If Sierra Depot had acquired F-35s and Strykers, they might have acquired ground-to-air missiles that could take out anything below seventy-five thousand feet. And way below that was where Jason intended to go.
Corporal Michaelson escorted him to the bridge. Lieutenant Allen turned from the control console. “Welcome aboard, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“Awaiting orders.”
He gave them. Allen’s eyes widened. “Yes, sir.”
“And maintain constant communications with the airlock, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know any more about the fuel situation than you did before?”
“No, sir. Unknown fuel source, presumably sealed inside somewhere.”
“Then we’ll just have to hope the ship doesn’t suddenly run out of fuel and fall out of the sky.”
“If so, I’ll try to have it fall on Sierra Depot, sir.”
Despite himself, Jason almost smiled. “Are you still navigating solely on visual?”
“Yes, sir. We’ll have to drop out of the clouds at some point.”
“I’ll tell you when.” Jason had maps and Allen had a compass; given a constant and known speed, he’d figured the time to Sierra Depot. Maps, compass, basic geometry—it was as if navigation had returned to the nineteenth century.
Jason returned to the large area near the wide airlock. Why so wide? Had the Worlders, whose “technology” Jane had described to him, brought beast-drawn carts through here, along with the sophisticated telescopes and other tech that their bizarre society permitted or the super-alien tech bequeathed to them?
Everyone was in position. The inner door of the airlock was already open. Colin and Tommy were both harnessed to the wall, close to the outer door; neither would fall out if the ship abruptly tilted with the outer door open. Everyone wore oxygen masks except Kandiss and the two airmen, who wore parachute harnesses. Just beyond, the designated bombardiers stood with the same lethal explosives that Jason had just dropped on his own base.
Tension prickled through the area like heat.
“Allen, now,” Jason said.
There was no sensation of motion. But on the wall screen, the gray mass of clouds below them became a gray wall filling the screen, and then they were below the clouds, dropping low. The airlock door opened. Tommy and Colin leaned forward, into the cold air.
Below them, Sierra Depot lay in dawn light. Mostly a support facility, it had no dome. Once the depot had been a 34,000-acre, high-desert supply, maintenance, and repair facility, ideal for outdoor storage of rows and rows of vehicles along with its many buildings. Even before the Collapse, changes in weather patterns combined with budget cuts had greatly reduced the depot’s stocks of everything. RSA had left so few survivors that much of the rest had been closed. When the war started, the remaining troops had defended the depot bravely until reinforcements arrived. Before that happened, however, the commander had destroyed everything he could not defend, so that it wouldn’t fall into New America’s bloody hands.
The depot had been chosen to house the top secret quantum-computer project precisely because a supply depot was not a place an enemy would look for it—but that was before the enemy included renegade pieces of the Army itself. Sierra’s CO had been prepared to blow up the buried quantum project, too, but that hadn’t been necessary. The depot had held until New America had captured it a few weeks ago.
Jason asked Tommy Mills, “Where are they being held?” The Return hovered over the remains of so many battles: rows of blasted vehicles, charred barracks, twisted metal storage units. An area to one side, circled by an electric fence, held lighted buildings. Tiny, antlike figures patrolled, undoubtedly raising alarms.
Tommy shook his head, his young face squinched into fantastic anxiety. Then he pointed. “That building there… by them trees… I think that’s it….”
“Allen, sixteen degrees north from current position… Colin?”
Colin, eyes closed, bit his lip. “I can’t… no, wait… yes. That building there, the one off by itself.” As the ship dipped low to fly over the building, Colin sagged in his chair with efforts Jason could only imagine: straining his hearing to take in everything below, filtering out what he didn’t need, searching mind-deafening noise for one muddied signal. No time to ask if he was sure. F-35s could scramble in three minutes. Missiles could launch even faster.
“Allen, hold position…. Now!”
The Return hovered briefly and the three airmen jumped. Only three… But Jason had no time to think of that now. Kandiss would have to make what he could of surprise. The Return lifted and flew quickly back over the base to the airfield. Small figures ran toward the jets. Three men, five… Jason had no time to count them before bombs from the Return dropped and obliterated them all.
They crossed the base again, dropping bombs as they went. Jason peered out the airlock. Christ, they had rows of Strykers… from where? He watched them all go up in smoke and flames. The explosions sounded like the end of the world. Debris leaped into the sky, almost immediately obscured by smoke.
A surface-to-air missile whizzed by the ship, slowed, returned. Heat-seeking.
“Lift!” Jason shouted and the Return, faster than he would have thought possible, rose higher than the missile could go. The outer airlock door closed. Jason felt O2 flow into his mask.
“Allen, again,” Jason said. There were more buildings. This time it would be more dangerous, but it had to be done. He had no idea what weapons, brought at who-knew-what time and distance, had been stored in which buildings.
Nor did he know under what structure the quantum computer was housed, or if it could withstand the pounding that the depot was receiving from the Return. It might be that Jason was destroying his own last, most powerful weapon, even as he destroyed the enemy.
They dodged two more heat-seeking missiles. But when Jason finished, there was nothing left of Sierra Depot, except for the one building beyond the trees.
“Allen, land on my command, ten degrees… now.”
The Return set down north of the building. J Squad ran out. Half took up defensive positions; half ran toward the building. Over the tops of the trees, oily smoke and orange flames rose lurid to the dawn clouds.
Eight of Jason’s best soldiers disappeared into the building. Jason said, “Colin?”
“I don’t hear any gunfire. No, wait… I do now.”
The minutes seemed like hours.
Ten figures left the building. Two of them carried children; two had adults slung over their shoulders. Gunfire erupted from the trees.
J Squad returned the fire, and in a hail of bullets Jason’s unit returned to the ship, which immediately lifted. He closed the airlock. Colin cried, “No…” a second before the ship took a hit and the impact rattled Jason’s teeth. “Allen, go! Stay low but go!”
If they could…
The Return listed, as shocking as if the ocean had suddenly rose from a calm sea to a fifty-foot tsunami. But then the ship righted itself and flew off, barely reaching a thousand feet.
“Can you keep it flying at this height?”
“I don’t know, sir!”
“Try to lift.”
“Ship won’t go any higher.”