Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [31]
Davlin turned to Ruis. 'Tell the people to gather their food supplies. Pull together any scraps they can find in the storehouses, then cache them in hiding places. The Klikiss haven't raided our possessions yet, but that will come sooner or later. Prepare for the worst-case scenario.'
'Should we go to the Klikiss camp and try to talk with their leader? Maybe Margaret can do that.' Ruis looked at Davlin, as if suggesting that he himself should volunteer, rather than sending anyone else. 'We all have to live on this planet together. We have to share the resources. It only makes sense that--'
'The Klikiss don't have to share this planet with anybody. They simply don't bother with us - except when we get in the way, like the EDF soldiers did. I suggest we not give them reasons to notice us.'
Sixteen
General Kurt Lanyan
It was the largest spare-parts dump in the Spiral Arm. The last stand against the hydrogues had left wreckage strewn from Earth orbit out past the Moon. Debris from hundreds of Ildiran warliners drifted among shattered hydrogue spheres and EDF warships - even two Juggernauts, one severely damaged, one destroyed.
And Lanyan got to pick up the pieces. Commerce and traffic around Earth had been hindered by the sheer number of ruined vessels and the lack of qualified pilots to fly through the danger zone. 'Sometimes I hate this job,' Lanyan muttered as his ship negotiated the scrap yard.
The asteroid-belt shipyards were now a veritable boomtown. Thousands of scrap haulers, salvage experts, and independent reclamation contractors combed through the wreckage to identify usable parts 'for the good of the Hansa' - while also lining their own pockets, he was sure.
Though the Chairman had called for every capable ship during the last defence of Earth, many more pilots and vessels had appeared now to assist with the profitable salvage work. Cowards and slackers! Lanyan ground his teeth together. Where had these people been when the EDF was facing the enemy?
Already six unofficial ships had been stopped and seized, their cargo holds full of rare components stripped out of the wreckage. Vital pieces had begun to appear at exorbitant prices on the black market, and the Chairman demanded an immediate crackdown. To set an example, four men were convicted, sentenced, and ejected from airlocks - a dramatic and harsh sentence, but one previously established as appropriate for 'pirates'. Even so, with such a huge junkyard to pick over, Lanyan was sure criminal activities would continue.
Meanwhile, EDF warships were being repaired as swiftly as possible, and new patchwork ships assembled with parts cannibalized from other vessels. The resulting constructions looked like Frankenstein's monsters, but as long as the engines worked and the weapons fired, cosmetics weren't the military's highest priority.
He had hoped that the EDF could take time to rebuild after its losses, but the Hansa now found itself in an unpleasant civil war against the King and an alarming number of breakaway Hansa colonies. Lanyan was sure that an intimidating show of force would send the rebels scurrying home to their colonies (once he got his battleships back again, that was).
As he flew toward the main shipyards, he saw zones delineated by danger beacons, indicating drifting wrecks that were unable to move under their own power. Clusters of spacesuited men and women worked with plasma cutters and high-powered deconstructor jaws to disassemble the hulks. Tankers moved about like giant metal mosquitoes, connecting to, and sipping from, any intact ekti tanks to preserve every last scrap of stardrive fuel.
Lanyan chose to fly alone. He was a qualified pilot, and with so many navigation hazards here, the smallest mistake could cause a severe accident. The General didn't feel like trusting his life to some underling. He identified himself on approach, and the harried-sounding space-traffic controller assigned him an arrival vector, then immediately changed his