"Weir needs only say they have gone into seclusion after their tragic loss of brother and father."
"Do we use jets or stay on the ground and run to get to Cork?"
"Your expertise with the jump jets is limited."
"Take over," Cletus said, "and then relinquish when we get to the fort." He disliked giving up control this way, but Leanne's experience got them where they could rescue his mother and sister faster. If Scarlotti was with them, he could be added to that roster of those being saved.
Leanne engaged the QED. The jump jets kicked in, sending the warbot arrowing upward, then tipping over to drive through the atmosphere so fast the top of the armored head began to glow. As suddenly as she had assumed control, she released it. Cletus watched Cork expand in his display and immediately regained command of the powerful robot as it settled down along a paved road meandering through a forested area. Small fires exploded from dried undergrowth as the jets died. He ignored such minor destruction as the fighting machine walked forward. Cletus allowed its AI to handle the random fire from scattered knots of soldiers as he searched the buildings ahead with his most advanced sensors.
"I found the prison. There are a couple dozen people in cells, another twenty outside cells that must be guards. We'll have to free them all. Avoid damage there, Leanne. None at all to those in the cells."
"I understand. However, we are beginning to take more serious fire."
A rocket collided squarely with his chest and erupted in an oily fire that spread as it dripped down his torso. The napalm stuck to the heavy armor but did nothing to melt it. Cletus realized this wasn't the intent. The fire blanked his forward sensors with intense heat that rendered IR and most of the visual spectrum ineffectual.
"Turn around, face backward. Your rear sensors are as acute as the forward looking ones."
Cletus took the advice and located the prison again. No amount of work using his sensors identified the prisoners, though. As he spun about to stride toward the detention center, red lights began winking at him on his HUD. The robot reached the limit of what it could do on its own and required human direction.
He quickly saw that the weapons directed him were increasingly potent. The napalm burned itself off and gave him a better appraisal of what he faced. The laser cannon mounted at the corner of the detention building cycled and licked at his chest. The warbot automatically sidestepped, reacting faster than he could have. But with increasing computer power required for such active defense, he had to direct the lasers and rockets himself.
A quick sweep of lasers on both arms wiped out the most dangerous of the weapons clusters firing on him. A sudden lurch sent him staggering forward. It was as if someone had clubbed him on the back of his head. A 360-degree sensor scan showed that aircraft entered the fight now.
He had only two rocket tubes covering his rear. He started to launch when he saw contrails snaking up toward the fighters. Leanne had launched a pair of 25 cm missiles that would not quit until they found their targets. And they did. Two fighters vanished in fireballs.
"They released a new nanodrone swarm. We can't wipe them all out."
Cletus saw the problem, agreed with Leanne, but tried to sweep the sky with a continuous wave laser anyway. Tiny electric sparks popped up above him, but for every gnat-sized drone he destroyed three remained. Worse, the defenders could pump up the numbers in the swarm until the sky turned black. They had to use their onboard sensors. The soldiers had only to access the data sent from the swarm to know every movement, every detail of the warbots' movement, armament and condition.
"I'll make a dash to the prison. Cover me."
"Wait, Cletus. I'm picking up heavier artillery. Tanks. What we faced until now were all automated responses. These are human-controlled and likely to be erratic."
He saw that she allowed her warbot to fire automatically. With computer versus computer, the destruction quotient tipped in favor of the towering mechanicals. With humans hunting for weaknesses or devising on-the-spot tactics, the fight would be tougher. A quick look at his HUD damage panel showed no significant problem. As with the Shillelagh, there were internal repair nano assemblers constantly patching and shunting around seriously impaired systems. More of a problem was his lavish use of the rockets earlier. He had to depend more on his energy weapons.
"When is it good to use the aurora gun?"
For a moment he thought she hadn't received his question. Just as he started to repeat it, she answered, "As a last resort, if you want anyone to survive. A discharge, even a low power, will level the entire base."
"Understood." Cletus shrugged, reloaded the launch tubes on his shoulders and set the fiery-tailed dragons loose against an approaching column of tanks. The first four tanks lurched and skewed about, a tribute to the immense power locked in each 25cm warhead. But more clanked past the damaged ones. He triggered a few tentative bursts and saw he had to crank up to full power to put these land behemoths out of commission.
"Go, free the prisoners."
He started off with Leanne engaging the metallic tsunami launched at them, then stumbled and sank as the ground beneath his feet turned to molten slag. The internal gyros worked so hard he smelled the ozone coming through the internal air system. He worried that the kilometers of foptic cable in the electronic gyroscope would melt. Then he realized he had ignored a real danger. His warbot stood knee-deep in the slag.
"What do they have that generates that much energy?" He monitored the swarm spying on him and realized the data transferred to space, not to the ground units now. A cold lump formed in his gut. "The orbital lasers are coming into position!"
A new scintillant blast beside him caused the warbot to lean heavily. Instinct or plain luck caused him to fire his jump jets. He blasted free of the molten pit, spun crazily in midair and then crashed. The AI system took over to prevent a devastating collision with a building. A few staggering steps allowed him to regain his balance. His sensors screamed in his ears as a new attack came from space.
Against the potent space-based lasers, even the warbot was vulnerable. Those beams had been designed to level entire cities.
He crouched to present a small target and plunged forward. He slashed through buildings and vehicles and, although he couldn't tell, soldiers trying to stop his rampage with nothing more than sidearms or laserifles.
Ahead of him a shimmering picket fence formed. A half dozen orbital continuous wave lasers blocked him from the prison. To attempt to go through that deadly picket fence would be suicidal. Alternate beams winked out for their batteries to recharge the weapons. Even with such space, he would be easily destroyed in he tried to squeeze between.
A tank shell crashed into his back. The explosion knocked him forward toward the deadly energy curtain. Only by flopping forward to land on his front did he keep from being destroyed.
"I can take care of the tanks," came Leanne's still calm voice. "The Shillelagh must do what it can to destroy the orbiting laser battle platforms."
"Message sent," Cletus responded. "I was already keying in the microburst message. Voice com is out."
"Lasercom is useless with the orbital lasers discharging like this. They ionize the air and disrupt line-of-sight lasers."
"My father'll do what he can, but we're on our own for a few more minutes."
Cletus doubted his father would destroy the orbital station, even if he could. Those were loyal citizens obeying orders. Worse, if the station was destroyed this might encourage Eire and Uller to press the ground troop advantage they held along the borders. To protect his son and rescue his wife and daughter, Donal Tomlins had to risk his entire nation. That was a decision Cletus wasn't sure he could make, even as he took increasing fire from both tank and artillery.
He used his lefthand laser to kick up a cloud of dirt and rock when an energy blast came from above. The debris momentarily hid him from the spying nano-swarm and caused the orbital laser to miss. He swung his laser around, firing continuously until he reali
zed his constant discharge sapped the power of his weapons and forced recovery time he dared not take. Across his HUD a river of fiercely glowing red lights showed how he was overheating too many systems.
Through the haze he created he saw Leanne's warbot standing proudly, firing rockets with measured regularity from both shoulder hard points. An occasional contrail appeared at her waist, showing her judicious use of the 25s. Her arms moved constantly, but the lasers only discharged occasionally. She conserved her energy and fired only for maximum effect. He took this lesson seriously as he bulled his way parallel to the energy beams preventing him from reaching the prison.
The barrage had to cease eventually. He knew the capacity of those battle platforms. He dodged for a few minutes, then acted when the beams. eased up. He applied full power to his legs to surge forward. Response came sluggishly, showing how drained he had become. A frightening thought of being trapped inside this metal coffin to suffocate, to be cooked alive, to die, turned him cautious for an instant.
This saved his life. If he had bulled on, the downward stabbing laser would have cut through his head and the entire torso of the warbot. He raised his right hand and fired at the prison. The ravening beam melted the razor-wire fence, cut through the maze intended to slow escaping prisoners and caused the entire front to evaporate in a haze of destruction. The prisoners inside had to get free on their own.
Cletus found himself engaging a tank that had circled about and came at him from the right flank. He depressed the trigger for a shoulder rocket to take it out. Empty. He tried his left shoulder. The tube there exploded, a rocket malfunction. He felt the vibration throughout the ponderous metallic body, but worse, the explosion damaged the sensors on the left side, leaving him virtually blind there.
He twisted about, brought the tank into his sights and fired both lasers. The eye-searing beams crossed at the tank turret. The explosion as all of the MBT's inboard shells went off simultaneously caused him to lose balance and sit heavily. Even the warbot had to obey the laws of inertia and momentum transfer. Most of the tank turret had crashed into his chest.
With savage fury, he erased more of the HUD panels showing the damage he had sustained. Coming to hands and knees, he found the proper sequence to stand again. His visuals were gone, but IR ghost images of prisoners flooding from the stockade made his heart race. At least he thought they had to be prisoners since there were so many.
He frantically scanned his virtual panels for an external circuit that would allow him to call out for his mother and sister. If there was one, it had been destroyed. The prisoners began scattering. If he wanted to rescue his family, he had to act now. He began working to pop open the chest so he could look out.
"What are you doing? You'll die if you breach the seals on your unit." Leanne's usually calm voice rose to a shrill pitch. "You can't find them now. We have to rendezvous with the Shillelagh immediately."
"I won't leave them. They're out there somewhere and need me." Cletus started his robot moving. It canted to one side, corrected and almost became vapor when a new assault from space lit up the prison compound. "The lasers will kill them."
"You're drawing that laser fire! Keep hunting and you will seal their deaths. Return to the Shillelagh immediately." Leanne's voice was more controlled now. "We are out of rockets and between a new wave of tanks approaching and the orbital lasers, there is no hope for our mission to succeed. Retreat, Cletus. Now, while we have enough fuel to reach orbit."
"No!"
He slammed full power into robotic legs, driving the warbot forward. No response. He worked through the HUD panels. Only one appeared in front of him.
"You can't take control. Let me go!"
His angry protests were drowned out as the jets kicked the warbot aloft and higher into the atmosphere. The seals began leaking precious air the higher he flew until it became a race between reaching the safety of the dreadnought's pressurized cargo bay and dying in transit.
But nothing he tried reversed the warbot's flight away from the prison and his mother and sister. Nothing.
Chapter Twelve
"Sirens! What's that mean, Mama? Are we under attack?" Bella huddled down in the corner of the prison cell, looking miserable. Kori wanted to slap the girl and give her some backbone.
"It might mean we can get out of here. Weir could never mount a takeover of the government and not have opposition. Someone in the military must be fighting against him, attempting a coup. That fool Riddle was always more ambitious than clever." She went to the steel door and placed her hands against it to feel the warmth and distant vibrations. Explosions! "We'll be free soon. There is a huge fight going on nearby."
She stood on tiptoe and peered through the small grate in the door. Her field of vision was reduced to a narrow cone directly in front of their cell, but she saw movement reflected in a shiny patch of metal on the door across the corridor. She sucked in her breath, held it for a moment, then called out, "Are you in the next cell? Scarlotti? Are you there?"
The dim reflection stirred, as if someone reached through the grate on the adjacent door and waved at her.
"Damn you. Shout! I can't make out what you're trying to do waving those fingers around like that."
"The guards will hear."
It was Sean Scarlotti in the next cell.
"They're occupied with an attack. That's what the sirens mean, you fool."
"Kori, I got off a microburst before the soldiers captured me. And I got back a reply. Donal's still alive!"
For a moment she stood frozen to the spot. Hope tried to rise within her but she held it down.
"Are you sure? How?"
"I got a recognition signal back from the Shillelagh. I sent a microburst and got one back with all the proper significators to verify the source."
"A recognition signal only means the ship wasn't destroyed."
"If the dreadnought is still in space, Donal must be, too. And Cletus! That must be them coming for us!"
Bella crowded close and called past her mother, "Are you sure, Sean? Please, don't lie to give us hope. Please don't."
"It's true. I have a burst transmitter embedded in my hand. It sends the incoming signal directly to my brain where it's decoded."
"In his micro-sized brain, decoded? We're doomed," Kori said, but in spite of herself, she felt they had a chance now. To Scarlotti, she called, "Can they home in on your signal?"
"I'm sending out a pulse every minute or two. That's all the power my body generates."
"Burn out your damned brain for all I care. Get in touch with Donal and be sure he knows we're here."
"The alert means something unusual is happening. It's got to be Donal coming for you." Scarlotti's voice cracked with strain.
"Mama, how? Papa can't land the Shillelagh. It's too big. It's not designed for maneuvering in the atmosphere."
"A dartabout can land," shouted Scarlotti over the increasing din. "The Shillelagh has several on board, I think."
Kori tried to remember but couldn't. For all the times she had been aboard what was the de facto Burran flagship, she had paid scant attention to such things. The time it afforded to be with Donal always had been her goal, not all the toys stuffed into a warship when there wasn't an enemy worthy of mention from Ballymore to engage the dreadnought. The chances were good, though, that there were adequate shuttle craft aboard since Donal wouldn't permit a Far Kingdom ship to take him from the Shillelagh to the planet. He would insist on his own craft throughout the trade mission. A carrier, a dartabout or even something larger. That had to be coming for them and causing the tumult outside.
She pressed her face to the grate and tried to see if any of the guards patrolled the cellblock. A flash of green uniform caught her eye as a soldier moved at the far end of the corridor, then all that remained was the incessant shriek of the warning siren. She stepped back and stared hard at the door, as if force of will would cause it to spring open. The first thing she had done when they were locked in had b
een to examine the door, the walls and floor and ceiling, every detail in the five-meter square cell. If they were to escape someone outside had to open the door. Even with a lasepistol, she saw no way to burn through the carefully protected lock.
The entire building shuddered, causing Bella to stumble into her arms. She tried to hold up her daughter, but a secondary explosion knocked her off her feet. Sitting on the floor, awkwardly holding Bella made her uneasy. She helped the girl stand, then she got to her feet.
"Kori, Bella! Are you all right?"
"We're here, Sean." Bella started to cry. "We're going to die in here."
"I'm coming for you. Hold on a few more minutes."
Kori snorted in disgust. Scarlotti had no better chance of getting free than they did, though his admission of having a microburst transceiver surgically embedded in his hand surprised her. She hadn't thought he was one for such extreme body modification. The medical reports of serious cancers and inflammation deterred most people from the insertion of any such electronic device. She shuddered. What the connections did to the recipient's brain was even more terrible. That might be why she disliked Scarlotti. He wasn't quite right because of the neural insertions scrambling his good sense.
Right now, she wished she had a laser-replaced finger or two.
"Stand back. I'm blowing open the door."
Kori started to speak, then wrapped her arms around tighter her daughter and turned from the door as it exploded inward. Scarlotti stood in the corridor with a smoking laserifle in his hands. His face was streaked with dirt and a wild, crazy look had replaced his usual collected demeanor. For a moment they all stood there frozen, then Bella rushed to him and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him in spite of the dirt.
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