So there are times you see things my way after all.
"Never said there weren't." Alicia shifted to her contact with Megaira. How's it look from your side?
Everything's green, but I've got two aircraft to the south.
Data flowed into Alicia's brain, and her lip curled, for one of those aircraft had "military" written all over it. It might be an escort against whatever local menace had provoked this night landing. Then again, it might not.
Keep an eye on 'em, she thought back. I'm getting vehicle sources around the landing beacon, too. Air lorries, it looks like.
I see them, too. Want me to take a closer look?
No. Wouldn't do to spook them, now would it?
You're the boss. Just watch yourself.
Alicia turned back to the shuttle controls, wiggling to settle her unpowered body armor. It, too, was Cadre-issue, better than anything on the open market but not visibly different enough to call attention to itself. They were less than two minutes out now, and she let the first trickle of tick seep into her bloodstream and smiled wolfishly as the universe slowed.
The ground party watched the shuttle slide down the last few meters of sky and deploy its landing legs. Flat pads reached for the ground, dust devils danced in the turbine wash, and one of the air lorries moved away from the dust in a curve that just happened to point the rear of its cargo bed at the shuttle. The tarp which closed it flapped in the jetwash, and something long and ominous was briefly visible behind the canvas.
"They're down," a man muttered into his helmet com. "Ready?"
"Light on the pads," a voice replied in his earphones.
"Good. I hope we won't need you, but stay loose."
"Yo," his phones said laconically, and he turned his full attention back to the shuttle. He'd expected a standard shuttle, and avarice flickered as he realized this one was almost twice that size. It must contain an even bigger chunk of Yerensky's cargo than he'd anticipated.
The shuttle's after hatch whined open and extruded a ramp, and he changed com channels, murmuring to his lorry pilot. The lorry's powerful lamps came on, bathing the shuttle in light, and he walked forward into the glare with a bright smile and a welcoming wave.
"Try and take the pilot alive," he reminded his gunners. He'd settle for one shuttle load-especially one this size-but if he could get his hands on the pilot and "convince" him to take his own boys back upstairs …
His nerves crackled as subsiding dust billowed around the ramp. Any minute, he thought, still grinning and waving while he braced for the gunfire.
But the dust settled, and no one emerged. His waving hand slowed, his grin faded, and he suddenly felt exposed and stupid in the light.
Alicia killed the flight deck lights, popped an emergency hatch, and dropped to the ground on the far side from the illuminating lorry. That had been outstandingly stupid, she thought as she floated to earth on the wings of the tick. Anyone looking into that light would be blind as a bat, not to mention all the nice shadows it made on this side.
She melted into the darker shadow of a landing leg and juggled her sensory boosters. Without a combat helmet's built in sensor systems, she had to rely upon her own augmented vision, but she'd had lots of practice at that. She had to wind the boosters way down when she looked into the light, then pump them high when her gaze tracked across the dark, but that was a problem she was used to, and she grunted with satisfaction as she completed her count.
Eighteen, nine of them bunched up around the air lorry with the calliope and not a one of them in even light armor. Well, at least it proved their mastermind was no military type. Unless his name was Custer.
Megaira?
I see them, the AI replied, watching through Alicia's eyes as easily as Alicia might scan space through her sensors. Tisiphone was silent in the back of her brain, wise enough not to distract her at a time like this.
Somehow they don't look like the welcome wagon to me.
You watch your ass, Alley!
I will. You just watch those aircraft.
I'm on 'em.
Damn it, something was wrong! His waving hand fell to his side as suspicion became certainty and he realized how exposed he was in that vortex of light. He started to turn and order the lamps doused when something sailed past his head to thump and rattle metallically across a lorry freight bed.
The air lorry gunship vanished in superheated fury as the plasma grenade exploded, but Alicia wasn't watching. She'd turned like a cat while the grenade hung dreamily in midair, and the combat rifle was an extension of her brain and body. She didn't even see the sight picture, not consciously. She simply looked at her target, and the gunman's chest exploded.
The glare of the lorry couldn't quite hide her muzzle-flash, but she'd already found the two men who could see it. One of them died before he realized he had; the second while he was still raising his weapon.
The gun crew inside the lorry never knew they were dead, but screams of agony and terror rose from the men clustered about it. A human torch shrieked its way into the darkness as if the night could somehow quench its flames, and two more rolled on the ground, fighting to extinguish themselves. Three unwounded hijackers ran for their lives from the inferno, and the leader threw himself under his own vehicle and switched channels frantically.
"Get over here!" he screamed, and two heavily-armed aircraft leapt into the night in reply.
Alicia slid easily through the gap she'd blown in the ring around the shuttle. Three of the six on this side of the ambush remained, but they didn't realize they were alone. They'd made the mistake of staring into the flames, stunned by the carnage, and Alicia looked at their backs in disgust. Idiots. Did they think simply carrying a gun made someone dangerous?
It really wasn't fair. These people were pathetic, so completely out of their class they didn't even know it. But life wasn't fair, and anyone who lent himself to ambush and murder for gain had no kick coming.
She found the position she wanted and fired three more short, neat bursts.
The stutter of automatic fire hammered his ears, and he stared out from under the lorry as a white eye flickered beyond the shuttle. Beyond the shuttle! Someone was on the ground out there! It had to be the shuttle pilot, but how? And where were the men he'd posted back there?!
How became immaterial as a lithe, slender shape slid across the very edge of the light with a cobra's speed and blew another of his men apart. It vanished back into the darkness, graceful as a dream, but another deadly burst and a bubbling shriek told him where his men were. Drive turbines began to whine above him as his lorry pilot prepared to pull out, and panic filled him at the thought of being left exposed and naked. He wanted to run, but his body refused to move, and he pounded the dry earth with his fists and prayed for his sting ships to get here in time.
Two heavily-armed aircraft sliced through the sky. One was little more than a transport loaded with weapons, but the leader was military from needle prow to sensor package, and its pilot brought his scanners on line. He saw only confusion and motionless bodies-lots of bodies, lit by a glare of flames-and one target source moving with deadly precision. He swore. One of them. Just one! But he had the bastard dialed in now. A few more seconds and he'd be able to nail the son-of-a-bitch without killing his own -