Infinite Day (107 page)

By dawn on Saturday, the rain had all but ceased, and when Merral walked around some of the upper bunkers at ten, the sun's heat coming through torn clouds was already evaporating the pools of water so that a strange pale mist hung around the site.

From a trench on the summit, Merral surveyed the scene as best he could. All his senses told him of activity. There were the sounds: the constant crack of orders, the near continuous whistling of rotorcraft blades, the ceaseless throaty roar of engines as excavators and cranes were steered back into transports or parked. There were sights: the glimpses through the mist of long files of men and women in new brown uniforms moving out from the temporary campsites to defense lines, the flags of the Assembly being hoisted, and everywhere the gleam of the almost universal mud. There were smells: engine oil, lubricants, the chemical aroma of the last mirror ice being sprayed on.

As Merral tried to imagine what the scene before him might look like in five or six hours' time, a message crackled in his headset. “Sir, better get down. New data incoming on attacks.”

He ran down to the Circle.

DC broke the news. “Commander, the Dominion forces are starting course corrections. It fits with landings here. In two hours.”

From her reading of the signals, Betafor agreed, and ten minutes later Ethan called to confirm with a similar ADF prediction. He added that they were preparing to engage the incoming Dominion vessels. “Merral, I shall be speaking to the world soon and announcing you are in charge at Tahuma.”

“Very well. I will make a short speech.”

“We will transmit it on.”

Vero, installed at the ranch in the Negev that Delastro had used as his base, sat down at the table in the topmost room of the old tower and looked at the list before him. He had all he needed. Some of the things he had found in the herbs and potions left behind by the prebendant. Some ingredients he had refused, so there was nothing that involved live animals or fresh blood.
The things discovered in the freezers prove that the prebendant tried such means. I will not go down that road.

He surveyed the jars of powders and liquids, checking them off. He had the solitude, he had the ingredients, and—courtesy of the dead, mutilated priest—he had the formula and the commands he needed.

In the heavy silence, he sat still as for the thousandth time he considered the rightness of what he was doing.

It will not be magic in any real sense. I want nothing for myself. I just want to attract the attention of the lord-emperor. It is a distraction, pure and simple.

Vero turned to the sheets of paper before him and began to rehearse the words.

Merral made the speech from the summit of Tahuma-A; he had been guaranteed a brief moment of silence, and the technicians had arranged for his words to be broadcast through speakers across all the nearly two hundred square kilometers of the defenses. A single camera had been positioned to film him against a backdrop of the banners of Earth and the Lamb and Stars.

Merral adjusted his uniform, stared across the broad panorama of desert scored with ditches and constructions, and waited. The green light came on.

“I am Merral D'Avanos of Farholme, talking to you now as your commander.” His words, distorted and blurred, came echoing back to him from a hundred loudspeakers on the plain around. “I am both conscious of that honor and humbled by that responsibility. I need your prayers. Let me tell you what we know. It now seems certain that in the next few hours the enemy will attack us here. He comes here because he wants access to the system of Gates that forms the very basis of the Assembly. If he seizes that power, then the evil and terror of our enemies will be across all the worlds in days. We have no option but to stop them here.”

He paused and swallowed, hearing his words repeated like the murmur of some strange sea.

“It was often said, in ancient battles, that those who fought were privileged. It was then often a lie. It is not so, however, today. We face an enemy without virtue and without mercy. We have done nothing to him; his sole motivation is hatred for us and all we stand for. We had forgotten much of war—and been glad to forget—but reluctantly, we have now taken up the weapons of war to deal with this enemy.”

He paused again.

“We had forgotten much of war, but we of the Assembly have never forgotten courage and sacrifice. What we have honored with our words, may we now honor with our actions. As mortal men and women, we live all our lives knowing that one day we must put on immortality. For some of us that day may be upon us.”

Beyond the echoes he seemed to hear a profound silence.

“Let us do all we have to do with hope and, as far as it is possible, with grace. Now to the Lamb, slain, risen, and coming again, be all glory and praise. God be with you all.”

He bowed his head for a moment and as he prayed, an almost overwhelming silence seemed to envelop him.

He looked up. “To your posts, soldiers. Get your armor on.”

If the other battles of the Great War deserve fuller treatment, so does the space conflict above Earth that day. But here too, only the briefest summary can be given.

Fifteen Dominion ships approached Earth, twelve apparently intending to land. The assault on them began even as Merral spoke. For some fifty minutes a dozen Assembly vessels attacked with ferocious determination in the silent, lethal emptiness of space. With the glowing and ominous mass of the Blade of Night in the background, ships exploded, were gutted by cannon fire, or were rammed. Nine Assembly vessels were destroyed, and none of their hundred or so crew survived.

Yet their losses were not in vain: only six Dominion ships made it through into the atmosphere and the two suppression complexes that would have supported them were disabled or destroyed. The surviving ships corkscrewed down toward landing sites around Tahuma.

Merral watched the battle from the Circle, hearing the restrained cheers and groans as victories or losses were registered.

“Six ships,” DC said quietly and adjusted a screen. “Now it's up to us. Ready, Chief?”

“Ready, DC.”

“Hear orders! Hi-alt missile batteries: arm. Fire on first firm lock.”

Merral turned to Betafor, who was squatting next to him with an array of wires coming out of her chest. “Krallen estimates?”

“Provisional figures only. Twenty thousand. And other things.”

Merral felt the ground shake.

“First missiles away,” intoned DC.

Merral looked at the clock. It was three minutes after two in the afternoon, and the Battle of Tahuma had begun.

For Merral, the pattern for much of the next four hours was similar. The Circle, with the lights dimmed slightly, became a nervous and strained environment full of men and women hunched over screens and talking in urgent whispers. Every so often there would be the rumble of outgoing artillery or the sharper explosion of an incoming round.

Merral stayed close to DC and Betafor, with Lloyd and varying team leaders nearby. DC, her jacket discarded, would sit swaying backward and forward on her seat, tapping buttons and scrolling down screens and calling out messages and snapping out commands. Every few minutes, she'd throw a question over her shoulder for the chief and ask for a decision. At less frequent intervals she'd ask Betafor for information.

Merral, seated just behind DC, tried to assimilate her constant rapid-fire statements with comments from Betafor and from other sources. He located events on maps and tried to see trends. He had to force himself to concentrate and not let his mind wander. Time seemed to vanish in the nonstop succession of data, decisions, and orders.

The effect, he realized in a snatched moment of reflection, was a paradox.
I know a great deal of what's going on in this battle, but I feel utterly distanced from it.
Only the episodic percussive blasts rumbling through the floor reminded him that beyond the Circle, a war raged in which men and women died.

For the first two hours or so, there was hope of a victory. One incoming ship was destroyed in midair by a missile, but the remaining five landed successfully, essentially forming a frame around Tahuma. Two touched down to the southwest only to soon be blown apart by a sustained artillery barrage. To the southeast, a single ship released some Krallen but was then badly damaged and from then on seemed to pose only a limited threat.