VIII: A DEVILISHLY FOUL FELLOW

They were named Sanchez, Ndulu, Rosen, and Nasser and they all looked like they liked bending barbells with their bare hands as warm-up exercises.

Sanchez and Ndulu were female, but you could hardly tell that until you were pretty close, and in the case of the strike team seemed irrelevant anyway. These were not in any way the kind of folks Captain Murphy thought of as normal.

He met them only briefly, as Chung and her tech team set up in an aerovan they had rented and then definitely violated the lease renovating. He would remain with them, and watch and hear the action secondhand. Chung would coordinate wearing the same sort of virtual command helmet she'd used to fly the shuttle; it would augment her senses and abilities sufficiently to effectively monitor all of the automated backups for the team at once, and to effectively watch the combat personnel's back. Darch would insure that all of those things, including Chung's apparatus, were deployed and working properly and he would manually back her up; Broz would oversee the equipment they'd assembled in the van as well as the shuttle's own protective systems just in case they were spotted, even though they would be several kilometers away and in the middle of nowhere when it all went down.

Murphy was surprised they didn't use robotic soldiers for all this, maybe controlling them like Chung ran the show, but then, he thought, these people were the closest thing to combat robots that he knew and probably both biologically designed and cybernetically augmented for just the jobs they had. He felt helpless, though, just sitting there in the van watching and listening as others determined everything, even though he had no desire to be one of these people.

Maslovic had hoped to put this sort of thing off until he had the full navy task force at his disposal, with any personnel, supplies, gimmicks, and whatnot backing him up, but he felt now as if events were overtaking them. The fact that Macouri hadn't destroyed the Order's headquarters when he'd left pretty well said that he expected to return to it, but the manner of his leaving and the totality of the lockup said that he had no plans to return soon.

That left the question of where the rest of the members of the Order were, for there were surely quite a number of them, and also what the hell three pregnant girls from a rural backwater world had to do with all this.

It was his call and he'd made it. They were going in.

The objectives were basic. Incapacitate and capture for interrogation anyone who might be likely to yield information on this business. Seize as much in the way of records and other intelligence as might be available. And, if possible, get those damned jewels, any and all of them, but insure that they were not in the position of being used by wearers against the team. It was that last that worried them all, but at least now they knew the power of the things and they respected it. The order was clear: anyone, and that included the girls, who tried to use the power of those things against the team or any of its members or in aid of anyone in the Saint Phineas group would be simply eliminated. They could not afford to take a chance.

Each of the team members wore a combat suit made for them and for no other person. The suits were almost like living exoskeletons, usable only by their matched wearer and, in fact, were grown in tanks and wedded to individuals through a kind of symbiotic connection that only those who oversaw the process knew.

They had several means of propulsion, but in cases like Barnum's World, where there was a very strong magnetic field, they were able to literally float above the forest floor and, using magnetic pulses, propel themselves with no more than a low whining sound just about anywhere their wearers wanted to go.

The suits were also thin and plastic, like a thick second skin, and they covered the whole marine save for the face itself. Cybernetic implants throughout the body allowed not only for full control of the suit's range of functions but also allowed for near silent communication between team members as well as between themselves and the tech coordinator, in this case Chung.

They followed the basic rules of those who created and deployed these teams, a cardinal one of which was to never do anything in the daytime if you could avoid it. The marines' eyes, from a biodesigner and included in their very DNA, allowed them an amazing visual acuity in dark areas, taking in light at such an efficient rate that they were often nicknamed for big cats. In this case they were Tiger One through Tiger Five, with One being Maslovic himself. With augmentation from the suit electronics, they could if need be also see in spectrums ranging from the infrared to the ultraviolet.

The ferrets had done a nice preliminary recon of Macouri's lodge and camp, but they could only go so far here. Unlike the house, which had to contend with everything from city power and broadcasts to air conditioning and such, defenses out here could concentrate on the abnormal, which would be anything of any significant size and mobility approaching the compound. Even the ferrets would have been noticed, as they would have shown up as small but potentially threatening animals yet without biological signs. They simply weren't designed to fend off the kind of probing rays that fed any signs of danger, natural or human generated, to the security people there.

The ferrets could, however, tell the military team what kind of probes and guards were there, and the away team could compensate pretty well for them. They would probably be noticed when they breached the perimeter, but they'd be pretty damned hard to find once they did.

The same went for the team. Once they found a way in, they could make themselves next to invisible to people and virtually all known electronic monitors. That was how they'd surprised the captain back in the alley. The suits could so attune themselves to backgrounds that they were virtually invisible, and because they also masked body heat and emissions if the faceplate was in, they simply didn't show up as life-forms.

Several kilometers away, completely suited up, Maslovic floated near the compound and observed it through all the filters he had available.

The place itself was as luxurious as he and the others might expect. Built out of a combination of synthetics and real jungle hardwood, it was almost half the size of the big house in town, although far more rustic and exotic looking. It was also round and anchored in the swampy soil on sturdy stilts of the best building support materials, probably anchored to bedrock far down in the earth. The panoramic windows looked out on a jungle lake so unspoiled that it might have been out of some ancient naturalist's book, and light was not only artificial and direct inside but also outside, again for atmosphere, given by external blazing torches on long poles. These also marked and illuminated well-manicured trails down to places like the boat dock, supply sheds, stables, and whatever else was there.

There was a strong electronic fence around the main compound as well, but it was basically designed to keep things out that might wander in with feet or tentacles or whatever on the ground. This was an area where ancient animals of Old Earth had been released after being brought back from extinction, so there were hippos and crocodiles and a lot more about that might well wander into camp. Those the fence would discourage.

More imposing was the aerial protection. Using the full capabilities of their viewers, the marines could see a vast spiderweb of crisscrossing lines covering the place like a dome, all in the spectrums invisible to the human eye.

"We're not gonna squeeze in there without being noticed," Sanchez commented, merely voicing what the others already thought.