The Ramal Extraction (14 page)

“A little over a kilometer.”

Jo said, “I got it.” She switched to the tactical channel. “Gramps?”

“Here.”

“You got our PPS sig?”

“Of course.”

“We are heading for a clearing approximately one kilometer southwest of our location. Next to a stream, an old gold mine. We have an obstacle, so it might be a few minutes before we get there. Be nice if you were on the ground with the door open when we show up. We’ll need to be leaving in a hurry. And come in quick and quiet, somebody might be looking for you.”

“I’ll see what I can manage.”

“Off-line.”

Jo looked at Kay. “How far apart are they?”

“Twenty-five meters.”

“Okay. Right up the middle.”

Singh said, “What are we doing?”

Jo looked at him. “We are in a closing pincer, between the pickets and the pursuers. If we are going to get to where the hopper can land, we have to get out of it. Terrain says we can’t go south, and if we try going around, to the north, it will take too long. So we punch right through the line and move as fast as we can. Speed is of the essence, we are run-and-gun. Lose the suits.”

Singh stared at her as if she had just turned into a giant lizard. “What?”

Jo continued. “The pickets have gear that messes with our sensors, so we will have to use visual. The suits won’t stop what they are throwing, and they’ll hose, spray-and-pray, so the camo won’t help. And they will slow us down.

“They are using capacitor-driven railguns, so our spookeyes will work, there won’t be any muzzle flash. But if somebody chain-fires photonics, the strobes will screw the ’eyes.”

“Will they do that?”

“Maybe, but
we
will for sure. So their nightsight won’t work, either. Kay and I will know where they are, and we will be firing at them. Fire only if you are
certain
you have a valid target. It’s going to be just like a strobe scenario, only they’ll be using live ammo instead of taggers.

He nodded. “A-All r-r-ight.”

“Everybody ready? Wink?”

“What? I’m trying to take a nap over here.”

“Get a pressure patch ready and get out the FAS, we are going jogging.”

“Man,” Wink said. “You know Rags is going to shit a square brick when we show up without these suits. They aren’t covered by insurance.”

They stripped to their skivvies, black polyprop sheaths that covered them from neck to ankles. “Put your boots back on,” Jo ordered.

She looked at Wink. “How is your wound?”

“Nothing I can’t plug with some dermastat.”

“Plug it. And Wink? Stay behind Gunny.”

Jo glanced at Gunny, then at Kay, then pointed her nose at Singh. He was putting his boots back on, he didn’t catch it.

Gunny and Kay nodded at Jo in return. They would let Singh get a step or two ahead of them when they moved. It wouldn’t matter to anybody shooting in their direction from the picket line if he was a meter ahead or behind, but that way, he wouldn’t accidentally shoot one of them in the back. Even a combat veteran could get excited in the middle of a firefight, and Singh wasn’t that.

“Ready?”

They all nodded.

“Let’s do it.”

“Well, looky here,” Nancy said. “It must be a celebration—somebody is shooting off fireworks.”

She had already zigged to port by the time Gramps spotted the ground-to-air missile heading their way. Not that the evasive move was necessary: the hopper’s tactical computer had tagged the missile, painted it with a laser, and launched a counterrocket that hit it five hundred meters away from the vessel. It made a bright splash against the polarized portholes.

The viewscreen was a full-sheet starlight sandwich, and the night was as a somewhat-faded day looking through it. It cut the glare as the missile blew up.

They had gained some altitude to look for the clearing, which was why the GTA.

“There it is,” he said.

“You sure? Doesn’t look big enough.”

“I get that a lot. Trust me, it’ll look bigger in a minute.”

The hopper dropped, and his belly roiled at the sudden lack of gravity.

Kay set the photonic grenade bar for a three-second delay and a sequential quarter-second strobe. She threw the PGB into the air ahead of her in a high arc, mentally timing it. She heard the
pop!
as the globes separated from each other, six of them, each the size of a walnut. No matter which way they landed, some portion of the globe would flash, unless it was completely buried, only they’d mostly go off in the air—

“Eyes!” she said. She shut her own as the first of the globes ignited, and it was bright even against her lids. To somebody looking right at it, it would be blinding. Spookeyes
would cut out and protect the circuits and a user’s vision, but a quarter second later, and for a total of a second-and-a-half, the night-vision gear would be cutting in and out as the grenades lit.

Strobe. Strobe. Strobe—

Kay had marked her path, and she opened her other senses, listening, smelling, feeling the ground under her feet, and ran. The nearest enemy was fifty meters away—

She heard the railguns go off—they were shooting blind—and pointed her own weapon at the source of the sound. She could smell the human’s fear-sweat.

Kay fired. Was rewarded with a scream.

—Strobe. Strobe—

Kay opened her eyes, picked up the second target to her left.

Fired—

Jo saw the man angling in from her right, his weapon on full auto. Stupid—the J&S fired a heavy projectile at high velocity, and the recoil was stout. Even as she watched with her augmented sight amped to full, she saw the muzzle of his weapon rising, so by the eighth or ninth shot, the guy was shooting at the stars. She gave him a pair of three-round bursts, pointing high. The first burst hit him in the neck armor, the second blew through his helmet’s face bubble—

Two more angled in from her left, but Gunny had them, that was four? no, five down, and they had a big hole in the line.

Just ahead of her a step, Singh waved his carbine back and forth, also on full auto, and chipped bark from several trees. There wasn’t anybody in his line of sight.

So much for don’t shoot unless you are sure of your target—

—Wait, there was an enemy!

She swung her weapon over to cover him, but Singh’s
rapid hose found the solider and stitched across his belly. The man went down—

Gunny didn’t follow the two she’d spiked as they fell, that was a beginner’s mistake she hadn’t made in a long time. She looked for more targets, could hear railguns, but their shooters weren’t visible. There were at least seven more troops out there, but they didn’t seem in a hurry to get here.

They’d punched through the line and were past it. She moved her finger off the weapon’s trigger and kept running—

Wink didn’t see anybody ahead of him except Gunny. To his left, Kay ran, with Singh a couple of meters ahead of her.

Now
he was up! His heart raced, his blood sang with ancient songs of life and death, his breath was too loud in the night. The pain in his lat was gone, the glue would either hold or it wouldn’t, but that wasn’t important.

There was a body on the ground just ahead. Gunny leaped over it.

“Watch your step!” she called out.

“Got it!” Wink yelled back.

He leaped over the downed body. Was he dead? That didn’t matter, either. Wink wasn’t dead. That’s what mattered—

Three hundred meters past the line, Jo stopped, turned, and using every one of her sensory augs, scanned the woods behind them.

Nothing.

“Kay?”

Eight meters away, Kay said, “We are clear.”

“But we won’t be for long.”
Click.
“Gramps?”

“Nancy and I are having a picnic by the water here,” he
said. “Why don’t you all come on by and join us? I’ll save you a sandwich.”

“Three minutes,” Jo said.

“Don’t put any mustard on mine,” Gunny said.

“Chocolatte, I’ve got some special sauce I’ve been saving for you.”

“Ah bet,” Gunny said. “You just keep right on savin’ it.”

Once the hopper was airborne and fifteen klicks away, they all felt better.

Gramps shook his head. “Children, children, what have you done with your dress clothes? Your father is going to be sooo unhappy with you.”