The invid were charging in and there was nothing to be done—the last escort ship was burning, it's hull splitting and Sharin had to-
Sharin woke up in the command bubble. She must have drifted off. The commander stretched, trying to feel rested, but no. She couldn't remember ever being so exhausted. She looked down onto the command floor, and noticed that the tempo of operations were somewhat slower—not all had taken themselves off to bed (had it been only three hours since she'd ordered half the staff to rest?), but had found out of the way corners and gone to sleep. The main view screen was showing the exterior of the ship, with the engineering mecha of the males moving mountains to get the base ready. Sharin saw the water in the bottom of the drainage ditches that had been dug and gave silent thanks that she'd listened to Shygon. A single re-entry pod touched down, disgorging more refugee zentraedi and salvage.
"Commander?" Sharin looked up at the comscreen. It was Korva, and how did he manage to keep going? It wsan't that she was a female—half the males were just as exhausted, but Korva seemed to get stronger the longer he worked.
"Yes?"
"The salvaging is going well—and we've started bringing the refugee zentraedi survivors in. No flag officers though."
Which means that there will be no command conflicts, Thank Zor. All they needed right now was for someone to butt in convinced she—or he, knew how to run things better.
"I'll be out."
"Ah…"
"Yes?"
"Commander, we need to start searching the micronian city." Sharin frowned, but let Korva continue.
"It's almost completely flattened, but it was a command node—if anyones going to get their people organized enough to be a threat, it will be there." Sharin nodded.
"Can we spare the people?" She shook her head and answered her own question. "Of course not—we're understaffed for what we need to do now as is." Still… "Korva, I agree, but send a small team in—do you have any suggestions?"
"Yes."
"Good, but let them know if they meet any resistance, fall back and we'll use missiles from the ship. I'm not going to lose people."
"Very good, commander."
"Oh, and Korva, if they find any Micronians, living ones, bring them in as well. We could do with some intelligence."
"And if The Singer's there?" Everyone now referred to that horrible screeching harridan as "The Singer", apparently a name they'd picked up when some of Breetai's people had come wandering in—perfectly happy to join up with anyone that seemed to know what they were doing.
"That falls under the category of fall back to the ship and watch us level the place."
"Understood." Sharin headed for the door.
The first thing that hit her was the humidity. The ships were still sealed environments, and machinery, even the tough systems on their mecha and ships, didn't generally like steam baths. But the air was thick with hot fog, even as the rain thundered down. Sharin made the mistake of licking her lips and spat at the bitter taste.
"Not good, is it." Korva said, looming up out of the lightning shot darkness. There were floodlights, but they almost did more harm than good, the fog diffusing their beams.
"No." She said, "And the heat isn't much better." Korva shrugged.
"We may not have to worry about that much longer."
"Oh?"
"No way to tell, but so many cubic miles of sea water have been converted to steam, not all of it will fall in rain like this." He gestured around. "Some of it will go up into the upper atmosphere, along with the dust and ash, and form a barrier against the sun—we may see rather cold temperatures for some time to come."
"Everywhere?"
"Mainly in the 'northern' hemisphere," Korva said. At Sharin's raised eyebrow, he continued, "We managed to get some Micronian topographical maps from their satellites before they were destroyed. In any case, the majority of their industrialization was in this part of the planet 'above' the equator—and so I expect the worst climatic disruptions will occur here." Sharin nodded, considering just how much she had to learn about living on a planet—fortunately Korva was willing to share his knowledge.
Sharin, still thinking, strode to the hall (Actually a mecha bay in one of Korva's landing ships )where most refugees were being gathered. There they were, male and female, although they'd segregated themselves by sex and rank. Her eye swept over them and she noticed how few were command rank.
Of course—most commanders would never dream of abandoning their ships—and very few of them made it down alive.
"I am Fleet Commander Sharin." She said, watching for reactions. The females were smaller in number than the males—over all the zentraedi fleet was male dominated even if the ratio was reversed in elite units, but the numbers weren't as small as she might have thought—the female mecha units evidently had survived the battle in better shape then the males.
"If you remain here, it will be under my command. Anyone not wishing to accept this will be provided with a supply of food and their mecha restocked." She waited, as a quiet muttering filled the chamber.
"Where is your authority for this?" A female rose. Under Sharin's calm gaze, she dropped her eyes, and muttered, "My lady."
"None." Sharin replied. "The command fortress is gone—none of the commanders were able to send so much as a single order before they died." She smiled. "Of course, I'm the highest ranking officer, and as a newly promoted fleet commander, the highest ranked one you're likely to find, although Lord Breetai has more seniority." A growl ran through the crowd at that, even from some soldiers who Sharin judged by their unit tabs had been part of Breetai's forces.
"He betrayed us—betrayed the zentraedi!" A male snarled.
"When will the Masters send a relief fleet?" Another asked. Sharin looked at them and spoke quietly.
"There will be no relief fleet—the protoculture reserves of the empire were nearly depleted—and I'm certain that what units are left will have their hands full with the Invid. We may hope—but we cannot put our trust in anyone but our own unit. As I said—if you wish to remain, swear allegiance. If not, I will work to help you as best I may." She nodded, and left the hall.
"Another unit to our cause." Korva said.
"Not all will join."
"True, and they'll be missed—but so far we've had over 10,000 members of other units come to our banner, and how many have left? Fifty?"
"Sixty five." Sharin said.
"Not worth bothering about." Korva said. "Well, I'll set up the recon teams—I also want them to bring any micronian items they can transfer in easily—I'm not at all satisfied with what the command fortress called 'information' about their technology—it didn't mention any five mile diameter cannons, after all."
Sharin nodded and Korva set out to his command ship.
***
"Here—I've got you." Gary Chang said, as he eased the shocked woman out of the room. Her face was covered in dried blood, but she didn't look like she needed immediate medical attention—which was good, because right now he was a doctor without any hospital to send people to, no medicine, and no bandages.
The hospital was a burning wreck, and no doctors on duty had made it out—the alert had sent many people to their shelters…Unfortunately, most of them were conventional shelters left over from the global war. As a doctor, Chan had been in on briefing for emergency relief, including the confident assurances by everyone from the mayor on down that they'd have at least a week to evacuate.
When he died he planned on looking up the mayor and asking him what he thought about that breezy assertion now.
"Dr. Chan—Cindy isn't breathing anymore!" A young woman ran up. "What do we do?"
"Carry the body to the edge of the clearing." The woman was outraged.
"But she-"
"Is much better off dead! What do you expect me to do? She had 3rd degree burns over half her body—even with a full hospital, she'd be likely to die!" The short asian doctor rubbed his eyes and softened his voice. "There was nothing we could do for her, Denise… it's better that she didn't wake up." And She won't be the only one. The numbers of injured in this one area was terrifying—the numbers that had been unable to escape the buildings or shelters that had been transformed into crematoriums ,even more so.
"Will help come?" Denise asked.
"I don't know. What about the radio?" Among the things they'd found had been a wrecked RDF jeep—but its radio worked and some of the uninjured were trying to get it to work, to call anyone.
"Nothing but weird noises—Jacob says it might be some military code." She paused, "He's started calling for help."
***
"'…and find me some micronian tech.' Why doesn't he get it himself." Kashik muttered to himself. The ground combat officer marched along in his Nousdral Ger mecha—oh yes, it could fly, if you didn't mind making yourself a target for every SAM in the area—and more importantly, the other soldiers in the unit were either unpowered, or piloting regults—which also could not fly. Not in this gravity, at least. They had the more advanced …. Pods, but they were required for salvage and engineering work, which the presence of arms made possible and was the reason that combat engineer units had gotten them first.
"And of course, Zor forbid that any female would let her precious mecha get muddy." He continued his monolog. The females had some of the newest mecha to come down the production line—advanced battlepods, armor, next generation cavalry mecha and power suits…and the only things they'd let people see had been the Quedlann Rau's, and of course those couldn't be used out here!
"And to top it off, we have a midget of ah-"
"Ahem." The voice of his overall commander riding high (and dry) in a Quel-Quallie handling top cover and air control broke in. "I don't think its wise to be so open over the tactical network, do you?"
"No sir, of course sir." Kashik said, turning off his mike before his mutters became actually treasonous. Thirty seconds later, he turned it back on.
"Finished, Kashik?"
"Yes sir."
"Good—we've been picking up some weak radio messages up ahead—coordinates to follow." Kashik looked at the coordinates as they came up on his screen.
"Got them."
"Check them out— we're not picking up anything that looks like a weapon…" the captains voice trailed off, and Kashik nodded. Pre-packaged missiles or land mines didn't scream "Here I am!" like a warship weapons.
"We'll watch." He paused, and looked around at the buildings. There was a building directly infront of him, seared by the shock and thermal pulse from the bombardment. What had it been? There was a variety of colors, not completely seared off—the thing must have been a riot of greens and golds. A military emplacement? Impossible. It wasn't hardened at all. There were a variety of micronian bodies scattered around the front of it. Most of them evidently killed by the initial searing thermal pulse, some had survived—and had apparently been crawling to an oddly painted and shaped object in the middle of the open area. It looked like a squashed sphere, and evidently had been painted orange at some point, with several openings in it. Kashik blinked and dialed up the magnification. No he hadn't been mistaken. Those micronians were less then half the size the database indicated. Wonderful. Another place where the Zor cursed intelligence had been off.
"OK, everyone lets move out." He said. Enough delay. But why had they been so determined to reach the object? It wasn't a bunker, or a weapon or mecha….
"Micronians." He finally said, letting that be his explanation.
The thundering sound of the Zentraedi faded into the distance, leaving only the rain and the odd bolt of lightning and responding thunder. In the dreary rain the pre-schools story pumpkin stood forlorn, surrounded by the dead children.