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"Anything yet?" he asked his tac officer.
"Not yet. Of course, if they're lying doggo, they're going to be a pretty small target."
"I know. But Ringstorff says the remote platforms tracked them back to the planet, so they have to be around here somewhere."
"Maybe so, but if I were a pi
"Yeah? Where would you hide?"
"The planet's got two moons," the tac officer pointed out. "Well, one and a fraction. Me, I'd probably look for a nice crater somewhere and hide in a ring wall's shadow. Either that, or find myself a nice deep valley down on the planet, somewhere. Damned sure I wouldn't hang around in space!"
"Makes sense to me," Lamar acknowledged after moment. "But we have to start somewhere, so let's get on with it. If they're not in orbit, Ringstorff is just going to make us look somewhere else until we find them, after all."
"What a pain in the ass," the tac officer muttered, unaware that he was paralleling Lamar's own opinion of Ringstorff. Lamar smiled at the thought, and returned to his own console.
Fifteen minutes passed. Predator slowed, killing the last of her motion relative to Refuge as she slid into a high orbit, and her active sensors began a systematic search for any other artificial object in orbit around the planet.
It didn't take them long to find one.
"There she goes," PO Hoskins said softly, staring down at the palm-sized display of the portable com. The unit's transmit key was locked out to prevent any accidental transmission which might give away their position, but the signal from the orbiting pi
Not that it was much of a signal. Just a single, omnidirectional burst transmission which would give away nothing about its intended recipients' location even if it was picked up. But it was enough to let them know what was happening.
High overhead, the pi
Its impellers kicked to life, and the small craft slammed instantly forward at its maximum acceleration, darting directly away from the planet in an obvious, panicky bid to escape.
It was futile, of course. It had scarcely begun to move when Predator's fire control locked it up. The pirate cruiser didn't even bother to call upon the pi
There was no wreckage.
"Well, that seems straightforward enough," Lamar said with an air of satisfaction.
"Yeah," his tac officer agreed. "Still seems pretty stupid of them, though."
"I think Al may have a point, Sam." It was Tim St. Claire, Predator's improbably named executive officer, and Lamar frowned at him.
"Hey, don't blame me," St. Claire said mildly. "All I'm saying is that Al's right—only a frigging idiot would have sat here in orbit waiting for us to kill him. Now, personally, I figure there's a damned good chance that anyone who's just seen his ship haul ass out of the system with the bad guys in hot pursuit is go
"All right," Sampson sighed. "Break out the assault shuttles and let's get to it, then."
"They didn't buy it, Ma'am," Palmer a
"Not entirely, anyway," Hoskins put in, and Abigail nodded, even though she suspected that the pi
"Chances are they're at least half-convinced they got us," Sergeant Gutierrez said. "At the very least, it's going to generate a little uncertainty on their part, and that's worthwhile all by itself. But whether they figure we're already dead or not, it looks like they're going to look down here until they're sure, one way or the other."
"We knew it was likely to happen," Abigail agreed, looking about in the dusk of an early winter evening. Their carefully hidden position was tucked away in a narrow, rugged mountain valley on the opposite side of the planet from Zion. It was winter here, and winter on Refuge, she was discovering, was a cold and miserable proposition.
She shivered, despite the parka from the pi
At least it should be hard for them to find us, she thought. Any planet's a big place to play hide-and-seek in.
These rocky, inhospitable mountains offered plenty of hiding places, too, and Gutierrez and his Marines had rigged thermal blankets for overhead cover against the heat sensors which might have been used to pick them out against the winter chill. Unfortunately, they had only fifteen of the blankets, which wasn't enough to provide cover for all of them even when their smaller perso
They'd done their best to put solid rock between those power sources and any sensors which might fly past, but there was only so much they could do.
"All right, Sergeant Gutierrez," she said, after a moment. "Who's got first watch?"
"This has got to be the most boring fucking job yet," Serena Sandoval grumbled as she brought the heavy assault shuttle around for another sensor sweep.
"Yeah?" Dangpiam Kitpon, her co-pilot, grunted. "Well, 'boring' beats the shit out of what happened to the Hunter, doesn't it?"
Sandoval made an irritated sound, and Dangpiam laughed sourly.
"And while we're talking about things that 'boring' is better than," he continued, "I wonder just how 'interesting' things are being for Morakis and Maurersberger about now?"
"You've got an over-active mouth, Kitpon," Sandoval half-snarled, but she couldn't quite dismiss Dangpiam's question. It had been hours since Cutthroat and Morder had translated into hyper in pursuit of the Manty cruiser. As badly damaged as the Manty had been, they had to have caught up with her quickly, so where the hell were they?
She concentrated on her flight controls, ignoring the moonless winter night beyond the cockpit canopy, and took herself firmly to task for letting Dangpiam get to her. Sure, it was a Manty, but there was only one of it, and it already had the shit shot out of it! It had just gotten lucky against Fortune Hunter, that was all, and—