“You’ve got it, Major.” And better you than me, you poor bastard.
* * *
Caine heard the roar of the returning shuttle diminish into a thready whine: it was crawling forward in hover mode. Damn it, they know right where we are. “Unsymaajh, Thnessfiirm. Keep your subtaxae watching the skies carefully. We need to see where the attackers come down.” He turned to the armed persons in his party. “They are finding us too quickly. No way the cavalry is going to get here in time, even if it’s coming. So this is up to us.”
Nasr Eid’s voice quavered. “And Ms. Betul and I are just to watch?”
“No: you are to maintain a watch. Very different.” As I’ve already explained, but you’re too jittery to process and remember. So: one more time—“We need you to watch our flanks. If you detect any movement there, you sneak back and report it so we can try to adjust our positions to deal with that new threat. Qwara, you’re going to be down near our revetment by the river. Nasr, you’re going to be positioned near a large clearing that is on our other flank, and you’ll have some special local help. And of course, if any additional weapons become available”—or if any of the survival rifles suddenly and sadly find themselves without their original wielders—“we’ll want you ready to join us on the line.”
Qwara nodded calmly. “I — we understand, Captain.”
Unsymaajh ducked back under the canopy of the cone tree without noticeably breaking his stride; his flanged hips seemed to allow him to dip, swerve, and rise up again in one fluid motion, even at speed. “My subtaxae have seen flying machines leaving the belly of the attacker’s shuttle, which approaches slowly.”
Caine nodded. “Are these flying machines flat and mostly square, with rotors at all four corners?”
“They are as you say.”
“Those are recon ROVs. Again, probably of our own manufacture. The enemy is trying to find exactly where we are before they land and attack.” He turned toward the edge of the cone tree’s canopy, called “Thnessfiirm!”
Salunke frowned. “So: they will find and reach us quickly by using their aerial sensors. What should we do?”
Caine rose into a crouch. “We need to slow them down, make them land further away. Which means we need to put out their airborne eyes.”
“But how?”
The answer to Salunke’s question materialized in the form of Thnessfiirm, who swooped under the canopy with almost the same swift facility as Unsymaajh had. “You summoned me?”
“I did. I need the autonomous munitions platform. Let’s call it the AMP.”
“Very well. It is close by.”
“Excellent. How many of those SAMs — er, surface-to-air missiles — does it have?”
“Four.”
Well, we’d better make this first volley count. “Okay. That’s how many targets we’ve got. But I want you to move the AMP into the zone I designated as Salvo Point Three. Once it’s there, drop the launcher cells for all four missiles, then scoot it over to Salvo Point Two and activate its reactive camouflage systems.”
“It shall be as you say, Caine Riordan.” She left in a smooth rush of gangly limbs.
Salunke’s mouth had curved into a small, almost hopeful smile. “So: ‘putting out their eyes.’ Now I see.”
“And hopefully, now they won’t. At least not very long.”
Nasr was the one frowning now. “If we have these missiles, should we not use them against the shuttle itself?”
Riordan shrugged. “That’s good thinking, but I doubt they’d do much. The missiles have small warheads, and with only four hundred meters reliable range, I doubt the shuttle will become a target for them. The attackers will stand off, wait for their ROVs to bracket us, and then force us to either take potshots at those quadrotors or hunker down where we can’t be seen and can’t defend ourselves. However, if we take down their sensor platforms, they can’t see how we’re positioned, or any munitions we might have. And when they see rockets take out their ROVs, they’re going to realize that we’re not as poorly armed as they suspected.”
Keith looked up. “The problem is that they suspected anything about us at all.”
Riordan did not nod, did not want to dive back into their most gnawing problem: that they certainly did have a traitor in their midst. Who had waited until now to strike. Textbook sabotage: never act until there’s no time left to uncover your identity. “Unsymaajh, any more word from your treetop convectorae?”
“Yes, Caine Riordan. The small hovering objects are approaching in a diamond formation which shrinks as it approaches us.”
“They’re putting a detection net around our clustered thermal signatures,” Dora summarized. “Tightening it as they see the limits of our dispersal.”
Riordan nodded. “Range, Unsymaajh?”
“The lead sensor is now within five hundred meters of our closest cluster. The tail of the diamond is approximately two hundred and fifty meters further away.”
Caine did the math. “Send a runner to get Thnessfiirm; I’m going to need her by my side from now on. Tell the convectorae I need to know when the rearmost ROV is within three hundred meters of our closest position. And as soon as our missiles launch, all positions within one hundred meters of the lead ROV are to be evacuated. Everyone goes to their first designated fallback. Except the flank-watch near the river; they have to hold in place.”
“It is fortunate they are not close to the ROVs, then.”
“Very fortunate,” Caine agreed. But also a bit predictable; the team by the river is outside the primary footprint of our dispersal.
Caine glanced at his watch, popped two more pills, checked his breathing, found it tolerable. Although that’s going to change as soon as I have to start moving. Which will be any second now.
Thnessfiirm reappeared. “How may I assist you, Caine Riordan?”
“You must be my, well, we humans would call it a ‘technical expert.’ You did an excellent job familiarizing me with the controls for the AMP right after it arrived, but I might forget some of your instructions. I need you with me so that I won’t make any mistakes.”
Thnessfiirm’s response was interwoven with a rich, gratified purr. “I am happy to serve as your technical expert, Caine Riordan. How may I assist at this moment?”
“For now, you hold on to the controls. And I’ll take the laser-designator.”
“Very well.” Thnessfiirm handed Caine what looked more like a titanium wand than a laser-designator. “Do you require anything else?”
“Yes. I want you to choose two of your fastest, smartest assistants. We need them to be ready to move more swiftly and silently, carrying messages when and where we instruct.”
“I understand. I also predicted this. Three such assistants await us just beyond the fringe of the canopy.”
Well, son of a—“That is very well predicted, Thnessfiirm. You are an excellent assistant.”
Unsymaajh turned from a hasty consultation with the convectorae on the other side of the cone tree’s canopy. “The furthest ROV is at three hundred seventy-five meters. The leading ROV is only one hundred ninety meters away.”
“Thnessfiirm, how are the missiles targeted?”
“We have multiple options: thermal, object designation, object characteristics—”
“That: characteristics. Now, can you combine targeting options? Such as, both speed and altitude characteristics?”
“I am not sure what you are requesting.”
“Can you instruct the targeting system to select all objects that are traveling above the treetops, at a rate exceeding ten kilometers per hour, and within the missiles’ primary intercept envelope?”