In the meantime, however, the understrength battalion of five-hundred-ton Wolverines had been snorting through the jungle for several hours, moving into position, and Nike didn’t know where they were or precisely what they planned. She knew their objective was to reach the depot without being intercepted, yet the way they did it was up to them, and Gonzalez had opted for a multipronged advance. She’d divided her fourteen Wolverines into four separate forces, two of three tanks each and two of four each, operating along the same general axis but advancing across a front of almost fifty kilometers. There was a limit to how rapidly even a Bolo could move through a Santa Cruz jungle, and the colonel clearly hoped to sneak at least one force past Nike while the Bolo dealt with the others. If she could get a big enough start once contact was made, it might even work. Splitting her tanks into detachments wouldn’t really increase the odds against their survival-all fourteen Wolverines together wouldn’t have lasted five minutes against Nike in a stand-up fight-but Nike would have to deal with the separated forces one at a time. It was certainly possible, if not exactly likely, that one of them could outrun her while she swatted its fellows, and A signal beeped, and he twitched upright in his chair. It beeped again, and he turned his chair to the communications console. The screen flickered to life with Lorenco Esteban’s face, and Merrit frowned as he recognized the old man’s tense expression.

“Morning, Lorenco. What can I do for you?”

“I think mebbe y’got a little problem over here at th’ field, Paul,” Esteban said in a low voice. Merrit’s left eyebrow rose, and the old man shrugged. “I got me four Dinochrome Brigade officers out here, headed by a colonel name of Sanders, an’ they’re lookin’ fer you, boy.”

“Sanders?” Merrit let his chair snap upright and frowned as an icy chill ran through him. “Clifton Sanders?”

“That’s him,” Esteban nodded, and Merrit’s lips shaped a silent curse. He could think of only one thing that would bring the sector’s chief Maintenance, Logistics, and Procurement officer to Santa Cruz, but how in hell had anyone on Ursula figured out-?

He shook himself, and his mind raced. He could call off the exercise and order Nike back to base, but there was no regulation against a Bolo commander on independent assignment conducting exercises on his own authority. More to the point, having Nike out of the garage when Sanders arrived would buy at least a little time. That might not be as important as he suddenly feared it might, but the fact that Sanders had come in person, without sending even a single information request first-and hadn’t commed him from the field after arrival, either-was more than simply ominous. It smacked of sneak inspections and an attempt to catch Merrit violating procedure, and, unfortunately, that was exactly what it was going to do, because Merrit hadn’t kept Central “fully informed” of the state of his command as Regs required. He might not have told any actual lies, but he’d certainly done a lot of misleading by omission.

He closed his eyes and thought hard. Sanders himself had a reputation as an administrator, not a technician. He might not realize how far outside parameters Nike was from a cursory examination of her schematics and system specs, but that was probably why he’d brought the others along. Any half-competent Bolo tech would know what he was seeing the moment he pulled up Nike’s readouts. Besides, Sanders wouldn’t be here in the first place if he didn’t already suspect something was out of kilter.

A fist of cold iron squeezed Merrit’s heart at what that might mean. But if Nike wasn’t here when the MLP men arrived, they’d have to at least talk to him before they could shut her down. In fact, he could force them to hear him out by refusing to call her in until they did. It wouldn’t hurt if she’d completed the first phase of the exercise, either. Thin as it might be, his performance log’s authentication of her unique abilities was her only real protection. Of course, if he refused to call her in when ordered, especially after what had happened on Sandlot, he was through in the Brigade, but he suddenly realized how little that meant to him beside protecting Nike’s life.

He opened his eyes and cleared his throat.

“Thanks, Lorenco,” he said softly. “Thanks a lot.”

“Son, I don’t know what all you been up to out there, an’ I don’t rightly care. You’re a friend. You want I should let these yahoos get themselves lost in th’ bush? Reckon it’d take ‘em four, five hours t’find you with the directions I c’n give ‘em.”

“No. I appreciate the offer, but you’d better stay out of this.”

“Huh. Well, how ‘bout I waste an hour or so ‘fore I find ‘em transport? I already set that ‘un up.”

“If you can do it without being obvious, please do,” Merrit said gratefully. “After that, though, you’d better go home and keep as far away from any official involvement as you can.”

“Iffen you say so, boy.” The old man hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “Gotta tell you, Paul-they’s somethin’ squirrely goin’ on here. Can’t put m’finger on it, but I c’n feel it. You watch yerself, hear?”

“I will. Thanks again.” Merrit nodded to the pickup and killed the circuit, then leaned back and fidgeted in his chair. He started to key his link to Nike, then sat back and put his hands in his lap. There was no point worrying her, and she was just likely to argue if he told her he wanted her to stay out of sight. He shook his head. No, much better to leave her in blissful ignorance as long as possible.

He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, and fear fluttered in the pit of his belly.

“I sure hope to hell your ‘associates’ have managed to ‘deal’ with that Bolo, Mister Scully,” Colonel Granger muttered.

“Amen,” someone muttered from the recesses of the big transport’s CIC, and Gerald Osterwelt shrugged.

“You’ve seen the plan, Colonel,” he said mildly. “I can’t blame you for worrying, but I certainly wouldn’t be here if I didn’t expect it to work.”

“I can believe that,” the colonel muttered to herself, and turned away from the glowing tactical display. The single aspect of the plan she most disliked was the tight timing. They were scheduled to hit the planet within two hours of Colonel Sanders’ arrival, and she didn’t like it a bit. It would take less than fifteen minutes for an air car to reach the maintenance depot from the field, and Sanders could burn the Bolo’s command center in less than ten once he got it shut down, so if all went according to schedule, two hours was an ample cushion. But if things didn’t go as scheduled-if they got there too soon, before the Bolo went down, and its commander She clenched her teeth and commanded herself to stop worrying over what she couldn’t change. Besides, Scully was right in at least one respect. The Bolo commander-this Captain Merrit-had to be among the fatalities, because if he wasn’t, the fact that someone had fixed the Bolo would be glaringly evident. But the same thing would be true if anyone on the planet happened to com Central-or anyone else off-planet-and casually mention the presence of “Dinochrome Brigade officers” on Santa Cruz at the same moment a “pirate raid” just happened to hit it.

They had to take out the planet’s com sat relays as the opening gambit of their attack, anyway, because if there were so much as a single Navy destroyer anywhere within jump range of Santa Cruz and a message got out, it could blow all three of Matucek’s Marauders’ starships to scrap. And since they did have to take out Santa Cruz’s FTL communications, they might as well do it as quickly as possible after Sanders’ arrival to ensure that no word of his presence got out. Besides, they didn’t know how thoroughly Merrit had settled in on Santa Cruz, or how much contact he normally had with the locals. If he had friends who knew he was being visited by an off-world deputation, they might well com him to find out how things had gone, and when they didn’t get an answer-or if they figured out he was dead-they were almost certain to com Central. All of which made it highly desirable to hit the planet as soon as possible after Sanders did his dirty work.