Steve Gordon - Insectoids 04 - Nightfall On August.pdf

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Nightfall On August – Insectoids 04
Steve Gordon
Nightfall on August
Part I: Roughing it on August
Chapter 1: The March Across August
It had been victory, but at a terrible cost.
For nearly 20 years the Insectoids had occupiedAllianceplanets,
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enslaving the human race. It was only after years of resistance, and the
return of a rebuilt fleet led by War Admiral Norman North, that they were
able to finally liberate their homeworlds.
But their victory had come at a terrible cost. As a parting act of spite,
the Insectoids had used some sort of weapon to disrupt all power systems
on nearly allAllianceworlds. The Queen leading the invasion, Zsst
herself, came to August, the capital of theAlliance, in a mighty Chent
ship, intent not only on disrupting the power on the planet but also
destroying it utterly with a Chent superweapon.
Zsst used an energy dampener to disrupt the power on August, as she had on
most majorAllianceworlds. But then, just as she was about to destroy
August with the superweapon, the Chent ship turned around, and simply
disappeared from known space. No one knew why.
But the damage Zsst had done was significant enough. MostAllianceworlds
were without power. That would be a disaster on any world.
On August, it was worse than a disaster.
Imagine a city so large that it spanned an entire continent, and you
imagine August. Everything from transportation to food to medicine to
industry relied on power. Even at the height of the Insectoid occupation
the generators kept running, supplying the resistance with the power they
needed to run their underground electrofarms. There were some conventional
farms on the periphery of the continent, but they only produced a small
fraction of the food needed to support the population.
And now, suddenly, the lights went out. Everything stopped working. The
power generators cut out. The hot lamps which powered the underground
farms cut out. The entire planet was cut off, surrounded by a sparkling
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field of particles that prevented any ship from safely landing, that even
prevented communications from coming in and out. August was one, big,
prehistoric prison, and everyone on the planet was trapped there.
The power to all electrical devices had been cut off right after the
energy suppression field hit. Unfortunately, one of those "electrical
devices" was a small fighter, just in the process of taking off, when
power was lost.
The wreckage from the long range Trobadore B two seater fighter littered
the street, burning everywhere. A bloody hand reached up unsteadily to
push some of the debris away.
A person attached to the hand struggled to free himself from the debris as
well as the parachute attached to the chair ejection mechanism. The figure
stood up, revealing the equally bloody but grim face of Clifford Croft,
resistance leader and super spy, one of the Agency's Eight.
Croft wiped the blood off his forehead as he looked around. He felt fuzzy
and lightheaded. It must be the concussion, he thought dimly.
Croft tried to look around, but despite the small fires burning around him
a glittering haze was filling the air, preventing him from seeing more
than a few feet in any direction. Had his vision been impaired?
Croft felt unsteady, like he had trouble standing; he fell back to the
ground, and tried to cut through the buzz in his head and concentrate.
He had been in the backseat of the Trobadore B. The pilot had tried to
eject, but when power was lost, the automatic eject system went out with
it. His last memory was of the pilot pulling the manual eject lever....
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Aeronautical engineers knew, of course, that pilots would have to eject
under a variety of circumstances, including when they had lost power, and
had provided a manual release mechanism. But the extra seconds that the
pilot had taken to move from the automatic to the manual ejection button
had nearly been fatal.
Perhaps fatal, for the pilot. Croft and the pilot of the Trobadore had
ejected separately. He tried to look around, to see if he could see any
signs of the pilot. But that dim, glittering haze was blocking his vision.
Croft felt the painful spot on his head. Had he suffered brain damage that
injured his vision?
Croft stiffened as he heard crackling sounds, as if someone was moving
through the wreckage. Could it be the pilot? No, not from the sound of it,
unless the pilot brought several friends with him.
He was reaching for his blaster when he slumped over and blacked out.
Croft slowly awoke to find himself lying on a table in an underground
room. The room was illuminated by a small flame driven torch on the wall.
The room was covered in that sparkling mist, making it difficult to see.
Croft closed his eyes hard, and reopened them. He saw people moving in the
mist. Croft groaned, and started to sit up. His head was throbbing, and he
felt a sharp pain in his side.
Someone came over to him out of the mist. "You're very lucky," said the
figure.
"I'm not so sure," said Croft, guessing that this must be a member of the
resistance. He felt his body. It was painful on his right side and right
leg, like he had twisted something, but at least nothing seemed broken.
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Maybe he was lucky. He tried looking around, but his vision was still
blurry. "There's something wrong with my vision," he said.
"If you mean the mist, there's nothing wrong," said the man. "At least,
not with your vision. It's from that bug weapon they used on us."
Bug weapon.
It all came back to Croft. The Insectoids had used some kind of weapon to
dampen power on the entire planet. That's what the sparkling particles
were.
"What about the pilot?" said Croft, standing up painfully. He checked his
blaster; it was still in its holster. Good. Or was that now irrelevant?
"There was no sign of him," said the man.
Another shape moved in the blur.
"He's conscious, sir," said the man.
"Thank you, Corporal, you're dismissed," said the second man. He turned to
Croft, stared at his face, and look startled. He said, "I think I
recognize you, from the broadcast at the victory celebration. Could you
really be..."
Croft looked up expectantly.
"Clifford Croft?" said the man.
"In the flesh," said Croft, groaning as he felt a pain in his back.
"Barely. What's the situation?"
"Lieutenant Pomiter, sir, resistance group 7-2," said the officer,
saluting. "All power has been cut."
"Planetwide?" said Croft.
"There's no way to tell," said Pomiter. "We don't have power for the comm
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