“Well, I’d say that got their attention,” I tell Sergeant Fallon.
“They think we’re bluffing,” Rogue One says on the combat-control channel. “Dumb SI fucks.”
I check the display to see that the two armored personnel carriers from Frostbite have resumed their slow and cautious course toward New Longyearbyen. I tap into the ground comms, but they have switched to their own encrypted private network, taking a page out of our playbook.
“Rogue One, they’re not talking. Paint ’em with the fire-control radar. See if they get the message.”
Rogue One fires up his radar dome and zaps the two mules coming down the road with short sweeps of focused millimeter-wave radar. If their threat detectors are working, the tactical consoles of those vehicle commanders are lighting up like pachinko parlors right about now. I check the video feed from the Dragonfly’s forward sensor array to get a view of the drop ship’s quarry.
The two mules stop by the side of the road, halfway between Camp Frostbite and New Longyearbyen. Then one of them activates its remote weapons mount. The autocannon on top of the mule turns toward the drop ship’s targeting camera. I see the muzzle flashes before I can hear the rumbling staccato of the cannon all the way from the other side of town. The targeting image skews as the pilot takes evasive action.
“I’d say they got the message loud and clear,” the pilot sends.
“Weapons free,” I reply. “Try for mobility kills. Don’t want to shed blood unless we have to.”
“Copy that.”
The view from the targeting camera flashes, and the bottom of the display shows “MANUAL OVERRIDE.” Then the reticle slews to cover the ground just in front of the belligerent mule.
The drop ship’s nose turret hammers out a short, rasping burst. A second later, the view from the targeting camera is obscured as the chin cannon’s high-velocity rounds kick up the frozen dirt and gravel in front of the mule. From half a mile away, the cannon sounds like the distant thunder of a far-off summer storm. I watch the camera feed from the drop ship’s turret as the two mules come to a stop. The lead mule swivels its weapons mount as the gunner looks for a target. Over the audio feed, I can hear the threat detectors in the cockpit of our drop ship warbling a harsh alert.
“What a dipshit,” the pilot says almost conversationally. The chin turret thunders again. This time, the grenades hit even closer to the mule. The pilot walks his reticle from the front of the vehicle over to a corner. One shell strikes the bow armor at a sharp angle and glances off in a shower of sparks and laminate armor shards. Another hits the front-left road wheel of the mule dead-on and blows it into tiny little pieces. The mule heaves to one side as the combined force of the grenade and the exploding tire rock the vehicle.
“Slave your cannon to the rear and turn off your targeting radar, or I’ll put the next burst right down your centerline,” the pilot instructs the mule’s crew over the emergency channel. “I’m not in the mood to play tag here.”
The chirping from the threat receiver stops as the gunner in the mule turns off the active targeting aids for the autocannon. Then the weapons mount swivels backwards until the gun is pointed away from the drop ship. The other mule has popped a burst of polychromatic smoke, and the Dragonfly’s radar says he’s retreating at a fair clip.
“The other one’s pulling out. Let him go. This turkey makes a shifty move, blow off the other tires, too,” I tell the Dragonfly crew.
“No worries,” the pilot says. “They try to use that gun again, I’ll shoot it right off their ride.”
Well, at least they fired the first shot, I think.
The main situational display on the holotable next to me chimes to announce new data. I shift my attention in time to see four red inverted vee symbols enter the sensor sphere from above, almost five hundred miles from the airfield. They drop down into the atmosphere at high speed, drop ships or ground-attack birds on a tactical mission profile. Their course is away from New Longyearbyen, but I don’t take any solace in that information. I know the tactical handbook for this type of scenario, and I know exactly what I’m looking at.
“Raid warning, raid warning,” I announce over the tactical channel. “Two flights of two entering atmo from orbit. They’re going to hit the weeds outside of sensor range and come in as close to the deck as they can. Likely approach vectors are two-twenty through two-forty degrees. I repeat, raid warning, air threat red.”