Coke sighed. “Roger both of you,” he said. “One out.”
He’d intended to run with a minimum of equipment. They would hide in the forest—if possible—until the situation changed or at least became more clear. If the survey team dropped off the map, Camp Able would send a follow-up mission.
In three weeks or a month, the FDF would send a follow-up mission. And while the Heliodorus Regiment was an organization of professionals, they were low-end professionals and the Cantilucca operation had to be handled without Bonding Authority oversight.
The Heliodorans just might carry out an order to execute captured Frisians. And there was no question in Coke’s mind that Madame Yarnell would give such an order.
Pilar’s hand lay beside his on their joined thighs. Coke squeezed it, then resumed compulsively counting the loaded magazines in his remaining bandolier. A moment before the van came in sight, Coke had wanted to find a hole and curl up in it for a week of sleep. Now he had a second wind, but he felt as though something could snap at any moment and leave him a pile of constituent atoms….
Margulies stopped in front of the L’Escorial building without killing the van’s engine. Daun and Barbour ran from Hathaway House across the street. Both men were heavily laden. The intelligence officer carried his console, packed again into its integral case, while Niko staggered along ahead of the lieutenant with a wicker hamper.
“Daun, we don’t have room for your …” Coke called. Clothing? Housewares? What in hell did the kid have in the basket?
“Beer!” Niko shouted as he slammed the hamper down in back of the van. “Master Hathaway’s best! And if you’re as dry as I am, it’s better than ammo!”
Sten Moden, carrying so much equipment that he looked like a forklift, waddled from what had been L’Escorial’s courtyard. Besides the launcher with two tubes ready, his hand gripped a pair of ammunition boxes. He’d slung additional weapons from his shoulder.
Coke jumped out to help his logistics officer. The team was going to need all the munitions, all Barbour’s electronics, and mere thought of the beer was a cleansing shower for Coke’s mind. But they were going to need a hundred times anything they could bring, so loading the van to the point of breakdown was bad tactics.
Particularly they were going to need troops. And the troops didn’t exist on Cantilucca.
The beer was in earthenware bottles. Daun handed Coke one which he’d opened by digging the wax stopper out with a screwdriver blade. The cool lager slipped through the major’s being like a blessing from the Lord.
“Let’s get going,” Coke said as he seated himself again beside the white-faced Pilar. He dropped the empty bottle out the window and took the fresh one Daun offered.
Margulies accelerated with care, but the vehicle wallowed anyway. It would be worse when they reached what passed for rural roads on Cantilucca.
The team couldn’t run far enough on a planet where it had no friends, any more than the six of them could successfully fight a regiment. But they would run as far as they could; and then they would fight, because sometimes a bad choice is the only choice there is.
Coke reached an arm around Pilar. His hands were black with smoke, ammunition matrix, and iridium redeposited when plasma charges sublimed it from the bores of his weapons. Pilar snuggled close anyway.
Coke started to laugh. Margulies glanced over, and he felt Pilar stiffen. “It’s not over yet, friends,” Coke said in partial explanation.
Dawn was beginning to break over Potosi. The intelligence officer switched channels on his commo helmet intently, using its limited resources while his console was in traveling mode. He saw Coke looking back at him and flashed his commander a tight smile.
It was a hell of a thing to think under the circumstances, but Major Matthew Coke was glad to be alive.
The van rumbled eastward out of Potosi. According to the map Coke momentarily overlaid on his visor, the nearest hamlet had been owned by L’Escorial. The Lord only knew what the situation in the sticks was now, since both syndicates had lost their command groups and much of their rank and file.
Coke took only a glimpse at the map overlay, because he still had to watch for possible ambushers. Most of the gunmen who’d escaped Potosi alive would hide in panic when they heard a vehicle approaching, but a few might take potshots at strangers lucky enough to have transport.
Of course, bushwhackers would probably wait for the van to pass. That meant they’d be trying conclusions with Johann Vierziger.
“Heliodorus is just now putting out patrols,” Bob Barbour reported. Niko had placed a variety of sensors throughout the spaceport one evening after driving Coke to the terminal. “Madame Yarnell is furious. She’s told Colonel Shirazi that they should have been moving an hour ago.”
“If she wanted professionals …” said Sten Moden. He was picking with a knifepoint at matrix congealed around the ejection port of a 2-cm weapon. “…she should have hired us.”
“Direct rule by the Delos cartel’s probably more efficient than leaving it to local thugs,” Margulies said. “More of the locals might starve to death, but they wouldn’t be as likely to be shot for the hell of it by some yo-yo having a night on the town.”
“Frisian Vessel Obadiah to FDF commander Cantilucca,” crackled an unfamiliar voice through Coke’s commo helmet. “Come in FDF Cantilucca. Over.”
The members of the survey team stared at one another in surprise. Pilar didn’t have a commo helmet. She clutched Coke fiercely, then snatched her hand away lest she interfere with his movements. She knew something had happened to startle her companions, but she couldn’t imagine what it might be.
“It’s coming from orbit,” Barbour reported.
“Frisian vessel Obadiah to FDF commander—” the voice repeated. Coke cut the signal off so that it didn’t interfere with his thinking.
“The Heliodorans?” Niko Daun suggested.
“Negative, they couldn’t crash our frequencies,” Barbour insisted. “This is on a general purpose push, but it’s encrypted normally.”
“The Heliodorans are trying to get us to give away our position,” Margulies insisted stubbornly. “They’ll home on the transmission if we respond.”
“There is an Obadiah,” said Johann Vierziger as he watched the rear and sides of the van for possible dangers, “on the FDF naval list. She’s a Class III combat transport.”
Coke stared at the back of Vierziger’s neck. The information Vierziger just stated wasn’t secret—but it wasn’t something Coke knew, or that a newbie sergeant was likely to have known. Coke didn’t doubt that the statement was true, however.
Sten Moden released the blade catch and slid his knife back into the sheath on his belt. “I don’t see that there’s a downside to responding, Matthew,” he said. “If the Heliodorans are good enough to mimic our codes, then they’ve got us anyway.”
“The Heliodorans,” Johann Vierziger said toward the landscape rumbling past the back of the van, “aren’t good enough to hit the floor with their hats. Though numbers count for something.”
Coke grimaced. “Bob,” he said, “will my helmet raise them, or do we need to put up a beam?”
“You’ll do better if you’re out of the van,” replied the intelligence officer. “But if they’ve got their antenna array extended, and I’m sure they do, they’ll pick it up anyway.”
“Pull off—” Coke began. Margulies swung the wheel and braked before he got to: “—the road, Mary.”
Coke was out the door before the vehicle had come to a complete halt. The immediate area had been cleared around a shack now tumbled to moss and ruin. The van’s other doors opened as suddenly as Coke’s, the guns of his team facing the chance of attack. Even Margulies was scarcely a heartbeat slower than her commander in jumping from the vehicle she drove.