The other glider-drone, too, was eventually deployed, thus cutting the mapping time down considerably. After all, there was a limited amount of time left to complete the mission and the Cristobal Colon, while it was never bright enough to actually understand what had happened to it, was certainly intelligent enough to follow its programming and retrace its steps.
Chapter Three
My sons were faithful… and they fought. -Padraic Pearse, The Mother
Cochea, 10/7/459 AC
Hennessey leaned back from his keyboard, blanking his mind of distractions as he tried to match what he remembered from the invasion of a dozen years before with the sequence of events as related by Jimenez. That was, in fact, the entire purpose of the exercise, to construct an objective history of the 447 invasion by testing it against both sides.
And besides, Hennessey thought, my side had all the histories written by ourselves. What will happen to the memory of good men who fought and died on the other side if Jimenez and I don't write down their story?
For himself, he remembered his mechanized infantry company standing by on radio listening silence from just after sundown until the order came to roll. The armored personnel carriers-or "tracks," boxy M-224s-he had pulled into hide positions off the main road that led from Fort Muddville to Ciudad Balboa, paralleling the Transitway. The engines he'd ordered to be left idling-an armored vehicle once stopped could not be guaranteed to start again-while he and his subordinates went over the plans and contingencies for the umpteenth time.