* * *
“Missile attack. Taking evasive action.”
Lysander noted the tiltrotor’s location on his map projection. “OK, you’ve found them,” Lysander said. “Now get well back, refuel, and stand by. If they had one missile they’ll have more.”
“Yes, sir.”
“OK, driver, push it,” Lysander said. They rolled onward.
* * *
“Bloody hell,” Lysander cursed quietly. “There goes the chance of using the IV sensors.”
The hills to the west were aflame for better than a kilometer to either side; there was a strong easterly wind, enough to move the fire briskly despite the early season. Tall grass will burn even when green, if the fire is set with torches and fanned by moving air. The higher partial pressure of oxygen on Sparta made it even more deadly than prairie fires on earth. . . . Haze and smoke and the pale-yellow disk of the setting sun made it difficult to see the mountain peaks beyond.
“Halt.” The burbling roar of the diesels sank to a low murmur, no louder than the roar of the fire approaching them from a kilometer away. He could smell the thick acrid smoke of it, over the hot metal of engines and the overwhelming sweetness of crushed grass.
The tracking force was advancing along a front as wide as the fire itself, Cataphracts in the lead with the trucks a hundred meters behind. He swiveled to look around; nothing, except the clouds of birds fleeing the grassfire, and the twin-track marks the armored vehicles had beaten through the turf. They were tending south of west, up into the higher country on the fringes of the Drakons. Not the nine- and ten-thousand meter peaks of the midrange, but still more than high enough to carry eternal snow and glaciers. The hills here were already several hundred meters higher than the Gap country proper, unclaimed land, with tendrils of brush and forest down the valleys. Perceptibly colder than the Halleck ranch, too.
“Regimental command push,” he said.
“Bennington here,” the Major replied after a second.
“Collins here. We’re getting closer, but they set a grassfire. We’ll have to stop and find the scent again on the other side.”
“They were laying mines back here,” Bennington said grimly. “New wrinkle. Anti-vehicle mines in the track, as a decoy; laser trigger rigged to a directional mine off to the side. Lost two of the sappers.”
“Goddam!” Lysander said.
“My sentiments exactly. Not to mention a farm wagon further down the road, another fatal. Get them, sir.”
“Will do, Jamie.”
The 6×6 jounced up, with the dogs and the Hallecks. The trucks had excellent cross-country mobility, Charbonneau-thread tires gripped like fingers, but the ride was rougher than the broad treads and hydrogas suspension units of the Cataphracts. Miguel, the chief vaquero, swung down, wiping at his soot-streaked face with a bandanna.
“The hijo de puta picked the spot for their fire well, my Prince,” he said. “No deep valleys, the ground only rolls. More broken country beyond. Someone among them must be himself an llanero, a plainsman. Donna Halleck says that the forest begins only ten kilometers beyond, very bad country with many ravines and cliffs; oaks, firs, deodar cedar and rhododendron thicket.”
“I’ve hunted leopard there,” she said from the bed of the truck; her father and Harv were beside her. “Tricky. Pumice soil and rock, pretty steep. Landslide country in the rains.”
We’ll never get them in there, Lysander thought. His speed advantage would be lost; ambush country, and easier for the bandits to disperse. Roger Halleck was looking grimly furious.
“Backburn?” the vaquero asked, looking at the approaching fire.
“Nix that!” Lydia Halleck said. “Too long—look, we can run it, if a couple of your lobsters go through first right ahead of us. We’ll only be in the flame-front for a second or so and nothing flammable will be touching the ground. Hose everything down, and the dogs will be able to take it.”
Hell of a risk, he thought. Then: God damn it, these are my people, I’m not going to let their kinfolk be dragged off by those scum.
“OK,” he said. “Citizen, Miss Halleck, if you’d prefer to ride in one of the Cataphracts?” A family muleishness confronted him.
“The dogs need me to stay with them,” the girl said. Well, not much chance her father won’t stay with her, Lysander thought.
“Sir?” Harv, standing next to the Hallecks. “Sir, if we cover everything with a couple of ground sheets and soak it, we’ll be safe enough under.”
Lysander blinked in surprise; he had expected another polite-but-firm request that Harv ride in the Cataphract with him. “Carry on, Sergeant.” He looked west. An hour of daylight left. “Let’s move.”
* * *
Lysander buttoned the hatch down and looked at the wall of smoke ahead of them; it towered into the sky, and the flames were twice the height from the ground to the top of the Cataphract’s turret.
“Goose it!” he said.
The armored vehicle gathered speed with a pitch-and-yaw motion like a boat beating through a medium sea. For a moment there was darkness shot with red outside the vision-blocks, and his ears popped as the overpressure NCB system pumped air into the fighting compartment through its filters. Then they were through, on a broad expanse of smoldering black stubble kilometers wide. The truck was through as well, covered in soot and smut but still functioning; as he watched the tarpaulin over the rear deck was thrown back, revealing grinning humans and hysterical dogs pulling against the short-staple leashes tied down to the railings.
The column pulled to a halt on the unburned grass, the familiar shhhh against the hulls replacing the popping crunches of the burn. The Hallecks and Miguel moved efficiently to quiet the dogs; the cycle-mounted scouts pulled up from their wide circle west of the fire. As steady in their way as the humans, the dogs soon settled down and began to cast about, tails high and wagging furiously; they had been following the on-again, off-again trail all day, and they were getting into the spirit of it. Well-trained pack, too, Lysander thought, studying the ground ahead. No yelling off after something else once they’ve been given a scent.
The land was rising again, the ridges getting sharper. It suddenly occurred to him how different it would have looked in his grandfather’s time. Olive green pseudomoss then, and scraggly patches of semibamboo, scarred by the erosion the introduced vegetation resisted so much better. Grass and brush all mixed in, just beginning its long march to conquest. One long human lifetime, an eyeblink in the history of a world. Even the insects and bacteria beneath his feet were of strains that had come here less than a century ago.
“Message, sir,” his driver called.
Lysander frowned. “Right.” He retrieved the head-set from the Cataphract. “Collins here.”
“Suggestion.”
Owensford’s voice. And he’s not using honorifics because there’s only one person out here he would say “sir” to. OK he thinks someone is listening. Someone with our scrambler codes . . . “Yes, sir,” Lysander said.
“Wait five right where you are.”
“Dammit, they’ll get away—”
“Strong suggestion.”
Lysander started to protest and thought better of it. “Roger.”
* * *
The tiltrotor landed on a level spot close by. A dozen men, led by Owensford in combat dress. “Like to talk to you for a minute, sir,” Owensford said.
Lysander let himself be led away from the others. “What’s all this, General?”
“Highness, do you know what the hell you’re doing?” Owensford demanded.
“I’m chasing down those scumbags—”
“No, sir, you’re making certain that the Senator’s grandson is killed, and probably endangering everyone around you,” Owensford said evenly. “You don’t think this was a coincidence, do you?”
“Eh?”
“Senator’s grandson gets kidnapped. Not killed, kidnapped, just before the Crown Prince visits the regiment assigned to security duty here. The Prince Royal’s Own regiment to be exact. May be coincidence, sir, but more likely leaks in the Palace.”
“To what end?’
“God knows,” Owensford said. “But they run to complicated plans. My guess is they hoped you’d be sucked into this operation.”
“Am I that easy to predict?”
“Senator’s grandson, kidnapped in your regiment’s sector, plain trail to follow.” Owensford shrugged.
“I see. So now what?”
“They plan a surprise for us, I think,” Owensford said. “Just maybe we have one for them.” He turned to the group who had come with him in the tiltrotor. “Miscowsky.”
“Sir.” Sergeant Taras Hamilton Miscowsky was a stocky man, dark, clearly of Eurasian descent.
“Got a reading?” Owensford asked.
“I think so, sir.” Miscowsky squatted and used his helmet to project a map onto the ground in front of him. “They’ll be here, in canyon country. They’ll have split up into smaller groups, but there’ll always be an obvious main body—”
“It’s been that way so far,” Lysander said.
“Yes, sir. Point being to get you to divvy up your force while they lead you by the nose.” The stocky sergeant grinned slightly.