Lee Carter switched off her radio and relayed the strike coordinates she'd just received from Colonel Tarik to Max and Kim. Together, the three of them banked their Banshees and headed back for the planet. The surrounding space sectors were secure now that the Mulluran supply train had been stopped and the Sutherland had returned to orbit. Sam and Jo waited for them on the surface near the ruins of the anti-spacecraft emplacement they'd taken out earlier.
Air friction began having an affect on the Banshees, and their forward shields started to coruscate up and down the visible spectrum. At the appropriate moment, their flight-computers switched the planes' control surfaces to atmospheric flight mode, and the three spacecraft became aircraft.
Carter switched the HUD inside her helmet's visor to long-range scans, and she marked Sam and Jo's Banshees heading on a rendezvous course right on schedule. As soon as the static from their passage through the upper atmosphere had cleared, she switched her radio back on. "Banshees Three and Four, join formation. We're heading to take out three enemy munitions dumps." She clicked off the radio, but a second later clicked it back on and said dryly, "Try not to get shot down this time, will you, Sam?"
Sam, ever bashful, didn't respond, and Carter could almost see her face turning red through their voice-only comm-link, but Jo's chortle could be clearly heard.
"And no more half-assed rescue attempt from you, Schmidt!" reprimanded Carter.
"Yes Ma'am! Only full-assed rescue attempts from now on, ma'am!"
Carter screwed up her eyes and snapped off the radio impatiently. She swore to herself (again) that she'd never put up with this sort of insubordination and tom-foolery if it wasn't for the fact that the Banshees were the best pilots around. ...And if they weren't all such close friends, she forced herself to admit, her attitude softening a bit.
The Banshees had entered the atmosphere of Az'reel on the far side of the planet from Az'reel City in order to avoid enemy fire while they were vulnerable. From there they'd proceeded to circumnavigate the globe in the upper atmosphere at Mach 10, and so closed the distance between themselves and their first target in about twenty minutes. That target was approaching now, and Carter had it lined up in her HUD.
She snapped the radio on again and began reciting orders, her voice tight and calm, the way it always became during battle. "Listen up. Line abreast, loose formation. Descend to Angel-2. Refractive shields double-front. Closing speed 400 kph. Phasers medium power, maximum refire rate. Concentrate on the ground targets. If there's air cover, Max will handle it. Otherwise, we make two strafing passes and then move on to the next site. Understood?"
A chorus of confident "Yo's" answered her. Carter allowed herself a moment of pride in her team, then settled back into her battle mentality and began charging her phasers.
The first munitions dump was almost in range. There was no sign of air support, which was a relief. It eliminated one source of return fire from the list. The second the dump was in range, the Banshees opened fire. At only medium strength, the pulse phasers had enough energy reserve to refire extremely rapidly, and a medium strength phaser will blow up a fuel barrel just as handily as a full strength blast.
The neural tie-in through her Banshee provided full tactical data inside her helmet, but as they overflew the dump site on the first run, Carter took a quick visual look with her own eyes. In the pale moonlight, the world was painted shades of gray. The complex consisted of a few low, hardened bunker-type buildings surrounded by several yards filled with stacked 55-gallon drums, ground vehicles and unidentifiable crates. Most were burning. She ordered Sam and Max to switch to quantum cannons while the rest stayed with phasers for the second pass.
The bunkers didn't stand a chance against Sam's cyber-enhanced pinpoint accuracy and Max's esper-enhanced luck, and were quickly blown to bits.
There had been no return fire. Carter wondered briefly at this. Judging by the size of the explosions in the munitions yards, the site had been an active storehouse. Perhaps the Mullurans were getting desperate and had sent every last man to the front to fight leaving no one here to guard the supplies. Well, bad move, fellas, she thought. This is one supply dump no one is going to have to guard ever again.
The Banshees tightened up their formation again and flew on. Their next target was about fifty klicks to the southeast. The targeting computer had switched Carter's HUD over to the next site automatically, but it was picking up something unexpected. Max had picked up on it too, and now her voice came over the radio. "I have high levels of comm traffic coming from the site directly ahead," she said.
Carter instructed her system to go to extreme long-range visual, and was immediately rewarded with a low-res view of the target site. More munitions yards spread their acreage around a central cluster of hardened bunkers. It looked almost exactly like the site they'd just destroyed, except for the tall communication towers sprouting around the bunkers.
Her blood ran cold. The Mullurans can't be allowed to alert their forces! She was sure they couldn't detect the Banshees yet -- they were still too far out and flying too low and had their refractive shields on. A heartbeat later, she was on the comm. "Sam! Scan the target site ahead of us. Can you take out the comm towers from here?" She waited as Sam took in the data.
Finally, Sam's voice came back. "Yes, but I'll have to climb higher to overcome the curvature of the planet's surface."
"Do it."
"Aye."
On Carter's HUD, Sam's Banshee went vertical, climbing higher and higher, until it was at just under Angel-20. Then, from its perch at 20,000 feet, cloaked by its refractive shields, it lobbed a pair of quantum pulses back earthward. On Carter's HUD, they seemed to descend like a pair of snowflakes, but when they alighted on the rooftops of the hardened bunkers at the munitions dump, they blossomed into miniature mushroom clouds.
An instant later, "Move in!" Carter shouted to the rest of her team. The remaining four Banshees flashed forward, phasers blaring, and finished off whatever wasn't already burning. Sam rejoined them midway through their second pass over the site.
Afterward, as the Banshees turned toward their next target, Carter thought, Two down, one to go.
The third munitions dump proved to be much more primitive than the previous two. There were a few clusters of equipment, but there were no antennae or hardened bunkers, just a few tents pitched a short distance away. As the Banshees passed overhead, some few soldiers came scrambling out of the tents firing old-fashioned guns at their attackers. The lead pellets did no damage against the Banshees' shields, and the explosions in the munitions yards soon engulfed everything.
Carter clicked her radio back on and tuned it to the proper frequency. "Banshees to Colonel Tarik. Mission accomplished."