WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(98)
The APC came fast over the trees, heading east toward the first island. The downdraft drove the flare's falling particles into the lagoon as a hundred scattered steam vents. The hiss of quenching sparks was lost in the roar of the fans.
The big vehicle banked left. The plasma cannon in its cupola raked the original Cinnabar camp with a hell of stripped ions.
Steam and fire blew from the jungle. The vegetation was wet, but even stone burned when bathed in radiance as hot as a sun's corona.
A mushroom of soot and vapor erupted from the target area. Daniel heard the chatter of submachine guns as well, a sign of ruthlessness and bad fire discipline. Personal weapons had nothing useful to add to the plasma cannon's swath of destruction.
"Those bastards," Hogg said as he stropped his knife on his palm. "Kill us all while we slept, they would."
He spat, and smiled, and looked much more his old self.
The APC went into a reverse bank and swept back. The cannon fired again, its dense saffron beam ripping apart the pillar of smoke from the first pass. A glowing rock flew out of the impact area, dimming as it tumbled. It landed in the lagoon and exploded from thermal shock.
Daniel was white with cold rage. This was war: if it claimed Barnes and Dasi, well, that was a hazard they understood when they took their oaths. This Alliance commander wasn't alone in his willingness to shoot sleeping enemies without giving them a chance to surrender.
And it wouldn't change anything about what happened next; nothing except that Daniel Leary would take more pleasure in viewing the Alliance casualties he very much expected to see.
Apparently satisfied with what it had achieved on the neighboring island, the APC idled toward what it believed was the Kostroman camp. The muzzle of the plasma cannon pointed toward them as a white-hot oval, cooling slowly.
Daniel stood and raised his hands to shoulder height. A part of his mind was already composing the letters he'd write to the families of Barnes and Dasi, if that were required and if God preserved him to carry out that duty.
Adele watched the armored vehicle come toward her at a slow pace, thunderously loud and bigger than she'd expected even though she'd seen APCs before. She supposed it was because of the circumstances in which she was watching this one that it seemed to loom so large.
The APC was closed up; its driver and gunner used electronic imaging to view their surroundings. Daniel said that vehicles of this sort had sensor suites that could tell if a gnat farted.
The saving grace of the situation was that this jungle had many, many gnats. As in Adele's own proper job, the difficulty was to sort vast quantities of data for the single item you needed. No ordinary weapon was going to pass the electronic frisking, though.
The APC hesitated in the air, then dropped to the surface of the lagoon. Spray erupted in a screen that would have been rainbowed if there'd been any lights to refract within it. The vehicle resumed its leisurely progress, waddling up the inlet toward the camp. It didn't even show the minimal running lights Adele had seen on APCs in Kostroma City during the coup.
The sailors were all standing. They looked nervous, the attitude the commandoes would expect as well as the way Adele supposed they really felt. She didn't want to stand, but at last she got up awkwardly from the bucket so as not to look out of place.
Daniel spoke; sailors moved forward slightly. Adele, though not concealed, was now in the background.
She wasn't afraid. She was too detached to be afraid. She understood precisely what was required of her; if circumstances permitted, she would execute her task. There was very little uncertainty except about the outcome.
The APC's bluff bow slid out of the water, bulldozing a wedge of root-bound mud ahead of it. Spray doused the campfire and drove the sailors back, cursing and covering their eyes.
Adele turned away. She could scarcely be wetter than she was already, but the deliberate insult set her face coldly. Scorn a Mundy of Chatsworth, would they?
She turned again, smiling internally at her own reaction. She'd have laughed, but that would have been out of keeping with her pose as a small-time crook and smuggler. Instead she let her face muscles relax into a neutral expression. She'd never cringed, so she was afraid of an unsatisfactory result if she tried to fake it now.
The APC swung broadside to the eleven Cinnabars. Its stern shoved aside undergrowth and nestled there. The cupola rotated so that the plasma cannon stayed trained on the presumed Kostromans. Five submachine guns projected from miniature gunports in the armored side.
Realistically, the weapons weren't much danger because those threatened were close enough to the vehicle to duck under the cannon and flatten themselves against the APC's flank between the gunports. The muzzles would have a psychological effect, though, especially on the stupid thugs the commandoes thought they were facing.