Chapter 25 twenty three

Feldman.Colonel Kassad walked through a portal, expecting to see something strange or strange, but what he saw was a frenzied war.Moneta walked ahead of him.The Thorn Demon God accompanied her, piercing Kassad's upper arm with the sharp edge of his fingertips.When Kassad passed through the stinging energy curtain, Moneta was waiting, but the Thorn Demon God was gone. Kassad knew immediately where they were.They stood on top of a low hill on which King Billy of Sadness had ordered his image to be carved two centuries earlier.The flat land on the top of the mountain was empty, except for the wreckage of an anti-space missile defense gun, still smoking.From the fact that the granite was still smooth and the molten metal was bubbling, Kassad guessed that the cannon had fallen from space.

Moneta walked to the edge of the cliff, fifty meters above Sad King Billy's broad brow, and Kassad stepped beside her.The river valley in front of him, the city, and the highland space port ten kilometers to the west let him know the current situation. Hyperion's capital city is ablaze.The part of Old Town called Jacktown resembles a small storm fire caused by an atomic bombing.In the suburbs and on both sides of the road leading to the airport, there are hundreds of smaller fires, like well-maintained beacon towers.Even the Huli River is burning, as the oil fires spread beneath the old docks and warehouses.Kassad saw the steeple of an ancient church rising above the flames.He tried to find Cicero's shop, but it was obscured by smoke and flames upstream.

There was chaos in the hills and valleys, as if an anthill had been kicked away by giant boots. Kassad could see the roads, all blocked by the flow of people, moving slower than real rivers. There are always tens of thousands of people on the road. escape.Flames from artillery fire and energy weapons stretched across the horizon, illuminating the low-hanging clouds above.Every few minutes, an aircraft, military floater or landing craft, rose from the smoke near the spaceport, or from the tree-covered hills to the north or south, filling the air with shots from above and below. There was a flash of bullets end to end, and the craft plummeted down in a puff of black smoke and orange flames.

Hovercraft hang across the river like water bugs, dodging among burning ships, barges, and other hovercraft wreckage.Kassad noticed that the only bridge on the road was broken, and even the concrete and stone piers were burning.There were flashes of battle lasers and death rays in the smoke, and individual attack missiles were clearly visible, too, for the tiny white dots were too fast to be seen but left an aftermath that superheated the air they passed.As he and Moneta watched, there was an explosion near the spaceport, sending a cloud of fire rising into the sky. (Not the atomic bomb,) he thought.

(no.) The part of the tights that covered his eyes was like an extremely reinforced Overlord night-vision goggle, and Kassad used its function to draw closer to a hill five kilometers northwest on the other side of the river.The Bajun Marines slowly moved towards the top of the hill, some already detached, using their equipped energies to dig foxholes.Their armor was activated and the camouflage was perfect, with minimal detectable heat, but Kassad had no trouble seeing them, even their faces if he wanted to. Military commands and encrypted channels whispered in his ear, and he could hear the excited words and occasional curses, the orthographic marks of human battles for untold generations, thousands of troops drawn from spaceports and their garrisons. When they are driven out, they will be excavated in a circle twenty kilometers away from the city, forming a carefully planned firepower zone and the power to wipe out all the enemy's troops.

(They thought there was going to be an attack.) Kassad sent a message, only to find it more effective than silent words and only slightly less effective than telepathy. Moneta raised a quicksilver arm pointing skyward. The cloud was very high, at least two thousand meters, and it was shocking that first an airplane appeared there, then a dozen, and within a few seconds, there were a hundred swooping objects, most of them Hidden by camouflaged polymer paint and background-matched guard fields, Kassad had no trouble seeing them clearly.Beneath the camouflage, there were unclear markings on the iron-gray outer layer, and he recognized them as Ousters.Some of the larger craft were clearly landing craft, the blue contrails clearly visible, but others descended slowly in the fluctuating air of the supporting force field, and Kassad noticed that the fat size and shape were the Ousters. The attacking logistics transports, some undoubtedly loaded with supplies and ammunition, and many were undoubtedly empty, decoys for ground defense forces.

After a while, the ceiling-like cloud breaks again, and thousands of small free-falling things come down like confetti: Ouster paratroopers drop straight down past transport ships and landing craft, wait until the last second Only then did they deploy their supporting force fields and parafoils. No matter who the commander of the Overlord Army is, he is indeed very disciplined towards himself and his subordinates. The artillery on the ground and the thousands of Marines scattered around the city ignored the landing craft and transport ships with larger targets. Waiting for the positioning of the paratroopers to turn on some are only a little higher than the treetops.At that instant, the air was filled with thousands of flashes and plumes of smoke, lasers piercing the smoke, and missiles exploding.

At first glance, the casualties inflicted were staggering, enough to ward off any attack, but after a quick tour, Kassad knew that at least forty percent of the Ousters who landed would come from the first wave of any planetary attack. That said, the numbers are pretty good. A group of five paratroopers turned toward the hill where he and Moneta stood.The laser death ray below the mountain set two of them ablaze, one spun panic-stricken, fell into nothingness and disintegrated, and the last two were whirled by a gust of wind from the east and fell into the forest below. All of Kassad's senses were engaged: he smelled ionized air and smokeless gunpowder and gunpowder smoke; , and the crackling of small arms fire and burning trees carried to his ears on the wind; radios and intercepted encrypted channels blared; flames lit up valleys, and laser beams pierced the clouds like searchlights.About half a kilometer below them, where the forest meets the meadow at the foot of the mountain, several groups of Marines from the Overlord Alliance were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Ouster paratroopers, and the screams were clearly audible.

Feldman.Kassad watched in fascination, feeling as if he had once had the thrill of watching a regiment of French cavalry charge at the Battle of the Arc of Achan. (Isn't this virtual reality?) (No,) Moneta replied. (Is this what is happening now?) The silver figure beside him tilted its head. (When is it called now?) (Close to the time we met in Tokizukadani.) (no.) (That, is the future?) (Yes.) (But it's the near future, right?) (Yes, five days after you and your friends arrived in the valley.) Kassad shook his head in surprise. If Moneta's words were to be believed, then he was ahead of time.

When she turned to face him, firelight and colors shone across her face. (Do you want to join this war?) (Fighting the Ouster?) He folded his hands over his chest and watched more intently, already having some idea of ​​the combat function of this strange new tight armor.He could have turned the war around with one hand, could have destroyed the thousands of troops the Ousters had already landed. (Don't,) he said to her, (Not now, not at this moment.) (The Lord of Pain believes you are a warrior.) Kassad turned to look at her again.He was a little curious why she would give such a heavy title to Jing Demon God. (The King of Pain can fuck himself,) He sent a message, (Unless he wants to fight me alone.)

For a long time Moneta remained motionless, like a statue of quicksilver on a windswept mountaintop. (Would you really fight it?) she asked finally. (I came to Hyperion to kill it, and you. As long as either or both of you agree, I will accompany you anytime.) (Do you still believe I'm your enemy?) Kassad thought back to the attack he had received at Tokazuka, knowing that it had not been rape, but had allowed him to fulfill his own desire, his own unspoken desire, to be lover again with this unlikely woman. (I don't know what you are.) (I was a victim at first, like so many others,) Moneta sent a message, her eyes returned to the valley. (Then, in our far future, I saw why the Lord of Pain was created and had to be forged and I became both a companion and a guardian.) (protector?) (I control the tides, tinker with mechanisms, and watch out for the Lord of Pain not to wake up before his time.) (So ​​you can control it?) Kassad's heart beat fast at the thought. (cannot.) (So, who or what controls it?) (Only the man or woman who can defeat it in hand-to-hand combat.) (Who beat it?) (Nobody,) Moneta teleports, (Not in your future or your past.) (Have many people tried it?) (Millions of people.) (Are they all dead?) (Or worse.) Kassad took a deep breath. (Did you know if I would be allowed to fight it alone?) (Will do.) Kassad let out the breath.No one beat it.His future was her past, and she had always lived here. She had seen that terrible thorn tree, as he had seen, familiar faces, as he had seen Martin.Selenus struggled, nailed to a tree years before he actually met the man, and Kassad turned his back on the battle in the valley below. (Can we go to him now? I'm going to challenge him to fight alone.) Moneta watched him in silence for a long while.Kassad saw his own quicksilver visage reflected in hers.She didn't answer, just turned around, tapped the air with her hand, and summoned the portal. Kassad stepped forward, going through the door first.