“Yes, but — ah: these characteristics eliminate all other possible targets except the ROVs. I see now, and—”
“Thnessfiirm.”
“Yes?”
“Just do it. Quickly.”
As Thnessfiirm turned to comply, Unsymaajh announced, “The trailing ROV is now at a range of three hundred and thirty meters, lead ROV at—”
“Thnessfiirm?”
“Ready.”
“Fire. Unsymaajh, evacuate the closest positions. Dora, Keith, heads up: they’re going to show us their playbook in the next minute or so.”
From a clearing slightly beyond the area the ROVs were searching, the four Slaasriithi SAMs leaped skyward and then snapped over into head-on intercept modes. It took a moment for the ROVs to detect the incredibly swift missiles, to begin to react—
Four explosions rippled across the treetops; four sharp flashes became dirty gray blossoms of airborne smoke and shimmering showers of debris.
“Four targets confirmed destroyed,” Thnessfiirm reported proudly — and needlessly.
Riordan nodded, pointed at Unsymaajh. “In the next few minutes, our enemies will decide where they are going to land troops to move against us. Their choice of landing site will reveal much about the tactics they plan to employ. Your watchers must keep us informed — constantly — of where their shuttle flies, where it lands, how many persons come out, where they go. Our survival depends upon this.”
Unsymaajh’s sensor cluster bobbed sharply. “We shall not fail.” He was beyond the cone tree’s canopy issuing instructions before Riordan had turned on his collarcom.
“What are you doing?” Nasr Eid gasped in alarm.
“Not sending. Just listening.”
“Still—”
But in the time it took for Nasr to renew his protests against activating even a tiny a power source in such close proximity to the enemy, Riordan heard what he had expected: one of the group’s other collarcoms was on and dial-sweeping. Every five seconds, it was sending out a signal that essentially tumbled through the bandwidth, like a beacon to any other receiver that might be looking to connect to it. Except, in this situation, it was working as a homing device for whoever was listening for it aboard the enemy shuttle. Given the interference, the collarcoms’ ranges were reduced to less than four hundred meters, but that would be all their adversaries needed.
“What have you found?” Xue asked quietly. There was a pensive undertone in his voice.
Is he the traitor, or does he simply suspect what I’ve discovered? Caine shook his head, tasked his collarcom to identify which of its networked siblings was sending the signal. Mizuki’s. Which meant that, when their half-blind and wounded fellow-survivor had left for the boat, someone had nicked her collarcom, set it to dial-sweep and had ditched it somewhere nearby.
Caine carefully considered the ramifications of his next action, then reactivated his collarcom’s transmission capability.
Eid’s eyes grew wide. “No! Don’t—!”
Riordan, along with Gaspard, had one of the two collarcoms that were network administrators for all the others. He chose one of the executive overrides, entered his code, gave the command, turned off his collarcom.
As he pocketed it, Veriden frowned deeply. “What did you just do?”
“I shut down our comm net. Completely.”
Xue nodded. “So, someone has been helping them locate us by sending a signal.”
Riordan nodded. “And there was no way to be safe eliminating just one collarcom. If one gets shut down, our turncoat might have access to another, or might use his or her own.” Caine stood. “Now, the bastards have to hunt us down fair and square.”
Unsymaajh swept back under the canopy. “The shuttle has kept its distance, is landing in a small clearing three hundred and fifty meters south of our fallback position.”
“Inland, or close to the riverbank?”
“Within sixty meters of the river.”
Keith nodded. “So they are in a hurry.”
Qwara frowned. “Why do you say so?”
Veriden answered. “The shore is flat and hard-packed right up to where the captain put our flank against it. It’s marshy there, but up to that point, they can approach us at a good trot.”
Xue rose into a crouch, cradled his rifle. “So do we follow Plan Gamma and flank them for an ambush?”
Caine shook his head. “Tempting, but no. I don’t think we’re up against amateurs. They may move a force down the shore, but they’ll keep another force paralleling them in the bush. Our own ambushers would get hit in the flank that way.”
Keith looked at Riordan. “So what’s our plan?”
Caine suddenly discovered he was not so much thinking about the tactics as he was about how much of them he could share. Someone listening to him now was a traitor who might try to subvert their plans. Ironically, the only persons he could trust were the Slaasriithi. “We go with Plan Beta. We pivot our positions so that our backs are no longer to the river, but face upriver, toward their landing site.”
“They’ll try to get around us.”
“I know. With the river on our left, they’re going to try to find the limit of our lines to the right. They probably know they have more personnel. So they’ll believe they can win a flanking game.”
“And you think they’re wrong?” Veriden sounded doubtful.
Riordan shrugged. “We have some tricks they don’t know about. But here’s what I’m expecting: they’ll use their superior numbers and firepower to press us all along the line. They’ll find our center and fix it. And then they’re going to threaten us from either flank. Whatever they plan for the right, inland flank — well, we’ll have to evolve a response as we see what they do. But we can be certain that they’ll send a probe down along the river, expecting us to swing to prevent it.”
Keith shrugged. “Aye, and they’ll rush us there if we don’t react. The riverbank gives them better visibility, and solid footing except for the silted stream upon which you’ve anchored our, well, ‘line.’ But once they’re past that obstacle, they can turn that flank. And they’ll move to do so.”
Riordan nodded. “I’m counting on it.”
Veriden frowned. “Oh? And how do plan on stopping them?”
Caine smiled. “Well, since you ask—”
Chapter Forty-Five. SOUTHERN EXTENTS OF THE THIRD SILVER TOWER BD +02 4076 TWO (“DISPARITY”)
Bannor Rulaine surveyed his combat team: Tygg Robin, Trent Howarth, Peter Wu, and Miles O’Garran. The Wolfe-class corvette’s standard load of six full EVA-rated combat kits had just barely been enough. Although they had no use for the extra suit of light combat armor, or the CoBro eight-millimeter liquimix battle rifle, they had been glad for the extra ammo, the extra cans of “hot sauce”—liquid propellant — and spare rounds for each rifle’s underslung launch tube. Sitting on what was normally the ceiling of the aft airlock, the century that had elapsed during the past ten minutes had been bumpy, twisty, and frankly, terrifying. A high altitude jump into a hot landing zone with no support and no means of extraction would be a positive relief.
Or maybe not, as Tygg’s question pointed out all too clearly: “Major, given that the aft hatch will barely admit two persons going sideways, just how do you mean for us to deploy?”
“Tygg, you and O’Garran jump first — a big guy jumping with a little guy will give you some extra space.” He glanced at the SEAL almost everyone called Little Guy. “No offense, O’Garran.”
“Major, if I got offended every time somebody implied that I could use a pair of platform shoes, there would be a lot of black eyes in the crowd running after me, I’d be in jail, or both.”