Not that it was much of a signal. Just a single, omnidirectional burst transmission which would give away nothing about its intended recipients' location even if it was picked up. But it was enough to let them know what was happening.
High overhead, the pinnace which had returned to parking orbit under the preprogrammed control of its autopilot recognized the lash of radar when it felt it. And when it did, it activated the other programs Hoskins and Palmer had stored in its computers.
Its impellers kicked to life, and the small craft slammed instantly forward at its maximum acceleration, darting directly away from the planet in an obvious, panicky bid to escape.
It was futile, of course. It had scarcely begun to move when Predator's fire control locked it up. The pirate cruiser didn't even bother to call upon the pinnace to surrender. It simply tracked the wildly evading little vessel with a single graser mount . . . then fired.
There was no wreckage.
"Well, that seems straightforward enough," Lamar said with an air of satisfaction.
"Yeah," his tac officer agreed. "Still seems pretty stupid of them, though."
"I think Al may have a point, Sam." It was Tim St. Claire, Predator's improbably named executive officer, and Lamar frowned at him.
"Hey, don't blame me," St. Claire said mildly. "All I'm saying is that Al's right—only a frigging idiot would have sat here in orbit waiting for us to kill him. Now, personally, I figure there's a damned good chance that anyone who's just seen his ship haul ass out of the system with the bad guys in hot pursuit is gonna act like a frigging idiot. Panic does that. But if hedidn't panic, then this was way too easy. And if we don't go ahead and look for him some more on our own now, Ringstorff is just gonna send us back here and make us do it later. Besides, it'd give the crew something to do while we wait for Morakis and Maurersberger."
"All right," Sampson sighed. "Break out the assault shuttles and let's get to it, then."
"They didn't buy it, Ma'am," Palmer announced quietly, watching the display as the small tactical remote they'd deployed on a high peak several kilometers from their present position tracked the impeller signatures far above the surface of Refuge. The remote was too simpleminded to give them very detailed information, but it was obvious that the single pirate cruiser was deploying small craft.
"Not entirely, anyway," Hoskins put in, and Abigail nodded, even though she suspected that the pinnace pilot had only said it in an effort to make her feel better. But then another, deeper voice rumbled up in agreement.
"Chances are they're at least half-convinced they got us," Sergeant Gutierrez said. "At the very least, it's going to generate a little uncertainty on their part, and that's worthwhile all by itself. But whether they figure we're already dead or not, it looks like they're going to look down here until they're sure, one way or the other."
"We knew it was likely to happen," Abigail agreed, looking about in the dusk of an early winter evening. Their carefully hidden position was tucked away in a narrow, rugged mountain valley on the opposite side of the planet from Zion. It was winter here, and winter on Refuge, she was discovering, was a cold and miserable proposition.
She shivered, despite the parka from the pinnace's emergency survival stores. It was warm enough, she supposed, but she was a Grayson, raised in a sealed, protected environment, not someone who was accustomed to spending nights outside in the cold.
At least it should be hard for them to find us, she thought. Any planet's a big place to play hide-and-seek in.
These rocky, inhospitable mountains offered plenty of hiding places, too, and Gutierrez and his Marines had rigged thermal blankets for overhead cover against the heat sensors which might have been used to pick them out against the winter chill. Unfortunately, they had only fifteen of the blankets, which wasn't enough to provide cover for all of them even when their smaller personnel doubled up. Worse, they hadn't been able to do away with power sources. Their weapons, the two long-range portable communicators they had to have if they were ever going to contact Gauntlet when she returned, and at least a dozen other items of essential survival gear all contained power packs which could be readily detected by an overhead flight, and the thermal blankets wouldn't do much to change that.
They'd done their best to put solid rock between those power sources and any sensors which might fly past, but there was only so much they could do.
"All right, Sergeant Gutierrez," she said, after a moment. "Who's got first watch?"
"This has got to be the most boring fucking job yet," Serena Sandoval grumbled as she brought the heavy assault shuttle around for another sensor sweep.
"Yeah?" Dangpiam Kitpon, her co-pilot, grunted. "Well, 'boring' beats the shit out of what happened to the Hunter, doesn't it?"
Sandoval made an irritated sound, and Dangpiam laughed sourly.
"And while we're talking about things that 'boring' is better than," he continued, "I wonder just how 'interesting' things are being for Morakis and Maurersberger about now?"
"You've got an over-active mouth, Kitpon," Sandoval half-snarled, but she couldn't quite dismiss Dangpiam's question. It had been hours since Cutthroat and Morder had translated into hyper in pursuit of the Manty cruiser. As badly damaged as the Manty had been, they had to have caught up with her quickly, so where the hell were they?
She concentrated on her flight controls, ignoring the moonless winter night beyond the cockpit canopy, and took herself firmly to task for letting Dangpiam get to her. Sure, it was a Manty, but there was only one of it, and it already had the shit shot out of it! It had just gotten lucky against Fortune Hunter, that was all, and—
A signal pinged quietly, and Sandoval's eyes dropped to her panel.
"Well, dip me in shit," Dangpiam murmured beside her.
"Wake up, Ma'am!"
The hand on Abigail's shoulder felt as if it were the size of a small shovel. It felt as strong as one, too, although it was obviously restraining itself, since it was only ripping one shoulder off at a time.
She sat up abruptly, eyes snapping open. The sleeping bag was like an entrapping cocoon, for all its warmth, and she squirmed, fighting her way out of it even as her brain spun up to speed.
"Yes? I'm awake, Sergeant!" she said sharply.
"We've got trouble, Ma'am," Gutierrez told her in a low voice, almost as if he were afraid of being overheard. "Overflight four or five minutes ago. Then whoever it was came back again, lower. They must have gotten a sniff of something."
"I see." Abigail sucked in a deep lungful of icy mountain air. "Should we move, or sit tight?" she asked the platoon sergeant, deferring to his expertise, and heard him scratching his chin in the darkness.
"Six of one, half a dozen of the other, at the moment, Ma'am," he replied after a moment. "We know they must have picked up something, or they wouldn't have come back. But there's no way to know what they picked up. For that matter, they could've come back around and missed us the second time, in which case they may decide that this is a clear area. In that case, it would be the safest spot we could find. And there's always the fact that people moving around are easier to spot than people bellied down in a good hide. I'd stay here, unless—"
Gutierrez never completed the sentence. The whine of air-breathing turbines seemed to come out of nowhere and everywhere simultaneously, filling the night with thunder. Abigail threw herself flat in instinctive reaction, but her eyes whipped around, seeking the threat source.