Vanguard

Chapter 11

Already on his way, Rob raced the last few steps and through the hatch onto the bridge. “What is it?”

Drake Porter, in the midst of being relieved from his watch, stared at Rob in confusion.

Rob dropped into his command seat and called up his display. As he was cursing the seconds needed for the display to boot up, Danielle Martel came running onto the bridge and flung herself at the operations watch station.

“Another ship just arrived!” Drake finally got out.

“Shut off the general quarters alarm and pass the word for everyone to get to their battle stations,” Rob ordered.

His display finally steadied.

A destroyer?

“A warship arrived at the jump point,” Danielle confirmed. “One light minute away. It’s… sir, it’s a Warrior Class destroyer.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. “Warrior Class?” Rob questioned. “The same class of ship that bombarded Lares?”

“Yes,” Danielle confirmed. “Old, but still dangerous. And he’s not broadcasting any identification. Just like the one that hit Lares.”

This wasn’t his battle. Squall wasn’t here to defend Kosatka. In fact, Rob’s orders didn’t even mention what he should do if he encountered a threat.

It took him less than a second to realize that none of that mattered. Rob punched his comm control. “Unknown warship, this is Glenlyon Cutter Squall. Identify yourself immediately.”

He cut the transmission and turned to Danielle. “Full combat readiness. Get all weapons powered up, shields at maximum, notify engineering that we will need full output from the power core.”

“Yes, sir.”

While Danielle Martel took care of that, Rob called up the maneuvering display, designated the unknown destroyer, and tapped the intercept command.

A moment later, the solution appeared, a pretty short, pretty flat curve that would bring the Squall close to the destroyer in a bow-to-bow pass. Words appeared. EXECUTE INTERCEPT? YES. NO.

“What’s our status?” Rob asked Danielle.

“Weapons are ready. Shields are building. Most combat stations ready. Engineering warns that we need to save full draw on the power core until we really need it.”

“Understand,” Rob said. “Drake, anything from the destroyer?”

“No,” Drake said, looking worried. “Not a peep.”

Rob took a slow breath, studying what the display told him. Warrior Class destroyer. Nearly a century old. Standard armament included a bombardment launcher, a grapeshot launcher, and a particle beam a generation behind that on the Squall.

“It’s roughly even odds if we engage him,” Danielle said. “Our sensors say his after shields are degraded.”

The destroyer had steadied out on a course aiming in-system, toward the primary world of Kosatka. Squall’s maneuvering system automatically updated the intercept solution for Rob.

EXECUTE INTERCEPT? YES. NO.

Squall was the only warship that Glenlyon had. He couldn’t afford to get Squall too badly damaged.

But the destroyer must also know that this would be a nearly equal fight. And whoever controlled that ship, whichever star system it had come from, surely didn’t want to lose it. Especially since examining who and what was on that ship would allow blame to be fixed for the devastation at Lares.

“If we come around in a long approach—” Danielle began.

“I know,” Rob said. “But we need to try to win this fight fast, without exchanging fire. Maybe they don’t want a fight.”

“Maybe they do.”

“Then they’ll get one. Tell engineering I need full power and make sure forward shields are at full strength.”

He reached out and touched YES.

Squall’s thrusters fired, pitching her around, then the main propulsion kicked in, hurling Squall toward the destroyer. The aging inertial dampers on the cutter whined in protest as the structure of the ship groaned from the stress. Rob hung on to his seat as acceleration forces leaked past the dampers.

The destroyer was moving at point zero three light speed. Squall was coming up to point zero four light speed. With just less than a light minute separating them, at a combined velocity of point zero seven light, the two ships would cover the roughly eighteen million kilometers between them in a minute and a half.

“Lock weapons on the destroyer,” Rob ordered Danielle. “Set them to fire when we get within range.”

“Yes, sir. Getting hits at a relative velocity of point zero seven light speed is outside the capability of our fire control system.”

“He may not know that.” Still no message from the destroyer. The slim barracuda shape was just off Squall’s port bow and slightly below, Squall aiming for the point where the destroyer would be in another minute and five seconds.

“He should be seeing our course change now,” Danielle reported. “Thirty-five seconds to intercept. Sir, you’re not giving him much time to react.”

“I want him to know that,” Rob said. “I want the cowards who bombarded a defenseless city to know that we are coming for them and that they only have a few seconds to decide what to do.”

“He’s maneuvering!” Danielle said at the same moment as Rob’s own display alerted him.

Twenty seconds before the ships came within weapons range of each other. What was the destroyer doing? Altering course to better engage Squall?

“He’s using full thrust,” Danielle reported. “Still coming up and around.”

Rob frantically entered new commands, shifting Squall to come up and over slightly so she was still aiming to intercept the destroyer.

“He’s lighting off main propulsion!”

The destroyer’s maneuvers had brought it in a long curve upward, its bow now almost facing back toward the jump point.

Rob had two seconds before intercept as he ordered Squall to adjust her own course again.

What would have been a bow-to-bow encounter, with both ships having their strongest shields and weapons facing each other, had changed as the destroyer turned away. With so little time to react, and unable to accelerate out of danger fast enough, the destroyer had ended up presenting her vulnerable stern to Squall as the cutter swept past.

Squall lurched as her weapons fired under the control of the automated systems, the moment of closest point of approach coming and going in a tiny fraction of a second too short for human reflexes to have pressed firing commands.

Rob entered another set of maneuvering commands, bringing Squall back around to hit the destroyer again, but this time the solution was accompanied by a pulsing red warning message. PLANNED MANEUVER WILL EXCEED HULL STRESS PARAMETERS. EXECUTE ANYWAY? YES. NO.

“Hell,” Rob muttered, ordering the new intercept to take place using less extreme maneuvers that wouldn’t threaten to destroy Squall. The arc of the new intercept doubled, and the time to new intercept grew even more, but he punched approve for the new solution. It made little sense to try to reengage the destroyer at the cost of tearing Squall apart.

“We’re getting an evaluation of damage,” Danielle reported. “Some grapeshot from the destroyer impacted our forward shields, but they held. The destroyer… his after shields suffered spot failures! We scored some hits aft on him!”

The crew whooped with triumph, but Rob bent to look at his display. “Our sensors can’t evaluate damage to him. What do you think, Danielle?”

“Let me check something.” Her hands flew across her display. “His thrust is down to sixty percent maximum for what a ship of that class should be capable of. He demonstrated eighty percent maximum coming out of the jump point.”

“We did hurt him,” Rob said.

“Yes. Not enough, though.”

It didn’t take him any thought to realize what Danielle meant. The destroyer had steadied out heading back for the jump point on the quickest possible trajectory. Squall was swinging through her long loop to reengage, but the projected intercept was past the jump point.

“What?” Drake Porter asked.

“He’s going to get away,” Rob explained. “We can’t reengage before he jumps out of this star system.”

“Huh? But we—”

“It’s not possible,” Danielle said. “Not with Squall’s capability to maneuver. Physics is a bitch. She won’t let us.”

“We’ll stay on this trajectory anyway,” Rob said. “If that destroyer changes his mind, we’ll be ready.”

But whatever the destroyer’s mission might have been, it had no desire to continue the fight. Rob watched it reach the jump point and disappear into jump space while still twenty light seconds away from Squall. “Secure from battle stations.”

“He can’t turn around, right?” Drake asked.

“Right,” Rob said. “Ships can’t turn around in jump space. He’ll have to go to whatever star he jumped to, then, if he wants to return, jump back.”

“The nearest star accessible from this jump point is five days in jump space distant,” Danielle said. “That means a ten-day round-trip, minimum.”

“Whew!” Drake said. “I wasn’t complaining.”

Rob saw Danielle smiling at him. “That was some wild fighting,” she told Rob. “I’m impressed.”

“Thanks.” Rob realized his heart was still pounding. “Uh, I didn’t have a chance to grab anything to eat. Could you get me something?”

“I think there’s still a pack of donuts left.”

“Victory feast!” Drake cried.

“The breakfast of space squids,” Danielle agreed with a laugh. “Come on, Drake. Let’s get the lieutenant a donut and some coffee to celebrate the Battle of Kosatka.”

Rob ordered some sedate maneuvers to get Squall back to the region where she had been waiting to hear back from Kosatka, wondering what the people on the planet would think four hours from now when they saw the just-concluded battle take place.

The reply from Kosatka that showed up eight hours later had six people visible. One was spliced in, with an identifier saying “Orbital Facility Chief Operating Officer.” The five others were all standing in the same room and included the Safety Coordinator who had sent the last message.

“Lieutenant Geary,” the man in the center began. “I am First Minister Hofer of Kosatka. You already know our planetary safety coordinator, and this is Leader Ottone of our House of Peoples’ Representatives. And of course Citizens Carmen Ochoa and Lochan Nakamura, who you asked after. We have seen your unhesitating and heroic defense of our star system against what appeared to be the same criminals who struck Lares. Kosatka owes an immense debt to Glenlyon. You had no obligation to defend us, but you risked yourself for us anyway. There are no words of thanks adequate for how we regard you and Glenlyon.”

The First Minister paused, looking uncomfortable. “If we had means to assist you, we would provide it. But as you may have already seen, we lack defenses of our own. Citizen Ochoa has offered advice on a solution to that problem that we will be pursuing, but at the moment we cannot even defend ourselves. I understand that the soonest that awful warship can return will be more than a week, and by then we will have improvised some combat capability on one of our freighters. As soon as we have acquired an additional defensive capability, we will endeavor to return a hundredfold the favor you have done us. Please assure the Council of Glenlyon that Kosatka honors her debts.”

He gestured toward Lochan Nakamura, who looked slightly bemused. “Lieutenant, I don’t know who referred Carmen Ochoa and me to you,” Lochan said, “but we were happy to advise Kosatka to assist Glenlyon when possible. Our advice was not necessary to convince them, as it turned out. Your actions did that.”

First Minister Hofer spread his hands in a welcoming gesture. “Thank you, Glenlyon. Kosatka, out.”

Rob slumped in his stateroom seat, sighing with relief. As the initial glow of victory had faded, he and the rest of those on Squall had been getting nervous about having left Glenlyon defenseless in their absence.

He straightened again and tapped reply. “Kosatka, we are honored by your offer of assistance and understand your concerns. Since it appears that Kosatka will have some defense in place before that destroyer could return, we would like to return ourselves to Glenlyon to defend that star system against any similar threat. You may not have detected that we inflicted some damage on the destroyer’s propulsion during the fight. He was down to sixty percent of maximum propulsion when he jumped out of this star system and won’t be able to work at repairing external damage while the ship is in jump space. I think it unlikely that ship will risk another battle until they have time to repair that damage, which will likely require them to return to the star system that sent them out, whichever one that is.

“Therefore, I intend taking Squall back to Glenlyon. I will wait eight more hours after sending this reply to give you the opportunity to tell us if you see a desperate need for us to remain. Otherwise, I will return to Glenlyon to defend it and pass on your reply to my government.

“For Citizens Lochan Nakamura and Carmen Ochoa, I was referred to you by Mele Darcy, the commander of Glenlyon’s ground forces. I’m sure she sends you her best wishes. If you have any messages for her, please transmit them as quickly as possible, as Squall will leave in eight hours unless Kosatka urgently requires otherwise. Geary, out.”

The replies that showed up eight hours later consisted of another wave of thanks from the government of Kosatka, and a joint message from Nakamura and Ochoa for Mele Darcy.

Should he have told them that Mele Darcy had already committed to a hazardous mission? That there was a good chance that she might be killed before Squall managed to return to Glenlyon?

No, Rob decided. What good would such knowledge have done them? Better they enjoyed as long as possible the thought of their friend alive and well.

He called the bridge, where Danielle Martel had the watch. “Danielle, head for the jump point. We’re starting back for Glenlyon.”

That was, he knew, probably the most popular command he had given since leaving home.

Squall trembled as thrusters fired, pushing her onto a direct course for the nearby jump point.

Three and a half weeks. Barely enough time to teach someone how to salute properly. Barely enough time to scrounge together the equipment she would need. But Scatha’s base had finished their antiorbital weapon installation today, firing a test blast of charged particles that tore through the atmosphere and into space. Warned of the pending test, Glenlyon had used their satellites’ maneuvering capability to switch to orbits out of reach of the weapon, but that meant that Glenlyon could no longer keep track of what Scatha was doing at the base.

Barely enough time, but it was time to go.

“All right, listen up.” Mele looked over her best twenty volunteers, who made up the raiding force. Aside from her, only Grant Duncan would be guaranteed reliable in a fight. The others were willing enough but had little idea of what they would be facing. Theory and games and simulations and stress tests were one thing. Actually facing people out to kill you was another. “I’ve only had time to give you the basics. But we’ve got a few big advantages. We’ve been watching Scatha’s soldiers, and they are not ready for us. They think they brought in enough firepower that Glenlyon has no choice but to accept the inevitable. And they think if we do try something, it’ll be something stupid. But we’re going to be smart.

“So,” she continued, trying to radiate confidence, “we’re going to surprise them, and they won’t be ready for it. I’m going to take the lead on a lot of things because I’ve got the training. Ninja has laid some fantastic groundwork for us. But I need you guys to stay focused and stay sharp. Because you are also one of our big advantages. Scatha never imagined that Glenlyon could put together a group of people like you in such a short time to kick Scathan butt. You’ve all got important roles to play. If you get confused, use your heads. And remember that we are going to do our best not to kill any civilians at Scatha’s base. Only the soldiers are targets. Any questions?”

No one had questions. They looked both nervous and eager, Mele thought. All except Grant, who had the look of a skilled worker about to tackle an ugly job.

She probably looked the same way.

“Everyone who has a weapon is to ensure it is on safe. Check it! All good? Let’s board,” Mele told them, watching as her twenty filed onto the WinG, then following last.

All of the others except Riley strapped themselves into seats in the passenger deck, while Riley went down and aft to check on the improvised explosives, and Mele went forward to the cockpit. “Everything’s aboard?” she asked the pilots.

They nodded, radiating excitement. “I never thought I’d be playing this kind of game,” one told Mele.

“It’s not a game,” she reminded him. “We can’t afford any slipups. What about Delta?”

“They’ll accompany us partway and set up while you guys are doing your business. Do you think we’ll need Delta?”

“Delta is insurance,” Mele said. “Let’s hope we don’t need it, but if we do, we’ll really need it.”

The other pilot looked back at Mele. “You pretty much improvised all this stuff out of gear designed for other uses. I never knew so much of our equipment could be used for things like this.”

“Humans are pretty clever when it comes to figuring out how to kill each other,” Mele said.

Riley came forward. “I checked over the bombs. Everything looks fine.”

“Should we ask what kind of bombs they are?” one of the pilots said.

“Some are explosives and some are thermite,” Mele said.

“Thermite? Are you sure none of those will go off in flight?”

“If one did,” Riley offered, “it would just burn its way through the floor and out.”

“That’s not too reassuring.”

“I’ve got the detonators,” Mele said.

“And you’re sitting up here right next to us?” the pilot said. “That’s not too reassuring, either! Hey. We got a call. There’s someone outside wants to see you before we take off.”

Grumbling to herself about delays, Mele went back to the passenger hatch.

Waiting next to the WinG was Council Member Leigh Camagan. “Good luck, Major Darcy.”

“I guess the rest of the council was busy?” Mele said. “Um, sorry. That wasn’t very majorish of me.”

“The rest of the council doesn’t know how to send men and women off to risk their lives for us,” Leigh Camagan said. “They do care, Major.”

“How is it you know how to do that?” Mele asked.

“I was married once, Major. To a firefighter who went off to help those who needed it, and one of those times did not come back.”

Mele straightened to attention. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Leigh Camagan gripped Mele’s forearm. “Get it done, Major. And if there are any greater powers watching out for us, I pray that they be with you tonight.”

“It never hurts to ask for help,” Mele said. She saluted Leigh Camagan in a way that showed she meant the gesture of respect, then went back inside the WinG and sealed the hatch.

The WinG moved forward, rising on its ground-effect cushion of air, accelerating as it headed north and east. The other one of the smaller WinGs paced them for a long time as they raced toward the coming night, the sun falling toward the horizon in the west. Ocean swells rolled a couple of meters beneath them like the backs of monsters of the deep, the water dark and mysterious in the way of all oceans.

That was one of the differences between space and planets with water, Mele realized. Space didn’t conceal anything. It was all out there, no matter how far away. You just had to figure out how to spot it across the distances and the vast gulf of years that usually separated humans from the stars and galaxies they studied.

But oceans kept their secrets as long as they could, hiding them beneath waters that might be placid or rough but always enshrouded what lay under the surface. You could look at a star and tell just about everything about it. But looking at an ocean only let you see what the ocean allowed.

Like people, Mele thought. Humans might move among the stars with increasing ease, but they still had much more in common with the seas of worlds where humans could live.

“Why didn’t Scatha ever put up a satellite?” one of the pilots finally asked Mele, breaking the silence in the cockpit. “If they had, they would have been able to see us approaching even coming in as low as we are.”

“Scatha couldn’t while Squall was here. Lieutenant Geary would have just shot down their satellite. I guess they didn’t expect Squall to leave, so they didn’t bring any launch capability to put up a small sat if it did.”

“They must have left behind a lot of stuff that they would have brought if they had more cargo space available,” the second pilot observed. “We understand that! Half the time, people want to load twice as much as we have room for. Scatha must have wanted to bring more ground sensors. Why didn’t they put any up on those hills we’re going to run in behind?”

“Their sensor fields around the base are thin as it is,” Mele said. “I would have put sensors on the hills anyway, but any by-the-book commander would put them all in close until they met the required density for base protection. And from what we’ve learned from the files we captured on the Squall, Scatha is all about punishing people who deviate from instructions. They’ve been gearing up production at their base of more sensors and we’ve seen a few more planted, but they’re still way behind the curve, so whoever’s in charge at that base is playing it safe.”

“And by playing it safe, they’re actually increasing their risk,” the first pilot said with a laugh.

The WinGs moved fast for planetary craft, but the trip to the continent where Scatha had planted its base still took time. Mele, knowing how hard the waiting could be, went back and moved around the passenger deck, talking to her volunteers, trying to project confidence, and going over the plans yet again for anyone who might still be unclear.

Night fell. Glenlyon had two minor moons, which didn’t reflect much light, but Mele was still glad when thin, high-level clouds moved in to obscure the moons and the stars.

As they neared a couple of small islands well off the coast of the continent, the WinG accompanying them veered off and headed for the islands.

Alone now, the WinG carrying Mele’s raiding force angled north to ensure it would be beneath the curve of the planet’s surface as it went past the base location, then swung close to due east as the coastline appeared ahead. Mele was happy to see whitecaps and bands of white foam where waves were thundering against the coast. The waters had grown rougher as they went north and east, and the more noise the ocean was making tonight, the better.

The WinG zipped over a short stretch of gravelly beach and began slowing, dropping a little closer to the thick scrub covering the soil.

“This is it,” the lead pilot said to Mele as the WinG slowed even more, touching onto the surface and sliding to a slightly bumpy halt. “You guys be careful.”

“Thanks. If we’re not back by sunrise, get out of here and head back,” Mele said.

The pilots exchanged reluctant glances. “We’d rather wait—”

“If we’ve gotten picked off, Scatha will be looking to find out how we came in. They’ll find you,” Mele said. “When the sun rises, head for home. But hopefully we’ll be back well before then.”

She led her team out of the WinG, walking back to where the big cargo hatch had lowered. It was dark enough out that Mele kept one hand on the side of the WinG for guidance as they walked. When they got to the back, one of the volunteers pulled out a hand control and began punching in commands.

Something stirred in the deeper darkness of the cargo bay, uncoiling and sliding toward them in a way that set Mele’s hair on edge. The tunnelpede looked like a massive earthworm with broad tires set along its length, as well as a single line of seats and handholds along the top.

The tunnelpede rolled to where something like a boulder stood out from the ground. The volunteer tapped in more commands, and the boulder turned out to be hiding the rear of the snake that had dug the tunnel. The snake, compressed back into a one-meter diameter, still looked scary as hell to Mele as it slid along the ground and into the WinG’s cargo space, coiling itself into a tight curl.

The two-meter-wide opening left behind by the snake angled down into pitch-blackness. The volunteer with the control took the seat on the tunnelpede closest to the front, Mele and the others climbing onto seats behind. “Lay as flat as you can,” the volunteer called back in a low voice. “The tunnel is narrow enough that if you sit up, your head might graze the top, and you do not want that to happen because we’re going to be traveling pretty fast at times.”

The tunnelpede began rolling forward, the motion of the many tires so gentle that it felt as if the device were simply sliding forward. A headlight came on as the vehicle entered the tunnel, showing an eerily round tunnel leading lower before leveling out, the only breaks in the smooth surface ridges of instacrete every half meter or so to provide purchase for feet or wheels. The focused beam provided little scatter of light, so from the front of the tunnelpede back, most of the vehicle traveled in total darkness.

Mele, seated on the tunnelpede with her upper body lying flat, tried to see ahead, but her view was blocked by the driver. She was suddenly glad that the tunnel was unlit because it seemed the primary view of anyone on a tunnelpede would be the butt of the person in front of them.

The location chosen for their base by Scatha must have looked perfect on a map. Foothills to the north and west framed a broad plain sloping gradually downward toward the coast. The hills seemed to offer protection, while the plain served as a wide, open area that any attacker had to cross to reach the base. Comparatively little work at the construction of a breakwater and some dredging close to shore would provide a good harbor for oceangoing ships. A wide river ran between substantial banks nearby and might pose a future flooding threat, but for now guaranteed enough freshwater.

What wasn’t obvious from the map was that the low hills, if not occupied, offered concealment for anyone threatening the base. Maybe Scatha planned on occupying those hills as soon as possible, but Mele intended throwing a monkey wrench into Scatha’s planning. Whoever had chosen the site had also not taken into account the ground vibrations that the river and the not-far-off wave action would create, allowing Glenlyon’s modified snake to tunnel right under ground sensors without being detected.

That ancient Old Earther Sun Tzu had a lot to say about how to attack, but most of his advice came down to figuring out what the enemy expected you to do or wanted you to do, then doing something different. Scatha, with all of the effort put into including that antiorbital weapon in their first wave of equipment, had plainly been looking mostly to defend against attacks from above. The setting of the base had shown that Scatha was also concerned about attacks coming on the surface. Mele had looked at those things, then sought out the mining equipment.

The tunnelpede slowed and halted. “The tunnel angles up from here,” the driver whispered back to Mele. “We should be three meters deep.”

“Okay. Grant,” she called back in a soft voice, “get everyone off the ’pede and lined up. Riley, get up front with me.”

Grasping the high-powered hunting rifle she had selected, Mele led Riley up the slope as the tunnel angled toward the surface. The tunnel halted abruptly, ending in a plug of dirt directly overhead that had been left in place by the snake. The scrub roots protruding from the bottom of the dirt revealed that the plug was not very thick.

Mele pulled out the big combat knife sheathed on one of her hips. That had been one of the easiest things to get manufactured on short notice. She placed the tip of the knife near one side of the tunnel, slid the blade into the dirt, and began sawing her way along the edge of the tunnel. The topsoil offered little resistance, but the tangled roots made the work hard and sweaty, and as she worked dirt rained on her.

The plug suddenly tilted down. Mele pushed it to the side of the tunnel, seeing night sky above. The distant roar of the surf could be heard. Grateful for the background noise that would block any errant sounds from her team, Mele checked the time here. “O-Dark Thirty. Perfect. Riley, get up here with Ninja’s magic box.”

Riley crawled up next to her, cradling the thick epad that Ninja had provided. Mele helped raise an antenna just above ground level as Riley tapped the activate command.

The pad displayed the ancient sign of the hourglass as it worked, strings of code flashing by at the bottom. Mele waited patiently until the hourglass vanished and words appeared. LINK ESTABLISHED. VERIFICATION SUCCESSFUL. INTRUSION UNDER WAY. SUBSTITUTE COUNTERFEIT DATA?

“Here’s what Scatha is seeing,” Riley whispered, passing another pad to Mele.

She checked the symbology, which didn’t quite match that used by Franklin but was close enough to be understandable. One section provided an overview, showing exactly where the current perimeter patrol was located. Another section showed what those patrollers were seeing on their helmet displays. Mele put on an earpiece that would let her hear any orders issued on Scatha’s command net or conversations on the patrol net.

A warning symbol popped up on both sections. Apparently one of Scatha’s sensors had spotted something odd where Mele had opened the access tunnel.

“Get the false data going,” she ordered Riley.

He tapped the YES command, and the warning symbol vanished as Ninja’s device scrubbed out the detections from the sensor net.

“What was that?” she heard one of two soldiers on patrol say as the symbol disappeared.

“Another glitch,” the other sentry complained.

“Maybe a wabbit. I think I’ll take a shot.”

Mele gestured to Riley to stay motionless.

The pop of a pulse weapon sounded on the surface. She heard the energy bolt hit somewhere in the scrub, but on the fraudulent display that Ninja’s hacking had created the shot didn’t appear. Mele tensed to see if either member of the patrol had spotted the discrepancy, but both appeared too bored and uncaring to notice.

“Hit anything?”

“Shut up.”

Mele eased her head up enough to see the two members of the patrol, bulky in their battle armor, walking in her direction. Their movements and postures were even more casual than the sentries she had observed while planting the surveillance pickups.

She lowered herself back down into the tunnel and gave Riley a thumbs-up. “They’re sloppy as hell,” she whispered.

“I don’t get it,” Riley whispered back. “You told us these Scatha guys are really tough about following rules and doing everything perfect.”

“The bosses are,” Mele explained. “Funny thing. The harder the bosses are, the tighter they try to control everything their people do, the more likely those people will screw off the minute they’re not being watched.”

As the patrol ambled along its route, she eased the plug of dirt and plants back into place and waited with growing impatience, depending on the relayed images of their displays to know where they were rather than risk exposing her head again.

The two soldiers from Scatha walked past the tunnel exit, only a few meters from it, but both were discussing how to get their hands on booze rather than paying attention to the landscape around them. Why should they? Nothing had happened since they landed here.

Mele pulled the plug down again, grasped the hunting rifle, and came out of the tunnel silently. The rifle had a newly made silencer screwed onto the end, which probably wouldn’t hide all the noise but should work well enough.

One of the soldiers was slightly behind the other. Mele moved like a wraith until she was directly behind the lagging patroller. Her right hand grasped the rifle near the breech, her finger near the trigger. Her left arm came around the front of the soldier from behind, her left fist pushing up the startled soldier’s right arm before he could realize what was happening. Jamming the muzzle of the rifle into the soldier’s exposed underarm, a place where she knew this type of armor had a major weak spot, she fired.

The soldier jerked as the large caliber bullet tore through his upper chest from side to side. He started to collapse, and Mele let him go and dropped her hunting rifle as well, grabbing the soldier’s pulse rifle from unresisting hands.

“What was that—?” the other soldier said, turning to look.

Mele was already raising the pulse rifle. The second soldier only had time to realize she was there before Mele fired into his faceplate, the pulse rifle’s muzzle almost touching it.

The faceplates were heavily reinforced, but that wasn’t enough to stop an energy pulse at such short range.

The soldier’s head jerked back, then his entire body fell backward.

Mele turned back to the first soldier to make sure he was down and saw him jerking on the ground.

Riley came up, staring down at the first soldier. “What’s he doing?”

“Dying,” Mele said. “Dying in pain.”

“W-what can we do?” Riley asked.

“He’s only got a couple of minutes left, at best,” Mele said, her voice flat. “There’s only one thing we can do to stop his pain.”

“We should do it then,” Riley urged.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

Mele braced herself, put the muzzle of her pulse rifle against the stricken soldier’s faceplate, and fired.

She looked up to see Riley staring at her.

“Don’t think that was easy,” Mele told him. “Or anything I wanted to do. But if it had been me lying there, dying in pain, no hope, no other way to stop it, I’d want someone to end it if they could.”

“Th-that wouldn’t happen… to you… would it?”

“It might,” Mele said.

The killing had been quick. Much harder was dealing with the emotional aftereffect. Mele paused to breathe deeply, fighting off a sudden feeling of nausea. Them or me. Them or me. I didn’t start this.

She checked the pad, seeing that according to it the two sentries were continuing their patrol. The alarms that should have sounded when both were killed had been blocked by Ninja’s hack of Scatha’s systems.

She retrieved the second soldier’s pulse rifle and passed it to Grant as he brought everyone else to the surface. “Obi, take my hunting rifle. We’re going to head for the command bunker single file. Me in front, Grant behind me. Riley, make sure you’re in the middle. Obi, bring up the rear. Only Grant and I should have ready weapons. The rest of you keep yours on safe until I say otherwise. Ninja’s hack will prevent the sensors from reporting seeing us, but we can’t risk a stray shot being heard by someone.”

While the others were lining up, Mele went over the fallen soldiers and removed a pair of grenades from each, stuffing them into the pockets of her short jacket.

She led the column toward the command bunker, which was clearly identified on Scatha’s own command net. Mele had to fight down repeated urges to run toward her objective. But if she ran, everyone else would run with her, and too many of her new volunteers might get disoriented in the darkness and do something wrong.

As they got closer, Mele could see the bunker’s visual observation periscopes resting in their armored mounts, the lenses blocked by protective shielding that would prevent anyone inside the bunker from actually looking at the outside. Shoddy, careless, and complacent. Standard procedures should have called for visual searches to be performed at random intervals as a backup for the automated system. She felt a surge of anger at the sheer stupidity of Scatha’s soldiers, who seemed to be cooperating in their own deaths.

A short ramp led down into the half-buried bunker, a sealed blast door at the end. Mele squinted at the pad in her hand. “Get Riley up here. Hey, how do we open this door?”

Riley brought up a menu, tabbed a submenu, studied the blast door, then tapped something else.

The blast door slid open.

The secondary door behind it was already open, another sloppy violation of standard rules.

Mele gestured to Grant, then went into the bunker fast, her stolen pulse rifle ready.

Two soldiers were sitting at watch stations along a wide set of displays.

One started to turn at the noise of Mele’s entry. “What are you guys doing back—?”

She shot that soldier, then put another shot into the head of the other watch-stander.

Mele and Grant paused, their weapons trained toward an internal door. “Sentry rest area,” Grant breathed to her. “Hard way or easy way?”

“Let’s see if they’re awake.” Mele edged forward cautiously.

She kept her rifle trained on the door, so that when it suddenly swung open, she was already lined up for a shot.

“What the hell was that noise?” another Scatha soldier demanded, blinking to adjust to the slightly brighter red light in the rest of the bunker.

Mele fired, the bolt hitting the soldier in the chest. As the soldier tumbled backward, Mele yanked one of her stolen grenades from a pocket, primed it, and threw it after the soldier she had shot.

Grant hit the internal wall next to the door and yanked it closed moments before a muffled explosion sounded, and the metal door dented in several places from grenade fragments hitting it.

Grant slammed the door open again while Mele went inside in another rush, her weapon questing for targets.

There had been four other soldiers sleeping in the rest area. The one Mele had shot lay on the floor. The others had died in their bunks.

She backed out, fighting off another surge of queasiness. “Close it,” she told Grant.

Mele went back to the entry and gestured the others inside. The bunker had felt roomy, but with twenty men and women plus Mele and the two bodies of the watch-standers it had become crowded.

The dead were hauled away from the displays, Mele gesturing to Riley to sit where one of them had been. He hesitated, then sat down.

“Get going,” Mele said.

Riley wasn’t as good as Ninja (no one was, he had admitted to Mele), but he was very good. Swiping through control displays, he quickly opened paths to critical systems throughout the Scatha base. “Ninja was right. We’re inside everything,” he told Mele. “Past all firewalls.”

“Plant the malware bombs and be sure the timers for them are all set right.”

Riley nodded, dropping a data coin into a slot on the console, extracting the destructive software inside it, and directing the malware into every system within reach of the Scatha command and control net. “One hour? Are you sure that’s time enough?”

“It should be,” Mele said. “I don’t see any signs of problems at the big gun. Make sure their alarms there are disabled and their gates and doors unlocked.”

“Got it,” Riley said. “The big gun is wide open. Malware bombs planted. Timers are all set. One hour.”

“Can you tell who is inside the big gun’s site?”

“Hold on.” Riley swiped through several more screens, then paused to study an image. “Two people. From their outfits, they’re technicians, not soldiers.”

“Good. Grant, you stay here with your ten. Make sure nobody shows up early and raises an alarm. Set the explosives we brought to destroy this bunker. Here are the detonators for those. Riley, download every Scatha file you can so we can bring them back with us, and if you spot anywhere else in Scatha’s networks we can cause problems, see if you can raise more hell. But make sure none of that hell happens before the malware bombs go off. Obi, you bring your ten with me. There are two techs at the site. Civilians. Make sure we only use shockers on them.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to kill them, too?” Obi asked. She had the look of someone who had already fallen off a cliff and wasn’t trying to pretend otherwise. “Since we’ve already killed these others? If those techs are alive, they could work against us, maybe help repair the weapon?”

“No,” Mele said. “We shock them, haul them out where they’ll be safe and unharmed when the site goes up, and the civilians with this camp will know they are safe from us. The soldiers here will know that, too. They’ll be mad about their buddies we killed and mad that the civilians didn’t get a scratch. That will drive a wedge between the civilians and military even if there wasn’t one before. Besides, there isn’t going to be enough left of that weapon for anybody to be able to fix.”

“I don’t know,” another volunteer commented. “We should take them out! Aren’t they all enemies? I wouldn’t shoot kids, but everyone from Scatha—”

Mele silenced him with an abrupt gesture that held both command and menace. “I don’t conduct debates during a combat op. Let’s put it this way. If anybody kills one of those civilians, or tries to kill them, I’ll kill whoever fired. Does anybody want to try dodging my shots? No? Then follow orders. Shockers only inside the site. Make sure you’ve got your bomb packs. Come on.”

With the Scatha sensor net and warning systems totally compromised, and in fact under the control of her own people, Mele led her group at a run across the wide stretch of pavement separating the antiorbital site from the command and control bunker. If they were going to take out the big gun and get back to the WinG before daylight, they couldn’t waste time. The rest of the base stretched off to the north and west, the buildings housing families visible as well as the low, rounded dome of the main power plant.

The gate in the chain-link fence protecting the site opened when she pulled on it. Sensors that should have reported the gate opening and intruders entering the site remained silent.

The weapon site was an impressive feat of engineering, a massive hexagon with sloping sides of thick multithreat armor. The top was only five meters aboveground, though, because most of the massive particle beam cannon was in big rooms excavated below ground level.

Mele led the way past defensive infantry firing ports that were sealed closed. The gun site could have been a fortress against a ground attack if any soldiers had been inside. And if every lock and alarm hadn’t been tied in to a central control system that Mele’s people now directed.

She went through a surface blast door that had already slid open, its impressive thickness posing no barrier. Steps led down to another blast door, which also stood open.

The pad Mele held showed the floor plan for the weapon site, so she had little trouble finding the operating room nestled into one side of the armored citadel. The armored hatch that should have sealed off the operating room swung open easily when Mele tried it. Looking inside, Mele saw one tech dozing in her chair while the other watched a vid on a personal pad.

She nodded to four of the volunteers who carried shockers, gesturing for two to target one tech and the other two the remaining one.

Shocks knocked out both techs before either realized they were in trouble. Part of the charge from one shocker hit the personal pad of the vid-viewing tech and fried it.

One of the volunteers had come from Glenlyon’s police force and fell to binding the arms and feet of the techs while others wrapped gags around their mouths.

Mele turned to another volunteer. “Hedy?”

Hedy dropped into one of the vacated seats, studying the controls and displays. While not a weapons expert, she knew enough about similar systems to have been able to quickly learn all that Glenlyon’s databases had about antiorbital weapons like this one. “Okay. No surprises,” Hedy said. “You can plant the bombs. The preplanned spots should work fine.”

“Let’s go,” Mele directed. Most of the remaining team followed her out of the control room. On Mele’s pad, locations for each bomb glowed. As they reached each one, a bomb was gingerly removed, placed, then Mele put the detonator in and set the timer.

“We’re putting these on the most critical parts of this site,” she told the others. “When these thermite bombs ignite, the thermite in them will burn at something over two thousand degrees centigrade, melting right through everything they’re on and everything under that.”

“Can they put it out?” Obi asked.

“Thermite? Yeah, if they’ve got the right stuff. There are special powders that can bind with the thermite,” Mele said. “Other than that? No. I watched thermite burn out in the shell of a spacecraft once. Full vacuum. It just kept going until the thermite had all oxidized.”

Back inside the control room, Mele found Hedy carefully entering some commands. “Can you give me the right time for this? I’m going to power up the cannon so the power storage cells are at peak when the thermite melts into them. The explosion that sets off will destroy anything that the thermite hasn’t slagged.”

“You engineers love doing this kind of thing, don’t you?” Mele asked, leaning down to look at the display in front of Hedy. “Your time is good.”

“Thanks. Yeah. You know what they say, engineering is like science, only louder.” Hedy stood up. “We’re ready. It’s all on auto. I admit I’m nervous to be inside this site with those thermite bomb timers ticking and the cannon about to power up.”

“Then let’s get out.” Directing the rest of the team to hoist the bound techs and carry them, Mele went last, making sure no one was left behind.

She closed the blast doors as they passed each one, pausing only long enough to fire energy pulses from her rifle into the lock panels so that getting through the doors again would be a major chore for the techs and soldiers from Scatha.

“What is the power plant going to do when that cannon starts drawing power big-time?” Hedy asked Mele. “I didn’t think of that.”

“It’s okay. They’ll do one of two things,” Mele said. “Either call and ask what’s going on, or assume they didn’t get told about something and not worry.”

“If they call, they won’t get any answer.”

“As long as they spend another… half hour arguing about it before they send anyone, it won’t matter.”

They were outside again. Scatha’s base remained silent, but the quiet now wore at Mele with the feeling that menace lurked unseen and soundless just out of sight. Things had gone too well. Something always went wrong, so what would it be and when?

They dropped off the bound techs, still unconscious, about halfway between the antiorbital weapon site and the command and control bunker, Mele ensuring the two were placed inside a drain culvert to protect them from the mayhem that would soon erupt. Both were still out cold. She made sure the gags didn’t obstruct their ability to breathe through their noses.

Obi turned a worried gaze on Mele. “I know we’re not hurting them, but what are the guys in charge here going to do to these two once they find out we’ve done so much damage?”

“All we can do is what we can do,” Mele said, not surprised that once Obi had seen the techs as people she had lost any desire to kill them out of hand. “I’m sure not hauling them out of here with us.”

At the command bunker, Grant was waiting just outside the front entrance, weapon ready as he scanned his surroundings. “Are we ready?”

“You tell me,” Mele said.

“All bombs planted. I just have to set the timer for the fuel-air explosive that will pop the top off this fixer-upper.”

“Do it, and get everyone else out here. Obi, start leading them back to the tunnel entrance. You know where it is? Right. Listen up, everyone. Nobody relax yet. Stay in full-alert mode until we get inside that tunnel again and are riding the ’pede back to the WinG.”

Mele waited with growing nervousness as the last members of the team left the bunker. As soon as Grant gave her an all clear she waved him off to join the others, then waited, cautiously watching for any sign of alarm. She checked the pad. Ten minutes until both malware bombs at remote sites and physical bombs at the bunker and big gun started going off.

“I cut this a little too close,” she muttered, backing away from the bunker, then running to join the others through the deceptively peaceful quiet of the night.

Almost everyone was inside the tunnel when Mele reached them. She waved the last two inside, lowering herself behind them but keeping her eyes on the bunker.

Which was why she saw the ground vehicle pull up at the command bunker. Her lower body already inside the tunnel, Mele laid her upper body on the ground, watching. Three soldiers got out of the vehicle, moving with the slow, casual pace of people who expected no danger. Distant sounds of conversation came to her, too faint to make out but followed by unmistakable laughter.

Five minutes left. If these soldiers from Scatha realized what had happened and acted quickly, they could still disarm some of the bombs.