"At least that explains why the road's in such a crappy state these days."
They drove on past the base of the first few slag piles, then turned in among them. Somewhere up ahead was Dixon. Lawrence didn't really want to go there, but that was where the road led. For all their ruggedness, the jeeps wouldn't be able to cross the raw terrain of the plateau.
"Somebody behind us, Sarge," Lewis announced. "Moving fast."
Lawrence expanded Lewis's telemetry grid and called up his visual sensor. Sure enough, a small plume of dust was racing across the plateau. It was too far away for the sensors to gain a clear picture of what it was. But it was certainly traveling a lot faster than the jeeps had managed along the same stretch of road.
"Keep tracking them," Lawrence said. "No active sensors. But I want to know when you can make them out properly."
"No problem, Sarge."
Dixon was still there. Most of it. The first thing Lawrence saw was that all but one of the huge maintenance sheds were gone. Its doors were open, showing a single excavator processor standing inside. Concrete oblongs marked where the other sheds had stood, gradually succumbing to the slow incursion of windswept soil. One of them was now a parking lot for a couple of articulated trucks. A further two were covered with small piles of aluminum ingots; there weren't enough to fill even one of the trucks.
The houses remained, though the majority had sheets of bleached plywood fixed over their windows. The grainy dust lay thick on every ridge. Lawrence noticed that all the air-conditioning cabinets had been removed, leaving empty metal brackets on the walls.
He looked over to the hexagonal building outside town that housed the fusion plant. The web of red power cables that used to radiate away from it had been taken down; now there was just a solitary line of pylons carrying a lone cable across the countryside. When he switched to infrared, the walls and roof glowed a light coral pink in comparison to the dull vermilion of the surrounding land.
"They have power," he said.
"Anybody home?" Dennis asked. He was too edgy to make it entirely jovial.
"There has to be somebody," Odel said. "They're still working here. The lights in the shed are on."
"They must have seen us coming," Karl said. "They'll be hiding out there somewhere."
"How did they know it was us?" Amersy said. "We didn't announce we were visiting."
Lawrence's jeep had reached the first houses. He nudged it forward along the main street, sensors sweeping for any sign of movement. "I don't care where they are as long as they're not in our way. Keep going."
"Sergeant!" Odel called. "Airborne. Incoming."
Odel's telemetry grid expanded across Lawrence's vision. Tracking data scrolled down. Three kilometers west, five hundred meters' altitude, holding level at four hundred kilometers per hour. One meter long. No known match found in the armory file.
"What the fuck is that?" he murmured. His own AS had acquired it: there was hardly any infrared signature, and no electromagnetic emission at all.
"It's a goddamn recon drone," Lewis said. "They're hunting us."
Who? Lawrence wondered. Somehow it didn't seem like the kind of thing that KillBoy would use. It must be Arnoon Province. They had the money and the technology to guard their territory. Despite the alarm at such a thing being deployed against them, he felt happy. I was right about them.
"More like a smart cruise," Dennis was saying.
"Amersy, double time," Lawrence said. "Let's get out of here. Odel, use a smart, shoot it down."
"Yes, sir!"
Lawrence accelerated: the main street was the best piece of road since before the ambush; the jeep made a hundred kilometers an hour along it without any trouble. He saw Amersy keeping up with him. A single pulse of bright-orange flame squirted out from the smart missile rack Odel was carrying. His sensors tracked the little missile as it flashed into the sky, arcing around to line up on the unidentified drone or whatever the hell it was.
He pushed the jeep harder, racing across the central square. His display grid flashed a huge silent warning. His Skin was being struck by an incredibly powerful em pulse. Even though all its electronics were ultrahardened, the brutal power of the energy wave had already overloaded several neurotronic pearls. Noncritical internal functions began to close down.
The jeep died on him. Every electrical system simply stopped working simultaneously. The dashboard display didn't even flicker before it blanked out. They were almost across the square, with the main street just to the right. He turned the wheel, but it was sluggish without the power steering. His foot kicked down on the brake. Tires skidded on the loose sandy soil.
Their right fender clipped the building on the corner of the main street. The hood smashed through the wall, shattering composite paneling into a shoal of fluttering fragments. Then the right front wheel struck one of the concrete foundation piers. Lawrence was slammed into the steering wheel, which broke instantly. His beleaguered Skin AS didn't harden the carapace fast enough. The steering wheel's blunt column stabbed straight through his Skin, puncturing his flesh just below the rib cage on his left side.
Odel was catapulted out of his seat and straight through the windshield. He plowed into the hulk of the building, his inertia breaking several more panel sections. Hal's safety straps held on to him as he was flung forward, then reeled him back into the seat. He flopped there limply, his eyelids flickering. Dots of blood began to stain his fresh shirt, seeping out from around the medical modules. Dennis was slung out sideways, his Skin locked solid as he whirled across the road.
Amersy saw what was happening to the jeep in front and yanked the steering wheel around hard. The brake seemed to have virtually no effect on their speed. He saw the other jeep crash into the building, its rear end lifting from the ground as it struck the pier. His steering wheel was already in full lock; he couldn't twist it any farther. They missed the other jeep by less than half a meter. By then they were almost at right angles to the street. Amersy tried to reverse the lock. He could feel the tires skidding. They hit something big in the middle of the road. Momentum rolled the jeep. There was a single bar to protect the occupants. It almost worked. From Amersy's point of view the horizon tilted fast, turning the ground into the sky. It descended onto his helmet. His Skin carapace hardened just in time to protect him from the lethal blow. Then the world rotated again. And again.
Lewis tumbled out of the rolling jeep when it was on its second spin. His Skin had turned rigid, holding him in a spread-eagle pose as he slithered across the dirt road to crash into a building's foundation pier. Despite the Skin's protection the impact stunned him. The Skin released him from its grip, and he collapsed back onto the ground. When he lifted his head he saw the jeep had finally halted, its wheels in the air. The roll-guard bar had buckled, trapping Amersy and Karl underneath. He clambered to his feet and staggered over.