“—can’t have been a ground-based system!” Durak Na-Khorul was saying hotly. “The main formation was over eight hundred kilometers northeast of Flight Leader Ukah’s destruction, and Hellbores are direct fire weapons. Name of the Nameless, just look at the terrain!” He stabbed a clawed finger at the map display on the main screen above the table, its features radar-mapped by the shuttles on their flight to destruction. “Look right here—and here, as well! These are intervening ridge lines with crests higher than the shuttles’ altitude. How in the Fourth Hell could a Hellbore shoot through a mountain to hit them?!”
The engineer glared around the table, lips quivering on the edge of a snarl, and answering tension crackled. Tharsk could taste it, yet he knew—as Durak surely did—that the engineer’s anger, like that which answered it, was spawned of fear of the unknown, not rage at one another.
“I agree with your analysis, Sir,” Lieutenant Janal said finally, choosing his words with care, “yet I can offer no theory which answers your question. Starquest’s database was never well informed on the Humans’ ground systems, and some of what we once had on their planetary weapons has been deleted to make space for data more critical to the flotilla’s operational needs. Nonetheless, all that we retain agrees that the Humans never employed Hellbores beyond the five-centimeter range as airborne weapons, while our telemetry data makes it clear that these weapons were in the twenty-centimeter range. They must, therefore, have been ground-based.”
“But—” Durak began, only to close his mouth with a click as Tharsk raised a hand. All eyes turned to him, and he focused his own gaze upon the tactical officer.
“What sorts of systems might we be looking at?” he asked quietly.
“Sorts of systems, Commander?” Janal repeated in a slightly puzzled tone, and Tharsk bared the very tips of his canines in a mirthless smile.
“I don’t doubt your conclusions as to the type and size of weapons, Janal. What I need to know is how mobile they’re likely to be… and how well protected.” He felt the watching eyes narrow and allowed a bit more of his fangs to show, expressing a confidence he was far from feeling. “We’re here now,” he continued levelly, “and our vessels are too worn to go further. If we can’t run, our only option is to fight, and for that we need the best information on our enemies in order to employ our own resources effectively.”
“Yes, Commander.” Janal’s voice came out husky, and he cleared his throat as he punched additional queries into the system. No one else spoke, but there was no real need for them to do so, for they knew as well as Tharsk how thin their “resources” had just become. With the loss of Flight Leader Ukah’s entire strength, they retained only ten shuttles, twenty-one assorted light mechs, and enough battle armor for little more than a battalion of infantry. Aside from Starquest’s ability to interdict incoming missiles, that was all they had, and it was unlikely to be enough.
“First, Commander,” Janal said finally, eyes on his flatscreen, “the Humans mounted Hellbores of this weight as main battery weapons in their Type One armored personnel carriers and Type Two light manned tanks as well as in the secondary batteries of their late model Bolos. In the absence of fusion power signatures on our flight in we cannot face Bolos, and their light manned armor should have been unable to coordinate their fire as precisely as appears to have been the case here.
“Assuming that the weapons were not, in fact, vehicle-mounted, we are left with several types of support weapons which might fall within the observed performance parameters, but all are relatively immobile. That immobility would make it difficult for the enemy to bring them into action against us here, as we would be given opportunities to destroy them on the move at relatively minor risk. However, it would also mean that our shuttles were engaged by at least two defensive positions, since no support battery could have relocated rapidly enough to engage at two such widely separated locations. From the threat assessment perspective, and given that our shuttles were tasked to recon and/or attack the smallest of the hostile emission sources, fixed defenses of such weight would certainly suggest much heavier ones for their important centers.
“Of the support weapons which our pilots might have encountered, the most likely would seem to be the Type Eight area defense battery, as this normally operated off capacitors in order to reduce detectibility. Next most likely would be the Type Five area defense battery, which—”
8
Regina Salvatore and Allen Shattuck stood on the outskirts of Landing and watched the miracle approach behind a blaze of light. It was a sight Salvatore had never seen before… and one Shattuck had expected never to see again: a Mark XXXIII Bolo, coming out of the darkness under Ararat’s three moons in the deep, basso rumble of its tracks and a cloud of bone—dry dust.
The mammoth machine stopped short of the bridge over the Euphrates River on the west side of Landing and pivoted precisely on its tracks. Its surviving main battery turrets traversed with a soft whine, turning their massive Hellbores to cover all western approach vectors as the dust of its passage billowed onward across the bridge. The Mayor heard her chief marshal sneeze as it settled over them, but neither cared about that, and their boot heels clacked on the wooden bridge planks as they walked towards the Bolo without ever taking their eyes from it.
A light-spilling hatch silently opened on an armored flank high above them. The opening looked tiny against the Bolo’s titanic bulk, but it was wide enough for Jackson and Rorie Deveraux to climb out it side-by-side. Rorie stayed where he was, waving to the newcomers, but Jackson swung down the exterior handholds with monkey—like agility. He dropped the last meter to land facing the Mayor and dusted his hands with a huge grin.
“Evening, Your Honor,” he said with a bobbing nod. “Evening, Marshal.”
“Jackson.” Salvatore craned her neck, peering up the duralloy cliff at Rorie. Shattuck said nothing for a moment, then shook his head and shoved his battered hat well back.
“I will be damned if I ever expected to see anything like this again,” he told Jackson softly. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Jackson! D’you realize what this means?”
“It means Shiva—that’s his name, Marshaclass="underline" Shiva—just kicked some major league ass. That’s what it means!”
Something in Jackson’s voice jerked Shattuck’s head around, and the younger man gave back a step, suddenly uneasy before the marshal’s expression. Shattuck’s nostrils flared for an instant, and then he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. It wasn’t Jackson’s fault, he told himself. For all his importance to Ararat’s small Human community, Jackson was only a kid, and he hadn’t seen the horrors of the voyage here… or the worse ones of the war.
“And how many people did Shiva kill ‘kicking ass,’ Jackson?” the ex-Marine asked after a cold still moment.
“None,” Jackson shot back. “He killed Melconians, Marshal… and kept them from killing the only people on this planet!”