Building 12 was a gray, ground-extruded nanocrete dome near the east side of the XC Mission quarter, ugly as sin, as her grandmother back in Michigan used to say, but it had been home and office for five Terran Standard years. She emerged from light and air-conditioned coolness on the elevated walkway halfway up the side of the curved wall, plunging into the steamy heat outside.
Spread out below her within the tight perimeter of the Legation walls, the embassy compound was submerged in murky red twilight, with only the bright gleam of a handful of lights in scattered windows to show where Earthers had left them burning after leaving for the evacuation pickup. Gunfire crackled and snapped from the north, where a company of Marines was trying to hold off the incoming tidal flood of Anu god-warriors and their Sag-ura slaves. Smoke stained the red sky at a dozen different points—most of them marking burning ’villes outside the wall, but a few were inside, set by fanatics within the embassy compound or by firebombs lobbed over the wall.
It was late morning—not that the Terran Legation staff ever paid much attention to local time. Ishtar circled giant Marduk in 133 hours, which meant that its day-night cycle was five and a half Earth days long. The Legation’s work and rest periods were based on a standard twenty-four-hour cycle matched to Greenwich Mean Time on distant Earth, a necessary concession to the biological needs of a much different world’s evolution. In any case, the light from the primary, red-dwarf Llalande 21185, was so wan that the landscape always seemed to be shrouded in twilight, even at high noon.
At the moment, the sun was a red-ember pinpoint gleaming high in the eastern sky, well above the haze-shrouded Ahtun Mountains, too tiny and too distant to lend Ishtar more than a trickle of heat. In the west, above the black cone of God Mountain, Marduk hung against the deep green and purple sky, a baleful scarlet eye poised to fall upon the exotically lush landscape of Ishtar and crush it. Though gibbous and waning now, the sliver of Marduk’s night side visible at the moment glowed almost as brightly as the sunlit side. Stirred and stressed by the constant gravitational tug-of-war with its largest satellite, the gas giant radiated far more heat than it received from its star, heat sufficient to warm its Earth-sized satellite to tropical temperatures on the side forever facing Marduk in tide-locked captivity.
Nichole spared only a moment for the red-gloom beauty of the landscape. The gunfire in the north was growing steadily in intensity, and she could see the black sprawl of Geremelet’s hordes surging through the shattered main gate. A cluster of rockets rose from the jungle beyond, trailing orange flame. The flames winked out; moments later, a scattering of flashes popped and strobed across the northern quarter of the compound, followed seconds later by the dull thud of the explosions. The Marines wouldn’t be able to hold that army of Ahannu fanatics back much longer.
A Marine Wasp droned overhead, its insectlike body painted in stripes of yellow and dark blue-black. It angled across the compound toward the north, and she guessed that it was searching for the launch site of those rockets.
Shouldering her pack, she moved quickly down the stairway curving along the wall of Building 12. The streets of the city were almost lost in the near-darkness. Not for the first time, she wished she had microimplant optics like the Marines used, to help her pick her way through the shadows. Normally, the Legation’s streets and walkways were brilliantly lit, but the power had failed hours before and the streetlights were out. The ground was littered with debris—scattered chunks of rock and broken nanocrete from the Ahannu rocket barrages—and twice she nearly stumbled with her heavy load.
“Halt! Who’s there?” a voice demanded from the shadows to her left.
“I’m Dr. Moore,” she said. “Xeno-C Mission.”
A figure stepped forward from the shadows, man-shaped but bulkier, heavier, and clad in black military armor. Gauntlets grasped a massive laser rifle, which was connected to the armor’s backpack by a trio of thick cables. The armor was dented and scarred in several places. The name AIKEN, G. was stenciled across the top of the helmet, above where the visor would have been had it had one, and a master sergeant’s insignia decorated the upper left arm, painted in dark gray against the darker black of the armor.
“Hey, Doc,” Aiken said. His voice, amplified through the suit’s speaker system, echoed off nearby walls. “I hoped that was you. Lemme give you a hand.”
She pulled back. “I…I can manage just fine, Master Sergeant.”
“Sure you can.” The speaker’s volume was lower now. “But I can do it faster.” He reached out and lifted the pack from her shoulders as lightly as if it were empty. “We’ve got to hustle.”