The sky was turning to day overhead, blackness flushed away by a spreading stain of azure blue. The contrails to the west were becoming too bright to look at. They seemed to be lengthening at a terrific rate, cracks of sunlight splitting open across the wall of night.
Kinetic harpoons were the Confederation Navy’s standard tactical (non-radioactive) planetary surface assault weapon. A solid splinter of toughened, heat-resistant composite, half a metre long, needle sharp, guided by a cruciform tail, steered by a processor with preprogrammed flight vector. They carried no explosives, no energy charge; they destroyed their target through speed alone.
Ilex accelerated in towards Lalonde at eight gees, following a precise hyperbolic trajectory. The apex was reached twelve hundred kilometres above Amarisk, two hundred kilometres east of Durringham. Five thousand harpoons were expelled from the voidhawk’s weapons cradles, hurtling towards the night-masked continent below. Ilex inverted the direction of its distortion field’s acceleration wave, fighting Lalonde’s gravity. Stretched out on their couches, the crew raged impotently against the appalling gee force, nanonic supplement membranes turning rigid to hold soft weak human bodies together as the voidhawk dived away from the planet.
The harpoon swarm sheered down through the atmosphere, hypervelocity friction ablating away the composite’s outer layer of molecules to leave a dazzling ionic tail over a hundred kilometres long. From below it resembled a rain of fierce liquid light.
Their silence was terrifying. A display of such potency should sound like the roar of an angry god. Murphy clung to one of the rails along the side of the wheel-house, squinting through squeezed-up eyelids as the solid sheet of vivid destruction plummeted towards him. He heard Jacqueline Couteur moaning in fear, and felt a cheap, malicious satisfaction. It was the first time she had shown the slightest emotion. Impact could only be seconds away now.
The harpoons were directly overhead, an atmospheric river of solar brilliance mirroring the Zamjan’s course. They split down the centre, two solid planes of light diverging with immaculate symmetry, sliding down to touch the jungle away in the west then racing past the Isakore at a speed too fast even for enhanced human senses to follow. None of them, not one, landed in the water.
Multiple explosions obliterated the jungle. Along both sides of the Zamjan gouts of searing purple flame streaked upwards as the harpoons struck the earth, releasing their colossal kinetic energy in a single devastating burst of heat. The swath of devastation extended for a length of seven kilometres along the banks, reaching a kilometre and a half inland. A thick filthy cloud of loam and stone and wood splinters belched up high into the air, blotting out the heat flashes. The blast-wave rolled out in both directions, flattening still more of the jungle.
Then the sound broke over the boat. The roar of the explosions overlapped, merging into a single sonic battering-ram which made every plank on the Isakore twang as if it was an overtuned guitar string. After that came the eternal thunderclap of the air being ripped apart by the harpoons’ plunge; sound waves finally catching up with the weapons.
Murphy jammed his hands across his stinging eardrums. His whole skeleton was shaking, joints resonating painfully.
Debris started to patter down, puckering the already distressed surface of the river. A sprinkling of fires burnt along the banks where shattered trees lay strewn among deep craters. Pulverized loam and wood hung in the air, an obscure black fog above the mortally wounded land.
Murphy slowly lowered his hands, staring at the awful vision of destruction. “It was our side,” he said in dazed wonder. “We did it.”
Garrett Tucci was at his side, jabbering away wildly. Murphy couldn’t hear a thing. His ears were still ringing vociferously. “Shout! Datavise! My ears have packed up.”
Garrett blinked, he held up his communications block. “It’s working,” he yelled.
Murphy datavised his own block, which reported the channel to the ELINT satellite was open.
A beam of bright white light slid over the Isakore , originating from somewhere above. Murphy watched as the beam swung out over the water, then tracked back towards the boat. He looked up, beyond surprise. It was coming from a small aircraft hovering two hundred metres overhead, outlined by the silver stars. Green, red, and white strobes flashed on the tips of its wings and canards. His neural nanonics identified the jet-black planform, a BK133.
Murphy’s communication block bleeped to acknowledge a local channel opening. “Murphy? Are you there, Murphy?”
“Sir? Is that you?” he asked incredulously.
“Expecting someone else?” Kelven Solanki datavised.
The beam found the Isakore again, and remained trained on the deck.
“Have you still got your prisoner?”
“Yes, sir.” Murphy glanced at Jacqueline Couteur, who was staring up at the aircraft, shielding her eyes against the spotlight.
“Good man. We’ll take her back with us.”
“Sir, Niels Regehr is injured pretty badly. I don’t think he can climb a rope ladder.”
“No problem.”
The BK133 was descending carefully, wings rocking in the thermal microbursts generated by the harpoons’ impact. Murphy could feel the compressor jets gusting against his face, a hot dry wind, pleasant after the river’s humidity. He saw a wide hatch was open on the side of the fuselage. A man in naval fatigues was slowly winching down towards the Isakore .
Floodlights on the roof of the navy office showed the grounds around the building were thick with people. All of them seemed to be looking up into the night sky.
Murphy watched them through the BK133’s open mid-fuselage hatch as Kelven Solanki piloted it down onto the roof pad. A wedge-shaped spaceplane was sitting on one side of the roof, wings retracted; it only just fitted, tail and nose were overhanging the edges. It was one of the most welcome sights he had seen in a long long while.
“Who are all those people?” he asked.
“Anyone who saw Ilex ’s spaceplane taking the staff away earlier,” Vince Burtis said. He was the nineteen-year-old navy rating who had winched the marine squad to safety. To him the invasion was exactly what he had signed on for, adventure on alien worlds; he was enjoying himself. Murphy hadn’t the heart to disillusion him. The kid would realize soon enough.
“I guess they want to leave too,” Vince Burtis said soberly.
The BK133 settled on the roof. Kelven datavised the flight computer to power down the internal systems. “Everyone out,” he said.
“Hurry, please.” Erato’s appeal was relayed through his communication block. “I’m in touch with the sheriffs outside. They say the crowd is already at the door.”
“They shouldn’t be able to get in,” Kelven datavised.
“I think some of the sheriffs may be with them,” Erato said hesitantly. “They’re only human.”
Kelven released his straps and hurried back into the cabin. Vince Burtis was guiding Niels Regehr’s tentative footsteps, helping him down through the hatch. Garrett Tucci and Louis Beith were already out, marching Jacqueline Couteur towards the spaceplane at gunpoint.
Murphy Hewlett gave his superior a tired smile. “Thank you, sir.”
“Nothing to do with me. If the Ilex hadn’t shown up you’d still be paddling home.”
“Is everyone else from the office out?”
“Yes, the spaceplane made a couple of flights earlier this evening, we’re the last,” Kelven said.
They both hopped down onto the roof. The noise of the spaceplane’s compressors rose, obscuring the sound of the crowd below. Kelven did his best to ignore the sensation of guilt. He had made a lot of friends among Lalonde’s civil administration staff. Candace Elford had turned over the BK133 as soon as he asked, no questions. Surely some people could have been taken up to the orbiting colonist-carriers.