In the shelter of nearby buildings, while some of the wardens moved ahead to check sidestreets, Orduval looked back towards the car. It was sprawled on its side with one tread hanging off. Across the street from it lay a caved-in building, which he guessed was either where that launcher had been, or was the source of the sniper fire after a mine had turned over the armoured car.
"What now?" he asked Reyshank.
The chief gestured him to silence as he listened to his earpiece, then after a moment replied, "We're pulling out. If we stay here, we'll give the Groundstars too many extra targets—the Coplanetaries already pulled out an hour ago. We're all hoping the fight'll go out of the Groundstars once the Fleet base gets hit." Reyshank paused for a moment, noticing Orduval's puzzlement. "You know about the Groundstars and the Coplanetaries, don't you?"
"I know the Groundstars support Fleet and the Coplanetaries support Combine, just a couple of groups amidst many. I didn't realise they were so dangerous."
"Well, the Coplanetaries aren't really much of a threat, but the Groundstars are ever since Base Commander Fregen supplied them with arms."
"And it's his base that's going to get hit… by Orbital Combine?"
Reyshank nodded. "Most base commanders have surrendered, as per Fleet orders, but Fregen is holding out. His base is in a high population-density area so he's reckoning Combine will hold off."
They moved on, trying to stay under cover for as long as possible, but breaking into a run across any open ground. At one point a group of youths appeared from a sidestreet, picking up chunks of rubble and throwing them, but soon retreated after the wardens fired over their heads. Orduval noticed that the youngsters all wore armbands bearing the image of a white flower on a purple background. This indicated they were members of the Orchid Party, which now mostly consisted of student agitators looking for any excuse to throw rocks and wreck property. He spotted the corpse of a woman lying in a doorway, but no sign of the injury that caused her death. Every street seemed to have its own burning ground car, and the chatter of weapons fire remained constant, though thankfully distant. As they neared the outskirts of the city a light glared from behind them, casting black shadows, followed by a hissing rumbling.
"Combine just stopped holding off," Reyshank observed.
Orduval glanced over his shoulder to observe a thick pall of smoke rising from some distant point of the city. Within that oily blackness a hot bar of light stirred, reaching down from the sky. He recognised the effect of a microwave beam heating the smoke rising from the base, and no doubt from the burning corpses it contained. He felt sick and, as they continued up the street, wondered just how bad things were getting elsewhere. Support for either Combine or Fleet was variable among the planetary political units, but also among revolutionary and protest groups. With the two main Sudorian factions now in open conflict it struck him that their society might soon fall apart. Only the GDS wardens seemed capable of holding things together, yet here they were retreating.
When they finally reached an area where the damage seemed somewhat less, Reyshank broke into a ground car.
"You come with me," he pointed to Orduval, "and you three." He indicated Trausheim and two other wardens. "The rest of you head over to Bleak Street and link up with Jarden."
The next minute, Orduval was sitting between two wardens in the rear of the car as it pulled away. To his right he glimpsed the maglev tram tracks between suburban houses, then the road drew adjacent to it as they left the city behind. Glancing back, he saw the bloody eye of the setting sun peering at him through columns of smoke, and here and there flickered the muzzle flashes of automatic weapons.
High in the sky burned other fires, and sadly they weren't stars.
McCrooger
After sliding for some time in and out of unconsciousness and the land of nightmares, I woke feeling relatively better; that is, I did not feel myself only a short pace from entering the underworld. Rhodane had re-secured the straps across me before she departed, but this time I managed to undo them without any trouble and, pushing myself upright on the bed, felt no urge to vomit.
One additional shove sent me drifting towards the door, which opened easily—obviously some repairs had been made. Pulling myself out into the corridor, I noticed a pronounced drift towards the floor, which told me the spin section must be slowly getting up to speed again. I moved along the corridor in bounds that grew steadily shorter, only halting when the jarring of my feet against the floor reminded me of the fragility of my bones. Meanwhile, the gradually increasing spin seemed to be trying to drag the meat from my skeleton. My injured arm began to ache, as soon did many other parts of me. After a little while, when it seemed the spin had stabilised, I moved on, and finally reached the area best described as the Bridge, and entered it through another one of those fleshy doors.
Inside, Brumallians sat in organic control stations that seemed melded around them. These in turn encircled a concave floor that I knew to be a view screen with facility for semi-holographic projection. Rhodane leant out of her own station to observe me as I entered, then eased herself out and walked over. She wore a headset that looked like a horseshoe crab impacting with the side of her head.
"Would it be foolish to ask how you're feeling?" she enquired.
"I feel like someone has beaten me from head to foot with rocks, but, as you can see, I'm standing, so that's a plus. What's the situation now?"
With one hand clasped against her headset she gestured over to the dish screen. The screen itself darkened and stars resolved, and then from the surface of it a hilldigger rose before me, flickering as waves of interference occasionally erased it. "They gave up some hours ago. We were worried they were going to head for Brumal next, since the hilldigger's next logical target would be our launch site. However, its course is now away from Brumal, out towards another hilldigger that didn't join the rest of the Fleet."
"And Sudoria?"
Again a wave of her hand, and now Sudoria rose before us, the dish screen itself cupping the glare of the sun. The planet itself remained constant, but views of the stations surrounding it kept flickering in and out of existence, though I did get one brief glimpse of something disappearing in a ball of flame. "Fleet jamming is lighter here and we can now open communications with Combine. I was going to come and get you." She again waved at the display and Sudoria disappeared, to be replaced this time with a blank grey floating screen. "Now let's talk to Combine."
Yishna
Surprisingly, Defence Platform One had remained intact even though severely damaged by the missile hits from Blatant. On one of her screens she observed the last of the repair teams and GDS investigators leaving it, to take cover aboard a better-defended satellite. The ruined platform was only partially covered by others located at three compass points, though completely lacking in cover at the fourth point, where Twelve, which was also being evacuated, still lay under construction. It occurred to her that the positioning of Dravenik's hilldigger Blatant near Platform One, and the ensuing events, had not just been an excuse for this conflict, but a preparation for it too. For Combine's defences had been weaker there, and Blatant's return strike against Platform One had weakened them further.
"First impacts in twenty seconds," said Gneiss over general address.
Yishna finally latched down her suit helmet, then sat tense in her chair, tightly gripping the arms. Twenty seconds later, space above Sudoria filled with incandescent explosions and vapour trails as projectiles struck defence buoys or were intercepted by beam weapons. Glittering menisci occasionally flashed into existence as projectiles struck station energy shields. Though projectiles were targeted at stations all around the planet, the main attack was, of course, concentrated almost a quarter of an orbit away, over the cross formation of five defence platforms with the wrecked Platform One at its centre.