Aneka Jansen 6: The Lowest Depths of Shame (8 page)

Deena had had a cough for the last month, and Mizzy had caught it a week later. Neither had said anything to the guards because sometimes the people who left the cave did not come back. Mizzy’s cough was not getting better, and she knew Deena was worried about it, so she tried very hard not to cough, but it was difficult when she was cold.

The bed moved. ‘Something’s happening,’ Deena whispered from outside the blankets. ‘The guards are running about.’

Mizzy pulled the blankets back and looked up at the older girl. ‘Is someone coming?’

Deena reached out a hand and stroked the little blonde’s hair. ‘I don’t know, hun. Just be ready.’

‘What for?’

‘Anything.’

BC-101 Hand of God.

The primary beam, a one-hundred-gigajoule gamma-ray laser, sliced through the hull of its target. Fuel tanks exploded and the ruined frigate began a lazy tumble. The Hand’s computers projected a deorbit over the southern pole in six hours. Tasker made a note to send a shuttle out to check for survivors.

‘Hand of God reporting last Herosian vessel down,’ she said aloud for the benefit of the Jenlay contingent.

‘Prepare for ground invasion,’ Thackett’s voice said. ‘Anti-aircraft fire to begin on my mark.’

‘We’re getting radio transmissions from the surface.’ Tasker did not recognise the voice, but it came from one of the Jenlay ships. ‘Repeated statement that they will take extreme measures if we don’t withdraw.’

A flurry of thoughts passed across the Hand’s internal network. Ground batteries below were opening fire. There were three squadrons of fighters in the air, more preparing for launch. Point defence fire was being initiated from all Old Earth vessels. No one could detect the transmissions the Jenlay ship was reporting.

‘Open fire,’ Thackett ordered.

Tasker’s visuals showed missile tracks heading for the airborne craft below. Seventeen seconds to interception. Point defence had taken out the ones coming up…

‘Continued radio traffic,’ the same voice reported. ‘They demand we back off.’

‘Or what?’ Thackett growled. ‘They’re going to shout at us harder?’

Missile detonations. Sixty-one per cent estimated kill rate. Tasker dispatched an order to her ground force leaders indicating they should prepare for launch. And then chaos consumed the fleet’s communications.

‘Detonations,’ someone reported.

‘Two detonations. Nuclear!’

Figures flashed across Tasker’s field of vision. Two nuclear detonations a couple of kilometres outside the city. Estimated yield twenty-five kilotonnes. More precise locations appeared. The mines…

Beryum.

When the cavern began to shake, Deena grabbed Mizzy from the bed and pushed her under the frame.

‘Stay there,’ the lanky girl said.

‘What about you?’ Mizzy called back as Deena turned away.

‘Have to get the others under cover.’

Mizzy curled into a tight ball as she heard small rocks hitting the floor of the cavern. She was not sure exactly what was going on, but she was sure it was not good and that she wanted Deena in with her, under cover, and away from the falling ceiling.

There was another sound, deeper and more resonant, from somewhere above them. It sounded a bit like the explosions Mizzy had heard when the Herosians had first come, but it went on for longer and it had to be louder because of all the rock above their heads.

Screaming started as something big hit the floor of the cavern. One of the voices sounded like Deena.

Mizzy’s screams joined the others as something heavy slammed into her bed, buckling the frame.

LV-101 Argus.

Norden was momentarily stunned. None of his simulations, none of his research, had indicated that the Herosians would commit suicide rather than allow the planet to fall into Jenlay hands. But there it was. Two warheads had been detonated near the mining facilities.

The data was indicating surface blasts. Nuclear mines or standalone devices. Had one of the anti-aircraft missiles triggered them? But, no, the delay was too significant. It seemed that they had been a response to the continued attack. There had been the reports of radio broadcasts…

Analysis would have to wait. The surface damage was significant and there would be extensive disruption of the mine tunnels. It was known that civilians were working in the mines
and
hostages were being held down there. Radioactive fallout was already dispersing across a wide area. The city was likely safe; it was domed due to the cold, thinly oxygenated atmosphere. Data was still lacking detail after the explosions, but the dome seemed intact.

‘All teams switch to hazard suits,’ Thackett was ordering. ‘I want men on the ground in less than thirty minutes! Vashma damn them! What were they thinking?’

Norden said nothing in reply. He was busy coordinating the launch of drop ships to the planet’s surface. There were still going to be Herosians down there, and it seemed they were far more desperate than had been estimated. The fight was far from over, and it was going to be hard.

Shadataga, 12.7.530 FSC.

‘I’m… not sure I believe what I’m seeing,’ Gillian stated.

Ella was just staring, wide-eyed, at the operations room display. Most of the others were watching in silence. Aneka had closed her eyes, but she was still getting raw data displayed behind her eyelids, which seemed to soften the impact a little, but still managed to get across the probable level of destruction.

‘This is not a normal reaction for Herosians,’ Evolution stated. ‘Summer was the real expert on their behaviour, and I’m not sure all his reports can be classed as impartial, but no reading of their mindset I have suggests this kind of action under these circumstances.’

Winter was nodding. ‘I think we need to go over the sensor records for the period before the detonations.’

‘All those people…’ Ella whispered.

Aneka opened her eyes and wrapped an arm around Ella’s shoulders. ‘There’s nothing we can do for them, love,’ she said. ‘It’s up to the people out there.’

‘I know,’ Ella replied. ‘It’s just… I can’t watch this. Not when I can’t
do
anything.’

Nodding, Aneka steered her out toward the door. The data feeds continued in her mind, detailing the devastation on Beryum. There was nothing she could do either, but she felt she had to watch. Something about all of it felt wrong and she wanted to know what.

Beryum.

Jared edged through the wreckage-strewn interior of the building on alert. His suit’s sensors were watching for the data transmitters the Jenlay had embedded in them, but he was not getting much luck with that. The Herosians had, of course, had theirs deactivated, otherwise spotting the remaining aliens would have been a lot easier and Jared would not have been on such high alert.

Except it felt like a waste of effort. The Jenlay commanders were insisting that there were still Herosians hiding out in the buildings, but none of the Guardian squads had encountered them. There were bodies, plenty of those, but nothing on its feet.

It was better than being on the mine clearance operation, however, so he was not exactly unhappy about being dispatched to the city. The Argus’ factory facilities had been used to build equipment to clear fallen rock. Largely that had come down to microbots built for digging. The tiny robots could shift tonnes of dirt, shoring up as they went, far more safely than traditional tunnelling mechanisms, but it still took time. Since it was going to be hours before they could move into the mines, spare troops had been moved up to the city.

Not that they had seemed welcome. The Jenlay had appeared reluctant to let them in, and they had been assigned to clearing habitation blocks which, as best as Jared could tell anyway, had already been cleared.

A flash from his HUD caught his attention and he turned into an apartment on his right. His suit had picked up an identity transponder and was decrypting the bio-monitor readouts as he narrowed in on it. Low blood pressure, thready, weak pulse, but whoever it was they were alive. He found her as a name flashed past: Tuft, Donna. She was lying in a pool of blood, but not all of it was hers. Beside her lay a dead Herosian in combat gear, killed by a laser hit to the side of the head. Someone had killed the Herosian and not noticed the woman?

Jared sent out a request for immediate medical assistance to his location and a notification to the rest of his squad that he had a survivor he was securing. Then he checked the rest of the apartment, but there were no more aliens, and no sign of any real conflict aside from the two casualties.

It was as the medics were arriving that Jared realised that there was also nothing in the way of weapons in the room.

13.7.530 FSC.

Ape Gibbons watched as bodies were carried out of the mine. He had insisted on coming down to the planet, despite the protestations of his XO and Thackett who seemed to think that surface activities were none of his concern. So he was down on the planet and regretting every moment of it.

It was also why Leeforth was standing nearby in full Marine armour and carrying a rifle which looked large against her slim frame. She handled it like a pro, however. She was an ex-Marine, so she
was
a pro, but her talents were not really needed.

‘You sure you need to see this?’ Leeforth asked over the direct radio connection they had set up.

‘Yes,’ Ape replied. ‘I need to see this.’

‘It’s not like this is our fault, and the Guardians have this covered.’

There was silence for a second as a stretcher with a rather small body on it was carried out.

‘Something doesn’t feel right about the way this happened,’ Ape said, and then moved toward a figure walking out of the tunnel the microbots had carved. He switched his suit to external speaker. ‘Captain Tasker, you’re finding hostages?’

‘We’re finding bodies,’ Tasker replied sourly. ‘The explosions brought the roof down across half the mine. We’re hoping to find some people alive deeper in the tunnels, but… Kids, Ape… They were children.’

‘Yes… we need to talk, somewhere private.’

‘The Hand? Meet me up there.’

Ape nodded, turning on his heel. ‘Judy, let’s go. We’ve a meeting to attend.’

Shadataga.

‘We’ve been through every scrap of sensor data we have, several times,’ Winter said. ‘None of our systems picked up any radio traffic of the kind reported by this frigate.’

‘That… seems odd,’ Aneka said.

‘But inconclusive. The frigate was in a low orbit. It could have picked something up we could not.’

‘Your message suggested that your findings were more… more of an issue than that.’

‘Yes… You read the end of mystery novels first, don’t you?’

‘No! I just… like getting to the point.’

Winter’s lips twitched. ‘The nuclear detonations happened more or less immediately after the interception of ground battery fire and the elimination of a large number of fighters. None of the Navy’s missiles appeared to be in the area of the detonations. It would appear that the Herosians did, indeed, set off nuclear charges themselves.’

‘Except,’ War put in, ‘that the explosions were low-altitude air bursts. One at about seventy-five metres, the other at fifty. Not high, but higher than any of the buildings in the area.’

‘But none of the missiles got that low,’ Aneka said, her eyes on the tracks of every weapon that had dropped down from the ships in orbit.

‘That ignores this anomaly.’ The display retraced its steps to before the missile were launched and rotated, swinging around to show them the far side of the planet where a lone frigate was low in the atmosphere. There were heat markers showing on its forward hull. ‘We detected this ship launching missiles forty-seven seconds before the barrage begins. There are no tracks after five seconds, indicating that the weapons launched dropped into a terrain-following mode. Given probable velocity and compensating for terrain…’

‘That thing launched the nukes,’ Aneka finished. ‘Why?’

‘That,’ Winter said, ‘is a very good question.’

BC-101 Hand of God.

‘We detected nothing from any surface radio station,’ Tasker stated, ‘but the frigate doing the reporting was in a low orbit and radio is…’

‘Unreliable when there are missiles flying about?’ Leeforth suggested.

‘Among other things. There was a fair level of jamming going on.’

‘If I were being suspicious,’ Ape said, ‘jamming like that would make it uncertain whether such a transmission had been made.’

‘That possibility has not gone unnoticed,’ Tasker said slowly. ‘Norden has been running a number of lines of analysis to determine
exactly
what happened during the battle.’

‘You know…’ Leeforth said. ‘We are spinning some sort of conspiracy theory here.’

‘Yes,’ Ape replied. ‘Which is pretty crazy really…’

Shadataga.

‘The news networks all across the Federation are buzzing with anti-Herosian sentiment,’ Winter said. ‘There’s some hints of resentment for the Torem attitude to the war, but it’s subtle at the moment. The main push is anger toward the Herosians.’

‘Have the reports from Beryum reached New Earth yet?’ Aneka asked.

‘No, but they have reached Dokar. The reaction has been inflammatory, spurred on by some spin from this Front Line News network.’

‘I met their lead reporter. He’s an arsehole.’

‘He seems to have an eye for finding the right line to take to maximise his audience. There is no evidence that he’s working for anyone official, but his position within the fleet allows him to get footage others would not, and this clearly rides on portraying the Navy in the best light. And there is the matter of the video from Marchant…’

‘Where there was apparently a lot of fighting, despite there being no one to fight.’

‘Analysis of the footage was made difficult by the apparent source,’ War said. ‘Most of the video comes from suit camera feeds. The resolution was low and there are a lot of digitisation artefacts. However, we managed to find certain faults in some of the stills which indicate that at least some of the material was manufactured.’