black streaks.
Michael was sure the threat plot was wrong. The Hammers had more than enough time to launch Kingfishers from Ojan and McNair, but ENCOMM was saying that both bases were quiet, with the marines from Amokran still committed to the diversionary attacks on Bretonville and Daleel. It made no sense. Why were the Hammers not responding to the attack on Perdan?
'Tac, where the hell are those Kingfishers?' he asked, even though he knew the question was pointless. If Ferreira knew, so would the threat plot, and it did not.
'Not seeing them,' Ferreira replied, 'and we have nothing from ENCOMM, either.'
'I don't like this, not one bit,' Michael muttered, forcing himself to sit back and let Mother get them home. 'Maybe there's some-'
In an instant, the flight deck was filled with the cacophonous racket of threat alarms. 'Alaric missiles inbound,' Carmellini said, slapping the alarms off. 'Missiles have gone active,' he added. 'They're in terminal guidance mode.' The threat plot confirmed Michael's worst fears: too many missiles moving too fast from too many directions for Widowmaker's defenses to defeat. A pair of heavy landers like Alley Kat and Hell Bent might have a chance of surviving; a lone light lander like Widowmaker did not.
Now Michael and the rest of Widowmaker's crew could do nothing but watch. Dumping the last of her precious decoys into Widowmaker's wake, Mother rolled the lander over in a desperate bid to get even closer to the ground, ramming the fusion plant to full power in a futile attempt to outrun the incoming missiles, their terminal guidance system a lethal hybrid of optical, radar, and laser sensors even the best electronic countermeasures in humanspace would struggle to deceive.
Michael swore; maybe he should have held Widowmaker back until Alley Kat and Hell Bent came off task. Not that it mattered; it was too late. The Hammers had learned from their mistakes that making their presence known too early gave the landers the time they needed to accelerate away from the Alarics. Guided by track data from the battlesat radars overhead, they must have come in low, slow, and stealthy, probably from the sea, where there were no inquisitive NRA eyes to report their passing, before unloading their missiles. Heart hammering, Michael watched Mother do her best, the lander twisting and jinking in a final attempt to distract the missiles. But there were too many of them, and even though some were seduced by Widowmaker's decoys, even though some were distracted by jammers, the rest were not, enough getting past the defensive lasers to doom the lander.
Mother stopped trying to save Widowmaker, shifting her focus onto surviving the attack long enough to save the crew, wrenching the lander nose-up to force the missiles to impact the most heavily armored part of the hull, Widowmaker's belly, screams of pain from the lander's neural system ignored as the foamalloy wings, stressed well beyond the point of failure, disintegrated under the impossible pressure of onrushing air.
Michael swore the lander stopped when the Alarics smashed home, three of them hitting a microsecond apart, their enormous kinetic energy and explosive warheads hurling Widowmaker back, up, and over into a death roll to the ground. He lost consciousness for an instant before the automated ejection system hurled him and the rest of the crew out into the night. In front of them, Widowmaker tumbled to a fiery death on the rocks below, missile after missile smashing into her carcass, her passing marked by a spectacular white fireball when fusion plants lost containment. Barely aware of what was happening, Michael was knocked out again by the shattering crash of his escape capsule plowing into the ground.
How long he lay there, he had no idea. When he awoke, it was strangely peaceful, the only sound the rain drumming an insistent tattoo on the protective plasfiber cover of the capsule. Almost too tired to move, he commed the capsule to release him, which it did, dumping him unceremoniously down the slope.
'Oh shit,' he whispered. He commed painkiller drugbots into his system to combat a growing chorus of protest from a badly abused body; as ever, his left leg was the most vocal of all. Forcing himself to his feet, he climbed out of his combat space suit, throwing it to the ground, where it lay, looking disconcertingly like a dead body. 'Won't be needing that bastard thing again,' he said to the night air.
Reenergized by the drugbots, he had his neuronics scan for the rest of Widowmaker's crew. To his intense relief, first one, then another and another beacon came online until the whole crew had been accounted for. Comming the rendezvous point to them, he set off.
By the time everyone turned up, Michael did not know whether to laugh or cry. A sorrier bunch he had never seen, his crew sporting an impressive collection of cuts and fast-blossoming bruises. With a silent 'thank you' to the unknown engineers who had designed and built Widowmaker's crew escape system, Michael asked the question on his and everyone else's mind.
'Where to from here?'
Wincing as she lifted her arm, Ferreira pointed in the general direction of Perdan. 'That way. Closest friendlies. Our bases in the Branxtons are too far away.'
'Anyone disagree?' he asked. 'No? Okay, Perdan it is. Anyone having trouble walking, for chrissakes let me know. Matti, take point. Single file and make sure your chromaflage capes are working and neuronics are off. I don't think the Hammers will come looking for us, but you never know. Let's go.'
In silence, Widowmaker's crew set off after Chief Bienefelt. Limping along behind them, Michael knew how lucky they had been. They had been ambushed with the lander Widowmaker running slowly; if both fusion plants had been online, it would have been moving at full speed. Then no crew escape system could have saved them, ejection into the fast-moving airstream more than enough to tear capsule and occupants apart.
Bienefelt's hand went up. The small column stopped while she scanned the ground ahead. Perdan was visible beyond under a thick pall of smoke. 'I think we're there. Hard to tell, but I think I saw NRA pickets up ahead, which means their outer sensor line can't be far away. According to the ops plan, the 48th has this sector. I'll go and make sure they don't start shooting at us.'
'Watch out for the slugs, Matti,' Michael said. Fitted with optical sensors feeding a simple fire-control system linked to a pulsed laser, the ground-attack drones the NRA called slugs were deployed to secure the outer approaches to a fixed position. The size and shape of a large tortoise, slugs were cheap and nasty. The average grunt hated them. Occasionally, slugs would ignore the IFF-identification friend or foe-patches worn by every trooper in combat; they might be cheap and nasty, but they were still lethally dangerous.
'I will,' Bienefelt said, dropping to her stomach and crawling forward. 'I don't trust the bloody things, either. I'll be back, so don't go anywhere.'
'We won't.' Too tired to care much anymore, his body racked by pain, Michael slumped to the ground.
'You okay, skipper?' Ferreira asked, frowning with concern.
'Yeah, Jayla. Everything hurts like fury, but unless my neuronics are lying, it's nothing serious. Just aches, strains, and sprains, How about you?'
'Same. That was one hell of a ride.'
'Those Hammers were waiting for us,' Michael said with a grimace. 'That was planned.'
'That idea had occurred to me. Wondered why we hadn't seen them.'
'Interesting, though,' Michael said. 'They didn't give a shit how much damage we inflicted on Perdan's defenders. All they cared about was getting us. Cold-blooded but smart, damn smart… bastards,' he added with feeling.
It hit him. 'Shit,' he said. 'What about Alley Kat and Hell Bent? You heard anything?'
Ferreira shook her head. 'Nothing. I'm hoping they're okay. We'd have heard their beacons if they ejected, but there's nothing. I think we triggered the ambush too early.'
'I hope so. Losing Widowmaker's bad enough, but one of our heavies? What a disaster. Losing two doesn't even bear thinking about.'
The uncomfortable silence was broken by Bienefelt's return. 'Come on, you lot,' she said with a beaming smile. 'It is the 48th NRA, and they've put the coffee on for us.'
Much cheered by the prospect of one of the NRA's trademark brews, hot and aromatic, Michael climbed to his feet and trudged off after Bienefelt.
'I've spoken to brigade,' the colonel commanding the 48th said. 'They want you to make your way to the 120th to link up with the rest of the Feds.'
Michael's heart soared, buoyed by the prospect of seeing Anna again after so many weeks apart. 'Any idea what happens after that, Colonel?' he asked.
'No, sorry. Just that I'm to provide you with an escort and guide to make sure you get there okay. There are still a few Hammers we haven't accounted for. I can't spare any recon drones to watch your flanks, so keep your
