felt good.
His surroundings were little more than a green blur, there were moments of what felt like weightlessness as Joshi jumped over fallen trees, and the occasional pop as an insect came into violent contact with Santana’s visor. But after a couple of hours had passed, Santana began to tire. And he knew that the rest of the troops felt the same way. However, it was important to push the company, and he did. So that by the time the light had begun to fade and Santana called a halt, the team had covered nearly two hundred miles. It was an accomplishment that put them only two days out from the G-tap.
But to maintain that pace, Santana knew it was important to perform maintenance on the cyborgs. So rather than eat, pee, and push on, he granted the company an eight-hour respite. Although once the bio bods consumed their rations, carried out repairs, and stood an hour of guard duty, they would be lucky to get five or six hours of sleep. Instead of taking the time and energy required to build a marching fort, Santana had the troops put out sensors and sleep within a circle of watchful T-2s.
The hours of darkness passed uneventfully, but Santana hadn’t been able to sleep as well as he would have liked and was unexpectedly sore as he made the rounds. Months had passed since he had spent a full day on a T-2 that was running cross-country. But everyone else had sore muscles as well, and it gave the bio bods something to bitch about as they ate their rats, drained their bladders, and strapped in. Moments later, they were under way.
Ponco had her sensors on max. That was a good thing to the extent that it enabled her to “see” the occasional group of grazing triturators and lead the company around the massive beasts. But there was a downside as well. Cranking her sensors up to high gain resulted in a lot of visual clutter. That included the presence of arboreal animals that were of little or no threat to the company, hot spots where the sun had been baking a tree trunk for an hour, and, in one case, the wreckage of an air car that had been hanging in the canopy for years.
So when Ponco “saw” the scattering of heat blobs at a distance, she didn’t take them very seriously. Not until she got close enough to make a positive ID. That was when she took cover behind a Ba-Na tree and put out the call. “This is Alpha One-Three. I have approximately twelve-that is one-two-indigs in sight, and suggest that the column pull up while I deal with them. Over.”
Santana’s voice was concerned. “This is Alpha One. I read you. Can you handle them alone? Over.”
“Affirmative,” Ponco replied, although she wasn’t as confident as she sounded. “I’ll give you a holler if I need help. Over.”
“Roger that. The column will take a break. Over.”
Ponco’s first task was to circle around the O-Chies and place herself between them and the G-tap. Because if this particular group of indigs was hostile, she wanted to prevent them from making contact with the Ramanthians. But were they? Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out.
So Ponco darted from tree to tree until she was as close as she dared to go. Then she showed herself. The result was almost instantaneous, as the natives opened fire on her.
Ponco took evasive action, secured a good vantage point, and prepared to fire. Rather than pull the trigger manually, she chose to bring her. 50-caliber weapon online and marked three targets for the onboard computer to shoot at. Then it was a simple matter to give the order, feel the recoil, and watch the symbols disappear.
Then the survivors came straight at her. Now that they knew off-world troops were in the area, they were determined to report the invasion. But they fell one after the other as Ponco marked them for death, and the computer did her bidding. Then the target blobs began to coalesce as the O-Chies banded together and charged her. They were moving up, down, and sideways as they swung from vines and jumped branch to branch.
But Ponco could deal with that, or believed she could, until a shrill tone sounded inside her “head.” The computer’s voice was emotionless. “Incoming missile. Incoming missile. Take evasive action.”
Ponco obeyed in hopes that she could shake the weapon. “Type?”
“Type R89 fire-and-forget with hunt/pause capabilities.”
Ponco wasn’t scared anymore. She was terrified. Apparently, one of the O-Chies had been armed with a Ramanthian Type 89 missile. The weapons were easy to fire and could not only track their targets but wait for a clean shot if necessary. “This is Alpha One-Three. A Type 89 missile has a lock on me. Estimated six hostiles on the loose. You’re on your own. Over.”
Then it was kill or be killed as Ponco was forced to switch her attention away from the O-Chies to the computer-controlled killing machine that was stalking her. She triggered all of the electronic countermeasure gear she had on board but knew it wouldn’t be enough in a situation where the enemy had visual contact with her.
As Ponco flitted from tree to tree and from shadow to shadow, she caught brief glimpses of the deadly thing as it darted through the foliage. It was shaped like an elongated bullet. But unlike a projectile fired from a gun, the 89 could hover before speeding in for the kill. Such were Ponco’s thoughts when Santana’s voice came over the push. For the first time in memory, he made use of her first name. “We’re ready for the little bastard, Sally. Home on my signal and come straight in.”
Ponco felt a sudden surge of hope as she swerved, flew under a thick branch, and weaved her way between sun-splashed tree trunks. “The missile is closing,” the computer announced dispassionately. “Ten to impact. Nine, eight, seven…”
Then Ponco was down at ground level, following a game trail through the woods, as gunfire erupted from the right flank. The missile, which had been suckered into flying past a rank of four T-2s, exploded. Pieces of the machine flew for another thirty feet before plowing into the ground.
A cheer went up as Ponco soared into the treetops. She was giddy with relief and surprised to be alive. “This is Alpha One-Three. Thank you. Over.”
“You’re welcome,” came the reply. “Close with those O-Chies and kill them. Over.”
Ponco was alive, but the job was far from over.
The next couple of days were not only physically demanding but emotionally exhausting. As the company continued to race toward the Ramanthian geo tap, a series of scrambled radio messages had come in from Rona- Sa. The larger group had been attacked by Ramanthian aircraft twice. But thanks to the heavily armed quads, two fighters had been shot down, and casualties were relatively light.
Did that mean the bugs believed all of the Confederacy troops were retreating toward Baynor’s Bay? He couldn’t be sure. But as Santana lay belly down at the edge of the forest and looked toward the geothermal power plant, there was reason to hope. Because there had been no further contact with the enemy or its auxiliaries subsequent to Ponco’s nearly fatal encounter with the Ramanthian missile. Having carried out a reconnaissance during the hours of darkness, the recon ball was hovering inches off the ground to the officer’s left.
As Santana peered through a pair of binoculars, he saw a stretch of open ground, X-shaped monster barriers similar to those he’d seen in Baynor’s Bay, and weapons blisters between them. Farther back a windowless, one- story building hugged the ground. There was a landing pad on the roof. That was flanked by three vertical stacks, all leaking what might have been steam into the cool morning air. The only other feature worth noting was a com mast that poked straight up from the south side of the installation.
That was what Santana could see from the edge of the forest. But he knew that in keeping with both the power plant’s function and the Ramanthian preference for living underground, most of the facility would be below the surface. And that, he figured, was where most of the troops were housed.
The general impression was that of a well-fortified installation but one the battalion would have been able to take had the entire force been present. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. “So,” Santana said, as he panned the glasses from left to right. “There’s no way to take this thing head-on. Not given the force at our disposal.”
“No, sir,” Ponco agreed. “I circled the entire facility last night and concluded that we would need the quads to beat their defenses down.”
Santana knew he had allowed himself to engage in wishful thinking where the installation was concerned. He had hoped that the geo tap’s defenses were only partially completed. Or maybe they were poorly built. But no such luck. The Ramanthians had done their work well. So what to do? Quitting wasn’t an option. Not with so much at stake.
Think, Santana told himself. Every fortress has a weakness. All you have to do is find it. But there weren’t any weaknesses. None Santana could see anyway. So he and Ponco were forced to withdraw without formulating a plan.
