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HOSTAGE SITUATION

There is no greater tactical disadvantage than the presence of precious noncoes: treat them as already lost

--ANONYMOUS 167 PILOT

The five s with the suddenness of coins thrown into sunlight The disks of their rotary wings shi across prisms of motion Master Pilot Jocim Marx noted with pleasure the precision of his squadron&039;s forencer craft perfectly formed a square centered upon his own

"Don&039;t we look pretty?" Marx said

"Pretty obvious, sir," Hendrik answered She was the squadron&039;s second pilot, and it was her job to worry

"A little light won&039;t hurt us," Marx said flatly "The Rix haven&039;t had ti with eyes"

He said it not to remind Hendrik, who knew damn well, but to reassure their squadron-mates The other three pilots were nervous; Marx could hear it in their silence None of them had ever flown a mission of this importance before

But then, who had?

Marx&039;s own nerves were beginning to play on hiencers had covered half the distance fro any resistance The Rix were obviously ill-equipped, ile advantage: the hostages But surely they had made preparations for small craft

After a fewwas over

"I&039; echolocation from dead ahead, sir," Pilot Oczar announced

"I can see them," Hendrik added "Lots of them"

The enemy interceptors resolved before Marx&039;s eyes as his craft responded to the threat, enhancing vision with its other senses, incorporating data from the squadron&039;s other craft into his layers of synesthesia As Marx had predicted, the interceptors were s, sinuous grappling ar surface, which was more screw than blade The devices looked rather like soo, a contraption powered by the toil of tiny led before Marx There were a lot of theuely obscene fascination as creatures fro with a blind and angry abandon

Master Pilot Marx tilted his Intelligencer&039;s rotary wing forward and increased its power His ship rose above the interceptor, barely rimaced at the near miss Another interceptor caher, and he reversed his wing&039;s rotation, pushing the ship down, dropping below its grasp

Around hih the swarm of interceptors Their voices came at him from all sides of his cockpit, directionally biased to reflect their position relative to his

From above, Hendrik spoke, the tension of a hard turn in her voice "You&039;ve seen these before, sir?"

"Negative," he replied He&039;d fought the Rix Cult many times, but their small craft were evolutionary Shout every generation Characteristics that succeeded were incorporated into the next production round You never knehat new shapes and strategics Rix craft er than I&039;ve soon, and the behavior&039;s morevolatile"

"They sure look pissed off," Hendrik agreed

Her choice of words was apt Two interceptors ahead of Marx sensed his craft, and their arators when prey has stepped into reach He rolled his Intelligencer sideways, narrowing his vulnerable area as he slipped between them

But there were encer&039;s profile was still too large Marx retracted his craft&039;s sensory array, trading away vision for coe, however, the closest interceptors resolved to terrible clarity, the data layers provided by first-, second-, and third-level sight al hislike a snake&039;s spine, the cilia of an earspot casting jagged shadows in the hard sunlight Marx squinted at the cilia, gesturing for a zoom until the little hairs towered around hi sound to track us," he announced "Silence your echolocators now"

The view before hiht, and the interceptors were audio-only, his squadron would be undetectable to theled!" Pilot Oczar shouted froot a sensor post!"

"Don&039;t fight!" Marx ordered "Just lizard"

"Ejecting post," Oczar said, releasing his ship&039;s captured li interceptor tu to the ejected sensor post with blind deterencer tilted crazily as its pilot tried to co heavy, sir," Hendrik warned Marx switched his view to Hendrik&039;s perspective for aswarht lines of their long grapples sparkled like a shattered, drifting spiderweb in the sun

There were too many

Of course, there were backups already advancing froencers was destroyed, another squadron would be ready, and eventually a craft or tould get through But there wasn&039;t tience, and soon Failure to provide it would certainly end careers, ht even constitute an Error of Blood

One of these five craft had to hten up the formation and increase lift," Marx ordered "Oczar, you stay down"

"Yes, sir," the man answered quietly Oczar knehat Marx intended for his craft

The rest of the squadron swept in close to Marx The four Intelligencers rose together, jostling through the writhing defenders

"Time for you to make some noise, Oczar," Marx said "Extend your sensor posts to full length and activity"

"Up to a hundred, sir"

Marx looked down as Oczar&039;s craft grew, a spider with twenty splayed legs e suddenly froht The interceptors around Oczar grewtheir shapes with ultrasonic pulses, , and millimeter radar

Already, the dense cloud of interceptors was beginning to react Like a burst of pollen caught by a sudden wind, they shifted toward Oczar&039;s craft

"We&039;re going through blind and silent," Marx said to the other pilots "Find a gap and push toward it hard We&039;ll be cutting le, sir," Oczar said "Two"

"Feel free to defend yourself"

"Yes, sir!"

On Marx&039;s status board, the counterdrones in Oczar&039;s azine counted down quickly The man launched a pair as he confirmed the order, then another a few seconds later The interceptors lanced down at Oczar&039;s craft The bilateral geo to twist, burdened by the thrashing defenders Through the speakers, Oczar grunted with the effort of keeping his craft intact

Marx raised his eyes from the battle and peered forward The re the densest rank of the interceptor cloud Oczar&039;s diversion had thinned it soh

"Pick your hole carefully," Marx said "Get some speed up Retraction on my mark Fivefourthree"

He let the count fade, concentrating on flying his own craft He had aiap in the interceptors, but one had drifted into the center of his path Marx reversed his rotor and boosted power, driving his craft doard

The drone loo h

"Retract now!" he ordered The view blurred and faded as the sensor posts on the ship furled In seconds, Marx&039;s vision went dark

"Cut your main rotors," he commanded

The small craft would be almost silent now, i at their rear It would push the craft were already beginning to fall

Marx checked the altiht, the craft would take at least a round Even with its sensor array furled and ence craft fell no faster than a speck of dust

Indeed, the Intelligencers were not hter With a wingspan of a single millimeter, they were very small craft indeed

Master Pilot Jocience, had flown microships for eleven years He was the best

He had scouted for light infantry in the Coreward Bands Revolt Hiswater, the hemispherical surface holed with dozens of carbon whisker fans, each of which could run at its own speed He was deployed on the battlefield in those days, flying his craft through a VR helmet He stayed with the platoon staff under their portable forcefield, wandering about blind to his surroundings That had never set easy with hi hi explosively on the synesthetic real his craft steady in the unpredictable Bandian winds His craft would paint enemy snipers with an undetectable x-ray laser, which swar kills Mark&039;s steady hand could guide a projectile into a centih the eye-slit of a sniper&039;s caainst Rix hovertanks in the Incursion These projectiles were hollow cylinders, about the size of a child&039;s finger They were launched by infantryman, encased in a rocket-propelled shell for the first half of their short flight When the penetrator deployed, breaking free the instant it spotted a target, it flew purely on momentum Ranks of tiny control surfaces lined the inside of the cylinder, like the baleen plates of soht was an exercise in extree and a penetrator would tuht, its onal weave of the ar down a cloth searated into countlessdown the machine in minutes Marx flew dozens of ten-second ht with fitful microdreams of launch and collision Eventually, backpack AI proved better for the job than hus were still studied by nascent intelligences for their elegance and flair

The last few decades, Marx had worked with the Navy Small craft were now truly ser than a few millimeters across when furled, built by even smaller machines and powered by exotic transuraniu, although they had offensive uses Marx had flown a specially fitted Intelligencer into a fiberoptic AI hub during the Dhantu Liberation, carrying a load of glass-eating nanos that had dismantled the rebel&039;s communication system planetithin minutes

Master Pilot Marx preferred the safety of the Navy At his age, being on the battlefield had lost its thrill Now Marx controlled his craft from shipside, hundreds of kilometers away froel seat like soes that allowed hiht, the parts of his brain nor, siven over to vision Marx experienced his ship&039;s environment as a true pilot should, as if he himself had been shrunk to the size of a human cell

He loved the nhts, Marx burned incense and watched the sency flashlight He noted how air currents curled, how ghostly snakes could be spun with the er, a puff of breath With an inhumanly steady hand he h the air, projecting its i the behavior ofthese dark and silent vigils, Jocim Marx allowed himself to think that he was the best ht

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