Sounding surprised, Andropov said, “We won that battle.”
Historians would see it as a great victory, but the survivors didn’t. We had seven survivors, and the Mogats had none. As our forces fought the Mogats on the planet, the Scutum-Crux Fleet ambushed and destroyed three Mogat battleships. From the historian’s point of view, we had won a great victory, destroying three of their ships and all of their ground forces.
Tint shields formed over the windows. Hill and Hughes, deep in a conversation of their own, probably did not even notice the anomaly as we broadcasted across the Orion Arm.
“What about New Prague and Albatross Island?” I asked.
“Those weren’t battles, General; they were police actions, and the Liberators came out on top.”
“They went berserk and killed civilians,” I said.
“You’re not looking at it with a clinical eye,” Andropov said. “They accomplished their objectives in both cases, then lost control of themselves afterward. It wasn’t the battles that they lost; they destroyed the enemy.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” I said.
“And you are the last of the Liberators. I find it interesting that even after you defected to the Enlisted Man’s Empire, you’re still winning every battle,” Andropov went on.
Defected to the Enlisted Man’s Empire? I thought. First this son of a bitch had me locked in a concentration camp, then he had me marooned in space, where he planned to use me for target practice; and now he says I defected. I decided to shut him out. From here on out, I would only pretend to listen to him.
As I started to let my mind wander, Gordon Hughes joined our conversation. He said, “But we’re not here to discuss military history; we’re here to plan an evacuation.”
“Right,” Andropov agreed. “That is why we’ve come.”
“Mr. Andropov is of the opinion that we might be able to fight our way out of this situation,” Hughes said.
“I suggested the possibility,” Andropov said. He turned to me, and explained, “I simply meant that there are other avenues to explore besides evacuation. We could make the entire Navy available for the fight thanks to your empire’s new broadcast network. Should the aliens try to capture Olympus Kri, well, we now know how to blast through their ion-curtain defense.”
General Hill spoke a word into the intercommunications system, then leaned into our conversation and spoke softly. “Mr. Andropov, our pilot informs me that we are about to enter the atmosphere.”
The explorer did not inject itself into the atmosphere with the grace of my shuttle, but it broke through more smoothly than a transport would have. The sky outside our ship was dark with clouds as fine as lace.
“Before you experiment with military options, you’d better evacuate the planet,” Hughes reminded Andropov. “We all agreed that the first thing we need to do is to evacuate Olympus Kri.”
He looked so old, a caved-in, wilted wax model of the one-time political heavyweight known as Gordon Hughes.
Andropov drummed the fingers of his right hand along the top of his armrest, then asked, “Where do you suggest we take them, Gordon?”
“Take them to Earth,” Hughes said. “God knows there’s enough room for them there.”
“What are we going to do with the population of Terraneau?” Andropov asked.
“As I understand it, there are only five million people left on Terraneau,” Hughes said. “There’s plenty of room for them on Earth.”
“And Providence Kri? What about the people on Providence Kri?”
“Take them all to Earth.”
It sounded like the bastards expected to evacuate our whole damned empire.
The lower we descended, the more grim the atmosphere became. I could see the planet below through a hazy sky that was black, but not pitch-black. It was a dirty, rusty black.
The thing that surprised me most was the snow. A fresh layer of fluffy gray snow covered the burned-out countryside, blanketing forests in which the burned-out hulls of pine trees pointed into the sky, as straight and naked as sewing needles.
There could be no question that this was New Copenhagen, I’d fought in these woods under very different conditions. I recognized the terrain. I recognized the roll of the forest floor, even spotted clearings in which our Marines and soldiers had ambushed the enemy.
Clearings? The entire specking forest was a goddamned clearing. I could not see so much as a hint of a leaf or a pine needle.
“What kind of weapon does something like this?” I asked.
“Sweetwater thinks the Avatari ignited the atmosphere,” said General Hill.
“Ignited the atmosphere?” I asked. “What the hell does that mean?” I was angry. I was irritable. I was scared.
No one responded. They didn’t know.
“Have you debriefed the survivors?” I asked.
Hughes answered in a hushed voice. “That is the point, General. There are no survivors.”
When I looked back out the window, we were flying above Valhalla, the capital city of New Copenhagen. I had seen this city destroyed; but in the three years since I left, the residents had undoubtedly rebuilt it.
“It looks a lot better now than it did when the Avatari left the first time,” Nickel Hill said.
“Igniting the atmosphere” had toppled some buildings and left others standing. I saw no logic in the buildings that remained and the ones that fell. We flew over tall buildings that stood and piles of rubble that might have once been great skyscrapers. On one side of the street a three-story building might stand untouched, while across the street, a building of seemingly similar size lay in ruins.
Our pilot took us lower and lower until the roofs of the tallest buildings passed only a few feet below our wings. I saw melted roadways below us and streetlamps with posts that had wilted like old sticks of celery. We flew over an intersection in which cars had sunk axle deep into the road below them. The cars were all the same color now, the dull nickel gray of burned metal.
“We landed drones down there to gather data,” Hill said. He always struck me as a man with a love of gadgets and an appreciation for science. “The radiation levels are normal. The carbon monoxide is off the charts, but that’s predictable. Whatever did this, it killed off the plant life. It burned everything. We haven’t found a patch of ground that has not been burned.”
Flying low to the ground, we passed a tall skyscraper that reached well above us. The glass in some of its windows had melted and run down the side of the building like wax from a candle. The entire building was covered with soot.
“I can tell you what Sweetwater says happened here if you’re interested,” General Hill said. Of all the generals stationed on New Copenhagen, George Hill was the only one who took Sweetwater seriously. “Sweetwater doesn’t think we fought the Avatari Army that first time out. He thinks they sent their exterminators, maybe only their janitorial squad. He says they sent their C-team to sweep us cockroaches out of the way. That’s what we fought.
“He thinks they’re sending their army this time. Last time they wanted us to leave. That was before we took our planets back. Now they’re sending their army.”
I turned from Hill and stared out the window. Below us was a park in which a blackened and mostly melted slide stood on a glittering mound that looked like it was made of glass. Scanning the grounds, I did not see so much as a single blade of grass.
We left the city, flying no more than fifty feet above a residential suburb. Some of the homes below us had exploded. For the most part, the neighborhood looked like it could be washed clean with a hose, just spray the soot away and move right in.
“I don’t want to fight them again,” Hill admitted. “I think we got lucky last time. I think we got lucky, and they didn’t take us seriously, and they were fighting with one arm tied behind their backs, and they still almost won.”