Codename: Night Witch (32 page)

"Sigrid, blast it, if you think for one instant I'm leaving you here alone, then you
are
mad."

"This isn't up for debate! I can handle seventeen Merchantmen, Suko, but I can't fight them and protect these people at the same time."

"We can
fight
them together—"

"Yes, we can. But how many of these people will die if we do? Suko, you have to get them out of here."

"We'll stand with you, Lady Sigrid," one of the refugees shouted in a booming baritone. He rose defiantly, staring down at her from atop the flatbed carrier. He was a tall man, broad shouldered and strong. Others rose as well, women and men, coming to stand beside him.

"We'll fight," he said. "And we'll die if we have to, but we won't go back."

There was more muttering, murmurs that rose quickly to shouts, even chants of "Night Witch! Night Witch!"

Sigrid turned from him back to Suko. "These people won't last four seconds in a firefight. You have to get them out of here, Suko."

Suko opened her mouth to protest, but Sigrid silenced her with a kiss that was deep and long and passionate enough to elicit several cheers from the refugees behind them. When she pulled away, Suko could only stare at her breathlessly.

With her eyes locked with Suko's, Sigrid uncoiled her arms from around her waist as she backed away—only to reveal that she now held Suko's 18 mm recoilless in her hand along with the pearl-like string of grenades she'd unclipped and snatched from Suko's belt. Suko's hands flew to the empty holster, and then her eyes shot back to Sigrid in dismay.

"Sigrid—blasted hells! What do you think you're doing?"

"I'll be all right, Suko. It's seventeen men. I took on more than four hundred on Bellatrix."

"Yes," Suko said, watching her go, dashing off and back up the hill and back toward the encampment. "And we all know how that came out."

Only once Sigrid was well and gone, disappearing up and over the rise, did Suko turn to Victoria, where she promptly helped herself to her sidearm, along with a string of grenades to replace the ones Sigrid had nicked from her.

"Hey!"

Suko clipped the recoilless into its magnetic clip at her hip. "I need you to take the transport and get these people to this Crossroads place. Whatever that is."

"You're going after her? I thought she told us to—"

"Victoria, do you see that girl up there? Yes, her, the one barging into battle with only a single sidearm and shoes that are five sizes too large. That, Victoria, is Sigrid Novak. And if you think I trust her not to get herself killed trying to save everyone around her, then you don't know either of us very well at all."

~ - ~

Sigrid turned back one last time to watch as the rusted transport hauler lumbered away, carrying the refugees to safety. Well, that was one less thing to worry about. Now all she had to do was take care of a few Merchantmen and…

Blast it. Tanks.

Her scans confirmed it. The two pursuing vehicles were indeed tanks. They were still more than three kilometers away, though they were closing the distance fast and heading straight for Suko and the fleeing transport. But they weren't here yet. There was still time.

Cresting the rise, she had a perfect view of the valley ahead of her. There wasn't much cover; most of the trees had been clear-cut or washed away during the last of the summer floods. It was perfect terrain for a squadron of tanks, but it wasn't of any use to her, alone and on foot and armed with only a pistol.

She saw them now; they were less than two kilometers distant. The first of the tanks crashed through the brush, entering the valley on the far side and followed closely by its companion. While she'd never tangled with their likes, or even seen them up close, her tactical databases told her everything she needed to know, everything from schematics and armaments to their preferred methods of attack. They were Krait K-17s, ground superiority armor. Antiques, perhaps, but dependable and highly effective. Wide-tracked and low-profiled, they were fast, and their twin eight-point-eight-centimeter guns packed a devastating wallop.

Shucking off her coat and boots—they were far too big for her and only slowing her down—Sigrid wrapped the string of grenades around her waist, tying it off like a belt. At least it kept her blasted nightdress from blowing up over her head.

Scanning the valley, she took note of the streambed they'd so recently made camp by. The ground was sunken here and the stream carved a deep zigzagging course through the muddy terrain. This course led all the way across the valley to the other side. It also cut straight across the path of the oncoming tanks.

Barefoot, with mud splattered up to her thighs, Sigrid ran, heading straight for the streambed and the narrow cut. Walls of loose sand, dead roots and shale rose up on either side of her, perfect cover, especially for one as small as she. In the spring, this cut would be brimming with water, runoff from the surrounding hills. For now, only a few feet of water splashed down its middle—a few feet of water, and Sigrid.

While the tanks might not have noticed her, she was keeping perfect track of them. When she was satisfied she'd run far enough, she left the cover of the cut to scramble up a muddy incline. Loose earth and rocks clattered down the embankment behind her, kicked out by her bare feet. Reaching the top of the bank, she dived down on her stomach, using her elbows and heels to scramble forward as quickly as she could.

From behind the cover of a rotting tree trunk, she peered up and over. Zooming in with her optical module, she saw them. They were less than a kilometer from her, on her flank and about to move quickly past. She counted seventeen soldiers riding on top, twelve of the merchant sailors accompanied by five mercenary marines. All their focus remained to their front as they clung to supports on the sides of the heavy, dual-tracked vehicles.

Blast!
She was in the perfect position for a kill shot, yet here she was with no rocket launcher, no mines—not even an incendiary
shuriken
or a sound blade at her side. The recoilless wasn't of much use either. That armor was too thick, even for the powerful Markov and its 18 mm armor-piercing rounds.

The grenades belted around her waist, on the other hand, might prove quite deadly. Sigrid unclipped one of the tiny incendiary explosives and held it in her palm. Just one of these dropped into a ventilation port would do the trick.

Swallowing hard, Sigrid wondered if she was seriously contemplating the plan that was forming in her mind.

Apparently, she was.

Well, if this was going to work, then she was going to have to get in close, and to do
that she would need to get their attention—which was precisely the sort of thing she'd been trained not to do.

The pistol in her hand gave her the answer. It might be useless against the tanks, but as for the men riding on top…

Sigrid rose to her feet.

Taking a moment to compensate for the crosswind that whipped her hair and nightdress into a swirling frenzy, Sigrid raised the weapon and took aim.

At nine hundred and forty-seven meters, the tanks were well past the pistol's effective range—at least according to the documentation issued by the Markov Corporation's diligent team of engineers. But those engineers hadn't factored Sigrid into the mix. Rifles, machine guns, pistols, if it had to do with ballistics, she was your girl.

Sigrid let her finger brush gently against the hair trigger. There was a sudden crack and a loud hiss. Yellow flame exploded from the Markov's louvered side vents, absorbing the full force of the recoil. Her PCM tracked the 18 mm ballistic round the entire way to the target. The tanks were moving at a steady 182.3 kph; the wind gusts peaked at 47.365. Even the unevenness of the terrain was factored into her equations. She'd fired high and well to the right of both tanks, yet this wasn't a miss.

Sigrid waited and watched.

Traveling at more than 760 meters per second, the single ballistic round ripped through three of the unsuspecting sailors. They were dead before they ever heard the shot fired. Sigrid fired again, three more rounds blasting out. All of them fired before the first round landed its killing blow.

By the time the commander of the tanks knew what was happening, all twelve of the merchant sailors were dead, falling from their perches atop the tanks to crumple dead on the ground. The two tanks slowed, spinning on their tracks and spraying up huge pillars of mud. The giant muzzles of the twin eighty-eight millimeter guns swung her way, and Sigrid swallowed.

Wonderful plan you've come up with
, Sigrid thought. She had their attention. Now all she had to do was keep it.

It was tempting to cloak or even dive back down the embankment into cover, but Sigrid resisted both options. She needed the tanks to see her—if she was going to get them to follow her.

Which was exactly what they did.

Huge rooster tails of muddy earth sprayed out from behind them as they shot toward her. She had them. All she had to do was lead them. And then kill them.

Turning, Sigrid ran.

Each of her footfalls exerted an incredible force and pressure, more than eight times her own body weight, propelling her to incredible speeds. Sigrid quickly reached and then surpassed her top recorded speed of 67.7 kilometers per hour. It wasn't sustainable, but she didn't need to go far.

Ahead of her, the streambed merged with another, widening into a river and diving sharply down where it flowed into a deep ravine. The rush of water was nearly as loud as the tanks behind her. Large outcroppings of rock offered plenty of cover, while the smooth walls of the ravine presented potential high ground from which to attack. If she could make her way in there, the armored force would have no choice but to follow, but they'd have to follow her on foot. In there, she would have them.

Her PCM sounded the first of its warnings even before she heard the first reports of the eighty-eights firing behind her. The whine of incoming shells screamed toward her. But these weren't warning shots. They were trying to kill her.

This wasn't what she was expecting. She was counting on them taking her alive—or at least trying to. The lure of her technology, the temptation of her planet-sized bounty, was too great a prize for most men to pass up. Yet these Merchantmen appeared to want her dead.

While this didn't exactly change her plans, it did increase her pace.

The shells launched at her were smart weapons, guided by the crews in the tanks behind her. They had her locked and zeroed. But the software and avionics guiding those shells was proving just as antiquated as the tanks that fired them. Not daring to slow, Sigrid engaged her communications module. Half the size of a pea and lodged near the base of her skull, the module was immensely powerful. It only took her a second to link to the Merchantmen's own satellite uplink and, from there, directly to the shells that were screaming towards her.

Sigrid was amazed—the coding had to be forty years out of date. All it took was a gentle nudge of a controlling fin, a tilt of a gimbal. The first twelve shells flew harmlessly overhead, exploding some hundred meters past her and blasting great chunks of shale from a cliff. She didn't wait for the second salvo, running straight for the ravine. She would make it, as long as the tank commander didn't switch off the targeting computer and start firing line of sight.

Which was exactly what he did.

Four shells screamed toward her, then four more, all of them fired unguided and ballistic. Trapped in the open and unable to steer the rounds away, Sigrid dived headfirst down the embankment, throwing herself into the safety of the river cut.

The first salvo was poorly aimed, rushed and fired from distance, but the concussions were loud enough to rattle her skull and rain down a shower of rocks and dirt around her that pelted her head and back. With her ears ringing, she dragged herself from the water. The ravine was still forty meters away. She wasn't going to make it—something she was reminded of as more shells detonated ahead of her. Worse still, these hadn't come from the tanks behind her—they'd come from a second squadron of tanks moving in from the west. They were corralling her, moving to cut her off. And they were finding their range.

The river was narrow here and the cut ran deep into the sandy walls of the embankments. The scant cover was the only thing keeping her alive. More shells burst high over her head.
Antipersonnel rounds.
Sigrid hurled herself beneath a muddy outcropping, burrowing herself under a cluster of exposed tree roots and shale, shielding her face with her arms against the hail of debris.

The ground heaved under another barrage. She couldn't stay here. She was going to die here.

Forty more meters. That was all she needed.

Doing the only thing she could, Sigrid engaged her cloak, sent out as many false signals as she could, and ran. It wouldn't do any good and she knew it. They were blanketing the area, firing blind. Shells embedded themselves in the ground not twenty meters from her, others burst high overhead, smashing apart the tops of trees and raining splinters down on her, and still Sigrid refused to stop.

She heard the explosion, a sharp staccato bang. An eerie silence followed. But then came the shrill whistle—hundreds of tiny flechettes: the splinter-like shrapnel fired from the antipersonnel rounds. They came down hard and fast, zipping past her, burying themselves in the water and in the ground around her feet. Two of the flechettes pierced her arm. Another tore through her thigh.

The pain was beyond anything she'd experienced in her life. Her leg buckled and collapsed under her. Running at speed, she fell forward, hard onto the rocks. She tried to rise, but her leg was afire with a scorching hot pain, and that pain was spreading rapidly. Her HUD flashed amber then red: the flechettes were coated with an incendiary compound, nitrocellulose, that threatened to burn her alive.

With shaking fingers, Sigrid tore the tiny flechettes from her leg and then her arm, screaming her agony as much as her horror as the flesh continued to melt away. It was only the swarms of nanomites coursing through her that saved her. They were diligent little creatures and they did their utmost to purge the chemical fuel and extinguish the fires burning in her leg and her arm.