“Trevor?”
“Uh… yeah, Tygg?”
“Shall we maintain our OP here?”
“I don’t think so. We’re going to need our all our close assault elements, including us, on the ground and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Anyone left up here until the last minute isn’t going to get to us in time to join the attack.”
Private Gavin shrugged, didn’t see Tygg’s sharp look—which could be universally translated as a preemptive “put a sock in it”—and pointed into the corridor behind them. “I dunno, Captain. Those elevators are very fast.”
“They’re quick when they’re working, Gavin. But the barrage is only going to get worse. A hit, or an EMP strike, might take out the power. And eighteen stories is a very long walk.”
John Gavin frowned. “Why another EMP strike?”
Tygg jumped in before Trevor could respond, and while his words answered Gavin’s inquiry, his tone signaled that the garrulous private had asked his last question. “When we activate the disposable cell repeater net that the indigs have been building up secretly over the past month, the Arat Kur may decide to hit a big off switch, rather than jam it. Particularly when all our radios start turning back on.” His tone lowered. “Of course, it might be our side that generates an EMP.”
Gavin had evidently missed Tygg’s tonal hint that question-time was now over. “We’d launch an EMP strike? Why us? We want to be able to talk.”
Tygg shook his head. “Talk or no talk, we can’t be sure what weapons might have to be used to gain control of the battlespace.”
“Eh?” Gavin wasn’t much good at reading between the lines.
Trevor stepped in. “Private, according to your lieutenant, better than ninety percent of the world’s remaining submarine assets are currently hiding near or inside the fifty-kilometer nautical limit. And they are fully armed.”
For one moment, the expression on Gavin’s face suggested that he was wondering what good all those torpedoes were going to do here in Jakarta. Then he evidently grasped what Trevor meant by “fully armed” the same instant he understood what kind of submarines were being discussed. “Oh.”
“So,” Tygg concluded, “if you see a sharp flash overhead, don’t look up; look down. And if you’ve got the time, cover your ears and your ass. In a deep, dark hole.”
Trevor looked over the Aussie’s shoulder, out the still-intact plate glass window that presented Merdeka Square as if it were a mural. So far, the national monument—the decidedly phallic Monas—hadn’t been hit, despite the fact that the air around it was filled with the smoke of recently or currently exploded inbound rockets. To the far right, a smaller warhead, clipped by the almost uninterrupted upward flow of enemy PDF fire, cartwheeled down and struck the most dramatic minaret of the Istiqlal Mosque, bounced off, exploded halfway on its tumble toward the dome. Lucky that time, but before the day was out, that dome was going to be hit, holed, maybe dropped. The cheap, free-flight rockets being used to overwhelm the Arat Kur’s PDF intercept sensors and automation were notoriously inaccurate. Hopefully, one wouldn’t come down on Jake Winfield’s head while he made his way to the docks to recruit some additional help rumored to be coming ashore there.
As if to prove the accuracy limitations of the great majority of in-rushing rockets, there was a muffled blast overhead. Two ceiling panels shook loose, and ancient interfloor dust and detritus rained down. Barr, the secret-service man, looked up as though the rest of it were about to fall on their collective heads. “How long can they maintain this rate of fire?”
One of the two remaining locals, a shopkeeper by the name of Kurniawan, smiled. “Long time. Soldiers without uniforms, they kept many rockets in secret places. They hid the best ones our army had, even before Ruap took over. And they got lots more since: good rockets, some very smart. Some were even sent here before the Roaches came, almost half a year ago. The smart rockets are small enough to hide in garbage cans. They mostly American, Russian, English, guided by laser or little computer chip, launched by a radio signal or wire. Then, soon after the Roaches land, little boats from Thous’ Islands start coming with simpler rockets. Some of those were old. Real old. Katyusha, RPGs. A lot from China. A lot aren’t even weapons. They’re just like firework rockets, with a tin tube around them. Or mylar.”
“Mylar or tin? Why that?” asked Gavin.
Trevor supplied the answer. “Tricks the Arat Kur PDF systems. Only works for a second or two, but with this many rockets launched from relatively close ranges, they can’t spare the time to sort things out in detail. Any rocket they miss could hit one of their arrays, particularly if it’s one of those smart ones with a chip. Some of those are programmed to act like an off-course free-flight rocket until it approaches within a few hundred meters of its target. Then it goes active and swerves into a direct engagement vector.”
Impossibly, that’s when the overhead thunder redoubled. The sound of heavier impacts in and around the enemy compound only four hundred meters to the west started rippling against the outer walls, and their eardrums, like one long explosion.
“And that,” added Witkowski, snugging the chinstrap of his helmet, “sounds like the freighters inside the fifty-klick limit have joined in.”
Trevor shook his head. “No, that’s only the little ships launching. For now.”
Senior Sensor Operator and Assistant Shipmaster Tuxae Skhaas snapped his mandibles together, signaling an urgent correction to his last report. “I refine the data. The new wave of human rockets is being launched only from the small ships at the edge of the fifty-kilometer no-sail zone.”
“From the freighters?” His superior’s arrhythmic staccato cluckings were those of stunned incredulity.
“No, Fleetmaster R’sudkaat. There is no sign of any attacks being launched from the grain ships.”
The older Arat Kur acted with the decisiveness typical of—but today, welcome from—the Hur caste. He turned to Tuxae Skhaas’ closest companion. “H’toor Qooiiz, transfer your station to the terminal adjoining Sensor Operator Skhaas’. Speak all his subsequent findings immediately to me and to First Delegate Hu’urs Khraam’s personal Communications Operator. Tuxae Skhaas, you are to stop operating the sensors of this command ship.”
“But Fleetmaster—” began Tuxae.
“Harmonize now. I will pass orders that all other Sensor Operators are to link their feeds into your panel. You will analyze, assess, report. Your operator duties will be passed to the next senior operator.”
“As you instruct, Fleetmaster.”
H’toor signaled his matching acquiescence with a short bob as he squirmed down into the couch next to Tuxae’s. When the Fleetmaster had scraped off to give other orders, H’toor angled his frontal antennae toward his friend. “R’sudkaat must be desperate indeed, putting two unharmonious Ee’ar such as ourselves next to each other on the bridge.”
“Sing no caste-parodies this day,” Tuxae rattled sourly. “I forebode too many deaths among all our rock-siblings. See this.” He pointed into the holotank, brought the oblique bird’s eye view of Java closer. “The humans in and around the two greatest cities we occupy, Jakarta and Surabaja, have suddenly gone sun-time. Our other cantonments are also beset, but it is worst in these two places. The humans launch rockets from the jungles, the fields, the rice paddies, the roofs, and now small ships. Hundreds of rockets every minute.”