Backshot (17 page)

“Another five,” Musica said.

There were at least two hundred and sixty soldiers in the compound, and only one way in or out. The platoon didn’t have the equipment or materials it needed to breach the outer defenses. And the compound didn’t look anything like an agricultural research station—there wasn’t a greenhouse to be seen.

“Give me what you’ve got,” Daly said. Bingh used his hands to orient himself with Daly, then tight-beamed the scope’s data to the first squad leader’s comp.

“Give it one more hour,” Daly said when the data transfer was finished, “then return to the hollow. Look for a tunnel entrance on your way back. I just can’t believe there’s only one way in and out of that place.”

“You got it,” Bingh said.

On the way back to the hollow Daly divided his attention between looking for a tunnel entrance and preparing the data the recon had collected into a packet he could send to the
Admiral Nelson
via burst transmission for relay to the platoon.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In the Trees, North of the Cabbage Patch, Union of Margelan, Atlas

Sergeant Kindy and Corporal Nomonon didn’t return to the hollow by the same route they’d followed on their first circuit; they followed a route seventy-five meters farther upslope and deeper into the trees. They did that partly because good troops never follow the same route returning as going out, and partly because Kindy wanted to see if there were mines and detection devices farther out from the fence and trench.

And partly because he and Nomonon hadn’t seen anything that might be a tunnel or cave entrance the first time around. He’d looked. He hadn’t spent as much time observing the compound as Sergeant Daly had, but he’d noticed the lack of an obvious back gate and, like Daly, couldn’t accept that there wasn’t another way out.

Halfway from the New Granum road to the hillside where the hollow was, he spotted an anomaly. He and Nomonon were paralleling a game trail that was just as neglected as every other game trail in sight of the fence; the game trails so close to the Cabbage Patch didn’t show as much use as the trails he’d seen farther away from it. The anomaly was, the trail abruptly seemed to have slightly heavier use.

“Where’d they go?” he murmured, unheard inside his helmet. He stood erect and Nomonon came close behind to touch helmets.

“Where’d they go?” Kindy repeated, this time to the other Marine. Nomonon looked around and saw the same slight-but-abrupt change in the game trail. “Maybe they saw something they didn’t like and turned back,” he said facetiously. He kept looking around. Kindy in the meantime had concentrated his attention on a slab of rock right where the game trail changed.

“Look for a camera,” he told Nomonon as he squatted for a closer look at the rock slab. He was careful not to touch anything, though he wanted to brush dirt off the rock’s surface. He slid his light gatherer and magnifying screens into place.

And saw faint scrape marks on the ground where the slab of rock had been swiveled aside. Nomonon bent over to touch helmets and said, “I have a camera.”

Kindy slowly rose to his feet, careful not to move his feet so they wouldn’t disturb the ground under his boots. Nomonon put his arm around Kindy’s shoulders and turned him to face the tree where he saw the camera. “Three meters up,” he said. Kindy looked up and spotted the camera. It was small, camouflaged to look like a leaf dangling from a branch close to the tree’s trunk. But the camouflage wasn’t well maintained; if it had been, a visual search from ten meters away wouldn’t have spotted it. The camera was aimed at the slab of rock. Unless it was a wide-eye, except for Kindy’s feet they were outside its field of vision.

“Keep looking,” Kindy said. He and Nomonon stayed in position for another ten minutes looking for another camera without seeing one. Either the others were better camouflaged, or there was only the one. From the state of the camouflage on the camera they saw, Kindy’s guess was there wasn’t another. A Hillside East of the Cabbage Patch Sergeant Daly and Lance Corporal Wazzen reached the hollow first, even though Sergeant Kindy and Corporal Nomonon had a shorter distance to cover. Daly assumed it was because they’d found the tunnel, or something else of interest. Time was passing and he had to make a report, he didn’t have time to wait for them to come back. He climbed a tree to establish a comm connection with the orbiting
Admiral Nelson
.

The navy starship hadn’t remained docked at Kraken Interstellar, but trailed it in the same orbit by two hundred kilometers in order to facilitate communications with the covert operation of the Force Recon platoon on the ground. Nobody on Kraken gave the separation any thought; it was Confederation Navy policy that ships of the line didn’t remain docked to civilian starports any longer than necessary. The difference was the degree of separation; single navy starships normally didn’t remove themselves much more than one hundred kilometers from an orbital port, but Kraken didn’t know that—Atlas was seldom visited by an unaccompanied ship of the line. Kraken Interstellar was barely visible to the naked eye, nearing the horizon when Daly climbed the tree, and the
Admiral Nelson
was only a few degrees higher. He didn’t have much time to make his report, but it was long enough for a burst transmission. He found the
Admiral Nelson
in the sights of his point-transceiver and activated it to lock onto the starship. When the transceiver signaled it had a lock, he touched the contact that sent the one-and-a-half-second burst. As a failsafe, he had the transceiver programmed to send the burst automatically five seconds after it registered it had a lock. A much longer delay, and the lock might be broken.

Before descending the tree, Daly studied the clouds headed toward them from the east. They looked like they were dropping rain, but the rain didn’t look so heavy that it would have an effect on their operations even if it reached them. He was on the ground minutes before Kindy and Nomonon returned with their surprise.

Five Kilometers East of the Cabbage Patch The radiomen in the
Admiral Nelson
’s comm shack were every bit as alert as the Marines needed them to be, and they relayed Daly’s burst in plenty of time.

“Sir, we got a burst,” Gunny Lytle reported. Lieutenant Tevedes sucked in a deep breath. He accepted the packet Lytle tight-beamed to his comp and called the data up on his HUD. “Are you looking at this, Gunny?” he asked.

“Yessir.”

“No crop fields, no greenhouses. What kind of agricultural research station is this?”

“One with a lot of soldiers,” Lytle said pensively.

“Too many soldiers.”

“Guard towers, bunkers, razor wire, stake-filled trenches, peepers and mines all around. It looks like they’re ready to repel a major assault.”

“What kind of agricultural research station expects a major assault?”

Lytle didn’t bother answering, Tevedes knew the answer as well as he did.

“Have the men saddle up, we’re moving in.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Near a Game Trail, Four Hundred Meters North of the Cabbage Patch

“Let’s go,” Sergeant Kindy finally said. And froze before he took a second step. A
click
had come from the rock slab. Kindy put out a hand and gently swept it in an arc until he found Nomonon. Using a series of taps and arm squeezes, he told him what he wanted to do. Nomonon replied with a return touch. Normal communication between men who must maintain silence, even radio silence, and can’t see each other except as the faintest of smudges even in infrared, is impossible; Force Recon had a vocabulary of touches and squeezes to use in those instances when they couldn’t even touch helmets. Kindy and Nomonon watched the rock lift a few centimeters, then pivot to expose a meter-wide hole. A head popped through the hole and looked quickly around, then was followed by the rest of a man in an unmarked military uniform. He was unarmed. The man didn’t bother looking around again after climbing out of the hole, but went straight to the tree with the badly camouflaged camera and flipped a chunk of rugged bark aside to reveal a small control panel. The control panel’s cover was far better concealed than the security camera was.

Kindy watched closely as the man tapped a five-touch pattern on the control panel, and was certain he could repeat the sequence.

The rock slab pivoted back over the hole and settled into place. Again without looking about, the man stepped onto the better-used part of the game trail and headed northeast. Kindy touched Nomonon and the two Marines soft-footed after him. In fifty meters, Kindy judged enough trees were between them and the tunnel entrance to be completely out of sight of the security camera. He touched Nomonon’s arm and the two Marines sprang forward. They were on the man in the unmarked uniform before he was fully aware of the footsteps running behind him. Nomonon took him at the shoulders, bending him forward, while Kindy threw his shoulders into the back of the man’s knees, buckling his legs. They hit the ground hard. The force of the landing, and being sandwiched between the ground and Nomonon, knocked the air out of the man’s lungs—he couldn’t even gasp, much less yell, before Nomonon had him in a choke hold. In seconds his eyes rolled up and he went limp, unconscious.

“Grab him and go,” Kindy ordered, touching his helmet to Nomonon’s. Nomonon got up, then hoisted the unconscious man onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. The two Marines sprinted.

After fifty meters they slowed to a pace Nomonon could maintain indefinitely with his burden, then came to a complete stop a hundred meters later when the prisoner began to regain consciousness. Kindy unsheathed his combat knife and held it to the man’s throat. “Make noise and you’re dead,” he said harshly through his helmet speaker. “Do you understand?”

The prisoner’s eyes darted about, trying to see the source of the voice, then looked down to see what was pressing against his neck. He couldn’t see the talker, but the blade of the knife that pressed against his throat was highly visible. He tried to nod, but was afraid of cutting himself. “Yes,” he croaked softly, not wanting to cut himself by speaking, either. Inside his helmet, Kindy smiled—he had the back of the blade against the man’s throat, he also didn’t want the prisoner to get cut accidentally.

“We’re going to tie your hands and take you with us. Do we need to gag you, or can you keep quiet on your own?” He eased the pressure of the blade.

“I-I’ll be quiet.”

“Good. Then maybe you don’t have to die.” Kindy jerked the knife away as the man’s eyes popped and he began to tremble violently. He stood and yanked the prisoner to his feet. Nomonon secured his hands behind his back and tied a length of cord snugly around his neck, but not so tight it cut off his air.

“We’re going to move fast,” Kindy said. “Keep up or it’s going to hurt.”

The prisoner’s eyes widened even more and he fish-mouthed, unable to speak. They searched him before they set out. He had a wallet with civilian identification and cred chips, but nothing else. Certainly no military documents or weapons.

Kindy set a fast enough pace to keep the prisoner worried about keeping up, but not so fast he was in real danger of falling.

A Hillside, East of the Cabbage Patch

A
click
announced the return of Kindy and Nomonon. Daly whistled in surprise when he saw the bound prisoner stumble out of the trees.

“That’s the best birthday present I’ve gotten all year,” he said through his helmet speaker so the prisoner could hear him.

“We caught him coming out of a tunnel,” Kindy said, also through his helmet speakers. The prisoner looked wild-eyed for the sources of the voices, visibly upset by so many invisible men.

“What’s your name?” Daly demanded. The prisoner’s mouth worked, but he couldn’t form any words.

“Answer the man,” Kindy demanded.

The prisoner flinched from the harsh voice next to his ear. He tried again and managed to gasp out,

“Nijakin—Lucyon Nijakin.”

“What’s your rank, Lucyon?” Daly said with a glance at the unmarked uniform.

“N-No rank. I’m a-a c-contract worker.”

“What are you working on?”

“M-Machinery.”

“What kind? What do you make with it?”

“Tools. T-Tools and p-parts. I-I’m a m-machinist.”

“What kind of machines do you make parts for?”

“I d-don’t know.”

“You can’t be a very good machinist if you don’t even know what kind of machines you’re making parts for.”

“M-Manufacturing.”

“What kind of manufacturing?”

Kindy poked him and whispered harshly, “Stop wasting time.”

Nijakin flinched again and looked around wildly. “Th-they make t-tubes. Tubes and bl-blades.”

“Tubes like barrels? Blades like knives?”

Nijakin looked uncertain, like he didn’t understand the question. Wazzen reached in and gave the prisoner a sharp but light tap on the back of the head. “Speak up,” he snarled. “The tubes, are they barrels for weapons?”

The man jumped and looked even more frightened at being questioned by yet another unseen person.

“Y-Yes. I-I d-don’t know. Th-They could be.” He nodded vigorously. “N-Nobody t-told me.”

This could be it,
Daly thought. “How big are the barrels?”

Nijakin’s shoulders twitched as though he was going to lift his hands to show him. His expression went from frightened to resigned sadness. “Some are two hundred centimeters in diameter.” He also stopped stammering.

Daly shook his head. Lucyon Nijakin now believed they were going to kill him. He decided to reassure him.

“All right, everybody leave him alone, he’s cooperating. Listen to me, Lucyon—right, your name is Lucyon? Relax, nobody’s going to hurt you. We just want to know what’s being done at the Cabbage Patch. You’re being very helpful, and I appreciate that. When we’re finished here, you’ll be free to go. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Nijakin’s voice was flat, obviously he didn’t believe Daly. Daly sighed softly. “I’m telling you the truth. Now, those two-hundred-centimeter tubes, how long are they?”

“Ten meters. Maybe longer. I don’t work on them, they’re made in a different lab. I don’t see them very often.”

“What were you doing coming out of the tunnel alone?”

His mouth twitched. “There’s a woman, she’s a tech, she lives in Spondu. I was going to see her.”