Earthfall (31 page)

L
aw examined the
growing storm with some trepidation, watching as it billowed and grew on the horizon. While the SCEV had handled itself admirably—it even continued rolling along its course when Law had, very much against his will, fallen asleep in the pilot’s seat—the storm front was simply gigantic, stretching from horizon to horizon … and it was still over fifty miles away. Great flashes of lightning illuminated the pulsating formation’s innards, and a wall of wind—a gust front, he remembered from his earlier days—had already swept over the SCEV, sending clouds of dust flying across the vehicle’s viewports. To say the tempest was intimidating was a massive understatement.

Will this be the end?
he wondered.
Will this storm destroy the vehicle, or just give Andrews enough cover to return to this base of his?

Either way, I’m dead.

Law had not taken the time to stop at any of the caches on the way back to Harmony Base, so the SCEV was critically low on fuel. He had only a couple of hundred miles left, then the rig would be reduced to battery power. After that, he would have—according to the computer display in front of him—another thirty hours of power before the SCEV became inoperable. Given the rather toxic environment outside the vehicle, it was obvious he wouldn’t survive for long after that happened.

There had been no sign of his quarry. Had Andrews and his remaining crew taken another route? Had they been delayed somewhere in their travels, and he had passed them by in the darkness? Had he been wrong in assuming that his lightened rig would be able to catch up to Andrews’s heavier one? Had they deviated from their course to take on more fuel at one of the caches?

He just didn’t know.

But I’m close.
He regarded the moving map display. Harmony Base was only a hundred or so miles to the east, buried beneath the gently rolling landscape of dry earth and desiccated grass and the occasional twisted, rotting tree.
I’m close, so even if I get there ahead of them, I can simply wait for them.
He judged that he could extend his survival by several days if he shut down the rig and conserved fuel and power, laying in wait for his prey. The interferometers positioned along the rig’s exterior shell—basically a series of antennae designed to receive electromagnetic pulses along certain spectra—would alert him to SCEV Five’s approach, presuming Andrews was running with the ground-search radar enabled. And why wouldn’t he? There was no reason for him to disable it. Even if he was operating it at minimal power, as Law was doing, the SCEV’s receivers would detect the pulses of millimeter-wave radar energy long before Andrews and the others could get a solid return that showed his location. While in the Marine Corps a lifetime ago, when the planet was still green and fertile, Law had learned that radar energy was detectable far beyond the range of its own receiver, which was one reason that pilots and warships had practiced emissions control, limiting their use of technologies that could give away their location before they were ready to engage the enemy. Perhaps he could use that to his advantage—

A chime sounded over the cockpit speakers and, for a moment, Law was overcome by terror. Had Andrews found him? Was his vehicle being targeted by another rig, hidden somewhere out on the landscape?

He scanned the displays and saw he had been given a remarkable gift. SCEV Five’s transponder had been activated, and it emitted a string of data.

Including the rig’s position, just seventeen short miles ahead of him.

Law almost laughed out loud. The other vehicle was moving at less than forty miles per hour, which meant he would catch up to it in less than sixty minutes. He reached for the map display and zoomed out, examining the surrounding terrain. There was a small line of ridges that stood above the plain twenty-five miles ahead. If he could get to them in time, they would provide Law a clear view of the area, and he would be able to look down on SCEV Five as it rolled past.

Law dropped a waypoint onto the ridged area by dragging a finger across the map display’s touch screen, and the SCEV obediently altered its course.

Soon, Andrews. Soon.

***

As they closed to within fifty miles of Harmony Base, Andrews slipped on his radio headset, switched one of the radios over to the approach frequency, and pressed down on the TRANSMIT button on the control column. “Harmony Base, this is SCEV Five. Over.” He released the button and heard nothing but static-tinged emptiness crackling across his earphones. He tried again. “Harmony Base, this is SCEV Five. We’re inbound to you now. Can you give us a SITREP? Over.”

A faint voice came through the static interference, vague but distinct. “SCEV Five, Harmony Base. Stand by for Harmony Six. Over.”

“Roger that, Harmony. Over.” Andrews looked over at Mulligan. “Well, we get to talk to the Old Man himself.”

“The wonders of modern communications technology never cease to amaze me, sir,” Mulligan said. He donned his own headset and adjusted the boom microphone. “I hope he picks up soon. We’re going to lose commo once that storm hits.”

A low whine came across the radio as Benchley spoke, his voice barely audible above the background noise.

“SCEV Five, this is Harmony Six. SITREP. Over.”

“Harmony Six, this is SCEV Five. We have three supports. One soul and one rig lost. Number two differential is gone, but all other systems are green. ETA in just over one hour, but we’re on a storm run. Is there any way you can you boost your signal output? We can barely read you. Over.”

Lightning flared in the storm, and the radios were awash with static. Benchley responded, but Andrews couldn’t make out the words.

“Harmony Six, negative contact. Over.”

Again, Benchley’s voice came across the radio, horribly distorted and drowned out by the rising tide of white noise. Andrews repeated his situation report and again reported negative contact, hoping that those in Harmony Base might be able to hear it.

Mulligan stirred in the copilot’s seat. “We should still be able to establish voice contact at this range,” he said. “They must’ve burned through the auxiliary power faster than they thought.”

“Damn,” Andrews said. He had an ominous vision of a darkened Harmony Base, the air stale and filled with the stench of sweat and untreated waste, the personnel inside the subterranean fortress fighting to draw enough oxygen from the carbon dioxide-saturated air. Had more people died? Would even more die over the next hour?

Could they even send the vehicle lift to the surface to retrieve them?

“Transmit our status over the data link,” he told Mulligan. “Ask them to raise the lift, so we can at least make it that far.”

Mulligan’s fingers flew over the instrument panel as he executed the captain’s command. “Done.”

Andrews pressed the button that opened the pressure door separating the cockpit from the second compartment. “Leona, you still back there?”

She appeared at the doorway a moment later. “You want me to come forward?” she asked, glancing over at Mulligan.

“Negative—we’re close enough to Harmony that we’ll keep the staffing as it is right now. Get everyone else up and ready. We’ve got about a hundred klicks to go, and that storm is going to be on the doorstep by the time we get there. Let me know when everyone’s awake and strapped in. We’ve got to move a little faster.”

“Roger that.” She looked at Mulligan again. The big NCO ignored her, but there was some tension there. Andrews found himself wondering what was up between them.

Later,
he told himself as Leona withdrew. Andrews sealed the pressure door again and peered through the viewports. Dust was blowing across the dead fields, driven by the storm’s gust front. It wasn’t heavy enough to vastly reduce visibility, but that was coming. By the time they made it to Harmony, they’d be half-blind despite the radar, infrared, and the rig’s rather impressive array of floodlights.

“We’re good to go back here,” Leona said over the intercom a few minutes later. “Everyone’s strapped down. Open her up.”

“Cool. Thanks,” Andrews replied. He switched off the autopilot and pushed the control column forward. The SCEV accelerated, picking up speed until it was dashing across the landscape at almost fifty miles per hour. He had to slow when it rolled up to a series of ridges, but he stuck to the narrow defiles between them, using them as avenues to shield the rig from the mounting wind. It took only a few minutes, then they were back on the plain. Andrews pushed the control column forward again, coaxing the big rig into an all-out sprint across the more-or-less flat terrain. Even with the rig’s sturdy suspension, the ride was hardly a comfortable one.

A series of loud
bangs
cut through the air. Andrews swept his gaze across the instrument panel and reduced power, thinking the machine’s drivetrain was experiencing another failure. But the combined moving map and radar display froze up, and a single message flashed across the screen: SYSTEM INOP: HARDWARE FAILURE.

He was trying to process what had happened when he felt the control column move forward with such intensity that it was almost ripped from his grasp. Mulligan had slammed the copilot’s control column full forward, until it literally banged against the control stop.

“We’re taking fire!” he snapped.

***

It couldn’t be more perfect.

Law positioned the SCEV atop one of the ridges that overlooked the plain and eased it slightly downslope, where he hoped the miniguns would have a full field of fire. Just to be sure, he slewed them from side to side once he had set the SCEV’s brakes, then checked elevation and depression. Both weapons would be able to engage SCEV Five, which approached Law’s position from the southwest. Thanks to godsend of transponder technology, he was able to monitor his enemy’s progress across the wasteland without needing to resort to the millimeter-wave radar system to paint the target. That would only serve to alert Andrews and his crew, and Law was in no mood to sacrifice surprise just yet. While the SCEV carried several thousand rounds of tungsten-cored 7.62 millimeter bullets, he knew they would be mostly ineffective against the SCEV’s armored hide. In fact, they couldn’t even reliably defeat the rig’s tires, which were constructed out of a self-sealing honeycombed polymer. But the radome on top of the vehicle wasn’t armored at all, beyond a fiberglass shell that was transparent to radar. Beneath the shell lay the radar scanner itself. Law knew if he damaged that, he would also take out the vehicle’s anti-missile defenses, which the helpful electronic manuals he had read during his voyage informed him required a radar contact to act against. With both the radar and AMW system down, Law could target Andrews’s SCEV with a Hellfire missile. Since the weapon was designed to destroy even densely armored main battle tanks, SCEV Five would be easy prey.

All too easy.

There was no indication that Andrews and the rest of the crew aboard SCEV Five had seen him as he dashed past them, his vehicle a vague phantom in the storm-blown dust that swirled over the plain. He had come within five hundred meters from SCEV Five, and he had caught momentary glimpses of it through the roiling dust. It was moving much slower than his own vehicle. Was that because Andrews was being conservative in their approach, or was the vehicle damaged? Was there something about the local topology that necessitated a more deliberate speed? Law found nothing unusual in the vehicle’s electronic navigation system, and it had updated itself during the outbound voyage from Harmony Base. By the time he had reached the top of the highest ridge, he knew he had nothing to fear. The speed of SCEV Five was nothing of importance; he would simply have to wait in his ambush for several extra minutes until the target drew past.

There it was.

SCEV Five emerged onto the flat plain below, no more than eighty yards to the right of the ridge Law’s vehicle sat on. He had only seconds to act before the other rig’s radar detected his vehicle amidst the clutter of the ridgeline—the hard, metal shape of SCEV Four would be difficult to conceal in such an elevated position. But he had prepared himself for quick action, and the miniguns on the rig’s nose were capable of being aimed and fired optically, so he merely slewed the turreted weapons to the right, laid the electronically-generated crosshairs across SCEV Five’s form, allowed the computer to correct for windage, and fired. Two muted columns of flame erupted from the rig’s nose as the electrically driven miniguns unleashed their salvo of rounds, and SCEV Five was suddenly besieged by a hail of muted sparks as the bullets struck it at a quartering angle. Law fired the rounds across the top of the vehicle’s MEP, where the radome was located, and he was rewarded by the sight of fiberglass exploding into shards that whirled through the air, before the wind caught them and sent them fluttering off to the west. For an instant, he caught a glimpse of the radome’s interior parts, including the millimeter-wave scanner array. Then it too disintegrated as several rounds smashed through it, shattering sensitive electronics, before the SCEV began executing a series of clumsy evasive gyrations. More bullets pelted the vehicle, raking across its side and rear. Law ceased fire and tracked the target, then ripped off several more bursts as it accelerated away. The rounds struck the rear of the rig, but other than shearing off an antenna, denting some metal, and tearing away a coating of slick paint, they did nothing more than further mar the already dirty vehicle’s appearance. Law secured the miniguns and went for the missiles. He raised the pod and switched SCEV Four’s own radar array into targeting mode, his fingers dancing over the fire control system, then across the display he had dedicated for the purpose of engaging SCEV Five with the Hellfire missile system. The radar locked onto SCEV Five’s fleeing figure instantly, but he was surprised to discover he couldn’t fire on the vehicle—the firing button on the display was grayed out. He tried the physical button on the control yoke, but the results were the same: no missile would launch. He understood the problem quickly. The fire control computer had image recognition capability, and it had automatically refused to fire on an SCEV until Law cleared the warning message flashing on the touch screen display. He did so, and the firing button became active again. Law pressed the button and was rewarded with a chime indicating positive launch. A brief
hiss
sounded as the missile left the launch rails and arced toward SCEV Five.