On the ground, Bertingas and the women were met by a tall Satyr with mellow eyes and grizzled chin whiskers. He had sergeant’s chevrons pinned to his utility vest. The sergeant assigned them to temporary quarters in the officers’ quad and took them down a road labeled simply “A2.” Even in the sickly artificial light, Tad could see the surface wasn’t tar and gravel, or any composition he recognized. It looked like fused cinders. Maybe the engineers used some plastic as a binder in the pour. He asked the sergeant about it.
“No, Sir. No time to go pouring surfaces here. Miz Rinaldi wangled use of a destroyer from the Cluster Command. They just brought it down to high hover at ground level, lined up its main batteries, and burned in the landing strip with six shots of plasma. They cut these radial roads with about three shots each, out at right angles. Surface is a little uneven at the joins. We’ll have trouble with weed control in the spring—if we’re still here—but they work.”
Beyond the lights, Bertingas discovered that all the buildings were not only temporary, they were inflatable. Tubes and ribbing under continuous positive pressure supported panels of some kind of frothed ceramic. Even the floors were raised on air pressure, which made them springy.
Between the grumble of aircraft coming into the strip and the whine of the building blowers, he got no sleep at all. Reveille was a bleak three hours after their arrival.
The same Satyr sergeant met them as they stumbled out the door of their quad. Mora had found some military-looking coveralls and had stowed the gaudy dress. Only Firkin looked unruffled and at ease.
“Miz Rinaldi signaled,” the Satyr told him. “She said you’d want to inspect the corps early, Sir.”
“What about breakfast?”
“The recruits’re all lined up, Sir.”
“Well, coffee? At least?”
“Afterward, Sir. We’ll get you fed.” The sharp-faced alien smiled.
The landing strip did double duty as parade ground. Almost 2,000 bodies were standing there in not-quite-parallel lines. Tad had thought they would be grouped by species, but some old military mind had put them in order by height.
Filling out the end that Bertingas and his party approached were mostly Ghiblis and Cowras. The former squatted solidly on their three-toed pads, a sheen of spittle glistening and dripping on their constantly exposed, half-meter fangs. Beside them the timid Cowras performed their nervous little dances—even when ordered to attention. Their tiny eyes never strayed far from those Ghiblis’ teeth.
At the other end of the lines, toward the back, a group of long-necked Foolongs kept bunching up, trying to herd. Their species functioned best in a group dynamic with a telepathic element. In a cadre, they could be stronger than any Human or other alien unit, but as individual soldiers, perhaps cut off from their fellows, they would wilt into a near vegetative state. A recruiter took what he could get.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Bertingas whispered to Patty Firkin.
“Check their weapons,” she suggested. “Any sign of neglect, like dirt, oil, low charge, or packing grease, and you flick the back of your hand against the trooper’s shoulder. If he’s got one. Near the neck, at least. And—ah—gently with the Ghiblis. They’ve got some hard-wired reflexes. The sergeant will handle discipline later. Anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem. These weapons were just issued, too new to have seen much abuse.”
Tad went down the lines. He peered into coil tubes and thumbed the action on reloaders. He examined new collar tabs and freshly burned tattoo brands. He peered into the polish on boot toes and hoofs and hindclaws. Occasionally, mostly for show, he flicked his hand for real or imagined infractions. Just to keep his new troopers on alert. No one protested the demerit, however; no one questioned his judgment.
By the end of the inspection, he was enjoying himself.
“What’s next?” he asked the sergeant.
“Buildings and stores, Sir?”
“Very well. Lead on.”
So they inspected buildings and stores. Tad keyed through on the comm gear, let his AID query the cybers, ran his fingers along cooking surfaces, stared at sealed machinery, poked into bins and bags, initialed manifests, signed chits. At one point, he even got his cup of coffee, while sampling the chow in the mess hall.
They went to the improvised target range and watched their recruits put glass beads, steel bolts, and static discharges through hologram targets. For all their visible ferocity, the Ghiblis were lousy shots—compounded by bad eyesight and a short attention span. And the Cowras fidgeted too much to hold their weapons steady. But the Foolongs, provided you gave them two minutes to consult and pat each other beforehand, were devastating. They would aim and shoot as one being. Tad was reminded of soldiers from his reading of history: British redcoats in long lines—one kneeling to fire, one standing to fire, two crouching to reload—who advanced in a clockwork Human wave punctuated by volleys of lead balls and blue smoke.
He began to feel some enthusiasm for this experiment. Perhaps a picked body of aliens, given the right weapons and instruction, could support them in the coming crisis.
By ten o’clock they had exhausted the camp’s possibilities. Mora, who had probably accompanied her father on hundreds of inspections, was shifting foot-to-foot. The sergeant was looking haggard, and even Firkin seemed bored.
“Is that everything?”
“Oh, yes, Sir,” the Satyr affirmed.
“Then why don’t you call our car and we’ll be getting back to Meyerbeer?”
Once they were in the air, he plugged the AID into the controls and collapsed into the seat with a sigh.
“This soldiering is hard work,” he said to Patty.
“Right.”
By daylight, Bertingas could see the kind of country they were crossing. A thousand meters higher than he normally hiked through, but still familiar. Granite ridges with stands of what looked like fir trees between them. The soil would be black loam, he knew, and thick with needles. Occasionally, in the higher meadows, he could see shoals of orange flowers, trembling in the late morning breeze. In the lower valleys he could see stands of white-skinned trees, like birches. It was good country. Clean air. Sweet water. Cold nights.
“We got company, Boss,” the AID said suddenly. “Three vehicles, big ones, on a closing vector behind us.”
“Something you arranged?” Bertingas turned to Firkin.
“Nobody I know.”
“What about Halan?”
“He said I was working solo this assignment.”
“You want to assume they’re hostile?”
“Seems like a safe bet,” Mora said, “considering recent history.”
“What weapons do you have?” he asked the AID.
“Are you kidding? This is a staff car, outfitted for embassy calls. I’ve got champagne and foie gras in the ice chest and a box of deckle-edged notecards, suitable for all occasions, under your seat. Perhaps you want to write somebody an invitation?”
“Okay, cut the sarcasm. What are our options?”
“Immediate surrender,” the machine replied.
“You say those are heavy vehicles.” Firkin leaned forward. “Troop carriers?”
“Mass is about right,” the AID said.
“All things considered, we may be faster. Can we outmaneuver them?”
“Worth a try,” Mora put in.
“Maybe if you jettisoned the party tent and picnic equipment,” the machine responded.
An idea was forming in the back of Tad’s brain. “What’s their range?” he asked.
“Hundred and ten kilometers.”
“That’s outside the horizon of your traffic radar.”
“I got the word from a friendly intelligence in Hemisphere Satellite Survey. ‘Someone to watch over me.’ Need it in this business, Boss.”
“Are those troop ships working us from the same source?”
“Uhhhnnhh—” Where did his AID learn that verbal tic? “Could be, Boss.”
“S
o we could assume they can’t scan us with a lot of sophisticated equipment—yet.”
“I don’t feel any probes,” the machine agreed.
“All right. Mora, Patty, there are drag harnesses under your seats. I’m going to do a slow roll and let you two out. You fall for two hundred meters and then pop your pigtails, on full discharge. Our friends back there can’t trace your plume, yet. Get down in the trees. Wait one hour until this circus is well past. Then turn on your beacons. A party from Cairn Hollow should come get you inside of two hours.”
“You want us to jump?” from Mora. “Into the woods?”
“What about you?” from Firkin.
“I’ve got a few tricks left.”
“But Follard made it clear that—”
“Halan isn’t here now. You must go with Mora. She has important information pertaining to the survival of the Pact. I want you to help her, protect her, and see that she gets that data into the right hands. Clear?”
“Well . . .”
“Do it, Colonel.”
Tad overrode the AID’s control and put the car into a long roll that wouldn’t show up on their trackers’ instruments, if any. The two women strapped into their electrostatic discharge harnesses. Mora patted her Naval AID, Betty, to make sure it was secure. Tad blew the roof. They dropped into the screaming airstream.
As the car came around upright, he brought the rear cameras into focus and watched until they showed the telltale blue lightning of a high-voltage ED unit. One crackle, then another, at the right time, right altitude. It was a clean drop.
Now what? Continue at the same speed and heading, as if he suspected nothing at all. Let the followers come into his computed radar horizon. At that point, pour on the speed, as if he were startled, panicking.
Then what?
Then improvise.
Tad kept the controls, for something to do, and let it happen as he had planned. When the three troop carriers first pinged on his screen, he waited three or four seconds, as if he were just figuring out the situation. Then he opened the throttles wide and shed his altitude, as if diving for cover among the granite ridges. The airspeed indicator rose to 350 klips. The rush of wind screaming across the open canopy rose to a higher, frantic note.
The troopships moved that much faster. Suddenly they were closing on the screen at a visible rate. Tad’s staff car could never outrun them.
On his right quarter he got his first visual. The black speck loomed up and paralleled his course. As it edged closer, it grew from speck, to fly, to beetle outline. It was a big vehicle, fifty meters long and broad in proportion. Its shape was boxy, hinting at a large interior space, with a high center of gravity. Its tough, rindlike surface was armored with ablative ceramics. Mounted on the nose, well forward of the first fan scoop, was a nine-centimeter swivel gun. It was trained left, tracking on Tad.
He kept an active scan on the radio, but no one had hailed him yet.
The other two cars seemed to be hanging back, out of range. But out of range of what? Tad had no weapons.
Well, one.
From initial distances in kilometers, that first car was now within a hundred meters and closing slowly.
Let them come.
What were they making of his broken roofline? Might they suspect that someone had already bailed out? Let them. In a few seconds, it would not matter what they knew.
Fifty meters. Tad took a new grip on the control yoke with sweating hands.
“You’re planning something,” the AID said accusingly.
“You bet.”
Twenty meters. Were they going to try boarding him? Did they actually think he would hold a steady course while two or three armed villains leapt across into his cockpit? And did that mean they hoped to take him alive?
Ten meters. Time to move.
Tad’s hands wove a complex pattern on the yoke. His car bobbled in its high-speed airstream, like a stone skipping across water: left side high, right side low, passing to right side high, left side low. The maneuver brought his right fender up, hard, under the troopship’s airskirting.
At the speed they both were traveling, the time needed for recovery was just too short. The other vehicle flipped over on its back, like a box turtle in the sun. Its fans were suddenly working against the mechanics of flight. The pilot was still trying to recover when he spread himself across a cliff face. There was surprisingly little fire, just one orange flash and then broken pieces tumbling down.
Tad contoured the land, looking over his shoulder to see where the other two troopships were. That was his only trick, and it would work just once. When the others caught up with him, they would probably shoot him down.
“Well, old friend . . .”
Bertingas mentally reviewed the memory content of his AID: people’s addresses and Shadow Box codes, mostly for business; two month’s worth of meeting notes, all boring; some new building plans and specs; the early work on their security force, although Gina’s AID had the bigger picture now; all the details on next year’s budget, He decided that, altogether, there was nothing he either hadn’t backed up or couldn’t afford to lose.
“Yes, Boss?”
Bertingas started pulling on the ED harness, one-handed. “I want you to take back control now.”
The machine did. Without being told, it duplicated the aircar’s hill-hopping, zigzag flight. Smart machine.
Bertingas quickly closed the last clips and checked the dragline power settings. He armed the front part of the canopy and rested his hand on the eject lever.
“Just keep flying like that. Low across the hills. When we get a minute of visual cover, I’ll jump.”
“Who is going to drive the car? When you disconnect me, that is, and take me with you.”
“I am not going to disconnect you. You must continue flying this same pattern, so our friends back there will think I’m still on board.”
“Oh.” The AID paused for several million nanoseconds. Call it five years of subjective time for a Human. “What will they do, when they catch up with this aircar?”
“To you? Nothing. They probably won’t even notice you. And when they return the car to Government Block, I’ll fetch you.”
“Oh good. For a minute there, I thought you were abandoning me.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” What does it cost to lie to a machine? “Now, that half-sized mountain up ahead. You curve low around the west slope and I’ll go.”
“Right, Boss.”
At the last minute, he decided not to blow the rest of the roof. Instead, he climbed around to the rear and stood in the hole Mora and Patty had gone by. With the car still flying upright, he had to push himself up into the airstream. It shoved him diagonally as he took three steps across the skirting and threw himself face forward. Even before he was off the side, he broke the dragline’s restraint tabs and yanked. The pigtail pulled hard and crackled with its miniature thunder.
It was a hundred meters down to a steep gravel slope. Tad made his body a loose ball, hit on his shoulder, and rolled bonelessly. The pigtail was still flaring blue and pulling against his fall as he rolled in among the fir trees.
What would those who followed see? From half a kilometer back?
They would catch a trailing flash of the ED discharge. They would notice—but possibly miss—a speck on the slopes, which might be a man, or a deer, or a falling rock. The aircar would still be ahead of them, caroming through the mountains. Those pilots and observers would need superHuman intelligence and reflexes to interpret what they saw, figure out what he had done, break off their chase, and circle back to lay down a barrage across his position in the trees.
No, the psychology of pursuit was on Tad’s side. Probability said they would follow their main objective, the aircar, and not break off for him.
And after they had destroyed the car? Would they fly home and report their mission accomplished? Or would they remember the flash, the speck, their suspicions?
Of course they would come
back. Probably in five minutes. Maybe in ten. The troopships could hover above that gravel slope and offload a squad of searchers. The ships couldn’t settle on the slope, for fear of a slide, so they wouldn’t be able to bring in heavy equipment, a command center, a full-scale manhunt. Unless they went down the valley and found a clearing. That, however, would take time.
While he worked it out, Tad slipped out of the ED harness and threw it as hard as he could downslope, into the branches. He took the metal out of his pockets—small coins, stylus, chrono repeater, nail knife—and scattered these things left and right. The searchers would have ferrous spotters and resonance detectors.
But wait. His clothing was loaded with metal—snaptabs and closers, silver foil in his uniform braid, heel plates in his boots. He stripped and scattered everything he was wearing, down to his underwear. That was a single skintight weave of thermal monofilaments, guaranteed to be without metal and having a resonance that was reasonably close to his own body’s.
Only trouble was, without an outer layer of clothing, his skinnies wouldn’t hold much body heat. The nights got down to zero Celsius in this latitude, at this altitude, at this time of year.
The searchers would also have infrared detectors, probably, to trace his body heat. Tad knew from past experience, however, that these hills had a lot of large fauna, all warm-blooded and radiating hotter than the rocks. Such instruments would give more false readings than true. Let half of his trackers go chasing a hungry Wampit on the prowl. He hoped they’d find it, too.
Tad quickly moved off the slope, going diagonally, deeper into the forest. His body picked up the jogtrot-walk routine that would, he knew, take him farthest, fastest. As he moved out, Tad pondered his situation.
He was six or seven hundred kilometers from anywhere in particular. He was unarmed and nearly naked. And within the time of a hundred heartbeats, a dozen or more angry men would be swarming over this area, trying to kill him.
An Honorable Defense Book 1 Crisis of Empire Page 14
