You’ll be able to rejoin your squadron there.”
Gray looked out past a sea of thronging people, civilians, most of them. The large majority were women, most of them veiled inside their clear helmets, many completely anonymous beneath the traditional burqas draped over lightweight e-suits. There were lots of children as well, the youngest in survival bubbles, older ones clinging to mothers or older siblings, the oldest trying to look stolid and brave.
“All of these people are going to the America too?”
“These are, yes, sir. They’ve been sending them up by the shuttle-full for hours now. I hear they’re packing them into every ship in the battlegroup.”
Gray looked at a nearby child of perhaps three, squalling inside her e-suit’s bubble helmet as her mother held her, bouncing her up and down. The inside of the bubble was nearly opaque with moisture from the screaming, though Gray could still make out the child’s red and contorted face. “It’s going to be an interesting trip home.”
“Yes, sir,” the corporal agreed with considerable feeling.
Not all of the people boarding the shuttle were women and children, however. There were a few men sprinkled in among them. One, a couple of meters away, wore a black e-suit with a green-and-yellow patch of the Mufrid Defense Militia, a local group that worked as military auxiliaries in support of the Marines.
Gray found the fact that so many women were wearing burqas over their e-suits interesting. Only the most conservative and traditional of Islamic women still wore the things, which were supposed to conceal the woman’s shape and keep her from offending—or tempting—male believers. Individual cultures tended to determine for themselves what was properly modest and what was not, and the women of those Islamic states on Earth that had accepted the White Covenant tended not to wear veils or similar heavily concealing garb. The Haris colonists, though, appeared to have reverted to form-hiding drapery, even when the woman was wearing a head-to-toe environmental skinsuit and bubble helmet that could not in any way be described as sexy.
“How many are there?”
“God knows, sir. Six or seven thousand, I heard. They’re even bringing them in from the other Mufrid colonies out there.”
Gray had heard that there were five other outposts on Haris besides the main colony-research station called Jauhar, or Jewel, and that two of those outposts had been incinerated by the Turusch during the past few weeks. Three, however, had not been attacked, and the Navy was trying to get as many women and children out of those surviving bases as possible.
As Gray and his escort started across the field, falling in with the women and children, he heard a low and menacing rumble from the civilians on the perimeter. They’d completely ringed in the landing field, and were blocked from approaching the grounded Choctaw shuttle by a painfully thin line of armored Marines. This crowd, most of them men, had been silent at first, but they were becoming more agitated now. One man was standing on a balcony overlooking the landing field and the mob, shouting something incomprehensible.
“What’s he saying?” Gray asked.
“Beats the hell out of me, sir,” the corporal replied. He looked nervous, staring across the crowd and fingering the stock of his laser rifle.
“He is saying,” said the male civilian with the MDM patch on his shoulder, “that this is blasphemy in the eyes of God and the Prophet, may his name be forever blessed … and that those who return to Earth and to Earth’s oppression …” The man broke off the translation, listening, then shook his head inside his bubble helmet. “I don’t think you really want to hear this, sir.”
“Maybe we should hear,” Gray said. He was measuring the distance they still had to cross to reach the waiting Choctaw, wondering what the chances were that he would make it on board with this pass, or if he would have to wait for the next ride out.
“He is saying that it is God’s will that we all stay and face the aliens, that … that Shaitan waits to devour us all on Earth. …”
“God help us,” the corporal muttered.
The civilian looked at Gray, and extended a gloved hand. “I am Sergeant Muhammad Baqr,” he said. “Militia, attached to the Marine 4th SAR/Recon.”
“A pleasure. I’m—”
“Lieutenant Gray, I know. I was part of the hopper team that pulled you out of that tangle of shadow swarmers last night.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Abruptly, four Marines appeared on the shuttle ramp ahead. One was holding up his hand, his helmet moving slowly back and forth. There was no more room on that Choctaw, and he was stopping the queue.
Screams and cries arose from the waiting civilians, and the men outside the perimeter began shouting and shaking their fists. The Marines began backing the civilians away from the ramp, gesturing for them to get back.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Gray said.
“Very bad,” Baqr agreed. “Very bad …”
The ramp pulled back inside the Choctaw, and the hopper began to rise, a spooling whine coming from its power plant, navigation lights winking, broad, flat wings unfolding. A stone, hurled from the mob outside the perimeter, struck the glossy black hull and bounced off, as a ripple in the nanosheathing spread out from the point of impact. Another rock followed, and missed.
The mob surged forward.
“Back!” a Marine on the perimeter line shouted. “Get back!”
But the mob began breaking through. One of the Marines fired, the laser a bright flash, and then people in the mob were screaming and cursing. More rocks flew, most of them hitting the civilians still lined up at the landing pad.
The roar of the mob was deafening as they shouted in unison, “Allahu akbar!”
God is great.
VFA-44 Squadron Ready Room
TC/USNA CVS America
Haris Orbit, Eta Boötis System
1825 hours, TFT
Commander Allyn was still in debrief when the word came up from the planet that a riot had broken out, that at least a thousand Marines and several thousand civilians still waiting to be evacuated were being attacked by a rampaging mob.
“Commander,” the voice of Admiral Koenig said inside her head, “are you and your people ready for another mission?”
She started to say, “I don’t know,” which was the truth. After arriving at the debriefing, she’d learned that the four other members of her squadron all had recovered on board the America after the fight with the Turusch fleet, but she didn’t know if their Starhawks had been refitted and rearmed, didn’t know if they were flight ready, didn’t know if her squadron, what was left of it, was flight ready. They’d been through a hell of a lot, and they’d lost six people—she’d heard that Lieutenant Gray had crash-landed safely and been picked up by a Marine SAR. Suffering a casualty
