Free Side Show by Rick Shelley Page B

it's time I give you the rest of it," Stossen said.
    "They must be involved in something truly revolutionary," Kenneck commented when the colonel had finished.
    "There's no point in guessing," Stossen said. "Whatever it is, it won't do the Accord any good unless we can get them out, and back to our people. Off-world. Failing that..." He had already told them of the stop-loss option.
    "No chance for a pickup, even for them?" Ingels asked.
    Stossen shook his head. "Not according to the general. We're completely on our own. If we can't get them out, they don't get out." He paused before he added, "And neither do we."
    —|—
    Blue Flight stayed near the bottom of the cloud bank until the last instant. Barring the appearance of enemy fighters, their only worry was mudders with surface-to-air missiles, and as long as those mudders couldn't see the Wasps, there was little chance they could point a missile near enough to get a target lock.
    The four Wasps chose their targets and nosed over, presenting the smallest possible profile to the enemy. Zel was just behind and to the right of Slee. He showed two tanks to his first two missiles. As soon as he had the double click of target lock for the second missile, he fired both, then flipped his weapons selector to cannon. There was a lot of infantry down there with the tanks, and Blue Flight had chosen its attack vectors to allow the pilots to go directly from missile launch to strafing.
    Zel didn't bother to watch his missiles running in. His heads-up display would tell him when they hit. With ground targets, there was little chance that either missile would miss. Instead, he turned his attention to the strafing.
    Six seconds was all that his strafing run lasted. Then Zel hit full power on a vertical ascent that took him to the edge of blackout before he eased off and zigged left in level flight, back in the clouds. He heard the whistles to signal missile strikes. There were no other alarms going off in the cockpit. No return missiles had been detected, and nothing else on the ground could pose any threat to a Wasp as it climbed through eight thousand meters.
    Deep in the heart of a thunderhead.
    Zel had zero visibility through the canopy. There might as well have been a coat of slate-gray paint over it. Except when a bolt of lightning flashed. But Zel rarely bothered to fly by eye in any case. The instruments were more accurate, and quicker. He could pick out the other three Wasps on his display, now spread over an area of more than ten kilometers horizontally and three vertically. They came back together, somewhat, as they prepared to stage their next attack.
    This one went the same as the first, and so did the third. There were enemy missiles coming up after them now, but none came close enough to be particularly dangerous. The Wasps could boost at the same speed as the best Schlinal antiaircraft missiles, and hold that acceleration much longer.
    Altogether, the four Wasps each made five passes. That expended all but two of the missiles that each plane carried, and more than 90 percent of the ammunition for their forward cannons.
    "Head for home," Slee said. "Yellow Flight is sending four birds to replace us." He had just received that news. He didn't mention that it would be fifteen minutes before those planes arrived. There was nothing to be done about that.
    —|—
    If the ride had been rough before, it was murder now. Joe Baerclau braced himself and tried to roll with the bouncing of the Heyer. He had his helmet on, and only the padding in that kept him from getting knocked senseless every time his head slammed against the side of the APC. The driver had the throttle cranked to the stop. Orders had come from the colonel to shift course by five degrees. Apparently, that would add a few kilometers to the distance they had to travel, and the extra speed was to keep them from losing time.
    At some point, the seal around the splat gun turret had started to leak. Water dripped into