A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [95]
On the horizon behind them, a stain of smoke and frozen steam approached like gangrene. “Admiral Willis, I need to know if you’re slowing them down at all.”
The flagship responded with real-time images of the warglobes flattening the stands of black pines. “One of our cruisers has been obliterated and over two hundred Remoras destroyed or downed—so far.”
Tasia felt sick. “Any damage to the enemy?”
“Not a whit, dammit! Lucky for us, the drogues are more interested in ruining the lumber crop than in fighting us. What have they got against a bunch of trees?”
Mobs of lumber workers were already aboard Tasia’s cruiser. Many were separated from their families or loved ones, but they could sort that out later. Less than twenty minutes remained, according to her projections. From outside, above the shouts and outcries of the settlers, she could hear the crackle, boom, and roar of the approaching warglobes.
Willis called again. “Commander Tamblyn, what is the evacuation status of Settlement D?”
“I’m getting most of the refugees on board now, but they’ll fill every cranny of my Manta.”
“Good work, Tamblyn,” Willis said. “At least somebody’s accomplishing a good thing.”
Obviously, the Admiral hadn’t yet figured out what Tasia already knew. “Ma’am, we can take these people to safety, but…look at your map. The hydrogues are being pretty methodical, laying waste to the entire landmass, centimeter by centimeter.”
“So get those people out of there!”
“My point exactly, Admiral. I can get most of the refugees out of Settlement D before the enemy arrives, but there are fifteen other settlements, a hundred thousand people. If the drogues keep coming, they’re all in the line of fire, ready to fall like dominoes. Unless we devote our full resources—and I mean one hundred percent effort—to rescuing the colonists, they’re going to suffer horrific casualties.”
Surprisingly, Patrick Fitzpatrick came over the channel in support. “I hate to admit this, Admiral, but Tamblyn’s right.” His image looked battered and haggard. His cruiser had already been damaged in the fight. “Politically speaking, you don’t want to be in command of the mission that costs the greatest number of lives in human history.”
Willis’s face looked pinched. “Well, we sure aren’t accomplishing squat in either defense or offense against the drogues.”
Off-channel, Tasia called to her own crew. “Give me a status. Is everyone on board yet?”
“Only a few stragglers left, Commander.”
The town on the lake was already a ruin. Small fires sputtered from the warehouse Tasia’s Manta had flattened. On the main screen she could see a few bodies of trampled or injured people. “Sound the last call; then let’s get out of here.”
Behind them, the nearby forests were already crumbling, toppling, as diamond spheres cruised above the treetops, coming closer.
“Listen up, that’s it! All ships break off our counterattack,” Willis finally ordered. “Disperse and grab the colonists. Begin a full-scale evacuation of Boone’s Crossing.”
“Commander Tamblyn, we’ve rescued approximately two thousand four hundred settlers,” said Sergeant Zizu. “We’ll do an accurate count later, but that’s over fifty percent of the Settlement D population.”
Tasia’s heart skipped a beat. Only half.
Seeing her expression, the security chief said, “That’s as good as we can hope for, considering the circumstances. Most of the work crews out in the forests couldn’t get back in time.”
She looked at the map, noting the heavily forested continent that ended abruptly at the broad ocean. She knew the holding capacity of the Jupiter and the remaining cruisers, and did a quick calculation.
The EDF ships could never carry all of the endangered colonists.
47
CESCA PERONI
The central complex of Rendezvous was a loose cluster of asteroids bound together by gravity