“Can we contact our people?” Woorunmarra sounded worried. “With the power down we can’t use the station’s comm terminal.”
“Of course, at the shelter. The portable’s voice-only, but help yourself.”
“Thanks.”
Radaker nodded, then followed the others inside the station.
“What’s wrong?” Adela asked once they were alone. “Specifically, I mean.”
“I’m not sure. Just want to call in.” He picked up his step, outpacing her. Clearly, if he suspected something, he didn’t want to discuss it until he’d had a chance to check it out. Adela let him go and remained outside the shelter. She wondered if she might be able to help inside the station, but decided against offering. Radaker and the others had been very friendly and courteous to both of them, but it was clear they weren’t pleased with the duty they’d drawn. Best to stay out of their way, she realized.
She sat down in the shade of one of the barrel trees a few meters up the rise, her back resting against the soft, almost spongy bole. In spite of the heat, the humidity was still very low and a soft breeze made the spot quite comfortable. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, and had been there only a few minutes when Woorunmarra came running from the shelter.
“Captain Radaker!”
He was sprinting for the station, calling out as he ran, and was about halfway to the front entrance when Adela noted a sudden sharp hissing that filled the air. She jumped to her feet, but before she could move there was a sudden whump! and she saw the canted roof of the station crumple as if in slow motion, followed by a brilliant flash and a shock wave that threw her backward into the tree. Dazed, she tumbled like a rag doll to the ground.
She tried to push herself up, but a dizziness and nausea swept over her and she fell forward into the grass. She tried again, successfully this time, and managed to push herself up to a sitting position. The whole scene spun around her through blurred eyes. There was a throbbing ache at the back of her head and she felt blood trickling down the back of her neck. She rubbed at it gingerly, feeling a small gash in her scalp. Her hand was covered with blood when she pulled it back, but the wound felt too small to be serious. She rose unsteadily to her feet, wiping bloody fingers on her shorts, and looked at the station. Or what was left of it.
The whole building had collapsed, the jumble of twisted plastic and metal now fully engulfed in flames. The heat was intense and pounded against her face in searing waves; she found it difficult to even look directly at it. Burning sections of the station were strewn for dozens of meters in all directions; a chunk of roofing had barely missed the shelter and hit one of the GEMs, setting it afire. Halfway between the burning vehicle and the wreckage of the station, next to a twisted support beam, Woorunmarra lay unmoving.
“Billy!” Some of the men and women at the shelter had cleared the rise and were running down to the fire, reaching the perimeter of the station just as she made it to Woorunmarra. He rose shakily to his feet, stumbling to his knees with the first step he tried to take. Adela helped him to his feet and steadied him as the first of the soldiers came to their side.
“I’m… I’m all right,” he said, waving them away. “The station? Anybody left?”
He turned back to the flames and made a feeble move toward the wreckage before Adela stopped him. There were several people silhouetted against the fire, but it was clear that no one inside could have survived the blast itself, much less the inferno that was raging now.
The remaining soldiers came running over the crest of the rise. Adela noted they had donned battle armor and were now fully armed. The one in the lead, a woman unusually tall for a Pallatin, was shouting as she came down the slope.
“From the south! They’re coming up from the south. Tell the Captain that—” She stopped cold, seeing the wreckage and realizing the seriousness of the hit they’d just taken. She came up alongside them, doing a mental nose count. “Captain Radaker? Wyand and the others?”
One of the men who had arrived at the fire first now came running back, his face red from his proximity to the inferno that just three minutes earlier had been pressure-tap station 67. “They were inside… are inside.” He turned back to the flames, the others who had run down with him immediately after the blast joining them where they stood. “They…” He didn’t have to finish.
There were eight of them now: Adela and Woorunmarra, plus the remaining six guards. The tall woman, Janners, was a Sergeant and had the highest rank among them. A look of subdued anxiety crossed her face when the realization hit that she was now in command, but she immediately sized up the situation and took charge, reluctantly and uncertainly.
“The rest of you suit up. We may have company in a few minutes. Move!” Once the others were out of earshot she turned to them, her voice apologetic. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. There was no indication that—”
“Forget it.” Woorunmarra rubbed at his shoulder, skinned and bleeding where he’d been thrown to the concrete apron around the station. “What information do you have?”
Adela took his arm before she could answer, forcibly leading him up the rise. “Keep talking, but let’s move up to the shelter, out of the open. Sergeant, could we get a dressing for his shoulder?”
She followed, but for a moment Janners was unsure as how to respond to Adela’s overt action. So much had happened in such a short time—the attack, the loss of half her squad, assuming command—that she seemed overwhelmed. Hastily catching up with the pair from behind, she caught sight of Woorunmarra’s shoulder, then her gaze settled on the blood that had run down into the collar of Adela’s shirt. “Come on,” she barked, as if fully comprehending the situation for the first time. Her demeanor changed suddenly and she quickened her step to lead them up the rise, calling ahead of her as they approached the shelter, “I need a medical kit. Now!” She continued talking over her shoulder. “Divisional command just called, there’s an enemy unit heading up from the south. They’re still east of Arroyo, but command has heat-traced the missile that hit the station directly to them. It’s a sure bet that the flyover computer targeted us, then relayed the information to them, and they fired while still twenty-five kilometers out.”
One of the enlisted men had brought the kit at about the same time they entered the shelter and was already spraying a skin gel on Woorunmarra’s shoulder and back. The wound treated, he concentrated on the gash on the back of Adela’s head. The spray stung slightly for a moment, but the anesthetic worked quickly to drive away the throbbing that had been steadily increasing since she’d gotten back on her feet. She felt her scalp tighten where the injury was, indicating the skin gel was going to work closing the cut.
Woorunmarra stretched his arm and shoulder as the gel penetrated his skin, checking his range of motion. “That fits in with what I just learned from the Levant.” He stopped stretching suddenly and let his arm drop to his side. “I just wish I’d managed to find out a few seconds sooner.”
“Don’t even think about it, Billy,” Adela interjected, wiping the now-dried blood from her neck with a moist pad the enlisted man had given her. “Nothing we can do about it. The question is, what happens now?”
“There’s an Imperial combat shuttle on its way from the station at Taw. It’s the only one close, but there are others that’ll be sent as backup.”