Backshot (25 page)

Dwan looked at him for a long moment, before turning back to the trid. Gossner thought his answer mollified her, but he wouldn’t be willing to bet his life on it. Soon after, they headed out to find the target’s current location. But it soon became clear that he wasn’t in his usual haunts. They’d try again the next day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Fifteen Kilometers Northeast of the Cabbage Patch, Union of Margelan, Atlas

The going was slower now that someone was looking for them. Daly told Nomonon to keep the lorry to low ground and under trees as much as possible. That meant Nomonon had to take a meandering route that went around hills and zigged and zagged along the irregular borders of clumps of trees. Fearing another strike from the sky, Daly put Sergeant Kare and his third squad on air duty, scanning the sky in all directions for aircraft. Whenever they spotted one, Nomonon pulled the lorry into the deepest shadows he could find until the plane disappeared over the horizon.

“There’s more than just the pair that buzzed us, you know,” Kare said to Daly after the third time they’d had to hide from aircraft they’d seen heading in a generally northerly direction.

“I expect they’ve got a full-fledged search on,” Daly acknowledged. “Once they found what we’d done to the Cabbage Patch, they probably started feeding everything they could into searching for us.”

Daly checked his inertial map and silently swore; in the two hours since dawn, they hadn’t covered much more than half the distance to where they’d hidden the puddle jumpers. And the search was getting larger, covering and re-covering more ground. If escape using the puddle jumpers hadn’t already been impossible because of their dead and severely wounded, now it was totally out of the question because of the air search. As it was, escape would be easier if they didn’t go back for the puddle jumpers. But Daly didn’t think they could leave that equipment behind; if it was discovered, the equipment would point to the Confederation Marines as the raiders. At least they had the lorry. Now if the search didn’t spread too wide too quickly . . .

A Hilltop, Ten Kilometers East of the Cabbage Patch

“Hometown, Hometown, this is Walking Man. Over,” said Lieutenant Rak Svetlanacek, commander of the Fifth Independent Armored Cavalry Platoon, which had been sent to take out the lorry.

“Walking Man, this is Hometown. Go.”

“Hometown, we are at the coordinates where Gamma Flight saw the lorry. The lorry’s not here. Over.”

“Walking Man, Hometown. Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

“Positive, Hometown. I’m standing in the wheel tracks where the lorry sat, but it’s not here.”

“What are your coordinates, Walking Man?”

Svetlanacek looked at his map display and read off the coordinates.

“Confirmed,” Hometown said when he compared Svetlanacek’s coordinates with those given by the Gyrfalcon flight when they reported seeing the lorry. “Tell me about the tracks, Walking Man.”

“They come from the southwest. I can see where the lorry stopped. There is evidence on the ground of several men moving about and one man lying down, but there are no tracks of anybody walking away. The lorry’s tracks go southeast from here.”

“Follow the tracks, Walking Man, I will direct an air search to your southeast. Hometown out.”

Lieutenant Svetlanacek took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Mount up!” he shouted to his soldiers. The thirty cavalrymen broke off their search of the area and reboarded their three armored cars.

“Echelon formation,” Svetlanacek ordered when his men were all back on their vehicles. Corporal Mirko, the command vehicle’s driver, started his vehicle and headed out at the commander’s signal. The three armored cars headed southeast at speed, with Svetlanacek’s car in the tracks left by the lorry, one car fifty meters ahead of it and a hundred to its right, the other an equal distance to its left and rear. A hundred kilometers to the west, a flight of Gyrfalcons veered from the flight path to its previously assigned search area and headed due east to take up a search pattern in support of the Fifth Independent Armored Cavalry Platoon. Fifty kilometers to the north, two more Gyrfalcon flights broke off their searches, gained altitude, and headed south to newly assigned search areas. At the same time, a mounted infantry company on the New Granum Road turned off and headed east cross-country on an interception vector. Seventy-five kilometers to the south, an airborne battalion boarded Vertical/Short-Take-Off-and-Landing aircraft and launched. The VSTOLs began orbiting several kilometers south of the lorry’s one known position. Once the raiders were located, the VSTOLs would land their battalion to trap and crush the raiders.

In the Air, Southeast of the Hilltop

“Hometown, this is Mad Max. Over,” the leader of another flight of searching Gyrfalcons said.

“Mad Max, Hometown. Go.”

“Hometown, I think I have something on the ground, we’re heading for the deck to check it out.” Mad Max Lead transmitted his location.

“I logged your location, Mad Max. You are cleared for the deck.”

Mad Max Lead turned onto his right wing and dropped toward the ground, followed by his wingman five hundred meters to his left rear.

On the Ground, Southeast of the Hilltop

“Bogies, eight o’clock!” Corporal Pitzel shouted.

“Hide us,” Sergeant Daly ordered.

Corporal Nomonon looked for a heavier patch of trees, someplace that would offer more screening than the thin layer of branches under which the lorry was moving. He spotted one to his left and the lorry trundled under the denser cover provided by the branches of three huge trees. A moment later, the two Gyrfalcons shot by barely a hundred meters overhead; subsonic, the force of their passing shook the leaves and branches, but barely rocked the lorry. Daly couldn’t see the aircraft, so he listened intently to the scream of their passage. He swore when he heard them turn about for another pass rather than climb back to their search altitude.

“Stand by,” Daly ordered over the command circuit, “they may have spotted us.”

The lead Gyrfalcon shot past fifty meters to their left, then a change in the second Gyrfalcon’s doppler told Daly it was shifting to come directly at them. A line of explosive cannon shells erupted in the treetops, raining shattered branches and mangled leaves down onto the lorry.

“They missed!” Nomonon squawked excitedly.

“No they didn’t,” Daly snapped back. “That burst was to make a hole in the canopy so they can see through it.” Then into the command circuit, “Everybody who can, dismount. Third and sixth squads, take the assault guns! We need to try to take them out on their next pass!”

The twenty-two Marines who were still mobile scrambled off the lorry, bringing as many of their severely wounded with them as they could. Doc Natron stayed aboard with Lieutenant Tevedes, who he said couldn’t be moved. Third and sixth squads set up the heavy fléchette guns.

“Here they come!” Daly said more calmly than he felt. “First section, right aircraft. Second section, get the one on the left. Wait for my command. Shoot in front of the sound.”

The overhead foliage was too thick for them to see through until the aircraft were almost directly above them, they’d have to aim by sound rather than sight because when they saw the aircraft, it would be too late to hit them.

Daly listened closely. This time the aircraft on the left came first. When he thought it was close enough, he ordered, “Second Section,
fire!
” He barely had time to finish before he had to order, “First Section,
fire
!”

Southeast of the Hilltop

Mad Max Lead staggered as two plasma bolts and a spray of fléchettes struck the aircraft. The pilot flipped off the damage alarm that screamed in his ears and ran his eyes over his control panel. He had no idea what had hit him, but the control electronics in his left wing were out and his engine was overheating. He began sweating; he had little control over the Gyrfalcon now—and he had to stop the increasing heating of the engine. He eased the throttle back and tipped his nose up, which put him in danger of stalling, but he was too low to bail out and couldn’t survive ditching in this terrain.

“Wing, status report,” Mad Max Lead shouted into his comm. An explosion to his rear was the only answer. The other assault gun had ripped through the second Gyrfalcon, permitting one of the two plasma bolts that struck the fighter to reach a fuel bladder. There wasn’t much left of the blast wave from the exploding Gyrfalcon by the time it reached Mad Max Lead, but it was enough to further fatigue the wing root damaged by the fléchette burst and rip it off. Mad Max Lead barely had time to see treetops rushing up before he crashed into them.

“Mount up, now!” Sergeant Daly ordered. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“What way?” Corporal Nomonon asked as he hauled himself behind the lorry’s controls.

“In a direction they don’t expect us to go,” Daly answered. “North. Go fast, let’s get some space between us and anybody else who shows up here.” Both the Gyrfalcon flight that attacked them and the flight they saw a few minutes before it had come from the north. If the search was shifting from the north to the south, they should go where it had been rather than where it was. The crashed aircraft started a forest fire behind them.

Lieutenant Svetlanacek and the Fifth Independent Armored Cavalry Platoon were the first ground unit to reach the site of the brief air-ground battle. Several acres of trees and undergrowth were still burning, but because of the previous night’s rain, the undergrowth and canopy ignited slowly and the fire didn’t spread rapidly.

“Two and three, search for survivors from the aircraft. And watch out for the raiders! If they could take out two fighter planes, they might have set an ambush or some other surprise for us.” He didn’t think that was likely, though. According to what he’d heard over the command net, the raiders hadn’t initiated the fight; instead they tried to hide, and didn’t fire until they’d been fired on. Most likely, they simply fled after knocking out the two Gyrfalcons. He set his own armored car to make a circuit of the burn to try to pick up the tracks of the lorry.

Sevtlanacek had Corporal Mirko drive counterclockwise around the burned and burning area, checking the south and east first because that’s the direction the lorry had been headed in since he began following its tracks. It wasn’t until the second circuit, a hundred meters farther out from the burn than the first circuit, that he found tracks—
two
sets of tracks. One set went due north, the other west of north. Which was which? Had the raiders met up with another group?

Svetlanacek pursed his lips in grudging respect for the raider commander. Heading into what that commander had to know was the center of the search area was an audacious move. But then, that commander, whoever he was, must have guessed that the search was shifting south and east, leaving the search area uncovered. Except, which set of tracks belonged to the raiders? He couldn’t tell, they’d both been made by the same kind of tires. He ordered Mirko to make another circuit and he found the second set of tracks leading into the burn. He plotted both sets on his map, but neither exit matched the entrance of the tracks he knew weren’t made by the raiders.

By the time Svetlanacek found the northbound tire tracks, his other cars had retrieved the mangled and charred bodies of the Mad Max pilots. Svetlanacek radioed in his report and told Hometown he wanted to follow the tracks that went due north. Hometown approved his decision, but vehicles and people had been seen on the ground south and west of the Cabbage Patch, and the search and pursuit were concentrating there. Svetlanacek ordered his platoon to follow the lorry’s tracks. Hometown sent one flight of Gyrfalcons to search the area west of north of the burn.

Seven Kilometers Due West of the Puddle Jumper Cache When Sergeant Daly’s map showed they were due west of where they’d left the puddle jumpers, he told Nomonon to turn right and go as fast as he could. Nomonon went faster than Doc Natron would have wanted, but while the extra jouncing was uncomfortable for his patients, it didn’t cause them any additional injury so he didn’t raise an objection.

Twenty Kilometers Due East of the Cabbage Patch

“Only two hundred and seventy kilometers to go,” Daly said ironically when they reached the puddle jumpers. He ordered second section to load the puddle jumpers, then changed the scale on his map so he could examine a larger area. He knew the lorry was leaving tracks on the ground, tracks that could be followed by any ground forces following them. They needed a paved road. The map showed a road twenty kilometers northwest of them; he shrank the scale again and saw it was the same southwest-northeast road that ran past the Cabbage Patch, the road they’d first followed in the opposite direction after the raid. The road continued northeast for twenty-five kilometers beyond its closest point to their current position before turning to wend its way east through the foothills of a mountain range. It passed fifty kilometers north of where the AstroGhost waited for them. Daly thought for a moment. Maybe he could get the AstroGhost to meet them somewhere along that fifty kilometers, closer to the road—maybe even somewhere along the road itself. If he could find a place and time to contact the
Admiral Nelson
, that was. It was worth trying.

He showed Nomonon the map and asked, “How long do you think it’ll take to get there?”

Nomonon looked at the map and shrugged. “Half an hour?”

“Do it.”

Thirty Kilometers Northeast of the Cabbage Patch

They reached the New Granum Road without incident. Sergeant Daly looked to the right, no traffic was in sight. He did see a vehicle in the distance to the left, but it seemed to be going away rather than toward them.