A big ten-wheeled vehicle rolled into view, grey metal glinting dully, a black bubble-cab protruding from a flat upper surface. It had a blunt wedge-shaped front that smashed through trunks without the slightest resistance. Viscous sprays of red-brown mud were being flung up by its rear wheels, caking the metal bodywork. There were another three identical vehicles following it along the track of shattered vegetation it was ripping through the jungle.
“We positively identified them as Dhyaan DLA404 landcruisers; they are made on Varzquez. Or I should say, were made. The Dhyaan company stopped producing that particular model over twenty years ago.”
Colin Rexrew datavised a search order into the office computer. “The LDC never brought any to Lalonde.”
“That’s right. The invaders brought them. What you’re seeing is the first definite proof that it is an external force behind all this. And they’re heading straight towards Durringham.”
“Dear God.” He put his empty wineglass down on the desk, and stared at the screens. The enemy had a physical form. After weeks of helpless wrestling with an elusive, possibly imaginary, foe, it was finally real; but a reason for the invasion, logical or otherwise, was impossible to devise.
Colin Rexrew gathered up what was left of his old determination and resolve. Something tangible gave his psyche a fragment of very welcome confidence. He accessed the one neural nanonics program he had thought he would never have to use, strategic military procedure, and put it into primary mode. “We have to stop deluding ourselves we can handle this on our own. I need combat troops backed up with real fire-power. I’m going to blow these invaders right off my planet. We only need to locate the headquarters. Kill the brain and the body is irrelevant. We can see about removing the sequestration nanonics from people later.”
“The LDC board will need convincing,” Terrance Smith said. “It won’t be easy.”
“They will be told afterwards,” Colin said. “You’ve seen those landcruisers. They’ll be here in a week. We must move fast. After all, it’s the board’s interest I’m ultimately protecting; without Lalonde there will be no LDC.”
“Where can you get troops from without going through the board?” Terrance asked.
“The same place they would ultimately get them from. We buy them on a short-term contract.”
“Mercenaries?” the aide asked in surprised alarm.
“Yes. Candace, where’s the nearest port we can get enough in reasonable numbers? I want armed ships, too; they can provide the fire-power back-up from low orbit. It’s expensive, but cheaper than buying in strategic- defence platforms. They can also prevent any more of the invader’s ships from landing.”
The chief sheriff gave him a long, testing stare. “Tranquillity,” she said eventually. “It’s a base for blackhawks and the so-called independent traders. Where you find the ships, you find the people. Ione Saldana might be young, but she’s not stupid, she won’t throw out the undesirables. The plutocrats who live in the habitat have too many uses for them.”
“Good,” Colin said decisively. “Terrance, cancel all work on Kenyon as of now. We’ll use the money earmarked for mining its main chamber. It always was bloody premature.”
“Yes, sir.”
“After that, you can take one of the colonist-carrier ships to Tranquillity and supervise the recruitment.”
“Me?”
“You.” Colin watched the protest form and die unvoiced on the younger man’s lips. “I want at least four thousand general troops to re-establish order in Durringham and the immediate counties. And I also want teams of combat scouts for the Quallheim Counties. They are going to have to be the best, because they are going to be assigned the search and destroy mission in the deep jungle. Once they locate the invader’s home base they can zero it for the starships’ weapons. We can pound it from orbit.”
“What sort of armaments are we looking for on these starships?” Terrance asked guardedly.
“Masers, X-ray lasers, particle beams, thermal inducers, kinetic harpoons, and atmospheric penetration nukes—straight fusion, I don’t want any radioactives clogging the environment.” He caught the aide’s eye. “And no antimatter, not under any circumstances.”
Terrance gave a cautious grin. “Thank you.”
“What ships have we got available in orbit right now?”
“That was something I was going to mention,” Terrance said. “The
“So?”
“Firstly, it was a cargo ship, and only fifty per cent of its cargo had been unloaded. And cargo is the one thing we are still bringing down to the spaceport. It had no reason to leave. Secondly, it had no permission to leave. There was no prior contact with our Civil Flight Control Office. The only reason I found out it had left was because Kelven Solanki got in touch with me to query it. When I checked with flight control to ask why they hadn’t informed us about it, they didn’t even know
“Why?” Candace asked. “It’s not as if we have anything that could prevent them from leaving.”
“No,” Colin said slowly. “But we could have asked another ship to track it. Without the monitor satellite data we don’t know its jump coordinate, we don’t know where it went.”
“Solanki will have a copy,” Terrance said. “Ralph Hiltch too, I suspect. If he was pressed.”
“That’s all we need, another bloody puzzle,” Colin said. “See what you can find out,” he told Candace.
“Yes, sir.”
“Back to the original question. What other ships are available?”
Terrance consulted his neural nanonics. “There are eight left in orbit; three cargo ships, the rest colonist- carriers. And we’re due for another two colonist-carriers this week, as well as a Tyrathca merchant ship sometime before the end of the month to check on their farmers.”
“Don’t remind me,” Colin said sorely.
“I think the
“Get onto it tonight,” Colin said. “And, Candace, that means the spaceport has to be defended at all costs. We have to be able get those troops down in the McBoeings. There’s nowhere else for them to land. The scouts can use VTOLs to take them direct to the Quallheim Counties, but the rest will have to use the McBoeings.”
“Yes, sir, I am aware of that.”
“Good, start organizing for it, then. Terrance, I want you back here in ten days. Give me one month, and I’ll have these bastards begging me for surrender terms.”
The gaussgun’s fragmentation round hit the man full in his chest, and penetrated to a depth of ten centimetres, already starting to crater the flesh, impact shock pulverizing the entire mass of organs held within his rib cage to mucilaginous jelly. Then it exploded, silicone shrapnel reducing the entire body to a spherical cascade of scarlet cells.
Will Danza grunted in acute satisfaction. “Try rebuilding yourself out of that, my xenoc friend,” he told the slippery red leaves.
The hostiles were impervious to almost any major injury. The little ESA team had found that out long ago. Gaping lacerations, severed limbs—they barely slowed the hostiles down as they emerged from the thick bushes to harass the party. Wounds closed up, bones knitted in seconds. Lieutenant Jenny Harris might insist on calling the prisoner a sequestrated colonist, but Will knew what it really was. Xenoc monster. And its friends wanted it back.
Twice in the last three kilometres Jenny Harris had been forced to order a sweep-scorch pattern. The things had been throwing that eerie white fire of theirs. Once a ball had struck Dean Folan’s arm, burning through the suit’s energy diffusion layer as if it wasn’t there. The medical nanonic package they’d put on his arm looked like a tube of translucent green exoskeleton.
“Hey!” Dean yelled. “Get back here!”
Jenny Harris looked round. Gerald Skibbow was running into the jungle, both arms pumping wildly. “Shitfire,” she muttered. He had been zipcuffed a moment ago. Dean was lining up his gaussgun.
