by David Drake
He'd been speaking to Corius, expecting him to relay the instruction to Fallert if he approved it, but the reptileman was apparently able to hear better over the fans than a human could. Daniel felt the direction of thrust shift as the aircar swung slowly toward the island.
The distant ship's thrumming vibrated the night even over the car's intake whine. The flare of ionized atoms returning to their normal state was first brighter than any star, then brighter than the small moon. It continued to increase. Daniel's goggles dimmed the discharge, but a ghost of the thrusters' rainbow aura remained.
Only one ship was landing: the Duilio remained in orbit. The warehouse personnel had told Daniel that was the procedure. He hadn't doubted what they said—it was the logical way for the Pellegrinians to operate, after all—but he liked to see things for himself. He didn't have a plan or an inkling of a plan at the moment, but when he did he'd have the facts right.
The Rainha swelled into a fat, blunt-ended cylinder flanked by the lesser cylinders of its outriggers, bathed in its own exhaust. The roar of its descent sent ripples across the sea's surface, even miles away. Daniel smiled, unconsciously moved by the sight of a starship and all the wonder and delight that brought to his mind.
His earpiece blipped at him. He couldn't hear the message over the Rainha's thunder.
"Say again, over," he said, cupping his hand over the earpiece. His response went out as VHF because the aircar's commo suite didn't have a laser emitter. Daniel was taking Adele's transmission's through the goggles, but the tiny RCN sending unit was useless beyond intercom range.
As he spoke, he switched his viewing mode from light amplification to IR. He saw an APC lifting from the opposite shore of Mandelfarne Island even as Adele said, "You've been. . . The APCs they use to es. . . are to shoot you . . . . . . was manned when the alert sounded. O. . ."
"Fallert!" Daniel said. He pointed his carbine as the snakeman's head turned enough to catch the motion with his peripheral vision. Air compressed by the APC's fans was a warm plume spreading beneath the vehicle. "They're on us!"
Fallert shifted his throttles and steering yoke. The car stayed low as it accelerated, but to Daniel's surprise the stern lifted slightly. The downdraft threw up the expected roostertail, but because the car wasn't level the spray was nearly the length of the vehicle behind where Daniel would've expected it to be.
Oh, yes. Fallert knew how to pilot an aircar.
"I am returning to base!" the snakeman called. "We could not be fully recharged before we left tonight. If I let them chase us out to sea, I do not know that we will be able to return."
We ought to be able to make it, Daniel thought. He loosened his seat belt with his left hand as his head turned to follow the APC. No plasma cannon had much range in an atmosphere, and that was true in spades for the little popgun the APC carried.
It wasn't a popgun compared to an aircar, of course.
The faint hope that the APC didn't see them—that it'd been sent out because somebody on shore had heard sounds—was dashed when the big vehicle curved toward the aircar. It was seven miles distant but on an interior course, and the aircar had ten miles to go to the safety of the shore. Though the Federals didn't have plasma cannon of their own, a burst of multi-sonic osmium slugs from an automatic impeller would turn an APC into a colander in a heartbeat.
Daniel disliked using goggles for data display, but he'd been very wise to pick the headgear he had. He grinned at himself. Not that there'd ever been doubt: he'd always go for the tool that'd be best in a fight.
The APC fired. The dazzling bolt was on the right line but it sizzled out in a bottle-shaped plume a few thousand yards from the muzzle. Even the most incompetent gunner must've known the aircar was miles out of range, so why—
Two more APCs came around the west end of Mandelfarne Island, three miles from the aircar. They'd stayed low in the strait, but now that they were in sight they lifted to get a clear shot at their quarry against the sea.
Though the APCs were relatively slow, they'd be between the shore and the aircar before it could cross their line. The bolt's ionized track was fading, but sufficient glow still hung in the air to point the newcomers toward their prey.
"Between them!" Daniel said. "Stay low and get between them!"
Fallert swung the car up on its left side in a hard turn, deliberately overcorrecting; for thirty seconds only inertia was keeping them airborne. Instead of locking into a straight new course, he made them fishtail to the right as they settled.
The APC still over the island fired, hitting the sea a quarter mile from the car. The bolt slaked its energy in iridescent steam. An instant later the APCs on a converging course fired also. Daniel felt the bare skin of his face and hands prickle, but the nearer of the two bolts nonetheless struck well behind the speeding aircar.
Fallert nudged his steering yoke again, not hard—a serious input would slow the aircar in the kill zone—but enough that the trailing flag of spray pointed momentarily in a direction different from the car's present course. The APCs were dead ahead, high enough that the fan ducts on their undersides were visible from the sea skimming car.
Daniel aimed over the left side of the vehicle and squeezed off a shot—
And a shot—
And a shot—the osmium pellet ricocheting from the target's sidewalls of high maraging steel, a flash at the point of impact and a neon spark wobbling into the high sky—
And a—
Daniel's target banked hard to the right, making it more vulnerable. As he swung his weapon to follow the eight swelling ovals of the fan ducts, Fallert twisted to the right again. The carbine's barrel slammed the roof support, jarring the round off wildly into the empty night.
Hogg's target crashed into the sea sideways. Either the impact or the gunner's reflex triggered the plasma cannon while the muzzle was already underwater. The fireball lifted off the turret as the APC skipped upward like a flung stone.
"Got the bastard!" Hogg was shouting as he twisted in his seat—good God, he must not be belted in at all!—to point his heavy RCN impeller directly over Fallert's head. "Got him!"
Fallert steered through the geyser from the first impact while the APC—now a collection of scraps and fragments spraying out like a shotgun charge—hit a third time. A few of the bits continued on to splash in a wide arc. The aircar bucked. Falling water drenched the passengers, but they were through and headed for home at nearly 150 mph.
Daniel popped his own belt loose to aim over the back of the vehicle. To his surprise he had no target: both surviving APCs had dropped to the sea's surface to cover their vulnerable fan ducts. They hadn't a prayer of tracking, let alone hitting, the aircar, there.
The rainbow bubble of the Rainha's exhaust was dimming, but there was still enough to color the froth around the wrecked APC like a tapestry of jewels.
* * *
Adele was sitting at the checker's desk when the two attendants raised the overhead door. Noises from the night outside became louder and sharper: occasional shots, a klaxon in the far distance, and the growing murmur of the returning aircar.
The desk terminal was intended only for inventory control, but it was cabled to the database that the communications suite on the roof fed. Adele hadn't found it difficult to link her personal data unit to the terminal and through it to control the entire system. The display in the commo center was far better and so, she supposed, was the security; but neither of those things was as significant as being on hand when Daniel and Hogg returned.
The aircar paused on the loading dock, then turned slowly—counterclockwise—to back into the warehouse. Adele frowned. She hadn't thought about positioning the vehicle to leave quickly; Fallert had. It was his job, of course, but that was the sort of information which might be important to her present duties.
Echoes deepened the whine of the car's motors as it crawled inside. Adele couldn't make out the features of the persons aboard without pulling down her goggles, but there were five of
them. That was all that really mattered, that they'd all come back. Against the lighter background of the night sky she saw that the left side of the windshield was crazed and milky.
"They hit something," said Tovera quietly. "Not bullet holes, a collision."
Had she been worried also? Probably not; the statement was analytical, though the fact Tovera made it aloud showed that she was at least trying to act the way a normal human who was worried would act.
The door rattled and rumbled down, stopping with a jangle against the lintel. Fallert had already shut off the motors, but the fans roiled the air still further as they spun down. Adele sneezed, then sneezed again. The downdraft had driven a strong vegetable sharpness—ginger root?—out of the wooden flooring.
"Turn a bloody light on!" Colonel Quinn shouted. "Now, dammit! All I bloody need tonight is to break my bloody neck besides!"
A panel on the right door pillar flickered into greenish life. "Make do, buddy," growled an attendant. "If we turn on the overheads, the pigs'll see it through the skylight. We don't draw rockets here, not even for the Lord God Incarnate!"
After nearly complete darkness, the luminescence was more than sufficient. Adele left her data unit on the desk and walked to meet Daniel as he got out of the back of the car. His uniform was wet—dripping wet, in fact—but he flashed her a brilliant smile.
"I'm glad to see you're safe," Adele said. Part of her mind observed that another person would've added flourishes, but the words she'd used were sufficient.
"You ought to be bloody glad!" Quinn said angrily. "Do you know how close we came to being killed? If that Hogg hadn't been luckier than anybody alive, we'd be cinders out there right now!"
I do indeed know how close it was, Adele thought. I watched you. I watched the whole thing.
Turning from Adele to Hogg, Quinn added, "I don't know why you're working for a living, bub. If you're that bloody lucky, you ought to just play roulette!"
Hogg ignored him. He'd walked over to a stack of crates which were unmarked except by stenciled numbers. He pried up the lid of the top one with his big folding knife.
"Master Hogg is indeed lucky," Fallert said with a little more than his usual emphasis of the sibilants. "I would guess that Master Hogg is often lucky with a long gun, not so?"
Hogg pulled a liter bottle from the honeycombed interior of the crate. He cut the foil seal and worked the stopper out.
"It's been known to happen," he said. His tone was mild enough, but his eyes had a look of hard speculation as they rested on Quinn. "But luck, sure. You know that as well as I do, Fallert. Just hitting the bastard was doing good, what with that wind and you throwing us around like granny jogging without a bra."
"You and the Commander each hit twice," the snakeman said. "That is very good. I could not have done as well."
He bowed to Tovera. "I did not doubt you, mistress-s-s," he said. "But what I saw tonight was very remarkable."
"Here you go, young master," Hogg said, handing the bottle to Daniel.
Daniel drank and returned the bottle to Hogg. "I'm afraid I can only claim one," he said, turning the carbine over in his hands to look at the underside of the receiver. "And other than perhaps startling the crew, that didn't do any harm."
"You hit twice and Master Hogg hit twice," Fallert said. "One of our enemies fled and the other was destroyed. This was very good. This was worthy of great honor."
"Did you kill the driver, then, Hogg?" Corius said. "I thought the car just went out of control and crashed. And at a very good time, I must say."
"I put a round through a fan duct," Hogg said. "It's what I wanted, but I don't pretend I could do it more'n maybe one time in five."
Daniel raised an eyebrow.
"Well, one time in three, then," Hogg admitted. "And then it bounced the right way and put paid to the motor."
Hogg drank again and held the bottle out to Fallert. Fallert shook his head, but his whole long jaw was smiling. "I thank you, Master Hogg," he said. "But ethanol would kill me."
The snakeman laughed.
Hogg shrugged and looked at Corius. "I couldn't shoot through the driver's cage on one a' those, Councilor," he said. "Not at two hundred meters, which is as close as we got, you'll recall. The armor's too thick."
"Those APCs weren't heavily loaded," Quinn said. "Even if you did shoot out a fan, it could still have flown. The driver just lost control."
He sounded frustrated, a man desperate to find an answer to a question that was completely beyond him. It didn't make Adele like Quinn any better, but viewing him as a mongrel dog invited to give a lecture permitted her to interact with him without getting angry.
"Yes, Colonel, he did lose control," Daniel said. Adele could hear the edge beneath his cheerful lilt, but Quinn probably didn't. "He panicked because his fan had been shot out—it hadn't just failed. He poured maximum power to the remaining units before adjusting his angles of thrust. That overbalanced the vehicle, and by then he had no chance to recover."
He patted Quinn on the shoulder. Much as he'd pat a dog, Adele realized, and wondered whether Daniel had formed the same mental image she had of the man.
"Let's all take that as a lesson not to panic," Daniel said with a smile. "In case the enemy has somebody as good as Hogg is, right?"
"As lucky, you mean, young master," Hogg said, lowering the bottle. Half its contents were gone. He'd been frightened too, though frightened wasn't quite the right word. He'd been very well aware of how close they'd come to being killed, him and the boy it was his duty to protect.
"Here you go, Tovera," Hogg said, offering her the bottle. He was making a point of not including Quinn in his forced camaraderie. "Finish it if you like. There's plenty more where this one came from."
"I'm working," Tovera said. Her smile was as wide as her thin mouth permitted and looked—at least looked—real.
"Mistress-s-s?" Fallert said. "Do you mean that if you became drunk, you would not be able to kill?"
"Not that," said Tovera, still smiling. "I might forget to stop, though."
She laughed, and Fallert laughed, and Hogg laughed so hard that some of his big mouthful of wine squirted out his nostrils. Corius looked a little queasy. Adele wasn't sure he understood all the by-play, but there was enough going on even at a surface level to disturb anybody who wasn't used to it. And he'd been in the car also when the APCs bore down on it shooting. . . .
"Look, I don't see that there's any more to do tonight," he said. "I propose to get some sleep and discuss the details in the morning."
"Adele, I have a few questions," Daniel said. "Can we go over them now, or—"
"Of course," Adele said, striding back to the desk and her data unit. If she was going to work, she'd have the wands in her hands. The wands or a pistol, and not the pistol tonight.
Corius had been heading toward the line of locked storerooms which the addition of cots had turned into sleeping quarters for him and those who'd accompanied him. He paused and without comment joined Daniel.
The desk was meant to be used standing, which didn't matter to Adele one way or another. Hogg slid over a crate and sat, but the others decided to stand also. The two attendants watched from beside the door. Adele wondered if she should order them to leave. For the moment she didn't see any reason to.
Tovera walked over the pair and spoke briefly. They left the warehouse through the pedestrian door.
"We've been told there're ship-killing missiles at the base," Daniel said. "Are there, and are they operational?"
Adele had been gathering electronic data simultaneously through the antennas on warehouse roof and from the pickups on Daniel's goggles. As she sorted them, she heard Quinn say plaintively, "How's she going to tell that? You'd have to be right there with the missiles, wouldn't you?"
No, of course you wouldn't. You could determine whether the targeting radar—and lidar, Adele learned on checking her database on Metex Group AS9 missiles—were active, whether the signals were being relayed
to the missile battery, and whether the missile control panel registered the six missiles as being ready to launch.
"Yes," Adele said. "The missiles are here and are live."
She threw up a display of Mandelfarne Island, then shrank the scale to focus on the missile battery in a pit two hundred yards from the chalked cross on which the resupply vessel landed. This inventory-control terminal didn't have projection lenses, so she had to use those of her little data unit. They weren't really adequate at the present scale, but her audience would have to make do.
Daniel sucked his lower lip for a moment and nodded. "Well, I was willing to hope they were bluffing," he said. "I had visions of bringing the Sissie down and ending the war with her ventral turret while we hovered."
"But Arruns has plasma cannon even if he didn't have missiles, doesn't he?" said Corius. "We know he does—on the armored vehicles at least. They shot at us."