the command pilot’s seat, worried that the lander’s control system would lock him out. But by now he was pretty sure the lander would do as it was told.
He turned his attention to the weapons station; it was much simpler and largely matched the intelligence summaries provided by his neuronics. It was the work of only a few minutes to get on top of it. Calling Yazdi over, Michael sat her down and commed her what his neuronics thought were the correct operating procedures for the lander’s twin cannons. He told Yazdi to ignore the rest of the lander’s weapons systems. His orders were simple- answer the voice prompts and, once the system was live, put the laser target designator’s lozenge on the target and press the trigger. If all went well, the system should do the rest. There was one more thing, he added as an afterthought. Speak very, very deeply. Hammer women did not operate lander weapons systems.
Michael took a deep breath to steady himself; he could not put the evil moment off much longer. If they were going to get the lander operational, he would have to bite the bullet.
“Time to go.”
Yazdi smiled, a smile tight with tension. “Too true. Can’t sit here all day, anyway. Eventually someone’s going to wonder what that truck’s doing there.”
Michael nodded. Yazdi was right. They were on borrowed time. Happy that Yazdi was ready, he picked up a headset and plugged it into a spare socket. Without the benefit of neuronics, the Hammer relied heavily on voice- activated systems with touch screens as a backup, and so he was going to have to talk to the damn thing nicely and hope it cooperated.
Ten minutes later, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. Things definitely were going their way. Not much had changed since the last war, and when he had made a mistake, the lander’s control system had prompted him helpfully to do the right thing. Best of all, when it came to security, there was none. Not a damn thing. No identity checks, no password protection, nothing. If one knew what to do, the lander was wide open, and if one did not, the system would supply a prompt. The Hammers clearly assumed that their landers were secure enough behind walls of razor wire protected by dopey, halfasleep lance corporals.
Well, they were about to find out that was a bad mistake, Michael thought, a really bad mistake.
Michael took a deep breath. The assault lander was flightready. He scanned the command holovids one last time. Propulsion, flight control, navigation, weapons, threat warning, target management-all systems were ready to go.
He brought the lander’s two fusion plants online, the lander trembling slightly as cooling pumps kicked in. “Okay to go?” he called across to Yazdi.
“Much as I’ll ever be,” she replied with a nervous smile. Michael grinned. He knew she hated landers. She only tolerated them, she said; they were a necessary evil, useful only for getting marines down dirtside quickly so that they could get on with what they did best-killing people.
“Off we go, then.”
Tapping the brakes off, Michael nudged the lander’s main engine throttles forward gently. Slowly, reluctantly at first, the lander eased onto the taxiway. Once it was clear of the other landers, Michael turned the lander to face along the length of the flight line and stamped on the brakes.
“Right, Corporal Yazdi.” Michael’s command overrode the safety interlocks that prevented the cannons from operating when the lander was on the ground. “Let them know we mean business! Weapons free.”
“Roger that.”
“Let’s go.”
Michael mashed the throttle levers forward, the lander shuddering as raw power ripped the air behind it apart. He released the brakes, and the assault lander accelerated hard down the taxiway past the flight lines and their neatly parked aircraft. Yazdi opened up, the fuselage shaking as depleted-uranium rounds ripped away, the high-pitched buzz-whine of the rotary cannon filling the lander’s command cabin. Michael glanced at Yazdi as she methodically hosed the cannons up and down the flight line. Her teeth were bared in a rictus of sheer animal ferocity. For an airbase that had been empty only a few minutes before, there were suddenly a lot of people around; everywhere, desperate airmen scrambled to get clear of the blizzard of death falling on their heads.
It was carnage, and Michael loved it.
Michael’s headphones were screeching, the panicked voice of the duty controller trying to find out what the hell was going on. Michael ignored him, concentrating hard on keeping the lander’s enormous bulk on the narrow taxiway.
He smiled in grim satisfaction. They were rolling fast now; Yazdi was busy shredding a long line of air superiority fighters, their gleaming plasfiber wing and fuselage panels disintegrating under a vicious hail of cannon fire. One by one, they fragmented into shattered wrecks, their fusion mass driver plants losing containment to explode into vicious white balls of incandescent energy roaring up into the morning sky.
“Kind of them to keep their fusion plants online,” Michael murmured. “Must have planned to go flying today.” They were coming up the serried ranks of ground attack aircraft. Confident that Yazdi knew what she was doing, Michael concentrated on getting the lander safely in the air.
With the end of the taxiway approaching fast, Michael ran the main engines up to emergency power. The lander’s warning systems screeched in protest as its main engines kicked him in the back, the lander climbing sluggishly across the inner perimeter fence. It took Michael a few anxious moments to get used to the sidestick controller, with the lander staggering and wallowing into a shallow climb, but he was relieved to find that it handled much the same as the ones he had trained on. It was heavier and slower to respond, but it did what it was told.
Then things got busy. Michael’s headphones screeched; somebody was awake out there. The radar warning receivers were telling him that Kraneveldt’s close-in air defense radars were coming online. Michael did not hesitate; a voice command launched radar-homing missiles, the radars exploding in plumes of dirty black smoke. A confused and bewildered Hammer air defense command and control was locked into a fatal paralysis of uncertainty and indecision.
Michael accelerated the lander hard but kept it low, bringing it around in a wide turn to run back across the airbase. A second salvo of antiradar missiles raced away to sterilize the base’s remaining air defense sites.
“Hit anything you like, Corp,” Michael urged. “Give them a good hosing. This is our last pass, then we’re gone.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Michael looked quickly across at her again. She was totally focused on the laser designator screen in front of her, teeth bared in ecstasy. A killer doing what she did best, Michael realized. He eased back on the main engines to give Yazdi more time. He lined the lander up for its last run across the base, boiling clouds of dirty gray-black smoke from destroyed aircraft climbing in front of him. Michael flew the lander low across the perimeter wire, the massive machine only meters off the ground. Yazdi opened up again. Twin streams of metal followed the laser designator across the base complex; he could see buildings disappearing in clouds of shredded plasteel, small explosions boiling up and out of the wreckage, men diving desperately for safety as the lander roared past, its fusion-fed main engines ripping the air apart over their heads.
“That’s it,” Michael called, reefing the lander around in a hard left turn, launching another salvo of antiradar missiles to streak away and deal with the latest missile sites to wake up. “See if you can get the base fusion plant on the way past. Should be five clicks, starboard bow. Hundred FedMarks says it’s not protected.” That’s what centuries of beating the crap out of your own people makes you, Michael thought-arrogant, careless, always taking things for granted. Well, the Hammers were about to find out what a mistake that was. A quick check confirmed that the plant’s air defense radars were not even online. He pushed the throttles forward. It was time to go.
The lander roared past the base power plant, and Yazdi did what she had to do. The plant’s ceramcrete outer skin and inner ceramsteel shell were no match for the hypervelocity depleted-uranium slugs laid down by the lander’s cannons. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a blast that threw the lander violently onto its side, the plant went up in a huge white flash. A towering column of superheated gray-white smoke shot through with writhing, swirling red flames climbed hundreds of meters high, urged on by the plant’s auxiliary systems as they, too, succumbed to Yazdi’s cannon fire. Finally, they were past and the cannon fell silent.
“Waaah!” Yazdi hissed breathlessly, engrossed in the holovid from the lander’s aft-facing holocam. What once had been a fully operational Hammer airbase fell away behind them, a shattered, smoking ruin. “That was awesome.”
“Good work. Now let’s see if we can get away with it.” Michael pulled the nose up sharply, the lander’s
