Trial by Fire - eARC (45 page)

A sudden concussive roar, bloom of orange-yellow light, and tumbling shock wave were right behind her.

Chapter Thirty

Northern slums, Jakarta, Earth

Riordan ducked as the stream of coil gun needles tore through the side of the corrugated metal shack, which promptly folded over on itself like a half torn sheet of perforated paper.

“That was close, Caine,” said the young Indonesian beside him, listening as the rotors of the Arat Kur attack ROV hummed into the distance.

Caine nodded. “It wasn’t sure we were in here. That was just a little recon-by-fire.” The rotors slowed, picked up in volume again. It was doubling back.
Because, no matter where I hide today, they know where to find me.

Which made less than no sense. At the start of their occupation, the Arat Kur had seeded the streets of Jakarta with dust-sized nanytes purportedly able to identify and track any individuals already in their database. According to informants, the project had been an utter failure. Firstly, the entire project had depended upon meshing the visual data gathered from the Arat Kurs’ “phased array” of pervasive nanytes with the advanced biometric programming provided by their megacorporate allies. The reason for its failure had been an object of considerable speculation. Perhaps the Arat Kur had been unable to sync such different software systems; perhaps the culprit was data overload, or nanyte failure due to the hot, supersaturated air and merciless pounding of the monsoons. But there was no question that the scheme had been a complete failure—so how had multiple Arat Kur ROVs been able to track one Caine Riordan almost flawlessly for the past two hours?

The effectiveness of his guerilla cell was not a reasonable explanation for the sharply increased attention. Other insurgency groups had been far more troublesome in terms of raw casualty and damage infliction upon the enemy. Caine had concentrated on what he did best: specially prepared ambushes such as the one in the western
kempang
that had gained them a treasure trove of lethal Hkh’Rkh weapons. Such operations were very useful, but couldn’t be carried out too often. They took considerable prep time, and could not safely be conducted in the same region: after an attack, the Arat Kur invariably shifted a crippling density of reconnaissance and surveillance assets to that area. Also, the Hkh’Rkh had resumed their tactic of hammering any
kempang
that became particularly restive, ruthlessly punishing the indigenous population for ambushes which they had neither aided nor abetted.

“The ROV is coming back, Caine,” said the young Indonesian nervously.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be all right.”

“Yes, but it could still—”

Caine turned and stared at him. “Soldier, we are going to be all right.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

Caine smiled, nodded, tried to peer out the tiny sliver of sky visible between where the roof and front wall had folded over and down against the rear wall.
At least I
hope
we’re going to be all right.

He could hear the Arat Kur ROV hovering closer, tracking slightly from side to side like a scenting dog.

Damn it, Teguh, where the hell are you with that—?

From fifty meters away, an antivehicle rocket sprang out of a fire-gutted building with a screaming hiss. Although Caine could not see the ROV’s response, he heard the familiar sounds of its chassis spinning in that direction, the pop as its short-range active defense rockets jumped toward the incoming threat.

In the microsecond before those rockets made their intercept, the oncoming missile’s warhead launched from its bus, speeding even faster toward the ROV. The minirockets jinked over, just managed to intercept it—but missed the slower, heavier projectile that had been launched right behind the HEAP warhead.

Caine heard the launch-hiss of a second wave of intercept rockets, but they were too late. The slower tungsten warhead crashed into the ROV with a sound like a screwdriver punching through a car-door—right before that projectile’s small, tail-covered back-charge went off.

The combined impact and explosion sent rotors spinning in all directions, one screeching wildly across the back of the bisected tin shack. Looking out the similar gap at the other end of the folded expanse of corrugated metal, Caine watched as the savaged chassis of the Arat Kur patrol unit was flung down with a crunch, raising a path of dust until it stopped rolling.

“Let’s go,” he said to the young Indonesian, starting to push at the fallen wall which had sheltered them. And which lifted off with weightless ease: Teguh and two of his assistants stood there, holding it up.

“I still want to know where you got those damn rockets,” Caine said as he clambered out of the trashpile that had once been a shed.

“An’ I tol’ you I promised the guy I wouldn’t say. He’s a prewar black marketeer, Caine. He means business.” Teguh trotted toward the cover of a new building, the one that housed their objective: a colonial-era cistern system.

“Yeah?” Caine replied. “Well, those rockets mean that someone is getting contemporary munitions onto Java, and if equipment is getting here, that means people can probably get here, and that means—”

“Yeah, good thinking—but stopping to think will get us dead right now. We gotta move. There will be more ROVs coming.”

Caine stopped as they came under the building’s catch-roof, and within arm’s reach of the cistern’s half-rotted wooden cover. “No.
We
don’t have to move.
I
do.”

Teguh stopped. “What you talking about, Caine?”

“Face the facts, Teguh. Whatever is going on today, the Arat Kur keep finding us because of me. This last time they flew right past the two squads we sent running away as decoys, didn’t even seem to know they were there. But me? They can find me in any building, under any car, in any culvert. We’ve lost three men finding that out. Men we should never have lost at all.”

“Yeah, but we got four of their ROVs.”

“Teguh, listen to me: forget kill ratios. This is not a battle of our choosing. Hell, it’s not even a battle, it’s a—a rabbit hunt. The Arat Kur ROVs are the hounds and somehow, they’ve got my scent.”

“Look, don’t go thinking the world revolves around you, heh? Don’t go
bule
-crazy, like you did after the
kempang
. This is just bad luck, and by tomorrow—”

Caine looked at him. “By tomorrow, we’ll all be dead. I’m not
bule
-crazy, Teguh, not this time. And you know it. You just don’t want me to leave. And I don’t want to, either.”

“Shit, you think you so important I care whether you leave?” But Teguh’s eyes and the set of his mouth told a very different story.

Caine put a hand on his shoulder. “My Indonesian brother, you helped me get my head—well, out of my ass, after the
kempang
. But today, it’s you who refuses to see what your brain already knows.” Caine waved at the ruined ROV and the streets behind them. “They are after me, Teguh. You know it; you’ve seen it. I want to stay, but I can’t. Maybe they put some kind of transponder in my food when I was on the Arat Kur ship. Or maybe I walked through some kind of nanyte-dusted trap that actually works. I don’t know how they are tracking me. I only know this: they can find me wherever I go, and the only other people they’ve attacked today are the ones who got in their way. So you have to get the hell away from me, and I’ve got to go down this hole and hope that they can’t follow me into a tunnel. Who knows? Maybe it will block or at least degrade whatever signal they’re using to track me.”

Teguh shook his head and looked like he might start to cry. “This isn’t right, Caine. You should stay with us.”

Caine put his other hand on Teguh’s other shoulder. “It wasn’t right what happened to all those people at the
kempang
, but we had to accept that, too.”

Teguh looked away, reached up, patted Caine’s right hand. “You a good man, Caine. You come find me when this is all over. We’ll find some beer. We’ll talk.”

“We will,” Caine nodded, removing his hands and pushing the cistern-cover aside. “Now, get out of here.”

“Hey,” Teguh retorted as he began trotting away down the wreckage-strewn street, “you gone now. I don’ have to take your orders!”

“You never did,” Caine whispered at the receding back of his Indonesian brother. Then he clambered down into the cistern.

“Spooky Hollow”restricted area, north of Perth, Earth

Once inside the underground garage that concealed the mobile command trailers, Downing began returning the salutes of the Australian soldiers guarding the largest one: the one that they had taken to calling Spookshow Prime. Only special personnel with insanely high clearance were allowed within ten meters of it, let alone inside.

Downing walked up the stairs to the overpressure hatch of Spookshow Prime, went in, sealed it and felt the atmosphere change beginning: slightly more rich in oxygen, a slightly flinty smell, and—despite being on the west coast of Australia—a slightly higher level of humidity. The green light illuminated over the inner door. Downing went in.

The three junior Dornaani at the monitors nodded faintly as he passed, returning their nods. Entering the combination conference rooms and living quarters at the rear of Spookshow Prime, he found Alnduul sitting in what looked like a meditative pose before a holosphere that showed the area around Jakarta.

“Greetings, Richard Downing. Is there news from the World Confederation Council?”

“Yes, and it’s not good.” Downing sat heavily. “There’s been no contact from the Arat Kur to reopen a dialogue, not even when we paved the way with questions about prisoner exchanges and increased humanitarian aid. So the primary means of carrying out Case Timber Pony—the diplomatic mission—has been scrubbed. Without at least an invite from the invaders, we can’t initiate talks in Jakarta without them becoming suspicious. Which means we have no way to get a diplomatic mission into, or at least close to, their HQ.”

Alnduul laced his fingers together slowly. “So the Arat Kur have not explained their lack of interest in further communication?”

Downing shook his head. “Not a word. The intel brain trust suspects a combination of factors, but Arat Kur uninterest is not high among them. Rather, the preferred theory is that the increasing violence and bitterness of the Javanese insurgency is making the Hkh’Rkh not only more aggressive on the battlefield, but at the planning table. That they are dead-set against any further discussion of terms.”

“It would not be uncharacteristic of the Hkh’Rkh to make their continued cooperation with the Arat Kur contingent upon an unwavering demand for Earth’s unconditional capitulation.” Alnduul stared back down into the holosphere. “Of course, there may be an advantage to such a situation.”

“You mean, that there are even greater rifts opening up between the Arat Kur and Hkh’Rkh leadership?”

“Just so.”

Downing could tell that Alnduul’s following silence was intended to be significant. And he understood the unspoken implication. “You still think we went too far by destroying so much of Indonesia’s warehoused foodstuffs and increasing the ferocity of the insurgency, don’t you? And that if we had been more moderate, the unrest would not have flared into a bitter guerilla war that is now keeping the invaders from the negotiations table?”

Alnduul drew his fingers through the air like streamers in a molasses-slow wind. “Perhaps. The rapid increase in the desperation of the island’s population did accelerate the rate at which initially uncoordinated acts of resistance coalesced and intensified into a nationwide insurgency. And that, in turn, has accelerated the speed with which the Hkh’Rkh have become harsh, belligerent, and unmanageable. But I still maintain that this may prove to be a superior outcome insofar as completing Case Timber Pony is concerned.”

“How so? Our best chance of carrying out Timber Pony has just been eliminated.”

“I am by no means as certain of this as you are. I have never been convinced that the ploy of inserting a disguised assault team was the most attractive—or promising—method of executing the plan. It was, to use a human idiom, a piece with too many moving parts. If one failed, the machine would not function when needed. Consequently, the vulnerability to both routine mishaps and competent enemy screening were too great to ensure acceptable odds of success.” Alnduul paused. “I know you are reluctant to pass the responsibility—and risk—of completing the mission to individuals, Richard Downing. I am, also. But with the primary delivery alternative canceled, we have little choice but to ensure that all the assets remain within striking distance.”

“Of course, this means we will have to insert special data into the infiltration unit updates to try to nudge our remaining delivery assets in the right direction.”

“You are sure that Captain Corcoran and Major Patrone would not obey a direct order to move into greater proximity to the target?”

“They would not, and we have no way to embed such an order in the updates, let alone know if they received it.”

“Then you are correct. We must embed data that entices them to collapse on the target area. But we must take more extreme measures in the case of Caine Riordan. Look.” Alnduul gestured into his extraordinarily lifelike holosphere of the coastal shallows north of Jakarta. A filament-thin spindle of green light twirled and shone, moving slowly away from the perfectly rendered landmass. Two other spindles—one yellow, one cyan—were still on the landmass, one at the western edge of the city, the other on the east. Alnduul pointed to the green spindle. “Riordan.”

Richard frowned. “He didn’t run until we ensured he was trackable by the Arat Kur.”

Alnduul seemed to feel the veiled accusation in Downing’s tone. “True. But we had to act as we did. If, as you suspect, he had become part of the resistance, that presented two dangers to his participation in Case Timber Pony. Firstly, he could have been killed either in combat or in prison, unless he was captured by the Arat Kur.

“Secondly, even if he was captured and survived, as an active insurgent, his diplomatic status would have been revoked, thereby eliminating his unique access to the enemy headquarters. Logically, therefore, his resistance activities had to be terminated and we had only one such method at our disposal: making him intermittently detectable to the Arat Kur. Enough to convince him to desist his actions, but not enough to lead to his death.”