The scenery in Valles Huebenweg was spectacular.
The mountains were gigantic, far more impressive than anything Britannia Mesa could boast, and the valleys were deep and wide. The rover followed the path of a road from before The Freeze that ran half way up the eastern side of the valley with a precipitous drop to their right, worrying Andrew that a sudden fall of ice might send them tumbling to their doom. The floor of the valley was dotted with several large towns, though, and Cheval worried that they might drop into another ice covered building if they followed that route, even though the ice here was several times as deep as it had been north of the mountains. They would have followed the road even without the threat of the towns, though. The valley branched in several places, many of which also led to the other side of the mountains, and there was no telling which path Fox had taken and so they had to keep following his tracks.
After they'd been following the valley for a couple of hours Cheval entered the cockpit looking happy and excited. "There was an earthquake at Monte Bondone a few weeks ago," he said. "A big one. We've been waiting for a satellite to pass over the region and we've just got some new images." He tapped some commands into the display interface and a satellite photo appeared on one of the monitor screens. He pointed to a part of the valley considerably further south of their current position.
"There's been an avalanche," he said with grim satisfaction. "A big one. The entire floor of the valley is blocked with loose ice, and the ice still on the valley walls will be too unstable for a rover to drive over it. The risk of another avalanche would be too great. If he went that way he'll be forced to turn back and try another path. He'll have lost hours of time."
"If he turned back, his return path might be on the other side of the valley," said Andrew, though. "We might miss it. We might still have to follow him to the site of the earthquake and follow his trail back. We won't gain any time on him."
"Unless we can anticipate his alternate route," the Sergeant answered. "He'll want to backtrack as little as possible so he'll take the first alternate path he comes to heading back south." He tapped a finger on the monitor screen. "My money's on Civezanno. To the east."
"That would mean he'd have to remain on this side of Heubenweg," said Andrew, though. "There'd be less chance of us stumbling across his return tracks if he were on the western side of the valley. Suppose he took the Mezzolombardo pass?"
"That would require him to backtrack more than twice as far," said Cheval doubtfully.
"But it would pay off for him if it took us longer to pick up his trail again."
Cheval stared ahead of himself, his eyes unfocused, as he considered the idea. "We don't need to know which path he took," he said at last. "We know where he's going. Etna Mons. All we've got to do is get there before him."
"If that's where he's going," said Andrew.
"Have you thought of something else? Some other way for him to dispose of the dysprosium permanently?"
"No, but maybe he has. With the other two rovers out of commission he might strike out to the west, head for Atlantica Planitia. Look for a gap in the ice where he can drop it into liquid water."
"New London has already sent out another couple of rovers to rescue the crews of rovers seventeen and eighteen. If Fox started heading west, the rescue rovers could cut him off. He'd be a fool to try it when he has a clear lead over us and a plausible destination ahead of him. No, he's heading for Etna Mons. I'm sure of it." He fell silent for a few moments, staring ahead again as if looking at the idea from all angles, looking for flaws and weaknesses. Then he nodded, though. "Etna Mons," he said again. "And all we've got to do is get there first. We're taking the Civizenno pass. I'll tell the others."
Andrew nodded as the Sergeant left the cockpit, heading back for the makeshift command centre in the childrens' bedroom.
☆☆☆
A few hours later Andrew went to get some sleep, leaving Cheval in charge in the cockpit. He returned after a sleep that lasted longer than he'd intended to find that the Sergeant had been replaced by Windsor. "Sorry," he apologised as he took his place in the co-pilot's chair. "Overslept. I must have been tireder that I realised."
"No worries," the Constable replied. He reached down to rub his bandaged foot. It was sprained rather than broken, he'd been relieved ro find, but that only meant it wouldn't take as long to heal. In the meantime, he was as handicapped as if it were broken.
"Everything is very boring here," he continued. "Fox is still going south and we are still chasing after him. You get as much sleep as you need."
"Have we reached Civezzano yet?" Andrew stared at the cockpit displays to see for himself. They were just approaching it now, he saw. Soon, they would see if Cheval's guess had been correct.
He took the rover as high up the side of the valley as he dared so that when they came to the side pass they could search the entire width of its entrance for the tracks left by Fox's rover. Cheval returned to help him look, and both policemen gave a cry of delight and triumph when they saw them. The original tracks left by Fox's rover continued to lead straight ahead, but crossing them from right to left was a second set of tracks leading into Civezzano. They all knew for a fact that no other rover had been this way since The Emergence began. The second set of tracks could only have been left by Fox, forced to turn back by the ice fall ahead and take an alternate route.
"We must have gained six hours on him!" declared Cheval triumphantly, leaning forward in the co-pilot's chair as if it would somehow make the rover go faster. "And still nearly a thousand kilometres to go before we reach Etna. We've got him! By God we've got him!"
A mood of celebration reigned in the rover for the rest of the day, therefore, as they imagined themselves gaining on the other rover kilometre by kilometres as the other man was forced to carefully navigate unfamiliar terrain. Andrew's rover, in contrast, could drive at full speed across ground that had already been proven to be safe by their quarry. Cheval was confident that Fox had no more explosives. There was a limit to how much he could have hidden at the dig site and he'd had no opportunity to obtain more supplies and equipment from the city. They wouldn't have to worry about a repeat of what had happened at Augsburg.
As evening was approaching and Andrew and Windsor were starting to think about what they were going to have for their evening meal, though, they were surprised to feel the rover come to a halt. The gentle rocking and bouncing of the rover as it travelled across the uneven terrain had become so familiar to them that they barely noticed it any more, and when it suddenly stopped it took them a few moments to identify what it was about their environment that had changed. When the truth hit then they both jumped to their feet at the same time, anxious and worried, but before they could investigate Cheval came back from the cockpit with a look of excitement on his face.
"The infra-red camera's picked up a heat source from up ahead," he said. "Consistent with what you would expect from a hab-rover."
"A stationary source?" said Windsor.
"Yes. Higher up the valley wall than you'd expect a rover to be, but Fox might have been forced to climb higher to go around an obstruction of some kind."
"And then he broke down?" said Andrew. "You think it's him? Stopped for some reason?"
"Laying another trap for us, perhaps," said Cheval. "That's why I thought it prudent to stop here for a bit while we investigate further. Make sure it's safe before we take our transport into danger."
"The bug," said Windsor, nodding. He turned to Andrew. "I assume you've got a bug?"
"Of course I've got a bug," Andrew replied. "It's standard equipment."
He went to the cockpit, followed by the others, and tapped out the command to open the bug bay and deploy the remote controlled crawler. The spider shaped robot was lowered gently to the ice by its deployment arm and then went scuttling off along the tracks left by Fox's rover. Andrew, sitting in the co-pilot's seat, directed it by means of a joystick and watched the images its cameras were sending back on the monitor screens. He sent it higher up the side of the valley and made it stop when it reached a position from which it had a good view of the valley ahead for several miles.
It was getting darker as the sun set, but the heat source was clearly visible in the infra-red image as a bright splash of red amongst the blues and greys of the mountains. "Take it closer," said Cheval. "If he has suffered some kind of malfunction, he might be planning to steal our rover. He might be hiding somewhere with a rifle. See if you can spot a smaller, secondary heat source."
Andrew nodded and moved the joystick forward, sending the bug on its way, it's own on-board computers directing its legs to comply with the wishes being sent from the rover. It was slow, though. It could travel at only a fraction of the speed of the rover and the three men fidgeted impatiently as the heat source grew closer at a glacial rate. For a while, the heat source disappeared from view as the bug went into a depression, and the three men had to wait for fifteen tense minutes for it to climb up the opposite side.
When the heat source came into view again, though, it was closer and they were able to make out some extra details. "That doesn't look like a rover," said Windsor, frowning at the image on the monitor screen. "What the hell is that?"
"There's another heat source," said Andrew, pointing at the screen. "A mobile one."
It was further down the valley and was emerging from the knob of rock and ice that had hidden us from view until now. "That's the rover," said Cheval, frowning with worry. "Which means that this..." He pointed at the first heat source.
"An automatic sentry weapon," said Windsor. "He stopped so he could reactivate it. I'm sending the deactivation code." He tapped at the command screen, then frowned at the message that appeared on it. "As we thought," he said. "He's changed the codes. He can control it but we can't. I've got an identification, though. It's a CREW9-14."
He tapped the screen again and an image appeared on another monitor screen. A photograph, taken before The Freeze. It showed what looked like a piece of field artillery but with a cylindrical drum instead of a long gun barrel. The drum had a small, glass window in the end which, according to the rows of text underneath the image, was where the fifty kilowatt laser beam was emitted. It could be used in several modes; in low power to dazzle the eyesight of infantryman and burn out electronics, or in high power to disable vehicles by targeting their wheels or tracks. It could also destroy an enemy military vehicle completely if it was able to detonate its explosives. They wouldn't have to worry about that, but if the weapon took out two of their wheels then their pursuit of Fox was over.
"After two hundred years it's plutonium power core will be badly depleted," said Cheval, leaning forward in his seat and staring at the image intently. "It'll take time to charge its capacitors enough to fire at us at full power. Even if it takes out one of our wheels we'll be past it and out of range before it's ready to fire again."
"According to our information, New Rome deployed six of those things here," said Windsor, though. "If he's taken the power cores from the others and hooked them together, that weapon could be back to full strength, meaning it can fire at full power every twenty seconds. We'll be a sitting duck."
"Fox is a historian," said Cheval, though. "He doesn't have the technical knowledge to do something like that."
"He had the technical knowledge to reactivate the weapon," pointed out Windsor. "Maybe he was coached in what to do. We know he has collaborators who are all working together. Kartoshka was able to co-ordinate his move to coincide with Fox's turn to the south. An expert might have told him what to do."
Cheval stared at him, then turned back to the monitor screen, his jaw clenching as he watched Fox's rover dwindling in the distance. So close! No more than a couple of kilometres away now. Andrew saw his hands clenching into fists, but then he nodded.
"Okay," he said. "We'll have to take it out before we go any further."
"Take it out?" said Andrew, staring at him in horror.
"Yes, take it out. It's in our way."
"You'll be killed! You're mad!"
"Those things were deployed in groups for a reason," said Cheval, though. "To provide overlapping fields of fire so that each one could protect the others. One alone will be vulnerable. We can climb above it and approach it from behind."
"It can turn and aim in any direction," said Windsor, frowning. "Even up and behind."
Cheval nodded. "We'll use the bug to provide a distraction," he said. "While it's shooting at the bug we can run to the blind spot at its base. Then we can get into its control box and there'll be nothing it can do to stop us."
"I can't climb with this foot," said Windsor, looking shame faced and guilty.
Cheval nodded. "Birch, you're with me then."
"I'm not going up against a sentry weapon! It's suicide. You go, if you've got a sudden hankering to commit suicide. I'm staying right here."
"Nobody goes out alone," the Sergeant replied. "The rule exists for a reason. I may need your help if I get into trouble out there."
"Tough shit. I'm not getting shot full of holes by a sentry weapon. If you go out, you go out alone."
The Sergeant glowered at him. Andrew was a civilian. Cheval had no authority over him. He couldn't order him to risk his life. "I'll talk to New London," he said. "Maybe they'll have another solution."
He stalked out of the cockpit towards the ladder to the upper level, leaving Andrew and Windsor in an awkward silence behind him.