Final Assault Read online

  THE TENTH

  PLANET

  FINAL

  ASSAULT

  Dean Wesley Smith

  and

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Story by Rand Marlis

  and Christopher Weaver

  A Del Rey® Book

  THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP • NEW YORK

  They had exactly eighteen minutes to abandon the station and drop the shuttle out of orbit before the alien spacecraft would be on top of them. If the aliens were true to form, they'd drain the energy from this place. If Banks and her crew stayed, they would die here. Their air would run out first or they'd freeze to death.

  She wasn't going to die that way.

  None of them were.

  Making sure everyone was ahead of her, she gave one quick glance around the control room, then reached down and keyed in one last command.

  The computers would track the incoming ships. When they were almost close enough to drain the energy from the station, it would explode with enough hydrogen bombs to level half of Europe.

  The ISS had become just another weapon in the many that Earth would be throwing at the aliens this time. But if the ISS took out even one alien ship, it would be worth it.

  Quickly she headed behind her crew toward the shuttle. Twelve minutes to board, release from the station, and drop into the atmosphere. No one had ever done that in under an hour before.

  But they would.

  They had to.

  They had no other choice except death . . .

  By Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group:

  THE TENTH PLANET

  THE TENTH PLANET: OBLIVION

  THE TENTH PLANET: FINAL ASSAULT

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  If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  A Del Rey* Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2000 by Creative Licensing Corporation and Media Technologies Ltd.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-107309

  ISBN 0-345-42142-6

  Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition: December 2000

  To Brent and Stephanie,

  who were there when it all began.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Also by the Authors

  Dedication

  Section One: PANIC 1

  2

  3

  Section Two: FIRST BATTLE 4

  5

  6

  7

  Section Three: THE FINAL SHOT 8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Section One

  PANIC

  1

  October 11, 2018

  7:04 p.m. Central Daylight Time

  30 Days Until Second Harvest

  The ancient El train shuddered to a stop. Kara Willis grabbed the metal bar to keep herself from being flung into the man next to her. His overalls smelled of grease and onions, and his hands were filthy. He obviously had some kind of job that required maintenance work. This was not her crowd, from the tired, overweight women who clutched large purses against their old overcoats to the men with haggard faces and exhausted eyes. They made her uneasy.

  A garbled announcement sounded around her. She made out “tracks” and “closed” and “wait.” The announcement was repeated in Spanish, and the words were much clearer. But even though she was in her third year of high school Spanish, she could only make out a few words. Most of them were extremely unfamiliar.

  Around her the crowd groaned.

  “What was it?” she asked the man beside her.

  He blinked, his eyes blue and red-rimmed. “Trouble down the tracks. They’re closing this line. They suggest waiting for a different train.”

  “Which one?” she asked.

  But he just looked at her, and shook his head slightly.

  “Probably better to walk, niña,” the woman across from her said.

  Kara’s eyes widened. She couldn’t walk. They had stopped at Superior and State, right downtown, and she lived in Lake Forest. Walking was not an option, and from what she’d seen through the scratched and dirty windows the last half hour, she knew she wouldn’t find a cab.

  It was her fault. Her friends had driven her home from school, the BurpeeKins blaring on the CD player, so she hadn’t been prepared for what she found when she got to the house.

  Her mom had been sitting on the couch, hands in front of her face, shoulders shaking.

  The wall screen had been pulled down and ten channels appeared on it, all of them with the volume on, so that a bunch of voices blasted her. The newscasters, usually sprayed and combed to perfection, looked frazzled. On the screen below them or above them were the words “Breaking News,” and a few of the images showed a round blackness coming around the sun.

  She recognized that image—she had seen it enough since the president’s speech last summer. It was the tenth planet, and it was coming back toward them.

  The first time it had come, it had destroyed various areas all over the Earth. One of them had been in California, where her cousin Barbara had lived. She had gone to the memorial service that her grandparents and aunt and uncle had held for Barbara. There hadn’t been anything left of her cousin. Someone had had to go to court in California and have Barbara—and everyone who had lived in the ruined areas of Monterey—declared legally dead.

  Kara’s mother didn’t even seem to notice that she was home. Kara put her purse on the couch and picked up the remote. Her mother continued to shake. For a moment, Kara put her hand over her mom’s frail back, then pulled away. She had not seen her mom like this, not since the aliens had attacked the first time.

  Kara muted nine channels, leaving only the handsome guy from CNN. Only he wasn’t so handsome now. He looked as upset as her mom, except that he didn’t have the luxury of burying his face in his hands.

  The aliens had launched a new fleet of ships at Earth. They were going to attack again.

  Her father came out of his office at that moment, his feet bare, his hair tousled. He looked like a man who had been punched in the stomach.

  “Turn it off, Kara,” he said.

  Her mother lifted her head. “No—”

  He grabbed the remote and shut off the entire screen. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “This time, we’re all going to die.”

  “But we attacked them,” Kara said. “We bombed them with every nuke on the planet. We won.”

  “They’re more powerful than we are,” her mom said. “They can survive anything.”

  Kara’s father met her gaze. His dark eyes were sad.

  “I’m so sorry, honey,” he said to her, and then dropped on the couch and put his arm around her mom.

  Maybe it was his apology that made her leave.

  Or maybe it was her mom’s shuddery “What are we going to do?”

  Or maybe it was pu
re fear.

  Whatever it was drove her out of the house, down the lawn and into the street.

  Inside all the other houses, people were standing or shouting or shaking their heads. But no one else had come outside. She needed company—and not her parents. Her father’s look had said too much, just as he had said too much last April.

  If we had known this was going to happen, she had overheard him saying to a friend, we never would have brought a child into this world.

  And then, that afternoon, I’m sorry, honey. Not for going to her mother instead of her, but for bringing her into a world with no hope.

  She had run down the street, fists clenched. There was nothing she could do, but she felt like she had to do something. She didn’t want to sit around and calmly wait for death.

  Somehow that impulse had brought her out of her neighborhood to the El. She had gotten on, thinking she would go somewhere else, where people stood outside and stared at the sky, where they were discussing the future instead of cowering inside their homes.

  Instead, her impulse had turned into a long, nightmarish trip on the El. The people on the train looked tired and sad. They had been hopeless even before the aliens had come.

  And then the train went through neighborhoods she had never been in alone.

  As she looked through the scarred windows, she saw people flooding the streets, but they weren’t people she wanted to mix with. These people were angry. They were breaking windows and shaking fists at the sky. At one intersection, she saw boys younger than her carrying beer out of a liquor store—through the shattered windows.

  Then, as the sun set, an orange glow filled the skyline. The glow hadn’t come from the fall sun. It looked unnatural. One of the men farther down in the El car had said, “Fire!” and everyone had looked, heads moving in unison.

  Just as quickly, they looked away, pretending to see nothing, shoulders huddling inward, trying to keep as much personal space between them as possible.

  The kind woman across from Kara had touched her shoulder, shaking her out of the memory. “They do not want us on this train.”

  Kara stood. She gripped the metal bar tightly and wondered what she was going to do. She had planned to ride to the Loop, change trains and go home. But this train was stopping before they got to the Loop, and now they were making her get off.

  Passengers filed off the train in an orderly fashion, looking as defeated as her father had. She had run, but there had been nowhere to go.

  She hadn’t realized until just a few hours ago that she was trapped here—not in this train, this neighborhood, not in Chicago, but on Earth.

  Suddenly the world seemed very, very small.

  Her eyes burned. No wonder her mother was crying. No wonder people cowered in their houses. They had already figured out that there was nowhere to go.

  As she stepped onto the platform, she saw a chubby man in a blue Chicago Transit Authority uniform guide the flow of people down the stairs. There were other CTA employees scattered along the track, most of them looking tense. It wasn’t the kind of tense she would have expected—not the kind she was feeling. It was a more immediate thing, as if they were expecting her—or someone—to jump them.

  She followed the people down the stairs, their feet making rumbling sounds as they went. In the distance, she heard shouting and screaming and gunshots. The air smelled of smoke. She shivered. She hadn’t even remembered to bring a jacket.

  She crossed to the other side and started up the stairs so that she could catch a train home—or at least back in the direction she had come—but another CTA employee, a man with lined features, a man who looked as old as her father, put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” he said. “This line’s closed.”

  “I’ve got to go home,” she said.

  He shook his head. “There won’t be any trains on this track all night. Maybe not even tomorrow.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. The tall buildings of downtown were only a few blocks away. “Where’s the next nearest station?”

  He looked down at her and seemed to see her for the first time. People were flowing around them, walking down more steps to the street level. Another gunshot echoed, this time even closer, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

  “You’d have to walk,” he said. “And I can’t guarantee that any of the other trains will be running.”

  She felt panic surge through her, panic she had been controlling until now. “Why not?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “The entire city’s gone nuts. I don’t think it’s safe to be on the streets. Where are your parents? Maybe they should come get you.” She wasn’t even sure that her parents knew she was gone. They probably thought she was cowering in her room. “I’ll walk,” she said. “Just point me in the right direction.”

  “Look.” He put a hand on her arm. “I have a booth upstairs. You can wait there until your parents come. It’ll be safer.”

  She would have taken him up on that a year ago. Maybe even six months ago, when the aliens first attacked. She had still believed then that, despite the disaster, life would continue.

  Now she was sure she was going to die. It was just a question of when.

  She shrugged herself out of his grasp. “I’ll be all right,” she said, and hurried down the stairs. He called after her, but she ignored him. Her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. As she stepped onto the street, she saw a group of men push a car over. It looked like someone was still inside it.

  More glass broke, and people carrying boxes ran past her.

  The smoke wasn’t as thick here, but the air smelled funny—of sweat and piss and something else, something that made the hair on the back of her neck rise. Maybe that was what fear smelled like?

  Men sat on the curbs, head in hands, just like her mother had done.

  Women watched from windows as children and teenagers ran wild in the street.

  No one was making any effort to stop the mayhem.

  No one really seemed to notice except her.

  And part of her wanted to join in. It seemed logical somehow. Why wait for the aliens? What did they want anyway? To destroy the Earth. Why not destroy it before they did, make sure there was nothing left for them to touch?

  Because when the aliens had come the first time, they had sent down a cloud of blackness that had eaten through everything—including people. She had seen those scenes of people being devoured alive. Her father had tried to steer her away from the TV, but she had seen it anyway. And then they had learned that her cousin Barbara—her skinny, obnoxious, giggly cousin—had died in the last attack.

  Melted, eaten alive, just like everyone else.

  And it had looked so painful.

  Kara didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die that way.

  Behind her something banged so loud that she felt the ground shudder. She turned around. Another car had overturned, this one the size of her family’s sedan. Kids her own age were jumping on it, screaming at the person inside as if they blamed him.

  Maybe they should blame him. Maybe they should blame all the grown-ups. After all, they had lied. Every one of them, from the president on down, had lied. They had said, when we bombed the tenth planet, that the Earth had won.

  And it hadn’t. It hadn’t at all.

  Now the aliens were coming back, probably angrier and meaner. Maybe they would be like the creatures in those bad SF flat movies her teacher had shown in history class, the ones that showed all the paranoia of the last century. Those aliens had always gotten stronger after they were bombed.

  Kara shuddered. She pressed herself against the cold brick wall of a nearby building and watched the destruction around her. She couldn’t walk from here, and she didn’t want to go back to the El.

  She didn’t really want to go home either.

  There was nothing left for her. She had a month left to live—the whole world had a month left to live—and she was only seventeen years old.

&nb
sp; Her dad had been right. It wasn’t fair. She deserved a future.

  The president promised that the Earth would defend itself and survive, but that was a lie, too.

  She sank down onto the filthy sidewalk. No matter what she did tonight, it would make no difference thirty days from now.

  Thirty days from now, she would be dead, and there would be no one around to notice, no one to remember her, and no one to care.

  October 11, 2018

  19:13 Universal Time

  30 Days Until Second Harvest

  General Gail Banks never grew tired of the view from orbit. Spread out below her the whites, browns, blues of Earth seemed intense and alive. From this distance, her home seemed so small and vulnerable. Hard to believe there were nearly ten billion lives on it, all of them important, all of them connected.

  And all of them in her care.

  She touched the round frame of the portal in her tiny office on the International Space Station. In the last few months, this place had also become home to her. A cobbled-together home, filled with quirky, competent people, all as determined as she was to save that beautiful blue ball below her.

  She had coordinated the missile attack on the tenth planet from this station. She had been pleased that they had managed to arm and send over three hundred missiles at the tenth planet.

  The aliens had destroyed most of the missiles, but at least fifteen had gotten through.

  Her readings here had shown that the damage to the tenth planet had been severe. She had also known that the aliens hadn’t been obliterated, even though the word on the vid news and the Net among the civilians was that Earth had “won” the war.