“Yup.”
“Our primary egress will be 50 meters back from and parallel to the road, back where we’ll stash the bot. If that’s compromised, we’ll follow the reef away from the road up to high ground, drop down to the Jerzic River, turn north, and try to reach the NRA positions in the Velmars on foot.”
“Long walk.”
“But doable. So what I want you to do is this: First, put the base-side holocam in position. Let me see; yes, you’ll need to run fiber back to here. We can’t risk a radio datalink, and we can’t get direct line of sight, so a laser link is out.”
“Roger that.”
“And point the bloody thing the right way, toward the base. Got that?”
“Sergeant,” Michael protested, “I’m not a complete idiot.”
“Maybe not, but you’d be surprised how many times it happens. Now, when you’ve done that, I’d like you to check our secondary escape route. Try to find a way through that will allow us to move fast; look for good ambush sites and ways to get up onto the reef if we have to. Got all that?”
“Yeah. How far do I go?”
“Let me see … Five klicks should be enough. But I want you back here no later than four hours from now and watch your chromaflage discipline. There’ll be drones for sure. Any questions?”
“Just one. While I’m doing that, where will you be? And I’m not being a smart-ass, sergeant, in case you were wondering. I just want to know where to find you.”
“Fair enough. I’ll set up the cameras, run the fiber back here, and bring up our supplies in case we have to abandon the bot. And when we’ve done all that, we’ll find somewhere to hole up.”
Wednesday, July 7, 2404, UD
Gwalia Road, Commitment
Shinoda commed Michael. “Just received the final go code from ENCOMM,” she said. “J-Hour is confirmed for 04:00 Universal. So let me see; yes, that’s just on dusk local time.”
Finally, Michael thought. Finally, the beginning of what I really hope will be the end. He cycled through each of the holocams in turn. “About time,” he replied.
“Any sign of life?”
“There’s still nothing moving.” The road was empty in both directions and had been since the last changeover of the base’s watch keepers. Shit! Michael thought with a twinge of panic. We’ve missed something important, very important. “I think we might have a snag, sergeant,” he said.
“A snag?”
“As soon as the shit hits the fan, the missile base will to go from OPSTAT-4 to OPSTAT-5, and our man will come tearing down the road, right?”
“Which is why we’re both here, sir,” Shinoda said. She sounded irritated.
“But we haven’t seen the base go to OPSTAT-5, have we?”
“Not while we’ve been here, no. Why does that matter?”
“OPSTAT-5 is the same as our general quarters,” Michael said, “and that means all the Hammers not on watch have to get back to base to do whatever they do when they’re at general quarters. So when Juggernaut kicks off-”
“I get it, I get it!’ Shinoda said, cutting him off. “We’ll not only see Colonel Farrah, we’ll have every man and his fucking dog coming down the road at us. How could I have missed that?”
“Doesn’t matter. Question is what we do now.”
Shinoda went quiet for a moment. “I know what General Vaas said,” she said softly, “but I think we should do what we came to do.”
“But the road will be thick with truckloads of PGDF troopers,” he said. “I know what Vaas would say.”
“So do I, but we’re here to take out Farrah, and we can do that no matter how many trucks there are. What happens after that …” Shinoda’s voice slid into an uneasy silence.
“It’s suicide,” Michael said.
“Shit happens. But General Vaas isn’t here, so it’s your call. If you tell me to abort, we’ll abort.”
We should abort, Michael thought. We’ll never get away alive.
He took a deep breath. “No,” he said even though he knew he had almost certainly signed their death warrants. “We’ll stay. We can’t walk away from this, not now.”
“I agree,” Shinoda said. “Now, let me see … Yeah, we need to change things to give us a decent chance of getting away. I’m coming to you.”
A fleeting ripple shimmered its way toward him. Shinoda eased herself down beside him. “Right,” she said. “I’ll watch the holovids. When Farrah appears, I’ll take him from here. You get back to the base of the reef. See that boulder?”
“The one sticking out of the reef with the trees in front?”
“Yup. Dig in there. You’ll flank any PGDF brave enough to try and rush me. These are not frontline troops, so they’ll almost certainly fall back to the other side of the road when we hit them. The moment I’ve dealt with Farrah, we need to pull back along the reef. If we can do that before the Hammers get their shit together, we might just make it.”
“Not back to the bot?”
“No. The ground’s way too open, and more than likely there’ll be more truckbots coming up the road. And remember, when I move, you go too. No heroics; just run like hell. Clear?”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Go!”
Michael was dug in beneath the overhang of a massive boulder. He stared out down the road, a thin ribbon of silver-gray in the evening light that lanced down between towering thunderheads, harbingers of yet another storm.
“Stand by.” Shinoda’s voice came as a shock, so intense was his concentration. “One truck. Let it go.”
“Let it go, roger.”
The vehicle tore past, tires squealing and scrubbing as it hit the corner so fast that Michael thought it might roll over. Somehow it stayed upright. It left the corner and accelerated hard toward the base, giving Michael a clear view of the PGDF troopers packed into the back. They were all in combat gear and carried assault rifles. No, not all, he thought. One of them has a KAF-08 machine gun upright between his legs.
His heart sank. What he’d seen wasn’t a bunch of seat polishers, people who spent their time tweaking missiles or buried in bunkers staring at tactical displays, punching buttons. No, they were security troops. They might not be marines, but they would know what they were doing.
“Vehicles inbound … stand by … okay,” Shinoda said. “I have a red mobibot … Yes, image scan confirms that’s our man. Oh, shit. He’s got two trucks right behind him. Okay, here’s the plan. Open fire when I do. Put a long burst into the target, then shift your fire to the lead truck. Don’t let it get too close to us.”
“One burst on the target, then shift to the lead truck, roger.”
Michael wiped the sweat from his hands, then tightened his grip on the battered assault rifle and peered down the road through the stabilized optical sight.
“Yes,” Michael hissed when Colonel Farrah’s red mobibot appeared. The man was clearly visible through the plasglass windshield. He was talking animatedly to the three other occupants of the bot. “Bad day to ask for a lift from the boss, boys,” he whispered.
The moment the mobibot slowed into the curve, Shinoda opened fire. Michael followed suit an instant later. The windshield disintegrated into a maelstrom of shattered plasglass, but the mobibot kept coming despite the hail of hypersonic rounds tearing it apart. Then its snout bobbed as the emergency brakes bit. It slid to a stop in a screech of tortured tires, a smoking, shredded shambles, the bodies of the men inside thrown forward in bloody ruins.