Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

But it seems the Tarsalans had automatic sabotage procedures in place, and that all the equipment and software for the Gaspra mission has now been infected with a slow-burning virus. Systems are failing one by one. As a result, one of the crew members has already been killed. But Gerry and… and you’ll never guess… Ian Hamilton—”

“Ian Hamilton?” The sudden appearance of this dark phantom from Gerry’s past alarmed Glenda to the core of her being.

“Apparently he’s been up there working as an AviOrbit test pilot for the last seven years. Now he’s mission pilot.”

“I’ve got to sit down,” she said.

Rostov led her to one of the overstuffed chairs Louise liked to decorate her various homes with, and she sat down heavily, hyperventilating. The components of the disastrous mission paraded darkly through her mind. Gerry, millions of miles away in deep space, riding on a giant rocket that was falling to pieces, one crew member already dead, and the other—the god of good times, as Gerry used to call him—ready to wreak havoc on Gerry’s life all over again.

“Did they take any alcohol with them?”

As ludicrous as the suggestion sounded, it was no joke, and Neil was sensitive enough to see that. For only Neil fully understood the pain Gerry’s alcoholism had caused her, because who could she turn to but Neil when Gerry didn’t come home for three days, or wound up in jail under Fulton’s mocking gaze, or tried to be affectionate to the children when he was so repugnantly drunk he could hardly stand? She would never forget her long telephone calls with Neil, and how Neil had gotten her through the worst of

it. And then what she called the New Sobriety had come along, the sobriety that had finally stuck, after so many times of Gerry trying to quit, but always falling back off the wagon. Was all that in jeopardy now? Surely Nectaris wasn’t such a party capital that they’d allow their astronauts to take booze with them on a critical mission.

“Glenda… it’s okay. For the first time in my life I actually believe in Gerry. He’s going to do this thing. I know he is. I might be smart. But Gerry’s the family genius. And I’ve finally got the guts to admit that.”

She broke down completely after that. Her nerves were shot.

“How long till he makes it light again?” she asked through her tears.

Because, God, did she want daylight again.

“Eight days. Ten at the most.”

So in ten days she would know if she was a widow or not. She wasn’t sure how she was going to make it through the uncertainty.

She didn’t have time to brood or think about it because Rostov, using the tiny state-of-the-art radar dish mounted on the roof, tracked seven TLVs landing within an hour of each other, all within a one-mile radius of Marblehill.

An hour later, Marblehill came under heavy attack. This attack was different in that it employed not only the regular VMs but also standard human weaponry.

“They must have found an armory somewhere,” was Lenny’s only comment.

So, amid the whining squeals of the VMs, there was also a lot of semiautomatic weapons fire. With all the gunfire, she was surprised that the surrounding dead forest, now dry as straw after all the heat, didn’t go up in flames.

She was in a sandbagged position under the drive-through portico with her fellow soldiers, Jake and Melissa.

She watched Melissa in amazement. Here was a girl who should have been more at home in a shopping mall, or out on a prom date, but now she was firing her Montclair like a seasoned grunt, her face darkened by military greasepaint, her jaw clenching each time she pulled the trigger. She stood up over the sandbags and sprayed the yard with gunfire, her long blond hair jerking around her shoulders and her lips pursed against the clenching of her jaw, and when she was done she ducked back down daintily, as if she were practicing a move in a cheerleading squad.

Then Jake got up, and he had the curious habit of holding out both elbows when he was firing his Montclair, as if he were a bird about to take flight. He fired a burst of nearly forty bullets, and as he neared the end of this fusillade, his elbows rose higher and higher until they were nearly parallel with his shoulders. Then he stopped firing, and his head ducked to the left and right, as if he were inspecting the damage; he reminded Glenda of a dentist drilling a tooth—drilling a bit, then looking—but in Jake’s case it was shooting a bit, then looking.

It was Glenda’s turn. This wasn’t like shooting Fulton from the rooftop. This was full-fledged combat shooting, and she was so scared she felt queasy. She flipped down her night goggles, scanned the yard, and saw two Tarsalans, ghostly figures in green, moving toward the helicopter, both carrying automatic weapons, man-made rifles. Hardly any VMs anymore, as if they were running out and had to make do with local resources. She took aim, just as she had taken aim at those partridges so many years ago, and fired, not a whole gusher of bullets the way Melissa had, but with her Montclair on its single-shot setting, believing she was more effective in sniper mode.

The first Tarsalan dropped dead. She aimed at the second. They had a dozen crates of Montclair rounds, including what could be made with the round-making kit, but someday even those were going to run out. Best to conserve. She squeezed the trigger and the weapon spit its bullet with a phhitt!, and the second Tarsalan went down; and now there were two lumps of green in her night goggles.

She saw five more come through the gate.

So began what turned into a long night. Glenda, Jake, and Melissa covered the front yard. Rostov and Morgan guarded the west wing. Neil, Ashley, and Fernandes manned the east wing. And Lenny and Hanna patrolled the rear, though Hanna really wasn’t good for much fighting because she was still too weak from asthma. Glenda was glad the back was fairly well protected by the swimming pool and tennis courts. So far the Tarsalans hadn’t mounted more than harassment strikes from the rear.

She heard a lot of fighting from the west wing and, as they had things fairly under control in front, she sent Jake—yes, her own son, because she wasn’t about to send Melissa, not when Neil had already lost Louise—over to the west wing to help Rostov and Morgan.

“But, Mom, what about the three we keep seeing run by the gate?”

“Melissa and I will handle them. Go help Rostov and Morgan.”

Children as soldiers. Hitler’s Germany. Cheng’s Hong Kong. And more recently, Ngaradoumbé’s Chad. She remembered seeing a picture of a nine-year-old African girl kneeling with a machine gun, a teddy bear poking out of the knapsack on her back. And now it was happening here. At Marblehill.

After two hours, it didn’t seem so strange anymore that children should be fighting. Glenda slowly lost her fear simply because she had to concentrate so hard on what she was doing. It was, in a word, work .

Like a shift at Cedarvale, especially a holiday shift, when Whit would sometimes have her on for twelve hours at a time.

She got tired by the third hour. “Is this what the last one was like?”

Melissa nodded. “We fought… and then we fought some more… and after we were done fighting, we fought some more. It went on for eight hours… and it had these lulls.” Melissa motioned out at the yard.

“I hate these lulls worse than I hate the actual fighting. You don’t know if they’re done or not. You’re always waiting for more.”

“I don’t see why we don’t just give them food. Surely we can spare a bit.”

“Dad says there’s no point. They’d just want more. We’re probably the only food source around for miles. Plus, he’s never going to negotiate with them now. Not since they killed Mom.”