Stephen Berry - Final Assault

"Against nothing," he repeated, turning back to Sutherland, hands clasped behind his back. "That nest in the Mato Grosso was the last of them. There are no more traces on Terra. We've wiped all the S'Cotar on your world."

It had been a swift, flawlessly executed operation. Without warning, Repulse had moved out of stationary orbit, heading outsystem at speed, protests from a hundred nations rippling in its wake as the radar reports came in. Ambassador Z'Sha had only just issued an uninformative statement when the destroyer suddenly reappeared over Brazil, missile and fusion batteries sending a thin-stream of death into the atmosphere-a fierce rain of ordnance and energy that impacted on a small village deep in the Amazon basin.

Flashing silver in the tropical sun, five K'Ronarin shuttles had swept in low off the river, Mark 44 turrets strafing the burning, blasted ruins. With a faint whine of n-gravs, the craft had settled into the clearing between the village and a swamp. Before the landing struts had even touched the ground, the raiders were leaping out, running for the village, M32 rifles in hand, S'Rel and Sutherland in the lead.

The survivors huddled at the other end of the clearing, a pathetic group of ragged, terrified children clutching their frightened mothers; a few old men, watching the American Rangers and the K'Ronarin commandos impassively, through eyes that had seen too much, and one very fat man, shirtless but wearing a big straw hat. Behind them, smoke drifted lazily from the ruins of their homes out over the broad brown stretch of the Amazon.

S'Rel had halted his force about forty meters from the survivors, waiting as the fat man walked over to them.

"Why?" said the fat man, halting in front of him and Sutherland, hands spread dramatically, eyes shifting between the two of them.

Blaster leveled, S'Rel had said nothing, merely pulled the trigger. The weapon shrilled, sending a fierce red beam punching through that great gut-a gut that resolved into a slender green thorax as the S'Cotar died.

The tall insectoid was still falling when the firefight broke out-the illusion of huddled refugees rippling, dissolving into a tight formation of blaster-armed, bulbous-eyed bugs that opened fire with trained precision, indigo-blue bolts slamming into the human line, a withering fire that would have wiped out the human force had the thin silver miracle of their warsuits not absorbed the fusion bolts, converting them to brief bursts of multicolored lightning that crackled up and down the warsuits for an instant, then were gone.

The return fire was just as accurate as the S'Cotars' but deadly. Unprotected by warsuits, the bugs died, the few survivors scattering for the swamps as the humans charged.

"Shit," said Sutherland, the target between his sights suddenly shrouded in black mists -the wind had shifted inland, bringing the smoke from the village in over the clearing.

"They can't get far," said S'Rel, kicking the firelight's first casualty. "Their transmute's dead." The corpse was thinner, taller than the rest, a six-legged horror that lay face down in the mud, tentacles still clutching a blastrifle. Like the dead warriors behind it, it had mandibles. Unlike theirs, its weren't serrated- they were long, thin, hiding the almost microscopic probes that slid out from them and into the brains of its victims, slowly absorbing their memories, their personas, until the transmute could perfectly assume their lives.

Telepathic, telekinetic, and dead, thought

Sutherland, looking down at the S'Cotar. Thank God.

"Bill, take your Rangers through the village, then circle into the swamp from the east," said S'Rel as the air cleared. "I'll take my group and go straight in from here. We should catch any survivors between us."

As Sutherland went looking for the Ranger commander, S'Rel spoke into his communicator. A moment later the shuttles rose, moving slowly at treetop level into the swamp.

Three hours and they'd killed three S'Cotar -and almost lost S'Rel.

"What was that reptile again?" asked S'Rel, turning from the window.

"An anaconda," said Sutherland. "Largest snake on the planet."

Hearing splashing and a muted cry for help, Sutherland had hurried through the brackish, waist-deep water, blastrifle above his head. The sounds of the struggle stopped for an instant, then resumed, louder than before, as he penetrated the thick mangrove swamp, emerging into a shallower area where the trees were fewer.

Eyes bulging, face contorted, the K'Ron-arin was up to his waist in the muddy water, his free hand just keeping the tree-thick, olive-colored coils of the great snake from making the final turn around his neck.

Cursing, Sutherland twisted the M32's muzzle down to minimum aperture, set the selector switch to continual fire, and moved toward the struggle, water, mud and tangled roots tugging at him, slowing his pace to a frustrating, dreamlike crawl. By the time he'd covered the final yards to the roiling brown water, S'Rel had disappeared beneath the surface.

Placing the rifle's muzzle inches from the glistening, mottled-brown skin, Sutherland had pulled the trigger, sending a thin red beam knifing through the snake. Ignoring the shudder that suddenly rippled down the long yards of flesh, Sutherland passed the beam through the rest of that thigh-thick braid of muscle.

The thrashing ceased as the anaconda's body fell into two dead halves.

Dropping the rifle, Sutherland seized S'Rel's hand, pulling the. K'Ronarin from under the water, gasping for air, still wrapped in dead serpent's coils. The anaconda's head hung down S'Rel's back, mouth open, tongue protruding.

T don't believe you got all the S'Cotar, S'Rel," said Sutherland, looking up at the Watcher. "I think you're leaving because it's politically expedient-declaring a victory and going home."

Sighing, S'Rel sank into one of the red leather armchairs fronting the director's desk and leaned forward earnestly, hands on his knees. "Here's how it looks from FleetOps,

Bill. We fought the S'Cotar for ten years, lost millions of people, scores of planets. We were about to lose it all when D'Trelna and Implacable stumbled onto your planet and found…"

"And found the S'Cotar were organic manufactures-biofabs," said Sutherland. "Created beneath our moon by a possibly demented cyborg programmed thousands of years ago by your equally demented Empire."

"Yes," nodded S'Rel, "but don't forget why. To toughen us as a people, prepare us to face an invasion from another reality-an invasion of artificial intelligences-AIs-that happened once before, a million years ago, and was repulsed by the Trel."

"Even though defeated," said Sutherland, pointing a finger at the Watcher, "those machines killed the Trel and every living thing on all their worlds. And they'd have killed us, too, this last time, if D'Trelna hadn't stopped them at Terra Two."

"It's FleetOps opinion," said S'Rel, "that the end of the Terra Two incursion marked the end of any threat from the AIs. Our priority now is to purge our planets of any remaining S'Cotar and get on with the rebuilding of broken worlds and shattered lives."

"FleetOps is wrong," said the CIA director. "The Trel warned that the rift they sealed to the AI universe was opening now. The Terra

Stephen Ames Berry-Two invasion was a fluke, maybe even a feint. The Fleet of the One is coming, S'Rel, through that rift, perhaps even right now. And what are you people doing?" His voice rose angrily. "You're doling out tea and comfort and congratulating each other on having survived the big green bugs when you should be mobilizing every ship that can mount a fusion battery!"

"Finished?" said the K'Ronarin as Sutherland caught his breath.

"What about D'Trelna?"

S'Rel shrugged. "He was sent to check out the Trel's invasion warning-into Quadrant Blue Nine, from which no ship has returned since the Fall. He hasn't been heard from. I doubt he ever will be."