Chapter Eighteen
Approaching BD+56 2966 Two (“Turkh’saar”)
Riordan turned toward the screen as the enlisted men filed off the bridge and Solsohn resumed his station. With any luck, the Cold Guard’s opinion-leaders would now have a greater appreciation for Solsohn as their immediate commander and would spread that impression, along with what to expect about equipment shortages and how that might affect operations. Which could be commencing any minute now, depending upon what the passive sensors are telling Melissa about the situation on the ground. “Mr. Tsaami, what are our landing options?”
“Spoiled for choice, sir. Got a lot of suitable clearings, decent cover in about half. I just need the Doc to tell me where we won’t run into the locals.”
Riordan nodded. “Doctor Sleeman, what’s looking good?”
Melissa Sleeman was frowning. “I wish I knew. There’s unusual activity down there.”
“Show me on the main screen.”
Sleeman complied; a topographical rendering popped up, with darker splotches indicating woods of some kind, and small lakes scattered liberally throughout the region. Yellow markers were crowded into two main clusters, one small and dense to the north, one large and diffuse to the southwest. The latter was configured as two parts: a thin, ragged bow wave moving generally northward in front of a curved blob of larger trailing icons. They were all angling in the direction of the tighter, smaller cluster to the north. “Are those vehicle or individual biosigns, Dr. Sleeman?”
“A mix, sir. The triangles are individual vehicles. The circles are groupings of individuals. The larger the circle, the larger the group. The specks are individuals at considerable distance from any others.”
“So what we’re looking at is a wide sweep of vehicles moving up from the southwest. Different kinds of vehicles, too. Judging from the variation in heat signatures and size, it looks like the leading vehicles are smaller, lighter.”
“That is correct, sir. And before you ask, I’ve tried to get a visual on LI. Nothing usable. Most of them are moving under the cover of light vegetation.”
“No surprise, Doctor. Any Hkh’Rkh near a radio has probably been warned about our planetfall and death-dance with their missiles.”
“Then, if they already know we’re here, would it do any harm to try to contact them, Commodore?”
“Doctor, our OpOrd is very clear. Even if we are detected making planetfall, we wait for communications to be initiated by Yaargraukh or some other Hkh’Rkh official.”
“But maybe, if we communicated with those nearby to reassure them that—”
“Dr. Sleeman, we have not been invited here. Yes, we’re trying to clean up an apparently human-made problem, but we don’t have the Patrijuridicate’s permission to do so, or even enter their space. In short, they are within their rights to declare our intrusion an act of war. But there’s also the chance that we might unwittingly establish contact with a renegade group of Hkh’Rkh: New Family outcasts, let’s say. That would open the door to accusations that we were willfully interfering with the sovereignty of the Hkh’Rkh Patrijuridicate and inciting rebellion against it.
“So, unless we receive permission from Yaargraukh or some other Hkh’Rkh official who has been given the authority to interact with us to help solve their ‘human problem,’ our sole job is to extract any humans are on Turkh’saar, along with their materiel. Quickly.”
Melissa Sleeman’s frown seemed to bend her entire face downward. Her precise Anglo-American accent broke for a moment, slid into a Temne and Indonesian sing-song rhythm. “This is a very shitty job.”
“No argument, Doctor. Now, if I am reading your results correctly, those faint biosigns out in front of the lead vehicles look like individuals on foot: advanced scouts or a skirmish line.”
“Maybe both,” Solsohn suggested.
“Could be,” Riordan agreed. “Doctor, I’m having a harder time making out the signatures to the north.”
“That’s because they’re more tightly clustered, Commodore. It’s very hard to separate them. I think some vehicles are there, too, but I suspect that the are not operating currently, so their heat signatures are residual. Probably not much above the biosigns that look like individuals dismounting and reentering them intermittently. And you should also see this:”
The image seemed to plummet away from them as a zoom-out expanded the ground scale by an order of magnitude. At the far eastern edge, there were a few spots that were brighter than the pinpricks of local wildlife which dusted the entire sensor map. Riordan leaned forward. “What do you see when you zoom in on that far east clump of signatures, Doctor?”
“Hard to say. They appear and disappear without warning. Here: take a look.”
The map recentered to the area in question, then zoomed in to the earlier, more intimate scale. Within the first five seconds of observation, one of the regularly spaced signatures moved slightly—and then vanished. “There. That’s what I mean.”
Riordan was pretty sure he knew what he had just seen. The stare exchanged by Solsohn and Tsaami confirmed it. “I believe we are looking at perimeter guards, moving in and out of underground positions of some sort.”
“You can be sure of it, sir,” Duncan muttered. “I’ve seen that kind of sensor return plenty of times during prisoner rescue or exfiltration ops. But I don’t think it’s a perimeter post. Not exactly.”
Riordan squinted, nodded. “You’re right. Those outposts are not protecting a central position. They’re just following a slightly bent frontage.”
Karam nodded. “Because they’re guarding a large underground facility located behind them.”
Duncan sounded impressed. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Lissen, Major, I’ve been the airborne wheel man for more than a few getaways in my time. Every time I saw that kind of deployment without any discernible rear security, our folks ran into a subterranean facility. Which usually meant more body bags.”
“Both observations duly noted.” Riordan kept his increased concern out of his voice. “However, we can’t be sure that any of that activity is military, or that any of it is ours. Or theirs.”
“In short, we don’t know squat.”
“Correct, Flight Officer.”
“Yeah, but we’ve still got to land someplace, and we are now descending through three two thousand meter mark. At two thousand, I’m going to be losing airspeed because I’ve got to starting edginge fans upward into vertical mode for landing. I’ll need an LZ site selection by one thousand if we don’t want to start zigzagging around a potentially hostile countriside.”
“Understood. Doctor Sleeman, can you get any better definition on the mass or temperature of the biosigns in our target area?”
“No, sir. The low power passive sensors are not capable of that resolution from this altitude. Besides, differences in clothing, thermoflage, and exertion levels could all compromise our ability to distinguish humans from other biosigns, if that was your intent.”
“It was. Any sign of roads?”
“Not here. We passed over what look like dirt roads well back to the west. All the vehicles below us must be designed for cross-country driving.”
“Buildings?”
Sleeman shook her head. “I’d have to ask Karam to go higher again to be sure, but certainly no substantial construction.”
“Unless you really want to call attention to us, sir,” Tsaami added, “I don’t recommend boosting back up.”
“Agreed. Besides, according to the self-reference they gave us at the Convocation two years ago, the Hkh’Rkh rarely construct buildings except in larger communities. They’re ground dwellers.”
Duncan looked up. “Really? I though it was the Arat Kur who were the diggers.”
“They are, and seriously so: they’re fully subterranean. The Hkh’Rkh are descended from open plains creatures, but prefer living in burrows.”
Karam tone was grim. “For a moment, I thought you said they live in barrows.”
Sohlsohn’s answer was equally sardonic. “Could work out that way for an attacker.”
Caine adusted his straps. “Enough gallows humor. Sensors are not showing us a clearly superior LZ. So we’ve got to go with our best guess.”
“Which is what, Skipper?” asked Tsaami.
“Which is that the two rough lines approaching from the south are laid out in the shape of raiding or search teams, closing in on the smaller, denser cluster to the north. I’m guessing that is more likely to be the humans, with the Hkh’Rkh trying to quietly close in on them—or just find them.”
“Or,” countered Sleeman, “the vehicles to the south are being used by the humans and they’re creeping up on a small Hkh’Rkh community to the north.”
“Entirely possible. But that northern cluster is in pretty tight formation. Even in urban areas, groups don’t clump up that tightly without more gradual diffusion at the edges. They’re ganged up like that for a reason, whatever it is.”
Karam, still watching his instruments and smaller bowcam monitor, nodded. “So what do we do, boss? Go to the one further to the north?”
“Yes, but not directly. You’re going to skirt all these blips by sweeping around here”—Riordan swept his own interactive stylus at the map: it drew a bright red line that stuck to the left side of the display until it reached the top and then angled sharply to the right—“so that we can come in behind the compact group by landing even further to the north. I don’t want to get in between any of the clusters. That would be a great way to scare or piss off everyone in the neighborhood.”
“And once we’re in that position?”
“Well, by then, our sensors should have given us better results we can act upon.”
Sleeman’s voice was quiet. “And what if we discover that what we’ve been watching is humans creeping up on a Hkh’Rkh town, about to attack them?”
“That doesn’t change anything, Doctor. We’re here to remove our people. But until we know what they’ve been doing here, the jury is out on how gently we do that. However, since we don’t know who’s who down there, our immediate objective is to prevent conflict, no matter who’s trying to bring it to whom.” He pulled his straps tighter. “Altitude, Mr. Tsaami?”
“Five-hundred fifty meters, sir. I’ve got your LZ locked in. Ready to go nap of the earth when you call for it. We can approach on low fans the last four kilometers, to keep us as quiet as possible.”
“Excellent. Mr. Solsohn, just in case, have our strikers report to the ventral bay.”
“Will do, sir. Anything else?”
“Yes, Duncan: you are on gunnery. And you are weapons free.”
“Weapons free, sir? We don’t even have a target, yet.”
“And hopefully, we never will.” Riordan jutted his chin at the screen. “On the other hand, judging from all those sensor returns, we might have hundreds of them. So until we know…weapons free, Mr. Solsohn. Mr. Tsaami, take us in.”