Her/their Maneka component watched through her/their sensors as the pod disappeared and felt an undeniable surge of relief. She/they hated giving up the mobility advantage the pod had conferred, but she/they were simply too vulnerable in the air. And the pod was far too valuable—especially after the destruction of the full-capability Bolo depot aboard Stalingrad. It was inconceivable that she/they weren't going to take damage in the rapidly approaching battle. Indeed, the odds were no more than even that she/they would survive at all, despite all of her/their prebattle planning. If she/they did survive, however, the services of the automated depot in that pod, however limited, were going to be sorely needed.
She/they would truly have preferred to move directly, without delay, to this position after engaging the Melconian air cavalry. But if Major Atwater's militia had suffered casualties, the pod would have been the only way to get them back to the medical facilities of Landing, and her/their plans had always envisioned medevacing any wounded. Of course, there hadn't been any "wounded" this time, her/their Maneka half thought grimly. She was hugely relieved that Fourth Battalion's losses had been so light this far, but that didn't make the fact that two of Atwater's people were already dead any less painful. And the two people Fourth had already lost were probably far from the only casualties the militia were going to take, however well the rest of her/their plans worked out.
Maneka/Lazarus put that very human concern aside, pivoted on her/their tracks, and headed still further west. Three exquisitely stealthed Melconian recon drones hovered above her/them, watching carefully, and she/they pretended—equally carefully—not to know they were there.
"Now what is the accursed thing doing?" Colonel Uran Na-Lythan snarled.
"Advancing towards us along Axis Two at approximately forty-seven kilometers per hour, sir,"
Major Sharal Sa-Thor, the commander of Na-Lythan's First Battalion, replied helpfully from the com screen on Na-Lythan's console, and Na-Lythan managed—somehow—not to bite the unfortunate officer's head off.
"Perhaps," Sa-Thor said, apparently unaware of the degree of self-control his superior was exercising, "it isn't aware that we have it under observation."
"It's a Bolo," Na-Lythan said, and this time Sa-Thor straightened his shoulders visibly in the com display as Na-Lythan's tone registered. "It knows the platforms are out there," the colonel continued in slightly less frigid tones. "It may not have detected them—although I find that difficult to believe—but even if it hasn't, it knows they must be out there. Yet it appears to be taking no measures to localize and destroy them. It isn't even looking for them. So either it's decided there's no point, that we'll simply replace them as quickly as it can destroy them, or else it wants us to know where it is and what it appears to be doing."
"Sir, I would respectfully suggest," Sa-Thor said very carefully, "that it's more probably the former possibility. Our supply of reconnaissance drones is scarcely unlimited, but we have more than enough to replace losses to its air-defense systems and keep it under observation over the span of a day or two."
"You may be correct," Na-Lythan conceded. "Certainly I can't think of any advantage to it in letting us know precisely where it is. I simply wish I were certain that it couldn't think of one."
He grimaced, ears flattened in thought for several heartbeats, then looked at his communications tech.
"Get me a link to General Ka-Frahkan."
"Do you think Uran has a point, sir?" Na-Salth asked.
"I'm certain he does," Ka-Frahkan said, trying not to sound testy as he bent over the terrain display, scrolling through maps. The original imagery from which those maps had been made had been lost along with Death Descending, but his command vehicle's computers had a copy of it. And, limited though they might be compared to the equivalent Human technology, they were quite capable of manipulating the radar map to generate the detailed three-dimensional terrain representation he required.
"I'm just uncertain as to which of his points is valid," the general continued.
He found the map he wanted, and the moving icon of the Bolo appeared upon it. The Human vehicle was headed directly towards his main body, just as Na-Lythan had reported. And as he scrolled ahead along the line of its probable advance, Ka-Frahkan realized it was making for a firing position from which it would be able to interdict at least two of his own possible approach axes with long-range Hellbore fire.
"This is where it's headed," he said, tapping the position with a claw.
"That's going to make difficulties," Na-Salth observed. He brought fresh data up on his own displays and considered it briefly. "Na-Lythan's battalions are approaching along both of those routes," he informed Ka-Frahkan. The general already knew that, of course, but it was one of Na-Salth's jobs to make certain that he did. "At the moment, First Battalion is ahead of schedule, sir. At present rate of advance, it will enter the Bolo's engagement range roughly twenty minutes after the Bolo's estimated time of arrival. Assuming that it stops there rather than continuing to advance to meet Major Sa-Thor, that is."
"I know," Ka-Frahkan murmured, rubbing the tip of his claw back and forth across the hilltop firing position. "But why is it telegraphing its tactics this way?" he continued.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" Na-Salth looked puzzled, and Ka-Frahkan snorted.
"Uran is absolutely correct," he said. "Even if the Bolo doesn't have positive locks on our drones, it has to know they're out there. Yet here it is, ambling towards its chosen position at barely half its top sustained speed, and I want to know why. It's faster than we are. If it had waited longer—let us get closer, move further apart—it could have drawn us out of position, off-balance. It could have used its sprint capability to move as quickly as possible into position, caught us separated. It could have gotten in between our armored battalions before we could react and engaged one of them at a time. As it is, we have ample time to react."
"We haven't seen any of its drones because it isn't using them," Ka-Frahkan replied. He looked back up at Na-Salth. "But this Human, whoever he is—this commander who thinks 'outside the box'—knows exactly where we are, Jesmahr. What he did to Death Descending would suggest that, but in my opinion, his present maneuvers prove it. If he felt the least uncertainty about our positions, he would be doing everything in his power to resolve it. And he would either not be moving at all while he used his own reconnaissance assets to find us, or else he would be moving at a higher rate of speed, in order to minimize his own window of vulnerability between chosen defensive positions."
"But how can he know where we are, sir? We destroyed all of their surveillance satellites on our way in."
"We think we destroyed them all," Ka-Frahkan corrected. "It's possible we missed one. I don't think that's what's happening here, however. I think, Jesmahr, that this particular Human has thoroughly seeded these mountains with pre-emplaced, ground-based, carefully concealed sensors. He has every approach route wired, and he's using secure, directional communication channels—or probably burst subspace transmissions, since Bolos, unlike our mechs, mount their own subspace coms—to monitor them. That's why he isn't expending drones tracking us; he already knows where we are."
"But in that case ..." Na-Salth's voice trailed off, and Ka-Frahkan flicked his ears in emphatic agreement.
"In that case," he said, "he wants us to know where he is, and he's deliberately letting us know where he's going. And the only reason I can think of for him to do that is to maneuver us into doing what he wants."