"I make it twenty-three from here, Maam," Harkness said from the tac section after a moment, studying the frustratingly vague output of his passive sensors.
"In that case, I think its a river, My Lady," Mayhew said, and she heard the rustle and crackle of plaspaper as he studied the hardcopy map he and Russell Sanko had put together. "The Tepes download didnt give any terrain details, but thats what it looked like from the weather sat maps we picked up. If it is a river, its not much of one, though."
"Um." Honor laid the binoculars back down and rubbed her nose in thought, then looked at Scotty. "Think you could take a shuttle through there without counter-grav?"
"Without?" Tremaine looked at her for a moment, then inhaled sharply. "Sure," he said, far more confidently than he could possibly feel, and Honor chuckled.
"Dont get your testosterone in an uproar on me now, Scotty. Im serious. Can you get us in there?"
"Probably, Maam," he said after a moment, then added, grudgingly, "but I cant guarantee it. With one of our own pinnaces, yes. But this is a big brute, Maam. Shes a lot heavier on the controls, and I havent really experimented with her vectored thrust yet."
"But you think you could do it."
"Yes, Maam."
Honor thought for several more seconds, then sighed and shook her head.
"Id like to take you up on that," she said, "but I dont think we can risk it. Chief Harkness?"
"Aye, Maam?"
"Go ahead and fire up the plant, Chief."
"Aye, aye, Maam. Im starting light-off now. We should be nominal in about four minutes."
"Thank you, Chief. Signal Commander Metcalf please, Scotty."
"Yes, Maam." Tremaine banked the big shuttle to expose its full wingspan to Metcalfs lower position and flashed both wingtip lights twice.
"Answering flash from Shuttle Two, Maam," a Grayson voice reported.
"Thank you, Carson," Honor replied, and leaned back beside Tremaine. Firing up the fusion plants and bringing up the counter-grav added somewhat to the risk of detection if any recon sat happened to be looking their way. Shed hoped to avoid that, but shed also known she might not be able to. That was why shed arranged a signal to warn Metcalf without breaking com silence. At least the plants shouldnt be on-line for long, she told herself, and the counter-grav would make it much, much saferand easierto get the shuttles down.
"Ive got power to the counter-grav, Maam," Tremaine reported, breaking in on her thoughts, and she nodded.
"See that S-curve to the south?" she asked.
"Yes, Maam."
"It looks like the widest break in the tree cover weve got. See if you can get us in there on its west bank."
"Yes, Maam." Tremaine almost managed not to sound dubious, and Honor felt the right side of her mouth quirking in another grin as he banked again and came back around. Her hand dropped down beside her to rest on Nimitzs flank, and she felt a wiry, long-fingered true-hand pat her wrist in reply, and then Tremaine was dumping altitude and speed alike.
Despite his comments about the shuttles controls, he brought the big craft in with a delicacy a Sphinx finch might have envied. The counter-grav let him fold the wings, which had been swept fully forward for their low-speed examination of possible landing sites, back into their high-speed position without losing control, and she heard turbines whine as he held a moderate apparent weight on the shuttle and vectored thrust downward. The sixty-three-meter fuselage slid almost daintily towards the ground, hovering with ponderous grace, and Honor peered through the armorplast windscreen.
The break in the canopy was a river, and shallow water rushed and tumbled over mossy boulders in a torrent of moon-struck white and black. The trees grew right up to the banks, but the humidity was far lower here in the center of the continent than it had been at their peninsular landing site, and the growth looked less lush and thick. Or she hoped it did, anyway. It was hard to be sure, and the last thing they needed was to suck something into a turbine.
"Over there, Maam. To port," Tremaine said. "What about there?"
"Um." Honor twisted in her seat to look in the indicated direction. It looked like one of the treesand a titan among titans, at thatmust have fallen and taken two or three others with it. The result was a breach in the overhead cover that seemed to offer a way under the remaining canopy.
"All right," she said finally, "but take it slow. And take some more weight off her so you can cut back on the VT. Lets try not to kick up trash and FOD a turbine."
"Yes, Maam. That sounds like a real good idea," Tremaine replied, then grinned tightly despite his gathering tension. "Chief Barstow would appreciate it, too, Im sure."
"Hey, the heck with Chief Barstow," Harkness growled over the com. "This here is my bird, Sir. She can look after Two."
"I stand correctedor at least chastened," Tremaine said in a somewhat distracted tone, his hands flickering over his controls with the precision of an absent-minded concert pianist while his eyes never left his intended landing site.
The pilot in Honor wanted to help him, but she knew better than to try. Her single hand would make her slow and awkward, and it was better to let him handle the entire load rather than risk getting in his way.
The shuttle came in very slowly, gleaming in the moonlight, and the black shadow of the jungle reached out for it. Tremaine slid it forward, no more than half a dozen meters above the ground, and Honor watched with carefully hidden nervousness as foliage rippled and danced below them. Even with the reduction in downward thrust, there was a lot of small trash flying around down there, and foreign object damage to a turbine could have deadly consequences this close to the ground.
But the turbines continued their whining song of power, and Tremaine eased the shuttle carefully down and forward. The long fuselage slid in under the tree cover, and he fed in some side thrust, edging to port.
"Were not going to be able to get as deep as we were at Site One, Maam," he observed through gritted teeth. His voice was still conversational, despite the sweat glistening on his taut face, and his hands moved the stick and thrust controls with smooth delicacy. "Best I can do is scrunch over as far as I can this way and let Gerry have the right side."
"Ill go with your call, Scotty," Honor said softly, without commenting on the fact that hed given himself by far the tougher landing spot. But he was a better natural pilot than Metcalfas good as Honor herself, but with more recent practice and two handsand he brought his shuttle another twenty meters to its left, then nodded to himself.
"Deploy gear, please, Maam," he said. That much she could do, one-handed or not, and she pulled the big handle. The landing legs deployed quickly and smoothly, and Tremaine let the shuttle sink slowly down onto them. There was one scary moment as the outboard starboard leg flexed alarmingly and a red light flashed on the panel, but assault shuttles were designed for rough field landings, and the computer controlling that leg adjusted quickly. The red light died, and Tremaine gradually reduced his counter-grav, watching his readouts carefully for several taut seconds. Then he exhaled explosively.
"Were down, Maam," he announced. "Chief, kill the fusion plant."
"Aye, Sir," Harkness replied, and Honor reached across her body to pat Tremaine on the shoulder.
"That was good work, Scotty," she told him, and he smiled at her. Then she turned away to watch through her side window as Geraldine Metcalf brought Shuttle Two in on the far side of the opening. From here, it looked almost effortless, but Honor could imagine exactly what it felt like from inside that other cockpit. After all, shed just experienced it herself.
"All right, people," she said as the other shuttle finally settled and its turbines died. "Were going to have to work faster than wed expected to get the nets up. Senior Chief OJorgenson?"
"Yes, Maam?" Senior Chief Tamara OJorgenson was a fellow Sphinxian who had been a senior environmental tech aboard Prince Adrian but also happened to be a fully qualified small craft gunner.