“What if it’s a person?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Danny said. “We’re out in the open and we’re near their data line. The main thing is that you guys jump out with your equipment and I keep going. They won’t be too concerned as long as they think we have nothing to do with them.”
“Maybe they’ll think its a new kind of vehicle,” Aaron said.
“Half race car and half farm equipment. ‘Get your crops harvested in record speeds.’”
“That’s funny.” After a moment of staring at one of his scanner readouts Danny said, “We caught someone’s attention.”
“What?”
“Something big over the treetops to the north. It’s closing in on intercept trajectory.”
“When is it going to intercept?” Wiley said, leaning forward to see the readout.
“Soon. I can’t get you guys all the way to the data line. I’m going to have to drop you off now. Get ready. See that tree ahead?”
“Shit.” Aaron got up and scrambled to the back, followed by Wiley. Danny looked back to make sure they were grabbing guns as well as their computer hardware. Even in the dark of the cabin he could see them shaking.
He popped the hatch open for them. “If I slow down they might figure out what’s going on. Jump when we’re under the tree and hide.”
“What are you going to do?” Wiley said. He had to raise his voice above the wind coming in through the open hatch.
“I’m going to see how fast this thing really goes.”
“Good luck,” Wiley said. Aaron echoed him. Danny wished them the same, and then the two were out the hatch and Danny pushed the button to close it. He looked at the readout and saw the shape of the other vehicle. Troop transport, not made for fighter-like tactics but armed with missiles. This Mercedes can do Mach four but those missiles do at least Mach seven, he thought. But I have an inertia-null unit and can maneuver like a crazy fly. God help me if those missiles can too.
#
Wiley and Aaron tumbled to the grass, their body’s wrapped around the packs to protect the hardware. The rifles tumbled by themselves, and one went off with a deafening WHAM! Both of them thought they were being fired upon and immediately scrambled for the lee of the tree trunk. This is it, Wiley thought. I’m a dead man.
No further bursts occurred, and he put his head up to look after Danny. The Mercedes was a blur receding to the horizon. He saw, for a moment, something large turn and follow it. Something like sparks jumped. Missile exhaust? he thought. There was a sudden sharp boom, very loud, like a large bomb going off. It rolled across the Depopulated Zone like a tidal wave. There was no flash of explosion. He didn’t see anything at all.
“Is that it?” Aaron said. “Did Danny catch it?” His voice sounded strange, terrified and on the verge of tears.
“No, I’m hoping that was a sonic boom. I think he’s making for the other side of the valley so he can lose his tail in the mountains.” Wiley neglected to say anything about he missile exhausts he thought he’d seen.
“Who shot at us?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe one of our guns went off.”
“Oh, shit.” Aaron sounded relieved nonetheless. “So much for a quiet drop.”
“Well, Danny’s got their attention. They may not have noticed us.”
“He’s not coming back for us, is he?”
“I doubt it. We’re on our own.”
Aaron lifted his head. “Nothing new about that. Everything’s going wrong tonight.”
“Yeah. It is. Maybe that’s all that’ll go wrong.”
“We spent too much time sitting on our butts with CoGen. It was like being back up in the SOUTHSAT station. We forgot our basic training.”
“It’ll come back, sure enough,” Wiley said. He was thinking: Aaron’s really scared this time. This is the guy who took on a military drone by himself just a week ago. Maybe it’s because Savina’s not here. Savina was like a good-luck charm. I’m not at all surprised that Evelyn Sunrunner took a liking to her. “I’ll crawl out and get our guns.”
“Be careful, I don’t have anything to cover you with.”
“It was one of our guns that went off, I’m sure of it.” He crawled around the tree and found one of the guns. “Yeah, this one’s hot.”
“Great. An infrared torch. What else is going to go wrong?”
Wiley thought of something. “One more thing.”
“What?”
“Neither of us grabbed a pair of spotters.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah. I feel naked without a pair of spotters. It’s like being blind.”
“Maybe we should try this again another time,” Aaron said.
“It’s only a few hundred feet away. Come on.”
“I’ve got a very bad feeling about tonight.”
“The worst is over. Let’s go.”
Reluctantly, Aaron agreed to continue. He shouldered his pack and picked up his gun, and they walked to the northeast, going from tree to tree and using whatever cover was available. They had to cross one long clearing to get to what they thought was the group of trees the splice was under, only to realize it was a group of trees immediately north. They had to cross one more clearing to get there, and they were right on the data line.
“I hope Danny’s keeping them occupied,” Wiley said. They walked across the tall dry grass slowly, sedately, under the theory that they’d attract more attention if they were running.
“We’re just two happy-go-lucky anarchists,” Wiley said. “Oh, don’t pay any attention to us.”
Aaron didn’t laugh.
They reached their group of trees without incident, and found the cable where they had left it. It took them five minutes to set the equipment up and connect it, and run checks to make sure everything was okay. Aaron considered it a small miracle that the hardware wasn’t damaged in their jump from the moving air launch.
“Here’s the tricky part,” Wiley said. He typed the command to start their infiltration program. Its job was to smuggle their copy of CoGen in without it being noticed, then hide it in several places throughout the computer system. From there, the first chance it could get, it would replace the existing CoGen and it’s backup with their modified version. “It’s loading, and sending,”
he said to Aaron. “Should be all over with in about two-and-a-half hours.”
“I hope so.” Aaron sat against the tree. “I feel like a naked man on display out here. I wish I could see if someone is watching us.”
“I don’t care if they’re watching us, just as long as they don’t bother us for a few hours. By then it’ll be too late. We destroy the MSDs and they’ll never be able to tell what we were putting into their system.”
Aaron grunted.
They sat in silence for a little over a half hour, then Wiley stood up slowly against the tree, looking to the west. “What?”
Aaron said, then turned to look in the same direction.
“A fucking drone,” Wiley said. “I saw is shape against the trees.”
“Where is it?”
“Back where we dropped.”
“Oh goddamn it! It’s going to follow us right out here!”
“I think so, Aaron. We’re going to have to do what we did last time. But this time it’s my turn. I’ll go off over that way and get its attention. You stay here and make sure CoGen is loaded, then destroy those MSDs. I’ll meet you back here if I can, but don’t wait for me. When it’s done, it’s done, and you get out of here.” Wiley sprinted from tree to tree, heading north, then turned northwest. He belly crawled through a long stretch of open grass, lining his stomach and the front of his pants with stickers, then stood behind a tree and looked. The drone was heading slowly in Aaron direction. Wiley took careful aim with the rifle and pulled the trigger.
The drone’s armored hull flashed and the whole thing spun around once. Wiley jumped away from the tree and crawled through the grass. Behind him the tree shuttered with an impact which threw fresh splinters everywhere and broke loose every other branch. The branches came raining down with a rustling of trailing leafs, and one branch made a deep thud when it hit the ground. It was big enough to be a tree itself.
There’s nothing between it and me but grass, Wiley thought.
He crawled as quick as he could toward the next tree, then paused to see the drone. The drone was coming fast. I’ve got to hit some vital scanning equipment, he thought. Again he took aim, this time firing three times, then jumped away from the tree. There was a monstrous wailing sound and a shadow passed right over him, spinning as it went. The drone. Wiley got up and ran before it could recover its senses, making for a dense patch of brush that had once been someone’s hedge. Diving over, he discovered that on the other side was broken concrete instead of soft grass and dirt.