As a child, though, Adele hadn’t imagined that she would be one of those who fought.
Chapter Twenty-eight
As soon as the main hatch tilted forward enough to break the seal along the upper edge, smoke and ashes swirled into the Princess Cecile. The automatic impeller fixed to the wardroom hatch on the level above cut loose with a long burst, making the hull ring as it recoiled. An incoming projectile whanged off the corvette’s bow.
“Boarders, spread out and form along the road on this side!” Daniel shouted. “Over!”
The hatch thumped down in soft soil, rolling up sparks from the weeds and brush ignited by the Princess Cecile’s exhaust. A ridge of slightly higher ground supported a grove of trees, but the river a hundred yards north of the corvette flooded often enough to rot the roots of large vegetation on the flats. The road just beyond was built on a levee and made a good blocking position.
Daniel started for the grove, well behind the riggers in his fifty-strong party. They’d jumped while the end of the ramp was still ten feet in the air. The thrusters had baked the ground solid. The mud was more organic than mineral, so the stench was worse than that of a fire in a charnel house.
There was a bright white flash in the direction of the distant spaceport. Almost immediately the ground shuddered, but the crash of rending metal was many seconds delayed. The bow of a pirate cutter tilted up, then toppled again below the line of the causeway. There was no way to tell which side had been responsible for the destruction.
“Boarders, gunmen are taking position on the other side of the—” Tovera said. Her cold voice was little changed by the compression of the helmet radio link.
A stocked impeller began to fire behind Daniel, the slugs passing close overhead. He stumbled on a root that remained tough despite the charring. Righting himself he glanced backward. Hogg was seated cross-legged on the top of the ramp. His arms were braced on his knees and the impeller’s sling, locking the weapon on target.
Every time Hogg fired, a head slipped out of sight behind the causeway. Sometimes there was a splash in the air behind where the head had been.
Midway between the road and the corvette, the ground was still soggy. Daniel’s right boot sank ankle deep, throwing him forward. Spurts of mud and pulped foliage leaped high, drawing a diagonal across the line of advancing spacers. The man to Daniel’s right crumpled, holding his belly and screaming. His equipment belt twisted away from him as he fell, severed by the slug.
The Princess Cecile’s upper turret roared, raking the causeway with pulses of plasma. The bolts were hammerblows of pure heat on the back of Daniel’s neck and bare hands. Several of the spacers fell—unharmed, or he hoped so, but thrown to the ground by the crashing discharges.
Daniel’s visor blacked out the flashes that would otherwise have destroyed his retinas. What he saw as he continued to stagger forward was an invisible giant chewing hunks out of the roadway. Wet silt exploded in steam and the dark red flames of carbon; rock ballast blew to glassy shards or white, searing calcium flames.
The Falassan gunfire ceased. “Boarders, form along the roadway!” Daniel wheezed. “Over!”
Sun ceased fire after his twin cannon had devoured three hundred yards of roadway. Through the smoke of the new fires, Daniel saw people running back toward the town to the south or standing with their hands in the air.
Several of the spacers were shooting wildly as they advanced. They weren’t going to hit anything—well, they weren’t going to hit any Falassans, though their fellows were at risk—and the locals seemed to have stopped fighting anyway.
“Boarders, cease fire!” Daniel ordered. He thought again about his notion of small-arms training for the crew. There’d have been time for it during refit on Tanais. The Sissies would’ve been excited to have something real to be doing on a barren iceball. Instead—
Another explosion shook Homeland. An orange fireball lifted a metal roof and a human body. The figure was pinwheeling; the arms and legs had separated from the torso before it all dropped out of sight.