CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"NPA control, this is Falcon. Inbound. ETA the source of Sierra-One-One's last signal three minutes. Have you any more information for us?"

Captain Nikos Papadapolous glanced back over his shoulder while he waited for a response. Despite the cramped confines of the pinnace, Sergeant Major Jenkins and Lieutenant Kilgore had most of Third Platoon's three squads into their battle armor already. Other Marines, bulky in unpowered body armor, were paired off with each battle-armored trooper, running check lists on external monitors, and a background chatter of crisp commands and metallic equipment sounds filled the big troop compartment.

Surgeon Commander Suchon sat just behind the captain, hunched forward in her seat. Her dark face was sickly pale, and she clutched her emergency medical kit to her armored breastplate with clawlike hands.

"Falcon, NPA Control," a voice said suddenly, and Papadapolous turned back to his own panel. "Negative information."

"NPA Control, Falcon copies. No additional information. We'll keep you advised."

"Thank you, Falcon. And good hunting. NPA Control clear."

"Falcon clear," Papadapolous responded, and turned his attention to the map display at his elbow. They couldn't know precisely where Sierra-One-One had gone down, but they had a pretty fair idea. Unfortunately, the terrain looked uninviting, to say the least. Someone paused beside him, and he looked up to see Ensign Tremaine.

"Our scanner people are picking up a couple of energy sources down there, Sir," the ensign said. "We've already relayed the data to NPA Control."

His face was taut, but he leaned forward almost diffidently to press buttons on Papadapolous's map display. Two light dots appeared on it, separated by just over five kilometers. Both were faint, but one flickered much more weakly than the other. The captain studied them for a moment, brow furrowed, then tapped the flickering one.

"That's Sierra-One-One," he said positively.

"How can you be certain, Sir?"

"Look at the terrain, Mr. Tremaine. This one—" Papadapolous tapped the display again "—isn't just weaker, it's in the middle of a valley that offers the only flat ground within klicks, but this one—" he tapped the other dot "—is right on top of a hill. Or under it," he added in a thoughtful tone.

"Under it?"

"It's only a trace source, Mr. Tremaine, and solid ground makes a pretty good shield against sensors. Burying it would make sense, but if that's what they did, they didn't do a very good job. We see it, and something brought Sierra-One-One down where the Stilties could get at her. They may have picked up this other source and come in for a closer look."

"I see." Tremaine stared at the suspect light, young face hard as he remembered another raid on a power source in the Outback. He rubbed his chin, then looked back at the Marine. "You think it was a decoy? That they sucked the NPA in on purpose?"

"It's possible," Papadapolous agreed, "but I'm inclined to think it was just sloppiness. I can't see any reason they'd want to start their `insurrection' way out here in the boonies. Can you?"

"No, Sir. But with your permission, I'll detail one of the pinnaces to keep an eye on that source. That'll still leave two of us to support your people, but if someone down there did attract the NPA's attention on purpose and tries to bug out, we'll nail him."

"I think that's an excellent idea, Mr. Tremaine," Papadapolous said. "In fact—"

"Falcon, this is NPA-Two." Barney Isvarian's voice drew the captain's attention back to his com link.

"NPA-Two, this is Falcon. Go ahead." He said crisply.

"Nikos, we're still fifteen minutes out, but I'm looking at the Navy's sensor data. I think the source to the west has to be our people. Do you concur?"

"Affirmative, Major."

"What are your intentions?"

"I'll be dropping my first squad of scouts in—" Papadapolous glanced at his chronometer and checked it against the status board on Third Platoon's first squad "—ninety-five seconds. They'll secure the area around the suspected crash site and check for survivors as their first objective. The remainder of my people will be going in twenty klicks south-south-east along Ridge One-Three-Five. We've got a nice, long valley running north-south to that point, and it's got steep sides. We'll try to form a stopper to hold the enemy in it, then turn it into our killing ground."

"Understood. I've got two companies with me. I'll drop one of them with your main force, then use the counter-grav to swing the other north. Maybe we can come in behind them and pin them between us if they try to run." There was a pause, and Papadapolous braced himself for the question he knew was coming. It came very softly. "Is there any sign Lieutenant Malcolm's people are still alive down there, Nikos?"

"Negative, Major." Papadapolous's voice was flat, and Isvarian sighed over the com.

"Do your best, Nikos," he said.

"We will, Sir." A harsh buzzer snarled, and a bright light flashed over the pinnace's troop hatch. "We're dropping the first squad now, Major. We'll keep you advised. Falcon clear."

Sergeant Tadeuz O'Brian stepped through the yawning hatch into a thousand meters of air as the pinnace flashed on past him. He plummeted downward, the rest of his squad close behind him, and popped his grav canopy. It wasn't a regular counter-grav unit—there wasn't room for that. Instead, it generated a negative-gee force at the far end of its attachment harness, and he grunted involuntarily as an enraged mule kicked with vicious power. But O'Brian was used to that. He didn't even blink. Instead, he hit his armor thrusters and turned in midair, the movement almost instinctive after endless hours of armor drill, to align his sensors and built-in electronic binoculars on the smashed NPA skimmer. Even a scout suit's systems weren't good enough to get a reading through the shattered hull, but the sergeant's face tightened as the bodies sprawled all about it registered.

There must have been three or four hundred dead Stilties strewn across the mossy ground, most of them mangled and torn by the heavy pulser darts of the skimmer's dorsal guns. They weren't alone, and O'Brian controlled an urge to retch as he saw the first human body. It looked as if at least one of the NPA troopers had tried to make a run for it and been caught in the open; his weapons lay near the grisly ruin which had once been a man. O'Brian prayed that he'd already been dead when the Stilties reached him, but the knives driven through his limbs to pin his eviscerated body to the moss suggested that he hadn't been.

His armor's exoskeleton took the shock as the sergeant grounded and checked his display. It looked good—like a textbook drop. The squad's beacons glowed in precise alignment, encircling the skimmer, and he brought his own pulse rifle into ready position.

"Sharon, you're on perimeter security. I'll take Bill's people to check the skimmer."

"Aye, Sarge," Corporal Sharon Hillyard's voice said in his earphone. Hillyard was tough as nails, young but with seven years' service already behind her, yet he heard her relief. "Stimson, Hadley," she called her section's two plasma gunners, "take that ridge to the north and set up to cover us. Ellen, I want you and—"

O'Brian tuned her out and waved to his other corporal, and the five members of the squad's second section fell in on his flanks as he advanced on the wreck.

It was bad. In fact, it was even worse than O'Brian had feared. The skimmer's gunner had been dragged out of her smashed turret, and it was hard to tell that shattered, flayed body had been a woman's. Hell, it was hard to tell she'd even been human, and he swallowed his gorge as he made his way across the blood-soaked ground. It was going to take the forensic people to identify the bodies, he thought. After they gathered up all the pieces.