air ripped apart by the spaceships.
“Nineteen kilometers altitude,” Laura announced. “Watch out for the rocket exhaust. It’s as bad as any weapon.”
As she spoke, she saw the white spears of radioactive plasma emerging. More confusion and shouting erupted from the tannoys.
“Thirty-two confirmed lost,” a communications officer declared. No one in the crypt spoke.
“Stand by missiles,” Laura said, knowing it was all so wretchedly futile. They weren’t guided missiles; she hadn’t gotten Bienvenido’s electronics up to that level yet. These were unguided, developed to be fired in clusters from pods under the wings at a Faller egg in mid-descent. Thirty IA-505s had been hurriedly modified to shoot them vertically. Laura didn’t have any illusion that they’d hit the spaceships, but they would act as chaff, and hopefully divert some of the beam weapon fire.
“Begin missile barrage,” the chief air marshal ordered. The spaceship exhausts were now incandescent streaks, kilometers long. Coming down fast. Her u-shadow activated retinal filters, allowing her to see the tiny sparks of the cluster rockets swarming up at seven of the nine invaders. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the cries of fury and pain surging out of the tannoys might have decreased slightly.
“Invaders two, three, and eight coming down to your altitude, and slowing,” Laura said. “Four and six reaching attack altitude.”
“Converge,” the chief air marshal ordered.
“Giu bless you all,” Slvasta said in a strong clear voice. “Go get them!”
“One and seven,” Laura said. Then: “Five and nine. That’s all of them.” There was nothing left now but to pray.
The tannoys were a continual blast of shouted warnings and curses mixed with the high-pitched whine of the pneumatically driven rotary barrels. She closed her eyes, seeing the flimsy propeller-driven planes banking, turning toward the monster invaders and diving in, their Gatling guns firing furiously. They were good, those Gatling guns she’d designed for them, slinging five and a half thousand rounds a minute, hundred-gram projectiles with a muzzle velocity close to nine hundred meters a second.
Individually, a strike by one round would be nothing to spaceships this size, but the IA-505s were slamming out a wall of metal, chewing up the hull and outer systems. There would be damage, and the invaders were still in the air with three kilometers to go. If anything harmed their rockets…
A massive cheer burst across the crypt as intruder seven’s rockets failed. The spaceship began its long tumble to the unyielding desert below.
“Seventy-three percent casualties on seven’s attackers,” their liaison announced.
“Oh, bollocks,” Laura groaned in anguish. She refused to glance at the tally board. It wouldn’t be accurate anyway; they were losing planes so fast nobody could keep count. But she could see them through the terminus, small balls of flame flickering and dying in the hot air far above the desert.
On the map table, a pole ceremoniously knocked over the wooden rocket that represented intruder seven.
Intruder three’s rocket exhaust dimmed and vanished. Intruder five began to wobble, scything its plasma around in long curves.
“We’re killing them,” Slvasta said in satisfaction.
“Not enough,” Laura snapped back.
You don’t understand. If just one of these bastards lands…
“Attack on intruder two is over,” the communications officer announced.
“Over?” Javier asked. “What do you mean over? It’s still flying. Send the planes back.”
“We can’t,” the officer told him bleakly.
“Why not?”
“They’re all gone. Wiped out.”
“Crudding Uracus!”
Laura tried to block it all out of her mind, the suffering and deaths. Suspend emotion, everything that made her human, and concentrate on the facts. Intruder three was plummeting now, spinning wildly as its erratic rockets sliced their lethal exhaust across the sky.