"The Indians pulled out of the Alliance last week, aftah the headhunters revealed the little nasty the Alliance OSS pulled on they last election… but it's almighty confused. Burma—" an area in the lower right corner shaded from white to gray—"counterseceded back to the Alliance, and there was fightin' in Rangoon. Alliance seems to have won, worse luck. We've stayed conspicuously peaceful,"—a snicker of laughter ran through the room—"which put the secessionists firmly in power in New Delhi. Just long enough fo' the ground an' air units the Indians were contributin' to the Alliance to transfer their allegiance to the new Indian Republic, but not long enough fo' them to settle their share of the orbital assets. We've recognized the new government, an' they've reciprocated. Nice of them."
Another wave of chuckles. "Which means as of the present, everybody has recognized the new government as sovereign. But," The squadron commander tapped her pointer into a gloved hand. "But, the Alliance hasn't yet signed a defense treaty with the Republic, which has no credible nuclear strike force or defenses. We've got a window of opportunity; now we're goin' jump through, shootin'. Calculation is that the Alliance will run around screamin' and shoutin' and do fuck-all fo' the week or so we need to overrun India. We'll carefully avoid any provocation elsewhere, or in space. Now, befo' I proceed to the tactical situation, any questions?"
"Ma'am?" A man's voice, from the seat on the other side of Myfwany.
Yolande turned to look at him. Pilot Officer Timothy Wellington; a slim man of middle height, with a conservative side-crop and a seal-brown mustache, a jaunty white scarf tucked into his black flight-overall. She gritted her teeth and fought back a flush. Not that he was a bad sort. City boy, from Peking; knowledgeable about the visual arts, worth talking to on poetry. She had even quite enjoyed the several occasions when Myfwany had invited him over for the night. I just wish he'd learn not to presume on acquaintance, she thought. Also that Myfwany would slap him down more often. He had been hanging around entirely too much lately.
"What if the Alliance treat it as an attack on they own territory?" Wellington said.
The commander shrugged. "Everybody dies," she answered. "Any other questions?"
He sat down and leaned over to whisper in Myfwany's ear; she turned a laugh into a cough. Yolande keyed her notebook and poised to record, elbowing her friend surreptitiously in the ribs. This is important.
"Our role will be to interdict the medium-high altitudes. We're doin' this invasion from a standin' start, can't mobilize without scaring the prey back into the Yankee camp. We expect the Alliance to continue feedin' the Indians operational intelligence. No way we can complain of that as hostile activity. Our preliminary sweep will be—"
"Woof!" Myfwany said, as they cleared the doorway. "And to think, only yesterday I was complainin' on how dull everythin' is around here!"
Yolande nodded, standing closer for the comfort of body-warmth. "Some of that schedulin' looks tricky; we're dependin' hard-like on the groundpounders takin' the forward bases."
She stretched. "Well, let's go catch dinner." Their squadron had always been theoretically tasked with neutralizing Alliance turboram assets in India… in the Final War nobody had been expecting. This won't be the Final, she told herself firmly. Images of thermonuclear fire blossoming across Claestum painted themselves on the inside of her eyelids, and she shivered slightly. Nobody's that crazy, not even us. I hope.
"Ah—" Myfwany hesitated, then leaned against the corridor wall. "Ah, actually, sweetlin', Tim sort of invited me ovah to his quarters fo' the evenin' and night. Yo' don't mind do yo'?"
"Oh." Yolanda swallowed. A pulse beat in her neck. "Mmmm, was I included in the invite?"
"I'm sure Tim wouldn't mind 'tall iff'n yo' wants to , sweet."
"I——" Yolanda looked aside for a moment. "Let's go then."
CENTRAL INDIAN FRONT
15,000 METERS
JANUARY 16, 1976
1400 HOURS
"Shitshitshit," Yolande muttered to herself. Myself and the flight recorder, thought some remote corner of her mind.
The canopy of the Falcon VI-a went black above her for an instant. Automatic shielding against optical-frequency lasers— the Alliance platforms in LEO had decided that that did not constitute intervention, and all the Draka orbital battlestations could do was to respond in kind. She banked, and acceleration slammed her against the edge of the clamshell, vision graying. The Indian P-70 was still dodging, banking; they were at Mach 3, and if he went over the border into Alliance airspace the battlestations would not let him back in. There was no way to dodge orbital free-electron lasers; they could slash you out of the sky in seconds… as the Alliance platforms would do to her if she followed the Indian too far.
"Bing!" Positive lock on her Skorpion AAM.
"Away!" she barked. The computer fired, and the Falcon shuddered, on the verge of tumbling as the brief change in airflow struck. The canopy cleared, and she had a glimpse of the missile streaking away. Then her fingers were moving on the pressure pads; cut thrust, bank-turn-dive, and the red line on the console map coming closer and closer. Closer, too close.
The squadron override sounded. "Ingolfsson, watch it."
"I am, I am," she grunted, feeling the aircraft judder. Blood surged under the centrifugal pull, and she could feel a sudden sharp pain at the corner of one eye, a warm trickle; a bloodvessel had burst. Fuckin insane, these things aren't designed for this limited airspace. Like playing tackleball on a field of frictionless ice, with instant cremation the penalty for touching the sides. A turboram could cross India from edge to edge in thirty seconds or less.
The calm voice of the machine. "Impact on target. Kill."
There was no time even for exultation. "Myfwany, yo' pickin' up anythin'?"
"Not in our envelope." Her voice was adrenaline-hoarse. "Yo' gettin' too low, 'Landa."
"Tell me."
The edges of the wing-body were starting to glow cherry-red, and the sensors told the same story. ionization was fouling up her electrodetectors, too; she might be too fast for the low-altitude turbojet fighters, but anything optimized for the thicker layers that happened to be in the right position would eat her.
"Come on, yo' cow," she muttered to the aircraft. "Up we go."
The ground was shockingly close, and she was still far too fast. All right, double Immelman and up. Her fingers cut thrust, and the aircraft flipped. C-force snapped her head back, and for an instant she was staring at the maplike view of the subcontinent below. A point of blue-white light blinked against the brown-green land, and the console confirmed it. .5 kiloton. A blast of charged particles. Radiation bomb. A nuke warhead designed to maximize personnel damage, wouldn't want to mess up the new property, d shitfire I'm glad I'm not down there…
Pulling up, six G's, seven. Nose to the sky, open throttle and here we go, fangs out and hair on fire, heeeeeeee-aaaaah. Feed thrust, overmax; speed bottoming out at Mach 1.7 and climbing, 2.1, 2.2, 2.8. The screens showed Myfwany closing in to wing guard position. And—damn. The canopy went black. Petty. Very petty.
The squadron commander broke in again. "No bogies, I repeat, no bogies our quadrant. Good work. Check fungibles."
Her eyes went back to the console. "Fuel .17, no Skorpions. Full 30mm drums." Close combat was proving to be something of an anachronism.
"All MK units, all MK units, squadron is cleared fo' alternate E-17, mark an' acknowledge."
The exterior temperatures were not falling the way they should; they must be tweaking the laser up there. Yolande spared a moment's snarl for the invulnerable enemies above. Your day will come, pigs. E-17 came up on the landscape director, down by her left knee; northern Punjab, enemy base. Status showed heavily watered runways, fires, no actual fighting and low radiation count, but massive damage to the facilities. No runways, vertical landing, she thought unhappily. Which meant no takeoff at all, until the unit support caught up with them; that would burn the last of the fuel. The follow-up waves would be using their
base back in Bactria, logical but unpleasant.
"All MK, take yo' birds in," the commander's voice continued.
Yolande felt a vast stomach-loosening rush of relief, and pushed it back with a savage effort. "It isn't ovah 'till it's ovah," she told herself. Aloud: "Acknowledged."
"CRACK."
Marya Lefarge threw herself flat and rolled, over the edge of the wall. The ditch was two meters down, but soft mud. She leopard-crawled, did a sprint and forward roll over a bank of shrubs, fell to her belly again, rolled down a short slope and raised her pencil-periscope to look back. Smoke, smoke rising against the far blue-white line of the Himalayas that towered over the Punjab plains. Sunset already beginning to tinge the snowpeaks with crimson. The line of the retaining wall, and… helmets. Enemy, ridged fore-and-aft and with two short antennae at the rear. Their IV and millimetric scanners would be looking for movement, for human-band temperature points.
Two Draka troopers had vaulted down from the terrace. The building above it had been the HQ offices of Chandragupta Base; now it was burning rubble, after the cluster-shell hits. The troopers were bulky and sexless, visored helmets and articulated cermet armor; they went to their stomachs and scanned back and forth across the flat runway before them. Nothing moved on it, nothing except the smoke and flames from smashed aircraft that had been caught on launch; one had gotten into the air before the homing missile hit, and its ruins sprawled across half a kilometer. The air was heavy with the oily smell of burning fuel and scorched earth.
There were smashed revetment-hangars across the way. Something was moving there. A trio of low beetling shapes moved out onto the pavement, their gun-pods swiveling; light tanks. The two Draka infantrymen rose and trotted towards them, and more followed over the retaining wall. They moved with impressive ease under their burdens of armor and equipment, spreading out into a dispersed formation. Good, Marya thought. They'll be concentrating on the link up. She waited a hundred heartbeats, then a hundred more. Waiting was the worst. Running and shooting you didn't have time to be frightened… Mission first, she reminded herself. A bollixed-up mission to save remnants from the worst disaster in decades; there was data in the base computers which must not be allowed into enemy hands.
Marya rose into a crouch. She was wearing a standard Alliance base-personnel grey coverall, with Indian markings. That fitted her cover identity; the bomblet launcher in her hands did not… Runway to her left and rear, hectares of it, swarming with enemy troops now. HQ complex ahead, and she would just have to take her chances. A deep breath, and now. She sprinted back along her path, leapt, caught the lip of the wall and rolled over it. Nothing on the way back, nothing but a steamcar in the middle of the gardens, bullet-riddled and… not empty. A body lying half-out the driver's door, a pistol in one hand. She moved quickly from one cover to the next, feeling lungs hot and taut despite the dry-season cool of the air.
In through the front doors, and there were more bodies, enough to make the air heavy with the burnt-pork-and-shit stink of close combat. Past the front offices, and the light-level sank to a dim gloom, shadows moving with uneven flamelight. She stopped in a doorway long enough to pull the filter over her nose and mouth, then froze. Steps coming down the hall, booted feet.
Sorry if you're a friendly, she thought, and plunged out into the corridor with her finger already tightening.
Schoop. The launcher kicked against her shoulder, and the 35mm projectile was on its way as the Draka assault rifle came up. Marya went boneless and dropped, as the round impacted on the center of the soldier's breastplate. That was a ceramic-fiber-metal-synthetic sandwich… but her bomblet was shaped-charge. The finger of superheated plasma speared through the armor, through vaporizing flesh, splashed against the backplate. Body fluids turned to steam and blew outwards through the soft resistance. Marya threw herself upright and ran forward; she tried to leap the corpse and the spreading puddle around it, but her boots went tack-tack on the linoleum for a minute afterwards.
Nothing moved as she tracked through towards the command center. Critical window, she thought; the moments between the assault-landing and the arrival of the Intelligence teams. Soldiers had a natural preference for dealing with the things that might shoot back at them, and so might leave an area already swept lightly guarded. She turned another corridor, came to a makeshift barricade. The bodies beyond were Indian, a scratch squad of office workers and one perimeter guard in infantry kit; they bore no wounds, but lay as if they had died in convulsions. Marya's skin itched, as if insects were crawling under it. Contact nerve agent, she thought, and put an antidote tab between her back teeth. That might work…
The stairs that led down into the control center were ahead. It would be guarded, but… She turned aside, into an office. It was empty, with a cup of tea still on the desk and the screen of the terminal flickering, as if the occupant— Ranjit Singh, from the nameplate on the door—might return any second. A quick wrench with her knife opened the ventilation shaft. The American pulled a pair of lightmag goggles out of a pocket and slipped them over her head. Darkness vanished, replaced by a peculiar silvery flatness. Marya slung the bomblet-launcher down her back, took a deep breath, and chinned herself on the edge of the ventilator.
Just wide enough, she thought. Just.
The Draka working over the base computer had the gearwheel emblem of Technical Section on her shoulder; so did the two gray-uniformed serf Auxiliaries helping her. They were all in battle-armor, though, a technical commando unit tasked with front-line electronic reconnaissance. Marya could see them all, down the short section of vertical shaft; she was lying full-length in the horizontal passageway above, with only her head out. That ought to make her nearly invisible from below, with the wire grille in the ceiling between her and them. And… yes, movement just out of sight. Probably troopers, guarding the tech. The peripheral units of the Alliance computer were open, and boxes of crackle-finished Draka electronics set up about it, a spiderweb of plug-in lines and cross-connections.
The OSS agent strained to hear.
"Careful, careful!" the Draka was saying. "Up ten… Fo' mo'. Right, now keep the feed modulated within ten percent of those parameters, and she won't blow when Ah open the casin'."
Another figure, a middle-aged Indian in uniform, with his arms secured behind his back. A bayoneted rifle rested between his shoulderblades, jabbed lightly.
"Yes, indeed," he babbled in singsong English. "That is the way of it."
Too bad. The black-uniformed Tech Sec specialist pulled the visor of her helmet down and took up a miniature cutting torch. Cracking the core unit, Marya thought grimly. The embedded instruction sets of a central computer and the crucial hard-memory were physically confined in its core, even on civilian models. This was a maximum-security military Phoebos, and it would be set to slag down unless you were very careful.
Careful is the word, Marya thought. This mission was important enough to make her expendable… but there was no point in being reckless. Her lips moved back from her teeth behind the mask. What was it Uncle Nate used to say? "A good soldier has to be ready to die. A suicidal one just leaves you with another damned empty slot to train someone for."
If I push the launcher over the edge at arm's length, she thought, and then drop the satchel charge right away, the ceiling should shelter me from most of the blast. That would certainly take care of the mission, now that the Draka had conveniently opened up the armored protection around the core.Then I can go back up the shaft, and try and make it out.
Soundlessly, she whispered: "And maybe the horse will learn to sing."
Millimeter by millimeter, she inched backward until only the end of the launcher tube was over the lip of the vertical shaft. Her other hand brought the explosive charge up, plastique and metal and soft padded overcase. It scraped gently against the tube wall in the narrow space between hip and panel, and the sound seemed roaringly loud. No louder than the beat of blood in her ears. Stupid, stupid, a voice called at the back o
f her mind. You volunteered, you're too stupid to live, you could be home now.
"Fuck it," she said, and pulled the trigger.
* * *
"Mistis—" the Janissary decurion began, as the canopy of Yulande's fighter slid back and she rose from the opening clamshell restraints. The cool air of the Indian night poured in lit by a swollen moon and the lingering fires. Then eye-drying warmth as the inflow crackled across the fuselage of her aircraft. The Draka picked up her ground-kit, machine-pistol, and helmet. There were a half-dozen figures in infantry armor, with a flat cart of some sort.
Then the serf soldier's voice altered. "Mistis Yolande!" He saluted and flipped up the faceplate of his helmet.
Yolande stared for a moment; it was an unremarkable face, heavy beak nose and olive complexion… then memory awoke.
"Ali?" she said. "Rahksan's Ali?"
His grin showed white as she stepped up onto the rim of the cockpit and jumped down, careful to avoid the savage residual heat of the leading edges.
"The same, Mistis. Swears it like home leave to see yo'."
"Freya bless, small world," she continued, and gave him a light punch on one shoulder. Her gloved fist rang on the lobster-tail plates of his armguard. The legion blazon on it showed a hyena's skull biting down on a human thighbone; that was the Devil Dogs, one of the better subject-race units. "An' yo' comin' up in it, Ali. I tells yo' ma, first thing."
His fist rang on the breastplate as saluted again, then noticed his squad glancing at each other. Myfwany's Falcon lifted its canopy.
"Ah, Mistis, we got field-shelters set up over to there." He pointed, and she saw prefabricated revetments on an uncratered stretch of runway. Two big winged tilt-rotor transports, as well; one began reving for takeoff as she looked. "We's gotta get y' plane towed ovah there. Yo' support team's comin' through, later tonight. We's got perimeter guard."
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