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"Standing by, Lieutenant," the cool voice replied.
"Pilot, now."
Debbie Lefkowitz keyed her own screen into the IR sensor. It had fairly
sophisticated electronics, enough to throw a realistic 3-D map and
pre-separate anything not the natural temperature of rock or vegetation. Data
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was pouring into the craft from the sensors with the column and in the
firebases along the route, free of the suspect satellite link that lay between
the Dales and the Legion's analysis computers back in Fort Plataia.
"Major, you've got about . . . two thousand hostiles in your immediate
vicinity," she said, as the machines correlated the fragmentary input. "Grid
references follow." And relay this back to Swenson, now!
A machine beeped at her. She looked at it and her stomach clenched.
"Major, I've got multiple readings south of your position. South of my
position. Readings all around,"
she said. Calm, she told herself sternly. This was certainly more hands-on
than headquarters duty, but needs must. If the Royalist line of march was a
bent I, the troops they must be troops were two parallel lines flanking it on
either side, with another bar in the north closing the C. This safe rear zone
just became bandit country. The enemy below might not have stinger missiles
and detection gear, but they probably did. "Permission to conduct direct
scan."
"South " Owensford began, then snapped: "Denied. Get low and get out of there,
and do it now."
"Sir." Gravity sagged her into the seat as the pilot turned for home and
rammed the throttles to full.
"We're getting out of here soonest," she said on the cockpit link. "Might as
well take a look while we're leaving. Prepare for pop-up. Stand by for
sidescan."
The rotors screamed as the engine-pods at the ends of the wings tilted,
changing the propellors' angle of attack. The aircraft jerked upward as if
pulled by a rubber band stretching down from orbit
"Scanning . . . down!"
Another freight-elevator drop. "Major, troops, at least two thousand down here
heavy weapons probable category follows "
Alarms squealed. "Detection, detection, multiples, frequency-hoppers "
"Jesus Christ missile signatures multiple launch "
The pilot's voice overrode it, shouting to his copilot. "Flares and chaff,
flares and chaff! Those are
Skyhawks!"
The putputput of the decoys coughing out of the slots was lost in the scream
of the airframe as the pilot looped, twisted and dove almost in the same
instant. The cabin whirled around her. For a moment they were upside down and
flying in the opposite direction to their course two seconds ealier, and she
could see two livid streaks of fire pass through the space she had been
occupying. One struck trees and exploded in a globe of magenta fire as they
began to turn, but the other did not. "Shit, shit, shit, shit," the pilot
cursed.
The Lord our God, the Lord is One Lefkowitz found herself praying, for the
first time since girlhood.
Get the data stream out. Send everything we know. Nobody dies for nothing. Let
them know what we saw. Lights flashed as the computers dumped their data.
The tiltrotor was below the nape of the earth now, threading its way through
narrow passages between trees and rocks, flipping from one wingtip to the
other with insane daring as the pilot stretched the machine to its limits.
Inspired flying, and very nearly enough; the missile was barely within
effective
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...Falkenberg%203%20-%20Go%
20Tell%20the%20Spartans.txt (120 of 159)20-2-2006 23:17:52
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20d...lle%20-%20%
20Falkenberg%203%20-%20Go%20Tell%20the%20Spartans.txt radius when the
idiot-savant brain that guided it sensed its fuel was nearly exhausted and
detonated.
"Portside engine out, cutting fuel." The copilot's voice, metronome-steady.
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The aircraft lurched and turned sluggish, barely missed a hilltop.
"Starboard's losing power!" Both pilots' hands moved feverishly on the
controls. "Something nicked the turbine casing, she's going to split. Shut it
off, Mike, shut her down."
"I can't, we're too low "
The plane surged upward, painfully, clawing for enough altitude to pick its
landing-spot. The starboard engine's hum turned to a whining shriek that ended
in an intolerable squeal of tortured synthetic and an explosion that sent the
tiltrotor cartwheeling through the sky. Fragments of fiber-bound ceramic
turbine blade sleeted through the walls of the aircraft, and lights and
equipment shorted out in a flash of sparks and popping sounds and human
screams, of fear or pain it was impossible to say. Lefkowitz felt something
like a needle of cold fire rip down the length of one forearm.
They struck.
* * *
"The observation plane's down," Andy Lahr said. "Lefky bought us a lot of
data. Still sending when she augured in."
"Dead?"
"Dunno. Went in from low altitude. Maybe not."
"What can we send to rescue her?" Owensford demanded.
"Not one damn thing. That area's crawling with hostiles. Which we know about
only because of her, but they'll get to her long before we do."
"I see. Tell Mace. All right, let's see what she found out."
"It's a lot. One thing's certain, Major. The satellite data is thoroughly
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