Ace Barton listened to staff reports as long as he could stand it, then left Captain Guilford in charge and took Honistu out to find some fresh air on Rochemont's wide veranda. The breeze off the sea felt heavy, laden with moisture, but it was better than the atmosphere in the staff room.
Honistu pointed out to sea. Barton scanned the area with his binoculars. About two kilometers out, the whitecaps were tinged with scarlet, and the water roiled with dark shapes. "Worst I ever saw them things," Honistu said.
Barton nodded. "Maybe so." There had been feeding frenzies before. Once the battalion cook had stimulated a frenzy by dumping garbage off the pier. The nessies had come for the garbage, and one rose out of the sea and grabbed the cook's assistant. Troops came running up to help, but it was too late to save the recruit. One of the man's messmates shot the nessie, and half a dozen other nessies attacked the wounded one. The resulting frenzy almost destroyed the docks.
After that they were more careful where they threw the garbage . . . .
There was a sharp double sonic boom.
"Right on time," Honistu said.
Barton's binoculars gave him an excellent view of the stubby-winged craft as it settled in on the choppy water. It skirted the crimson waves where the nessies were fighting and sped across to the dock area at too high a speed, turning just in time. It had come full speed close enough to the pier to make Barton wince.
"Hotshot," he muttered. Most landing boat pilots were.
"Worried about nessies. I would be too," Honistu said.
The Talin class was the smallest of the CD's assault/pickup boats. It looked fairly large, but most of its bulk was tankage and engines behind a small cabin and cargo area. The Talin class was designed to carry a marine assault section, two metric tonnes, to orbit, or bring twice that mass from orbit to ground. Its mission was to land troops in unexpected places.
And that we've done, Ace Barton thought.
Crewmen appeared at the aft hatches and caught lines thrown from the docks. The landing boat was winched in until it lay against the pier. The broad landing hatch opened.
"What the hell?" Barton said. A light armored vehicle rolled out. It was followed by a dozen armed men in dark cammies. "Command override," Barton shouted. "Cover the dock area."
Alarms hooted.
"Major, Guilford here."
"Yeah."
"Mr. Wichasta says that's ours. A present from Senator Bronson."
"Tell the son of a bitch—Captain, put me through to him."
"This is Chandos Wichasta."
"Mr. Wichasta, you damned near started a battle."
"I deeply regret any difficulties we may have caused," Wichasta said. "I did not know they were coming. I have the captain of Norton Star on line now. He says they were conducting an exercise, and could not unload the assault boat and still land during this orbit."
"And didn't have any way to tell us."
"I know nothing of that."
"Yeah. And I can believe as much of that as I want to. All right, Mr. Wichasta, but those troops are under my command. Mine, not yours."
"Of course."
"Guilford, get me the officer in charge of that assault team."
"Roger." There was a pause. "Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Niles here."
"Niles, what the hell do you think you're doing here?"
"Sir, I'm sure Captain Nakata has explained. We were conducting an exercise."
"Yeah. OK, Niles, I want your people off that boat. All of them, except the pilot and crew. That damned thing's going to be overloaded as it is."
"But of course, sir."
"Good. Second, I want them out of the way. Take your vehicle up to the field on the east side of the house, and keep them there. All of them. Guilford, notify security we've got strangers among us." He thumbed off the mike. "Wally, that's all we bloody need."
"Watchdogs," Honistu said. "Looks like Bronson doesn't trust us."
"Yeah. And I don't trust him, either." He thumbed his mike again. "Get me Anderson on a secure circuit."
"Captain Anderson here."
"Barton. Bobby, I want you to have a Leopard where it can cover Bronson's people."
"Sir?"
"You heard me. He don't trust us, I guess, but come to that I don't trust him."
"Yes, sir. Anything else?"
"No. Just be sure to do that."
"Yes, sir. Anderson out."
"Want me to assign someone in addition?" Honistu said.
"Oh, Bobby's all right," Barton said. "Maybe you ought to, though. OK, let's get that damn ship loaded and out of here."
Honistu gave orders. As soon as Bronson's troops were clear, the waiting trucks drove out onto the docks.
Barton's crew helped the ranch hands pull fuel lines out and connect them up to the landing craft. Rancher militia began unloading the trucks and carrying crates aboard.
"Well, Wally, this is what it was all for," Barton said.
"Yeah. And none too soon, Major."
"Come on, it was soft duty."
"Sure, but—Hell, Major, you must have felt it. Wondering what Falkenberg was going to do. Not that there was much he could do, but it doesn't stop the troops from worrying. He's pulled rabbits out of empty hats before."
"Yeah," Barton said. "But it does look like we've stymied him this time." He touched buttons on his sleeve console. "Patch me to the pilot of that landing boat."
"Aye aye," the comm sergeant said.
"Commander Perkins here."
"Major Barton. Have a good trip?"
"Yes, sir, uneventful. Understand we surprised you with the troops aboard. Sorry about that."
"Yeah, sure. When will you be ready to take off?"
"Assuming fuel and cargo are aboard, the next launch window for rendezvous with Norton Star will open at 0930," Perkins said.
"Seventy minutes. OK, you'll make that," Barton said. He touched more buttons on his sleeve console. "Sergeant major, move it out," he said. "You got fifty minutes to refuel and get that cargo aboard. Hop it."
He turned his binoculars on the Bronson group and watched as they went up the hill. Then he took a toothpick from his pocket and chewed thoughtfully.
"Nagging doubts, Wally. I keep thinking Falkenberg has an ace up his sleeve." He lifted his binoculars and swept them across the jungle edge. "But what the hell, he doesn't know everything."
Lysander could just see the assault boat through his peephole. It was the center of a flurry of activity. First the assault crew came ashore, weapons ready, and for a moment it looked like there might be a fight right there on the pier. Then they went northwards out of sight.
A crew snaked fuel lines out. A minute after they were connected up, they glistened with condensing frost. The fuel and oxygen lines crossed the road to the pier, and the ranch hands had put up a steel crossover to allow trucks to drive over them without pinching them off. Now a mixed crew of ranch hands and Barton Bulldogs was unloading crates from the trucks and carrying them aboard the landing craft. There were ranch hands in soiled coveralls; rancher militia in their jungle stripes; Barton Bulldogs in darker cammies; and in addition, there were darker blue coveralls which Lysander thought must be the landing ship crew. They were all mixed together. Can't possibly know each other, he thought. And there were the troops from the assault boat itself.
"Harv. Get the insignia off our cammies," he whispered. "May give us an edge." Falkenberg's legion wore a tiger-stripe camouflage uniform that wasn't like either Barton's or the rancher militia. With all those others mixed in, each group might think he belonged to some other. It was worth a try.
"We got a jackpot," he whispered, and gestured for Harv to come look through the peephole. "Get the layout. When the time comes, we walk out there like we've got jobs to do. When we get into the ship, you handle the doors. Get the hatches closed and the lines cast off. I'll get it off the water."
"Right." Harv grinned. "Be something to tell the phraetrie."
"May be." Of course I'll also have to explain to Mother what the hell I was doing here.
He let Harv study the situation outside while he tuned one channel of his receiver to Falkenberg's communications frequency, and slaved the other to his pocket computer. Then he called up a program to listen for and analyze electronic signals.
There were a lot of them. Apparently Barton wasn't worried about electronic security any longer. There was energy in all the radar frequencies, and widely across the communications bands. The communications signals were not strong and couldn't have been intercepted from very far away, but most of them were in plain English.
"—fifty minutes, you bastards! Move goddamit, that bird flies on schedule!" someone shouted.
Lysander tuned across the bands, and heard "Not now. Wait an hour and you got all the people you need, but let it wait."
Fifty minutes. Wait an hour. It was an easy inference that the landing ship would fly then. Lysander frowned in concentration on Norton Star's ephemeris, then nodded in satisfaction. It would be about fifty minutes before the ship was in the proper position for orbital rendezvous with a minimum-energy landing boat. They'd fly then, about 0930.
He tapped Harv on the shoulder and took over the peephole. Should have made two, he thought. Too late now.
Another truck rolled down to the dock.
Lysander tuned his transmitter to the frequency Falkenberg's troops would be monitoring. He hesitated a moment, then keyed the microphone. "Yeah, this is Lion. We'll be ready for liftoff in fifty minutes." He cut off the transmitter and listened. There was a faint click. Lysander winked, and Harv grinned wolfishly.
"That was him, all right," Corporal Tandon said. "Right on our frequency. I didn't acknowledge except to key in a click, sir."
"Good," Falkenberg said. "That's enough to let him know we heard him. Any sign they know about him, or us?"
"Not one damn thing, Colonel," Tandon said. "They're chattering away like nobody's listening. Sir, Mr. Prince is a little off on the launch time; I've heard a dozen people say it goes up at oh-nine-thirty, and that squares with the ephemeris. Fifty minutes from his message is 0920."
"I see. I think you underestimate him, Corporal. Lieutenant Mace."
"Sir."
"I want you to be ready to start your bombardment at 0915. Tandon, five minutes before that you will use the code we worked out to alert Mr. Prince. Be prepared to notify Lieutenant Mace to change that schedule if Mr. Prince requests it."
"Aye aye, sir."
Falkenberg studied the time readout on his sleeve console. "And now we wait. Lieutenant Mace, I think we should discuss your target priorities."
At precisely 0910 Lysander heard Corporal Tandon's voice in his earpiece. "Oh, hell, Lion, hold your horses, we'll have the stuff on the way in five minutes flat."
And what will Barton's communications monitors make of that? Lysander wondered. Assuming they heard it at all. He gestured to Harv and led the way through the passage between the packing crates. They unlocked the door and stepped into the corridor. There were two people there, one close, the other an armed Bulldog near the main door.
"What the hell are you doing in there?" the closest man demanded.
Lysander thought he recognized him as the man who'd come out of the store room earlier that morning. It hardly mattered. Lysander gestured toward the further man. Harv moved ten feet in a single flowing motion. As he did, Lysander spun the rancher around and brought his hand down in a sharp blow to the base of the skull. The man dropped. When Lysander looked up, Harv was dragging the soldier toward the store room.
They pushed both men inside. The rancher was still breathing. Harv thought the soldier was dead but he didn't really want to know. He locked the door. "Let's go."
There was no one in the tractor shed. They walked through that and toward the dock, striding briskly as if they had an errand there. No one stopped them.
The fuel lines were still rigged. There was no way to tell how much hydrogen and LOX had been pumped into the ship. Probably not enough to make orbit. What would happen if they took off with the fuel lines still in place? Presumably there were automatic shutoffs, but were there? Lysander tried to remember if they'd told him in training, and decided they'd never mentioned it. Why should they?
Just before they reached the pier there were sounds of mortar fire from the jungle edge. Several of Barton's people froze in their tracks. Someone shouted, "Incoming!" Several of Barton's troops hit the dirt.
There was a series of explosions up the hill near the house. Then the rattle of small arms fire, and more mortars fired. Several rounds hit the house itself. Part of the veranda was blown away, and the roof was on fire. A nearby shed was also burning. At the dock area people began to run, toward the ship or away from it, while others lay on the ground, or stared, or ran in circles.
There were more explosions from up the hill. The Leopard swivelled its guns to aim at the jungle edge and began to fire. Trees fell at the jungle's edge.
Lysander and Harv reached the dock and broke into a run toward the landing ship. A crewman was just beginning to close the hatch. Lysander leaped across the loading gangplank and pushed past the man, leaving him to Harv. Inside were narrow passageways.
"Who the hell are you?" someone called.
"Get the damn crates lashed in!" Lysander shouted. "Secure for immediate takeoff!"
"Holy shit!" the crewman shouted. "Sir, goddamit—"
"Hop to it! We'll be under fire in a second," Lysander said. He rushed forward to the pilot compartment. There was no one in the right hand seat.
The pilot turned with a frown. "What's going on?"
"Immediate takeoff," Lysander said.
"We're not fueled for takeoff, you idiot!"
"We'll be blown away if we don't get off now. I mean now."
"Off and go wh—uff."
Lysander unclipped the lap belt and heaved the pilot over into the copilot's seat. As he was securing the man's pistol, a crewman put his head into the compartment. Lysander kicked him and pushed him out, then slammed the cockpit door and locked it. He climbed into the left hand seat and inspected the control panel.
Ace Barton took a final look at the map table and turned to Anton Girerd. He grinned widely. "All done here. We can watch the takeoff from the veranda. Wally—"
He was interrupted by mortar fire. There was the sound of crashing glass. The house shook, then shook again. The door to the next room smashed open. Another explosion shook them and his staff dived under the heavy table. A third explosion nearby knocked him off his feet.
"Fire! Fire!" one of the servants shouted.
Barton got to his feet. Something was burning in the next room, and he gestured toward the fire in annoyance. "Carruthers! Deal with that!" He punched in code on his sleeve console. "Comm room, report!"
There was nothing but static. Barton switched to speakers so that Honistu could hear, and methodically punched in codes for emergency communication channels. "Comm Central, report!"
Surprise. Barton recalled Falkenberg's dry voice in the officers mess. "Surprise is an event that takes place in the mind of an opposing commander." You son of a bitch.
"Comm Central, Centurion Martino here, sir." The Centurion spoke slowly and carefully as he'd been trained to do. "We are under heavy mortar and recoilless fire from a battery in the jungle approximately four klicks to the east. There was no warning. The first salvo took out the power plant and damn near every antenna we have. I've got damage control and power crews out now. I have no estimate of the time required to restore power. Captain Anderson is switching control of his units to auxiliary antennas."
Barton heard the sharp crump! of his own mortar units. "What's he shooting at?"
"Stand by one," Martino said. There was a long silence. "Counterbattery. Captain Anderson got some backtrack info with the secondary antennas. Is your plot table powered?"
Barton looked the question at Honistu. "Yes."
"Stand by, Major, I'll try to feed a report to the plot table now—plot responds. Successful feed."
Lights blinked on the liquid crystal map table. Bright orange bordered in blue for his disabled units. Antennas and power plants, and now guns. Too many. More orange blotches on the house itself. Barton could hear frantic sounds from the next room, but he ignored them. The air smelled of smoke, but less now than before.
Red squares for suspected enemy installations. Four guns for sure, all in the jungle. The squares were large, indicating uncertainty in locating them. "There'll be spotters," Barton said. "Have the Leopards chew up the jungle edge. Mortar fire on the probable enemy locations. And have the choppers stand by for target information."
Choppers. How had Falkenberg got troops into that jungle? They sure didn't walk. "They may have some new kind of stealthy chopper," Barton said. "Watch out for it. All AA units stand by."
"Yes, sir."
So what the hell did Falkenberg intend? "Martino, have they hit the landing ship?"'
"Stand by one, sir." Another silence. "No, sir, they haven't been shooting at it."
Haven't been shooting at it. Barton's head hurt. He put his hands to the back of his neck and willed himself to relax. Slow. Send the pain away. Ignore the ringing. Forget the smoke. Forget everything, relax, concentrate. Surprise is an event that takes place in the mind of an enemy commander. Me.
They haven't been shooting at the landing ship. Why haven't they been shooting at it? Why didn't they disable it first thing? "Patch me through to the assault boat pilot."
"Stand by."
It seemed like an eternity.
"I'm still trying, but there's no answer, Major."
"No answer. No communications, or no answer?"
"Don't know, sir. Tried four channels."
"Keep trying. Sound a full security alert in the dock area. Then get somebody down there on line."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Wally, there's something damned wrong out there," Barton said. "Get your butt down to that ship and see what it is. Stay with Martino on Red Four. Martino, reserve Channel Red Four. You, me, and Captain Honistu."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Major?" Honistu asked.
"Damn it, get down there! Secure that ship! I won't be happy until you're sitting in the pilot compartment. Take whatever troops you need."
"Right. I'm on my way."
Barton thumbed his mike again. "Get me Anderson."
"Aye aye, sir."
Another long wait. That son of a bitch. Power plants, antennas, comm shack, damn near got me. Two salvoes and we're damn near out of business. That son of a bitch. He's out there—
"Captain Anderson."
"Bobby, aim something at that assault boat. Do that now, then stand by to disable it on my command."
"Disable? With the fuel lines pumping? Not bloody likely, Major. We can blow it to hell, but I don't know how to disable it."
"Holy shit. Stand by anyway. Martino! Keep track of Captain Honistu's group. I want security forces in that boat now!"
"Major, you must not, you must not destroy—" Anton Girerd's hands fluttered frantically. "Major—"
"On the contrary," Chandos Wichasta said. "You must arrange to destroy it before Governor Blaine can capture it."
"He cannot capture—"
"Anton, of course he can," Wichasta said. "Clearly their objective is to disable the landing ship. Major Barton has told us of the buildup on Dragontooth Island. Once that is complete we can't hold Rochemont. It is obvious they know this is the central storage place. If they did not know before, the landing ship told them that. I wonder if—but no, they had soldiers in the jungle. They must have come before the landing ship. Or did they?"
"They did," Barton said. "They're good, but they're not that good. Bobby, you sure you can't disable that assault boat without blowing it up?"
"Wouldn't want the responsibility, sir. Not till they get the fuel lines disconnected and capped. I've got artillery, not magic."
"Bring in another assault boat!" Girerd shouted.
"Right. Mr. Wichasta, do you have communications with Norton Star?"
"I will see."
"Please do. So. Martino, where the hell's the pilot of that boat?"
"Still no answer, Major."
"God damn it—"
"Captain Anderson," Wichasta said. "This is Chandos Wichasta. I speak for Senator Bronson. Captain, that landing boat must not be recovered by Governor Blaine. If there is any chance of that boat falling into the hands of the governor, destroy it."
"No!" Anton Girerd screamed.
"Captain, I am authorized to offer you wealth beyond your wildest dreams," Wichasta said. "Major Barton, we will pay your expenses and fees in full, with a bonus, provided that the borloi does not come into Governor Blaine's possession. An extra bonus for delivering the crop to us, but we will pay even if it is destroyed."
"Major." Centurion Martino's voice took on the deadly calm note professional soldiers use when things get serious. "The landing boat has started its engines. I still have no contact with the pilot."
"Wally!"
"All true," Honistu said. His voice sounded strained. "I'm running like hell—"
"Captain Anderson," Wichasta shouted. "Destroy that ship now!" Then he turned away and spoke into his microphone. Barton heard nothing of what he said.
Ace Barton touched buttons on his sleeve console. "Martino, keep this secure. Bobby, belay that instruction."
Anderson's voice was in his earpiece. "Ace, how much is wealth beyond our wildest dreams? Enough to get out of this racket?"
"What do you care? Belay that order!"
"Honistu here. Bronson's tank is firing at the landing boat."