Drifter's War Read online

  "Describe it again."

  File Leader Keem groaned internally. How many times would it take? By the holy fluid itself officers were a stupid lot. He forced himself to be patient.

  "Yes, sir. It started about dawn. Just after the sun came up. The prisoners seemed restless. Agitated like. And they moved away from our position."

  "As if they knew something was about to happen."

  Keem signaled assent with his tail, realized that Teex couldn't see it, and said, "Yes, sir."

  "All right," Teex said thoughtfully, "let's interrogate some of them. Lean on them a little… see what pops out. Find Half Sept Commander Heek. Tell him what we plan to do."

  Keem said, "Yes, sir." He started to salute, remembered that a sniper could be watching, and scratched himself instead.

  It seemed to take forever to get through the line. It started next to the supply dump where the Il Ronnians kept their food and snaked back into the middle of the field. Rola-4 had no watch, but estimated that she had been in line for more than two rals, which was way longer than usual. Food distribution normally took half a ral at most.

  The female in front of her moved forward a couple of steps and Rola-4 prepared to do likewise. She bent over, grabbed Neder-33 around his middle, and picked him up. He was dirty but relatively happy. Rola-4 took two paces forward and put her son down. He tugged at one of her sandals and giggled.

  When Rola-4 straightened up again it was to find herself in deep, deep trouble. The distribution point was just ahead. She saw Tusy-35 say something to the Il Ronnians, saw the shortest one of the group turn to look her way, and felt his eyes bore through her head.

  Seconds later the aliens were there, tearing the front of her dress open, ripping the pouch from around her neck.

  The shortest Il Ronnian wasted little time spilling the contents of the pouch into the palm of his hand. Rola-4 felt cold all over as she saw the name tag, the lock of Neder-32's hair, and the black disk. God's disk.

  The Il Ronnian allowed the name tag and earring to fall from his hand but held the disk up for the others to see. He glanced Rola-4's way and said something in a language she couldn't understand.

  Rola-4 managed to grab Neder-33 and hold him in her arms as they led her away. She looked around for signs of sympathy or help. All of the constructs looked at the ground, all except Tusy-35 that is, and she looked very pleased.

  16

  Lando swept the Il Ronnian field glasses across the compound. The binoculars felt awkward in human hands but did the job. It was night and the light-intensifying mode made things look green.

  First came the steel-mesh fence. It was about eight feet high, and came complete with razor wire along the top, enough voltage to cook an army for dinner, and just about every kind of sensor there was.

  Then came the fifty-foot free-fire zone. It was backed up by robotic weapons emplacements that couldn't be tricked, bribed, or put to sleep.

  And then, just to make sure that the triangle-shaped vehicle park really was secure, the Il Ronnians had constructed three guard towers. They mounted searchlights, automatic weapons, plus a battery of ground-to-air missiles.

  The place was damned near impenetrable. For bio bods anyway.

  Cy Borg bobbed up and down next to Lando's right shoulder. Light glinted off his metal body. It came from the floods that surrounded the Il Ronnian vehicle park. His voice was a hoarse whisper.

  "This is stupid, Pik… it'll never work."

  "Then get the hell out of here," Lando answered grimly. "I'll do it myself."

  "You'll never make it."

  "Then do it for me."

  Both dropped to the ground as an air car whined overhead. It was black on black against the sky. The beams from its landing lights made twin tunnels through the night. It dropped over the far side of the free-fire zone, taxied toward a distant set of fuel pumps, and coasted to a stop. A pair of insectoid robots moved out to greet it.

  Lando glanced at his wrist term. "That one was right on time. They arrive and depart at fifteen-minute intervals."

  Cy gave a mental sigh. They had been together, preparing for Lando's audience with "God," when the news had come in. There had been a firefight. Della was missing, killed outright or buried in a cave-in. The constructs weren't sure which. They were trying to organize a search party but it wouldn't be easy. Holding Area Two was crawling with troops.

  Lando had been like a mad man ever since. He had commandeered a light utility vehicle, crashed that into a ditch, and was preparing to steal an air car. Anything that would help him traverse the two hundred fifty miles that separated him from Della.

  Cy thought he could remember when a woman meant that much to him but wasn't sure. He looked around. The cyborg saw quite clearly thanks to his infrared vision. So this was it… the place where his mostly wasted life would come to an end.

  Cy felt an emptiness in his nonexistent gut. But the thought of losing Lando made him feel even worse. He had come to depend on Cap, Melissa, Della, and Lando. They were like family. They were rough sometimes, unreasonable more often than not, but caring too and that meant a lot.

  "All right, Pik, I'll do it."

  Lando slapped the cyborg on top of his housing. The cyborg bobbed up and down.

  "Thanks, Cy… I won't forget it."

  Unless we end up dead, Cy thought glumly. You'll forget everything then… including me.

  "The key," Lando continued, completely unaware of the cyborg's thoughts, "is to follow an air car in. We know they arrive at fifteen-minute intervals. So you wait, get into position, and follow one in. Stay close enough, and the sensors will see what they expect to see, a single image entering the compound."

  Cy looked at the greenish-white blob that represented Lando. He made it sound so simple, so easy. Never mind the sensors, the automatic weapons systems, or the sentries. Just "follow an air car in."

  Fear rose to fill his mind. He pushed it down again. The smuggler turned his attention to the compound. Time slowed to a crawl.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, Lando touched his housing. "Okay, Cy. An air car should come along in two minutes or so. It's time to get into position."

  Cy managed to resist the wave of fear that threatened to engulf him. He bobbed up and down, afraid to speak lest his voice reveal what he felt inside, and used squirts of compressed air to push himself upward. His antigrav unit made it easy. It gave him the same freedom to move up, down, or sideways enjoyed by divers who use belt weights to counter the natural buoyancy of their bodies.

  The antigrav unit was a small low-powered affair, so Cy was limited to an altitude of a hundred feet or so, but that would be quite adequate. The air cars had a tendency to skim the top of the security fence as they came in.

  Cy reached an altitude of seventeen feet and hovered in midair. He spun in place. His sensors fed him an kaleidoscopic mishmash of information. Bearings, vectors, blobs of heat, radio traffic, radar signals, radiation counts, and a host of other information all fought for his attention. The vehicle park rotated in and out of sight as he turned. One thought kept coming to mind. If he could see them, then they could see him. And there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

  Leep allowed the front legs of his chair to hit the raised computer floor with a loud thump. The other techs looked his way, then back at their screens. Leep frowned. Something weird had appeared on the low-altitude surface-scanning radar. The return made a small red blip on his otherwise empty screen. It was too small to be an air car, too large to be a bird, and too stationary to be an incoming missile.

  The blip did match the "drone/surveillance" design parameters programmed into the battle computer's memory banks however, and a recommendation appeared at the bottom of his screen: "82.4% match with type IDE-47 enemy drone. Destroy."

  Leep felt his mind race. The recommendation made sense if you were on a human world fighting humans, but he wasn't. He'd been dirtside for more than two months now and there had been no reports of drone
s in all of that time.

  So, what if the blip was something else instead? Like the unsecured antigrav platform that had drifted along the fence a few days earlier? Keeb had destroyed it and Beeq was furious. So furious that Keeb would be pulling extra duty well into the next century.

  What to do? Bump the problem up a level, that's what. Leep touched a button. Somewhere, down at the chow hall probably, Beeq's pager started to beep.

  Leep leaned back allowing the front two legs of his chair to come off the floor. The technician used his tail to hold himself in place. The blip was still there. He grinned. Let Beeq handle it. After all, that's what the silly old geezer got paid for.

  The air car should arrive any second now. Cy turned his back on the vehicle park itself and scanned the horizon. Nothing… nothing… there! A yellow-red pinpoint within the cool surround of nighttime air, blooming larger and larger, until it filled his electronic vision.

  Cy spun around and pushed himself toward the security fence. He had to build momentum, had to match the speed of the air car, or be left behind. The cyborg tensed as the security fence rushed to meet him.

  Suddenly the air car was there, no more than twenty feet away, using its reverse thrusters to slow down. A wall of air hit the cyborg and threatened to push him out of position.

  Cy gave it everything he had, fighting his way through the air car's wake, giving thanks as he slipped in behind it.

  Then, what had been hard became suddenly easy. The suction created by the air car's passage pulled Cy along behind it.

  The security fence slipped by followed by the free-fire zone and the automated weapons positions. He'd made it! Not only that, he was still alive!

  Leep felt Beeq's arrival long before he actually saw it. The noncom was a good fifty pounds overweight, and that, plus his rather heavy tread, shook the com shack's flimsy floor like a miniature earthquake. Thus warned, Leep sat up straight in his chair, and did his best to look alert. The other techs did likewise.

  The console gave a soft beep. Leep frowned as another red blip appeared. He glanced at the digital readout located in the upper right-hand corner of his screen. 20:44 hours. The air car was right on time.

  Leep waited as the battle computer queried the air car, got the right recognition codes, and flashed the words "cleared for landing" on the bottom of his screen.

  Beeq was like a mountain hanging over Leep's head. The noncom smelled of malp. It would never occur to Beeq to bring him a cup. "So, what is the problem this time?"

  Leep looked down at the screen and opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out. The air car had landed and the smaller blip had disappeared. The noncom would never believe him. The technician could imagine Beeq's sarcasm. It would go on for days. Comments about the blip that wasn't there, jokes about his eyesight, and laughter behind his back. He was well and truly screwed. Leep swallowed hard.

  "Sorry to bother you, File Leader Beeq… but I feel ill. A virus perhaps. Could you send someone to relieve me?"

  Beeq took a look at Leep's face, saw that the trooper looked peaked, and signaled agreement with his tail. "I will roust your relief. Do the best you can until he arrives."

  The floor shook as Beeq stumped away.

  Leep let out a long slow breath. It had worked. His relief would be pissed but that was better than a run-in with Beeq. He pushed the chair back onto its rear legs. The screen was blank. Where had the blip disappeared to anyway?

  Cy hovered behind a stack of plastic cargo containers. He could hardly believe it. Everything had gone according to plan. So far anyway.

  The cyborg scanned his surroundings. He saw bloblike troopers move here and there, a latticework of fuzzy green lines, and background filled with radiated heat. An engine growled nearby. Nothing out of the ordinary. Good.

  Cy preferred to remain airborne but knew that to do so would increase the chance of detection. He rolled along the ground instead. It was bumpy and littered with obstacles, but relatively safe. The cyborg was way below eye level, and as long as he moved with care, he stood a good chance of avoiding detection.

  Lando looked at his watch. Ten minutes had passed. It felt like twenty. Where was Cy anyway? Was he okay? A wave of guilt washed over him. The little cyborg had been afraid. Lando had known that and ignored it. He had pushed, goaded, and bullied Cy into risking his life. Dammit. How could he have been so selfish?

  Lando swept the glasses over the Il Ronnian compound and said the same words over and over like a prayer: "Come on, Cy, you can make it. Come on Cy, you can make it."

  Cy paused in the shadow cast by a storage tank, looked to be sure that the way was clear, and rolled across the road. A wooden walkway had been built along the other side. The compound was dry at the moment but turned into a sea of mud whenever it rained. Cy pushed himself under the boardwalk and turned toward the left.

  Light came down through the cracks and laddered out in front of him. The cyborg picked up speed, winding in and around the cast-off meal paks, wood scraps, and other less identifiable debris that lay scattered beneath the walkway.

  Then light flooded the area up ahead and the entire structure shook as a pair of Il Ronnians opened a door and stepped out onto the boardwalk.

  Cy froze. The Sand Sept troopers moved in his direction. Their words were automatically translated by a program that Cy had set up in his auxiliary memory banks. He listened as their shadows swept over him.

  "Did Leep say what was wrong?"

  "No, some kind of bug probably. He looks like death warmed over."

  "He always looks like death warmed over."

  Their laughter sounded like gravel passing through a meat grinder. Cy was glad when a door slammed and cut it off.

  The cyborg rolled forward again, bore right as the walkway disappeared, and headed toward the triangular landing pad. There were all sorts of vehicles parked around it. They gleamed under the lights.

  Light flooded the area in front of him. It was so bright that each little pebble stood out from all the rest and threw a shadow on the ground.

  The cyborg paused, knowing that he would have to make his way across the highway of light, but dreading the risks involved.

  Lando swore through gritted teeth. He could imagine Della wounded, waiting for him to come, dying by inches. What if she were already dead? What about all the things that he'd meant to say but never gotten around to?

  "Come on, Cy! Quit screwing around in there!"

  Lando regretted the words the moment he thought them.

  Anger turned to guilt and the cycle started all over again.

  "Come on, Cy, you can make it. Come on, Cy, you can make it."

  Cy heard a loud humming noise and spun toward the left. The power loader floated inches off the ground and beeped softly as it went. The cyborg looked for an Il Ronnian and saw none. A robot! Good.

  The opportunity was too good to miss. Cy rolled forward, maneuvered himself into the loader's shadow, and followed along behind. Now, if he could make it to the other side… And there it was. Just what he needed. A finger-shaped shadow that pointed across the road.

  The cyborg waited for the shadow to touch him, turned into it, and rolled toward the com mast that made it. He was in among the vehicles a few moments later.

  Now, which one to steal? Helicopters were out; he didn't know how to fly them, and didn't have the required legs. That left the air cars.

  Cy rolled in and around a forest of landing gear, rising occasionally to peek in a cockpit, searching for just the right one.

  Then he found it. An air car at the very end of the line. The aircraft was shaped like a delta, could seat up to four passengers, and was heavily armed. Cy rose, dropped into the open cockpit, and scanned the control panel. Small hatches whirred open as he deployed both of his articulated arms. His pincers darted here and there, touching, feeling, testing. Computers booted themselves up, fans started to hum, and indicator lights came on.

  Cy had never been in an Il Ronnian air car before, but h
e was an engineer, and knew that form tends to follow function.

  Especially where military artifacts are concerned. With that in mind it was relatively easy to identify the ignition switch, the inertial navigation system, the weapons indicators, the com gear, and all the rest.

  Cy was just about to start the vehicle when another air car swept in over the fence. Landing lights swayed across the compound and grew smaller as the aircraft touched down.

  The cyborg had just turned his attention back to the control panel, and was about to flip the ignition switch into the on position, when something thumped against the fuselage. The top rungs of a metal ladder appeared right next to him. He should have known! The last car in line would be the next to depart!

  Cy flipped the ignition switch to the on position and felt both the antigrav unit and the propulsion system come to life.

  "What the…?"

  The words were Il Ronnian but Cy understood them well enough. A visored face appeared over the edge of the cockpit. A long uniformed arm reached out to grab him.

  Cy pulled back on the steering column, felt the air car surge upward, and banked to the left.

  The Il Ronnian screamed as he fell away.

  What Cy did next was pure impulse, though he later claimed to have planned it.

  Steering the air car into a tight turn, Cy activated all the weapons systems and opened fire. Cannon shells churned metal, plastic, and dirt into a terrible stew. Helicopters lurched sideways as their landing skids collapsed, air cars burst into flames as fuel lines were cut, and Sand Sept troopers ran in every direction.

  Cy was filled with a terrible exultation. He was kicking ass and taking names! The cyborg uttered a well-amplified war cry and headed straight toward a tower.

  Lando stood and yelled at the top of his lungs. "Cy, you idiot! Over here! You goddamn bucket of bolts! What the hell are you doing?"

  But the words were lost in the sound of cannon fire, explosions, and the whoop! whoop! whoop! of an Il Ronnian perimeter alarm.