Cunningham pondered the storm for a moment, listening to the clatter of the rain. "I'm not so sure about Deadeye."
"Nor am I," Marshall replied, pacing across the room. "I should have left one of you up there as well."
Mulenga looked up, "You could not have known that Dietz would fall victim to an accident."
"As soon as he went underground, one of you should have gone up to take his place."
"We were doing important work," Cunningham said, "and your reasons were good ones. There was no way you could have expected that something would have been pulled like this; I'll freely admit that the Legion has exceeded my expectations in that regard."
With a quick chuckle, Marshall replied, "I'm sure that all of our listeners will be pleased to hear it." He raised his voice, "Can you hear us all right? Is there a microphone you want us to speak into?"
Rising, the astrogator placed a hand on Marshall's shoulder, "There is no sense in second-guessing yourself, Captain. We both know the sequence of events now. Orlova will make an attempt to rescue us, one way or another. She still has considerable resources at her disposal."
"And even if Deadeye rejects a plan, I'd bet my next month's salary that she'll go ahead anyway."
"I just...," Marshall began. "I'm just a bit disappointed by all of this. I'd hoped we would have left all of this behind us, that when we pushed deeper out into space we would have a chance for exploration, for discovery."
"Is this not sufficient," Mulenga said, an eyebrow raised.
"This is at the barrel of a gun. Weapons, espatiers, battles. It isn't quite what I had in mind when I dreamed about this back at the Academy." He looked up at the clouds again, sighing, "I wanted this. But I didn't think it would cost this much."
"You're still thinking about the Commandant's offer, aren't you," Cunningham said. "You were right to reject it; this planet is too important."
"The cost, though. And the other thing he said, the offer to join the Cabal."
"We might as well rejoin the UN, Danny," Cunningham replied. "From everything I've seen, this doesn't sound much better."
Walking around the cell, Marshall shook his head, "It's this damn waiting. Four days until the Cabal starship arrives."
"You are assuming one is on the way," Mulenga said. "Thus far that is simply conjecture, a worst-case scenario."
"All of this was planned. Capturing us, the fighting in Yreka, all of it. Planned and timed to coincide with something. They know that a ship is on the way, a tight-beam message would have taken a microsecond to dispatch. Company's coming, and I'm sitting down here in a cell rather than sitting on the bridge of my ship where I belong."
"Caine will do a good job if it comes to battle," Mulenga said. At Cunningham's doubtful expression, the gray-haired astrogator smiled. "She is over-thinking everything right now, but in battle there is barely time to think – and she has too strong a sense of responsibility to the crew to freeze in a battle situation. If Alamo has any chance of victory, she will find it."
"I hope so."
The rain continued to thunder down as the storm began to move away, strong winds starting to blow it out to sea. Mulenga, cross-legged on the floor, managed to get to sleep, and Cunningham began to doze on the floor. Marshall should have been able to sleep as well, but he couldn't. There was something inside him that prevented it, something that stopped him from resting. If he was on Alamo, he'd have taken a pill and been out like a light, but that was the whole point.
Restless, he leaped quietly up to the window, hanging onto the bottom and pulling himself up to look through. His arms quickly began to ache as he scanned the compound again, but he quickly forgot that as he saw something in a far corner, close to the jungle – a group of legionnaires wearing some sort of protective clothing, pulling away some camouflage netting.
Underneath was a silo, larger than the one Esposito had reported, and immediately fears of some sort of attack began to leap unheeded into Marshall's mind. They were rapidly dispelled as a platform began to raise, uncannily similar to the elevator airlocks on Alamo, and a smile began to race across his forehead.
Though the rain was still coming down in sheets, he could see clearly enough what was down there – a shuttlecraft of some sort. Stubby wings, and large boosters, a powerful brute-force look about it as it rested on a pair of runners. There didn't seem to be any way for it to land, so it had to be one way – some sort of escape system.
It was by no means large enough to evacuate the entire complement of the garrison, but it was certainly large enough to hold the Commandant and a few others. He examined it carefully, looking over every detail before his aching arms forced him to drop back down to the floor, his feet crashing down with enough noise to wake Cunningham, though Mulenga continued to slumber.
"What the hell, Danny?"
"Get up to the window and look over to the right. Do it right now."
A puzzled frown on his face, Cunningham walked over to the window and leapt up, looking in the direction Marshall had indicated. His eyes widened as he saw the shuttle, and he swore under his breath before dropping back down to the ground. He looked up at Marshall, a smile slowly spreading across his face.
"I know exactly what you are thinking." He shook his head, "I can also give you a dozen reasons why it won't work. Most of them focusing on the number of people between us and them."
"You haven't put the pieces together yet, have you? Remember, the Commandant said that we were going to be bartered off, taken back home no matter what to tell the Senate about the Cabal's offer. That shuttle's going to be our ride."
Glancing back up at the window, Cunningham replied, "That's a rather big assumption."
There was a knock on the cell door, then the bolt slid back again as the Commandant walked into the room, his white uniform gleaming and untouched. Marshall, squatting on the floor, looked up at him as Mulenga spluttered into consciousness, coughing a couple of times as he emerged from an enviable deep sleep.
"I'd offer you a chair, but we don't seem to have any."
"My apologies. Furnishing our cells is one of the lower budgetary priorities I have. I presume you have seen our shuttle."
Smiling, Marshall looked at Cunningham and then back at the Commandant, "I gather your bugs are still working."
"It was a foregone conclusion." He looked over at the window, "What do you think of it?"
"I'm sure it'll do the job, even if it looks a little old-fashioned."
"Reliable is the term I would use," the Commandant replied. "Our sources in Yreka have suggested that your Sub-Lieutenant Orlova is planning something extremely foolish. I was wondering if you would like the opportunity to talk her out of it."
His smile growing, Marshall said, "Does this mean that you are wanting to surrender, or accept my terms for a safe withdrawal from this planet? Those offers remain on the table."
"No, it means that I was giving you another chance to be reasonable. You've seen the defenses we have here; any attack on this complex will result only in excessive casualties. Surely you would rather spare your people such a bloodbath, especially one with such a poor chance of success."
Standing up, Marshall walked over to look the Commandant square in the face, taking advantage of the couple of inches he had on him, "I have the fullest faith in my junior officers to execute battle plans correctly. If Sub-Lieutenant Orlova is on her way, then she is coming with everything she needs to execute a battle plan that will see this facility fall." He smiled, "Perhaps you are unable to provide your juniors with such latitude."
"And training in mass ground combat is a standard part of fleet training?"
"The ability to learn on the job certainly is."
Turning on his heel, the Commandant marched out of the room, angling his head back towards Marshall as he left, "I hope that her education does not prove too expensive, Captain. For either of us; remember that you are in this facility also."
The door slammed shut, the catch springing home, an
d they could hear marching down the corridor as a pair of feet sprang to attention outside. Marshall looked over at Cunningham and Mulenga, all of them now both well and truly disturbed from their rest. Outside, the first glimpses of light were beginning to appear; the rain was continuing, but at least the gloom was beginning to lift a little.
"Looks like she's on the way," Cunningham said. "That didn't take long."
Looking at the door, Marshall replied, "He's getting desperate, and he isn't sure he's going to win."
"Are you?"
Glancing up at the ceiling, he shouted, "For public consumption, damned right I'm sure. Orlova's going to turn up here with something and teach these people how to fight."
"The only question is whether Alamo will still be here afterward," Mulenga said, looking morose.
"Right now none of that matters to either of us," Marshall said, pulling himself to his feet. "The first duty of every prisoner of war is to attempt to escape."
"We tried that once, and it didn't work out that well," Cunningham said, frowning.
Shaking his head, Marshall replied, "We made our escape on their terms, not ours. Next time we're going to be the ones determining the manner of our escape, but I'll tell you one thing – and I don't particularly care whether our captors hear me or not – I have absolutely no intention of going meekly into that shuttle and being taken into exile, however benign the ultimate intent might be."
"Great," Cunningham said. "Now we're going to get dragged on board in straight-jackets." He cracked a smile, "Just joking, Danny, sir."
Smiling in return, Marshall turned back to the window, leaping back up to look outside once again. It was critical for him to learn every detail of the compound, every part of it. All possible escape routes, guard schedules, everything. He groaned a little as his arms started to ache, and he dropped back down to the ground, rubbing his forearms.
"Problem, sir?" Mulenga asked.
"I'm going to come out of this with a good workout if nothing else." He turned back to the window, "Give me a hand."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
This time, Caine had insisted on being on the scene. She couldn't find it within herself to sit back on Alamo and wait while Harper was playing around with a bomb; when the time had came to select a shuttle pilot for the mission, she had pulled rank and taken it out herself.
Chuckling, she recalled the times when Marshall had sat in his office fuming, or had managed to find a way to get onto a mission despite logic suggesting that he should remain on board, and now she knew exactly how he felt. She'd never really been that active at stopping him in the past, but now she'd be tempted to encourage him.
She tossed a datapad loosely into the vacant co-pilot's seat, the last status reports from Alamo with just three days left before the presumed arrival of the enemy starship. They weren't even sure what government's flag it would be flying, but she suspected that they would not come in peace. At least Alamo's teeth would be ready for the fight, even if its shell was still stuck in pieces at the starport. Three days to get the ship ready for battle, and another two weeks after that to get her ready for deep space; Quinn had been forced to undo some of his work to get the work on the battle systems completed more quickly.
Her fingers tapped gently on the panel in front of her as she watched Harper outside, the telescopic filter on the heads-up display making it seem as if she was just outside the shuttle; in fact, she was almost a mile away – Dixon had insisted on a distance that would reduce the possibility of any sort of shrapnel to nothing. While she waited, there was a chirp from the communications system, a signal from Alamo.
"Caine here. Go ahead." She was catching herself getting more and more curt.
"Dixon here. Latest update from Orlova, tight-beamed. Request scramble."
Tapping a sequence of buttons, Caine replied, "The line is now secure."
"She's managed to raise a force of around six hundred men, including all the espatiers. Transport's going to be a problem, but she's rustled up enough to give her an effective radius of operation on the order of a hundred miles in the time alloted. A bit further by sea if we're hitting somewhere on the coast.”
"What about another airborne assault?”
"Apparently she doesn't want to risk the shuttles without proper orbital support."
Shrugging, she replied, "I can't say that I really blame her. Those missiles would have made a real mess of an incoming shuttle at the spaceport, and it's far too much to hope that they only had one of those installations available."
"How are things going on the surface?"
"I think Harper's getting close, but she's being about as communicative as ever. Is Medical standing by?"
"Though I'm almost at the point of posting a guard to stop Duquesne going back down to the surface, we're ready to go."
Another crackle broke in, "If you two have finished chatting, I'm trying to concentrate here."
"Spaceman, this is a secured line," Caine said.
A chuckle. "You're using my security, remember. I'll be detonating in about five minutes. The programming is complete, and I'm throwing the switch."
"Wait a minute, you're sure it works?" Dixon asked.
"Sure, why wouldn't it? I thought we were in a hurry."
"Be careful, Spaceman," Caine said, urgently. "There's no need to activate it until you get to the shuttle."
"I know that much."
Caine watched the young hacker make her way across the terrain, far too quickly. Given her dislike of spacesuits she was doing rather well, but she was still bounding her way over the ground a lot more rapidly than Caine would have liked. With nothing else to do, she started to run the shuttle through the preflight cycle, only to be interrupted by a series of expletives through the channel.
"Harper, what's wrong."
"The detonation cycle's activated!"
Leaning forwards in her chair, Caine said, "How long?"
"Four minutes now."
Even if she went as fast as she could, she'd never make it to the shuttle in the time. In her head, she quickly calculated the distance Harper might be able to make, and the effects of shrapnel from the explosion at that distance – and she didn't like the results she was getting.
"I'm on my way," she replied, throwing switches and hitting overrides, bypassing the usual safety checks to get the shuttle into the sky.
Dixon's voice sounded in her ear, "Caine, you can't take the risk. You'll be going within a few hundred meters of the explosion."
"If I get this right, we'll be well clear when that explosion happens."
"And if you don't?"
"Too many people have died on my watch already, Dixon! Not this time." She turned off the channel with the flick of a switch, locking to the short-range channels. A series of amber warning lights flickered on her heads-up display – just cautionary alerts, nothing she had to take too seriously. Angling the landing thrusters, she launched, sending gray dust flying into the air all around her. With a careful twist of a dial, she pivoted the thrusters forward, just enough to keep her at a steady altitude while providing forward thrust.
This was a game all rookie pilots played during training, hot-dogging with their practice shuttles across the surface of Phobos, racing across the unpopulated deserts of Mars. The challenge was always to beat the opponent while remaining under a specified altitude, sometimes as low as a hundred feet. It tested the skill of a pilot in a way simulators never could, and there was the periodic casualty to remind everyone that it wasn't a game, it was deadly serious.
Of course, on Mars the on-board computers had all the information on planetary conditions that anyone could ever want, providing a crutch for the pilot through the use of guidance computers. Here all she had were a few hastily taken measurements by an overworked sensor technician, and while perfectly sufficient for takeoff, landing and simple maneuvers, here she was trying to do something a whole order of magnitude more difficult.
All of these thoughts flashed through he
r mind in a second; she seemed to be processing information a hundred times more faster than normal, a familiar sensation from her fighter days back in the War. Up ahead, the sensor indicator marking Harper's position winked on and off as she approached; another consideration she had to bear in mind was that she couldn't afford to obscure Harper in a dust cloud, or still worse, injure her while attempting to rescue her.
Playing the thrusters, trying to conjure up skills from long ago, she angled around to take a slightly more circuitous course, one eye on the clock, another on Harper's position. She ducked over a low, jagged ridge of rock stabbing up from the ground, then around the rim of a crater; to save time later, she tapped another button to open the airlock. The gravity was so low that Harper would be able to jump into it, especially with some help from her suit thrusters. If she could just get close enough in time, of course.
A hundred meters to go, and she had to resist her impulses to step up to faster speeds to finish her run, easing back on the throttle. Behind her she could see a pair of tracks blasted into the ground from her engines; she certainly couldn't afford to do that in the area around Harper. Ahead, she could see the bomb site, the few bits of equipment scattered around the record the communications pulse, a warning that she was now well within range of the explosion – which was now just over a minute away.
Finally, she was over Harper. "Spaceman, get on board!"
Focusing her camera down, she saw the hacker brace herself for the jump, and with a pair of quick blasts from her thrusters, leap up into the air alongside the shuttle. Keeping the shuttle steady was difficult, a thruster played one way and another. With her left hand, she tapped out a series of trajectory calculations, and confirmed her suspicions; Harper had misjudged her jump and was going to fall short. Taking the throttle again, she eased down on the thrust, bringing the shuttle in line with the flying Harper.
"Got it!" Harper said, a clang from the outer hull confirming that she was hanging onto the rail.
"Get inside, as fast as you can. I'll hit the engines as soon as you get into the airlock."
Battlecruiser Alamo: Tip of the Spear Page 16
