Would that focus make it easier to sneak in? Maybe . . . Although once inside the fortified city, she and her party might have trouble getting out again. There were lots of questions and very few answers as Eason began to pick up speed.
Conscious of the fact that riding a T-1 took some getting used to, McKee looked back over her shoulder. The Droi was riding a ’borg named Noll. The only part of Insa that McKee could see was the Legion-issue helmet, which was bouncing up and down. She spoke to the native over the squad freq. “Hey, Insa . . . Are you okay?”
“Me fine,” came the reply. “Bumpy but learn soon.”
“Roger that. Let me know if you need a break.”
Thankfully, Insa was a quick study, and it wasn’t long before his helmet steadied, and McKee could focus on other things. Primary among them was the need to prevent the group from being spotted from the air. Contrails could be seen through gaps in the trees, and unless the strategic situation had changed a great deal overnight, they belonged to Hudathan aircraft.
Fortunately, the enemy weren’t looking for her group, not specifically anyway although that could change later on. But the Hudathans would certainly take action if they spotted the T-1s. So her responsibility was to make sure that they didn’t. And with Insa to guide them, there was a very real chance that they could escape notice during the initial part of the journey.
So when the group came to the main road, she led them across it instead of taking a right. They continued west for a good two miles before veering north on what Insa said was an ancient trade route. Though not an actual road, it was wider than a trail. With the jungle canopy to protect them, the T-1s could stay under cover and make good progress.
Strange though it seemed given all that could go wrong, McKee took pleasure in the warm air, the dappled sunshine all around her, and the rhythm of Eason’s movements. And while she told herself to stay sharp and keep her head on a swivel, there were times when her thoughts turned to Avery.
She knew he was very different from the man-boys that Cat Carletto had loved to toy with. Not as pretty for one thing, relatively poor, and not very hip. All of which meant that the previous her wouldn’t have given him the time of day.
But the party girl had been transformed into a battle-scarred warrior and a person with very different values. Now the very things that would have struck her as boring in the past meant everything. Avery had a good mind, moral clarity, and ten times the courage of the sports-boys she had dallied with on Earth. Enough to stand by her even if it meant a court-martial and the possibility of imprisonment. How many men would do that?
And then there was the kiss. Cat Carletto had never been one to sleep around casually, but there had been lovers, some of whom wanted to marry her. Or said they did, although there was always the possibility that what they really hoped to marry was her family’s money. In any case, some of them were very good in bed. And she’d enjoyed that.
But not once had there been a connection like the one she’d felt with Avery as they kissed. There was a physical attraction, a strong one, but something more, too. She didn’t have the right word for it, although “completion” came close. And he wanted her in spite of the scars on her face and back. Proof that the attraction wasn’t based solely on her appearance. All of which was very interesting.
Of course, there was danger, too . . . Because ever since she’d been forced to part company with Cat Carletto, she’d been very lonely. Maybe that was it. Perhaps she was so desperate for love and attention that she was willing to grab onto the first man who took an interest in her.
Her thoughts were interrupted as Eason spoke over the squad push. “I have a target. It’s at twelve o’clock and coming . . .”
McKee saw the drone. The machine was so low that it had been hidden behind a rise, where Eason’s sensors couldn’t “see” it. Now it was flying straight at them, and there wasn’t enough time to hide. So she said, “Kill it!” and Eason opened fire. There was a bright flash followed by a loud bang as the cylindrical robot exploded. Pieces of shrapnel flew in every direction—but Eason and McKee were unscathed.
“Nice shot,” McKee said, her mind racing. She had never seen that type of drone before, which meant it was probably Hudathan. Why send it into the Big Green? Intelligence gathering probably. One of many such machines dispatched to spy on the Droi. That was her theory anyway.
But what to do? Odds were that the images captured by the drone had been streaming to some sort of ship. So the Hudathans had seen Eason and possibly the others as well. How would they react? McKee thought she knew. “Insa! The Hudathans know we’re here—and can home in on our heat signatures. We could use a river to conceal them.”
“No river,” came the reply. “Small streams only. But lake nearby.”
“Noll,” McKee said, “take the point. Insa, guide him to the lake. And hurry! The Hudathans will be here soon.”
Noll passed Eason, ran for a short distance, and took a hard left. The jungle was ripped asunder as the T-1 plunged into it, closely followed by the other ’borgs and their bio bods. “I’ve got an incoming aircraft,” Eason warned. “It’s two miles out and closing fast.”
McKee wanted to say, “Damn, damn, damn,” but knew leaders were supposed to be imperturbable. So she kept her mouth shut as limbs threatened to decapitate her and passing branches tried to rip her off Eason’s back.
Then she heard Insa say something in its own language, and the trees parted to reveal a small lake. Noll plunged in, and Eason followed. Once in the water, the cyborg began to wade out to where it was deeper.
McKee felt the cold liquid invade her clothing and knew that while the T-1 could survive when completely submerged, she couldn’t. So it was time to release the harness and hang on to the grab bar for as long as she could. The trick would be to keep everything but her head beneath the surface.
A quick look around revealed that the others were pursuing the same strategy, for which she was grateful. Then the Hudathan ship was upon them. The disk-shaped vessel was bigger than she had expected. So much so that the hull blocked out most of the sky. A loud, thrumming noise could be heard as the ship’s repellers cut momentary grooves into the surface of the lake and steam rose all around. Then the Hudathans opened fire with large-caliber projectile weapons. Was it aimed? She didn’t think so. It appeared as if the Hudathans were hoping for some lucky hits. And she figured they might get some as bullets churned the surface of the lake—sending thousands of miniature geysers shooting up into the air.
At that point, McKee did the only thing she could. Having let go of Eason, she forced her head down and dived for the bottom. It was a mistake. The combined weight of the helmet, body armor, and weapon pulled her down. Then she was at the bottom of the lake, struggling to release the helmet’s chin strap as projectiles plunged around her. Her gear was like an anchor, her lungs were on fire, and she was going to drown. The last thing she saw before darkness closed in was a bed of flowering animals that lived on the bottom of the lake. The “blossoms” were red—and they were pretty.
CHAPTER: 16
* * *
Who dares, wins.
MOTTO OF THE BRITISH SPECIAL AIR SERVICE (SAS)
Formed standard year 1941
PLANET ORLO II
When McKee came to, she was coughing, spluttering, and hanging upside down. Larkin was peering at her from six inches away. “Okay,” he said. “Her eyes are open, and she’s breathing. Go ahead and put her down.”
Once the bio bod had a grip on her, Eason let go of her ankles. There was an awkward moment when McKee nearly landed on her head. But disaster was averted at the last second, and she wound up lying on her back, staring up at the sky. She didn’t realize the helmet was still on her head until Larkin removed it. “What happened?”
“You went diving, and Eason plucked you off the bottom,” Larkin explained. “We thought
you were dead.”
“The ship,” McKee said. “What happened to the ship?”
“The shovel heads got tired of wasting ammo and went away,” Eason rumbled.
“They could come back,” she said as she forced herself to sit up. “Where’s my AXE? We need to get out of here.”
“You can tell she’s back to normal, she’s bossing everyone around,” Larkin observed.
McKee felt a moment of embarrassment as Larkin helped her to her feet. Both he and Insa had survived the ordeal without drowning. She was too stupid to be in charge, and if a realistic alternative had been available, she would have asked that individual to assume command. But there wasn’t. So all she could do was accept the AXE that Insa handed her and climb onto Eason’s back. The group was under way two minutes later.
Her mood was different now. She no longer saw the beauty around her—or allowed her thoughts to stray to Avery. The Hudathans had been a theoretical threat before, and they were real now. Very real.
The first thing they had to do was get off the trade route lest the enemy send more drones along it or, worse yet, an ambush. So, based on directives from Insa, they traveled west until they came across what was little more than a game trail. It was safer, but narrow, and had a tendency to wander. The net effect was to cut the T-1s’ speed by half.
It couldn’t be helped, however, and McKee felt safer on the little-used path with a canopy of green overhead. But as the day progressed, the protective vegetation began to thin. And at about 15:30 hours, they ran into the first sign of civilization. It consisted of row upon row of carefully planted trees, all carefully pruned, and spaced so that machines could roll down the corridors between them. As the cyborgs crossed the plantation, McKee knew that she and her charges were about to become a lot more vulnerable. Especially if the Hudathans and the rebels were gunning for them.
But as the light began to fade, and they pushed north, she realized that most if not all of the local civilian population had fled in order to escape from the alien invaders. And for good reason. Homes had been burned, farm animals had been slaughtered, and anything that remotely resembled civilian infrastructure had been destroyed. That included transmission towers, grain silos, and even the most insignificant of bridges.
And why not? The Hudathans didn’t want to conqueror humans and enslave them; their objective was to obliterate what they saw as dangerous pests.
Insa’s knowledge of the countryside had been invaluable up until that point. But the Droi had never been to Riversplit and knew nothing about the local area. McKee wondered if it would have been wise to bring Trask or one of the surviving Grays along but quickly rejected the notion, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to trust them. So all she could do was proceed slowly, look for an opening, and seize it when it came.
It was dark by the time the group crossed a small river, passed the bloated corpses of some quadrupeds, and approached a cluster of buildings. Judging from appearances, the house had been fired on from above and caught fire. And the attack had been fairly recent because wisps of smoke could still be seen drifting away from the charred ruins.
Sheds had been destroyed as well, but the bullet-riddled barn was made of metal and remained standing. Having checked to make sure that the structure was empty, McKee ordered everyone inside. They needed to hole up for the night, and it was her hope that the residual warmth from the house fire would serve to cover their heat signatures.
Of course, a barn could attract humans looking for a place to hide. And, since the civil war had been under way before the Hudathans arrived, such individuals could be armed. That made it necessary for the cyborgs to dig fighting positions inside the building where they couldn’t be seen. The plan was to fire through the walls if necessary.
Once that effort was under way, she and Larkin slipped into the darkness. They could see, thanks to the night-vision technology built into their helmets, and McKee knew where she wanted to go. A hill was located approximately one mile north of the farm—and once on top, she hoped to get a good view of Riversplit off in the distance.
Of course, that was the problem with hilltops. All sorts of people were likely to congregate there, and McKee knew they would have to be careful lest they blunder onto a group of rebels or loyalists.
There was a high overcast, which meant no starlight, but McKee was grateful for anything that might interfere with the Hudathans’ ability to look down on them from above. After crossing a couple of fields and climbing over a fence, they came to the foot of the hill. It might have been forested at one time but wasn’t anymore, which offered a mixed blessing as they began to climb. The open slope meant people couldn’t lie in wait for them, but it also meant there wasn’t any cover should they need it, and she felt extremely vulnerable as she followed a footpath toward the summit.
She was out of breath by the time they arrived at a point just short of the top. With weapons at the ready, they elbowed their way up to the crest of the hill. An enclosure made of carefully piled rocks marked the highest point. It was covered by a flat metal roof, and judging from the size of the doorway, the structure had been built by the Hudathans. An observation post perhaps, constructed during the days after they landed, and since abandoned. The most important thing was that McKee had what she had come for—and that was an unobstructed view of Riversplit from the south. And it was a spectacular sight.
The city and the hill it stood on were under attack. Seen via night-vision technology, there were flashes of white light as bombs exploded, streaks of green as missiles rose to search out Hudathan aircraft, and occasional fireworks when they succeeded. McKee could hear what sounded like rolling thunder as both sides exchanged salvos of artillery fire.
It was tempting to quarter the area with the binoculars Avery had given her, but she knew there was something else she should take care of first. She turned to Larkin. “Patrol the hilltop. Stop to listen every once in a while. And let me know before you shoot anything.”
Larkin’s response was predictably contentious. “What if they’re ten feet away? And they’re about to shoot me? What then?”
McKee was tempted to say, “Let them,” but knew it was her fault. Having chosen to bring Larkin, she had no one to blame except herself. “That would be the exception. If they’re ten feet away, kill them.”
“That’s what I thought,” Larkin said self-righteously, and he was gone seconds later.
Having been freed from the need to worry about who or what might crawl up her six, McKee went to work examining the terrain in front of her. Senior noncoms had presumably been trained for such tasks, but she hadn’t. So she had to develop her own system of observation.
Rather than look at the big picture, and potentially miss the kind of detail she needed, she forced herself to ignore the distant battle and zoom in on the plain below. Then, working from left to right, she would look for a path into Riversplit.
The level of detail captured by the night-vision binoculars was surprisingly good. And as McKee focused them on the flat area in front of her, she saw what could only be described as a wasteland. Given all of the burned-out structures, bomb craters, and row upon row of defensive earthworks, she could tell that a battle had been fought there.
But the plain wasn’t uninhabited. Far from it. As McKee searched the area below, she could see Hudathan encampments, crude roads that had been cut through the debris, and the tracked vehicles that were using them. And it didn’t take a general to figure out that with their aircraft bombing the shit out of Riversplit, the aliens were taking advantage of the opportunity to resupply the front lines.
And that was the problem. With so many Hudathans in the way, it would be very difficult to sneak through their lines without being discovered. Still, that was what the situation called for, so she plotted route after potential route but without success. There was always some sort of obstacle in the way.
> It was only after an hour’s study that McKee turned her attention to a more daring alternative. If she and her companions couldn’t sneak into Riversplit—what would happen if they charged in? The T-1s could run at speeds up to 50 mph on a hard surface. And the Hudathans had cleared a preexisting two-lane highway that led straight to the hill. A convoy of half-tracks was grinding its way north at the moment, but the southbound lane was practically empty, and that could represent the opportunity she was looking for.
McKee estimated that the plain was roughly five miles wide. So if the T-1s were traveling at top speed, they could cross it in six minutes. Call it seven just to be safe. Was such a thing possible? If so, surprise would be the key. The shovel heads weren’t stupid. It seemed safe to assume that they were prepared for all sorts of eventualities. But a straight run in by three T-1s? She didn’t think so. Her thoughts were interrupted as Larkin chinned his mike on and off. “Yeah?” McKee inquired. “What’s up?”
“A Hudathan patrol is climbing the north side of the hill.”
“How many?”
“Six.”
Had they been spotted? Or were the Hudathans on a routine sweep? “Roger that. I’m pulling back. Meet me on the trail.”
The two of them couldn’t hope to take on six Hudathans and win. Nor did she want to reveal their presence. That would invite more enemy troops and kill any chance of making her newly conceived plan work.
Larkin was waiting for her as she found the trail, and they made good time as they followed it down. She wanted to be back in the barn before the enemy soldiers arrived on top of the hill and took a look around. There was no way to be sure, of course, but she felt reasonably confident that they had escaped detection as they arrived on the flat area below. However, just to be sure that they weren’t seen entering the hideout, McKee took the extra precaution of circling the farm and creeping in from the south. “We’re coming in,” she said via the squad freq. “Over.”
Andromeda's Fall (Legion of the Damned) Page 28
