Bob nodded and looked at the overlay maps of the peninsula. It was just over 500 kilometres long, crescent shaped with a mountainous spine and at its widest point almost forty kilometres wide.
The brigadier continued. 'The one thing that is giving me nightmares is if the predators were also dropped into the ocean. The ACEs think that there may have been one or two, but are not sure.'
He glanced away at the screens surrounding him. 'We are coming up to our separation point, Bob. Good hunting, my friend.'
Bob nodded and the connection severed. He felt a small change in the attitude of Haast and knew that they were moving away from Berkut to take up a parallel flight path, ten kilometres apart from the great disc-shaped carrier.
He looked again at his screens, seeing the pilots clambering into their craft with the hangar crews doing final checks and topping off the tanks.
When they were five kilometres above the sea at the southernmost tip of the peninsula, the three Aurora lifted off from their hangar platforms and flew ahead of Haast, spreading out to map and identif y all possible targets on the first high-speed run up the length of the peninsula's western side. Over the next ten minutes there was furious activity as all the combat aircraft lifted away, except the Hawks and the Chrysops which were held back in reserve.
Nina looked out of the Maui's cockpit and saw the sun starting to come up over the mountain range to their east. Will called out, 'Targets. Five. So we just smash them, move on and come and do it again, and again and again. Huh? Bit tedious.'
Nina laughed and nodded. 'Yup, just like mowing a long strip of grass. Not that you have ever done the mowing. Now don't go mental with the ammunition, eh. Two rounds per target, Willy.'
'Pathetic! Want to chew the crap out of them.' Will could not actually see the targets as shown on the data feed from the Aurora recon aircraft, as the targets were obscured by the terrain. He frowned then shrugged, trusting in his instruments.
'I have control of your gun.'
He locked onto one of the predators and fired, switched targets and fired again, and even before the first rounds hit the first predator, fired on the third. One after the other they exploded. As the Maul passed high overhead, Will could see in his aiming screens the body parts strewn about. He felt a chill sensation.
'Nina,' he said, 'that is damage like I have never seen before. They blew apart all in the same way. Like they were created to come apart like that. Fucked up, if you ask me.'
'Yeah, not our concern now, Will. We smash them down at this stage. That's what we have been told to do.'
They flew on with their escort of three Tengu small fliers at a leisurely 150 kilometres per hour, steadily clicking up the body count until they came across a small herd of wildebeest standing over the large, fat sluglike pupae of more predators.
Will fired into as many as he could, taking care not to kill the animals, while the three Tengu flew down like angry hornets and picked off the individual targets from much closer range. When all they could see left was smashed twitching predators they climbed away to take station with the Maul again.
The morning wore on until at midday, local time, they were all combing the slopes of the narrowing choke point of the peninsula, seeing nothing until they flew up against the controlled area of the Thorn and its dozens of small aircraft. In a carefully orchestrated turning, the forces of Berkutand Haast then flew back down the peninsula, with the outermost Mauls and their escorts flying high into the mountains.
Nico Matsis was eating a pack of fresh cherries as the Maul flew on autopilot. He looked at his crewmate's helmeted head in the comms screen.
'Wake up, Viggo. You look like you nodded off.'
Viggo Eames started, having obviously been asleep. 'What! Is there something happening? Have not had a target to wallop in over two hours.'
He yawned hugely then shook himself and sat up to pull out a ration pack and open a container of freshly sliced pineapple to eat.
Nico nodded at his friend. 'Yeah, well, I have looked at the kill figures from command. We have knocked out 180 predators and put bullets into a bit over 1600 pupae, so I reckon that by tomorrow afternoon we should be cleaning up. But you know me, I am waiting for the shit to happen because it always does. What do you think of Will's idea that the predators seem to come apart in the same pattern of segments?'
Viggo looked at his friend and said in all seriousness, 'I think that it is a purposeful design. We know that they can be put back together by another predator. I think that we should hit the things with incendiaries. Yeah, sorry, Nico, but I have dark feelings about this whole deal.'
Nico nodded in agreement. 'Trouble is, if we start a wildfire we will be in even more trouble. Smoke would fuck up the only way we can detect the bloody things. And it's high summer, so things look ready to burn anyway. Time will tell, mate, time will tell. Hey! Been meaning to ask ... that glorious looking woman you rescued. She is out of the medical suite I see and I spied her coming out of your quarters early this morning. Gorgeous!You going to introduce me?'
Viggo laughed, then said, 'No, no, hell no!' 'Arse! Has she got a sister?'
Viggo chuckled. 'Just for you, Nico, I will ask.'
Late that night the two carriers held station off the southernmost tip of the peninsula. Their water collection units were suspended below them and pumping thousands of cubic metres of seawater into the ships to be processed for fuel and consumables.
The commanders of the three groups were in a linked conference with the ACEs, Maqua and Ayana.
'Our thanks for taking the pressure off our forward stronghold, Major Suzuki. Those strafing runs of yours disrupted the predators for long enough for us to pull back and the actions of the Haast and Berkut crews slowed the predators' breeding cycle dramatically. I presume that the same will occur on the eastern side of the peninsula tomorrow morning?' 'You presume correctly, Maqua,' the brigadier replied. 'Yes, we will carry out this holding action again tomorrow but I know that it is only a holding action. How many types of the
large insect versions of the predators are you now aware of?'
The huge snow tigress, Ayana, answered and at the same time sent them images of the insects. 'We know of three types. One burrowing, one walking or crawling, and the other flying. All deadly. One of their worst characteristics is that the burrowing type is transported by the flying type, so the burrower could be dropped onto anything it wants to target. When the full-sized predators come under attack and are broken apart, if there is another predator present the creature will reassemble another from the undamaged parts left. Those parts that cannot be incorporated over the course of a few days, restructure themselves into the insects.'
Bob spoke up. 'So our shooting holes in them today was pointless?'
Ayana shook her head. 'No. 'It gives us time as we are not yet certain of what the insects' long-term goals are. But I would suggest that the day after tomorrow when you go back over the area you have some way of killing lots of palm-sized insects, preferably with fire. But, of course, until we have rain, which is forecast to occur in two days' time, we beg of you not to set the savannahs or forests ablaze. There are still hundreds of thousands of creatures down there who have not been affected by this yet.'
'We will do our very best, but this is a war and so we cannot make any promises one way or the other,' the brigadier told her. 'I am, right now, more interested to know about the flying version of this octopoid insect. How far could it get? How fast does it fly, how far can it fly and what weapons does it have?'
Ayana shook her head again. 'I am sorry. We do not know about its flight abilities. We do know that it possesses a hive mentality. The more of them that there are, the greater the intelligence. They have destroyed all my investigating swallows and any other bird, including the eagles that attempted to capture one for study, but never returned.'
'By what method did they destroy the birds?' Daisuke Suzuki asked.
'I suspect a neural toxin. It was brutally fast. Even
the ACE birds only had a few seconds to say that they were in trouble and complete their Soul Saver transfer before they died.'
Bob said, 'Gas? Or something on the surface of the insect?'
Ayana shook her head for the third time. 'Again, we do not know. Every ACE who has tried to learn this for us has died. We came to this planet to care for animals as we believed it was for the greater good. We did not come here to fight.'
Forty minutes later, after details of the next days' actions had been finalised, the conference finished. Bob sat very still in his command pod thinking. He tapped a comms icons.
'Sally, hope I am not disturbing you. Need you to come up with a list of all the neural toxins that are available to us here, onboard, now. As soon as you have it, get back to me, please.'
The woman nodded and the connection was severed. Bob smiled, knowing she realised it was urgent and therefore no need for small talk. He tapped another icon.
'Uncle,' Bob said, 'get me a method of shredding these bloody things. As soon as you find one that you know will work, start manufacturing the components for the thirty millimetre rounds.'
'Hmm, yeah, have a couple of ideas. Leave it -'
Bob interrupted him before he could continue. 'Whatever will work best, Uncle, just do it.' He cut the connection and tapped Nick Warne's icon.
The bleary face of his second-in-command looked back at him. 'Problem?'
'Yes, Nick. Info pack on the way. Pop a stim, you are not going to get much sleep for a while. We have a nasty. Start finding me solutions within the restrictions.'
The connection severed as the duty communications officer's face appeared on another screen.
'Sir, fast picket has just arrived from the Hauler. Rose Foxtrot is two days out. The other Thorn will be here in thirty-six standard hours and the third Thorn another day after that.'
Bob nodded his thanks and the screen cleared. He tapped the brigadier's icon, and the man's image appeared. He was chewing and swallowing, holding a fork with what looked like a piece of steak on it just inside the image's frame. The brigadier raised an eyebrow.
'Had an idea. We need to track these bloody things if they are going to either be reconstructed, or turn themselves into insects. Think that we could irradiate the rounds so that they would act as markers.'
'Good! I like that. Right, leave it with us. Back to you shortly.'
As the screen cleared, Bob leaned back in his seat, thinking of what else they could do to take the fight to the predators.
Then the comms screen lit with the serious face of Uncle looking at him.
'Yeah, caesium and rubidium. Small amounts available to us from the seawater processing. Plus those of us who like things to go bang always have a few extra kilo on hand anyway. Spoken with Mike Antipas and he is ramping up extraction. Also spoke with Major Kalashnokov on Berkut, and he has instructed their own systems to start storing the metals. I have started to make components. Don't suppose you have a biological component to add to the mix?'
Bob smiled, seeing Major Aydon's image appear, a beautif ul smile on her face.
'Staph bacteria, commander. We can give them a nasty dose of staphylococcus. I have looked at all the information that the ACEs passed on, including those few tissue samples that they somehow managed to obtain. I believe that the predators will be susceptible to a staph infection. We get it into their tissues and in theory it will create necrotising fasciitis. If it works, it will break them down. But knowing you, commander, I would suspect that this is just one part of a piece of potent munitions, no doubt with a copper outer case, a ceramic inner, then with a gel surrounding something like phosphorous, maybe?'
Bob and Uncle both smiled as Bob tapped Uncle's icon, making his image visible to Sally Aydon as well.
Uncle nodded at her with the look of an instructor who is delighted to see that a student has surpassed herself and said, 'Yes, well done, major. But we will use rubidium as the reactive metal.'
Sally chuckled. 'In which case, you will like the gel I have started to produce with the bacteria in it already. The internal delivery system will start delivering it to you in five kilo lots within three hours, courtesy of the medical nanobots.'
Bob cocked his head to one side. 'Good work, major. So where did you get the bacteria from? Are we not very healthy, thanks mainly to you?'
She nodded. 'Yes, but we all carry staphylococcus as a matter of course, mainly in the back of our throats. OK, I shall let you pair concoct other unpleasant weapons. I need to go find some alternatives for you.'
Before either of the men could say anything else, the screen cleared.
'Nice, really nice,' Uncle said. 'I shall press on. I have the machines starting on components. Within four hours we'll have them producing 3000 rounds an hour. Bit tight timing-wise, but should be able to have everyone bombed up with the new ammunition by first light. Right, I'm off.'
Bob nodded at his old friend. 'Good stuff, thanks, Uncle. I shall share this with Berkut.'
Looking from his pod and seeing the crew at their stations on the bridge, all bathed in soft red light, Bob felt at peace, knowing that at least they would not go down without a fight.
'It was late afternoon when Sir Mildred Jerobaum flew the Aurora high above and a few kilometres forwards of the rest of the squadrons with all his sensors watching, smelling and listening for activity. His two reconnaissance drones made a V-formation with his aircraft so that he was able to see and report across a ten-kilometre-wide area. As he saw and identified any contacts of interest, he would tag them and his onboard systems would allocate them to the following Mauls and the Q in their Gunju.
One of the drones was plotting a concentration of predators deep in a ravine high on a mountainside. Sir Mildred tapped the battle commander's icon.
'Captain?' Nick Warne answered.
'Mr Warne, I am seeing a change. This group is tightly clustered, with what appear to be caves on the north and south sides of the ravine. Also seeing large herds of bison on either side of the predators.'
There was silence from Nick Warne, something that Mildred knew from long experience of working with the major was normal.
Nick Warne finally spoke. 'OK, noted. I am sending in a squadron of armed drones. Stand by.'
Five minutes later, Mildred tapped one of his screens to look at eight large combat drones peeling off from below and behind him to begin their run into the ravine. Controlled by those of Haast's engineering crew who were not servicing aircraft being rotated back to the carrier for refuelling and rearming, the drones gave the non-flying crew hard battle experience.
He watched as they split into four pairs, each pair moving into the ravine from a different direction.
The first pair howled up the ravine flying nap-of-the-earth, as another pair came equally quickly then rapidly decelerated, waiting at the edge of the severe piece of terrain with its massive jumble of weathered, slab-shaped rocks until the other two shot over the top of the visually camouflaged predators firing down into them. The drones then swerved and impacted hard into the cliff faces, exploding and showering wreckage over one of the bison herds. The animals immediately started to stampede up the ravine, looking for a way of escape.
The other two drones slowly slipped over the edge, targeting the quickly moving predators, but before either could fire they simply rolled over and crashed into the rocks. The remaining four drones swept in from the other side, just as some of the dust cleared, showing not dismembered predators as Mildred had expected but dead and dying bison.
He immediately spoke directly to the drone controllers. 'Abort attack, abort!'
But by the time the controllers reacted, the four drones had slipped over the side of the ravine, also tumbling out of control to impact moderately hard into the stony ground.
The bison in the lower part of the ravine also reacted, running down the ravine and out into the grasslands. Mildred looked closely and saw the telltale signatures of predators running with the animals, so he logged
them and fed the information back to Haast.
One of the combat flight controllers said, 'Are those real contacts, captain? Not decoys, like the bison?'
'All my sensors say that they are.'
Mauls fired on the creatures using the new ammunition and the four predators exploded. Mildred zoomed his imagery up and painted the remains with one of his lasers, noting that the images mapped correctly with other bodies stored in his files. He swung the reconnaissance drones over for a closer look and was satisfied.
Eventually, he moved his sensors back over the ravine to see the first mob of angry bison charging back down the ravine and caught a glimpse of one of the crashed drones being dragged into one of the caves an instant before the dust from the charging bison obscured it.
'Mr Warne! See this!'
Nick Warne reacted very quickly. 'All aircraft! Be advised the enemy now have control of the remains of eight combat drones. I am transmitting self-destructs. Mr Jerobaum, stay on station and report everything. All other aircraf t, stay below the horizon of that ravine.'
Mildred told the Aurora to climb up another kilometre and to orbit the ravine. He waited to see the explosions from the drones blowing up, but saw nothing.
'Haast, self-destructs have failed,' he reported.
He continued steady circuits of the ravine, looking down through the heavy clouds of dust, trying to see the other drones, aware they were really tough machines and that the linear accelerators and magazines were even tougher and designed to take a great deal of punishment.
On his comms screen, the private icon of Viggo Eames came up.
'Viggo?'
'Get out! Get out now!'
Mildred hit the throttles, dived, turned and started throwing the Aurora about the sky. The first two linear rifle strikes hit the aircraft, punching fist-sized holes through the fuel tanks. The next two hit the antigravity power systems and the last two smashed great holes through his communication and sensor systems. He switched his comms to his laser . systems and blew the outer shield of the canopy off just as four strikes blew the turbines of his engines to pieces. He pulled the ejection levers and the front of the aircraft, including the cockpit, rocketed upwards with small wings popping out the sides. He snapped the little survival aircraft over on its back and dived straight down, weaving in every direction. Seconds later, the nose disintegrated from linear rifle shots with shrapnel slicing through the cockpit and into Mildred, who retained consciousness for long enough to hit his locator beacon.
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