Stephen Berry - The Battle for Terra Two

"Yes."

"H'Nar, your show."

"It's a small S'Cotar nest," said L'Wrona, taking the rostrum as Sutherland sat back down, "but with the same strange energy output we recorded at the time of John's dramatic return from Terra Two. Detector readings show the staff to all be biofabs. The two children on the stairs are sentries. The pushcart, vendor and line are probably a heavy weapon's position, flanking the doorway. We've made five recons in there. Pushcart and children are always there. The faces change, but never the positions. That red structure is the center of the signal.

"We're going in and through to Terra Two. Indigenous Terran forces will take out the S'Cotar as we're quietly taking that building. We'll make certain that no S'Cotar slip through to warn Shalan-Actal. It will be daytime, just before public hours, so they'll be only combatants there.

"Terra Two. You've all memorized the Maximus complex map. We'll come into the portal building, seize it, then break out and regroup.

"If separated, you must make first rendezvous within one Terran hour. Otherwise, we'll be gone.

"Any more questions

"Very well. Luck to you. To the boats."

John watched through the shuttle's window asImplacable shrank to just another unwinking light among billions. He lost it as the craft breached the atmosphere.

"What did L'Wrona mean by indigenous Terran forces?" he asked, turning to Sutherland.

The two sat together aft. At John's question, he began adjusting his chair monitor's flawless picture, transforming a perfect forward scan of North America to a brown-blue blur.

"Marines, mostly," he said. "Some armed by the K'Ronarins and disguised by us, some coming in high and slow to keep the S'Cotar busy."

"Mostly?"

Sutherland looked up from scan. "All but one very sick, brave man to distract gate security. A man with 'Big C who insisted on one last performance, battling alien hordes."

"Bob," said John softly.

Sutherland nodded.

"He hasn't been feeling well…"

"Two, three months left at the most," said Sutherland. "Metastasized throughout his body. He had a brief remission, but it's fading."

"I've got to see him," said John desperately. "You know how many times I wanted to drop out of grad school? How many times he bullied and cajoled me into staying, into working harder?"

Sutherland shook his head. "His contingent's leaving from a different point than yours or mine. There's no time."

"But he's my oldest friend!"

"He asked me to give you this," said Sutherland, handing over a white envelope.

Opening it, John slipped out the piece of white note-paper and read aloud the message, firmly penned by a strong hand:

Dear John,

You know me-no romantic palliatives: no harps, no heaven, no gentle Jesus. Ask my daughter to have them carve the stone with this, from John Donne:

Churches are best for prayer that have least light: To see God only, I go out of sight; And to 'scape stormy days, I choose An everlasting night.

Your friend always, Robert J. McShane

Turning into the empty dirt parking lot, the big silver-and-green bus crunched over the acorns, stopping beneath a stand of oak. "Fairfax Charters" read the lettering above the trim. From across the high white-picket fence, a calliope played.

The silver door swung wide. Out trooped the seniors, some leaning on canes. None were under sixty. Chattering, laughing, they followed the big white-bearded man up to the candy-striped admissions booth.

"Group reservation," he said, handing the attendant their yellow federal retirees' pass. "We're the Double Dippers." The attendant, a lean, tanned kid in Levis and an American U. T-shirt, smiled faintly, checking his clipboard. "Mr. McShane?"

Bob nodded.

"Welcome to Glen Echo, sir. We open in ten minutes." McShane raised his blackthorn Irish walker, pointing past the kid to where the Ferris wheel turned against a cloudless blue sky. "Your equipment is operating. We've paid enough for an extra ten minutes."

Even as the kid opened his mouth, the seniors were filing past, scattering into the park.

Need an underground command post? It's easy, if you're a S'Cotar transmute. Just teleport a clean, modest-sized nuclear weapon down to where it can be triggered without punching through to either surface or magma. Once the chamber you've created stabilizes, send down atmosphere and power generators, command and control systems. Finally, having carefully checked the life-support sensors, you may flick down your own green self. You're now a mile underground, sheltered in bedrock, impervious to standard K'Ronarin detectors and accessible only by telekinesis.

The command center under Glen Echo was small, just a single station with one transmute. Sug-Atra had had the good fortune to be outstationed on Terra Two when Pocsym blew the S'Cotar citadel to glory andT'Nil'sRevenge wiped the biofab fleet. That had been a year ago. Now he sat bored, watching the surface telltales and monitoring the portal's status.

Sug-Atra saw the reality of Glen Echo, not the illusion created by his transmutes on the surface. Elderly humans strolled the midway, playing imaginary games, buying invisible junk food. Seen only by each other, S'Cotar warriors patrolled in pairs. In a weed-choked lot, where intense humans ruefully lost quarters to nonexistent video games, three transmutes stood with antennae entwined, constantly refreshing the illusion of Glen Echo.

An alarm chirped. Flicking a tentacle, Sug-Atra brought up a tacscan of the nearby Potomac. Rotary-winged aircraft, thirty of them, were proceeding upriver toward West

Virginia. Not unusual. The last week had seen an increase in military air traffic.

In about a month, Sug-Atra knew, the Terrans and their quaint war machines would be ash.

He replaced the tacscan with a bootlegged recording of a double-tiered, three-patterned mating dance-warriors and transmutes. It was delightfully perverse and utterly explicit. Sug-Atra was totally engrossed when the alarm sounded again. Angrily, he snapped out a tentacle, bringing back the tacscan. The helicopters were coming in low and fast, a narrow phalanx charging straight at the nest.

Alert! Alert! Sug-Atra's thought went to every S'Cotar in the park. Air assault from the river. Ground defenses stand by to fire. Warriors deploy. Portal sentries alert Terra Two.

What about the humans in the nest? asked the next senior transmute, one of the three in the vacant lot.

Harmless, said Sug-Atra. Kill them later. Direct all fire at those helicopters.

I remind you all, he called, we are a sacrifice to the glory of the Race. We must hold this nest until our brothers in Terra Two can negate the portal.

As the two boys turned and bolted up the stairs, McShane raised his cane and fired. The narrow red beam knifed through the two, shattering the doorglass and vanishing into Xanadu.

Tumbling down the stairs, the bodies became those of S'Cotar warriors. They lay heaped on the ground, viscous green slime oozing from their wounds.

Glen Echo turned into a small corner of hell.

The infiltrators, K'Ronarin crew and Terran infantry, were blasting away at preselected targets, taking out S'Cotar weapons positions, warriors and the occasional innocent pushcart.

Stunned for an instant, the S'Cotar blasted back, azure beams crisscrossing with the red, turning the midway into a deadly net of energy beams.

Illusion faded as the transmutes fought for their lives. Shimmering, the bright red Ferris wheel with its gaily colored lights imploded into a ball of primary colors that burst outward, then contracted into a compact gray shape-a shape Sutherland recognized.

"Fusion cannon!" he cried, staring wide-eyed out the plexiglass cockpit of the third helicopter. Green figures scuttled around the weapon, its great ugly snout now only a few hundred yards away, locking onto the lead chopper.