"Last man clear!" Atwater's executive officer announced.
"You're clear to lift, Maneka," Atwater said. "Everybody's outside the drive perimeter."
"Thank you," Maneka replied, as courteously as if her/their sensors hadn't already informed her of that. "Lifting now."
The pod's drive howled as Lazarus threw maximum emergency power to it and headed not west, toward the Melconian transport, but south, away from it.
"Sir, Colonel Na-Lythan's advanced drones have located a force of Human infantry directly on our planned line of advance."
Ka-Frahkan looked up from the map console of the command vehicle moving away from the LZ at a steady fifty kilometers per hour and bared his canines in irritation. Not that he was particularly surprised.
"Show me, Jesmahr," he said, and Na-Salth quickly dumped the new data to a small-scale terrain display at the general's elbow.
"Nameless Ones take them," Ka-Frahkan growled. "What demon is whispering in their ears?"
Na-Salth made no reply to the obviously rhetorical question. He and Ka-Frahkan sat side by side, studying the display, and the general snorted in exasperation.
"I make it at least one of their battalions," he said, trained eyes evaluating the data sidebars with the ease of long experience.
"I concur, sir. But look here." Na-Salth indicated one of the sidebars. "They appear to be equipped with their Marines' powered armor, but their evident unit organization doesn't match."
"No," Ka-Frahkan agreed. His ears shifted slowly and thoughtfully, and then he stabbed the display with one clawed finger. "This is one of their militia battalions," he said positively. "It's far better equipped than their militia ought to be, but that's what it is. Look here. Their Marines use five-man fire teams, but these appear to be organized into seven-man teams, and the total troop strength is almost forty percent higher than a Marine battalion's ought to be. And look here, as well." He indicated the attached heavy weapons, most of which were already well dug-in. "They have fewer antiarmor platoons than they ought to, and this plasma-rifle section has four rifles in it, not six. The numbers are right for their militia; it's just the quality of the equipment that's different."
"So we're not up against first-line troops, sir," Na-Salth mused.
His ears flattened in grim memory of the twenty-seven percent casualties the brigade had taken in that attack.
"Well, sir," Na-Salth replied, "we won that one, too."
"Well said," Ka-Frahkan acknowledged. "Still, it should remind us that Human militia can be just as tough as their frontline units. And this militia has the weapons to be a nasty handful for Ka-Somal's infantry."
"But not for Uran's armor," Na-Salth pointed out.
"No," Ka-Frahkan agreed. "Of course, that's what their never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Bolo is for, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir," Na-Salth acknowledged, wrinkling his muzzle in an expression of sour agreement. Neither of them chose to bring up the fact that the defenders of Tricia's World had not had Bolo support when the brigade went in.
"But, speaking of the Bolo," Na-Salth continued, "where is it?"
"A well-taken question."
Ka-Frahkan folded his hands behind him, rocking up and down on the balls of his feet while he continued to gaze at the images relayed from Na-Lythan's drones.
"I suspect the Bolo is playing transport," he said finally.
"Sir?"
"This is one of the spots you and I identified as a potential bottleneck before we ever even landed,"
Ka-Frahkan reminded him. "It's on the shortest route from our LZ to their colony, and this—" he took one hand from behind him and waved at the terrain display "—is the one place where all of the possible lines of approach for all of the routes we've identified come together. This pass they're deployed in is the only way for our armored mechs to get through that particular stretch of mountains. And the terrain allows the side with the shorter-ranged weapons to overcome much of its disadvantages, which makes it an ideal spot for infantry to confront armored units, if it has no choice but to confront them anyway."
Na-Salth flicked his ears in agreement. The longest line of sight through the rugged, tumbling mountainsides on the approach to the Humans' position was no more than five or six kilometers long.
That was the equivalent of knife-range, close enough, as Ka-Frahkan had just pointed out, to make even infantry weapons—especially, he admitted sourly, Human infantry weapons—deadly against anything but the most heavily armored vehicles.
"It's not the best position for a Bolo, though," Ka-Frahkan continued. "Its Hellbore has a considerably greater effective range than our own do, and however much we may hate to admit it, its fire control is much better. Coupled with its superior battle screen and armor, it should want to engage us at the longest possible range, not somewhere where the terrain will let us get close enough for Uran's mechs to even the odds through volume of fire."
"So why—?" Na-Salth left the question hovering, and Ka-Frahkan snorted.
"They're building a blocking position, putting a cork into the bottle, Jesmahr," he said harshly. "These militia are there to backstop the Bolo. Look at it. It will take hours for our own mechs to reach that position. Na-Pahrthal's air cavalry could get there much sooner, but the Humans already have their antiair defenses well established, and their infantry weapons are capable of dealing with most of his air cav mounts. So they've been positioned at a point where they can block anything advancing towards their colony in order to watch the back door while the Bolo maneuvers against us further west. It can use its damned assault pod to position itself anywhere it wants for the initial contact, and it will know the blocking position behind it will stop anything that gets past it except our mechs."
"Well, we know it isn't anywhere between us and the militia," Ka-Frahkan said. "While I'm prepared to admit that the stealth capabilities built into the Bolos are almost as good as our own, no one could hide a fighting vehicle of that size from Uran's drones—not when he's flown the sort of saturation pattern he has here. So the most logical thing for it to be doing is returning to the colony to pick up yet another battalion of this accursedly well-equipped militia to further reinforce the position they've already established. It's got the time, after all. Even allowing for loading and unloading times at each end, its pod can make the round-trip between the Human settlement and this point—" he indicated the display again
"—in less than a quarter of the time it will take even our most advanced ground units to reach it. And the stronger the cork in the bottle becomes, the more tactical flexibility the Bolo gains when it comes time for it to engage us."
"You may well be right, sir. But does that really change our options?"
"No." Ka-Frahkan flattened his ears. "No, it doesn't. The only way to their colony is through that blocking position, and as long as we continue to advance towards it, the Bolo will have to engage us eventually. When it does, it will hurt us—badly," he admitted bleakly. "But that means we'll be able to hurt it, too."
"How do you want to proceed in the meantime, sir?"
"Do we have this militia localized well enough for Major Ha-Kahm's missile batteries to strike it?"
"Yes," Na-Salth replied in a slightly dubious tone. Ka-Frahkan looked a question at him, and the colonel grimaced. "We have the coordinates, but they've already got the equivalent of three of our Mark Twenty air-defense batteries in place. Our chances of actually getting one of Ha-Kahm's missiles through their defenses wouldn't be very high. And we only have forty-five tubes between the three batteries."
"Point taken," Ka-Frahkan grunted. "We don't have the ammunition to waste. And if the Bolo has sensor platforms in a position to track the missiles back to their launchers, it would pinpoint their locations for its own counterbattery fire."