“Thanks,” he muttered, setting off.
“And stay away from our batteries, you hear?” the man called out. “By the way, just what the hell are you doing around here?”
Michael just waved a hand and kept walking. With an effort, he resisted the urge to break into a run; a quick glance confirmed that the marine was still watching him, the man’s face set in a suspicious frown. Michael found the aid post; it was hard to miss the olive drab tent marked with massive red crosses. “Bastard Hammers,” Michael muttered under his breath when he saw a battalion command and control half-track parked so close that no NRA landers would attack it for fear of hitting the aid post.
Resisting the temptation to toss a microgrenade at the half-track, Michael went inside the tent. “What the fuck do you want?” one of the medics said, looking up. “We don’t treat civilians.”
“Sergeant Jalevi of the 654th Air Defense sent me,” Michael said. He waved hands now scarlet and spotted with suppurating blisters.
“Oh, did he?”
“Yes,” Michael said, reining in the urge to kick the man in the crotch. “I got a bit close to one of his missile launches.”
“What a fucking idiot.” The man got to his feet with a sigh. “Come on, then.”
With the use of his hands restored thanks to thin sheets of burnskin, Michael stepped out of the aid center and looked around. The medic had turned out to be anything but an asshole. Mostly the man was pissed. Without ever actually saying so, he seemed convinced that things were going badly for the Hammers.
That was all Michael managed to get out of the man. Even after a lot of bullshit about finding his uncle-a mythical civilian liaison officer with a joint DocSec-marine unit-he had learned nothing that might help him track down Hartspring.
“Shit!” he hissed when he spotted Sergeant Jalevi. He was coming his way flanked by four marines, a determined look on his face. Michael didn’t wait. Turning away, he sprinted down the street, head down and arms pumping.
“Hey!” Jalevi shouted. “Stop or I’ll blow your damn head off!”
Michael kept moving, weaving from side to side. With a good 20 meters still to go before he reached the safety of the next cross street, a burst of rifle fire shredded the air around his ears.
“Last chance, asshole,” Jalevi called, sending another burst Michael’s way.
“Okay, okay,” Michael shouted back. He raised his hands in the air and slowed to a trot. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Jalevi and his marines had slowed too; their guns no longer pointed his way.
With 10 meters to go to the corner, Michael took a deep breath and exploded into a sprint and ran for his life. He’d barely made the corner before Jalevi’s men sent a furious volley of rifle fire down the street. A well-aimed round plucked at the sleeve of his jacket as Michael skidded around the store on the corner.
“Oh, shit!” he muttered. Up ahead, a platoon of marines was scattered across the road in untidy confusion. “Help me! Heretics!” he shouted, pointing back to the corner store, which was being chewed apart by sustained bursts of rifle fire. “Heretics, coming this way! Get up, get up!”
The marines needed no encouragement. They leaped to their feet, unslung their weapons, and stampeded past. Michael slipped a microgrenade out of his pocket; he turned and tossed it high in the air. The small black shape dropped right into the mass of men and exploded with a flat crack that dropped marines to the ground screaming in pain, with the rest of the platoon skittering outward. The men nearest the corner needed no prompting to return fire at the oncoming Jalevi and his men, the noise rising to a crescendo as both sides hosed fire up and down the street.
By the time common sense prevailed and the shooting died away, Michael was five blocks away, holed up in the ruins of a small office building. He lay back, chest heaving as oxygen-starved lungs fought for air, and cursed his luck. It would take the Hammers a while to sort out the shambles he had left behind, but sort it out they would. And when they did, they would come looking for a scruffy man in civilian clothes, of medium height, with a stocky build and unruly brown hair.
There wouldn’t be many of those in Cooperbridge.
At best he had a day. Almost certainly, the marines would assume the man they were looking for was a deserter, which meant DocSec would get involved. And if they did, it was only a matter of time before Colonel Hartspring knew that the man Chief Councillor Polk wanted so badly to get his hands on was in Cooperbridge.
At that point the shit would really hit the fan. He groaned out loud. He was screwed. So much for his plan to slip into the town unseen, find Hartspring, and send him to join the rest of his Kraa-loving buddies kissing ass in Kraa heaven. Much as he wanted to have his revenge, a small shred of common sense told him that this was neither the time nor the place. It was time to abort and get the hell out while they still had a chance.
Hartspring would have to wait for another time.
He was fumbling for the transmit switch on his radio when his earpiece burst into life. It was Kleber. “Banjo, this is Two. Tango located in building southeast corner Harkness and N’debele. Putting surveillance cams in place. Will withdraw to Papa-Six. Acknowledge.”
“Two, Banjo, Tango at Harkness and N’debele, acknowledged,” Michael said, exultant, any thought of aborting the mission gone. “Niner Niner, this is Banjo,” he went on. “Implement chromaflage discipline now. Move to Papa-Six when ready. Acknowledge.”
One by one Shinoda and the rest of the team acknowledged the order. Michael slipped into a burned-out shop and put on his chromaflage cape. After a careful check to make sure that nothing more than a tiny slit across his eyes had been left exposed, he set off to Papa-Six, a derelict factory ten blocks from where Hartspring was quartered.
Tucked away out of sight behind a pile of scrapped machinery, Michael and the team watched the holovid feed from the holocams Kleber had set up.
Hartspring’s unit was billeted in a school; like many of Cooperbridge’s buildings, it was damaged, though not as badly as some. It still had most of its roof and walls. The yard in front was clear of debris, filled instead with marine all-terrain vehicles mounted with a mix of crew-served weapons: heavy machine guns, light antiarmor and air-defense missiles, and 120-millimeter mobile mortar launchers along with microdrone, grenade, and infrared smoke launchers. As Michael watched, the crews were busily throwing chromaflage netting across all the ATVs.
“Looks like they’ve just gotten back,” Shinoda said, shifting the holocam down into the infrared. “Yup, lot of heat coming off those vehicles.”
Michael nodded, trying to stay positive and failing. “That’s good, I guess,” he said. “Means they should be around for a while.”
“Probably, but we need to do this fast, sir. The cart’s been kicked over. The Hammers will be coming after us.”
“They will. What’s this?” Michael added as a small convoy of truckbots pulled up, black jumpsuited figures spilling out of the back.
“DocSec,” Shinoda said. “Wonder what they’re doing here.”
Mallory leaned forward to look at the screen. “I know what they are,” she said. “You’re looking at a DocSec search team.”
“How do you know that?” Michael asked.
“I worked with them once … in another life. See those boxes?”
Michael nodded. The DocSec troopers were manhandling plasfiber crates out of the trucks and carrying them into the schoolyard.
“The large boxes are perimeter security equipment: laser trip wires and so on. The small ones will be full of searchbots. Let me see … Yes, looking at how many boxes they’ve got, they’ve got enough to seal off and search a couple of city blocks at a time.”
Michael swore. Searchbots were like sniffer dogs, only smarter and with better noses, and they never tried to hump your leg. They hunted for traces of carbon dioxide in the air; no matter where you hid, they’d find you. The only way to dodge them was to wear one of the absorbent face masks the special forces teams used. Since he didn’t have any masks at hand, the only other option was to stop breathing, and even then the bots would find him thanks to sensors capable of detecting warm bodies, body odor, and the smell of fear.