24
At Cherbourg, Kieran and Mahom disembarked from the APC with Leppo and Casey just inside the lock. While the APC shunted across to the outbound lane to gain immediate exit with the next lock cycle, they took an elevator down a level and hurried to where the Guardian Angel was parked. Within minutes, Leppo and Casey had the Angel up to flight readiness. They taxied back up, left after a short wait, and were soon climbing into the strange, pink-blushed Martian sky with the Cherbourg plateau and its spaceport, and below it, Lowell nestled in the folds of the Valles Marineris canyons, shrinking amid an expanding vista of wilderness.
“Sure handles smooth and easy,” Mahom complimented, giving Leppo an approving nod. “Solid on the drive, too. Seems like maybe you did pick up a few useful things after all.”
“These are gonna be big one day,” Leppo promised him. “You sound like maybe you’re angling for a share of the action.”
“I’ll take whatever’s going,” Mahom said unabashedly with a shrug.
It seemed that Leppo had decided he was back in the security business again.
A call from Trevany confirmed that Everit and his force had arrived and were preparing positions around the expedition’s camp. Chas Ryan’s crew was digging slit trenches away from the vehicles as a precaution. So far there had been no hostile appearance. Trevany had barely finished saying this, however, when Harry Quong interrupted to say that three blips had appeared on the Juggernaut’s radar, heading their way—one leading, and two close together following a few miles behind. Moments later, Everit’s pilot reported the same contact from the APC. Everit ordered the APC off the ground, to take up a low-level circling pattern behind the mountains bordering the valley on the far side from the plateau.
But it soon became apparent that the approaching craft were heading not for the expedition’s camp but for the Troy site, where the Mule transporter that had brought Banks and his group, along with the eviction squad’s Venning troop carrier and scout car, were still standing by the two original Zorken shacks. Until a medical team arrived to begin checking through the vehicles, the site was deserted; but presumably the incoming force, who had to be the syndicate’s heavy team from Stony Flats, didn’t know that. This seemed confirmed when the leading blip swooped down in a dive following the plateau edge toward the shelf.
“Rudi’s got it via Gottfried,” Trevany reported. “It looks like they’re attacking.”
“Patch it through,” Kieran told him.
The cavorting, intermittent view from the robot high on the cliff showed a dark arrowhead that could only be the gunship they’d seen in the satellite image coming in on a low-level run. It released two missiles, followed up with a burst of heavy cannon fire, and broke off to go into a climbing turn above the valley. The missiles struck above the shelf, causing a minor avalanche of rock and debris to tumble down around the shacks and the vehicles. The cannon shells traced a line of smaller explosions along a line below, across the zigzagging approach road. It was a warning, demonstrating the firepower available. If anyone down there wanted to play games this time, the message said, the next ones won’t miss. There was no responding fire. In fact, there was no response at all.
* * *
“No return fire,” the gunship c-com/weapons operator reported to the command flyer holding fifteen miles back behind the two troop carriers. “Nobody’s coming out. Looks like they’re staying holed up.”
“It means we’ve got them rattled.” The strike commander, Colonel Sedger, came in from the lead troop carrier. “It’s the right psychological moment. They weren’t expecting anything like this. It’s a steal. If we go down now, we’ll be able to walk right in.”
In the command flyer, Mullen looked at the two expediters from the Firm, their impeccable dark suits now overlain by light-duty EV suits. In the seats behind, Sarda and Balmer waited tensely.
“Do it,” the senior of the two ordered.
Then the gunship CWO came in again. “Alert all. Unidentified contact on bearing one-one-zero—coming in from direction of Lowell.”
“How far out?” the strike commander asked over the circuit.