Tactical Error Read Online Free Page A

and apparently extensive vocal communication, defending their
colonies through the diligence of constant sentries. Their most remarkable
trait is their ability to mimic the sound of other animals, even complex
speech, with truly amazing clarity.”
    “Thus spake Zarathustra,” Lenna said under her breath.
“Knowing our friends, they probably have an entire colony of vast
proportions surrounding their damned base. Hello!”
    “Hello!” several dozen ice gophers obligingly called
back.
    “Heigh-dee heigh-dee ho!”
    “Heigh-dee heigh-dee ho!
    “Heigh-dee heigh-dee hay!”
    “Heigh-dee heigh-dee hay!”
    “By the gods, what a feeling of power!” Lenna said to herself,
then started forward again through the middle of the colony. “Take it,
maestro!”
    “Hey heigh-dee heigh-dee, heigh-dee hay a gopher hole!” Bill
roared in a deep, gravelly voice as he followed, his massive hull seeming to
sway in time with the rhythm. He was a machine of many unique talents, but
music was not one of them.
     
    The first hint Lenna had that they were anywhere near the base was when the
small patrol ship came over the top of the hill to their left, moving quickly
to intercept them. She recognized the ship immediately as a hover tank, a
fairly standard type used by the Union in rugged terrain, part attack craft
with powerful weapons and part transport. It could fly like a real aircraft for
covering rough ground, although it usually hovered just over the surface on a
form of field drive to save power. It could even float, although such a
function was of little use in this place.
    The tank settled to the ice a short distance away and the main hatch opened,
dropping down to form a boarding ramp. Lenna waited patiently while a pair of
soldiers in environmental suits like her own stepped out.
    “What are you doing out here?” the apparent leader of the pair
asked. At least he asked in the calm, almost bored voice of someone who
expected a perfectly reasonable answer. After all, Lenna was dressed as one of
their own and walking about this disgruntled countryside with a sentry. She
relaxed.
    “Performing cold-weather exercises on this experimental model,”
she explained, indicating Bill. He bent one foreleg and nodded. “We were
flying along when something came up behind us in a hurry and blasted us
good.”
    “Must have been that rebel freighter that made that laughable pass at
the base three days ago,” the second of the two offered.
    “I imagine so, considering the fact that you’ve been walking due
west along its approach,” the first one agreed. “Why don’t we
give you a ride in, as much as that might seem like better late than
never.”
    “How far are we from the base?” Lenna asked as she directed Bill
into the rear portion of the tank.
    “Oh, it’s just over that next hill, not more than a kilometer
away.”
    There was certainly something to be said about being delivered to the front
door, although she was just as glad that they had not found her before this. As
it was, it seemed likely that she would be allowed to simply disappear inside
the base as soon as they arrived. Otherwise, after finding her in the middle of
the frozen nowhere, there would have been too much time to wonder about her,
perhaps even to test her identity to greater depth than her forged idents could
endure.
    The base was sprawled across the icefield that filled the wide, circular
depression of a valley that appeared to be the better part of fifty kilometers
across, although only the tops of a few mostly-buried buildings broke through
the surface of the snow in widely-scattered clumps. Very little information
existed about this base, and no photographs. Lenna was not surprised to find
that the largest part of the complex was actually deep underground, in the zone
of constant temperatures and therefore sheltered from the deadly cold of the
winter storms.
    The tank cut a straight path across the ice to the nearest of many long,
featureless