“PA off,” Riordan ordered. “Melissa, is Phil on Puller’s railgun?”
“Standing by,” Phil answered.
“Okay. You keep standing by until I call for you. Peter, are you in position?”
“In position.”
“I want you to paint the motor pool so we’ve got overlapping impact points. Melissa, you send each paint-point to the AMP’s targeting computer.”
Wu was silent for three seconds. “Done.”
“I have the target-points,” Melissa confirmed.
“Excellent. Slave and fire the AMP’s full inventory of HE missiles to those target points.”
“Commodore, please say again: all HE missiles?”
“Yes, Melissa: all HE missiles. Is our Slaasriithi technical advisor perturbed?”
“No, sir. The question was mine.”
Of course it was yours. You’re a human; you’re used to fighting, to holding weapons in reserve, to keeping your options open. Our exosapient technical advisor is a wiz with machinery, but the pace and exigencies of combat overload and disorient him. Which is just what we need if we’re going to make the AMP truly useful to us…“In the event of counterfire, miniature antipersonnel heat-seekers are to be expended one per attacker. Engage.”
For a moment, it looked as if the AMP had exploded: the plumes of a dozen tactical rockets hid it in a roiling cloud of smoke. But as the exhaust cleared and the rockets arced sharply over Site One’s long, low administrative complex, the AMP stood revealed once again, half of its solid body — the part that had held the rockets — now an open framework.
Assault rifles stuttered at it from the refectory; the platform fired a MAPH at each flashing muzzle. Each fell silent.
The rockets hit the motor pool in a long, ragged roar followed immediately by an upward rush of smoke and debris. An instant later, the left berm launched a rocket, which the AMP’s back-mounted PDF knocked down easily. “Keep the PDF focused on that berm, Melissa,” Riordan ordered.
Her voice was as alarmed as Bannor Rulaine’s sudden sideways glance: “But, sir—”
“Just do it. I haven’t forgotten about the rockets in the other berm.”
The CoDevCo mercenaries indicated that their memory was similarly unimpeded: two rockets launched from the right-hand berm, hit the AMP, staggering it. One leg seemed to be unresponsive.
“Sir—?” began Melissa.
“Caine—?” began Bannor.
He ignored them. “Tygg, Miles; paint each berm. Phil, do you have target lock for the railgun?”
“I do.”
“Good,” replied Caine as another rocket rushed at the AMP. “Light ’em up.”
As the last rocket blew two legs off the crippled ROV and sent it cartwheeling away, two flaming bolts shot over their heads, ripping through the sound barrier with an earsplitting crash. Both went into the left-hand berm, which literally flew apart. Another rush of thunder and flame; the right-hand berm vanished in a second cyclone of dirt, bodies, torn machinery.
“Karam, do you have an eye on your sensors?”
“Precisely one eye on them, Commodore.”
“Tell me what you see.”
“No combat effectives bearing upon the marshalling ground. Panicked civvies streaming out the back, dodging the inferno that used to be the motor pool, scattering into the jungle. Sure hope they don’t meet any pavonosaurs out there.”
“We’ll make sure they don’t.”
“You’re a killjoy. Sir.”
“So true. Condition of the main complex?”
“Just some superficial blast damage, Commodore. All their records and dirty little local-killing secrets should still be in pristine condition when you get to them.”
“No. Commodore Cameron is going to get first access and credit for the operation. If he wants it. We were just here to expedite, unless he’s worried about taking heat for the op and wants to keep his hands clean.” For which I could not blame him one bit. “Tygg, O’Garran, close on the compound; Major Rulaine and I will provide a base of fire to cover your advance if any hostiles show up again.” Although I’d say what little loyalty is bought with mercenary coin has long since been expended. “Karam, when Tygg and Little Guy give you an all-clear, I want you on site in one minute to scoop up that disabled AMP.”
“Aye, aye, Commodore. I’ve clued Tina in; she’s ready in the bay with a robot stevedore.”
“Excellent. I’ll keep this channel open. Riordan out.”
Bannor Rulaine, looking down the scope of his own liquimix battle rifle, alert for any thermal signatures or movement, did not look at Caine when he asked, “Why did you put that AMP out as a Judas Goat?”
“Well, the Slaasriithi Great Ring forbade Yiithrii’ah’aash from giving us any functional weapons to look at, remember? But when I pressed him, he admitted they hadn’t said anything about us collecting any trash they left behind.” Caine nodded at the stricken AMP. “So I figure we’ll just do a good deed and clean up their trash.”
Rulaine smiled. “Which our miltech brain trust will dissect and get messy drooling over. Commodore, I hope you never choose to become a statesman.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re just sneaky enough to be good at it.”
“Maybe,” answered Caine, “but today, I was only interested in one thing: getting us access to every weapon available, given the years to come.”
Bannor heard the implication. “So despite the Arat Kur surrender, you don’t think we’re going to have ‘peace in our time’?”
Riordan just watched Puller swing in on fans and open its bay, ready to scoop up the battered AMP like a mechanical bird retrieving an injured fledgling into its own body.
* * *
Sixty kilometers north of the mini-Acropolis that had been the first mute evidence of other intelligences in the universe, Riordan’s team stood watch for the return of Yiithrii’ah’aash and his assistants. Despite repeated warnings about the dangers posed by pavonosaurs, the Slaasriithi had elected to search for the locals on their own. The presence of humans, Yiithrii’ah’aash explained, would only complicate what could yet prove to be a very simple matter.
Caine was part of the external anchor watch when Karam called him with news that Commodore Cameron was on the line. “Patch him through.”
“Commodores, you are both on; the line is encrypted and private.”
Encrypted and private? Hmmm—“Commodore Cameron, glad to hear from you.”
“Just Steve, please, Commodore Riordan.”
“Then it’s Caine, Steve. What can I do for you?”
“Firstly, I wanted to update you on what we found at Site One.”
“Incriminating evidence?”
“The mother lode. Apparently, the clever fellow they had running the show when you visited, Helger, was summoned home when it was anticipated that Shangri La was going into a deep freeze as far as profit-making was concerned. The drongo who took over was nowhere near so shrewd about what information he kept and what he didn’t. We have full records of ‘secure’ communications and cypher keys from CoDevCo’s top brass, instructing a resumption of Site One’s campaign of ‘indigenous wildlife elimination,’ in which the locals are definitively listed. And this after they were designated a protected species by the Hague, pending a scientific measurement of their sapience. CoDevCo has screwed itself well and good, Caine.”
“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving pack of jackals,” Caine observed. “But you wouldn’t need a cypher on this line to tell me that. What’s coming down the path towards me, Steve?”