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"I've deployed my people around the cavern, and we're watching. But if there's a large force out there, I can't promise to protect you here. This building is more exposed to fire from that doorway than I'd like."
He gestured at the screen, which now read "28%.”
“There's no way to hurry this," King told her. "Do what you can, and keep me informed."
"Yessir." Janice vanished back through the door, and he heard her calling orders to her troops a moment later. He wondered how long eight men and women could hold out against whatever was beyond the Wall. He touched the uncomfortable pressure of the flare pistol in his belt, thinking, That's no defense. You'll just have to get the job done . . . and get out!
His eyes met those of one of the two Techs in the library room. They were scarcely more than teenagers, and both looked scared.
"Go on, you two," he said. "There's nothing more to be done here. No, wait—" His words stopped them as they started toward the door. "If something happens to me, get this core back to the DropShips. Promise me! It is vitally, vitally important!" So many have died for it already!
The youngsters assured him that they would, and vanished.
King wondered if he would ever see them again.
* * *
"Range eight hundred meters. Closing."
Lori tried to analyze Grayson's voice through the faint hiss of static on the taccom's general frequency. The other MechWarriors had been completely silent ever since they had assumed their places in the line. She had had better luck determining the other warriors' moods than Grayson's. They, like her, had reached the absolute limits of their endurance and their abilities. Before they had mounted their 'Mechs, Lori had heard Sharyl saying over and over, "He can't make us do this ... he can't make us do this ..." Even the normally jovial Davis McCall had been stonily silent, the pain stark in his eyes. Something seemed to have broken inside him with the near-dismemberment of his beloved Ba
"We've lost, Grayson!" he had said. "We simply don't have what you're asking of us! Look at them!" Clay had pointed at Burns's infantrymen standing sullenly beside their vehicles, which were spread out in a long, ragged line ahead of the 'Mechs. "They're burned out! At the point of collapse! We still have time to pull back aboard the DropShips ..."
Khaled had said nothing, but Lori had seen him looking off toward the mountain valley and shaking his head. Koga had been as imperturbable as ever, until Lori caught him striking his right fist hard against his left palm in an unguarded moment. Seeing the fury in his expression, she had approached him. The impenetrable mask had dropped silently into place once more. "Vengeance ca
Vengeance against whom?Lori said to herself. Of all the old hands of the unit, Bear alone seemed unaffected. She had spoken to him before they'd boarded, but his response had seemed to come from a great distance, as though he were removed, on some higher, colder, and far-distant plane.
It was a different story among the newly fielded recon lance. The two recruits showed widely differing attitudes, with Gary Brodenson frankly terrified and Jason Morely passionately a
"He's not going to . . . going to make us stand to the last, is he?" Tracy had asked Lori. "I mean, what if he's down, but the rest of us are still fighting?"
"Then we carry on without him," Lori had said. The words had come with savage, i
With the possible exception of Bear, who came from a culture markedly different from her own, Lori could identify with all the different responses she found among her comrades. Yet, it was Grayson, of all people, who puzzled her the most.
He was grimmer, lonelier, and more isolated in a way that she could not touch or reach. Just before they'd boarded their 'Mechs, she had asked him to wish her luck. He had turned on her then, and she had seen agony behind his eyes. But she still did not understand.
"Seven hundred meters. Closing," she heard now over the taccom.
Lori began to switch the power systems of her Shadow Hawkto combat mode, checked her fire extinguisher automatics, and made certain the first of the autoca
33
The explosion smashed down on Alard King's body like a living thing, knocking the air from his lungs and leaving him gasping on the library floor. The shock wave had been transmitted through the floor of the cave and the deck of the library structure almost as though the deck had leaped up and hit him hard enough to knock him down.
For a moment, all he could hear was the ringing in his ears. Only gradually did he realize that there was noise trying to push through the ringing, that the noise was growing in volume, an almighty roar magnified tenfold by the echoing enclosure of the cavern. He pulled himself shakily to his feet. Miraculously, the computer still ran, the screen now reading completion at 89 percent. Or was it a miracle? The League engineers must have known that they were building over an earthquake fault; they would have designed the electronics of their facility accordingly.
The noise increased. Still dazed, King stumbled toward the door, which hung open now, the bearings smashed from their tracks.
He blinked in unaccustomed light. The Wall was open.
* * *
Langsdorf's engineers had placed their charges in hopes of bringing down the whole wall, but ten million metric tons of rock had been beyond their capabilities, at least with so little time in which to work. Light spilled now through a gaping hole on the north side of the Wall. Rather than falling, the ancient granite of the wall had split along an old and invisible seam. Perhaps a quarter of the wall had crumbled, and was lying as a vast pile of black and grey rubble. The shaft of light flooding the room was harshly visible in the dancing motes of rock dust thrown up by the blast.
Against the light, shadows moved.
The shock of the blast had struck Janice and her troops as hard as it had King, but they had been braced and expecting attack. They lay in their positions just outside the pool of dusty light, arrayed in a semicircle, with their weapons turned toward the invaders. The roar of noise was the firefight erupting within the cavern. Heavily armored Marik infantrymen were spilling through the gap in the wall and clattering through the fallen rubble. TK rounds stitched through armor, flesh, and granite wall alike, erupting in miniature suns of destruction. Submachine gunfire lanced out of the darkness, grabbing at armored men and spi
And the invaders replied. Gunfire flashed through the darkness. A young mercenary soldier shrieked as an invisible hand lifted him from the cavern floor and hurled him backward, leaving him crushed, bloody, and still.
King darted back into the library. The screen read 96 percent. Come on! Come on!He didn't know what would happen if he tried to stop the machine and remove the core. Perhaps nothing, or perhaps the attempt would cause him to lose everything. He gripped the edge of the table, watching the screen.