They were flying blind at Mach 18 inside the crown of a three-kilometer-long fireball; gravity began to take hold, pulling them eagerly toward the ground. All he could do was wait and sweat and pray as the AS flicked the lean air surfaces with a dolphin's precision, maintaining stability within the hypersonic glidepath. This was the moment he hated and feared above all else. It forced him to invest trust in the cheapest craft Z-B could build to accomplish the job, with nothing he could do other than ride it out.
He reviewed the platoon, calling up a grid of video and telemetry windows. As expected, Amersy's heart rate was over a hundred while he quietly murmured his way through a gospel chant. Hal was asking a host of questions, which Edmond and Dennis took in turns to answer, argue about, or just tell him to shut up. Karl and Nic were talking quietly together. Jones had brought up maintenance profiles for the jeeps that the lander pods were bringing down for them. Whereas Odel... Lawrence enlarged the man's grid, scanning his suit function telemetry. Odel's head was rocking from side to side, while his hands palm-drummed rhythmically on his knees. He'd accessed a personal file block in his Skin's memory. As they were streaking through a planetary atmosphere with the savage brilliance of a dying comet, Odel was happily bopping away to a Slippy Martin track.
At Mach 8 the external flames began to die away. Clean blue daylight embraced the drop glider. Lawrence could see the residue of ablative covering their blunt nose, black bubbling tar that sprinkled droplets from the peak of seething ripples. The craft's antenna found the relay satellite's beacon and established a link.
Mission tactical data scrolled across his membranes. The other drop gliders bringing down the Memu Bay force had made it through aerobrake. One of them, Oakley's platoon, was going to undershoot, coming down fifty kilometers from shore. Their AS was already modifying the descent profile so they'd land at one of the larger archipelago islands. A helicopter could recover them later.
Captain Bryant had already begun shifting deployment patterns to cover the loss. Platoon 435NK9 was given an extra two streets to sweep.
"Always a pleasure," Amersy grunted as the fresh data installed into their mission orders.
"We'll assess on the ground," Lawrence told him. They both knew the extra streets would be left alone—privilege of having field autonomy, it gave him some leeway. Lawrence's priority was getting the platoon through the town without incident.
According to the tactical data, the landing pods were descending nominally. They'd taken a different profile from the gliders, using a longer, higher aerobrake path, then dropping steeply. They were scheduled to hard-land on the ground behind Memu Bay. Watching their tracking data, Lawrence could see they were already spreading too wide, and that was before chute deployment left them vulnerable to wind. From experience, he knew nearly half of them would scatter outside the designated area. Rounding them up would take a long time.
The coastline was visible ahead, growing rapidly. Just how fast they were losing altitude had become apparent with the way the horizon's curvature was flattening out. When he moved forward in his seat, he could see the archipelago spread out below him. It was as if the dark ocean had been stained with droplets of cream. Hundreds of isles and atolls had been created by the crests of coral mountains that had risen up from the ocean floor over a kilometer down, emerging on the surface to accumulate cloaks of white sand. Waves broke against the reefs in gentle sprays of surf. The larger spreads of coral were hosting tufts of vegetation. Dark meandering mounds were visible in the water between the atolls where the submerged reefs lurked. It reminded him of Queensland's coastline, where Z-B's ecological restoration teams had worked their quiet miracles on the ailing Great Barrier Reef. Only the blue tinge of the vegetation was evidence that they were on an alien world.
Closer to the mainland the islands were larger, homes to thick forests. Then the plant leaves were a verdant green, and the beaches protected by long curving wave walls of broken coral. They all had wooden jetties extending out into the ocean. Huts were visible beneath the palm trees; sailing boats and canoes drawn up on the sand.
"Too good to be true," Dennis said. "Maybe we should just stay here when the starships leave."
"Nice idea," Nic said. "But the residents would slice you up into fishbait if they found you."
The drop glider shook enthusiastically for a few seconds as their speed fell below Mach 1. The nose dropped, and the familiar sight of Memu Bay was directly ahead, huddled in the folds of unnervingly tall mountains. The speed of their approach made Lawrence's natural skin crawl. Drop gliders had the aerodynamic characteristics of a brick; the only thing that kept them stable was their forward momentum. And they were shedding that rapidly.
The harbor drifted off to starboard, leaving them pointing at a shallow bay of gingery sand. A marble-walled promenade ran its entire length, separating beach from buildings. What looked like a line of police cars was parked along the top, with blue strobes flashing enthusiastically. Their AS tipped the nose up again, shedding more speed. They lost altitude at a dramatic rate once they leveled out. The beach was less than a kilometer away now, and the waves were only a couple of hundred meters below.
"Stand by," Lawrence called. "Brace yourselves."
Myles Hazeldine stood on the balcony that ran around the fourth floor of City Hall, watching the sky over the ocean.
His two senior aides hovered behind him. Don and Jennifer had been with him since he was a first-time councilman, twenty years ago now, one of the youngest ever to be elected in Memu Bay. They'd stayed loyal ever since, throughout all the wearying backbiting and dirt slinging of democratic politics; even the dubious deals with the business community that helped his campaign funding hadn't put them off. All of them had lost their naive idealism—probably back in that first term when he used to make hothead speeches condemning the then mayor. Now, they made a practical levelheaded team who ran the city with a decent level of efficiency, well equipped to deal with the new generation of young hotheads in the council who constantly criticized him. Goddamn, he was proud of the way he'd overseen Memu Bay's development in recent years. This was a prosperous settlement, high economic index, lowish crime rates ... Shit! Social problems, unions, bureaucrats, finance, scandals—he could handle any of that. But this kind of crisis was beyond anybody's ability to survive.
If he took a heroic stand and resisted Zantiu-Braun, he'd aggravate the situation and the invasion force governor would sling him out anyway. He'd achieve nothing. While if he cooperated and worked alongside the governor to ensure the bastards stole everything they wanted, he'd be a collaborator, a traitor to his electorate. They'd never forgive that.
A swarm of black dots materialized high in the clean azure sky, moving with incredible speed as they sank toward the beach on the east of town. Myles hung his head in shameful fury. Edgar Strauss himself had called yesterday, urging him to cooperate. "None of us want a bloodbath, Myles. Don't let it happen, please. Don't let them take our dignity as well." Another good politician lost to events out of their control. Myles had almost asked: In God's name why didn't you fund exo-orbit defenses? Why have you left us helpless against this? But that would have been too much like kicking a man when he was down. The best missiles Thallspring could have come up with would have been a pathetic token gesture. God alone knew how advanced Earth's weapons technology was these days. And the Z-B starships would have retaliated, made an example. Myles shuddered as he remembered the last invasion: his son dead, the meager ration of food for months afterward as they struggled to get back on their feet. And everyone had accessed the pictures of the new blasted land on the edge of Durrell, that highly unsubtle and very effective demonstration of their capability.