A Night Without Stars Read Online Free Page B

observers started talking to the operators gathered around the big strategic map that took up two of the trestle tables. Wooden spaceships—simple cones—were pushed across the big map of Fanrith by long poles. The Air Force squadrons were already there, marked by model planes. She would have wept in frustration if it weren’t that she knew she’d end up laughing in hysterics at the monstrous futility of it.
    Squadron communications officers talked urgently into their telephones. Poles began prodding the model planes as the IA-505s started to change course to intercept the descending spaceships.
    “Let’s hear it,” she said.
    Tannoy speakers came alive, filling the crypt with distorted voices and a lot of static as the radio links played. Squadron leaders relayed instructions, receiving tight confirmations from the aircrews.
    “I see them” was repeated several times, jubilant cries riding the static. More voices crashed out of the tannoys, a confusing medley of navigation vectors and course-correction commands.
    Laura turned back to the gateway. The spaceships were entering the atmosphere, their rocket plumes shrinking away. Even though they were traveling below orbital velocity, their size and blunt cone shapes created a huge shock wave in the tenuous ionosphere, sending out annular waves of glowing atoms, as if phantom flowers were blooming high above Fanrith. The nine ships were holding a loose circular formation, no more than twenty-five kilometers across.
    Typically unimaginative,
Laura thought.
No clever tactics. Just get down, establish a planetary beachhead, and start attacking.
    The ships reached the chemosphere, and the flares of superheated atmosphere began to elongate as they grew brighter. Chatter from the pilots grew louder and jumbled as they flew toward the invaders. Laura checked the tabletop map, seeing twelve squadrons clustering around the ships. They were coming down on the northern edge of Fanrith’s central desert, just south of the equator.
    “They need to get underneath,” Laura told the chief air marshal.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Right underneath. That’s their sensor blind spot.”
    “They know that.” The chief air marshal’s voice was level. “Your briefings were very clear.”
    Slvasta stepped up beside Laura. “Let the aircrews do their job,” he said quietly.
    Laura nodded, rubbing a hand across her forehead. She was worried now—worried for the planes and their crews, worried the invasion would succeed, worried she was making mistakes she was so tired.
    “Something—” a tannoy spat out.
    “Marco, Mar— Oh, Uracus, they just disintegrated! There’s nothing left!”
    “Evelina. Evelina’s gone!”
    “Explosions, they’re just exploding!”
    “Three down.”
    “Command, we’re taking some kind of hit!”
    “What are they using? Wha—”
    “Nothing! There’s nothing.”
    Laura stared at the nine long glowing contrails that were streaking down through the stratosphere. “Beam weapons,” she said. Then louder, trying to keep the anguish from her voice, “They’re hitting you with beam weapons. X-rays, or masers. Get underneath them!”
    One of the officers at the end of the trestle tables was chalking numbers on a board. The tally of planes lost. When he put up twenty-seven, Laura looked away. The IA-505s weren’t even in Gatling gun range of the invaders yet.
    “Portlynn and Siegen squadrons circling under intruder seven,” their liaison said.
    The tannoys were broadcasting a barrage of screams. Orders were garbled shouts. Static grew louder.
    On the table, the models of Gretz and Wurzen squadrons reached intruder three.
    Laura’s u-shadow ordered the wormhole terminus to descend. The panoramic view blurred as it lost altitude
fast.
Then the image steadied as it came to rest 110 kilometers above Fanrith, allowing them to look directly down on the fringe of the desert. There were no clouds. The only blemishes were the diminishing glimmers of distorted