“—FDF Cantilucca. Over,” as Coke switched on the transmission from orbit again.
“Survey team commander to FDF vessel Obadiah,” Coke said. “We’re glad to hear from you, boys, because we’ve got the Heliodorus Regiment looking for our scalps. Can you drop a boat to pick us up? The Heliodorans have secured the spaceport. Over.”
Margulies had shut down the diesel when she stopped. Either she didn’t choose to run further, or she was more optimistic about chances of restarting the beast in a hurry than Coke was. Metal pinged as the engine cooled.
“Obadiah to FDF Cantilucca,” the helmet responded. “You bet we’ll drop a boat. Hold what you’ve got, troopers. Help is coming in figures one-five minutes. Obadiah out.”
“Well I’ll be hanged!” Niko Daun said in pleased amazement.
“That depends on whether the extraction boat reaches us before Madame Yarnell does, kid,” Moden said, but the big logistics officer was smiling also as he pointed his missile launcher back down the road toward dawn and the Heliodorus Regiment.
“Thirteen point six,” Bob Barbour said with satisfaction. “Minutes, that is.”
The intelligence officer’s hearing must have been that much better than that of his commander, because it was another five or six seconds before Coke heard the first whisper of the vessel’s landing motors.
Pilar stood beside him, a hand on his hip beneath the edge of his body armor. She didn’t have armor of her own. Via, he should have grabbed Vierziger’s suit for her since the sergeant wasn’t using it. They brought every other cursed thing from Hathaway House when they—
Niko Daun looked up, toward the sound of the incoming boat. Coke, suddenly fearful that Pilar would follow the direction of Daun’s gaze, shot his hand over her unprotected eyes. “His visor will darken automatically,” Coke said.
Pilar pulled his hand down with a firm motion. “I’ve worked in spaceports for twelve years, Matthew,” she said. “I know that plasma exhausts can be dangerous to my eyesight.”
In a slightly sharper tone she added, “And I’m not fragile.”
She squeezed him to take the edge off the rebuke. He remembered that in previous times of crisis she clutched her crucifix. She no longer wore that symbol.
“Sorry,” he muttered, meaning more than his conscious mind really wanted to dwell on.
“Blood and martyrs, sir!” Niko said. “It’s not a boat, it’s the whole ship! They’re coming straight in and there’s no port here!”
“Class III?” Coke snapped to Vierziger as the penny dropped.
The little gunman smiled, though his eyes continued their ceaseless quest for a threat—or a target, it was all the same thing. He was holding a sub-machine gun now.
“That’s right, Matthew,” Vierziger agreed. “The Obadiah’s a battalion-capacity combat lander. She’s got pontoon outriggers, so she doesn’t require a stabilized surface to set down. And armor, in case the landing zone’s hot.”
The transport swept overhead at a steep angle. The roar and glare of her engines were mind-numbing,. Foliage at the tips of trees beneath her track curled and yellowed.
The vessel’s exhaust was a rainbow flag waved at Madame Yarnell and the Heliodorans, some ten klicks to the west. Either the Obadiah’s commander expected to lift again before anyone could react, or—
Or the commander didn’t care what a regiment of light infantry might attempt. The Obadiah was coming in with her landing doors open. The troops she carried were ready to un-ass the vessel as soon as the skids touched, or maybe a hair sooner.
“Bloody hell!” Mary Margulies shouted over the landing roar.
“She’s coming in loaded! She’s coming in with troops!”
The Obadiah landed a hundred meters away, like a bomb going off in the forest. Her exhaust and armored belly plates cleared their own LZ. Dirt and shattered trees flew away from the shock. Coke caressed Pilar’s head closer to his chest to protect her from the falling debris.
Lift fans howled through the shutdown sizzle of the landing engines. The rounded prow of a combat car burst through the fringe of forest which remained between the survey team and the LZ. The vehicle’s wing tribarrels covered the sides, but the commander’s weapon forward pointed straight at the van.
Coke stepped clear of the others, waving his sub-machine gun butt-upward. The combat car dropped to idle a meter from his feet. The legend on its scarred bow read Cutting Edge.
More vehicles deployed through the forest to either side. They were accompanied by squads of infantry riding one-man skimmers.
The commander of the leading car tilted up his tribarrel and raised his visor so that he could face Coke directly. “I’m Captain Garmin,” he announced, “with my C Troop, First of the First and L Troop, Third of the First for infantry. I’m in acting command, but I’m supposed to turn the force over to Major Coke if he hasn’t been incapacitated when we land. Are you Coke?”
You’re supposed to fucking what?
Aloud Coke said, “I’m Coke, but what are you doing here?” With a company of combat cars and a company of FDF infantry!
Garmin grinned broadly. Coke remembered him vaguely from back in the days of the Slammers, a non-com who’d gotten a field commission.
“The colonel took your initial reports and cut a deal with the Marvelan Confederacy,” Garmin explained. “We’re to clean a couple gangs off Cantilucca for them. Orders didn’t say anything about the Heliodorus Regiment, but I don’t guess that’ll change anything important.”
“I’ll be …” Coke muttered. He didn’t finish the thought because he didn’t know what the finish should be. “You’ve got just the two companies?”
“Yessir, but we’re not cadre and trainees,” Garmin said. “Most everybody in both troops wears the pin.”
The captain tapped the left side of his breast with an index finger. His clamshell armor didn’t show citations, but his meaning was clear: the expeditionary force was made up of Slammers veterans and soldiers with whom the veterans felt comfortable to serve. That was still true for much of the 1st Brigade of the Frisian Defense Forces.
“Right,” said Coke as the next sequence of actions cascaded through his mind. “Your troopers are ready to go, Captain?”
“My troopers are gone, Major,” Garmin corrected with justifiable pride. “Both troops have completed disembarking.”
He coughed and added, “The Obadiah is armed and has her own security element, sir. I’d figured to get to work with my entire force—if you hadn’t been around.”
“Right, hit them before they get organized,” Coke agreed. “Bob, set up in—”
He looked to his side. The intelligence officer had already re-erected his console, backing it against the parked van.
Barbour glanced up from a display of the Potosi area including the spaceport. Mauve icons denoted the Heliodoran forces. A platoon-sized Heliodoran detachment was probing Potosi, but the bulk of the regiment milled around the vessels on which it had landed.
“This’ll do, sir,” Barbour said. “I’m already patching data to the main com room of the ship. You can access it from there.”
He nodded up to Captain Garmin. “We’ve got sensors throughout the area of operations,” Barbour explained to the newcomer. “I’ll hand you targets on a plate.”
Garmin blinked in surprise. The officer who’d unloaded two troops inside of three minutes could appreciate professionalism in another man too.
“Niko, stay with Bob as security and a gofer,” Coke ordered. “The rest of us’ll need a car.”
Who ever heard of running central intel from a shade tree? But Barbour was right, so long as he had a link to the nearby ship, it was as good a place as the next. “You others—”