We Few

"You're impressed," Rosenberg said. "I can tell that."

"Yeah, I'm impressed," Catrone replied. "I didn't know it was going to be him, just that something was fishy. And I wasn't impressed when I met him. But... he's got that MacClintock thing you know? He didn't before—"

"Not hardly," Marinau muttered grumpily.

"—but he sure as hell does now," Catrone finished.

"Does he want the Throne?" Joceline Raoux asked. She was a former sergeant major of the Raiders, the elite insertion commandos who skirmished with the Saint Greenpeace Corps along the borders.

"We didn't get into that, Jo," Catrone admitted. "I put them off. I wasn't going to give him an okay without a consult. But he was more focused on getting the Empress safe. That might have been a negotiating ploy—he's got to know where our interests and loyalties lie—but that's what we talked about. Obviously, though, if we secure the Throne, he's the Heir."

"And from our reports, he'll be Emperor almost immediately," Rosenberg pointed out gloomily.

"Maybe," Catrone said. "I'm not going to believe it until I've seen Alexandra. She's strong—I can't believe she won't get over it."

"I want her safe," Toutain said suddenly, his voice hard. "And I want that bastard Adoula's head for what he did to John and the kids. The damned kids..." His face worked, and he shook his head fiercely. "I want that bastard dead. I want to do him with a knife. Slow."

"No more than I want New Madrid," Catrone pointed out. "I am going to take that bastard, if it's the last thing I do. But Roger can give us more than just revenge—he can give us the Empire back. And that's important."

Rosenberg looked around at the group of senior NCOs, taking a mental headcount, based upon body language. It didn't take long.

"Catrone, Marinau, and... Raoux," he said. "Arrange to meet. Tell him we'll back him if he's got a real plan. And find out what it is."

"It won't include what we know," Catrone said. "It won't even include the Miranda Protocols."

"How do we meet him?" Marinau asked.

"Slipping our tethers will be harder than finding him." Catrone shrugged. "I know I'm being monitored. But finding him won't be hard; there's only a couple of places he can be."

"Meet him, again. Get a reading on him," Rosenberg said. "If you're all in agreement, we'll initiate the Miranda Protocols and gather the clans."

"Honal," Roger smiled tightly, controlling his gorge through sheer force of will, "the idea is to survive flying in a light-flyer."

The sleek, razor-edged aircar, a Mainly Fantom, was the only sports model large enough to squeeze a Mardukan into. It was also the fastest, and reportedly the most maneuverable, light-flyer on the market.

At the moment, Honal was proving that both those claims were justified, weaving in and out of the Western Range at dangerously high speeds. He had his lower, less dexterous, hands on the controls, and his upper arms crossed nonchalantly. There were some tricky air currents, and Roger closed his eyes as one of them caught the flyer and brought it down towards an upthrust chunk of rock. The flyer banked, putting the passenger side down, and Roger opened his eyes a crack to see the rocks of the mountainside flashing by less than a meter from the tip of the aircar's wing.

The car suddenly flipped back in the other direction, banking again, and stood up on its tail. Roger crunched his stomach, feeling himself begi

"I love this thing!" the Mardukan shouted, rolling the car over on its back. "Look at what it can do!"

"Honal," Roger shook his head to clear it, "if I die, this plan goes to shit. Could we land, please?"

"Oh, sure. But you wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing, right?"

"You have successfully demonstrated that you can fly an aircar," Roger said carefully. "Most successfully. Thank you. The question of whether or not you can fly a stingship still remains; they're not the same."

"We've been working with the simulators." Honal shrugged all four shoulders. "They're faster than this, but a bit less maneuverable. We can fly stingships, Roger."

"Targeting is—"

"The targeting system is mostly automatic." Honal banked around another mountain, this time slower and further away from the rocks, and landed the car beside the more plebeian vehicle Roger had flown out to the site. "It's a matter of choosing the targets. Human pilots use mainly their toots, with the manual controls primarily for backup, but obviously, we can't do that. On the other hand—you should pardon the expression—humans only have one set of hands. We're training to fly with the lower hands... and control the targeting with the upper. I've 'fought' on the net with a few humans, including some military stingship pilots. They're good, I give you that. But one-on-one, I can take any one of them, and a couple of the rest of the team are nearly as good. Where they kick our ass is in group tactics. We're just getting a feel for those; it's not the same thing as riding a civan against the Boman. Go in against them wing-to-wing, and we just get shot out of the sky. The good news is that the squadron at the Palace isn't trained in group tactics, either. But they've got some pretty serious ground-based air defenses, and taking those out is another thing we're not great at, yet."

"Anything to do about it?" Roger asked.

"I've been reading up on everything I can get translated on stingship doctrine. But we've got a lot of studying to do, and I'm not sure what's relevant and what's not. We're not as far along as I'd hoped. Sorry."

"Keep working on it," Roger said. "That's all we can do for now."

"They're using Greenbriar," Raoux said. The sergeant major no longer looked like herself. Like the Saint commandos, Raiders often had to modify their looks, and she'd gotten a crash retraining in old skills since the coup. "He's on his way there at the moment."

"Why Greenbriar?" Marinau asked. "It's just about the smallest of the dispersal facilities."

"Probably the only one Kosutic knew about," Catrone said. "Pahner would've known more, but—" He shrugged. "We'll shift the base to Cheye

"You ready?" Raoux asked.

"Let's get our mission faces on."

"All right," Roger said, looking at the hologram of the Palace. "Plasma ca

"Won't take them out with a one-shot," Kosutic said. "But they can only be activated by remote command from the security bunker."

"Autoca

"Ditto," Kosutic replied. "Both of them are heavy enough to take out armor, which we can't get into the area in the first assault anyway, because the sensors all over the City would start screaming, and the Palace would go on lock-down."

"Air defenses," Roger said.

"The minute stingers get near the Capital," Kosutic said, "air defenses all over the place go live. Civilian traffic's grounded, and the air becomes a free-fire zone. Police have IFF; we might be able to emulate that to spoof some of the defenses. It's going to be ugly, though. And that ignores the fact that we don't have stingships. We might have to mount weaponry on those aircars Honal is using for training."

"Wouldn't that be lovely." Roger grimaced and shook his head. "A formation of Mainly Fantoms going in over the parade..."

"We make the assault in the middle of the parade, and we're going to cause enormous secondary casualties," Despreaux pointed out unhappily.

"It's still the best chance we have of getting close to the Palace," Roger replied.