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Saturday, October 28, 2017

Tactics of Delay, Pt. 37. Louis Shalako.


Louis Shalako




The enemy were advancing up the road to Ryanville.
The Confederation troops were ambushing them, mining key bridges, and defending ridges, chosen almost at random. One or two of the higher hills had been ignored for example, and then the enemy had been taken from the flank down in the flatlands on the other side. It had cost them one of the Samsons, a couple of infantry vehicles, and the Confederation had sacrificed a Puma.
The crew of four people were now walking north-west, keeping a kilometre or so southwest of the road. Killing two birds with one stone, they would report observations or contact with the enemy. Foot patrols still had their uses, and they had to get out of there anyways. At the rate the Unfriendlies were going, they might even beat them to the next ambush point. If so, they stood a good chance of pickup.
The air raid had gone well enough, the drones dropping dumb little iron bombs (a grand total of sixteen bombs for crying out loud), from two hundred metres relative altitude onto the long string of trucks and small four-bys trailing at the back end of the armoured column. This was far from any other ambush point, coming out of nowhere as it were. They’d gotten a few hits and a lot of near-misses, almost as good when using shrapnel against unprotected trucks and other soft-skinned machines.
The impression, was that the enemy column was burning from end to end in the drone and other footage.
The enemy drone operators, not expecting exactly that scenario, had seemed powerless or unwilling to come down and interfere with such an operation. To be fair, it was all over within one and a half minutes of popping up over the horizon. Things might be different next time.
Having dumped its load, Drone One had climbed out to the northeast, coming around again and taking up station above and behind the enemy drones. Drone Two and Three had returned to base on a zigzag, nap-of-the-planet course, Three for refueling and dispersal, and Two for further bombing up.
Two would await further action.
The enemy drones appeared oblivious to the possibilities, but they clearly had their function and their orders.
“Drone One.”
“Drone One. Colonel Graham. State your message.”
She was unfamiliar with this one, but he clearly had some kind of training or experience.
“Proceed with the second part of the plan.”
“Roger that. Initiating.”
They watched onscreen as Drone One, a good three kilometres back, reduced throttle. The operator, Trooper Kuri Mackinnen, with a wife and two kids back in good old Helsinki, put the nose down and centred up on the first of the enemy drones. The highest one. The one with the gun. All of his jammers were going at full power in case of enemy missile launch.
“Firing, Colonel.”
There might have been a couple of hits.
This guy was good. Still a few hundred or more metres behind the enemy drone, he descended past it at a high rate of speed. Pulling up hard, he popped it right in the belly from what looked like less than a hundred metres. Stuff fell and spun away, and then it was burning and breaking up.
“…awesome.”
“Thank you Colonel Graham—and we can wax one bandit.” This little piggy would be going right into the bank.
It would be a big help in giving his kids an education.
The land went sideways in the view, and the craft was banking hard left, the nose camera attempting to get a good shot of the enemy drone as it spun into the ground and the trees.
It was gone, gone from the board and that was good.
Kill confirmed.
“Careful there—don’t pull the wings off.” That sure sounded like Noya, tapping in from the drone base and its own little control room.
“I’m fine. Shut up. Coming back around—” This one would take one hell of a bite out of the home mortgage. “Powering up a bit.”
She could almost read the thoughts sometimes. Pilots had a certain personality type. He knew there were people watching. Some of them would be right there at his elbow, getting a little on-the-job training for future drone operations.
With a bit of luck, he’d get that other drone and then the enemy would be mostly blind.

***

Movie night on the big screen had been canceled.
Everything that they had brought in, except for some bagged-up garbage, was on their backs.
Team Three was changing locations, in an operation designed to get them closer, to within visual distance of the enemy command centre. They’d had enough reports, but it was best to confirm it themselves before wasting the Mongoose missiles.
Breaking out of their hastily-erected cubicle, all steel studs and drywall and batts of insulation, was a work of a few minutes. They’d had light and heat and fresh air ducts in the ceiling.
The lights and fixtures had been there to begin with. It was easy enough to build, and easy enough to escape. A bit of fresh paint in the air was hardly remarkable in a commercial building.
Score the back of the drywall sheet with a utility knife, V-groove it out, stand back, and give it a push. Shove the blade right through, cut the far side’s paper, and shove again. An anonymous workman, complete with work order, would come in a few days later and tear it all out. The place would be back to normal. All according to the plan. No one would miss the place, with its completely blank walls, away from windows. Admittedly they’d had a washroom and about a half a ton of self-heating ready-to-eats. They’d spent the time off-watch reading, playing games, listening to their earbuds and sleeping as much as possible. The joke was that they all seemed to be gaining a bit of weight. Built in, seemingly a part of the central support structure including stairwell and elevator shafts, it was almost undetectable. No one, not even the most optimistic real estate agent herding the most marginal prospect, had been through that floor in days.
The thoughts of a civilian security guard walking their rounds through the upper part of the building were not pleasant, quiet as they were keeping. Having tapped into the internal closed-circuit system, plus the addition of a few hard-wired cameras of their own, they’d been keeping a close eye on them.
There was a desk in the lobby where the unarmed, private security guards (in their horrid burgundy and black uniforms and zip-sided ankle-length boots), could read, or watch TV and the front doors and back doors all at the same time.
The stairwells were clear.
No one talked, concentrating on the feet and walking silently.
The sharp squeak of rubber on concrete was enough to draw dirty looks from all concerned—
Dales held up a hand.
Okay, okay.
It was four a.m. and very dark, quite chilly when the trooper unbolted one of the anonymous metal doors on the alley. A power failure, coming at just the right time, ensured that the alarm didn’t sound. Slated for ten minutes or so, it would soon end though, and so they had to move quickly and to get to their next station.
There were only the six of them, flitting through the shadows. The Unfriendlies, suspicious enough by nature, would be wondering what the blackout portended. They had people at the local power plant and it would only be possible to stall for so long, to pretend, to obfuscate and to double-talk. The Unfriendlies had engineers of their own. Again, people were taking a huge risk for the Confederation and no one wanted to let them down—or get caught.
Whoever had pulled that particular switch was probably walking north even as the thought came to him.
Trooper Dales paused at the end of the alley. According to their information, sure enough, there were Unfriendly troops stationed at the intersection of two major streets half a block away. They had two vehicles and a half a dozen soldiers slouching around. Bored as hell, most likely. The city had been pretty quiet for the last week or so. They’d be asleep on their feet at this point in the shift. They’d be looking forward to relief, a good breakfast and then their beds.
Luckily, they were south and Team Three was going north.
This time of day, there were very few vehicles parked along the streets. At least they were on rougher concrete, a lot quieter under the soft-soled combat boots, and a hell of a lot better than having crunchy old gravel underfoot.
Two by two, weapons set on safety, keeping low and moving carefully, they crossed the street, made their way to the mouth of another alley and then filtered in.
From there, it was a bare five hundred metres, all quiet little side-streets and even quieter alleys.
As for accommodation, it had been provided for them.
All that would take would be a trip via the stairwells to the twenty-fourth floor, locate their particular unlet office space. They had a copy of the master-key. Once inside, it was the work of a minute, using an electric screwdriver. All it took was the removal of a couple of plastic trim strips, the demounting of one sheet of high-grade, vinyl wallpaper-clad drywall, and one very brave and enthusiastic civilian volunteer to seal it all up again once they were inside. All he needed was the screwdriver and a rubber mallet or the heel of his hand to pop back a couple of plastic trim-strips. This little cubicle had been erected in between a couple of vacant offices, from the outside just looking like a bit of blank hallway going along there. Right down to the baseboards. You could plug a vacuum cleaner into the receptacle, and it would work as the wiring was all live.
But then—they needed power too.

At that point, all they had to do was to plug in with the boards, and this time, they would at least have a window. There was food and water enough for a week or ten days already in there.
That man, an unarmed civilian security guard, probably making a fairly minimal wage, was expecting them. The alarm on his particular building had also been switched off.
As for whether they completely trusted him, he’d been positively identified. He had a house, one owned by his parents before him. He had a job, a vehicle, a wife and three kids. He’d been well paid, half in advance, and the rest of it they would find out soon enough.
They were looking for a rusty brown door, with the overhead light housing a burned-out bulb in case the blackout ended early. This was in an alley a further two blocks up the street.
Turning the last corner, in the dim light of early dawn, Trooper Dales saw a tall, slender figure standing in the alley, a few feet from the door in question. A red pin-prick of light flared. The guy was having a smoke, a pasteboard cup of vending-machine coffee, flaring green in the goggs with the heat, sitting on top of a crate and it looked like it was part of his regular routine. No smoking in the building, right?
Dales wondered how anyone could ever drink that shit—
One some instinct, the figure turned.
“Jim? Jim? Is that you?” There was some nervousness evident, but the man was there and the door was wide open.
He kept the small flashlight off.
Walking up, straightening to his full height, Dales spoke, not too softly, but in a relatively normal tone. The rifle was slung upside-down, in close alongside his left shoulder, relatively inconspicuously, he hoped. The other people were somewhere behind, covering him. Chances had to be taken. This guy was nervous as all hell, judging by the odd tremor in the right hand. Either that or he had Parkinson’s.
“Hey. How’s it going? Looks like another lovely day, eh, Mister Marcus?”
Practically hyperventilating, the guy’s head bobbed and he indicated the door.
“I—I’ll be up in a minute.” He must need that cigarette pretty bad—
A real bad coughing spell would draw attention, and Dales hoped the guy would keep it together for a few more minutes. Dales was pretty sure they hadn’t been followed, but if the gentlemen wanted to reassure himself, that was okay too.
It was understandable enough.
“Sure. We’ll be in the stairwell.” At the bottom, just around the corner, but he didn’t say it.
Dales gave the signal, keeping the weapon right where it was.
Dark forms flitted past as the team made their way in. It was blacker than Toby’s ass out there. Overcast, no stars or moons at all. His ears were straining, hand up to keep Marcus quiet.
There was nothing out there but a garbage truck on the next block and one very small but excited dog, barking somewhere not too far away to the west.
From there, there were two or three possible escape routes, including smashing out second or third-floor windows and getting out by adjacent rooftops, ignoring the more obvious street-level doors. The alleys between were only about two or three metres wide and as far as jumps went, a bit of adrenalin would be all it really took.
That and a sense of commitment.
“Okay. I will be off, sir. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
“Thank you—thank you, ah, ah, Jim.”
Mister Marcus was scared shitless, and Bales could hardly blame the man for that.

***

The tops of the tallest modern buildings were festooned with aerials and antennas of all types.
Team Three’s little unit, placed there days before and with a cable coming in through a hole drilled in the stone cladding just below the parapet, nicely caulked so as not to leak, was slaved to the satellite. In good working order, nothing bad had happened to it, (bird-shit down the antenna-tube, for example), and there were no signs of enemy troops ever having gone up on the roof.
With clear skies now over Deneb City, the signal was good. A strand of hair, glued with a bit of spit across the bottom of the roof-top access door-frame in a gag as old as time itself, was intact and appeared to have been undisturbed.
Not even the cleaners had been through what was, after all, unoccupied space. Such spaces, the top three floors in this case, were costing money and not generating any revenue—so why clean them. According to the security guard, the enemy hadn’t been in the building except for a six-man patrol that had come in through the front lobby, and then straight through, out the back doors in what might have been simple curiosity.
Nothing like that had been seen since, and also according to him, the locals hated the Unfriendlies. The other guards, on other shifts, all felt the same way.
Hate, such a useful thing.
Hopefully that was all true. This one was the only one with any information at all regarding Team Three. They had his name, they had his address. All of that was known to the Command Centre.
Betrayal seemed unlikely, but they were taking an awful chance—sooner or later, you always had to take a chance. After a series of thumps and snaps on the other side of their partition, Marcus had gone off to play his role down below. In the remote camera view, their outer wall looked pristine. Three minutes later, Marcus was at his desk, movements jerky, hands visibly shaking as he pretended to read a magazine.
Across the street on the west side, and one building north, was the Unfriendly headquarters.
The distance was about seventy-five metres to the nearest corner.
“Team Three.”
“Reporting.”
“Confirm target please.”
The trooper on the scope snorted and turned to his partner, the other four team-members off-watch and trying to sleep on what was a pretty thin commercial carpeting. It had some kind of underlay but it wasn’t very comfortable. They’d been sleeping on commercial-grade floors for days now…
It was only slightly better than bare cement.
“Put this shot up for the Command Centre.”
It was eight-thirty-two a.m. and a big black limousine stood at the curb in front of the building in question.
The driver was out of the vehicle and a lackey at the top of the steps was holding a door.
“If that ain’t good old McMurdo himself, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
They watched as he, and a more junior officer carrying a briefcase in each hand, went up the stairs.
“Roger that. Monitor the situation, please.”
“Give them five or ten minutes. Then fire.”
“Yes, sergeant.”
The time wound down…
That was it.
On their own little battle-board, a red icon began blinking. Mongoose One was live.
Two orange carets appeared, tracking nicely towards town. For some reason, his heart was pounding. This was about as real as it could get. There were dozens, possibly hundreds of Unfriendlies in that tower, and boy, were they going to be mad—mad as all hell. How in the hell Team Three was ever going to get out of there was another damned good question.
Pray those missiles track properly.
“You might want to get your head out of that fucking window for a moment.”
“Roger that, baby.”
He looked over to where one baleful eye gleamed from a sleeping bag in the corner.
“Heads up. We got incoming.”
“Argh. Shit. Now?”
The trooper nodded happily. This was their moment in the sun, the moment they had all been waiting for.
“Aw, fuck.” People struggled up, batting the next person on the shoulder to wake them too.
Backs to the front wall, knees up and helmets strapped on, with their hands protecting their ears, they sat there waiting for impact.
Trooper Dales, counting down silently in his head, scrunched his eyes closed real hard. Head down, between the knees.
This was going to be big—

(End of part thirty-seven.)


Previous Episodes.

Part One.
Part Two.
Part Three.
Part Four.
Part Five.
Part Six.
Part Seven.
Part Eight.
Part Nine.
Part Ten.
Part Eleven.
Part Twelve.
Part Thirteen.
Part Fourteen.
Part Fifteen.
Part Sixteen.
Part Seventeen.
Part Eighteen.
Part Nineteen.
Part Twenty.
Part Twenty-One.
Part Twenty-Two.
Part Twenty-Three.
Part Twenty-Four.
Part Twenty-Five
Part Twenty-Six.
Part Twenty-Seven.
Part Twenty-Eight
Part Twenty-Nine
Part Thirty.
Part Thirty-One.
Part Thirty-Two.
Part Thirty-Three.
Part Thirty-Four.
Part Thirty-Five.





Images.

Image One. Confederation Public Communications Office.
Image Two. CPCO.
Image Three. CPCO.
Image Five. Collection of Louis Shalako.
Image Six. Acme Aerospace.
Image Seven. The cover of the book.

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Thank you for reading.



Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Tactics of Delay, Pt. 36. Louis Shalako.


Louis Shalako




It was an interesting moment. For the first time in the campaign, Dona was calling McMurdo. He was up onscreen in a moment.
“Colonel Graham. Dona. What an unexpected pleasure.”
He was positively purring, his forces having finally taken the road junction, and with a small but powerful armoured column presently on the short road to Roussef, This while the main force refreshed and regrouped.
“Hello, General McMurdo. And how are you this fine day?” And she meant it, too.
As long as he stayed healthy, the Unfriendlies wouldn’t replace him.
The family had too much klout for that.
He sat there, wondering. Surely he knew she wasn’t about to surrender, in which case curiosity would be building.
She nodded and a trooper put up the image. This was one Private First Class Phillip Dionne Jackson, Unfriendly trooper and only recently ransomed from the native Denebi. According to a published family tree in their databank, he seemed genuine enough.
“I would just like to reassure the General that his grand-nephew is safe and that he is being treated very well.”
“Oh, dear. That—that’s—” With a swallow and a nod, the General acknowledged the gesture.
“Well, that’s wonderful, Colonel Graham. Really rather decent of you.”
She smiled, having just disgorged the canary or maybe it was the Cheshire cat she was thinking of.
“I would like to return him to you. Honestly, we don’t have the facilities for large numbers of prisoners. I am also deeply saddened by the number of recent Unfriendly casualties. I would like the General to know that we are taking every step to minimize such casualties as much as possible under the present circumstances.” She meant it too.
The sooner they wrapped this up, the more Unfriendlies that would be going home. They might live to fight another day. Maybe they would just live.
They might even be a little smarter after this.
She wasn’t being paid to hate people.
“Ah—ah. Er.”
“At exactly ten-hundred hours this morning, a red civilian pickup truck, a Roussef Volunteer Fire Department truck to be exact, will approach the junction of Highways 17 and 2, just east of Roussef. He’ll be coming from the north. Phillip will be alone, in fact he assures us that he can drive it. That saves me from risking one of my troopers, whom, as I’m sure you are aware, are already quite busy enough. We will avoid detonating any mines, or any other ordinance while Phillip is in transit. That’s a window of about fifteen or twenty minutes. I will be giving up my own personal transport, General, so I do hope you appreciate it.”
“Ah—Colonel Graham.”
“Yes?”
"Thank you. Thank you very much.” The gentleman’s chest heaved with some kind of strong emotion.
Maybe he had finally figured it out, whatever. Maybe he remembered Phillip, opening presents on Christmas morning in front of some big old fireplace, at the family manor, or dandling him on his knee. The baptismal font—
He might really love that kid.
He swallowed, eyes shifting, but he was a brave man and they inevitably came back.
“Ah. I was wondering. If there was something, ah, something reasonable, that I could possibly do for you, my dear, ah…in exchange?” The face was definitely darker now.
“Yes, Ralph. There is. I would suggest that my earlier suggestion was actually a pretty reasonable one. Civilian emergency vehicles, police, fire and ambulance…with all the lights going, sirens going, should be considered as neutral in this present conflict?”
His mouth opened and then closed.
He smiled, the first genuine reaction she’d seen.
A paper transaction, almost meaningless except that honour had been served.
Honour, must always be served.
Some kind of bargain had been struck. This was now a relationship.
He nodded, he shrugged. He sighed.
He smiled again, the face a little colder this time. Perhaps he really was beginning to get it—
“Of course, Colonel Graham. I agree. That seems reasonable enough. And I thank you—on behalf of his mother, his family, and naturally, on my own behalf. Ah, also, on behalf of my dear sweet mother, as well as my wives, daughters and sisters. Thank you for, for giving us back our Phillip.”
It almost looked like he was going to get emotional. That one had hit home. She clenched down hard on an impulse to ask about the concubines—did they like Phillip too?
The life of one man had just been saved.
The old boy must have been pretty worried about Phillip.
“There was just one point that I wanted to mention, General.”
“Oh, please, Dona. Call me Ralph.” This smile was completely artificial and not very good.
“Sure. Ralph. If your people had come in peace. If they had landed on the other side of Denebola-Seven. There is virtually nothing the people of Denebola-Seven could have done about it. Simply put, it would have been too costly.” There weren’t the forces or even the transport available. “Some sort of accommodation would have been a lot more likely.”
“Ah, Dona. But surely you understand that there is a war on.”
So. This was part of their greater strategy.
Thanks, Ralph.
Play dumb.
Play the embattled commander.
“Yeah, but there wasn’t—not until you people came along. The problem is, you would have had to start in the middle of nowhere and to build from scratch. It is just so much easier to take what doesn’t belong to you. It’s a question of tolerance, and you people simply haven’t learned to get along with others.”
Not yet, maybe someday—
Hopefully, sooner rather than later.
“In which case, Dona, our people would have been extremely vulnerable.”
Scrambling to recover—
That one had hit home pretty good as well.
“How could they be vulnerable if there wasn’t a war on? And we weren’t likely to start one, either, Ralph. You outnumber us ten to one, after all. No, whatever happens here, it’s all on your own head—you and your superiors.”
“Dona, Dona—”
She cut him off, being rather sick of that patronizing tone by this point.
You and your sick little videos.

***

The Unfriendlies, having lost more people, more weapons and more vehicles on the short stretch leading to Roussef, were undeterred.
Having reassured themselves that the Confederation forces were mostly withdrawn, the bulk of them had turned around and come back to the road junction, and yet one more day had passed.
Also, another eighty or so casualties—the Confederation defenses having been heavy and well thought-out.
Roussef was essentially neutralized by one strong roadblock, and everybody knew it. No matter what actually happened there.
There were rumblings in the night, as they rested and reorganized for what could only be a dawn start. They had reset their artillery positions so as to dominate the road to Ryanville for the next twenty or more kilometres. By this time they must have had twelve or fifteen hundred troops involved in the operation, the count tallied by observation after observation. Yet another column forming up in Deneb City, there were helos patrolling the hills north of the city, hoping to locate the Mongoose if it was indeed used—and she was definitely considering it but the last reloads were precious.
Dawn was breaking in the southeastern sky. There might even be a little sun today.
“All right. They’re moving. Alert all positions.”
Harvey began tapping away on his board and the other staff members were riveted to their tasks.
You could have heard a pin drop—if it hadn’t been for the carpeting.
The first rounds were already falling on both sides, as the Unfriendly barrage opened up ahead of them and the Confederation troops blew the first of the charges. The charges were wired not along the road and the ditch, but by trunks and busses up in the hills, parallel to the road. As usual, the charges had been buried, camouflaged and obscured as well as possible. Every booby had its own camera, sometimes more than one. They were now wired into their network, which would only be temporarily useful. From now on, every defense point would be hard-linked by fibre so that people could talk to each other. Buried in their holes and bunkers, with the weather worsening, the satellite laser-link wasn’t nearly so reliable and they had to have communication.
Upon withdrawal, this part of the network would be cut up into little bits and abandoned, using remotely-triggered explosives.
Downstream fibre cables had been cut. The Unfriendlies had tripped over that a few times by now. They must understand the significance of it, but hadn’t tried to use it for anything so far. They were jamming known Confederation radio frequencies, but with simple trailered generators providing the power, the area they could swamp was limited to a bare few kilometres in radius and that would be on level ground—in this hill country, it was even less a lot of the time. At close ranges, the com units carried by individual troopers were burning right through it, what with the short signals, heavily-compressed bursts of data at max power. As for the enemy drones, the very latest in battlefield jamming capability should have been a priority, but apparently no one had thought much about that. As for the enemy radio traffic, the Confederation was glad enough to have it. They were sucking it up and analyzing it. They were recording every bit of it for eventual decryption by bigger machines.
Machines that were much more capable than anything available on Debebola-Seven. The larger strategic picture being what it was. The data might be worth her whole command—if they could get it off-planet.
The fibre links saved them from yelling back and forth, foxhole to foxhole.
“Here comes the infantry.” With a good one-point-two kilometres between one peak and the next, anticipating ambush and stiffening resistance the closer they got to Ryanville, the enemy assault force appeared to consist of light scouting vehicles, sacrificial goats leading the van, then some Samson armoured cars, a string of armoured personnel carriers, and then came the Joshuas, which were back up on the trailers. “They’re scattered about pretty good. Trying to avoid obvious ambush or mine-points.”
There were two companies on foot, one on each side of the road…
Further infantry was aboard a long line of trucks and other assorted vehicles, including more armour, on the far side of the hill.
“Activate Mongoose Two. Hit that leading column, please.”
“Roger that, Colonel.” The trooper looked over. “We’ll fire them one at a time, Colonel.”
Good.
A single triangular icon appeared on the big board.
“Tracking.”
“Thank you.”
Artillery rounds were landing on the forward assault group, and once again, the scene was becoming obscured by smoke. With a low, overcast sky, the satellite was next to useless. The fact that an enemy satellite would also be similarly affected wasn’t a whole lot of comfort.
What if it’s a hell of a lot better than ours?
With their two columns united now, and mindful of Noya’s recent success with the drone aircraft, the Unfriendlies had two drones in the air today, one of them purely for reconnaissance and the other now armed with an underslung, pod-type machine-gun mount. Considering the size of the aircraft, this might be anything up to a cannon in the 17 to 23-mm class. This drone was shadowing the recon machine, anything from one and a half to two kilometres back, and staying about a thousand metres higher in altitude. It was clearly meant to protect the other machine’s tail, and hoping to get a crack at one of the Confederation drones which tended to stay as high as possible where the ground-based systems couldn’t get at them. This was simple enough—keep the enemy drone between your own and the enemy column. If they tried to take you out, they stood just as much chance of hitting their own machine.
The Unfriendlies had been doing some thinking and were clearly prepared to slug it out.
“Mongoose hit on the column, Colonel. Assessing results, but we probably got somebody.”
“Thank you. Release the drones, please.” They’d been on standby, engines ticking over on the ground.
It was time for an air raid, and with the road to Ryanville wired for sound, colour and action in a proper and continuous feedback loop, all three were armed to the teeth. Their cameras would be used for targeting this morning.
“Colonel!” Two pictures came up in the middle of her big battle-board.
One was a POV, a point-of-view shot, moving quickly through brush and trees and then up a short but steep incline.
The other view was a panoramic, now zooming in to reveal the blur of one of their big-dog animals as it raced up to the side of one of the truckloads of infantry at an indicated eighty kilometres per hour. With probably fifteen or twenty people in there not counting the driver and relief up front, the resulting explosion would have been devastating.
Again, all along the line, the column halted while the burning wreck was cleared. A few stretchers were carried away.
Dona sighed.
“Thank you. Good work.”
The room was very quiet.
Another fifteen minutes had been used up.

***

Dona was with Harvey and the girl, proud of their work and their accomplishment.
“Okay, Colonel. Here’s the visible-spectrum shot from our bird. And down here, in the left corner, is a little black dot.” They’d timed the call to the colonel perfectly, and the white cloud-tops made it so much easier to see. “We zoomed out, and panned around, rather than zooming in. Makes a big difference in close-up focus, and therefore the acuity.”
This was live, all in real-time.
That’s how they’d spotted it in the first place, against cloud cover lit by the morning sun, that and one fortuitous radar-glint reflecting off of it shortly before dawn broke. With stealthy design it was otherwise invisible to their other instruments.
“Hmn. Very nice.” That was one way of putting it—
So the bastards had one up there after all.
“Ah. What do you want us to do now, Colonel?”
Having enjoyed the present assignment, they would be understandably concerned about being separated—clearly liking each other’s company in their cozy little lab, off and away from everyone else.
“Okay. Harvey. We need an estimate of its size. The Unfriendlies have some systems that are known to intelligence, although this one might be something new. Let’s see if we can identify it, first of all. Second. I would like a proper position, as accurate as you can make it…”
Coordinates, altitude, mass, all down to the nth degree. Its velocity was only slightly less than their own. Small as such birds were, it couldn’t be that far off, or they’d never have seen it with the lens or the human eye—they had a couple of starting points for the math. Harvey was looking at her oddly, mouth open, but she’d had all of their training, plus plenty more where that came from. Captains knew a lot of stuff that private troopers didn’t and might never.
“Our own bird has good maneuvering capability, Colonel. It’s in a geosynchronous orbit, the energy state is over ninety percent since initial boost was from LEO.” The girl took a breath. “What I was thinking, is what if we can get closer and maybe get a better look.”
Burn off some fuel in retro, and consequently some speed. The Mark Seventeen would descend. That part was simple enough. Milo might drop out of the picture, but it was a backwater anyways.
Dona nodded.
“What’s interesting is that they’re not too far off of our own satellite’s position. We’re lucky that theirs is in a lower orbit, and that is for sure.” Was the enemy satellite heavier by some substantial margin?
Would that necessarily imply that it was older, less sophisticated? Or did it mean it was more modern, and better-equipped than the Confederation’s bird. Perhaps it had extensive maneuvering capability of its own. Its fuel state might be one hundred percent.
The Mark Seventeen Satellite, deployed by the Confederation years before as part of their security mandate for Denebola-Seven, was using technology that was thirty or forty years out of date. It was a second-hand unit, adequate enough at the time.
“At least now we have some questions to work with.” That was the thing with the girl, Flaherty—that mind struck on things that others seemed to miss.
She turned things around. She looked at things from the other end—which was why Dona was sort of interested in her future with the Organization.
The Mark Seventeen had some very good optics and the sensors were the best that could be provided at that time.
The Unfriendly satellite might be brand-new tech, and at least comparable to the best anyone from more developed sectors of the galaxy could put up. It might be indigenous tech, but it might just as well have been acquired somewhere else. All it took was money and the Unfriendlies had been on a bit of a spending spree lately.
“You guys have something to work on.”
“Ah, yes, ma’am.” Harvey put his head down and began searching the database for known Unfriendly military reconnaissance satellites…
The girl nodded, tongue-tied now perhaps, when confronted with the CO’s approval.
“Good. I will leave you with that. Good luck to you guys and carry on.”
She would tell them the part about shooting it down when they had a little more information.
The door closed behind her.

(End of part thirty-six.)

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Images.

Image One. Collection of Louis Shalako.
Image Two. Confederation Public Communications Office.
Image Three. CPCO.
Image Four. Denebola-Seven Defense Force.


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