[IC] Pax Astra

[Penny]

The hall stilled as everyone waited for Gorm’s response. Somewhere in a back room a child cried but was quickly hushed by a parent. The Ketcharch regarded the two of them with calculating eyes, running his hand along his jaw in a habitual gesture. From the look in his eyes he would have liked to have ordered them killed. He might well have done so if he had any assurance his thugs would be able to pull it off before he himself was shot. He stretched out a foot and kicked the coin back in Tiber’s general direction, the small sliver of metal bouncing and rattling to a halt somewhere in the rear of the hall.

“It would be illegal to ask tribute of any legionnaire,” Gorm replied in a studied sneer, “let no man say that I don’t understand my… obligations.”

“As for these… unfortunate incidents. I am certain they are merely acts of random misfortune. I’ll instruct my men more… thoroughly in future.” The words were bland enough on their face, but they dripped with menace. The air was positively charged with malice.

“Glad to hear it,” Sabatine replied and began to back out of the hall. Gorm arched an eyebrow.

“Where are my manners? Would you care to join us for dinner?” he asked, making a vague gesture to some low tables set against the walls.

“We would be honored to dine with such… stalwarts of our great Empire,” he mocked.

“I’m sure we would be more comfortable dining in less auspicious surroundings,” Sabatine replied dryly.

“Perhaps among the hogs on your farm?” Gorm sneered.

“The atmosphere and the smell are both an improvement,” Sabatine returned. A smatter of laughter died quickly as Gorm sat up white with fury. Several of the braver thugs fingered their weapons, but they knew better than to act without their principals consent.

“Safe travels,” he gritted between clenched teeth.

The street was deserted by the time they made it to the ATV. The occasional bang of a closing shutter could be heard as the citizens, aware that trouble was brewing by some communal instinct, closed themselves in their houses. Sabatine supposed that the townsfolk were familiar enough with Gorm and his thugs going on rampages that by now they had developed rituals to deal with it. Sabatine hoped onto the back of the ATV as Tiber started the engine. A few of Gorm’s toughs had slunk out of the hall behind them but they weren’t starting anything just yet. Dusk was falling and the heat of the day was giving way to the sultry warmth of the evening as they drove west out of town heading back towards the farm.
The road rose up a small ridge in a series of long switchbacks, interspersed with bushy kayla shrubs and slender beech trees. The paving was ancient but solid in the manner of all Roman roads. The locals probably would have made to with a more direct dirt track, but roads were always built to a grade that would allow heavier vehicles than most colonists could afford to operate. There was a pleasant smell of hot stone, green plants and a subtle hint of petrochemicals.

“Headlights,” Tiber reported, noticing several sets of lights on the road behind them. Judging by the height they were probably cargo 8s. Light trucks capable of hauling people or produce. Sabatine was willing to bet they weren’t carrying lettuce. Gorm didn’t want them to make it back to their holdings it seemed, content to have them meet their end on a lonely road.

“We won’t get home before they catch up,” Sabatine opined.

[POOHEAD189]

"My place is closer," He added, the wind sending his dark hair flying behind him.

"It's a wreck!" She reminded him.

"It's got guns." He added, and that seemed to be the deciding factor. Sabatine tapped his shoulder in agreement and Tiber suddenly skirted the next bend and went south. He was loathe to have his place riddled with bullet holes, but it already needed work done. If it saved their lives it was worth it. Plus, he had a home field advantage.

To Sabatine's delight, the lights still approached them from behind even after the change of course. Tiber felt her sigh as she held him. He couldn't blame her not wanting her home destroyed. Wouldn't be fair for both of them to be out on the street. Seems their orders were to kill, this time. Another two kilometers passed beneath them before the ATV landed at the front of his workshop. The two soldiers vaulted the transport and Tiber led her inside through the massive hole in the bay gate. Papers and debris littered the ground while tools had been tossed like someone had thrown a tantrum. Forward was the area where he kept any vehicles he happened to work on, and to the right next to his office was a wide stairwell that led up into an open second floor where he kept much of his junk and undesirables. To the immediate right was his 'junker' mech, still chained up.

"Tell me that thing works." Sabatine said as Tiber hurried approached it and began to ascend the metallic giant, gripping its steel plates like he was born to it.

"No, but it can fall." He told her without elaborating, unhooking the chains and climbing into the cockpit to grab a small device. Once in hand, he climbed down and hopped the last eight feet, and ushered Sabatine up the stairs to what was essentially a storage basement, open with a rail one could stand beside and see most of the lower floor below. It was the only place with any elevation. Sabatine hopped over a few boxes to peer out of the lone window at the top, and light flashed on her face as the light trucks pulled into the last drag before they were on them.

"Here," Tiber said, and when Sabatine turned she almost didn't catch the Vetas Arma. An old, very outdated military slug thrower. It possessed a simple fire selector allowing the user to fire single shots, three round bursts, or fully automatic streams, with a fifteen round magazine. It had less finesse than the plasma guns and was less useful against high powered armor, but it could take a hell of a beating and it had impressive stopping power. He tossed her four magazines and loaded his own Vetas Arma.

"Know how to shoot this thing?" He asked her, slinging the weapon over his shoulder and vaulting another crate before he made it to the edge of the second floor, just at the north wall beside the railing. He opened up a small compartment, where a red button lay.

"Where the hell did you get these?" She asked.

"Souvenir from the campaign on Agripinaa," He said, referring to one of the more famous and recent rebellions in the empire. A rogue state had risen up in the system, breaking off and reforging itself into a 'supposed' republic. Tiber and his team had been sent in on spec ops. "Just tell me when they've made it to the flowers out front." He told her.

He didn't have a lot of time to explain his hand hovered over a remote detonator.

[Penny]

Sabatine hadn't been an infantry trooper. Her experience had been as a combat pilot, but she had spent enough time defending the bird while loading or unloading troops, or protecting herself after shoot downs, that she knew which end of the gun was which. In any case she suspected she was probably several cuts above the kind of thugs available in a backwater like this. She lifted the rifle and sighted down the barrel, easing off the safety with a click. She wasn't personally experienced with the Vesta but she had used similar slug throwers before, most particularly on Braxia where the thick growth of jungle drank plasma blasts too much to make a gladius really effective.

The gun had a simple three point sight, familiar to legionnaires since the western campaigns back on old Earth. She lay down on the catwalk and butted the weapon against her shoulder, cocking one leg out to provide herself a stable shooters stance. Three trucks had pulled up at the entry gate, disgorging perhaps a dozen toughs. They were back lit by the lights of their vehicles, just black forms against bright light. That suited Sabatine fine, making her think of a gunnery range rather than a battle field.

"Alright big shots, come out and get the beating that is coming to you!" one of them roared.

"We promise, once we've given you a few lessons in minding your manners you can go about your..."

Sabatine squeezed the trigger. Crack! Crack! Crack! The three round burst snapped out of the weapon. The speaker broke off with a scream and one of the head lights went out with a shattering storm of glass. The engine, still running, lugged, banged and then died with a cough as one of the rounds punched through something important. Sabatine resighted and squeezed of a second shot but the thugs were throwing themselves to the ground in all directions. Sabatine reached up and turned he shot selector to single. She fired at one of the silhouettes she could still see without any effect. She breathed in, breathed out, then fired again. The man spun to the ground clutching his arm and dragging himself behind the cover of a low stone wall. Gunfire ripped out from the group, punching holes in the walls of the building that were easily visible as gushes of bright head light illuminated air. It wasn't aimed in any military sense, though ricochets skittered around the interior like angry bees.

[POOHEAD189]

"ETA?" Tiber asked as bullets punched through the aluminum lining in the walls. A ricochet pinged off the interior's southern wall and cut his leg, but he didn't move. Sabatine ducked in and out of the crates, providing just enough of a buffer past the wall to halt the straight shot of incoming projectiles.

"Two paces!" She called, shouldering her Vesta and firing two rounds. Someone outside screamed in a pained panic. Her third round ended it abruptly and she ducked as a mass of returned fire punctured the wall by her position. One lucky bullet found a soft spot in the crate but Ceres watched over Sabatine. The shard flew just passed her head as she reloaded, paying as little attention to it as Tiber had.

Sabatine rolled to a different position and tried something risky, eschewing the safety of the crates and peeking through a bullet hole to give a more accurate reading of the enemy position. Almost immediately she cried "Now!" and vaulted over the closest crates as Tiber hit the button.

A concussive shockwave shoved against the building, followed by a wave of heat and a roaring as three remote detonated mines with layers of 12-ounce, C-3 explosive's launched flame and an array of 6mm steel cubes flying in all directions. As Tiber dove into cover next to Sabatine, holes rang through the wall like fletchlets in an immense shotgun blast. Four seconds rolled by as the two soldiers collected themselves, wringing out the ringing in their ears and getting to their feet. It was all the time they had before bullets rang on the walls and punched through the floorboards of the second story floor.

Tiber and Sabatine rolled in opposite directions, catching a glimpse of two men who had the relatively intelligent decision to flank the building and enter through the gaping hole in his baygate. Unfortunately, they didn't count on Legionnaire discipline. Tiber and Sabatine moved in unison, halting their rolls in a prone position and sending two clean shots. Sabatine's bullet hit the man right on the nose, literally, severing the spinal cord and sending shrapnel of bone into his brain. Tiber's bullet cut through the left thug's chest cavity and hit perfectly into his heart. Both men stumbled and dropped without a sound.

[Penny]

The thugs were panicking. They had grown used to throwing their weight around with the cowed populace in town. Worse yet they had allowed that to convince them that they were tough. That they were fighters. They were going to learn different tonight, or the survivors would at any rate. For a moment the fear of looking like cowards drove them forward. A bullet shattered to fragments a few centimeters from Sabtatine’s hand and she twisted to find one of the attackers aiming at her through a window, his pistol blazing wildly. He ducked back behind the wall as she made him. Sabatine fired a three round burst into the thin corrugated iron, the projectiles cutting the metal like tin foil and dropping the gunman behind it to the ground in a screaming heap. Sabatine clicked to semi automatic and fired twice more at ground level, blasting little star shaped holes in the wall. The screaming stopped.

The rout was on now. The survivors were fleeing in terror. One leaped into the cab of the truck and gunned the engine. The exterior of the glass crazed a moment before the interior exploded red, Tiber having no difficulty simply waiting for the hapless henchmen to climb into his sight picture. Sabatine lifted herself into a shooters crouch and aimed at a fleeing thug. She fired once and missed high, fired again and went wide, then clicked to full automatic and emptied the remainder of the magazine in a long sweeping burst. Bright flashes of blood burst from the fleeing tough’s lower back and he dropped in a heap howling in pain. Sabatine aimed a finishing shot but the weapon was already empty. She fumbled for a fresh magazine as the man tried to crawl away, his legs hanging limply from a shattered spine. Two more cracks rent the night and the side of the enemy’s head burst like a dropped melon, dropping him bonelessly to the dirt path. The echoes faded away to silence. After a few moments the sound of nightlife, briefly startled by the gunfire, returned.

“Clear behind,” Sabatine reported mechanically.

“Clear up front,” Tiber responded with a similar rote reflex.

Sabatine listened for long moments, sucking in lungfuls of air tainted with blood, shit, and the sour-sharp smell of burnt chemical propellant and cordite. It reminded her of LZs she had flown into after the ground pounders blew down trees to make a hole for the birds to come in and take off wounded. She didn’t doubt one or two of them had gotten away, she was also similarly certain it would be a long time before they stopped running. Gradually she became aware of a pain in her right hand.

“Ow,” she complained and flicked away the hot cartridge that had landed on the back of her hand, something she hadn’t noticed in the chaos of the fight, but had been hot enough to raise a red wheal on her wrist.

“Fucking cartridges,” she muttered, vaguely embarrassed for no reason she could articulate.

“You ok?” Tiber asked, Sabatine nodded and stood up, finally managing to get the fresh magazine home and charge the weapon.

“Who has the time to dig this many flower beds?” she jested feebly.

[POOHEAD189]

"As much as I'd like to see your green thumb in action, I've got a more traditional idea." Tiber said, lifting his shirt and checking the small wound he had.

The pair spent a good hour checking their wounds and moving the bodies. Tiber's suggestion was met with surprise at first, but Sabatine quickly accepted the pragmatism in it. Before nightfall, the bodies had been piled high along a patch of grass just outside of Tiber's property. All save their heads, having been cut off and stuck in aluminum poles along the ruined flowerbed. As disappointed as his grand sire would be on Tiber working for the Empire, he would approve of this at least. Out of the rough dozen that had attacked, seven heads had been planted and gifted to Mars.

The pair returned to Sabatine's home as the sun began to set, taking all of Tiber's ammunition and explosive stockpile with them, but not before setting a small trap inside Tiber's workshop. The commando had set a wire trip just beyond the entrance, and if the heads did not dissuade anyone from snooping within, the falling mecha he had unchained before the firefight would solve the problem.

They arrived at Sabatine's place as darkness descended, and Tiber stumbled off the bike, Sabatine catching with with both hands, nearly tumbling over with the man. He had gotten off with such confidence, but now that his mind had redirected itself to a somewhat 'civilian' rest state, he felt every ache and had realized he was dizzy. It was nothing to worry about, just annoying.

"Sorry, bloodloss," He said, oddly embarrassed. He pulled himself back up. "I just need something to eat, I'll be good. And we need to talk on what our next play is." He added as an after thought. Tiber was tall and built like a commando, but the fact he let himself feel so tired after just a few days of activity showed how rusty he was, at least in his mind. He recalled back on the moon of Orlan IV, he had gone two weeks with almost no sleep and complete vigilance, cutting a swathe through the enemy lines from behind with his squad of nine. He'd be damned if he let Sabatine down simply because he had gotten comfortable the past year.

[Penny]

Sabatine cooked a simple meal of stir fried vegetables with some diced meat from a recent hunt and a pungent tamrind sauce she had been saving for a special occasion. Given that she might be dead in the next hours or days it seemed the perfect time. She opened a couple of bottles of cold cider, enjoying the bite of the booze with the spicy food.

"Think they will come tonight?" Tiber asked as they sat on the porch and watched the end of the road.

"Nah, by the time the survivors clean their trousers out, and get up the balls to tell the big boss it was a bust, it will be after dawn."

"Probably after noon by the time he finishes raging and decides what to do about it."

"What do you think he will do about it?" Sabatine asked. Tiber made a face and struck the top off another bottle of cider.

"I bet he heads over here with every swinging dick he can round up," he replied. Sabatine sighed and looked out over the farm she had spent the last few years patiently building from her land grant.

"Yeah... that is what I figure too."

______

It was nearly dusk by the time the thugs finally arrived, rolling down the road in the back of large flatbed trucks. They dismounted as soon as they reached the boundary markers and shook out into a respectable skirmish line. They made no attempt at stealth, opening fire with shotguns and rifles when they hit the fruit trees and disturbed the wind chimes Sabatine used to keep the birds away. Sabatine winced each time they fired, high powered weapons maiming and killing trees she had planted on the first days of her retirement. When they reached the house without opposition, they threw crude incendiary bombs, petrochemicals in water jugs with fuses of soaked fabric, through the windows. The house, being a colonial hab model was largely fire resistant, but the mob raised great cheers as fire blossomed within. It was only then that Sabatine acted, bringing the engines online and lifting the assault boat out of the grove of wild trees in which it had been concealed, its roaring down draft blowing a storm of leaves in all directions. The pair had been watching the 'assault force', if such a term could be applied, on the excellent sensors of the assault boat. Now the lifted over the panicking thugs. They opened fire as the vessel swept over them fanning the flames into high intensity. Despite being less than fifty feet away the number of hits they heard through the hull was embarrassingly few.

"Contact," Tiber announounced from the gunners station as he settled his targeting reticule and fired. The air screamed as the particle beam ripped it apart, the lance of blue green energy pulsing out in a continuous flow. It struck the first parked truck two hundred meters behind the frantically firing thugs. The greenish cargo hauler transformed into a miniature mushroom cloud of fire and smoke that rained debris for a hundred meters in all directions. Tiber drew the beam along the line of trucks, each one adding to the conflagration as starship grade weapons atomized their light civilian frames. Tires and debris bounced out of the fratricidal explosions as the gunship swept over, the sensors neatly compensating for the thick pall of smoke that surrounded them. With a three second burst of the beamer Tiber destroyed every vehicle the assault force had brought with them.

"All tangos down," Tiber said in tones of grim satisfaction.

The loss of irreplacable vehicles to a remote rim community was immeasurable, but more importantly it stranded every thug that Gorm could summon 16.23 clicks from town. Sabatine grinned viciously as she turned the gunship north towards the township. It was time for Gorm to see how he liked losing everything he had worked for.

[Penny]

The assault boat roared away from the farm burning farmstead at several hundred kilometers per hour, driven onwards by its trio of ion thrusters at full output. There was no need for such haste, but aggressively pushing an advantage was beaten into legionaries from the earliest days of basic training. Sabatine flew a nape of the earth pattern, also completely unnecessary given the lack of any anti-aircraft capabilities beyond rifles. Her face, illuminated by the holographic HUD being projected onto it, seemed to shift, the farmer retreating to be replaced by an older and harder visage. Within moments Cereys was gone, replaced by Athena.

"Thirty seconds to target," Sabatine reported mechanically. Tiber had already left the gunnery station and was readying his personal weapons, snugging pouches and equipment in a familiar, if lately unpracticed, routine. The assault boat screamed in over the village, shattering windows with its down draft as Sabatine executed a stomach churning turn before setting down in the town square. The approach was deliberately too fast, prompting the chemical boosters to fire to slow the decent at the last moment. The old assault landing trick blasted grit and gravel out in all directions like a fragmentation warhead a moment before the boat crunched down on its skids. Sabatine slapped the hatch release and the rear landing hatch crashed to the ground bringing with it a could of dust that mingled with the bleach smell of the cleaning products they had used to get rid of the marine life. She stood up and took her gladius, racking the mechanism to ensure a fresh round was chambered and ready to go. Tiber was already down the ramp, his helmet on and visor down against the dust. Sabatine followed, feeling the tingle of ions from the engines arcing little sparks of heat lightning in the dust. The ramp retracted and sealed. Normally, an assault boat of this type would be defended from enemy infantry by a quartet of 3mm hypersonic gatling guns, but even the remarkable resilience of the craft hadn't spared ammunition in exterior pods from the ruinous effects of sea water. Sabatine doubted it would be a problem, the locals lacking the ordnance or time to force their way into the craft. If the did manage it, well they would burn that bridge when they got to it.

Tiber was already striding towards their target a large pilastered building which had once been a library but now served as Chieftain Gorm's treasure house. Two guards, slovenly dressed thugs with shotguns, were shielding their eyes from the downdraft when Tiber came out of the dust at a fast walk.

"Hey! What are you..." the first one asked, spitting a cigarette from his lips as his eyes widened. Tiber shot him twice, once in the chest, and once in the face in a classic spec ops doubletap. The second guard's eyes bulged a moment before his face exploded from Tiber's third round. He didn't bother with the doubletap this time. Both men were dead before the cigarette hit the ground. He slung his weapon and grabbed the door of the library. Uncharacteristically it was locked, more effort than the local thugs were usually capable of. Somewhere an alarm siren began to blare. Tiber stepped back, racked his weapon and fired. A brilliant bottle shaped blast blossomed from an underslung attachment of some sort and the door, wood veneer around a steel core, flew from its hinges with a scream of warping metal. He had neutralized the guards and breached the door within the few seconds it took Sabatine to catch up, her weapon questing across a landscape now devoid of targets.

"Clear," Tiber reported, sliding the nearly full magazine from his weapon and replacing it with a fresh one.

"Copy that," Sabatine reported, moving through the door with her helmet set to a thirty percent mask of thermal. There were no heat signatures beyond the cooling bodies of guards and their smoldering cigarette butts. The interior of the library was a mess of crates and boxes. Looted artwork, boxes of credit chips, statuary, the assembled loot of decades of drug dealing, prostitution, racketing and other crimes for which there were no names. Sabatine grabbed a hover dolly stacked with jewelry and credit chips and powered it up. For a wonder the mechanism worked and she began to haul the thing back towards the assault boat. Tiber started opening boxes, making a quick inventory of what was most portable and most valuable.

By the time the first thugs arrived, they had made a respectable dent in the loot, piling boxes and crates into troop compartment of the assault boat. Sabatine was tossing a sack of jewelry into the hatch when the first gunshots sparkled off the hull. A group of thugs, apparently the hangers on Gorm kept around as a personal guard, were fanned out across the street, the wiser ones taking cover behind dumpsters and ground cars. Others, often with eyes dilated by whatever drugs had gotten them out of their customary drunken stupors, stood in the open, rocking uneasily.

"Time to go!" Sabatine called to Tiber who was muscling the hover dolly through the shattered doorway. She ducked behind the landing strut and fired twice, dropping one of the drug addled goons in a spray of blood. A vehicle was making its way down the street. The thing had started out as an earth mover with a heavy steel blade, but had been augmented with welded sheets of steel and a trio of pintle mounted automatic slug throwers into an improvised armored car. It chuffed out diesel fumes as it came, brushing stalls of timber and canvas into ruin as it moved too close to the curb. Loud hailers mounted on the cab crackled to staticky life.

"Drop your weapons and I promise to kill you quick," a gravely voice, made worse by static, snarled. Sabatine had never met Chieftan Gorm, but she would have bet her last sesterce that he was the speaker. As if to punctuated the pronouncement, all three automatics opened up in a defeaning roar, kicking up tracks of dust and sparkling ricochets off the hull of the assault boat. Tiber shoved the hover dolly along at a run and then leaped aboard it, the frictionless antigrav gliding across the open space between the library and the assault boat. Bullets struck the boxes around him as he crouched in cover, spraying the street with credit chips and precious gems. The dolly sailed across the street and up the ramp with the precision of a pool ball being slotted home by a master.

"Very well since you choose to die..." the voice snarled. Sabatine pulled a stubby metal cylinder with a blue band around the top and struck the igniter live against the landing strut.

"Ave imperatrix! she shouted, and then tossed the cylinder through the open door into the library. It was doubtful Gorm or his thugs saw the missile in the dust and gunfire but its effect was unmistakable. The plasma grenade was a separated solution of liquid crystal compounds that fused together into a solid microseconds before smaller explosive charges compressed the newly formed lattice in a psudeo-nuclear explosion. There was a flash of bright blue light that was visible even through the stone wall, literally stunning to the untrained. The cerulean fireball ripped through the library like a devouring star. The walls survived long enough to channel the blast upwards before they shattered outwards in an exploding wall of debris. Sabatine was already halfway up the ramp when the concussion knocked her from her feet, driving her up the ramp and slamming her into a bulkhead with force enough to cripple an unarmored man. As it was her armor drove into her at half a dozen points hard enough to leave bruises in the days to come. Behind her the library and loot of Chieftan Gorm was a foretaste of Hades. At the temperature of crystal plasma everything burned. There was no orange, wood and other organics vaporizing in a heart beat, but rather the brilliant white of blazing sandstone, highlighted by the gorgoues red and green of burning metals. Several of the thugs that had been in the street fled burning, their clothing ignited by the terrifying intensity of the blast. Everything Gorm had worked for was gone in a heartbeat, his empire bankrupted, his hold over his men gone. After a debacle like this, he was unlikely to live out the week.

The heat beat at Sabatine like a hammer for the few seconds it took the powerful hydraulics to snap the landing hatch closed. Tiber grabbed her by the shoulder and half carried, half through her over the mess of boxes and crates into the pilots compartment. She cursed and groaned as she stumbled into the pilot's seat. She slapped a preplanned take off sequence and the chemical lifters roared, flaring the blaze behind them deep into the blue spectrum as oxygen was supplied at the pressure of a jet stream. The assault boat leaped skyward, jolting again as the ion thrusters lit, blasting them skyward away from the inferno below. Tiber was in the gunnery station but they were already beyond effective line of site of the settlement, though the glow of fires spreading from the library could be seen on the horizon.

"Going up," Sabatine said, lifting her visor to accept the projection of the HUD and angling the assault boat up and towards open space beyond.

[POOHEAD189]

As the ion thrusters flared to life, Tiber released the locking level on the aft-turret. It was an old fashioned, rudimentary turret made for local planetary forces, but Tiber preferred it that way, in a strange conceit. The steel and oil made him feel as if he was fighting with his grandfather on the Xolidan campaign, where the planet had been so war ravaged, it took twenty years of terraforming to make the world sustainable for colonization again. The wheel was gas powered, and as Tiber activated it he heard the hydraulics kick in, swiveling the gun. The mount was push-button and moved by battery power, and it gave the gun an extreme range of view, despite the primitive technology.

As the ground fell away, the MAR flashed. Two objects half a kilometer to the west approached rapidly.

"Faex," Tiber cursed. He balled his hand into a fist and struck the back of the assault boat thrice, and then twice, indicating they were being pursued. A red indicator blinked just above him, affirming Sabatine received the message. They began to bank to the left, drawing their path over the sparsely wooded foothills and leaving the town and the valley in inhabited off to the south. It was then he got a good look at what pursued them.

They were API2's, autonomous pursuit interceptor drones, meant as safeguards against enemy assaults. Ideally, they would be used to harass fleeing enemies after a failed attack, driving the weakened foe away before they had a chance to lick their wounds. In the event a raid was successful, they would be used to track a foe back to whence they came from. But considering they made no secret of their approach, stealth was not a prerogative for their programming in this situation. They were robust, nearly as large as the soldier's vehicle, with two plasma guns mounted on a small column hanging below the main 'body,' giving it the look of a metallic hornet displaying its stinger threateningly.

Tiber got a lock on the drone at the fore, flipping the safety off and pulling on the trigger. 12.7mm rounds roared out of the turret, every twenty shells releasing a green tracer. The first API2 went down swiftly, more out of luck than anything. Tiber's well aimed volley hit it center mass, detonating the small engine and sending it flying into the bush, streaming flames. The next veered to the right, flipping end over it as it careened for their position. Moments later, wet green projectiles chased them, narrowly missing their assault car. Tiber switched tactics, aiming the gun to the right and just above the drone, but its algorithm realigned it, spinning it counterclockwise.

Fortunately, Tiber had dealt with these before.

As it performed its pre-generated maneuver, Tiber swiveled his gun and realigned the mount, placing the drone at the center of his reticle. He pulled the trigger again, bullets streaking past the API2, nicking it in the side. It wavered in the air, trying to keep itself upright. Tiber did not give it a chance, and even as it fired at him defiantly, he ended its flight with another burst from the mounted gun, sending it below as nothing but a memory.

[Penny]

Sabatine sucked in a breath as she pulled on the flight yoke and lifted them up and away from the burning wreckage. The blue of the sky seemed to drain away in whisps as they moved up out of the atmosphere. The old rush was still there, just like the first time when she had lifted out of Caledon after she was enlisted. At the time she had expected to be a line soldier, relatively few Caledon's had the aptitude for flying that the Evocatii looked for, a mark of the relatively low level of technology on that hardy frontier world as much as anything she had since discovered. Whatever their arcane tests had found she was glad of it flying, particularly super orbital flying, always thrilled her.

"Breaking atmo," she reported, opening her mouth and exhaling. It sounded like a sigh of relief, but in reality it was a pilots precaution against sudden depressurization. Hardy or not, this boat had been at the bottom of the ocean for a decade and there was no telling if the seals would hold the air in once they were put to hard vacuum. At least if there was no air in your lung you could escape injury long enough to don a helmet. Fortunately, the seals held and she waggled the wings of the assault boat in the traditional test that all was well. Most of the lights on her control panel remained, green, though a few were amber and even red. Nothing vital, though some of the more advanced avionics was obviously toast. Salt water was hell on exterior sensors and it had been a minor miracle that the bullets and feed hoppers which had fed Tiber's guns had worked.

"Next stop," she declared, "anywhere but here."

For a moment she thought bitterly about her now destroyed orchard, then she flicked back the metal saftey cage and punched the jump button. Rainbow light exploded across the canopy as the little assault boat went supra-luminal, launching it into the Via Stellaris.