She didn’t want to turn tail and run, meekly, without scoring a single return blow, but there really wasn’t much she could do, up here. So she turned to go—
And the world erupted into flame.
Every gun atop the dam thundered in unison. Dinny slammed Yalena to the concrete as something came whistling across the top of the dam. A massive explosion in the reservoir behind them sent water skyward in a geyser that drenched them to the skin. The guns snarled again. Yalena twisted her neck, trying to see what was happening. She stiffened in terror. The air was black with incoming artillery shells. The infinite repeaters blazed, shooting them down. Explosions rained debris into the gorge. Hyper-v missiles streaked past with a whine and a scream of hypersonics. More explosions scattered flame and smoke and shrapnel into the gorge. Some of it struck the dam or bounced across the top, narrowly missing them time and again. Gun crews higher on the slopes were firing back, as well, sending gouts and streaks of flame racing across the gorge. The air shook with the thunder of titanic explosions.
“Get inside!” Dinny shouted.
Yalena nodded, crawled to hands and knees, tried to find the access door through the smoke. She couldn’t see it—
Something tore through the infinite repeaters. A fireball blew her flat. Heat seared her for just an instant, setting every nerve in her skin to screaming. Sound crushed her against the concrete, a solid wall of over-pressured air. When she could see again, half the infinite repeaters were gone, blown to pieces or maybe melted… The missile launchers were intact, but there was no sign of the loading crew. The Hellbore gunner, a dark, grim figure through the smoke and crushing sound of battle, was visible inside the Hellbore’s command and control cabin, hunched over his boards, waiting for something big enough to shoot at.
Yalena twisted around to look into the gorge and realized the skies were still black with incoming rounds. She didn’t hesitate. She just scrambled toward the silent missile launchers and started hauling missiles out of the racks and onto the loading belts. Dinny was right behind her, lifting and loading. More rounds came whistling past them, missing their position by scant millimeters, at times, and detonated behind them, sending up more geysers of water. They weren’t trying to take out the dam, they were trying to kill the guns — and their crews. Rage gave Yalena the strength to keep heaving missiles into the launch tubes. Their own missiles were screaming out into the skies above the gorge, exploding against incoming warheads, taking down the most dangerous targets identified by the battle computers.
When the shelling finally stopped, Yalena couldn’t quite believe it was silence that was ringing in her ears. She stood panting, drenched with sweat and trembling all over. She drew some comfort from the fact that General Ghamal was in no better shape than she was. He, too, stood gasping for breath.
“Goddamned bastards hit us hard, that time,” he finally got out.
Rachel appeared through the smoke, limping toward them. “Good job, kid,” she told Yalena.
“Damned fine job,” Dinny added, wiping sweat with one sleeve.
Yalena started to cry. She couldn’t control it. Couldn’t explain it. Rachel, at least, seemed to understand. She wrapped one arm around Yalena’s trembling shoulders and just held onto her for a long, comforting moment. Dinny touched her wet cheek, gently. “Don’t you be ashamed of those tears, girl. They prove you’ve got a heart in the right place. Your mama will be proud.”
Yalena gulped, trying to get her emotions under control. She looked toward the gap that led from Dead-End Gorge out into the main canyon, trying to gauge how badly they’d been hit. The refugee camp had been devastated. At least half the tents were ablaze. People were still running, trying to reach the edges of the canyon, away from the open floor. Hundreds of people — maybe a thousand or more — lay unmoving in the center of the burning camp. She didn’t realize, at first, what she was seeing, as the people still running started to fall for no apparent reason. Then she stiffened.
“Something’s wrong!” she cried, pointing urgently. “There aren’t any explosions, but people are falling down—”
Dinny swore, savagely. Rachel and the other surviving gunners dove toward their equipment packs. More than half of those packs had been blown off the dam during the fighting. There weren’t enough left to go around. Dinny grabbed her wrist and hauled her toward the access door while shouting a warning into his wrist-comm. “They’re using gas! Sound the alarm! Get into biohazard gear!”
Fear shoved an icepick through Yalena’s chest. It lodged in her heart.
“Mother!” She clawed at her own wrist-comm, realized she didn’t know the command frequency. A siren began to scream, sounding the alarm in a weird, hooting pattern that shook the air. They jumped over scattered equipment and debris, tripping and stumbling forward. They reached the access door just as another artillery barrage struck. Explosions turned the air to flame and thunder again. Somebody opened the door ahead of them. Dinny picked Yalena up and literally threw her inside. The world cartwheeled as she sprawled through the air. She saw Dinny go down as she tumbled head over heels through the doorway. She landed in an awkward forward roll and skidded across the concrete floor into the wall just as the door slammed shut.
Dinny was still outside.
“Dinny!” The scream tore her throat.
Someone grabbed her, stuffed her into a suit, jammed a helmet onto her head and zipped her up tight. When she focused her gaze, she found two people crouched over her. Phil Fabrizio she recognized through the faceplate of his biocontainment gear. Even his nano-tatt was ice white. Under the other faceplate was the blank stare of a command-grade battle helmet. Commodore Oroton’s deep voice said, “General Ghamal didn’t make it, child.”
She started to cry again, which was a serious mistake, because there wasn’t any way to dry her eyes or blow her nose inside a biosuit’s helmet. It wasn’t fair! He’d survived so much! Was so critical to the rebellion’s success. And he’d died for the worst, stupidest reason possible: saving her. She wasn’t worth it! Not even ten of her would’ve been worth it… Grief died in her throat. A cold, hard rage ignited in its place, rising up from her heart to shoot like molten flame through every molecule. It turned her resolve into fire-hardened diamond.
She was going to kill them.
All of them.
Starting with Vittori the damned.
II
Simon had never been to this part of Madison, before. The neighborhood was seedy, full of refuse and wind-blown drifts of children, thin and hungry-looking, with suspicion and despair in their dull eyes. They weren’t playing games or even chattering in the way of ordinary children. They just sat on the dirty curbs with poorly shod or bare feet, kicking at trash in the gutters, or they hugged the concrete steps that led from cracked sidewalks up to the sagging doorways of tenements.
Each time Simon and his guide passed one of those open doorways, the air that drifted down the steps to the sidewalk stank of open sewage and uncollected garbage and the smell of cooking that left him swallowing against nausea. He didn’t know what they were cooking, to produce a smell like that, but it was pitifully obvious that there wasn’t much nourishment in it.
Simon had seen port-side slums, had witnessed the aftermath of war on shattered worlds where residents with bruised eyes had climbed, aching in their very souls, back to their feet to try starting over. But these children and the ghastly world in which they lived left him stiff-jointed with rage. Jefferson’s slide into collapse had become an avalanche, one that had torn down the standard of living from galactic normal to desperate in the blink of a cosmic eyelash.