That didn’t really make sense, now that Tully thought about it. True, Kralik obviously had the hots for Stockwell, even if he wasn’t being uncouth about it. But he was a general, fer chrissake, in a combat situation. And, from everything Tully had seen, a particularly coolheaded one. However concerned he might have been for Caitlin Stockwell, delegation of authority came automatically to him. Kralik would have just ordered one of his junior officers to see the girl got to a hospital safely. He wouldn’t have left his post to do it personally.
There was only one reason Tully could think of, for Kralik to have done that. Because he needed to get in contact with someone and couldn’t afford to be discovered doing it. That meant finding a human telephone, instead of using his regular communicator.
Tully was still staring at the general. Again, Kralik’s eyes met his. This time, though, something seemed to flicker in them before he looked away.
For the first and only time since Tully had joined the jinau to ferret out what intelligence he could, he actually felt like saluting an officer.
You’re okay, General Ed Kralik, even if you are a damn collaborator.
Tully wondered if Kralik had passed along any specific knowledge, regarding which routes and tactics Aille would be using in the attack. Probably not. Kralik was a decent guy, sure enough, but he was still a jinau officer. He wouldn’t have gone that far. And it didn’t really matter anyway. Between Aille’s stalling and Kralik’s warning, the human authorities in Salem would have had enough time to evacuate anyone who was willing to go.
The Resistance units would stay behind, of course, since the city’s authorities had no control over them. But that meant it was going to be a straight-up fight, not a slaughter.
* * *
As he continued to watch, Tully realized something else. The young Pluthrak Subcommandant was still dragging his feet—only, this time, as flamboyantly as possible. The Jao forces invading Salem were making slow progress because they were destroying everything as they went. Every building, every shack—hell, they were blasting away street signs!
Even with the lightning-quick Jao targeting mechanisms and dead-sure aim, and the sheer destructiveness of lasers designed for space battle used at point-blank range, it was taking time. More time for the civilians to get out of the way.
Tully was sure that Kralik had recommended this avenue of approach for exactly the same reason. The Jao forces were advancing into Salem from the southeast, taking one of the commercial boulevards that branched off from I-5. Tully wasn’t familiar with Salem, but this boulevard was generic to almost any small city in North America: just an endless row of fast food joints, gas stations and car dealerships, most of which were long-abandoned and half in ruins, anyway. For twenty years, Oppuk’s rule had oscillated between savagery and negligence. Salem was in no better shape than most of America’s small cities, even ones that hadn’t been directly damaged during the conquest.
Almost gleefully, Tully watched another car dealership explode into ruins on the screen. An old Hyundai dealership, this one. Glass flying everywhere, of course, flames pouring out—but there weren’t even any cars being wrecked. From the looks of it, that dealership had gone out of business at least a decade earlier. A lot of the windows had already been broken even before the Jao lasers hit them.
And my daddy swore by Fords, anyway. Buy American, he’d always say.
* * *
The invaders finally met resistance when they started entering the residential districts. On the screen, yellow bursts of automatic weapons-fire split the night, distinctly different from the Jao laser beams.
Aille tapped that carved stick of his against the heel of his hand. The thing the Jao called a bau, which had some significance to them that Tully had never really understood. It had something to do with kochan status, was all he knew, not military rank as such.
“I am getting disturbing reports,” the Pluthrak Subcommandant said. “I must go closer and observe in person. Come with me, General Kralik.”
Knowing what was expected by now, Tully hurried to precede Aille out of the command center, with Aguilera alongside and Tamt on their heels. Once they got outside, he saw that the rain had started up again. In fact, it was coming down hard. Yaut motioned to a Jao vehicle standing by and it pulled up before them. The vehicle was a Jao equivalent of an armored personnel carrier, with the curved and rounded lines that characterized all their vehicles.