IMPOSSIBLE to get through to anyone at Northwind or the compound. They weren’t burnt off the air like the Army, just not answering. Busy, Miller hoped.
They counted four out of the compound’s six attack helicopters twisting into the air and slanting toward the barrage’s source. Rotors twirling, side-mounted fanjet engines screaming for every last sliver of speed, the choppers chewed the air to pieces in their desperate sprint toward the attack.
And still the shells slipped through the defensive laser-web, hammering the compound below.
Northwind might not have been answering, but the Cobalt access codes gave them the feeds off the drones circling the skies over the compound.
They watched their phablets with mounting horror. The scene was pandemonium.
Within minutes, three breaches had been torn open in the compound wall. The northern sections, where engineers had already started concrete reinforcement, held up, but towards the south, near where Miller had stood at barricade six, sections had collapsed into rubble. Infected mobs, civilian and military both, poured through the gaps like medieval besiegers, running down side streets and into the sectioned-off refugee shanties before the heavies could arrive in their exoskeletons and hold the breach.
On infra-red, it looked like one man approaching the gates was wreathed in rat-things tearing him apart, but a second, longer look showed he wasn’t under attack. The swarm was following him in, rushing past him like attack dogs, chasing a fleeing trooper down ahead.
Large sections of the compound had been walled off from one another in case of just such an attack, to help contain the damage. Members of the Rats moved in with flamethrowers, licking the streets with tongues of fire that caused as much destruction to home territory as the enemy did, but the Infected didn’t dare advance, giving the civilians a chance to flee deeper into the compound’s depths.
Shells continued to rain down, the Rats’ DEW-CIWS systems only able to shield the most heavily populated parts of the peninsula. But even where the laser web was concentrated, artillery slipped through.
Miller watched in muted dread, chewing the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper. He watched as shells struck buildings he knew held civilians, refugees, and employees. Tiny dots scrambled on the phablet screen. People were running for their lives, trapped like fish in a barrel.
It seemed to go on forever, but eventually the air attack silenced Stockman’s artillery. It had only been twenty minutes, but the damage was extensive.
Miller found an open relay channel and heard the cheers, but it was more than a minute before the shells already in flight finished landing on the peninsula.
Taking the opportunity, Miller and his team made it back overland, taking the footbridge over to Wards Island, and the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge back to Queens and the Astoria compound.
B Y THE TIME they arrived, the worst of the attack was over; but the city surrounding the compound had been reduced to smoking ruins, obliterated where the DEW-CIWS had simply let the shells fall.
Miller and the others pushed through the rubble. Climbing over fallen walls and hopping over piles of brick and concrete, they inched toward the compound too stunned to speak. The damage was immeasurable, the city unrecognizable.
And irreparable. S-Y hardly had the resources to reconstruct the damage to the wall and the infrastructure inside the compound, much less the surrounding areas outside the Astoria Peninsula. Manhattan was a ruin, and likely to stay that way.
As Miller ambled around a crater in the middle of 27th Street a surprisingly profound grief flooded him. To his mind, the heart of New York had just stopped beating. He kept his eyes ahead, looking directly at the compound gate a block away, trying not to see the details, but they were impossible to miss.
As he fought to gain control of his emotions, he heard the roar of a
They counted four out of the compound’s six attack helicopters twisting into the air and slanting toward the barrage’s source. Rotors twirling, side-mounted fanjet engines screaming for every last sliver of speed, the choppers chewed the air to pieces in their desperate sprint toward the attack.
And still the shells slipped through the defensive laser-web, hammering the compound below.
Northwind might not have been answering, but the Cobalt access codes gave them the feeds off the drones circling the skies over the compound.
They watched their phablets with mounting horror. The scene was pandemonium.
Within minutes, three breaches had been torn open in the compound wall. The northern sections, where engineers had already started concrete reinforcement, held up, but towards the south, near where Miller had stood at barricade six, sections had collapsed into rubble. Infected mobs, civilian and military both, poured through the gaps like medieval besiegers, running down side streets and into the sectioned-off refugee shanties before the heavies could arrive in their exoskeletons and hold the breach.
On infra-red, it looked like one man approaching the gates was wreathed in rat-things tearing him apart, but a second, longer look showed he wasn’t under attack. The swarm was following him in, rushing past him like attack dogs, chasing a fleeing trooper down ahead.
Large sections of the compound had been walled off from one another in case of just such an attack, to help contain the damage. Members of the Rats moved in with flamethrowers, licking the streets with tongues of fire that caused as much destruction to home territory as the enemy did, but the Infected didn’t dare advance, giving the civilians a chance to flee deeper into the compound’s depths.
Shells continued to rain down, the Rats’ DEW-CIWS systems only able to shield the most heavily populated parts of the peninsula. But even where the laser web was concentrated, artillery slipped through.
Miller watched in muted dread, chewing the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper. He watched as shells struck buildings he knew held civilians, refugees, and employees. Tiny dots scrambled on the phablet screen. People were running for their lives, trapped like fish in a barrel.
It seemed to go on forever, but eventually the air attack silenced Stockman’s artillery. It had only been twenty minutes, but the damage was extensive.
Miller found an open relay channel and heard the cheers, but it was more than a minute before the shells already in flight finished landing on the peninsula.
Taking the opportunity, Miller and his team made it back overland, taking the footbridge over to Wards Island, and the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge back to Queens and the Astoria compound.
B Y THE TIME they arrived, the worst of the attack was over; but the city surrounding the compound had been reduced to smoking ruins, obliterated where the DEW-CIWS had simply let the shells fall.
Miller and the others pushed through the rubble. Climbing over fallen walls and hopping over piles of brick and concrete, they inched toward the compound too stunned to speak. The damage was immeasurable, the city unrecognizable.
And irreparable. S-Y hardly had the resources to reconstruct the damage to the wall and the infrastructure inside the compound, much less the surrounding areas outside the Astoria Peninsula. Manhattan was a ruin, and likely to stay that way.
As Miller ambled around a crater in the middle of 27th Street a surprisingly profound grief flooded him. To his mind, the heart of New York had just stopped beating. He kept his eyes ahead, looking directly at the compound gate a block away, trying not to see the details, but they were impossible to miss.
As he fought to gain control of his emotions, he heard the roar of a
Similar Books
