"But they're Infected with Virus,* Tom said. "I don't want them Intact near my ship."
"Vega," Coeur said, putting a hand on her friend's shoulder, "they've already been In contact with your ship for a week. Let it go."
Grudgingly, Tom accepted Coeur's reasoning and settled for heaving the robots Into a trash bin with a steel bar through Its lock hasp. Tom, Coeur, Physic and the Marines then retreated to the hovering G-carrier waiting In a nearby alley.
Notably, Tom's rescue mission was staffed almost exclusively by Marines—with Whi2 Bang and Bonzo flying the G-carrier, and Red Eye and Widget on the ground with energy rifles and tac missile launchers, lust as Coeur would prefer, Tom kept the party restricted to ground combat specialists.
"So, where to, boss?" Bonzo asked Coeur.
"We've set up a camp in the new rebel base," Tom told Coeur. "We figured we'd go back there and wall for word from Drop Kick."
"Drop Kick?"
"He went off with Mercy to lake out your meson gun sensor."
"Oh."
"Thai Is what you wanted, wasn't It?"
"Yes," Coeur said, helping Physic Into a seat near the Iront of the vehicle. "I just didn't know he'd be so quick about It."
"He should have gotten there a few minutes ago," Widget said, flipping up her visor as she sat down, "assuming nothing happened on the way,"
Thatcould beabig assumption, Coeur knew. More so even than her mates, the remnant knew the power of heavy meson artillery.
"The rebel base sounds good," Coeur said to Bonzo, "Whiz Bang, shoot any nightjacks you see."
"Amen to that," the beefy gunner said, as Bonzo lifted them back into the air-
No sooner had the G-carrier cleared the surrounding buildings, though, than Coeur saw the evidence of a city in chaos. Though dusk was falling and Radio Soledad suggested crowds would be forming for a rally before the Defense Ministry, only a Soledad army patrol now stood before the building on Enea Avenue, strangely ani-llke below a massive poster of St. Kilalt hanging down from the side of the Defense Ministry—Its lower edges singed with burns from Molotov cocktails whose glass bottles lay shattered in the street.
"We've been a little out of touch," Coeur said, catching these details through PR1S binoculars as the G-carrier swung around In that direction. "It doesn't look like St Kilait Is as popular as I thought"
"Well he was popular," Tom said, "but that wore off pretty quickly. See that smoke off 10 the north? That's where the 1st Brigade is fighting with the Marina miitia. And over there to the east—that's smoke from an apartment block the nightjacks gutted."
"Good Gala," Physic said, frustrated by her inability to get a good view from her seat. "Kilalt sounds worse than Brak!"
"Lemos thinks he is." Tom said. "According to his people in this district Kilalt's even put Vazquez under house arrest in the Church of the Holy Sacristy, he's so paranoid about opposition."
"What a loon," whiz Bang said, staring through his gun sight "How did he ever get to be a saint?"
That, of course, was the ultimate unanswerable question, but Coeur had a theory. The Church of Grace and Light had once been a gigantic bureaucracy, a fact given witness by the ruins of gigantic churches and the hierarchical order that survived even the Collapse In the form of Cardinal Vazquez and her priests. Before Die Collapse, therefore, the CGI must have needed purely administrative officials—lawyers, accountants and such—with only a tangential relationship to the prime mission of the church. Kilalt Coeur believed, was almost certainly such a man—an administrator who saw the writing on the wall when civilization began to crumble and arranged to set himself up as a god in the aftermath.
It's just foo bad, Coeur thought that he didn't know about the Virus. Now the man who putted the strings is probably having his strings pulled by that depot computer.
But what does the depot computer wont?
"Bonzo," Coeur said suddenly, "belay that earlier order. Change course to the Church of the Holy Sacristy."
"What?" Tom asked. "Why?"
Bonzo, too, was curious about this change of orders, though he executed the course change crisply.
"Because I've got ahunch," Coeur said, "that There'sone more person we need to rescue in Soledad: Cardinal Vazquez."
As Tom observed, "house arrest" didn'l necessarily mean Vazquez woulo be under guard, but when the G-carrier arrived at the Church of the holy Sacristy, !t found the guard Co be fairly heavy. A demonic nightjack and two squads of Soledad troopers aboard jeeps with a pair of heavy machineguns blocked the front entrance to The church.
"Blow 'em away," Coeursaid. 'We don't have lime to be subtle."
"That's my skipper," Whiz Bang boasted, drawing deadly aim on the nightjack from 200 meters and spearing it with a lance o*f plasma fire. Agile as it might beat evading hand-held weapons, the nightjack was not so agile that it could elude a stabilized gun in the hands of a crack shot- It was flung back against the bolted church door by the force of fire that incinerated its torso brain cavity. The soldiers prudently fled a moment later, under strong motivation from the Comer's coaxial machinegun.
The field having thus been cleared, the G-carrier swung around In front of the church and planied its rear hatch before the locked doors of the structure.
"Easy with that from door," Coeur advised Red Eye and Widget as they piled out the back of the vehicle. "We don't want to damage the church."
"No problem." the gunnery sergeant replied, pulling a slug from his gauss rifle through the padlock securing chains to the front door handles. Rendered as ineffective as the nightjack Sprawled out on the front steps, the lock then came free with a tug from Widget, and both Marines hauled the chains out from the door handles preparatory to flinging the doors open. This they accomplished gingerly—each taking one of the double door's handles and standing back behind the cover of the building lest anyone inside should open up with a heavy weapon when the doors were opened.
"We surrender!" however, was the cry from inside, when the doors were (lung open. Both Cardinal Vazquez and Brother Anthony, the Marines saw, were standing just Inside the doorway with their hands up.
"Vazquez, get inhere!" Coeur yelled, standing up from theC-carrier chair she'd been using for cover.
"We're coming," the cardinal said, hurrying out of the church beside her subordinate, both of whom were still keeping their hands up.
"All right, Vazquez," Coeur said, "you can put your hands down. We didn't come to take you prisoner."
"Oh," Vazquez said, putting her hands down, "We weren't sure if you knew about the house arrest order," Anthony explained. "We thought you might have come with General Lemos to kill us."
"Yeah, we're with General Lemos," Tom said, "but we didn't come to kill you. Any mote of your people Inside?"
"No," Vazquez said. "Just Brother Anthony and me."
"Sir," Bonzo said, turning around in the pilot's chair, "I've got several targets closing fast from the south."
"Get us out of here, then," Coeur yelled forward, helping Tom close the rear door as the Marines jumped back aboard. "Whiz Bang, shoot anything suspicious."
"Ves, ski*
That, Coeur realized belatedly, was probably too much license for thegun-happy corporal, but it was better to be safe than dead. Momentarily, the street outside echoed with the report of the C carrier's machinegun as the vehicle rocketed back Into the air.
"Clearly, you've exposed yourself to some danger coming here," Vazquez said, when Coeur came to sit beside her and Anthony. "Why did you do it?"
"Like i told Tom," Coeur said, glancing forward at the pirate, who had deftly slipped past Bonzo to take over the controls, "a hunch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you and St. Kilalt haven't been getting aiong very well, have you?"
At the magnitude of this understatement, Anthony let out an inadvertent snort.
"No," Vazquez said, "we haven't. Rather too late I have come to see that he Is a Tormentor, a devil In the guise of a holy prophet,"
"Right," Co
eur said. "Well, Physic and I have had a little of his hospitality ourselves. How would you like to help us fight him?"
Vazquez smiled. "If only I could. I would go on Radio Soledad to rally the people against Kilalt, but I'm afraid they'd never let me into the Defense Ministry."
That. Coeur knew, was almost a sure beL The paranoid Kilalt had surely filled his center of power with loyal troops and nightjacks.
"Granted, But Radio Soledad doesn't have the most powerful transmitter in this city. We do,"
"You don't mean...you'd let me use your radio?"
"I sure will. Of course, Ifs actually Tom's radio—aboard her ship's boat—but I'm sure she wouldn't mind using it to blow Radio Soledad off the air—would you, Tom?"
"Nope," Tom called backfromthepiiofschair, "sure wouldn't"
"AH nght" Vazquez said, putting her hand on Coeur's, "I'll do it"
"Good."
A close shock rocked the G-canier a moment later, though, temporarily dimming the cabin lights to the level of the darkness outside.
"Excuse me a moment," Coeur said to Vazquez, rising to head forward.
"Trouble?" she asked Tom, "A little," Tom said. "Two choppers and a nlghtjack on our butt like a Dl on a raw recruit."
"Can't you get them with the plasma gun?" Coeur asked.
"Not yet," Whiz Bang said, firing as quickly as he could, but hampered by the plasma gun's five-second purge cycle, "No problem," Tom said. "We've got a tittle surprise In store for them."
"What?" Coeur asked.
"Look," Tom said, pointingat the G-carrter's forward-looking EMS display. There, dead ahead of the low-flying vehicle, was a last-approaching highway overpass, an overpass that appeared unoccupieduntilfourindrvidualswithshoulder-fired SAM launchers stood up In unison behind its concrete side wall.
Luckily, their target was not the G-carrier. That they let pass, and fired instead on the pursuing forces from Soledad. Caught quite by surprise, helicopters and robot alike plowed headlong Into the warheads coming In their direction—warheads that exploded with flowering brightness on the G-carrler's aft EMS scan and sent the crippled pursuers tumbling in flames to the rubbled streets of Senega District.
"Nice assist," Tom said through her radio headset to the rebels on the overpass.
"Any time," they called back.
"You planned that?" Coeur asked.
"Sure did," Tom said, with Ill-concealed pride. "Almost as sharp as you people In the Arses, ain't I?"
"Yeah," Coeur said, patting Tom on her shoulder. "Almost."
Chapter 21
"Time to target?" Drop Kick asked.
'Target in five," Mercy answered.
"Contacts?"
"No contacts, sergeant major. Approach track is clear."
Approach track i$ clear, Drop Kick thought suddenly, gazing through the sight of his fusion gun at images of nighttime terrain—jagged rocks and granite cliff sides—racing past below and beside them. Clear, except for a battery of deep sites waiting to punch our ticket....
How big thedeep-sile meson guns really were, of course, Drop Kick couldn't know, although he knew enough about relic models to guess at their size and firepower. They would be huge, for one thing—100 meters long at least—and powerful to boot, probably drawing enough power collectively to operate the whole RC fleet. But what was more, they would be hidden-buried so deep in the earth that no sensor could see them, and no weapon—save another meson gun—could answer their devastating fire.
And Drop Kick didn't have another meson gun.
Just a tank, and one good shot at the meson gun's sensors.
'Target In two," Mercy said Curtly, "steering 285,"
"Roger," Drop Kick replied. "Engaging fire control sensors."
"Think I'm too close?" Mercy asked a moment later, when collision sensors flashed at a close brush with rock just below the hull.
"Negative," Drop Kick said, "keep us as tow as you can. Those sensors can't even have a peek at us or we're toast."
"Understood. Target in one."
Still taking covering behind the adjoining mountains, the Intrepid couldn't see its ultimate objective—the EMS sensors atop Mt, Aitus. Drop Kick, therefore, had no Idea what precisely would await him at the end of one minute, when Mercy would come to the end of her attack run and execute a one-chance pop-up maneuver. The best Hornets survey data could reveal was the presence of three sensor domes atop the mountain, but the image was of low resolution and gave no hint of entrenched defenses.
And If those entrenched defenses fired back—if they spoiled Drop Kick's aim and let even one sensor dome remain intact—the Intrepid was dead.
Stop it. Drop Kick ordered himself. Stop thinking like that. You're In on intrepid, for Cod's soke—screw entrenched defenses.
Yet Drop Kick could not escape the obvious In his thoughts— even without its sensors, a deep-site gun wouldn't need a bull's-eye to knock them out.
'Time," Drop Kick said.
"Forty seconds."
"Mercy," Drop Kick said, "new orders. If I miss with any of my shots, you're to begin evasive maneuvers and bug out immediately."
"You sure about that, sir?" Mercy asked, keeping her eye on her sensors as they closed rapidly on the pop-up point. "You sure you wouldn't want me to drop down and come around the mountain for another pass?"
"Negative," Drop Kick said. The blast radiusof those guns will be too big—they won't even need to come close to get us If we stay In the area."
"Then you'll only get one shot."
'That's affirmative, corporal."
Mercy had no time for a rejoinder, for the end of the attack run had come.
"Slowing forward acceleration," she said, gritting her teeth, "and popping up."
And suddenly, there it was—Mt. Altus. Emerging from behind the shelf of rock that had been the grav tank's cover, three sensor domes—camouflaged to match the snow and ice of the peak-stood a lonely sentinel against the dark and cloudy sky not SOO meters from the end of Drop Kick's fusion gun barrel.
Company came an Instant later in the form of three howling discharges from the I 25 M) gun. One—two—three, the sensors peeled open and exploded under the force of the fusion bolt Impacts.
"Cot him!" Drop Kick exclaimed, "LeCs get the fuck outta here!"
"You got that right," Mercy said, dropping the Intrepid back behind its protective shelf of rock and then powering up her HEPLAR thrust to dive screaming Into the nearest gorge below.
"Nothing on sensors," Drop Kick said, taking over the Job of watching the sensors now that his main Job was over, "no blasts or explosions."
"Maybe the meson guns lake some Dme to set up," Mercy offered, powering into another deep ravine. They are pretty big artillery pieces."
"All the same," Drop Kick countered, "I'd expect at least one lobe set upall the time—just to keep people from doing wnat we Just did."
"Don't know. Want me to keep flying south?"
"Yeah, do that, until I tell you to stop."
Mercy kept flying at her NOE velocity of I 75 kph for over 10 minutes, finally traversing 20 kilometers of winding mountain passages before Drop Kick gave the order to come to a halt.
"This Is strange," Drop Kick said. There's been no evidence of any return fire at ail."
"Well, you know, sir," Mercy Observed, "If s possible that there never were any meson guns,"
At first, Drop Kick thought to dismiss that as dangerous thinking, but then he realized that she might be right. After all, even If the meson guns did work, there still wouldn't be anyway to know, "I don't know," Drop Kick said. "Somehow I don'i think Red Sun would have sent that message unless she knew there was real danger from the guns."
"True."
"Tell you what. Use the contra-grav to lift us over the nearest peaks so I can get a look at Soledad. Oh, and try to see if you can keep one of the closer peaks between us and ML Alt us, Just in c ase there's still somebody there."
"Roger."
Whether or not the c
aution was warranted, the maneuver revealed very little except that far-flung Soledad—partly concealed to the north behind the Lomarica Hills—was completely safe and intact.
"Well, I'll be damned," Drop Kick said. "I thought maybe the meson guns would have fired on the city instead just to spite us."
"looks quiet to me."
"Yeah, me too. All right, corporal, fine. Let's go home."
Although Drop Kick and Mercy knew Tom’s rescue mission would go off at the same time as their mission, neither tanker dared anticipate how successful Tom would be. To expect that Tom would safely recover not only Coeur, but Physic and Caffer as well In a single raid was perhaps wishful thinking.
When the Intrepid landed back at the rebel camp after midnight, the tankers were delighted to see Coeur and Physic waiting to greet them.
"Hey, Captain!" Drop Kick exclaimed, damberingdownfrom the Intrepid's turret hatch and jogging over to Coeur and the doctor in his battle dress, followed a moment later by Mercy.
"Drop Kick," Coeur said, "Mercy, It'sgood to see you're back."
"You too, sir. But doctor, what happened to you?"
"Oh," Physic said, glancing uown at the crutches under her shoulders, "I tripped on Tom's landing ramp."
"We took a harder casualty than that, though," Coeur said. "Caffer was killed, back In the depot."
"Oh no," Mercy said. "And Fubar and Gremlin?"
"We're not so sure about them," Physic said. "We saw them alive b3ckln the depot, but they didn't look like they were in any condition to travel ."
"So," Drop Kick observed, "from the way you're talking, you must have found the main depot—the one we're looking for."
"Yes, we did," Coeur said, "but Kilalt's machines stopped us before we could look around much."
"So," Drop Kick asked, "was It nightjacks that got CaHer?"
Coeur nodded. "Yes, two of 'em In fact. But Tom and the troopers got those two when they came to rescue us."
The Marines nodded grim satisfaction.
"But anyway," Coeur went on, "I want to hear about this mission of yours. Did you manage to takeout all the sensors on Mt. Alius?"
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