Debbie Lefkowitz keyed her own screen into the IR sensor. It had fairly sophisticated electronics, enough to throw a realistic 3-D map and pre-separate anything not the natural temperature of rock or vegetation. Data was pouring into the craft from the sensors with the column and in the firebases along the route, free of the suspect satellite link that lay between the Dales and the Legion's analysis computers back in Fort Plataia.
"Major, you've got about… two thousand hostiles in your immediate vicinity," she said, as the machines correlated the fragmentary input. "Grid references follow." And relay this back to Swenson, now!
A machine beeped at her. She looked at it and her stomach clenched.
"Major, I've got multiple readings south of your position. South of my position. Readings all around," she said. Calm, she told herself sternly. This was certainly more hands-on than headquarters duty, but needs must. If the Royalist line of march was a bent I, the troops-they must be troops-were two parallel lines flanking it on either side, with another bar in the north closing the C. This safe rear zone just became bandit country. The enemy below might not have stinger missiles and detection gear, but they probably did. "Permission to conduct direct scan."
"South-" Owensford began, then snapped: "Denied. Get low and get out of there, and do it now."
"Sir." Gravity sagged her into the seat as the pilot turned for home and rammed the throttles to full.
"We're getting out of here soonest," she said on the cockpit link. "Might as well take a look while we're leaving. Prepare for pop-up. Stand by for sidescan."
The rotors screamed as the engine-pods at the ends of the wings tilted, changing the propellors' angle of attack. The aircraft jerked upward as if pulled by a rubber band stretching down from orbit "Scanning… down!"
Another freight-elevator drop. "Major, troops, at least two thousand down here heavy weapons probable category follows-"
Alarms squealed. "Detection, detection, multiples, frequency-hoppers-"
"Jesus Christ missile signatures multiple launch-"
The pilot's voice overrode it, shouting to his copilot. "Flares and chaff, flares and chaff! Those are Skyhawks!"
The putputput of the decoys coughing out of the slots was lost in the scream of the airframe as the pilot looped, twisted and dove almost in the same instant. The cabin whirled around her. For a moment they were upside down and flying in the opposite direction to their course two seconds ealier, and she could see two livid streaks of fire pass through the space she had been occupying. One struck trees and exploded in a globe of magenta fire as they began to turn, but the other did not. "Shit, shit, shit, shit," the pilot cursed.
The Lord our God, the Lord is One- Lefkowitz found herself praying, for the first time since girlhood.
Get the data stream out. Send everything we know. Nobody dies for nothing. Let them know what we saw. Lights flashed as the computers dumped their data.
The tiltrotor was below the nape of the earth now, threading its way through narrow passages between trees and rocks, flipping from one wingtip to the other with insane daring as the pilot stretched the machine to its limits. Inspired flying, and very nearly enough; the missile was barely within effective radius when the idiot-savant brain that guided it sensed its fuel was nearly exhausted and detonated.
"Portside engine out, cutting fuel." The copilot's voice, metronome-steady. The aircraft lurched and turned sluggish, barely missed a hilltop.
"Starboard's losing power!" Both pilots' hands moved feverishly on the controls. "Something nicked the turbine casing, she's going to split. Shut it off, Mike, shut her down."
"I can't, we're too low-"
The plane surged upward, painfully, clawing for enough altitude to pick its landing-spot. The starboard engine's hum turned to a whining shriek that ended in an intolerable squeal of tortured synthetic and an explosion that sent the tiltrotor cartwheeling through the sky. Fragments of fiber-bound ceramic turbine blade sleeted through the walls of the aircraft, and lights and equipment shorted out in a flash of sparks and popping sounds and human screams, of fear or pain it was impossible to say. Lefkowitz felt something like a needle of cold fire rip down the length of one forearm.
They struck.
"The observation plane's down," Andy Lahr said. "Lefky bought us a lot of data. Still sending when she augured in."
"Dead?"
"Dunno. Went in from low altitude. Maybe not."
"What can we send to rescue her?" Owensford demanded.
"Not one damn thing. That area's crawling with hostiles. Which we know about only because of her, but they'll get to her long before we do."
"I see. Tell Mace. All right, let's see what she found out."
"It's a lot. One thing's certain, Major. The satellite data is thoroughly corrupted. We didn't get clue one of that force to the south, and it's far too damn big that we wouldn't have seen something."
"Right. Get me Jesus Alana."
"Alana here."
"Jesus, we've been snookered."
"Yes, sir, I'm following it."
"Got anything for me?"
"First cut analysis: your upper limit's blown away. The satellite hasn't been reporting properly, and we must ignore all its data. The conclusion is that we do not know what we're facing."
"How truly good," Owensford said. "What else?"
"They're trying for a giant Cannae."
"Hell, we knew that."
"Yes, sir, but they have more in place than you thought. We have been thoroughly deceived from the beginning. The satellite data were not merely incomplete, they were corrupted."
"How?"
"Someone is spending money like water," Alana said. "They have imported gear that we cannot afford, and people who can use it."
"People who didn't come off a BuReloc transport, that's for sure. OK, we have rich enemies off-planet.
What do I do this morning? What's vulnerable?"
"The force to the south is not well organized," Alana said. "And they cannot be reliably in communication with their headquarters."
"Not in communication. But they're moving. So they're following a plan."
"Probably."
"OK. A giant Cannae, and they think it's working. I want to think about that. You flog hell out of the data and report when you have something. Out."
After the battle he'd have to send a report to Falkenberg. And a letter to Jerry Lefkowitz. But just now there were other things to worry about.
"Andy."
"Sir?"
"They want us to move into the jaws. We want them to think we're doing it. Have all the units out there keep up coded chatter, lots of message traffic." He typed furiously. "OPERATION RATFINK, VARIATION THREE. GET YOUR STAFF PEOPLE WORKING ON THAT."
"Senior Group Leader, we have confirmation, they're talking a lot," the headquarters comm sergeant said.
"Acknowledged." Niles grinned, and turned to the company commander. "Right on schedule. The Brotherhood troopers will be coming down there," Niles said quietly, pointing west and to his right as his left hand traced the line on the map. "Get as far upslope as you can, dig in, and hold them. You're going to be heavily outnumbered. Hold while you can, then pull out; but every minute counts."
"They'll have to come to us," the Company Leader said. "Can do, sir."
"Good man. Go to it."
That's G Company gone, the Englishman thought, as they headed into the trees.
A stiff price, but worth it. They had gambled heavily on Skilly's plan. Niles had argued that it was too complicated, and was ordered to stop being negative.