Vanguard

Chapter 12

“Obi! Give me back the hunting rifle!” Mele lowered her pulse rifle to those fully in the tunnel and brought up the hunting weapon, loading a round and aiming hastily.

The rifle bucked against her shoulder as she fired.

If it had been an individual soldier, she might well have missed. But the tight group of three made a bigger target. The sound of the shot, soft as it was, caused the three Scatha soldiers to start to turn at the noise, which had been muffled enough by the silencer to not immediately sound like a slug thrower rifle going off.

One of the soldiers fell backward abruptly.

Shouts rang out as the other two soldiers went to ground.

Less than three minutes. “Get everyone seated on the ’pede!” Mele ordered, aiming again.

What would those soldiers do? The bunker was right behind them, where they would expect to find help. But why risk jumping up and running into it when they could call for help? There was a patrol out there, right?

Mele’s pad alerted her that signals were being sent. Alerts from comms held by those two soldiers. But Ninja’s software was blocking the alerts.

She fired again, aiming for the ground vehicle to be certain her shot would hit something and discourage the remaining two soldiers from rising.

One minute. Some big bombs were about to go off, and she was still way too close.

She aimed and fired again, ready to fall back, but didn’t leave enough time.

Ninja’s device chirped a warning. “Damn! Stay down!” Mele yelled to her team, dropping her upper body again to lie prone herself.

A titanic crash echoed across the plain. The heavy armor forming the top of the command bunker catapulted into the air from the force of the explosion inside the bunker. Mele caught a glimpse of the ground vehicle that had brought the soldiers to the bunker being flung aside as if slapped by a giant. The two soldiers outside the bunker probably died never knowing what had hit them.

An even more powerful series of blasts erupted from the antiorbital weapon site as thermite reached the maximized power storage cells, and everything let loose at once inside the armored structure. Jagged openings were torn in the protective armor, showers of burning thermite being hurled outward. The massive top of the site sagged downward into the devastation beneath it as the glow of melting metal lit the night.

Mele slid completely into the tunnel, shoving the plug of dirt and vegetation roughly back into place. The outside sounds of panic and destruction faded as the plug blocked and absorbed most of the noise. Anyone searching the field in daylight would spot the sagging place that marked the tunnel entrance, but every delay in Scatha’s soldiers finding the tunnel would be important. She expected that Scatha’s remaining soldiers would be busy for a little while with other matters, but no sense in making things easier for the enemy.

The ’pede could go back the way they had come simply by being driven from the opposite end. Mele climbed onto the last position of the ’pede, trying to slow herself down and think. “Does everyone have their weapon? Are all weapons on safe? Grant, Obi, is everyone accounted for?”

A chorus of replies assured her that all was as well as could be expected with explosions still rocking Scatha’s base, the walls of the tunnel trembling around them in a very disquieting way. Mele thought at this point the new explosions must mark software-controlled equipment suffering destructive failure because of the malware bombs. When she got a chance, she would have to ask Riley about some of the locations those bombs had been sent to.

“We’re not safe yet!” Mele called. “Get this thing moving! Maintain the best speed you can! The sooner we get back to WinG, the better!”

“Is this what being a Marine is like?” Obi called back to Mele.

“Part of it,” she said, watching tensely for any sign that Scatha’s soldiers had spotted the tunnel entrance behind them.

“I like it.”

“Then you might be crazy enough to be a Marine,” Mele said as the ’pede rolled rapidly through the tunnel. “Listen up everyone! This isn’t over! We’re still way too close to the hornets’ nest that we stirred up at Scatha’s camp. They’re mad as hell right now, and as soon as they figure out we’re responsible, they’re going to be looking very hard for us so they can get even!”

As if timed to emphasize her warning, the tunnel reverberated again to a distant vibration as something else big blew up back at the Scatha base.

“What was that?” someone asked.

“I don’t know,” Mele said.

“Maybe the power plant,” Hedy suggested. “There shouldn’t be anything left to blow that big at the antiorbital site.”

“Could be,” Riley agreed, his voice echoing off the tunnel walls. “Several malware bombs were planted in the power plant’s operating software. The design wouldn’t allow a runaway nuclear reaction, but there could have been a need to dump energy fast that resulted in a regular explosion.”

The conversation sounded weird, Mele thought. Hurtling along through the dark tunnel, the glow of the headlight barely visible ahead, and engineers discussing in academic terms what probably just blew up.

“If the power plant blew,” Hedy added, “they’ll be able to keep basics running using solar, but their manufacturing is going to slow a lot. It’s going to hurt them.”

“Good,” Mele said, worrying about something else. “Riley, did you get any malware bombs into the aerospace craft?”

“I don’t know. I think one of them was hooked in, and I was able to get something into it, but that was only one.”

Great. That left one aerospace craft as a potential problem.

Mele gasped with relief as the tunnelpede raced up the slope to where the tunnel came to the surface on this end. They rolled completely out of the tunnel and toward where the dark bulk of the WinG still sat.

The bulk of the foothills screening them from view from the Scatha camp didn’t block all of the sound coming from there. Mele heard a low murmur that at this distance was the mingled noise of hundreds of people shouting and yelling, mixed in with the roar of equipment and punctuated by occasional crashes and bangs that marked continuing explosions. A slight glow visible over the foothills drew everyone’s attention.

“Do you think that’s the weapon site still melting down?” Hedy asked Riley.

“Could be. Or the power plant. Most of the structure might have been liquefied by an emergency energy release.”

“Move now, talk later!” Mele ordered. “Everyone into the WinG! Except you! Get the ’pede stored aboard as fast as you can!”

She stood watching as the tunnelpede rolled up the cargo hatch, curling up to form its own, smaller coil next to the mining snake. As the cargo hatch swung closed, Mele shoved the ’pede guy toward the WinG’s personnel hatch while checking the ground for any equipment left behind or any person not yet aboard. Satisfied, she jumped into the WinG. “Get a head count!” she ordered Grant before racing to the cockpit.

“Are we ready?” the pilot asked. Both pilots looked about as nervous as could be expected after having to sit out here waiting through a long period of silence that had been replaced by the cataclysmic noises as various equipment and buildings in Scatha’s camp blew up.

“Still getting a head count,” she replied.

Grant came far enough forward to call out. “Everyone accounted for! We’re all aboard!”

“Let’s go,” she told the pilots. “Get us out of here as fast as you can. Stay hidden. One of their warbirds might still be operational.”

The WinG’s engines powered up. The craft slid forward, rising slightly as the ground effect kicked in, moving faster and faster down to the beach and over the water, curving north to avoid detection as it kept accelerating past five hundred kilometers per hour. The pilots held the altitude down to two meters above the highest swells of the dark ocean passing beneath them.

“Head toward Delta as soon as you think we’re outside Scatha’s detection range,” Mele told them.

“We’re already altering course to do that.”

An urgent tone sounded, a symbol appearing on the displays before each pilot. “That’s not good,” one commented.

“We’ve got company,” the other pilot told Mele. “An aerospace craft. It’s coming from the direction of Scatha’s base.”

“Who’s faster?” Mele asked.

“He is. And he’s pushing it hard to get within weapons range of us.”

“I imagine he’s pretty upset,” Mele said. “Can we get to Delta before he gets to us?”

“Don’t know yet. He’s still accelerating. It depends what he tops out at.”

“Give Delta a call. Tell them that we’re coming in hot with a Scatha warbird on our tail,” Mele said. “And get every bit of speed you can out of this skimmer.”

“We’re already trying to go our fastest,” the second pilot informed her.

“Sorry,” Mele apologized. “It’s hard to be a passenger. I did the same thing to fleet sailors.”

“Now you’re treating me like a sailor? I’m a pilot, not a space squid! Making me angry isn’t going to make this skimmer go any faster.”

“Sorry, bird driver.” Mele sat for a moment longer, gathering her thoughts, then went back to the passenger deck, where everyone looked at her. She took a deep breath before speaking. “The good news is, we’re heading back. The bad news is, Scatha got one warbird up. It’s chasing us. We’re trying to get to Delta before the warbird catches us.”

“How bad is this?” Riley asked Mele.

She shrugged. “If we get to Delta before the warbird gets to us, we’ll probably be fine. If the warbird gets to us before we get to Delta, it could be ugly.”

“We got the job done,” Grant said.

“Yeah,” Mele agreed. “We got the job done. Up to a point. Part of my job is getting you guys back. I’ll make that happen. I’m going to send an update so the government will know we hit Scatha hard, then if anyone needs me, I’ll be in the cockpit.”

When she got back to the cockpit, the pilots were looking ahead with grim expressions.

Mele checked their displays. “The warbird should be within range of Delta in half an hour.”

“Yup,” one the pilots said.

“But the warbird will be within range of us in twenty minutes.”

“Yup,” the other pilot said.

“Does this skimmer bird have any defenses?” Mele asked, hoping there might be some secret, hidden capability.

“Speed, very low altitude, and our lightning reflexes,” the first pilot replied.

“What do you think our odds are?”

“Pretty damn poor.”

“He’s going to engage with his missiles first, right?” Mele asked.

“Yeah,” the pilot agreed. “Most likely missiles with full-spectrum active seekers with backup full-spectrum passive seekers. Even a crate with a state-of-the-art countermeasures system would have trouble dealing with those. Our very low altitude won’t help. We can’t jink to avoid the missiles faster than they can correct and still hit us. Our only option is to go fast enough that he can’t get within range, and that’s not possible.”

Mele frowned. “I had a gunny once who told me that when anyone says there’s only one option, it means there must be another that’s not occurring to them.”

“A gunny?” the second pilot asked. “A Marine? That’s your source of wisdom and inspiration?”

“If you knew gunnies, you wouldn’t be skeptical,” Mele said. “If—You said all we can do is speed up. Why couldn’t we slow down to evade his missiles?”

Both pilots shook their heads. “We can’t decelerate fast enough to make a difference,” the first said.

“Hold on,” the second pilot said. “What if we pancake?”

“At this speed? It’d tear us apart.” The first pilot paused in thought. “We could skip. Bounce along the tops of swells. That would slow us a lot faster, much faster than that warbird and the missiles could manage, but not too fast for the bird to handle it.”

“If we did it right.”

“Well, yeah, if we did it wrong, the bird goes boom.”

“If those missiles hit us, the bird goes boom,” Mele pointed out.

The first pilot looked at his companion. “If we cut speed fast enough while the missiles are on final, they’ll be aiming at a point well ahead of where we are. They’ll try to compensate, but they’ll be on a downward trajectory and going very fast without much altitude left.”

“They’d hit the water,” the second pilot said. “Somewhere ahead of us. Hopefully. Of course, then we’d be going a lot slower, with that warbird rocketing up our tail.”

“Hmmm.” The first pilot studied the data on the pursuing warbird. “He’s coming on real fast. If we slow down as much as we’re planning on, he won’t be able to reengage us before he tears on past.”

“Looks like a good bet,” the second pilot agreed. “What does he do then?”

“He’d either have to shoot past us and swing back around, or climb almost straight up to shed velocity and tip back down and dive on us. Maybe a full loop if he thinks of that in time, but it would be a big one because of how fast he’s going and how much speed he has to lose.”

“Do you think he could manage a passing shot?”

“He could try. We’re going to be throwing up a lot of spray while we’re bouncing off the swells, though, and… the missiles aren’t going to impact that far ahead of us.”

The second pilot grinned. “They go boom, we fly right into a big fountain of spray, and maybe our warbird thinks he hit us. He’s going to have trouble figuring out what happened. Only for a few seconds, but at the speed he’s chasing us—”

“A few seconds might do the trick.” The first pilot grinned. “Want to try?”

“Why the hell not?”

“Why the hell not?” the pilot agreed. “Hey, Marine. If this doesn’t work, we’ll probably end up cartwheeling across the surface of the ocean, shedding pieces as we go. Since you gave us the idea, I wanted you to know that.”

“Thanks,” Mele said. “And if it does work, will we be able to get close enough to Delta before the warbird can engage us again?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s better than no chance,” Mele said.

“So it is. Make sure your guys are strapped in back there. In about ten minutes, we’re going to see whether we can do this.”

Mele passed the word, then returned to the cockpit and strapped into her seat. The pilots were both visibly tense, sweat on their necks as they watched the warbird draw ever closer. She stayed quiet, not wanting to distract them.

An alarm sounded at the same moment as one of the pilots called out. “Incoming! Two of them!”

“Hold on,” the other said.

“You going to call it?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ll call it.”

“I’ll cut the engines when you call it.”

Mele could see the threat markers that represented the two missiles closing fast on the WinG. The pilots held the WinG on a steady course as the alarm sounded again with more urgency. Red lights flashed. “Danger,” a woman’s recorded voice said. “Incoming missiles. Recommend evasive action.”

“No kidding,” the first pilot muttered. “Stand by.”

“Ready,” the second pilot replied.

“Ten seconds to impact,” the woman’s voice warned.

“Now!”

The WinG tilted down as the first pilot headed lower and the second pilot cut thrust. Almost immediately, there came a jolt that slammed Mele against the straps holding her in her seat, and the WinG bounced up again. The WinG floated several meters above the waves while the pilots fought to bring her back down, then fell and bounced upward again in another shower of spray.

“Not too hard!” the first pilot yelled to the second as they struggled to bring the WinG down again.

A third jolt, longer this time, the WinG ringing with the sound of the contact with the water.

Mele, looking forward, saw two objects plummet into the water just ahead. An instant later, spray from two explosions blossomed as the WinG reached the impact point. The WinG jolted as the spray hit it under its belly and wings, then steadied out as the pilots goosed the thrust again.

“What’s he doing?” the first pilot demanded as he steadied the WinG.

“Already overhead,” the second one reported. “He’s climbing. Coming up… it’s a loop. He’s coming all the way around.”

Mele saw the displays light up with warnings again. She didn’t need the pilots to interpret that. The warbird would soon finish his loop and dive at the WinG in a second attack.

“He’s either out of missiles,” the second pilot said, “or he doesn’t want to waste any more. This looks like a gun run.”

“It’s going to be real close,” the first pilot gasped, checking the distance remaining to Delta. “Here he comes. Let’s dance!”

The pilots of the WinG jinked the craft wildly as the warbird came boring in, its manta shape making it look malevolent as well as deadly. The WinG pilots lost speed with every maneuver but also created an erratic target whose path the Scatha warbird’s fire control system couldn’t predict. The warbird’s first burst tore up water to the left of the WinG, the second burst pelted the ocean just to the right of the WinG, and the third burst was hitting just in front of the WinG when the warbird finally came into range of Delta.

Two heavy-duty industrial lasers, their output pumped and their operating controls tied to simple optical tracking systems that spanned into infrared and ultraviolet. In daylight, its hull heated by the friction of tearing through the atmosphere at high speed, the warbird was easy for the tracking systems to lock on. And the beams of the lasers moved much, much faster than the bullets fired by the warbird’s guns.

The warbird’s skin was designed to vaporize when hit to help protect against damage from lasers, but two powerful weapons firing at the fairly close range demanded by their industrial design put out too much energy for that to make much difference.

An explosion in the warbird’s right weapons bay tore off the right wing, sending the warbird spinning wildly as it spiraled in an uncontrollable corkscrew across the sky.

Mele saw a symbol appear as the pilot of the warbird ejected, but the symbol vanished an instant after it appeared when the rapidly spinning craft’s left wing slapped the ejection module before it could boost clear. The impact turned the ejection module into flying debris and tore off a large part of the left wing, slowing the crippled warbird’s tumble a little as it nosed over and rocketed into the ocean. A tall plume of water erupted to mark the destruction of the warbird. As the water settled, nothing could be seen but small fragments of the aerospace craft.

“No way they survived that,” the first pilot said somberly.

“No,” the second pilot agreed. “Too bad. That pilot was pretty good.”

“Yeah.” The first pilot looked back at Mele. “It worked.”

“I noticed,” Mele said. “Next time you meet Marines, buy them a round.”

“Fair enough. Shall we tell Delta to pack up and go home?”

“Yes. Do they need us to hang around until they can lift in case Scatha sends someone else?”

“You haven’t had enough excitement for one day, Marine?” The second pilot passed on the request, then shook his head at Mele. “Delta says they’re already loading their power unit and lasers back on their WinG and they’ll be out of there in ten minutes, so there’s no need for us to hang around.”

Mele kept her eyes on the pilots’ displays as they raced past the two islands, watching until she saw Delta’s WinG take off and head for home as well.

She sighed, feeling her whole body suddenly overcome with weariness, but unstrapped and went back to her team. “You can relax,” she told them. “There’s nothing to do now but wait until we get back.”

“I’m writing my memoirs,” Obi announced. “And I’m going to update my online status from It’s complicated to I’m still alive.”

Everyone laughed except Grant. “What’s the matter?” Mele asked.

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I know he doesn’t deserve it, but I’m worried about what must be happening to Spurlick.”

“Spurlick?” It took Mele a moment to understand. “Oh, yeah. We figure he told Scatha they had nothing to worry about from me because I was an idiot, and that if Glenlyon did do something, it would be a head-on attack across the open field. That probably contributed to how unprepared they were tonight. No, I don’t expect Citizen Spurlick is having much fun right now.”

“He’s probably already dead,” Grant said.

“If he’s lucky, he is. The only reason Scatha would keep him alive would be to make him pay for their losses tonight.”

Riley spoke up. “I can go through some of the files we downloaded and see if there’s anything about Spurlick in there.”

“Good idea.” Too tired to care much about the fate of someone who had betrayed them, Mele went back to the cockpit, strapped in, and fell asleep.

Glenlyon had gone from tense foreboding to wild celebration. “They think the fight is almost over,” Grant remarked to Mele.

They were sitting in the temporary building that Mele had labeled the Supreme Headquarters Complex, in the small office that Mele called the Planetary Defense Command Center. “How many volunteers came in today?” she asked.

“Another ten,” Grant said. “That takes us close to two hundred. How large do you think the council will let us go?”

“I’ll keep them informed and see when they say stop,” Mele said. “We’re going to need those warm bodies. And next time, we’re going to lose some of them. Scatha still has more than eighty soldiers at that base, and they’re not going to be asleep at their watch stations next time we show up.” She gestured toward her portable display. “They finally found the surveillance pickups I planted, so no more close-in signal collection for us.”

“Too bad we couldn’t have hit them again already,” Grant remarked. “Their morale must be low enough to walk under closed doors.”

“The satellite shows they’re running patrols out a lot farther from the base,” Mele said.

“Can we take one?”

“Maybe. Their second warbird hasn’t lifted since the raid. It might be down, or they might be playing dead.” Mele’s alert chimed. “Let’s see what fan mail the council sent me. Hey, Squall is back. Showed up at the jump point four hours ago.”

“That’s good. We’ve got top cover again,” Grant said. “How’d their mission go?”

“No details. Space squids send status reports as soon as they arrive in a system, right? So the council should know something. They must be worried about people tapping into our network.”

“We did do that to Scatha.”

“Yeah,” Mele said, “but the same people who tapped into Scatha upgraded the defenses on our networks. I’ll go over to the council for a face-to-face with Leigh Camagan to find out how Squall did and let her know our current strength.”

“Sure thing, Major Darcy,” Grant said. “Maybe they’ll make you a colonel while you’re there.”

“I’m not sure I’m dumb enough to be a colonel. Maybe they’ll just bust me back to sergeant.”

Rob Geary had sent a detailed report in to the council as soon as Squall arrived back at Glenlyon Star System. He had talked with the council as soon as Squall got close enough to the planet for something like real-time conversation. And he had taken a shuttle down for a face-to-face with the council, which had dragged on for some time.

All the while, he had really wanted to meet with someone else.

“Ninja?” Rob asked as he opened the door to Ninja IT Consulting.

She was there, smiling at him from her desk.

Mele Darcy was in the office as well, just getting up from a second chair that Ninja had finally acquired. “Hi, Lieutenant Geary. I heard you did some great work.”

“Hello, Major Darcy,” Rob said. “I guess you outrank me now.”

She grinned. “I’m sure you’ll get bumped up in rank soon.”

He shook his head. “Not likely.”

Ninja’s glower was obviously aimed at the council, not him. “Why not? Look what you did!”

“I endangered Glenlyon’s only warship and may have started hostilities with another star system,” Rob said. “Or that’s what a good chunk of the council is worried about, anyway.”

“What were you supposed to have done? Let that ship bombard Kosatka?”

“The council can’t decide what I should have done,” Rob said, leaning against the wall. “Or if what I did was done the way I should have done it.”

“But you’re the one who done it,” Mele Darcy observed.

“Right. Speaking of stuff done, you did a real number on Scatha here. We saw the damage from orbit.”

“It’s going to take more,” Mele Darcy said, and he understood the dark undertone to that statement. She clearly feared that “more” would be expensive in terms of casualties. Having worried that Darcy would be strutting around like the savior of Glenlyon, Rob was relieved to see her still acting as levelheaded as his first impression of her had been.

“We’re here to help,” he said. “Uh, did I interrupt a business meeting?”

“Nope,” Darcy said. “Ninja and I were just discussing how vital it is not to put off important stuff when there’s shooting going on. You never know when it’ll be your last chance to tell somebody something, you know? I’ll let you guys catch up.”

Ninja gave Mele an exasperated look as she left, then waved Rob to the other seat. “Is the council really mad at you?”

“The council,” Rob said as he sat down, “doesn’t know what it wants to do. It’s been spooked ever since Scatha sent a ship to shake us down, and that’s gotten worse as the situation got worse. They’re thrilled I’ve got Kosatka’s promise of aid, scared that I might have triggered hostilities with another, unknown star system, glad that I probably saved Kosatka from what happened to Lares, and terrified that what was done to Lares might happen here.”

“So what they’re mad at is the universe,” Ninja said.

“Yes. But they can’t take anything out on the universe. I, on the other hand, am right here.”

Ninja looked down. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me, too. Are you and Darcy friends now?”

“I need someone to spend time with while you’re gallivanting all over the galaxy,” Ninja said. “Don’t you like her?”

“Mele Darcy? Yeah, I think I do. What she’s accomplished against Scatha’s base is amazing given what she had to work with. I was worried about her when I left, you know that, but now it seems she’s really something.”

Ninja cast a very quick glance his way. “If you like that sort of thing,” she said in a toneless voice.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Ninja, I thought you’d be happy to see me. Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be all right? I’m fine. Just don’t assume I’ll always be sitting around waiting for you to get back from another star,” Ninja said.

Rob eyed her, thinking. “I’ve got a sister, you know.”

“Congratulations.”

“She told me what it means when a woman says fine. It means whatever man she’s talking to is in trouble. Why am I in trouble?”

“Look,” Ninja said, “I’m sort of busy. If you don’t mind, I need to—”

“Ninja, I spent a lot of time thinking about you while I was gone. You’re an amazing person. I missed you. But I want to be fair to you.”

She kept her eyes on the display before her. “What does that mean?”

Rob had practiced his speech countless times, but now found it hard to say anything. “You already know what my life might be like. Danger, sometimes, and a lot of separation maybe. How could I ask any partner to put up with that?”

“Wouldn’t that be up to the partner?” Ninja asked. “If you respect someone, shouldn’t you let them weigh in on a decision like that instead of making it yourself?”

“Yeah,” Rob said. “I should. You’re right.”

“That’s a good start.”

“So?” Rob asked.

“So?” Ninja replied.

“How do you feel about it? Because I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been imagining things.”

She finally looked at him again. “One of the reasons I like you is because you don’t mess with people.”

“I’m not messing with you,” Rob said. “That’d be kind of dangerous, wouldn’t it?”

“You have no idea how dangerous it would be,” Ninja said.

“Is that what happened to that chief petty officer back in Alfar?”

“Him? Nah. He was just a jerk to everybody. It’ll probably be another decade before he gets his public and private records straightened out. Not that I know anything about that, you understand. Just tell me one thing. Are you doing me a favor?” Ninja asked.

Startled by the question, Rob took a moment to answer. “No. I’m doing myself a favor. I’m finally taking a chance on something that… could be really special.”

“It took you long enough,” Ninja said. “Now what?”

He felt awkward, rubbing the back of his neck. “Um… what are you doing for dinner?”

Ninja waved toward a bulb of highly caffeinated soda and a pack of candy. “Working meal.”

“You wouldn’t mind if we went out and got some dinner with actual nutrients in it, would you?”

“You mean like a date? Are you asking me out? Because I have a lot of work to do, and I wouldn’t want to waste any time.”

He grinned at her. “I’ve already wasted enough time. Yes, I am asking you out. I just realized how much I’ve always enjoyed talking to you.”

“You just realized that?” She shook her head, looking exasperated again. “You should do it more often, then. Sure. We’ll go out and get something healthy to eat if that’s your thing. Oh, wait, there’s something else I need to get out of the way first.”

“Will it take long?” Rob asked.

“Nah.” Ninja got up, walked the short distance to him, and bent over to kiss Rob, long and gently. When she finished, Ninja straightened and smiled at him. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while.”

“You can do it again if you want,” Rob said, his lips still tingling from the touch of hers.

Ninja laughed. “Maybe after dinner.”

Scatha had, of course, started planting sensors where they could watch behind the foothills. Mele led a raid in the WinG again, keeping a cautious eye out for the second warbird to lift while they located and destroyed Scatha’s remote sensors. They fled again in the WinG before Scatha could send a force to attack them.

Scatha planted more sensors the next day. Mele led another raid to destroy those.

Scatha planted more sensors. This time, not everyone who came on the WinG got back on it to leave. But with the sensors gone again, Scatha had no way of knowing that.

Mele lay as still as she could along the reverse slope of one of the hills. Scatha’s base was out of sight on the other side, but sensors planted on the hilltops by Mele’s team the night before offered a view of a patrol headed this way.

The patrol had ten soldiers in it. All in battle armor. Two were lugging sensor packs in addition to their normal loads. They were spread out in the proper dispersed formation for a combat patrol, but the way they trudged along didn’t speak of high morale or alertness. Behind them, their base was marked by two large craters full of slag where the power plant and the antiorbital weapon had been. Another smaller crater marked the former site of their command bunker.

With Glenlyon’s satellites back in place to maintain constant watch from above, Mele knew that large patrols were being sent out every day, wearing down the limited Scathan garrison. And Scatha’s soldiers had done this particular task twice already, replacing sensors destroyed by the same raiders who had trashed much of their base. They would replace the sensors a third time, and knew they would do it again as many more times as necessary while their commanders played a game of who-is-more-stubborn with the enemy. But at least while they were out here on the open plain, they didn’t have to worry about being attacked by surprise.

Mele sighed, imagining herself among that patrol. It was far too easy to guess what they were feeling and thinking.

The latest data from the satellite had also shown the warbird being worked on, panels removed, systems being replaced. The malware bombs must have torn apart a lot of the warbird’s equipment. It shouldn’t be rising anytime soon.

She checked the status of the mortars that had been brought in last night and placed behind the hills. Mortar tubes had been very easy to manufacture. The projectiles had been a little harder but nothing really complicated. And the firing calculations had been extremely easy for engineers to program into the control pad that Mele held.

The sensors that her team had planted fed through that control pad as well. A large red outline marked the firing zone that the mortars were set for. No matter what path Scatha’s patrol took to the hills, she would know when they were within the firing zone.

Mele gestured to her small team, spread out on either side of her, giving a warning sign. Obi grinned. Grant nodded in reply.

Scatha’s patrol began walking into the firing zone as Mele tapped to update the mortars’ firing solution.

Mele waited until they were all inside the red lines, then tapped the firing command.

The eight mortar tubes chuffed behind her, their rounds rising over the tops of the hills and plummeting down toward the patrol.

This close, with mortars firing on a low trajectory, there wasn’t much warning time. The patrol’s battle armor spotted the incoming rounds, of course. With no time to run, all ten soldiers dropped onto their bellies for the only protection available out in the open.

The mortar rounds fell until they were five meters above the patrol, then their warheads detonated, blasting out downward-focused cones of shrapnel.

Mele was already running, her own eight-person team following as she topped the hill and ran down toward the patrol. She saw the mortar rounds detonate, the dirt around the patrol puffing up as the deadly fragments hit at velocities sufficient to penetrate the back of Brahma-made battle armor.

It seemed to take far too long to reach the remains of the patrol. Mele started grabbing pulse rifles and grenades that the Scatha patrol no longer had any use for, passing them to her team as they caught up.

Then they ran again, back toward the hills, the sensors on the hills warning that soldiers were boiling out of Scatha’s camp.

Mele brought out the command pad and sent another firing signal.

Eight more mortar tubes chuffed behind the hills in a staggered volley, throwing their rounds much farther than the first eight. The rounds began exploding close to the base, driving back the retaliatory pursuit.

Scatha had mortars, too, the sort of professional military gear that could cause a lot of trouble. At extreme range, they could just hit the front edge of the hills. Mele’s command pad chirped to warn that those mortars had fired, aiming to hit her retreating team. “Even numbers, drop the packs!” she yelled to the rest of the team. “Everyone count to five, then run to your left!”

The even-numbered members of the team shrugged off their backpacks, Mele barely waiting until the last one was down before hitting a third command that detonated them. Charges bounded a short distance upward around the team and exploded, throwing out clouds of full-spectrum chaff designed to blind sensors.

Unfortunately, the chaff also made it very hard to see as Mele led her team through the dense fog that was only slowly settling as everyone ran off to the side of their earlier path. Mele heard mortar rounds detonating behind her as Scatha’s barrage went off blindly in the chaff.

Another warning. Mele squinted at her control pad as the team ran through thinning chaff. Scatha had fired again, but this time was aiming at the mortar launch sites behind the hill. That was a by-the-books move, to take out the enemy’s artillery, but how had they managed the extra range? They must have used vehicles to rapidly move some of their mortars out into the area outside the base enough to gain the extra range. They couldn’t leave the mortars out there very long, exposed to whatever trick Glenlyon might hit them with next, but for the moment, Scatha’s commanders were mad enough to risk it so they could get in some shots at Mele’s force.

But Mele breathed a sigh of relief. Scatha had no way of knowing that Glenlyon’s weapons were cheap single-use mortar tubes, and that all had expended their loads. The barrage would be wasted.

Getting up the slope and through low places in the hills took all the endurance that Mele had. She kept pausing, though, to make sure every member of her team was still moving.

Another warning. More Scatha rounds incoming, this time targeted on the team again. “Odd numbers, drop your packs, everyone jog right on the count of five!”

Once again they stumbled through clouds of chaff, this time uphill.

Coming out of the chaff, Mele only counted seven following her. “Grant! Lead everyone to the pickup point! I’ve already called the WinG!”

Without waiting for a reply, she plunged back into the cloud, moving slowly enough to search around her.

Mele found Obi lying where she had caught the edge of a mortar blast, one leg a bleeding ruin. Mele knelt to strap a tourniquet on Obi’s thigh, took a deep breath, then got under her, rose with Obi draped over her shoulders, and moved at the best pace she could into the hills.

The WinG, which had been waiting just over the horizon, was already sliding to a halt near where the rest of the team waited. Scatha was firing individual mortar rounds blindly over the hills, raising the risk that a round might fall close enough to the WinG to target it. As Mele approached, Grant ordered the others into the WinG and ran back to help Mele carry Obi.

The WinG was already starting to move again when Mele and Grant shoved Obi through the hatch and climbed in after her.

A doctor had volunteered to come along this time. She had them carry Obi to the WinG’s emergency bed, while the craft shuddered along the ground and rose a meter into the air, leaving behind Scatha’s mortar barrage.

Mele collapsed into a seat nearby as the doctor and the emergency bed’s equipment worked to save Obi. Grant took the seat next to her, sweating heavily and breathing hard. “I’m getting too old for this,” Grant said.

“You and me both,” Mele gasped.

Eventually, the doctor stepped back, rubbing her eyes. “She should live. The leg is gone, though.”

“Can you grow her a new one?” Mele asked.

“Maybe. There are still some bugs with that technology. If we can’t make it work, there are prosthetics that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.” The doctor sat down, too. “She’s not going to be doing this kind of work again anytime soon, though.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“It could have been a lot worse,” Grant said.

“Next time it probably will be,” Mele said.