No Surrender

by Kevin J. Anderson

  I shoved that thought away. I wanted to trust BeeBee.

  Besides, Pothole Charlie could kill me another way. Given his position on the Directors, his connections with many of the Nest leaders, he could simply have left behind a timed message, instructing a confederate there to terminate me. Our mission wouldn’t be compromised; I’d simply be killed when I returned to the Nest.

  I nodded, satisfied. If I survived this mission, that’s how I was going to die.

  Sorry, Lina. I can’t be your father. I’m going to be assassinated in the Nest, or maybe executed as a traitor. I didn’t transmit that. I just thought it.

  But as gloomy as that thought was, it allowed me to return to the matter at hand.

  10: Aiming Skyward

  We passed the nuclear power plant, a complex of ancient reinforced concrete domes. Ahead of us, just a few kilometers away, lay Akima Spaceport. Even at this distance, I could see that there was a cargo transport, one of the big rocket-shaped rigs, set up on a vertical-launch pad, aiming skyward, a booster vehicle shaped like two outrigger rockets coupled to it. Painted white, they gleamed orange-yellow in the harsh morning light.

  We’d accomplished the entire flight at a couple of meters above the ground, observing terrain-following protocol; rising above the surrounding terrain would have potentially put us on military radar.

  We reduced speed and I got on the HummingHawk’s radio. “Gunner One to Trigger. Report status.”

  Kieran’s voice came back: “Trigger is here, reporting ready. No wave-off.” He had seen nothing to cause us to abort the mission.

  I nodded, pleased. “Light it up, Trigger.”

  Understand, Akima Spaceport was surrounded by a fence. Kilometers in circumference, it stood about six meters high and was mostly made up of interwoven metal cables in a chicken-wire pattern too fine for a ’ganger to squeeze through. The cable was embedded in concrete at ground level. Metal poles every twenty meters kept the fence upright.

  Every kilometer, a section of concrete wall interrupted the circuit—civilian lowest-bidder grade concrete, we’d been able to determine—housing a featureless exit door for the use of patrols.

  The wall wasn’t defensive. A wire cutter would get through the fence material. But not undetected—the fence was riddled with short-range motion detectors and other sensors. The fence itself constituted a sensor, with low-voltage current pumped through it and sophisticated analytical computers sniffing out irregularities in the current flow.

  We could fly over it, of course. But what would happen then? The instant we rose above the fence top, we’d show up on radar from the spaceport tower and from General Milfield Base. After the Escape, the Chiron military had brought in weapons platforms to replace those we’d shot down ... and had installed a laser cannon bunker.

  Chiron had never needed a laser cannon before our Revolution. Now it had one—only one, fortunately. So the instant we showed up on radar crossing over the fence, the bunker would go live, the laser cannon would pop up, armored except for the channel housing its barrel assembly, and fire. In two or three seconds it could annihilate our entire air force—less time than it would take us all to crest that fence and descend on the other side.

  So, right now, Kieran waited at a position a few dozen meters from one of those exit doors, well away from the spaceport complex’s main entrance. In fact, he stood just below the spot where our HummingHawks were now slowing to a standstill hover. He had with him his dual-phase laser, this one tripod-mounted, and a power pack for extended use.

  In my aircraft’s belly camera view, I saw Kieran sight in along his weapon, lock the tripod, squeeze the weapon’s trigger ... and hold it. I switched to infrared view and my forward camera.

  A spot on the concrete wall above the door began to glow, a far brighter green than the concrete around it. The glow began to radiate outward in all directions. I saw smoke rise from the center of the affected area. A bit of concrete there, smaller than a ’ganger’s hand, turned black.

  “This is Bale One. I’m getting an image.” Bale missiles were heat-seekers. You couldn’t even aim one at a target unless the target were as hot as, say, vehicle engines. Or as hot as a small spot on a wall being exposed to intense laser light.

  I switched back to normal visual mode on my forward camera. “Fire when ready, Bale One.”

  “Firing.”

  I barely saw the Bale missile leap from the missile rack on Bale One’s underbelly—missiles are fast. There was the hint of a streak between the HummingHawk and the wall, then the target was engulfed in roiling black smoke and red-yellow flame. A split-second later the sharp bang of the explosion reached us, then I felt a bit of turbulence as the shockwave of expanding air hit us.

  We waited a few seconds, each of them a year long. Then the fire and smoke cleared enough to reveal a gap like a scooped neckline dominating the wall above the door. It was large enough for HummingHawks to fly through.

  I radioed, “Move through by pairs.” I accelerated forward, Lina behind me.

  I’m told that the spaceport was the sort someone would find on any backwater world—a few square kilometers of flat land sheeted in graytop arrayed in strips, circles, and roads, a monitoring tower, hangar buildings, a huge boxy warehouse-and-customs station, vast stretches of parking for cargo haulers, a port building for arriving and departing travelers. Since the Revolution had begun, the humans had added a couple of hardened bunkers, one for a small military detail, one for the grounded Coracle-class exploration spacecraft only Dollgangers could crew.

  I headed toward the military bunker; Lina drew up to my port side. Emerging through the hole in the wall, Meriah and Jitter, Bale One and Bale Two, headed for the Coracle bunker. Eyeball One, BeeBee, headed toward the transport craft waiting on the launch pad; Parfait, in Eyeball Two, zoomed toward the tower. Belly One, our drone, stayed only three meters above the deck and slowly moved toward a cluster of hangars.

  A noise filled the air, an eerie wail that echoed off every vertical surface, off distant buildings and hills. This was an air-raid alarm, its tone and purpose unchanged from sirens used in the early 20th century. Weirdly, I’d always loved that noise, and now felt comforted by it.

  Yes, the humans knew we were here.

  A small, open-cockpit ground hauler, crossing my flight path ahead of me, towed a chain of three small cargo trailers, headed toward the transport on the pad. I buzzed the pilot, flashing a mere meter over his head, and saw him bail out with the vehicle still moving. He hit the graytop surface and skidded to a stop. This wasn’t meanness on my part, nor for my own amusement; our objective was to create chaos.

  Up ahead lay the military bunker, a low gray thing with a roof like a squat pyramid—sloped armor to give the bunker a chance of deflecting an indirect hit from an artillery piece. Just now, at the bunker’s base, a front door, human-sized, was swinging open to allow a pair of armored infantrymen to exit. The broader door to its right was rising, the gap at its bottom now revealing the tracks of a small armored vehicle.

  There it was—we faced living targets who intended to kill us, targets we had to kill.

  Lina, to my left, would by default go after the infantrymen; my default target was the tracked vehicle. I thought for a couple of milliseconds about swapping targets with her so she wouldn’t have to watch humans die under her guns.

  No, she was already a soldier. She had already killed. To make the target swap would suggest lack of faith in her.

  I switched to text mode—faster to transmit, faster to interpret. Gunner One to Bale One. I need a missile here now.

  Roger. Coming. Somewhere off in the corner of my visual feeds, I thought I detected one of the missile rack HummingHawks break away from the other and head my way.

  The door into the armored-vehicle bay was now halfway up. I could see movement within the bay, personnel running to and leaping onto the vehicle. Without a good target, I fired a couple of short burst just under the bottom of the rising door. I doubte
d I’d hit anything, but those metal-jacketed rounds, hitting hardened concrete walls and vehicle armor, would ricochet like crazy, perhaps forcing the humans under cover.

  I heard, rising above the air-raid siren, more assault-rifle chatter—inbound from ahead, outbound from my left. Lina maintained discipline, firing short bursts. I saw both infantrymen fall—no, only one was hit, the other went to ground on his own, lining up a shot with his own assault rifle. Then Lina’s last burst took him just under the rim of his helmet, sending a spray of red mist out the back of his head, and he went flat.

  Eyeball One to Gunner One. I’m getting an image. We have one weapons platform, I say again, one weapons platform inbound.

  I glanced toward the waiting spacecraft on the pad. BeeBee’s HummingHawk hovered two meters in front of it, rising vertically toward its cockpit. Her tactic was to use the cargo craft as cover—alongside it, she wouldn’t show up as distinct from it on most radar.

  I was framing a reply when the second part of her text appeared: Coming from due north. ETA thirty-five seconds.

  Roger that, Eyeball One. Team Cream, go evasive.

  I couldn’t go evasive. I had a job: Keep that ground vehicle pinned in place. The door into its bay was all the way up now, revealing the vehicle—a two-man antipersonnel mini-tank, tracked but lightly armored, a steel-beam battering rather than a cannon barrel protruding from its front armor, racks of mini-missiles all over its top surface. Considering it was stationed here instead of in Zhou City, those missiles were probably not tear gas or wall-openers. I’d have guessed some were heat-seekers, some exotics optimized for use against Dollgangers.

  An infantryman appeared underneath the mini-tank, between its treads, readying a submachine gun. I snap-fired toward him, missing him with my three-round—six rounds counting both barrels—burst, which sent up ricochet sparks from the treads and concrete flooring. He scuttled backward and disappeared from sight.

  I saw a small explosion in the distance, from the direction of the Coracle bunker. In my visual feed, it looked like Jitter had lined up and taken his first shot against the side of the bunker. Kieran had to have lit it up for him, preparation that would only be needed for Jitter’s first shot. Before the smoke had time to clear, Jitter banked away and went evasive, then began circling for another approach run against the bunker.

  I nodded. Getting through the bunker wall would have been faster and more efficient had he unloaded his full rack of missiles in quick succession against that surface. But efficiency was not our goal. Getting through that bunker wall was not our objective.

  Bale One to Gunner One. I’m lining up for my shot.

  I could see Meriah’s HummingHawk, thirty meters behind mine and closing. The mini-tank, my aircraft, and Meriah’s aircraft made a nearly perfect straight line, with Bale One flying a couple of meters higher than I, close enough in altitude that I was an even better target for her missiles.

  I didn’t have to ask if she had enough of a heat trace coming off the mini-tank. If she had a shot, it meant she had a heat trace. The vehicle’s engines had to be live.

  Bale One, roger. Gunner Two, go to port. Lina was still close on my port quarter. I wanted to go that way, so she had to move. She did, veering away sharply. Bale One, fire in one second.

  Roger that, Gunner One.

  I hauled my yoke left and mashed the toe end of my right-side foot pedal, momentarily overdriving the starboard-side ducted fans. My HummingHawk lurched to port, losing a little altitude, roaring sideways. Our improvised HummingHawk controls were more primitive than those of a human helicopter, but we didn’t need as much sophistication when throwing around toy-scale weights.

  A missile streak flashed by my starboard side.

  There was no big boom from inside the bay, just a muffled explosion. Then, a moment later: Bale One here. Missile penetrated and detonated inside the target. Target disabled.

  I allowed myself a little smile of relief. Bale missiles were chancy against armor, even light vehicular armor. Good job, Bale One. Get to cover but support me against the weapons platform.

  Understood.

  I ended my sideslip and headed for the military bunker again, for its featureless south side this time. Reaching that bleak gray wall, I slowed to a hover, then rose along its wall—then rose and advanced along its angled roof, keeping close to the building, using it for cover.

  In the distance ahead of me, just on the other side of the north spaceport fence, flew the inbound weapons platform.

  11: Hawk Fight

  Weapons platforms are helicopters, but not optimized for speed. This one, like most I’d seen, consisted of a pair of rotors above a horizontal disk of a fuselage loaded with weapons, in this case machine gun emplacements and missile pods. It had three crew stations, a cockpit in front and two gunnery stations back and to the sides, one starboard and one port. The crew of two in each station was visible behind wide, protruding plass bubbles. I had expected this vehicle to be much higher in the air, but it came over the fence at only ten meters above ground—and then dropped almost to the deck. Behind it, trailing at a distance of a hundred meters or so, came a pair of drones, HummingHawks like ours.

  There were only three things in the Zhou City area that could trivially interfere with Granny Knot’s launch, and we knew where two of them were: this weapons platform and the laser cannon at the military base. But we didn’t know where the third possible hazard, the other weapons platform, was. We had to wait here, continue fighting, and flush it out.

  Taking a shot. The pilot transmitting failed to use his or her call sign—too inexperienced and distracted, I guessed. But the ID code on the text indicated that it was Bale One.

  I saw Meriah hovering behind the hauler and its cargo trailers, which was still rolling, though slowing. Bale One popped up above the trailer she was using for cover and launched a missile.

  It streaked—straight toward one of the weapon platform’s trailing drones. It detonated and the drone was gone.

  What the crap? Bale One again.

  Puzzled, I cycled through my visual options. In infrared, I saw the problem. There was the weapons platform, its heated engines making it glow a bright green. Behind it a hundred meters, its surviving drone glowed even more brightly.

  I cursed. The humans must have realized we’d stolen Bales from Kresh Assemblies. They’d rigged drones to give off heat in excess of that produced by vehicle engines. The drones would draw the Bales every time.

  The weapons platform angled toward Meriah’s position.

  I banked away from the military bunker on an intercept course. Straight-line, I could get to the weapons platform before it had a good line of sight on Meriah, but I didn’t go straight-line; that would have made me an easy target for the vehicle’s starboard-side gunners. I flew evasive, which would slow me enough that the weapons platform would be past before I could get to it. Lina stayed behind me, also evasive.

  Gunner One to Gunner Two, swing out to port. Incoming fire missing me might hit you.

  Roger. She did, slewing off another forty meters to my port side.

  Now the starboard gunners on the weapons platform did spot me. The heavy machine guns on that side opened fire. Incoming rounds chewed up the spaceport graytop as they sought me out.

  And Lina, too. I’m hit.

  A chill went through me. You or your HummingHawk?

  My weapons—disabled. Dammit dammit dammit.

  Make your way out of here. Stand by to lift anyone who goes extravehicular.

  It was a moment before her Roger appeared. She continued on her course, maintaining her evasive maneuvers. I couldn’t tell whether she were heading very gradually toward our exit or disobeying orders so that she could stay with me.

  We reached the platform’s flight path only a second after it crossed before us—its surviving drone had not yet reached our position. I turned in the weapons platform’s wake.

  So did Lina. She ignored my orders to bug out. She rose to the pl
atform’s altitude. I stayed low, miserably aware that it wouldn’t do to have the same burst of fire from the platform kill both of us.

  But the vehicle couldn’t fire at us at the moment. Weapons platforms have a 360 degree field of fire—almost. It was actually only about 350 degrees, with straight behind still being a vulnerable angle. Directly behind it was where we were, for the moment; but weapons platforms could swivel while maintaining an unaltered course and speed.

  Lina lost ground relative to the helicopter, positioning herself directly in front of and about a meter higher than the trailing drone. Then she reduced speed still more.

  The drone’s port-side forward fan duct thumped into her personnel-and-weapons-pod’s tail end.

  HummingHawks were tough. The impact merely jostled both aircraft. Then Lina gained a little altitude, maybe another meter, let the enemy drone slide in underneath her ... and she reduced her lift drastically.

  Her personnel pod dropped into the gap between the enemy drone’s four fan assemblies. Overburdened, the drone dropped. Lina rode the drone down toward impact, almost certain injury, almost certain suicide—because I knew she’d self-terminate if captured.

  And, gruesome as that truth was, it couldn’t be my concern, not then. The weapons platform was slowing, beginning a spin to bring me and Lina into line of its port-side guns.

  I nipped in under the platform’s skids, the gap between them and the graytop below too narrow for human-sized aircraft. I cranked my fans up, a desperate and uncertain attempt to compensate for the downwash from the platform’s rotors. The downwash did drive me downward, but I managed to stay centimeters above the graytop. Then, as I slid under the windbreak the helicopter’s belly provided, and the artificial wind shear ceased, I rose almost out of control. I felt an impact as I thumped against what had to have been one of the helicopter’s landing struts. I wobbled, sideslipped farther, managed to not quite slide out from under the protective cover of the vehicle’s belly.