The Stone Dogs (34 page)

Right, now keep the feed modulated within ten percent of those parameters, and she won't blow when Ah open the casin'."

Another figure, a middle-aged Indian in uniform, with his arms secured behind his back. A bayoneted rifle rested between his shoulderblades, jabbed lightly.

"Yes, indeed," he babbled in singsong English. "That is the way of it."

Too bad.
The black-uniformed Tech Sec specialist pulled the visor of her helmet down and took up a miniature cutting torch.

Cracking the core unit,
Marya thought grimly. The embedded instruction sets of a central computer and the crucial hard-memory were physically confined in its core, even on civilian models. This was a maximum-security military Phoebos, and it would be set to slag down unless you were very careful.

Careful is the word,
Marya thought. This mission was important enough to make her expendable… but there was no point in being reckless. Her lips moved back from her teeth behind the mask. What was it Uncle Nate used to say? "A good soldier has to be ready to die. A suicidal one just leaves you with another damned empty slot to train someone for."

If I push the launcher over the edge at arm's length
, she thought,
and then drop the satchel charge
right away, the
ceiling should shelter me from most of the blast.
That would certainly take care of the mission, now that the Draka had conveniently opened up the armored protection around the core.

Then I
can go back up the shaft, and try and make it out.

Soundlessly, she whispered: "And maybe the horse
will
learn to sing."

Millimeter by millimeter, she inched backward until only the end of the launcher tube was over the lip of the vertical shaft.

Her other hand brought the explosive charge up, plastique and metal and soft padded overcase. It scraped gently against the tube wall in the narrow space between hip and panel, and the sound seemed roaringly loud. No louder than the beat of blood in her ears.
Stupid, stupid
, a voice called at the back of her mind.

You volunteered, you're too stupid to live, you could be home
now
.

"Fuck it," she said, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

"Mistis—" the Janissary decurion began, as the canopy of Yulande's fighter slid back and she rose from the opening clamshell restraints. The cool air of the Indian night poured in lit by a swollen moon and the lingering fires. Then eye-drying warmth as the inflow crackled across the fuselage of her aircraft.

The Draka picked up her ground-kit, machine-pistol, and helmet. There were a half-dozen figures in infantry armor, with a flat cart of some sort.

Then the serf soldier's voice altered. "Mistis Yolande!" He saluted and flipped up the faceplate of his helmet.

Yolande stared for a moment; it was an unremarkable face, heavy beak nose and olive complexion… then memory awoke.

"Ali?" she said. "Rahksan's Ali?"

His grin showed white as she stepped up onto the rim of the cockpit and jumped down, careful to avoid the savage residual heat of the leading edges.

"The same, Mistis. Swears it like home leave to see yo'."

"Freya bless, small world," she continued, and gave him a light punch on one shoulder. Her gloved fist rang on the lobster-tail plates of his armguard. The legion blazon on it showed a hyena's skull biting down on a human thighbone; that was the
Devil Dogs
, one of the better subject-race units. "An' yo'

comin' up in it, Ali. I tells yo' ma, first thing."

His fist rang on the breastplate as saluted again, then noticed his squad glancing at each other. Myfwany's Falcon lifted its canopy.

"Ah, Mistis, we got field-shelters set up over to there." He pointed, and she saw prefabricated revetments on an uncratered stretch of runway. Two big winged tilt-rotor transports, as well; one began reving for takeoff as she looked. "We's gotta get y'

plane towed ovah there. Yo' support team's comin' through, later tonight. We's got perimeter guard."

"Myfwany, yo' remembers Ali, from Claestum?" The redhead came up, with a bounce in her stride, despite the sweat that plastered the curls to her forehead. "Coincidence, hey?" The squad was hooking the cart's towing hitch to the nose of her aircraft. "Carry on, decurion; nice to know mah bird's in good hands."

"Eurrch," Yolande said. "C'mon, love, why don't we turn in?"

Most of the squadron was there, but it would be a day or two before they had anything to do but stay out of the way. In the meantime, they had been assigned quarters. The original occupants certainly had no need of them…

The prisoners were being held in a messhall; sorted in groups by rank and age, in squares marked off by colored rope. The guards were Security Directorate, Intervention Squad specialists, but there were a fair number of Draka making inspection; Citizen officers of the Janissary legion, pilots from their outfit, others. She looked at the captives with mild distaste; they had been stripped of their uniforms as a precautionary measure, and secured with the old-style restraints, chain and rod links that bound elbows and wrists together behind the back. Indians, mostly. Base techs, the sort of work that was done by unarmed Auxiliaries in the Domination's armed forces. A few had the glazed look of shock, or docilizing drugs; most were openly terrified, even
crying.

"Yo' can turn in iff'n you wants to, 'Landa," Myfwany said. She was smiling, and there was a glitter to her eyes; Yolande swallowed past a hollow feeling.
I love you dearly, but there are
times when you make me
angry enough to spit, sweetheart
, she thought resignedly.

"Oh, all right," Yolande said. "Let's take a look."

They walked down the edge of one of the green-rope enclosures. Green for lowest-priority, younger specimens. She supposed they would be sold off, after the fighting, or sent to work camps, something of that sort. Her nose wrinkled; they stank of fear, and from the pungency, some had pissed themselves. Across the room there was a high scream. Yolande looked up and saw the Security troopers dragging an older prisoner out of the red-corded pen for interrogation. A paunchy type in his fifties, already babbling.
Glad they're not doin it in
public,
she thought idly.
Headhunters, eurgh
. Necessary work, she supposed, but disgusting.

"This one looks interestin'," Myfwany was saying. "On yo' feet, wench."

Yolande looked back. The prisoner had risen easily despite the restraints. In her late twenties, she estimated; much lighter-skinned than most of the others. Good figure, very nice muscle tone for a serf; cropped black hair, expressionless dark eyes… The neck was number-bare, that looked unnatural.
Sixty
aurics basic,
Yolande thought.
Depending on where she's sold,
of course.

"Who're you?" Myfwany asked the serf. Silence, and then the Draka struck.
Crack
. The open-handed blow rocked the prisoner's head back; Yolande was surprised she kept her feet.

Sighing, she glanced aside.
Myfwany gets too rough with them,
sometimes,
she thought unhappily. Of course, this one was feral and had to be taught submission, but still…

"Marya Lenson."
Crack
. A backhanded blow this time.

"That's Marya Lenson, Mistis, serf." The Security guard glanced up, came over idly twirling the rubber truncheon by the thong around his wrist.

"Mistis." The serfs voice stayed toneless-flat.

"Indian?" Myfwany put a finger under the serfs chin, turned her head sideways. "Europoid, I'd swear."

"My parents were from California, Mistis."

Myfwany turned to Yolande. "A Yank! What say we sign this'n out and play with it, 'Landa?" she said.

Yolande sighed. "Oh, come on, sweet," she said exasperatedly.

I hope we're not going to have a fight,
like we did when you
wanted Lele.
It had taken two days of not speaking to each other before Myfwany realized she was serious about letting the servant say no. "Where's the fun in that?"

"We can use aphrodizine," Myfwany said impatiently.

"Eurg." Not that the aphrodisiac didn't work, but… "Look, sweet, yo' just got after-fight jitters. Yo' don't really want to—"

Myfwany released the serf and spun to confront her friend.

"Look yo'self," she hissed. "I'm not yo' keeper, Ingolfsson, and yo'

not mine. Yo've got somethin' better to do, go do it." The green eyes turned heavy-lidded. "Tim or someone be glad to help me out."

Yolande felt shock close her throat. This was fear, not the hot sensation of life-danger up in the clouds, but dread coiling at the pit of her stomach. She forced a smile.

"Oh, don't get so heavy bout' it, love!" A glance aside at the serf.
Myfwany'll probably get tired fairly
soon.
"Iff'n' yo's set on it, certainly."
Not as if there was anything actually wrong with
it, after all.
You
have to compromise on differing tastes.
"Let's…

let's take a walk an' check on the birds, first, hey? Get some fresh air."

"Sure, 'Landa-sweet," Myfwany said. She smiled and took the other Draka's hand. Yolande felt the knot in her stomach melt.

Or most of it
, she thought.
Oh, well.
"I've got a rotten temper.

Don't know why yo' puts up with me, sometimes."

She called the guard over, palmed the identifier clipped to his belt. "Send this one ovah to our quarters, would yo'?"

Frederick Lefarge felt the sweat trickle down from the rim of his helmet, itching under the armor and camouflage smock. He glanced at his watch; 2000 hours. The pickup squad was in a stand of tall pale-barked trees not far from what had been the perimeter wire of Chandragupta Base. A dozen of them, with nothing but their fieldcraft and two boxes of very sophisticated electronics to keep them out of the tightening Draka net. Two were wounded, and he didn't think Smythe was going to make it, he'd been far too close to a radiation bomb yesterday, when the rest of them had been sheltered in the cellar. Vomiting blood was not a good sign, at least.

"Sor." Winters, the Englishman. Professional NCO in the Cumberland Borderers before transfer to the OSS special forces.

Very reliable. "Sor, it's past time."

She isn't going to make it
, he thought.
Either she's dead or
she should be
. He fought down the hot flash of rage, let it mingle with fear until it became something cold and leaden in his gut.

Something that would not interfere with the job at hand… He remembered a moment in Santa Fe, and the pistol in Marya's hand unwavering upon him.
We always knew the price,
he thought.
Go with God, ma soeur.

And her mission accomplished—the explosion in the base HQ

proved that—but nothing beyond. He raised the visor of his helmet and bent to the eyepiece of the spyglass. There were pickups all over the operational area, where his men had left their optical-thread connectors. The fires were mostly out now.

Those had been from the initial blitz, suborb missiles with precision-guided conventional explosives. Dibblers for the runways, earth-piercers for the hardened weapons points, then a rolling surf of antipersonnel submunitions. The assault-troops had come on the heels of those—1st Airborne Legion, Citizen Force elite troops, but they had moved out once the area was secured, now there was a brigade of Janissaries doing clear-and-hold. And support personnel, Intelligence, transports, two squadrons of low-altitude VTOL gunboats, another of Falcons.

And now they think it's secured,
he thought grimly.
Time to
disabuse them
.

"Hit it, Jock," he said.

* * *

They and the Janissaries were standing outside a dugout. The explosion was a kilometer away, across the base. A flash, and the muffled
whump
a second later, a ball of orange flame rising into the soft Indian night. The troopers went into an instinctive crouch, and Ali cursed, rolling back into the sandbagged slit and reaching for the groundline com.

"Suh?" he said. "Post Six, second tetrarchy—shit, it out!"

Another explosion, and another; a rippling line in an arc along the perimeter opposite them. Yolande and Myfwany exchanged a glance and pulled on their ground-helmets, slipping down the visors and turning the night to a pale imitation of day.

Each had a tiny dot of strobing red light at the lower left-hand corner; jamming. Then a
real
explosion; the two Draka threw themselves flat at the harsh white glare. Even reflected around the edges of their visors it was enough to dazzle, and the shockwave lifted them up and slammed them down again hard enough to stun and bruise on the unyielding pavement.

Yolande heard one of the Janissaries shouting. "Nuke? Dec, was that a nuke?" Her eyes darted down to the readout on the sleeve of her flight suit. No radiation above the nervous-making background already there, and a spear of blue-white flame was already rising from behind the broken hangars. Secondary explosions bellowed, like echoes of that world-numbing blast.

"No, it ain't," Ali was saying. "That the fuel store."

Liquid hydrogen and methane
, Yolande realized. High-energy fuels for high-performance craft, difficult to transport. One of the reasons the attack plan had made this base a priority target in the first place. And—

"The birds!" she shouted to Myfwany. Fatigue and worry vanished in the rush of adrenaline, at the thought of the turboram fighters caught helpless on the ground. The Falcons were two thousand meters distant, behind the parked assault-transports.

Myfwany nodded. "Ali, yo' tasked with that?"

The burly Janissary was climbing back out of the revetment.

He hesitated for a moment; he was, but having two Citizens along out of the regular chain of command was
not
a good idea…

The two Draka women saw him shrug and nod, accepting what could not be changed.