Samuel accessed the ESA operations centre computer and reviewed the security police deployment status. “We are a long way from their designated reinforcements; and we can have the flyers here in minutes. Hurting the feelings of the Tonala government is an irrelevance compared to securing the Alchemist. Mzu has done us a favour by coming to such a remote place.”
“Yeah. Well, if you’re willing to bring your flyers in to evac us, I’m certainly prepared to commit our people. We’ve got enough firepower to stomp on the police if—” She broke off as Adrian datavised again.
“The city air defence network has just located those missing Organization spaceplanes,” he told her. “They’re heading right at you, Monica; three of them coming in over the sea at Mach five. Looks like you were right about the foundry being a pickup zone.”
“My God, she is selling out to Capone. What a bitch.”
“Looks that way.”
“Can you direct the city network to shoot the spaceplanes?”
“Yes, if they get closer, but at the moment they’re out of range.”
“Will they be in range at the foundry?” Samuel asked.
“No. The network doesn’t have any missiles, it’s all beam weapons. Tonala relies on its SD platforms to kill any threat approaching from outside its boundaries.”
“The flyers,” Monica asked Samuel. “Can they intercept?”
“Yes.” Launch please, he instructed the pilots.
Monica datavised her armour suit management processor to run a readiness diagnostic, then pulled her shell helmet on and sealed it. The other agents began checking their own weapons.
“Joshua, the flyers are all leaving,” Ashly datavised.
“I was wondering about that,” Joshua replied. “We’re only about ten kilometres from the ironberg foundry now. Mzu must have arranged some kind of rendezvous there. Dick’s been running some checks for us; he says that sections of the foundry electronics are glitched. There could be some possessed up ahead.”
“Do you need an evac?”
Joshua glanced around the car. Melvyn and Dahybi weren’t giving anything away, while Dick Keaton was merely curious. “We’re not in any danger yet,” one of the serjeants said.
“No. But if it happens, it’s going to happen fast; and we’re not in the strongest position.”
“You can’t pull out now. We’re too close.”
“You’re telling me,” he muttered. “All right, we’ll keep on her for now. If we can get close enough to make our offer, well and good. But if the agencies start getting aggressive, then we back off. Understood, Ione?”
“Understood.”
“I may be able to offer some assistance,” Dick Keaton said.
“Oh?”
“The cars in this convoy are all local models. I have some program commands which could cause trouble in their control processors. It might help us get closer to your target.”
“If we start doing that to the agencies, they’ll use their own electronic warfare capability on us,” Melvyn said. “That’s if they don’t just use a TIP carbine. Everybody knows what’s at stake.”
“They won’t know it’s us,” Dick Keaton said.
“You hope,” Melvyn said. “They’re good, Joshua. No offence to Dick, but the agencies have entire departments of computer science professors writing black software for them.”
Joshua enjoyed the idea of screwing up the other cars, but the way they were driving further and further into isolation was a big mitigating factor. Normal agency rules of minimum visibility wouldn’t apply out here. If he upset the status quo, Melvyn was probably right about the reaction he’d get. What he really wanted was
“Sure thing.”
“Ashly, can you launch without causing undue attention?”
“I think so. There has to be someone observing me, but I’m not picking up any active sensor activity.”
“Okay, launch and fly a low-visibility holding pattern ten kilometres from the yard. We’ll shout for you.”
The four Edenist flyers picked up velocity as they curved around the outskirts of Harrisburg, hitting Mach two thirty kilometres from the coast. Their smoothly rounded noses lined up on the ironberg foundry. Snowflakes flowing through their coherent magnetic fields sparkled a vivid blue around the forward fuselages, then vaporised to fluorescent purple streamers. To anyone under their path, it appeared as though four sunburst comets were rumbling through the atmosphere.
It was the one failing of Kulu’s ion field technology that it could never be successfully hidden from sensors. The three Organization spaceplanes streaking in from the sea spotted them as soon as they lifted from the spaceport. Electronic warfare arrays were activated, seeking to blind the flyers with a full-spectrum barrage. Air- to-air missiles dropped out of their wing recesses and shot ahead at Mach ten.
The Edenist flyers saw them coming through the electronic hash. They peeled away from each other, arcing through the sky in complex evasion manoeuvres. Chaff and signature decoys spewed out of the flyers. Masers locked on and fired continuous pulses at the incoming drones.
Explosions thundered unseen above the farmland. Some of the missiles succumbed to the masers, while others followed their programs to detonate in preloaded patterns. Clouds of kinetic shrapnel threw up lethal blockades along the trajectories they predicted the flyers would use. But there were too few missiles left to create an effective kill zone.
The flyers stormed through.
It should have ended then, a duel between energy beam weapons and fuselage shielding, the two opponents so far away that in all probability they would never even see each other. But the snow forbade that; absorbing maser and thermal induction energy, cutting the effective strike range of both sides to less than five hundred metres. Flyers and spaceplanes had to get close to each other, spiralling around and around, looping, twisting, diving, climbing. Aggressors desperate to keep their beams on one point of their target’s fuselage; targets frantic to keep moving, spinning to disperse the energy input. A genuine dogfight developed. Pilots blinded by the snow and clouds, dependent on sensors harassed by unremitting electronic warfare impulses. Given that both the flyers and the spaceplanes were multi-role craft, the manoeuvres lacked any real acrobatic innovation. Predication programs were the true knights of the sky, allowing pilots to keep a steady lock on their opponents. The flyers’ superior agility began to pay dividends. The spaceplanes were limited by the ancient laws of aerodynamic lift and stability, restricting their tactics to classical aerial manoeuvres. While the flyers could move in any direction they wanted to providing their fusion generators had enough power.
The Organization was always going to lose.
One by one, the crippled spaceplanes tumbled out of the sky. Two of them smashed into the frozen soil outside the foundry yard, the third into the sea.
Overhead, the flyers closed formation and began to circle the vast foundry yard in anticipation of claiming their prize.
The docking cradle rose out of the spaceport bay, exposing the fuselage of the
“Fly us fifty kilometres along Jesup’s spin axis,” Quinn said. “Then hold us there.”
Dwyer flicked a throat mike down from his headset and muttered instructions to the flight computer. Ion thrusters lifted the clipper-class ship clear of the bay, then the secondary drive came on.
