“In the meantime we get you away from the station. Listen,” Janners barked at the remaining guards, “you, and you—check the GEMs; get two of them ready to move. The rest of you gather what you need.” The two men, their guns clattering against their armor, ran from the shelter and Janners turned back to them. “Can either of you drive a GEM? We might need—”
Woorunmarra waved a hand to cut her off. “Nah, no good. The Levant scanned the unit heading our way and said they’ve got a fifteen-man long-range hopper. We can’t outrun them in those.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction the vehicles were parked. “They’re part of a larger force that’s takin’ out as many of the individual stations as they can. Apparently they just started movin’ not much more than a half hour ago; but with several dozen of their bloody aircraft and hoppers workin’ together, timin’ their attacks nearly simultaneously, their hit-and-run raids managed to destroy twenty stations before anyone knew what they were up to.” His eyes shifted away for a moment. “Make that twenty-one,” he added soberly.
Janners considered this, then stepped across the shelter to the unit’s portable comm set. A woman in armor, a Private, sat at the unit with her helmet cradled in her lap to accommodate the headset she wore. “Bring a scan up on the screen.”
“It’s up, but they’re still too far out of range for the… Wait…” She listened in the headset for a moment, then tapped at the lower right corner of the screen with a fingertip where a pulsing blip had just appeared at the edge. “There they are, five k out and closing.”
“You said hit-and-run, sir,” Janners said without looking from the screen. “They’re still coming.”
“Yeah, looks that way.”
“It’s us,” Adela realized aloud. “They know we’re here. They monitored communications, or used satellite pictures or something.”
Woorunmarra shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He pulled at the shirt still tucked into his belt, then slipped it on. “Sergeant, has a squad been posted at all the stations that’ve been shut down?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. The individual stations are important, but they’re just not that critical to the pressure-tap network.” She thought a moment, then added, “There are a few stations in populated areas and they may have units assigned to them, but with so much happening to the north I don’t think they’d bother with isolated locations like this one.”
“There’s your answer, then. They want to see what’s so interestin’ about this station.” He buttoned his shirt, hastily tucking the tail into his shorts, and slipped the boomerang into his belt. “Sergeant, an Imperial combat shuttle’s on its way, but these hoons’ll be here in a matter of minutes. Could we borrow some armor?” He pointed to several pieces of battle gear near the bunks.
Janners hesitated a moment, realizing that the gear he’d indicated belonged to those who had just been killed, but nodded hurriedly and grabbed a frag vest from the nearest bunk and tossed it to him. “Put it to use, sir, ma’am. Do you need help in how to use it?”
“I’m fine,” he responded, pulling the vest on and deftly snapping the catches. “How about you, Doctor?”
“Just show me what’s what.”
They started suiting up, with Adela needing to try a few times before finding a set of gear small enough to fit. She finally managed to find a vest that would do and Woorunmarra gave her brief directions on how the pulse rifle worked while she struggled with the vest catches. A sudden squealing from the comm set, an indication that the approaching hopper was hitting them with jamming interference, caused them to finish suiting up without further discussion.
“It’s out! Gone!” The Private pulled off the headset, tossing it against the screen, and donned her helmet.
Adela finished with the frag vest and hefted the rifle, mentally going over Billy’s instructions. “Where were they?”
“Two k, closing.”
“Damn,” Woorunmarra spat under his breath. “The shuttle won’t be here soon enough if they start firin’ on us. Do you have any surface-to-air weapons?”
Janners and two of the Privates immediately started to scramble for the weapons.
“No! No, wait. There’s not enough time. Listen!” They stopped in their tracks. Already the unmistakable high-pitched whine of hopper thrusters could be heard from the southeast. Adela ran for the shelter door, tossing it aside like the glorified tent flap that it was and looked outside for a second, then started running out of the depression for the top of the rise leading to the station. “Come on!”
Woorunmarra, easily the fastest runner among them, was instantly trotting at her side with the rest of them directly behind. “Damn, lady,” he said good-naturedly despite the seriousness of what was happening, “you even had me jumpin’. You ever think about the military as a career instead of science?”
She ignored his attempt at humor. “Billy, when they see the shelter and GEMs intact and nobody around, they’re going to come in shooting from a half kilometer out. We can’t fight them or even hope to hold them off till the shuttle gets here. We need time!”
They cleared the rise and sped down the slope to the station. It had collapsed further as the flames consumed it; the thick, black smoke from the burning plastic billowed away from the site with increased intensity as the flames began to run out of fuel to sustain them.
“Everyone! Down on the ground!” She ran as close to the radiating heat as she could and let herself fall onto the concrete apron and lay still, her gun on the ground at her side but still within reach, then unstrapped her helmet—she’d had difficulty getting it to fit properly anyway—and let it roll across the concrete. “Don’t give them a reason to fire on us from the safety of distance! Make them come in close enough to see we aren’t a threat that needs to be fired upon from the hopper!”
“But keep your weapon close!” Janners shouted, picking up Adela’s strategy. She sprawled on the ground and, flashing a quick grin in Adela’s direction, unbuckled her helmet and let it roll freely to one side.
Woorunmarra had fallen next to her. “Let’s hope they circle us a few times, checkin’ us out,” he called out over the ascending whine of the approaching hopper. “If we can keep’m in the air for five or ten minutes until the combat shuttle gets here, she’ll be sweet.”
“Billy, will they be shielded?”
He smiled. “If they are, then these hoons’ll be in for a big surprise when they drop out of the sky on top of them. If not, the hopper’s sensors’ll see it and probably turn around and get back across Arroyo as fast as they can. Either way, we just need the time.”
Yes, Adela thought, all we need is time.
The hopper hove into view over a rise a kilometer away and skirted the flaming station in a wide circle, the whine of its jets lessening to a lower pitch as it slowed. It came to a stop and hovered at a point due west and remained motionless for several seconds. A sharp hiss split the air and one of the GEMs at the edge of the shelter jumped and spun end over end into the air as a small missile hit it. It fell heavily into the side of the shelter and fell apart, but did not explode. At the same time the hopper shifted abruptly to the side, then rapidly circled the area from the edge of a half-k radius and scanned the scene from a safe distance.
“A test shot,” Woorunmarra said without moving. “They’re buyin’ it. Good job.”
The hopper came in closer and settled to the ground a few hundred meters south of the burning station, kicking up a swirling cloud of dust and loose vegetation around its landing pads. Adela and the others carefully, slowly, turned heads in the direction of the hopper and watched as eight Eastland soldiers, fully decked in armor similar to their own, dropped out of the belly hatch and took positions in an advancing flank pointed toward the station. Either this hopper was not carrying a full complement of soldiers—which would seem likely if they had originally intended station 67 to be a hit-and-run mission—or there were several more still on board.