He darted another look at the status board and felt a stab of relief. Ninety percent of their passengers had launched. Another few seconds, and “Last man out!” someone announced.
“Go! Get us the fuck out of here!” the CO shouted. The Fafnir’s nose rose as it swung further north towards safety, and he glared at his com officer. “Tell Granger that goddamned Bolo’s still alive!”
Far below the hovering transport, a dozen slabs of duralloy armor slid sideways to uncover an equal number of dark, circular bores. Deep within the wells they had covered, long-quiescent circuitry roused as it received the activation command from Lorenco Esteban’s distant communications console. Targeting criteria were passed, receipted, evaluated, and matched against the huge energy source in the sky above.
My sensors detect a fresh burst of gravitic energy from the bearing of the Fleet Base. It is too heavy to emanate from any planetary vehicle and must, therefore, be the first Fafnir. It is accelerating away from the Base, but its commander appears to be no fool. Although I can detect his emissions, he remains too low for my fire control to acquire him. I compute a probability of 99.971 percent that his current maneuvers indicate the successful deployment of his assault force, but I cannot intervene.
“Missile acquisition! We’ve been locked up!” someone screamed. Fafnir One’s commander started to twist towards the technician who’d shouted, but he never completed the motion.
Twelve surface-to-space missiles launched on pillars of fire. Their target raced for safety as rapidly as its internal grav compensators permitted, so fast its bow glowed cherry red, but it never had a chance. The SSMs’ conventional boosters blew them free of their silos, and they tilted, holding lock, and then went suddenly to full power on their own counter-grav. They overtook their victim just over three hundred kilometers downrange at an altitude of thirty-three thousand meters, and twelve twenty-kiloton warheads detonated as one.
There was no wreckage.
The warheads’ glare was bright enough to bleach the brilliant sun of Santa Cruz even at three hundred kilometers’ range, and Esteban snarled in triumph. He didn’t know why anyone would want to attack his world, but he knew at least one bunch of the murderous bastards would never attack anyone else’s.
Not bad fer an old crock with no formal trainin’, he thought venomously, and then, Thank God Enrique an’ ‘Milla aren’t back yet!
He shook himself and climbed back out of the chair. Whoever those people were, they weren’t going to be very happy with him for wrecking their transport. On the other hand, he’d spent seventy years on this very hacienda. He knew places where an army of raiders couldn’t find him.
He paused only long enough to grab the emergency supply pack he kept handy for search and rescue operations, slung a four-millimeter military power rifle over one shoulder, and vanished out the back door at a run.
My sensors detect the EMP of multiple nuclear detonations at a range of approximately 392.25 kilometers, bearing 030 degrees relative. This coincides with the estimated locus of the second Fafnir, and the previously detected heavy gravitic emissions have ceased. I compute a probability of 98.511 percent that the Fafnir has been destroyed by defensive fire, indicating that my Commander’s friend Lorenco Esteban has managed to activate the Fleet Base defenses. I hope that he has not paid with his life for this success.
I detect two new emission sources. Their locations correspond to the projected landing loci of the previously observed assault pods. They match my files for SC-191(b) fusion plants, and are accompanied by narrow-band, encrypted communications transmissions. I attempt to penetrate the com link, but without immediate success. Analysis indicates a sophisticated, multilevel security system.
I devote 1.0091 seconds to consideration of available data and reach a disturbing conclusion. The energy signatures are consistent with the power plants of a Mark XXIV or XXV Bolo; no other mobile unit mounts the SC-191(b). I do not know how the Enemy could have obtained current-generation Bolos, but if these are indeed Mark XXIVs or XXVs, I am grossly overmatched. Despite the superiority of the systems Major Stavrakas devised for me, I compute a probability of 87.46 percent, plus or minus 03.191 percent, that I will be destroyed by two Mark XXIVs, rising to 93.621 percent that I will be destroyed by two Mark XXVs. Yet my duty is clear. However the Enemy may have obtained access to such war machines, I must engage them.
* * *
“Colonel Gonzalez, I have detected what may be two hostile Bolos,” the soprano voice said calmly, and Consuela Gonzalez’ olive complexion went sickly gray.
Bolos? In the hands of planet-raiders? It wasn’t possible! Yet she was receiving confirmation of nuclear air-bursts from outlying melon growers over the planetary com net, and the transmissions from Ciudad Bolivar were a babble of hysteria. Her com tech reported the sounds of explosions and heavy weapons fire in the background of the Bolivar transmissions. There could be no doubt that the capital-including her husband and children-was under heavy, ruthless attack, and no one had had even a hint of what was coming, not even a second to organize any sort of defense. Nausea twisted her stomach as she thought of all the civilians who must be dying even as her tank bucketed through the jungle a hundred kilometers to the south, and if the bastards had Bolos “What do you want us to do?” she rasped over the com.
“I will engage them, Colonel. Your own vehicles lack the capability to survive against them. Continue to the specified rendezvous, then advance at your best speed on a heading of two-six-three true for forty-two kilometers before changing to a heading of zero-three-niner. That course will pass to the west of the Enemy’s current location and take you to Ciudad Bolivar in the shortest possible time.”
“You can’t take two other Bolos on your own!”
“Your assistance will not appreciably enhance my own combat capability, Colonel, and your units will be of far more utility to Santa Cruz in Ciudad Bolivar than they will if they are destroyed here. Please proceed as I have advised.”
“All right,” Gonzalez whispered, and then, even knowing it was a machine to whom she spoke– “Vaya con Dios, amiga.”
Colonel Louise Granger stared at her display in shock. She didn’t know what had happened to Fafnir Two-her transport command ship was on the wrong side of the planet, where it had been busy killing the last communications array-but the sudden cessation of all transmissions from Fafnir One was chilling proof her careful battle plan had just been blown to hell. One hadn’t managed to report a damned thing about what was shooting back before whatever it was destroyed her, but she’d gotten off her full load of assault troops and armor to take out the field and the planetary capital before she died. That put her point of destruction well to the north of the Bolo depot, so whatever had killed her, it hadn’t been the Bolo. Granger didn’t know what else on the planet could have done the job, but whatever it was could only have come from the old fleet base, though how anyone could have had time to activate its defenses was beyond her. What she didn’t know was whether or not Fafnir Two had gotten her Golems off before her destruction, and, unlike a Fafnir-class transport-or a full-capability Bolo-a Golem had no subspace com capability. She couldn’t find out what had happened to the huge tanks until her ship swung back over their radio horizon.