“What if the Alliance treat it as an attack on they own territory?” Wellington said.
The commander shrugged. “Everybody dies,” she answered. “Any other questions?”
He sat down and leaned over to whisper in Myfwany’s ear; she turned a laugh into a cough. Yolande keyed her notebook and poised to record, elbowing her friend surreptitiously in the ribs: This is important.
“Our role will be to interdict the medium-high altitudes. We’re doin’ this invasion from a standin’ start, can’t mobilize without scaring the prey back into the Yankee camp. We expect the Alliance to continue feedin’ the Indians operational intelligence. No way we can complain of that as hostile activity. Our preliminary sweep will be—”
“Woof,” Myfwany said, as they cleared the doorway. “And to think, only yesterday I was complainin’ on how dull everythin’ is around here!”
Yolande nodded, standing closer for the comfort of body warmth. “Some of that schedulin’ looks tricky; we’re dependin’ hard-like on the groundpounders takin’ the forward bases.”
She stretched. “Well, let’s go catch dinner.” Their squadron had always been theoretically tasked with neutralizing Alliance turboram assets in India . . . in the Final War nobody had been expecting. This won’t be the Final, she told herself firmly. Images of thermonuclear fire blossoming across Claestum painted themselves on the inside of her eyelids, and she shivered slightly. Nobody’s that crazy, not even us. I hope.
“Ah—” Myfwany hesitated, then leaned against the corridor wall. “Ah, actually, sweetlin’, Tim sort of invited me ovah to his quarters fo’ the evenin’ and night. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Oh.” Yolande swallowed. A pulse beat in her neck. “Mmm, was I included in the invite?”
“I’m sure Tim wouldn’t mind ’tall, if’n you wants to, sweet.”
“I—” Yolande looked aside for a moment. “Let’s go, then.”
CENTRAL INDIAN FRONT
15,000 METERS
JANUARY 16, 1976: 1400 HOURS
“Shitshitshit,” Yolande muttered to herself. Myself and the flight recorder, thought some remote corner of her mind.
The canopy of the Falcon Vl-a went black above her for an instant. Automatic shielding against optical-frequency lasers—the Alliance platforms in LEO had decided that that did not constitute intervention, and all the Draka orbital battle stations could do was to respond in kind. She banked, and acceleration slammed her against the edge of the clamshell, vision graying. The Indian P-70 was still dodging, banking; they were at Mach 3, and if he went over the border into Alliance airspace the battle stations would not let him back in. There was no way to dodge orbital free-electron lasers; they could slash you out of the sky in seconds . . . as the Alliance platforms would do to her if she followed the Indian too far.
“Bing!” Positive lock on her Skorpion AAM.
“Away!” she barked. The computer fired, and the Falcon shuddered; on the verge of tumbling as the brief change in airflow struck. The canopy cleared, and she had a glimpse of the missile streaking away. Then her fingers were moving on the pressure pads, cut thrust, bank-turn-dive, and the red line on the console map coming closer and closer. Closer, too close.
The squadron override sounded. “Ingolfsson, watch it.”
“I am, I am,” she grunted, feeling the aircraft judder. Blood surged under the centrifugal pull, and she could feel a sudden sharp pain at the corner of one eye, a warm trickle; a blood vessel had burst. Fuckin’ insane, these things aren’t designed for this limited airspace. Like playing tackleball on a field of frictionless ice, with instant cremation the penalty for touching the sides. A turboram could cross India from edge to edge in thirty seconds or less.
The calm voice of the machine. “Impact on target. Kill.”
There was no time even for exultation. “Myfwany, you pickin’ up anythin’?”
“Not in our envelope.” Her voice was adrenaline-hoarse. “You getting too low, ’Landa.”
“Tell me.”
The edges of the wing body were starting to glow cherry-red, and the sensors told the same story. Ionization was fouling up her electrodetectors, too; she might be too fast for the low-altitude turbojet fighters, but anything optimized for the thicker layers that happened to be in the right position would eat her.
“Come on, you cow,” she muttered to the aircraft. “Up we go.”
The ground was shockingly close, and she was still far too fast. All right, double Immelman and up. Her fingers cut thrust, and the aircraft flipped. G-force snapped her head back, and for an instant she was staring at the maplike view of the subcontinent below. A point of blue-white light blinked against the brown-green land, and the console confirmed it. Five kiloton. A blast of charged particles. Radiation bomb. A nuke warhead designed to maximize personnel damage, wouldn’t want to mess up the new property. Shitfire, I’m glad I’m not down there . . .
Pulling up, six Gs, seven. Nose to the sky, open throttle and here we go, fangs out and hair on fire, heee-aah. Feed thrust, overmax; speed bottoming out at Mach 1.7 and climbing, 2.1, 2.2, 2.8. The screens showed Myfwany closing in to wing guard position. And damn. The canopy went black. Pretty. Very pretty.
The squadron commander broke in again. “No bogies, I repeat, no bogies our quadrant. Good work. Check fungibles.”
Her eyes went back to the console. “Fuel .17, no Skorpions. Full 30mm drums.” Close combat was proving to be something of an anachronism.
“All MK units, all MK units, squadron is cleared fo’ alternate E-17, mark an’ acknowledge.”
The exterior temperatures were not falling the way they should, they must be tweaking the laser up there. Yolande spared a moment’s snarl for the invulnerable enemies above. Your day will come, pigs. E-17 came up on the landscape director, down by her left knee; northern Punjab, enemy base. Status showed heavily cratered runways, fires, no actual fighting and low radiation count, but massive damage to the facilities. No runways, vertical landing, she thought unhappily. Which meant no takeoff at all, until the unit support caught up with them; that would burn the last of the fuel. The follow-up waves would be using their base back in Bactria, logical but unpleasant.
“All MK, take you birds in,” the commander’s voice continued.
Yolande felt a vast stomach-loosening rush of relief and pushed it back with a savage effort. “It isn’t ovah till it’s ovah,” she told herself. Aloud: “Acknowledged.”
CRACK.
Marya Lefarge threw herself flat and rolled, over the edge of the wall. The ditch was two meters down, but soft mud. She leopard-crawled, did a sprint and forward roll over a bank of shrubs, fell to her belly again, rolled down a short slope and raised her pencil periscope to look back. Smoke, smoke rising against the far blue-white line of the Himalayas that towered over the Punjab plains. Sunset already beginning to tinge the snowpeaks with crimson. The line of the retaining wall, and . . . helmets. Enemy, ridged fore-and-aft and with two short antennae at the rear. Their IV and millimetric scanners would be looking for movement, for human-band temperature points.