I looked around the street. Mixing what was left of my men and the local militia, there might have been a thousand of us. We mostly had M27s and machine guns. My men would have some rocket launchers and grenades. We were cooked.
“Captain Harris, I have them,” Hollingsworth said.
“Thomer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doctorow, you there, too?”
“I’m here,” Doctorow said.
“Herrington is dead,” I said. “The Avatari are on their way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Herrington’s transport simply vanished. That meant it went down quickly, so quickly that the pilot never even had time to send a distress signal. They could have had an equipment failure, but I knew damn well that they hadn’t. They were shot down. They reached the spheres and ran into the Avatari with their specking light rifles.
I remembered that the last thing I told Herrington was that I was too busy to talk; then I snuffed out that guilty memory. There would be time for recriminations later.
The beacon Herrington left by the mines was just over eight thousand miles away. Flying at 2,250 miles per hour, it would have taken him nearly four hours to get from the mines to the spheres. That meant he went down about an hour ago.
The spheres were approximately twenty miles from town. An army with light armor could close that gap in under an hour, but the Avatari moved slowly. Once they emerged from the spheres, it would take them hours to make the long march into Norristown.
Using interLink communications, I went over my calculations with Doctorow and Thomer and Hollingsworth. “Are you sure about this?” Doctorow asked. “For all you know, Herrington’s radio might be on the blink.”
I reminded him that the radar no longer showed Herrington’s transport.
“So what do we do?” Doctorow asked.
“We’re going to have to fight,” I said.
“Then you’re on your own, Captain. This is your fight; they came here looking for you.” Doctorow sounded angry, like a man who suspects his friends are trying to con him.
I wanted to tell Doctorow to go speck himself. I wanted to tell him we could all die together if he preferred it that way. I kept my mouth shut, partially because I needed his help and partially because I knew he was right.
“What if we lit up the nuke?” Thomer asked. “We’re closing in on the mines.”
“It’s too late for that,” I said. “We’re going to have to fight them. One way or another, we’re going to need to fight them.”
The Avatari emerged from their spheres as energy, then created their bodies by attracting tachyons out of the ion curtain. Exploding a nuclear device in the mines would draw loose tachyons out of the atmosphere, eradicating the ion curtain. It would not pull in tachyons that had already attached themselves to an avatar.
“Do you want me to scout the area?” Hollingsworth volunteered. “I could take a transport and be back in no time.”
It sounded like an unnecessary risk, but I allowed him to persuade me. “I wouldn’t mind having an ETA on the bastards,” I agreed. “Just don’t get shot down.”
Hollingsworth said he would be careful and signed off.
Perhaps hearing Hollingsworth throw himself into the fire reminded Doctorow of his days in the Army. Maybe he’d just rethought things. Something made him change his mind, and he said, “If the mines are as bad as you say they are, we’re all facing a death sentence. If it will help, Captain Harris, my militia will join you.”
“A thousand men with M27s; I’m not sure what good that will do.”
“My militia is five thousand men strong, and we have a lot more than machine guns. We have an exit strategy we’ve been saving in case of an emergency.”
“We have an army of indestructible aliens marching into town. I think that qualifies as an emergency,” I said.
“It sounds like an emergency to me,” Doctorow agreed. As it turned out, the Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow had a very good exit strategy indeed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Norristown did not have enough electricity for everyday life, but the city’s emergency generators produced more than enough juice to power the sirens. All around town, sirens blared, calling the militia to arms and warning everyone else to abandon the town. When it came to evacuation, I had little doubt that the general population of Norristown took their warning sirens seriously.
The sound of the sirens tore through the air as we crossed town, their moaning wail carried across the ruined landscape unobstructed by walls or towers.
I rode with the locals in a truck to go see the place that Ellery Doctorow described as “the darkest spot on Terraneau.” On the way, we would stop by the Norristown Armory. According to Doctorow, the locals had collected enough guns and bombs to put up a fight.
“Captain Harris, I found Herrington’s transport,” Hollingsworth radioed in over the interLink.
“Any survivors?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“I can’t tell from here. Do you want me to go in for a closer look?”
“No,” I said, seeing no reason for him to risk his life to confirm something we both already knew. With the ion curtain forcing us to fly low, our transports made easy targets for the aliens. “Do you see any sign of the aliens?”
“There’s some kind of glow coming off some hills,” Hollingsworth said. “Should I go have a look?”
“No!” My voice lurched as I yelled this, but I could not help myself. Hollingsworth had not been on New Copenhagen. He had no idea what he was dealing with. “That glow is the aliens. Mark the area on the map and get back to the airfield.”
A moment later, the positions came in on the virtual map in my visor. Hollingsworth marked the spot where Herrington went down. It was twenty-three miles west of town. He also marked the aliens’ position, approximately eighteen miles west of town. One thing about the Avatari, they moved at a glacial pace. I took off my helmet so I could speak with Kareem O’Doul, Doctorow’s right-hand man.
“The aliens are eighteen miles west of us.” I had to shout so that he could hear me over the blare of the sirens. “That gives us four or five hours.” Now that I had my helmet off, cool wind blew hard against my face. It felt good.
O’Doul was a small, dark man with nearly black eyes and skin the color of walnut shells. His hair was brown but very close to black. “What about your missing transport?”
“They found that, too.”
“Shot down?”
“Yes, they got it.” I surveyed the landscape and listened to the sound of the sirens. “Do your people know what to do when they hear sirens?”
“They know,” he answered. “We have a fleet of buses for evacuating town. When people see the buses, they climb on without asking questions.
“I’m more worried about giving them someplace to come home to.”
“You and me both.” I mumbled this far too quietly for him to hear me. We could not fight the Avatari. Even with the militia on our side, we could not engage them head-on. Instead of fighting like Marines, we would employ guerilla tactics, the old hit-and-run offense.
“How fast can your men rig the tunnels?” I asked.
“I’ve seen them do miracles. You’re talking about blowing a big area. If they had more time, they’d give you a real work of art.”
He sounded like a veteran. “Sounds like you have some demolitions experience,” I said.
“Army Special Forces,” O’Doul said. “I’m not your demolitions man. We have a couple of ex-Navy SEALs rigging the bombs.”
“SEALs?” I asked. About eight years back, the Navy phased out its natural-born SEALs, replacing them with a line of specially equipped clones. “Survivors from the alien invasion?”
“Retired,” O’Doul said.
“Old guys?”
“And they aren’t getting any younger. Good thing setting up charges is like riding a bike,” O’Doul said. “These boys will be hobbled and senile before they forget how to set a charge.”