“Okay, People,” Cuchillo said at the end. “If you thought we were going to just leave with the goods, you’re mistaken. We’re coming to see you now and don’t think you can hide behind a big door. You can spend the time deciding who pays for this insult.”
He switched off the comm and watched the lights flicker out, then turned to his troops.
“Squad Epsilon will remain on board the ship and guard it in case they have some idea of sabotage. Squads Gamma and Delta will take the ratwalks through the superstructure. Montana will command Gamma. Squad Beta will take the subway. Soldado will be in charge. Squad Alpha will come with me along the roads through the cylinder. You’re the best and that’s the likeliest place for an ambush. They may have left someone to guard their homes, or they may plan to attack under cover from the forest. Let’s go.”
The troops shouldered their arms, ranging from pistols and lasers to grenade-launchers and rockets, and set off down the corridors. Epsilon Squad returned to the bridge, leaving the lock open. Several minutes passed before there was a blinking light on the bridge control panel.
“It’s a warning light,” said the squad leader. He removed a panel and peered inside. Smoke poured out. Suddenly, alarm bells rang, and the bridge was filled with hissing gas. They scrambled off the ship, leaving the prisoners behind. The lock irised shut and the Swift-Footed Achilles detached from the colony and drifted offside. The squad leader rushed to the hatch, but of course the outer hatch was still open, and he could do nothing.
The prisoners on board the Achilles fell into a panic at the alarms, though there was no smoke in their cells. There was a thud and a clank as a large body attached itself to the top of the ship. Then they heard a lilting female voice.
“I am Celeste,” she said. “You are safe now. I will take you some kilometers away. We will wait for the battle for Friendship to finish and then, with the help of the Friends and my colleagues, we will return you to your homes. I am so sorry about what happened to you, but please be patient and you will soon be reunited with your families. Now, it may be some time. I would like to get to know you. Let’s start with the smallest. What’s your name, Sweetheart?”
Epsilon Squad leader messaged Cuchillo and reported. After his tantrum, he said, “I don’t know what they think they’re doing, but they’ll pay dearly for it.” He marched off toward the main cylinder and his men followed, eyeing each other and keeping silent. Somehow, it was all going wrong.
***
Delta Squad took a short trip in an elevator to the superstructure and the door opened. They stepped out onto a ratwalk, a long, cage-like tunnel. Powering up their magnetic boots, they walked along its length, their ears assaulted by a continuous roar like a great waterfall. The ratwalk vibrated disconcertingly and static electricity played over the steel cage. Above them, terrifyingly close, the inner cylinder of the colony rotated past them, like some great grinding stone.
One cylinder rotated within another. Below their feet was the unmoving outer cylinder, and every once in a while, there was a transparent panel like a window, giving a view of the stars. Here and there were places where they could climb down a ladder and access external airlocks. Fortunately, the rat-walk was only a mile long from one end of the colony to the other, because walking in magnetic boots was tedious and the sound of the rotating cylinder was deafening.
But suddenly there was a gate across the ratwalk and a sign about danger and repairs. Someone suggested cutting it with his laser, but they could see another such gate in the distance. Cutting them both would probably take more time than going back the way they came, and there was no telling what kind of danger was referred to. They could see nothing wrong, but that didn’t matter. There was no hope of contacting Cuchillo; the static electricity was playing havoc with their communications.
“We could go outside,” the Sergeant said.
“What are you talking about?”
“A couple of meters back is a ladder-well down to an airlock. There must be p-suits and charged air-tanks. There has to be. These people wouldn’t break the safety rules. We can cycle through the lock, cross over on the outside, and come back in through the next lock.”
He was met with looks of scepticism.
“We’ve all space-walked. It’s part of our training. Tourists do it for fun, for fuck sake.”
“Well…”
“Do you want to go back to the ship and tell Cuchillo that we gave up at the first obstacle?”
“Well, no, but…”
“I’m the Sergeant. Do you want to tell him you disobeyed an order? Because I’m telling you this is what we have to do.”
In the end, they fell in line. The squad walked back a few meters, climbed down the well, and found themselves in a suit-room in front of a surface-lock. There were pressure-suits in various sizes and charged air-tanks, which they examined carefully. They suited up and cycled through the generously sized lock.
Once the hatch was sealed and the air evacuated, the thunder of the revolving cylinder was gone, and the silence was exquisite. The outer hatch irised open and they saw the cosmos full of stars. Walking across the outer surface of the colony was perhaps the most enjoyable moment they had experienced since being assigned to Cuchillo’s command, except for a rape or two. Their only worry was whether the next lock would function. But when the buttons were pressed, the lock opened immediately, and they climbed in.
They shut the outer hatch and opened the inner to find a small female figure standing there with a sawed-off shotgun in her hands.
“Drop your weapons,” she growled. “Now!”
Three raised their own weapons instead and she fired off three shells in rapid succession. Three pressure-suits were ripped open, and blood poured out into the air. The other three soldiers let go of their weapons, which drifted away, and they quickly raised their hands.
“You,” Chi-Chi Li said, “pass them up to me.”
The designated soldier did so.
“Okay, now your helmets. Theirs too.”
There was some hesitation, but she cocked her shotgun with a loud crack and their helmets were passed up to her, including those of the dead or wounded victims.
“All right, I’m locking you in. You have several hours of air, and someone will come and get you out, unless Cuchillo kills us all, in which case you will die slowly. Meanwhile, you can contemplate what it means to throw in your lot with someone like Cuchillo.”
“What about them?”
“They should have been smart enough not to pull a gun on me when I had the drop on them. If they’re not dead, they will be soon. There’s a med-kit in there and you can stop the blood before it covers you and the walls.” She pressed a button to close the lock. “Oh yes, Mars Vigila!”
When the hatch was closed, she smashed the controls with the butt of her shotgun and stomped off in her magnetic boots.
***
“The idea behind Nova Terra,” the Professor said, “was to build a colony like the High Continents, but in orbit around Titan, where sunlight would seem to be too faint to grow Terran vegetation. We succeeded by creating huge, curved mirrors to focus the light and send it into the interior. We modelled it after a High Company design, with one cylinder based on New World landscapes and one on Old. We particularly wanted to make a pocket Africa because the African fauna on Earth was almost completely extinct. But the only place we could purchase such animals was High Africa.
“And that’s why you hired Karil for the Sixth Day project.”
“Yes, to help us design the habitat and transport the animals, whose behaviour he knew so well. The problem was his family owned one-sixth of High Africa and they were trying to kill him, so we couldn’t admit he was helping us.”
“Sorry to interrupt, Professor,” Atalanta said, “but Cuchillo is here with a dozen troops. I have informed Loris and Karil.”
Kelley peered through his scope and saw Karil and Loris conferring at a crossroads. “Loris? Karil?” he said. They touched their ears. “It’s show time,” he told them.
“Right.” Loris tapped her kendo stick on the ground, and it lengthened to two meters. She slapped Karil on the ass, and he did the same to her. They separated, she to cross the road and vanish into the forest, while he adjusted the laser on his hip and the crossbow on his back and jogged down the road into the abandoned village.
A few minutes later, through the scope, Kelley saw two squads entering the cylinder and proceeding cautiously down the ramp. Cuchillo directed one squad onto the forest trail and one onto the Village Road.
“I told you,” Aaron said. “The Farm Road is too exposed. He’s very suspicious and smells a trap.” Cuchillo accompanied the squad into the village, taking advantage of any cover available. The other squad crept cautiously into the woods, weapons at the ready, and spread out in a line.
“Darkling, Atty,” the Professor said.
The mirrors began to close, though it was early in the day, and a shadow crept across the landscape. The forest became dark and, eerily, the birds fell silent. Some of Cuchillo’s men donned night goggles and others switched on lights. The Professor knew that, unless they were careful, they could end up blinding each other.
In the darkened wood, the mood became tense, and the soldiers searched the suddenly frightening forest about them, clutching their weapons all the tighter. The soldier bringing up the rear disappeared with a startled cry. In infra-red, the Professor could see Loris moving silently and stealthily through the dark, hardly disturbing a leaf by her passage. She moved like a dancer in slow motion. There was a thud of a steel rod connecting with a skull and another soldier fell. Suddenly, there was a burst of gunfire as Cuchillo’s men began to shoot each other. Others burst from the woods in terror and stood in the road. Sniper bullets struck the road at their feet, driving them back into the woods again. The reports of the snipers’ rifles echoed across the landscape. Some of Cuchillo’s men fired wildly into the forest, endangering Loris. They died.
“That’s two for me,” Aaron said.
“It’s the edge of my range,” Kelley replied.
“Bullshit. My eyes are twenty years younger.”
Atalanta monitored Cuchillo’s radio frequency as they crept through the village, and she passed it on to Aaron and Kelley.
“What’s going on over there?” Cuchillo demanded. He searched the landscapes for the shooters but there were echoes and re-echoes and he could not find the source.
The soldier beside him gave a strangled cry and fell, an arrow through his throat. He turned as he fell, and no-one could determine where the arrow had come from. Karil slipped away and quickly moved to some other concealment. One of Cuchillo’s men noticed a movement and swung his laser in Karil’s direction. Kelley put a bullet in his brain.
***
Beneath the three linear landscapes of the center cylinder were three tunnels running from one end to the other. Beneath the residential village was the subway. Beneath the forest were the mains, because the forest was a part of the water system, particularly the small lake in the center, sheltered by the rolling wooded hills. And beneath the farmland was a tunnel giving access to the agricultural toruses that ringed the cylinder, revolving with it beneath the sun-mirrors. Much of the crops grown there were used for animal feed, and the manure provided by the farms was used in the hydroponic and aeroponic gardens for fertilizer.
Montana’s squad moved through the deserted tunnels. The transportation belts were silent now, shut off during the lockdown. The squad marched with some trepidation from one pool of light to another, in utter silence except for the clank of Montana’s boots on the tunnel floor. It seemed unsafe somehow, to follow the commands of a man who was virtually indestructible and therefore fearless. His taciturn nature and the lack of emotion in his half-steel face made it hard to relate to him. And when he looked at you, his eyes irised open like a spy-camera, giving him the air of a man looking into your soul.
They would have been even more nervous if they had known that Toro was following them, just beyond the light. He could see them and detect their heartbeat, which allowed him to tell how frightened they were. The Professor had outfitted him with special footwear which maintained his magnetic grip on the steel walkways yet provided padding that allowed him to move silently. It was not lost on the men that Cuchillo and his hand-picked favorites were even now strolling down a pleasant country road, though if they could hear the gunfire not far above them, they might have felt differently about the matter.
The last man in the squad, bringing up the rear, turned often to look behind, as was his role in the march, but he would face forward again quickly, so as not to lose sight of his companions. Thus, he did not see or hear Toro coming up swiftly behind him. He would have shouted upon feeling the Cyborg’s metal hands on his head, but his neck snapped so suddenly that he made no sound at all. Toro caught up his falling weapon and placed it silently on the floor-grate. He did not need it because a more appropriate weapon was on his own shoulder—a machine-gun more commonly attached to the hood or the roof of a tracked vehicle but weighing almost nothing as far as Toro was concerned.
By the time Montana looked back to check on his men, half of them were gone. The remainder of his squad looked at each other in terror. Was he going to send someone back to check on the stragglers? The prospect was terrifying. No-one could hazard a guess as to what had happened to their comrades.
Montana slipped his own machine-gun off his broad shoulder and the men dove for the floor. He fired over them, tracers streaking into the gloom. He heard the clang and whine of bullets on steel. Either they had struck the floor-grill or the wall, or there was another Cyborg back there, grateful for his steel torso. It was not uncommon, he knew, for cyborgs to find employment with Belters. If they had one available, the Friendship Colony might well have sent him after Montana, since the latter could hardly be beaten by a normal human being.
Montana said, “Friendship Colony plans,” and the plans on file with the Quasi-Police popped up before one eye. “End,” he said and raised his voice to speak to his men.
“This way. I know how to find out who’s trailing us.” He turned smartly and stomped away, and his men scurried to their feet to follow him. Shortly, they found themselves before a hatch. Montana touched the panel with the sensitive fingers of his left hand, found the place where electrical power was flowing, and his right hand ripped off the panel. The hatch irised open and mist poured out. Montana darted through and his men followed, not pleased about the soaking mist but happy to see sunlight. The plants hung in long rows, their roots trailing in the nutrient-rich water below. In the constant sunlight, they thrived. Mist from pipes overhead sprayed upon them every few minutes.
Some minutes later, Toro stood on the same spot.
“Atty?” he said.
“They have continued on their way through the hydroponic gardens,” she said. “You can follow them safely, but if you approach too closely, Montana will be able to detect you in the mist. He seems to be extremely clever.”
Toro smiled with his half-face. “That’s our best weapon, Atty. People think we’re stupid because we’re strong, but we’re engineers, after all, and pretty damn smart. And artificial intelligence is built into our body-armor.”
“I know,” Atalanta said.
Toro unslung his huge weapon, strode through the lock, and moved off into the mist.
***
The subway at Friendship was only a mile long, but there were several stations. Between the first station at the harbor, where ships came in to load and unload, and the last station near the Safe Room, now filled with the colony’s residents, there were stops at villages and one at the elevator to the Aerie. Shadow felt at home, as she waited patiently on a girder above Station One. It was dark up there and the train waited below, light pouring out of the open doors onto the platform.
She knew the Nueva York system intimately, as it was her pathway to everywhere in the city. Of course, much of it was under water, and many stations and tunnels were the dwelling places of the homeless. But some of the midtown lines had recently been put back in service, and in her makeshift quarters there she could hear the trains rumbling overhead. The sound was comforting to her, like the rain on the roof or the chirping of crickets had been in her childhood, when she lay crying in the dark, missing the parents she had been taken from. Many of these memories were coming back to her now.
The thought made the cold and loneliness creep into her bones again, and she turned to thoughts of Karil and Loris. She thought of them sleeping beside her, the sound of their breathing a counterpoint to the clicking of relays and the hiss of air circulation that were the heartbeat and breath of Atalanta. Perhaps for the first time in her life, that first night with them, she had felt safe.
Soldado and his squad came down the ramp from the harbor into the tunnel. She observed them from her owl-perch, examining the way they walked and carried their powerful weapons, the way they looked about them, the way they listened when Soldado spoke. He was clearly in charge. The men feared him and respected him, but she doubted they loved him the way her fellow warriors loved Professor Kelley. She doubted if there was any love whatsoever aboard the Swift-Footed Achilles. Jokes there might be and perhaps even companionable ribbing, but she suspected the easy affection she had seen among Karil and Loris, Kelley and Aaron and Li, could not be found on that ship.
Soldado’s voice drifted up to her: “The orders are to proceed to the far end-cap, take up position outside the safe-room, and wait for the rest of the crew. It seems the rest of the colony is deserted and the Captain believes they are gathered there. We will take down the door, kill the leadership and put them under our total control. Then we will have our pick of the women and children as spoils.
“This squad has the honor of a relaxing train-ride because we have the heaviest armament and weapons to blast open the door. The Captain has informed me that these clever bastards have set our ship adrift—a surprisingly bold move—and we’ll have to force them to bring it back to us.”
One of the soldiers spoke up: “We could take some of their ships and track down our own. Then, we’d have their ships as well.”
Soldado approached him and the man cowered. “They need those ships to do their work and collect metal for us, don’t they, Corporal?”
“Yes, Sir. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Well, that’s why I’m a Lieutenant and you’re a Corporal, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Sir. Of course.”
"Look at him," Shadow said to herself, "brow-beating his own men. Nobody is an asshole in just one way."
Soldado turned away from the terrified Corporal and back to his men. “I can tell you that the plan is to leave a squad behind to keep these people under control after we leave. Those chosen to be part of this assignment will have a very nice life here, served hand and foot, having the pick of the women, etc. So, keep your wits about you and do your jobs. Now, get aboard this train. It should move out automatically.”
As they shouldered their huge weapons and strode aboard the train, Shadow slid down a line and dropped silently to the car-roof. The doors closed and the train moved out. She was no longer pre-occupied with her loving relationship with Karil and Loris. All she could think about was how to rid the Solar System of these men as efficiently as possible.