taken place. “Put us down,” Santana ordered grimly, and the fl?y-form hurried to obey. The station wasn’t much to look at. Just a mound inside a defensive berm, two opposing gates so that vehicles could pull through without backing, and what was left of the smoking hab. Half of the com mast was missing, which was why the com tech at MF-356 had been unable to get through. A lieutenant from the 13th DBLE’s recon squadron was there to greet the cavalry offi?cer as his boots hit the frozen ground. She had brown skin, wide-set eyes, and a scar that ran diagonally down across her face. “Lieutenant Bamik, sir,” the woman said, as she tossed Santana a salute. “I have orders to provide you with whatever assistance I can. But we arrived too late to stop him.”
Santana swore. “How many people did the bastard kill?”
“One, sir, when the HEDP round hit the com shack. A company of Seebos stormed the place immediately after that.”
“What about the hostages?” Santana wanted to know.
“Colonel Six has them,” Bamik answered glumly. “A navy doctor and a navy medic. Both appeared to be in good condition. The doctor dropped this on the ground.”
Santana accepted the small piece of paper. Judging from how wrinkled it was, the note had been wadded up into a ball. “To whom it may concern,” the message began. “I have reason to believe that Colonel Six plans to take us over TowTok Pass.” It was signed, “Lt. Kira Kelly, Medical Offi?cer, CSB Navy.” That was promising. Not only did it serve to confi?rm the cavalry offi?cer’s hypothesis, it meant the doctor had her wits about her.
Santana looked out toward the highway as two heavily loaded trucks growled past. Both were loaded with glumlooking CVA conscripts. The offi?cer was struck by how empty the two-lane road was compared to the bumper-to-bumper traffi?c that he and his company had been forced to deal with as they entered the mountains. That seemed to imply a breakthrough of some sort, a victory that had allowed allied forces to cross Tow-Tok Pass and head for the town of Yal-Am beyond. So maybe General-453 had been right all along. Maybe the bugs were on the run.
Not that it made much difference to Santana. What mattered to him was that the highway was open. Which meant that the renegade and his Seebos would be able to make good time. “So what kind of vehicles did they steal?” Santana wanted to know as he turned back toward Bamik. The junior offi?cer consulted a scrap of paper. “Two Hegemony hover tanks, fi?ve half-tracks, a six-by-six, and a fueler. All taken from a company of Seebos. All the colonel had to do was order them to exit the vehicles, and they obeyed,” the legionnaire said disgustedly. “That’s the clones for you!”
“So he’s got plenty of go-juice,” Santana commented.
“Okay, let’s see if we can cut the bastard off. I need a com link.”
“I can take care of that,” Millar said, thereby reminding Santana of his presence. “Right,” Santana replied. “Thank you. See if you can raise First Lieutenant Lucy Amoyo for me. . . . Call sign, Alpha One-Six. My company is on hold at Waypoint 27. Maybe, just maybe, they can block the road and cut Six off. Assuming you can raise Amoyo, tell her what to look for, and tell her I’m on my way.”
Millar bobbed up and down by way of an acknowledgment, attempted to make contact, and failed. That wasn’t unusual in and around the mountains, so the recon ball shot straight up, and leveled off at one hundred fi?fty feet. And from that altitude the cyborg had better luck. He was able to make contact with Alpha Company within a matter of minutes, introduce himself to Lieutenant Amoyo, and relay Santana’s message.
Having accomplished his mission, the scout dropped to a point only four feet off the surface, where it was necessary to hurry over to the fl?y-form, which was preparing for takeoff. The transport fl?ew only one hundred feet off the highway as it followed the ribbon of concrete up into the mountains. The cyborg kept a sharp “eye” out for the fugitive vehicles but saw no sign of them. Even though it had taken Alpha Company days to make their way up to Waypoint 27—it took the cybernetically controlled aircraft less than fi?fteen minutes to make the same trip.
Back before the invasion, Waypoint 27 had been little more than a wide spot in the highway. A place where civilian truckers could pull out to let faster vehicles pass, take a bio break, or make some minor repairs. But during the long, hard-fought push up toward Tow-Tok Pass, the fl?at area had been used as the site for everything from a fi?eld hospital to a forward repair-and-maintenance company. Of course, those units were gone, leaving the piece of godforsaken real estate to some forlorn wrecks, and the legionnaires of Alpha Company. The fl?y-form’s repellers generated a cloud of steam and blew a layer of powdery snow sideways as the cyborg came in for a perfect landing on the big red X that Master Sergeant Dietrich had spray-painted onto the ice-encrusted ground. By the time the engines began to spool down, and the fl?yform’s steps had been deployed, Santana’s T-2 was there to meet him. Ten minutes later, the two of them were out on the surface of the much-abused road, where the company’s quads were half-blocking the highway. Which should be enough force to stop Six given that he wouldn’t be able to deploy more than two hover tanks side by side or run any fl?anking maneuvers. Millar followed ten feet behind them. The moment Santana saw Amoyo’s force he knew something was wrong. The platoon leader’s face shield was up, her cheeks were ruddy from the cold, and the set of her mouth was grim. Both legionnaires were mounted and therefore eye to eye. “Welcome back, sir. . . . I wish I had better news to report.”
Santana felt his spirits fall but was careful to keep his expression neutral. “They got by?”
“Sir, yes sir,” Amoyo said miserably. “It was my fault, sir. . . . I gave orders to watch for two tanks, fi?ve tracks, a truck, and a tanker.”
There was a brief pause while Santana considered the way the report had been phrased. Then he understood. “But you didn’t give orders to be on the lookout for a tank, two halftracks, and a six-by, or some other combination of vehicles.”
“Eventually, I did,” Amoyo added apologetically. “But it was too late by then. They had already passed in three seemingly discrete groups. And the unit designators on the vehicles had been changed.”
“That’s too bad,” Santana allowed sympathetically. “But don’t let it get you down. . . . Colonel Six is one smart bastard! That’s why they chose us to catch him! Come on, let’s pull the company together, and give chase. Maybe one of his vehicles will break down or something. We’ll catch up with him eventually.”
And they tried. But there was no sign of the renegade or the stolen vehicles as the company topped Tow-Tok Pass four hours later and started down the other side. It became increasingly diffi?cult to see because a winter storm had blown in from the west and was about to dump a foot of fresh snow onto eastern slopes of the Hebron mountain range. So it wasn’t long before visibility was reduced to fi?fty or sixty feet. That was when Santana sent Lieutenant Millar forward to scout the road ahead and provide advance warning if something was blocking the highway. But it wasn’t long before the recon ball came across something a lot more serious than a stalled APC blocking the road. The ground was fairly level at that point, forming a broad shelf in the mountainside, where the ice-encrusted concrete disappeared into a nightmarish landscape of wrecked vehicles. There were hundreds of them, both Ramanthian and allied, all mixed up with each other in a way that suggested a close-quarters battle between two armored units. It would be easy to lose one’s way inside the steel maze, especially given the gathering gloom, and Millar was about to call that in when a fl?are lit the sky ahead. A lacy curtain of gently falling
