Part 14: Whatever Moral Ascendancy

Lion Rock Tunnel

New Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

March 18th, 2016

"This is the end for Kowloon," Kang Li pronounced solemnly. "Sha Tin and Hong Kong Island, as well... Even Second Impact didn't destroy them like you have."

Knowing that Kang meant 'you' in an impersonal and plural sense didn't help Renaril, who already was close to tears. She resolutely kept her eyes pinned on the collapsed road overpass directly to the south, her back facing the twin tunnel mouths which emerged from the green slopes of the hill looming above. She couldn't stomach more than one look in that direction, more than one look at the twisted, burnt-out vehicles piled around the tunnels and the wide patches of dried blood staining the pavement.

Her Chinese companion displayed no such distress. "I didn't understand why Schuhart was so confident," she admitted. "If I had, I would have called him a madman." Kang stepped closer to an area where the road was liberally strewn with spent casings and picked up a large shell from a loose pile. "Serb fifty millimeter... It's brand new. Small wonder those antiques were so effective."

"Colonel." The Arume finally turned, cheeks shining wet. "Please..."

"They're calling it the 'Saint Patrick's Day Massacre.'" Kang laid the empty shell to rest with its fellows, her expression unreadable. "The world has seen what you wished to hide. Whatever you actually won or lost here will ultimately be irrelevant."

Renaril suddenly dashed forward and flung her arms around the taller woman, burying her face in Kang's shirt. Only her sobbing could be heard for a long time after.

One day earlier

"Up! Everybody up!" Richardson's eyes snapped open at the shock of Schuhart yelling nearby. "On your feet, people! Action stations! Let's go!"

The gosta wriggled out of her bedding as engines rumbled outside the tent, Harrington, Krieghoff and Lebel close behind. Poking her head out, Richardson saw the long profile of the big half-track silhouetted in early morning light. The sky had cleared overnight, she realized, and soon the sun would rise. Snatching up her socks and sneakers, she scrambled into the open. "Uncle Roland, what's happening?"

"The enemy's mobilizing." Schuhart raised his voice again. "Gosta, rally on me!" Without waiting he turned on his good heel and strode towards the tracked vehicle, where Nereus and one of the Russians were hitching a gun on a two-wheel carriage to its rear end. "Move, move, move!"

"Wake her up. Now."

The guard – it was the same one who had proven so malleable before – bit her lip. "But Benacirael – "

"Benacirael is about to undo everything we have tried to accomplish in this layer." Renaril bared her teeth. "Do it."

"Y-yes, ma'am!"

While the subordinate ran off to carry out the order, Renaril placed herself beside the hibernation box which held Kang. When the force field faded away, she carefully reached out and stroked the sleeping woman's smooth cheek. If I can sneak her out of here, she told herself, we might still have a chance.

"Here's the short 'n' scrawny," Schuhart barked, gesturing to the large map hastily taped to the side of the half-track. "The enemy are advancing from Yuen Long, Shek Kong and Tai Po." He indicated these locations with swift jabs of his finger. "Forces on the ground are probably Terran collaborator infantry supported by Arume assault hovercraft. We expect the Arume to also attempt an attack over water from the south or west using hovercraft or larger vehicles. The Russians let it be known that they'd declare war at the first sign of 'special weapons' use, which might work in our favor." The one-eyed man glanced over his audience – the gosta and a large group of Hong Kong resident volunteers – before continuing. "We have two objectives, one on the water and one on land. The first is to break through the Arume blockade and allow the landing ship waiting offshore to begin on-site support. Our two destroyers will attack the blockading units and provide fire support in the channel. We've deployed batteries of artillery along the shore – those will defend the south side against enemy raiders and landing attempts from the surface or the air... Any questions about the first objective?"

Sauer raised a hand. "What happens when the, uh, landing ship gets here?"

"We'll determine that when the time comes, based on the tactical situation... Now, the land objective is simple: we need to hold as much of Kowloon as we can. If that fails, we'll be forced to retreat to Hong Kong Island and Lantau. The land attack is most likely to be launched from Sha Tin, passing through either the Lion Rock or Tate's Cairn tunnels or possibly along the Tai Po Road, so we've deployed forward troops to secure those already... The tunnels will protect the enemy from bombardment, but they also create choke points which we can exploit. Your squad leaders will give you more details on that... Questions? No? Report to your squads – dismissed!"

"Nnnnn..." Kang opened one eye, then the other. "Renaril..?"

The Arume's pulse leaped. "Are you all right?" she asked anxiously. "Do you feel sick?"

"No." The forime frowned. "How long... What day is it?"

"The seventeenth," Renaril supplied promptly. "The sun will rise over Hong Kong soon... Colonel, I think we've run out of time."

Kang used her elbows to push herself into a sitting position. "What's happened?"

"I'm not sure how it started, but during the night a large number of the displaced forime in Yuen Long tried to push out of their camp and return to the destroyed districts. Now Benacirael is using it as an excuse to attack Schuhart directly."

"Schuhart..." Kang looked at Renaril suspiciously.

"I talked to him yesterday, using the satellite telephone. He told me a completely different story than what I got from Benacirael."

"I see." Kang swung her legs over the edge and placed her bare feet on the cool floor. "What... did you think of Schuhart?"

"He didn't seem like someone conspiring to fake terrorism," the group commander confessed, "just annoyed and rude... But how could you be friends with someone like him?"

"We weren't always like this," the soldier grunted, pulling her socks on. "At first I loathed him, even."

"And then?"

"Things happened. Where are my shoes?"

Supplementary document: excerpt from chapter two of Arbuthnot Ponsonby's The Greatest War, first published by Oxford 3L Press in 2041

Schuhart's material resources were paltry compared to his opponent's, their common determination to settle matters with a violent clash regardless. Eto Delo's surviving staff in Hong Kong numbered a hundred and fifty at best, though a solid majority were Russian or Soviet bloc military veterans with extensive combat experience. Most were armed with various Kalashnikov assault rifles, supplemented by antitank grenade launchers and Indian copies of the Lee-Enfield rifle and Bren machine gun. They were supported by a hundred and twenty local volunteers who were issued the hard-hitting Mosin-Nagant rifle but had received barely a day's training, and by sixteen renegade gosta with little better. To improve their potential, the volunteer sections were each led by a company veteran.

Due to the critical shortage of arms and vehicles, all items remaining in commercial inventory and the entire portion of the Kampfgruppe Klapp collection which had already been shipped to Hong Kong were also put to use. Eto Delo's prime movers included an SdKfz 251 and two SdKfz 7 halftracks. Six 88mm towed cannon formed the backbone of the harbour defence, while a single 50mm antitank gun was deployed on the north front. Vehicle crews were issued the weapons abandoned by Erich Klapp's Panzergrenadiers in 1944. To alleviate the lack of armour, the defending side liberated an operable Sherman bulldozer tank from the ruins of the Museum of Human History. Its main gun had been deactivated, but it was successfully fitted with two .30 calibre and one .50 calibre machine gun and assigned to clear obstacles and support advancing infantry. A pair of M35 medium lorries were equipped with heavy machine guns for the same purpose. A number of light lorries which survived the bombing on 13 March were upgraded with Brens and employed as scouts, as were a handful of motorboats.

It was clear from the beginning that neither side intended to adhere to the customs of conventional war. While the Arume commanders authorized the deployment of flamethrowers and chemical weapons to frontline units, Eto Delo organized small raiding parties nicknamed 'punk busters' and equipped them with highly accurate Mauser rifles. Firing a type of explosive-incendiary ammunition originally developed for Luftwaffe machine guns, these offered the potential to inflict both physically and psychologically devastating wounds at long range. Certain of Eto Delo's other policies were comparatively generous, however: it was ordered that prisoners be taken and treated humanely whenever practical, a gesture not reciprocated by Benacirael.

Richardson and Harrington scored another ride aboard the Kettenkrad as the reinforcement convoy moved out. The operator, a man named Semyon, drove at the head of the column with a trailer full of ammunition behind him. Following the diminutive rig was the bigger half-track, towing the two-wheeled cannon which Nereus mysteriously called a 'pack'. Sauer had asked for and somehow gotten gunner duty aboard the noisy vehicle, and Richardson could see the other gosta grinning at her from the far end of the top gun. She liked that thing too much, the spotter thought wryly, then wondered if her own partner was any different: the scoped M14 hadn't left Harrington's hands since Uncle Roland gave it to her before disappearing to some other part of the battleground.

More importantly, what was she supposed to feel now? Not happy, she understood that much, yet she couldn't deny that she'd been looking forward to this. She wanted to fight the Arume and their cronies. The Chinese volunteers wanted to fight too, but Uncle Roland and his friends – Nereus and Karan and Daemon and Woodpecker and the others – acted more as if this were an annoyance and a distraction from their customary routines.

She was still pondering this when the half-track astern suddenly lost speed and pulled off towards the side of the wide road. Twisting around, the girl reached forward and prodded Semyon's back. He glanced over his shoulder momentarily before throttling down and looping back. When the Kettenkrad stopped, the Russian dismounted and jogged over to the motionless half-track. Richardson couldn't understand the exchange between him and the driver, so she merely waited for Semyon to return. "We have breakdown," he announced. "Got to trade cargo and crew – you stay here, protect driver and follow when repair finished."

The other fighters had already disembarked from the disabled carrier and quickly set about removing the Kettenkrad's load. The second driver – it was Vyacheslav, who had been working on the same machine earlier – climbed onto the half-track's sloped nose and opened an access panel. The rest of the convoy drove on, one truck after another passing them and disappearing into the two tunnels ahead. The Kettenkrad followed once all the other troops had climbed onto its rear or into the emptied trailer, leaving Richardson, Harrington and Sauer alone with Vyacheslav.

"We need detailed, up-to-date intelligence," Kang declared once she and Renaril were holed up in the command room with Negadael and Eripol. "Those bird-shaped remote drones should help."

"We can't use them," Renaril protested. "I told you – "

"I remember," the Chinese woman said brusquely. "You're afraid to use them because their secrecy is compromised and you don't want anyone to capture your sophisticated technology... But right now you risk having a lot more than that captured, don't you understand?"

"I know, but it's impossible anyway. This ship doesn't have any provision for launching them directly and Benacirael might notice if we ask someone else to do it."

Kang folded her arms. "How likely is that?"

"She may be watching even now," Eripol pointed out. "Somebody was snooping on us yesterday."

"Then one of you can go down there and use your phase-shifting trick to observe directly, can't you? I know any reflective surface might blow your cover, but nobody could actually hurt you, right?"

"That's no good either," Renaril answered glumly. "We'd still have to enlist help on the surface."

"Arrrgh." The colonel took a long breath before speaking again. "Then all we have is orbital reconnaissance?"

"Afraid so," Eripol volunteered. "At least the clouds are gone."

"Get me the best imagery you can, and try calling Schuhart one more time." Kang looked around for a place to sit, found none and resorted to leaning against the aft bulkhead.

"Nothing," Eripol reported shortly. "I can't even make the connection – either he's out of range or he switched his transceiver off."

Kang made another exasperated face. "Dammit."

Richardson reached for another ammunition box, then stopped when she heard a distant booming. "What is that?"

"Eighty-eight," said Vyacheslav. "German gun – killed a lot of tanks in Great Patriotic War."

"Shore batteries," Sauer grunted, passing with another box in her arms. "The Arume must be attacking from the water."

Richardson shivered a little in spite of her resolve. "I hope they can't get through." As she finally picked up the box, the gosta heard lighter gunfire from over the hills ahead. I hope they can't get through on the land either, she added mentally. "Uncle Vyacheslav, how much longer?"

"Not sure," the man confessed. "Carburetor is pretty well broke."

"Honcho Gamma calling Two-Five-One." The tinny voice coming from the handset on Vyacheslav's harness was Daemon's. "What's your status, over?"

"Still fixing, over."

"Can you hurry it up any? The people on the front need that PaK urgently, over."

"I do what I can but it is hard without right tools, over."

"Time is running out – we're about to engage here. Your position will be a fallback point if the forward company over there can't hold the tunnels, over."

"Understood, over."

"Godspeed, out."

"What did that mean?" Harrington asked.

"It means," said Vyacheslav gravely, "we fight here if Arume capture tunnel."

"Your orbital optics are good, at least," Kang remarked. "What's the refresh rate on these, forty seconds?"

"Forty-one," Negadael answered. "I can increase the rate if you don't mind a resolution drop."

"This is enough, thank you... Far better than I had in the army."

"So far the first hovercraft attack has been repelled," Renaril summarized. "The blockade craft scattered when engaged, but those ships are moving very slowly... Why?"

"Sweeping for mines," said Kang. "It's the obvious thing to do... Move the focus inland again."

The group commander's stomach did a somersault. How could the colonel keep her composure so well? Unfair circumstances forced both of them to watch helplessly as events unfolded, the friend of one set against the comrades of the other, and it was wreaking havoc on Renaril's emotions while Kang kept on watching impassively. "I still don't understand," the Arume groaned. "What is Schuhart thinking?"

"In China we have what are called the thirty-six stratagems," Kang mused. "Schuhart has been particularly fond of the fourteenth and twenty-seventh for as long as I have known him."

Renaril reached for her PDA. Might as well look that up while she still had breathing space to do so.

The rolling thunder of the shore guns stopped after a little while, but the sounds of fighting over the hill did not. Terse bursts of speech came over the radio now and then, most of them unintelligible to the gosta. Vyacheslav kept working, occasionally climbing into the half-track's cab to test his progress... Until an especially frantic blast from the airwaves startled the Russian so much that he fell off his perch. Sitting up with a grimace, he hastily wiped his greasy hands on his fatigue pants and picked up his radio. There was an extraordinarily short exchange.

"Uncle Vyacheslav..?"

The man's whole demeanor had changed. "We are losing tunnels," he announced. "Ran out of rockets and now enemy is using gas – we are not set up for chemical war."

Richardson swallowed. "Are... Are they dead?"

"Not all," Vyacheslav grunted. "Survivors retreating now." Once upright, he headed for the rear of the half-track. "We must set up gun here, please help me!"

Kang squinted at the irregular blue-green shape on the primary display. "What is that?"

"The light carrier Defiant Fragaria," said Renaril flatly.

"That's a rather literal translation," Negadael pointed out. "I see what Benacirael is thinking – placing a carrier just inside her operations zone gives her air support we can't block."

The Chinese officer's mind was already at work. "Tell me about it."

"It's pretty new," Eripol supplied. "The design trades capacity for survivability. It's not fitted to support either heavy bombers or microlight scouters, but it can launch and recover up to twelve medium ground-attack craft." The image refreshed, a small blur streaking out from the seaward side of the carrier's curving hull. "See? It can deploy in several directions, but it normally keeps its shields up on the side towards the enemy and opens the hangars on the opposite face."

"What does it have for integral weapons?"

"Not much... Mostly what I think you call 'point defense' stuff."

"Then the destroyers can't damage it much, and vice versa." Kang glanced at Renaril. "Cheer up – that means fewer Arume casualties."

"Maybe," Eripol corrected. "The attack fliers are vulnerable, and they operate with three-body crews." The aide leaned forward in her seat. "Hey, I think Schuhart is calling."

Renaril finally stirred. "Answer it!"

"Right." Eripol hammered her keyboard. "It's done."

"Hello..?"

"You train young women to drop exploding girls on people, but you won't let them paint the female nude on their spacecraft because it's 'obscene!'" The signal quality was very poor, but there was no mistaking the voice.

Renaril was trying to think of a reply when Kang interceded. "Schuhart, are you all right?"

"Well – your sky-eyed friends and their sock puppets are gassing and burning my courageous employees, we're about to get strafed from above, my squad of grass-green volunteers has been reduced to all of three people including myself, and now I'm racing off to reinforce a unit in like shape. How about you, Colonel?"

"Renaril smuggled me out of detention. We tried to contact you earlier, but you disappeared."

"I had the batteries out of the phone for charging. Anyhow, you okay?"

"I'm fine." Kang frowned. "Did you say something about gas?"

"Yeah, it's a white misty stuff – catch one good whiff and you drop of a heart attack. We were holding the line pretty well until they started firing it at us. Ring any bells, Group Commander?"

"Oh no," the Arume whispered. "Oh no, oh no, oh no..."

"C'mon, start talking!"

"Technically speaking it's a nanomachine aerosol," Renaril explained hesitantly. "It attacks the heart, like you say... It was – I can't believe I'm telling you this – it was developed as an emergency weapon against uprisings and revolts. Deploying any other way requires authorization at the highest levels... To use it here is... Is..."

"Is what Benacirael saw fit to do. Are there any antidotes? Countermeasures?"

"I don't think any were ever developed," the group commander admitted. "The nanomachines degrade rapidly after release and we Arume are immune to their effects, so the creators saw no point in one... I'm sorry."

"The hell you are... Find Benacirael, bust a cap in her ass and say she resisted arrest or something. I gotta go."

Renaril could think of no Arumic word to adequately describe her feelings.

Only the Kettenkrad returned, spattered with blood and nicked by stray bullets. Those piled in the trailer had succumbed already, and the driver collapsed with chest pains not long after arriving. The subsequent plan of battle was a simple affair: Harrington would lurk among the trees by the side of the road and aim for individual soldiers, Sauer would spot targets and provide covering fire from the half-track, and Vyacheslav would operate the anti-tank gun with help from Richardson. The latter would have much preferred to remain at the sharpshooter's side, but the PaK – she still wanted to know what that actually meant – needed a loader. It had been determined that the Arume assault hovercraft were not particularly rugged, and that they could not use their main weapons in confined spaces. Vyacheslav therefore intended to knock them out as fast as possible when they emerged from the tunnels, denying them time to charge up and return fire.

It sounded good until the Russian admitted that he'd never fired the old cannon before.

Azanael had felt very detached from her old life these last few days. She wasn't sure if it was the tension of getting mixed up in something sinister once more, or just the sheer insanity of what went on aboard this huge vessel... Either way, the arrival of a video message from home actually surprised her for a change. She'd received them many times before, especially when her semi-civilian pilot job kept her far away and on the move almost constantly. This was the first to come since she'd returned to the navy, however, and she wasn't sure what to expect.

"Hi." It was Akane, wearing a dress shirt with the uppermost buttons left undone. "The others took Yuko-chan to see a play, so it's only me guarding the castle... Just like old times, huh? I hope you're doing okay over there, wherever 'there' is. You're getting enough sleep and eating right, aren't you?" The restauranteur ran a hand through her tousled hair. "I guess it'll be a while before you can come home on leave, but I'd really like to have you around for more than just a day at a time... The bed here is too big for one person." There was an embarrassed laugh. "That sounded kind of wrong, didn't it? Actually, an Arume proposed to me the day after you left. She's one of the regulars here – I don't think you know her... She's not a bad person, but you know how I feel about that kind of thing. If you have any fresh, uh, advice on politely turning down suitors, share it." Akane hastily stifled a yawn. "Listen to me, telling you to get enough sleep when I'm not getting much myself... Probably not the only one, either. There are a lot of rumors going around about what's happening, of course. Most of them are plain ludicrous... Apart from that, not much has happened here. The others will probably send their own greetings before long. It'd be nice to get some back too, you know?" Akane offered a little wave. "Take care of yourself."

When the playback ended, Azanael set her laptop aside and lay back on her bunk. She probably should send Akane a reply, but what would she put in it? She couldn't very well talk about what she was poking her nose into, could she?

Dong!

The pilot quickly sat up at the sound of her door chime. "Come in," she called, releasing the lock with a little wariness. The door hissed open to reveal Kataphel, the engineer with the apparent insider connection. "Oh..."

"Seiichi sends his regards." Kataphel quickly slipped in, tapping the closing button on the door's panel. "Sorry I was so abrupt with you before."

The allusion to Yoshimura piqued Azanael's interest. "Feel like talking now?"

"I still can't, sorry." The other Arume pulled out a data card and tossed it on the bed. "But we might be able to help each other. Right now I think you should take that to Elaqebil."

"What's..?"

"See for yourself – just don't tell anyone who gave it to you, all right? Tell them whatever you want, as long as they can't trace it back to me."

A brick of cold dread formed in Azanael's gut as she skimmed the card's contents. "When and where was this?"

"Early this morning," Kataphel replied, "in one of the Hong Kong displaced forime camps. Like I said, better make it a rush delivery."

Azanael nodded. "I understand..."

"Thanks." The door opened and suddenly Kataphel wasn't in the room. "I'll be in touch."

"Hovercraft with infantry, left tunnel!"

Vyacheslav sprang into action at Sauer's cry, rapidly spinning the two control wheels on the left side of the carriage. "Load!"

Richardson shuffled forwards with a shell in her arms, aligned it with the open breech and gave it a solid thrust forward. It disappeared into that mechanism's depths with a metallic schoonk, a large block automatically snapping into place behind it. Mindful of the gunner's earlier warning, the gosta scooted to the right and jammed her fingers into her ears. "Ready!"

BANG!

The cannon's barrel slammed back on its rails, spitting out the shell's empty case before recoiling. "Hit," Sauer reported as Richardson grabbed the next round. "Front-left corner, low." There was a ripping burst from her MG42 and a volley from Harrington.

Schoonk! "...Ready!"

It took a few moments for the next spotter's report to be distributed. "Hovercraft, right tunnel!"

Richardson couldn't see much past the double-layer bullet shield mounted on the PaK's carriage, so she focused instead on Vyacheslav as he frantically brought the gun to bear and slapped the firing button. "...Reload!"

"Hit, high center... Infantry, both tunnels!" This time Sauer really opened up, making communication at a polite volume impossible.

Richardson picked up a third shell and shoved it. "READY!"

Vyacheslav didn't fire right away, and Sauer stopped shooting after a handful of seconds. "Changing barrels!" The announcement was tailed by an alarmed yelp as a few bullets pinged off the angled facets of the half-track's hull. "Infantry, left! Transport, right!"

The PaK's next blast caught Richardson with her ears uncovered. Shaking it off with difficulty, she reloaded the weapon and tried to focus on her training from the previous days. They'd all been taught to provide covering fire for an occupied machine gunner, but the submachine gun she'd been issued today didn't have the range or accuracy to get the job done. Casting about, the gosta realized that the Kettenkrad driver's orphaned rifle and bandoleer were still lying on the other side of Vyacheslav. "Uncle Vyacheslav," she shouted, pointing to them, "give me those!"

She could barely hear her own voice over the ringing in her ears, and the Russian's reply was an indistinct murmur. Still, she got what she wanted: a blunt-nosed bolt-action identical to Daemon's. Resting its fore-end on the upper lip of the steel bullet shield, she could see the enemy properly at last. The right fork in the road was mostly blocked now, thanks to the burning wrecks of the second hovercraft – a squat rectangular thing in blue and violet with the fat mouth of a plasma bombard in the middle of its wide snout – and the wheeled troop carrier behind it. The first hovercraft had gone wildly off course and plowed into a barrier where the tunnel roads joined, rendering it useless as well. One of its Arume crew was climbing out, perhaps hoping to get away before the inescapable hail of bullets resumed. Richardson held her breath, aimed for the middle of that slender body and ever so gently squeezed.

Crack!

The hapless Arume jerked in mid-step and tumbled to the hard tarmac. As she ducked back into cover and Sauer resumed her own role in the rear, Richardson took a fleeting moment to savor the thrill of first blood. Uncle Roland would be proud, she was certain.

Then the first little canister traced a long arc through the air, casting its nefarious white clouds upon the defenders.