“No,” they heard Dloan’s calm voice say. “Look.”
“Hmm,” Miz replied. “Narrow…” The leading AT swivelled right.
“Zef?” Sharrow said, glancing up. “Zef?” she shouted.
Zefla ducked down, shaking her head, her hair gathered up inside a combat cap. “Nothing yet,” she said, grabbing an intercom stalk and clipping it to her ear as she stood again.
The AT in front of them bounced over rocks and charged across the grass towards the trees, tyres gouging scooped trenches in the grass and spraying earth back at them as it climbed over springy saplings and pressed between the taller trunks beyond. Clods and stones thumped and whacked into the sloped chin and screen of their AT.
Sharrow glanced back; the submarine was submerged save for its tower, sinking rapidly into the swirling water as it continued to swing out astern from the shore.
Miz and Dloan’s AT shouldered its way between the trees, slowing.
“Got it,” Zefla said through the intercom. “Single plane. Low; looks big… fairly slow.”
“Think they saw us?” Sharrow asked as Feril manoeuvred the snout of their AT to within a metre of the vehicle in front.
“Difficult to say,” Zefla said.
Miz was turning his vehicle into a small clearing to the right, the ATs mottled camouflage darkening as it burrowed deeper under the overhanging branches.
“No sign they’ve seen us…” Zefla said quietly.
“That’s about as far as we go,” Miz said. The leading AT rolled to a stop; Feril halted theirs immediately behind. Sharrow reached into the footwell and unzipped a long bag with a crude anti-aircraft symbol scrawled on it. She pulled a missile-launcher out and stood up on the seat, swinging the hatch back and sticking her head and shoulders through.
The plane was a lumpy black speck, low over the water. Where the sub had been there was just a patch of disturbed water near the abandoned floating hull. The plane’s image enlarged in the missile-launcher’s sight, went briefly fuzzy then came sharp; she flicked the safety off.
Then something waved in the sight, close and un-focused and partially obscuring the aircraft. Sharrow frowned and looked away from the launcher’s sight; some of the young trees behind them had risen up again after being caught under the ATs, forming a thin screen between them and the shore.
She squinted back into the sight and watched the plane’s silhouette tilt and thicken. It was a flying boat, about the size of an ancient heavy bomber; pairs of engines high on each wing root and a V-strutted float near the tip of each wing. Six small missiles, under the wings. The plane banked slowly, almost languorously away. She tracked it until it disappeared behind the trees.
Sharrow listened to the sound of the plane’s jets, echoing distantly among the mountains. She put the missile-launcher back to standby.
“Where’d it go?” Miz said.
“Think it went down the fjord,” Dloan said. Sharrow turned to see Dloan in the hatch of the stationary leading AT, its nose stuck into the trees. He was pointing the cannon over their heads at where the plane had been.
“See any markings?” Sharrow asked Zefla.
Zefla shook her head. “Didn’t look like a Franchise ship to me.”
“I saw one of those old things in Quay Beagh,” Dloan said. “While we were negotiating for the sub.”
“Think it could be another private operator?” Miz asked. They heard him grunt as the leading AT rocked fractionally back, then attempted to plough forward again, only to be resisted once more by the flexing trunks of the trees. “Now that’s what I call contempt for the Areas Laws,” he said, sounding almost amused. “Barrelling right in with an antique that belongs in a museum of flight. Shit, we could have used ACVs after all.”
“Whatever,” Sharrow said, “it might be back. Let’s head along the coast and find somewhere better to hole up.”
“We are kind of hidden here,” Zefla pointed out.
“Only kind of,” Miz said. “And if anybody’s going to look for us, that hull’s where they’re going to start.”
“Our brave captain said something about scuttling the hulls,” Zefla said.
“Yeah, but the one on the beach isn’t going to sink too far.”
“Zef?” Sharrow said. “What do you think; did the plane see us?”
Zefla shrugged. “On balance, probably… yes.”
“So let’s go,” Sharrow said.
They reversed the two ATs out of the forest. The grounded submarine hull had settled by the stern; its cavernous open mouth towered over the little beach like an expression of silent surprise. The jettisoned hull had rolled over onto its back, rocking back and forth as it sank slowly into the dark water.
The two All-Terrains picked their way along the jumbled rock and tattered grass line between the water and the trees.
The plane had left a faint line of exhaust smoke a hundred metres or so above the centre of the broad fjord. Zefla stayed on watch; Sharrow sat back in her seat with the missile-launcher on her lap. She looked over at Feril, sitting with apparent unconcern as it guided their AT after Miz and Dloan’s.
“Sorry about all this,” she said.
“Please, don’t be,” the android said, turning its head to her for a moment. “This is highly exciting.”
Sharrow shook her head, smiling. “Could get more exciting yet if we can’t find a place to hide.”
“Oh well,” Feril said, and turned from her to look around at the fjord to their right and the steeply forested mountains on either side. “Still,” it said as its hands worked the wheel of the AT, picking its way between the boulders littering the stony shore. “This is quite beautiful scenery, don’t you think?”
Sharrow grinned, briefly shaking her head at the android. Then she tried to relax, and took a slow, deliberate look round at the liquid silence of the calm black waters, the pitched abundance of the enfolding forests and the rippling, half-hidden morphology of the tree-smothered slopes, jagged-rimmed against the pale wastes of sky.
“Yes,” she sighed, and nodded. “Yes, it is beautiful.”
They had gone less than a kilometre down the side of the fjord and found no breaks in the trees, no fallen boulders large enough to hide behind and no other form of cover, when Zefla shouted.
“It’s back!”
The flying boat appeared, a grey dot against the dark mountains towards the head of the fjord.
“Hell’s teeth,” Miz growled.
Sharrow watched the flying boat tilt and turn until it was heading straight towards them. She shook her head. “This is no good-”
“Firing!” yelled Zefla. Two bursts of smoke curled from under the wing roots of the plane.
“Stop!” Sharrow told the android. She grabbed her satchel from beneath the seat. “All out!”
“Shit,” Miz said. Both ATs skidded to a stop.
“Head for the fucking trees,” Zefla muttered, dropping from the hatch, bouncing on her seat and kicking the door open. She jumped to the ground holding a small back-pack, followed by Feril. Sharrow jumped from the other door. Miz leapt from the AT in front and ran for the trees as well.
“Out, Man!” Sharrow yelled. She was heading for some large rocks near the water’s edge. She clicked the safety off the missile-launcher.
Dloan stood in the hatch of the front AT, sighting the cannon at the plane; the two missiles were bright points at the end of smoky trails, racing closer over the black, still water. “Dloan!” she yelled. She threw herself down between two rocks and sighted the missile-launcher.
The missiles zipped in; they missed the two ATs and screamed overhead, detonating in the forest fifty metres behind them. Dloan started firing the cannon; she could see each tracered eighth shell arcing up and out across the water, falling a hundred metres short of the plane in distant, tiny white splashes. She fired the missile; there was a bang as the tube juddered against her shoulder, then a flash and a clap of noise when the missile ignited and a whoosh as it raced away.