A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [94]
Admiral Willis barked over the command frequency, “Let’s hustle. All Remoras launch! All Mantas, power up your jazers and projectile weapons. Jupiter will provide the heavy firepower. I don’t think our guns are big enough for these customers, but I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong.”
Fitzpatrick’s Manta disengaged from the main fleet, and Willis’s Juggernaut accompanied it to intercept the first warglobe. The keyed-up Remora pilots and the EDF weapons engineers opened fire long before they came into range.
The warglobes launched blue lightning at the oncoming human forces, vaporizing a dozen of the fastest, cockiest Remoras. But the drogues’ main intent was directed downward, frigid icewaves ripping the landscape, freezing and shattering the majestic black pines.
Tasia wanted to join the attack, but she knew her efforts would be irrelevant. “Admiral Willis, our combined firepower isn’t going to scratch four warglobes. My tactician projects that Settlement D will be obliterated within the hour if we don’t evacuate—”
“What’s the matter, Tamblyn, no stomach for a real fight?” Fitzpatrick transmitted.
“Why not ask the sitting-duck colonists, Fitzpatrick—or should I just deliver a message that you were too busy shooting spitballs into a hurricane?”
“Tamblyn, you have a point,” Willis said. “Take your cruiser to the village and start loading everybody aboard. Have the colonists crowd into the corridors if you don’t have enough room in your hold.”
“Yes, ma’am!” She gestured to Lieutenant Ramirez. They angled down in a steeper dive, streaking eastward ahead of the hydrogue destruction.
The Juggernaut Jupiter slammed a volley of jazer bolts into the foremost warglobe. As if annoyed by the distraction, the spiked diamond sphere shot a blue lightning blast that grazed the starboard hull of the flagship and sent it careening off course.
Tasia snapped an order to her comm officer. “Get on the horn to Settlement D and tell them to have everyone out and waiting. Shizz, it’s going to take all the time we’ve got just to move everybody through the doors.”
The warglobes rumbled over the wilderness like cosmic bulldozers. Behind them, no tree, no blade of grass, remained standing.
Tasia’s Manta raced in front of the hydrogues, putting a hundred kilometers of thickly forested landscape between them. Minute by minute, the relentless alien spheres closed the distance. Settlement D stood in their way.
In the lakeside village, sawmills, loading platforms, and boxy barracks covered a cleared area dotted with clean stumps sheared off at ground level. As more black pines had been cut down, the settlement expanded, and new facilities were erected for processing the trees into exportable forest products.
Now the lumber workers, glancing toward the skies with apprehension, scurried like ants on a hot plate. Some comm operators watched from operations shacks or mill-control towers as the hydrogue destroyers swept forward, consuming the black pines.
As soon as Tasia’s cruiser came in over the lake by Settlement D, she looked for a place to land, but saw no clearing large enough to accommodate the Manta. The frenzied people ran about, waving and signaling the ship as if ready to spring aboard before she even landed.
“The drogues are seventy klicks away and coming fast,” said Ramirez.
Tasia pointed to one of the large hangar-size warehouses. “Time for some urban renewal. Level that empty warehouse, then land right smack in the wreckage. We’ll just have to hope there’s no one left inside.”
A single jazer burst flattened the structure into splinters and cinders, and the cruiser came down into the open area. Its nose touched the lakeshore, and cold water hissed against its hot hull. Several thousand villagers stampeded forward.
“We need to impose order, sir,” said her security chief, Sergeant Zizu. “They’ll trample each other.”
She looked at the chronometer, saw they had only about forty minutes remaining. “We don’t have the luxury of being orderly, Zizu.” Already the cargo hatches