"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Ma'am, they can overfly us in just a few minutes, but we're under pretty good cover here. They're not going to see us from overhead, and that means they're going to have to send people in looking for us on foot. Now, we knew exactly where we were going, and it took us a good fifteen, sixteen minutes to get here at a hard run. It's going to take them a helluva lot longer to cover the same distance not knowing where they're going. Especially when they're going to be wondering if the same people who shot down their shuttle are waiting to shoot them up, too."
Abigail nodded slowly as she realized he was right. But even if it took the pirates four or five times as long to cover the same distance, they'd be to the ravine in no more than an hour and half or so.
"We need to buy some more time, Sergeant," she said.
"I'm certainly open to ideas, Ma'am," Gutierrez replied.
"How good are those thermal blankets at blocking sensors, really?"
"Well," Gutierrez said slowly, "they're pretty damned effective against straight thermal sensors. And they'll help some against other sensors. Not a lot. Why, Ma'am?"
"We don't have enough of them to cover all of us," Abigail said. "Even if we did, it will only be a matter of time until they work their way far enough down the valley to spot this ravine." She thumped the rock wall behind her. "And when they do—" She shrugged.
"Can't argue with you there, Ma'am," the sergeant said slowly, in the tone of a man who was pretty sure he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear.
"It occurs to me that if we just stay here, they'll get all of us once they reach this point," Abigail said steadily. "I'm sure you and your people will put up a good fight, but with us pinned down in here, all it would take would be one or two grenades or plasma bursts, wouldn't it?"
Gutierrez nodded, his expression grim, and she shrugged.
"In that case, our best bet is to decoy them away from the ravine," she said. "If we just stay here, we all die. But if some of us use the thermal blankets for cover while we move away from here, then deliberately show ourselves further down the valley, well away from the ravine, we can draw them after us, pull them past the others. There should even be a pretty good chance that they'll assume all of us are somewhere out there ahead of them and extend their perimeter past the ravine without ever realizing it's here."
Gutierrez was silent for several seconds, then he drew a deep breath.
"Ma'am, there may be something to what you're saying," he said very slowly. "But you do understand that whoever does the decoying isn't going to make it, don't you?"
"Sergeant, if we all stay here, we alldie here," she said flatly. "It's always possible some of the decoy force might survive." She held up a hand before he could protest. "I know how heavy the odds against that are," she told him. "I'm not saying I think any of them will. I'm only saying that it's at least theoretically possible . . . whereas if we stay here, there's no possibility at all, unless Gauntlet somehow miraculously gets back in the nick of time. Or would you disagree with that assessment?"
"No, Ma'am," he said finally. "No, I wouldn't."
"Well, in that case, let's—" she looked up at the sergeant with a bittersweet smile he didn't quite understand "—be about it."
It wasn't quite that simple, of course. Especially not when Gutierrez found out who she intended to command the decoys.
"Ma'am, this is a job for Marines!" he said sharply.
"Sergeant," she shot back just as sharply, "it was my idea, I'm in command of this party, and I say that makes it my job."
"You're not trained for it!" he protested.
"No, I'm not," she agreed. "But let's be honest here, Sergeant. Just how important is training going to be, under the circumstances?"
"But—"
"And another thing," she said, deliberately dropping her voice so that only Gutierrez could hear her. "If—when— they finally catch up with the decoys," she said unflinchingly, "they're going to realize they've been fooled if all they find are Marines. That was a Navy pinnace. They may assume some of the crew stayed aboard to draw their fire and cover the rest, but do you think they're not going to be suspicious if they don't find any naval personnel dirtside?"
Gutierrez stared at her, his expression unreadable, as he realized what she meant. That despite anything else she might have said, she knew the decoys were going to die . . . and that she was deliberately planning to use her own corpse in an effort to protect the other personnel under her command.
"You could have a point," he acknowledged, manifestly against his will, "but you really aren't trained for this. You'll slow us down."
"I'm the youngest, fittest Navy person present," she said bluntly. "I may slow you down some, but I'll slow you down the least."
"But—"
"We don't have time to debate this, Sergeant. We need every minute we've got. I'll let you choose the rest of the party, but I'm coming. Is that clearly understood?"
Gutierrez stared at her for perhaps another three heartbeats. And then, slowly, obviously against his will, he nodded.
"It's taking too long," Ringstorff said.
"It's a big planet," Lithgow replied. The depot ship was far enough from Refuge that Lamar's light-speed message reporting the loss of his assault shuttle had yet to reach it.
"I'm not talking about that," Ringstorff said. "I'm talking about Morakis and Maurersberger. They should have been back here by now."
"It's only been fourteen hours," Lithgow protested. "It could easily have taken them that long just to run the Manty down!"
"Not if this report from Lamar about her impeller damage was accurate, it couldn't," Ringstorff shot back.
"Unless she got it fixed before they caught her," Lithgow said. "Or maybe they got just enough of it back to stay ahead for a few extra hours." He shrugged. "Either way, they'll catch her, or after a few more hours, they'll turn around and come home to announce they've lost her."
"Maybe," Ringstorff said moodily. He moved morosely around the depot ship's bridge for a few minutes. He didn't care to admit, even to himself, how shocked he'd been by Fortune Hunter's destruction. Despite all of his inbred respect for the Royal Manticoran Navy, he hadn't really believed that a single RMN cruiser stood the proverbial chance of a snowball in hell against no less than four Solarian-built cruisers, even with Silesian crews. But he'd viewed Lamar's report carefully, and he was privately certain that if Morder hadn't hit her with that single totally unexpected broadside, Gauntlet couldhave taken all three of the ships she'd known about.
Which, he finally admitted to himself, was the real reason he was so antsy. If an undamaged Gauntlet could have taken three of the Four Yahoos, then it was distinctly possible that, even damaged, she could deal with two of them. And that assumed she'd really been damaged as severely as Lamar thought she had.
"Bring up the wedge," he said abruptly. Lithgow looked at him in something very like disbelief, but Ringstorff ignored it. "Take us out of here very slowly," he told his astrogator. "I want a minimum power wedge, and I want us under maximum stealth. Put us outside the outermost planetary orbital shell."
"Yes, Sir," the astrogator acknowledged, and Ringstorff walked back across to his command chair and settled into it.