Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [122]
While she and her tiny team of forward observers were still in operation, the slow eastward crawl could continue.
Achebe Rim was still another twenty klicks ahead of the tanks.
That was where the defenders would have their last chance to keep out the rebels. Once they were inside the Gorge, Vincenzi expected fierce but small-scale resistance.
They’d been caught in strafing fire in the Noctis Labyrinthus, the defenders’ first response to the drop. The tank had stopped for repairs, a wheel almost torn loose in a clumsy DropShip landing.
The driver had caught a ricochet from the tank itself, its polycarbide armour throwing away a projectile in a lethal spray.
The mortars, set up in the first drop, had knocked three of the four aircraft down. There hadn’t been another strafing run.
Vincenzi took the driver’s position when they climbed back inside the tank. He liked to see where he was going.
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There was a ferocious exchange of fire whizzing overhead, as the ISN’s Command Centre lobbed smart missiles at the mortars and the Rim mortars lobbed smart missiles at anything that got in the way of the tanks. Funny thing, thought Vincenzi – who won depended not on how smart the commanders or the troops were, but on how smart the bombs were.
Muller’s crew were on foot, moving at a steady twelve klicks an hour, reporting back everything they saw. The defenders were a small force, but hand-picked. They kept popping up out of nowhere, in three-person trike tanks or even on foot. Muller and the other forward observers would paint them with lasers for half a second, and then run like hell, calling in their positions. Laser-reflective armour on the trike tanks and shootsuits only made targeting easier.
‘Plus twenty, Woodchuck. Fire for effect.’
A handful of observers on foot would be virtually invisible to whatever sensors the defenders had left, blips that flickered on and off their screens, mimetic armour hopelessly confusing pattern recognition algorithms. Like ghosts, thought Vincenzi.
The C and C was really configured for big, clumsy attacks by big, clumsy aliens in orbit.
The tanks had only engaged the enemy once, a very short, very furious battle as they left the Noctis Labyrinthus. Fast-moving trike tanks, just big enough for a couple of lasers and a one-shot missile. They were no match for the real tanks.
Vincenzi figured they weren’t getting enough information from their orbital lenses, probably because the battle upstairs had knocked out half of them. So they wanted a look for themselves.
Now they knew what they were in for when the rebels hit Achebe Rim.
They’d probably been surprised to see that the attackers were human.
They’d be getting ready to close up the Command Centre, a plasticrete building nine-tenths buried under the plain in Achebe Gorge, just one conical storey showing above the ground. The solar system’s hardest hardened target. You could drop a nuke or even a small asteroid on it without cracking it.
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Personally, Vincenzi would have preferred to drop a big asteroid on it, but there was the civilian population to consider.
Inside the centre, they’d be watching their screens. Astonished?
Horrified? Unsurprised? They couldn’t expect any help from the 31st Corp HQ, who had their hands full with a commando raid on Olympus Mons which had started a distracting half-hour before the first drop. Or from the 202nd Orbital Artillery Brigade, who were bust defending Phobos.
‘I’m real glad I don’t work for these guys right now,’ said Vincenzi, out loud. His gunner snickered.
Mimas
Chris felt someone brushing their fingers across his forehead, like spider’s feet dancing on his brain.
He decided there was no point in pretending to be asleep.
Well-spotted, said a voice in his head.
‘Ow,’ said Chris. ‘Don’t do that.’
He opened his eyes. Iaomnet was looking down at him.
No, she wasn’t. Iaomnet was long gone.
He jerked back, surprised to find he wasn’t restrained, the blank look in her eyes making his stomach turn. He knew what it reminded him of. A crocodile