“What sort of equipment do the defenders have?” Captain Bailey asked. He was looking at Kaehler.
“They don’t have anything, sir,” Dresser replied. He knew—all three of them knew—that Kaehler wasn’t going to speak. “I thought they were dead, but a few minutes again, they moved a little.”
Military operations on mantra had ceased generations before. The Ichton columns grinding away the rock on which the pair of indigenes sheltered were miners, not troops.
“Pan back a little ways, Kaehler,” Bailey said. “I want to get a view of the enemy.”
Kaehler didn’t respond.
The Mantrans were life-sized images above the purring console. One of them coiled more tightly. Bright yellow blotches of fungus were the only color on either body. Illumination from the Ichton colonies turned the hue to sickly green.
Bailey cursed under his breath. He stamped back toward the support module.
When her superior was halfway to his proper position, Kaehler adjusted her controls. The apparent viewpoint lifted, giving Dresser a view of the approaching Ichtons.
The plateau on which the pair of Mantrans lay was artificial. Mining equipment ground away the rock from six directions, lowering the surface of the plain—of the planet—by twenty meters. A snake of tubing connected each of the grinding machines to one of the Ichton colonies which squatted on the horizon. There the material would be sorted, processed, and built into the mothership growing at the heart of each colony.
The closed conveyors gleamed with magnetic shields. Such protection was now unnecessary. Not even rain fell. Separate conveyor lines carried tailings, the waste that not even Ichton efficiency could use, into the ocean basins already drained by the invaders’ requirements.
Cutting heads snuffled up and down the face rock, then moved in a shallow arc to either side with the close of each stroke. An Ichton in shimmering body armor rode each machine, but there was no obvious need for such oversight. The cutters moved like hounds casting, missing nothing in a slow inexorability that was far more chilling than a cat’s lithe pounce.
Bits of the upper edge of the plateau dribbled into the maw of a cutter rising to the top of its stroke. One of the Mantrans coiled because the ground was shifting beneath its segmented body. Dresser wasn’t sure that the movement was conscious. Certainly the indigene made no concerted effort to escape.
Not that escape was possible.
Kaehler touched her controls, focusing down on the two Mantrans. The images swelled to larger than life size. Edges lost definition.
One of the creatures was chewing on a piece of cloth. Its chitinous jaws opened and closed with a sideways motion. The fabric, a tough synthetic, remained unaffected by the attempt to devour it.
“The left one has a weapon!” Captain Bailey suddenly cried. “Increase the resolution, Kaehler! This must be it!”
Dresser could see that the Mantran, writhing as the plateau disintegrated beneath it, didn’t have a weapon. The yellow fungus had eaten away much of the creature’s underside. Most of its walking legs were withered, and one had fallen off at the root. That, hard-shelled and kinked at an angle, was what Bailey’s desperation had mistaken for a weapon.
Kaehler turned toward her superior. “I can’t increase the resolution with a hundred-millimeter aperture,” she said in a voice as empty as the breeze.
Bailey stood at the edge of his module. His head was silhouetted by the telltale behind him. “You could if you were any good at your job!” he shouted. “I’m tired of your excuses!”
The cutting head rose into sight on the display. The Ichton riding it pointed his weapon, a miniature version of the flux generators which had devoured armor denser than the heart of a star.
Kaehler stared at Bailey. Her left hand raised a panel on the front of her console. She didn’t look down at it.
Dresser touched the woman’s shoulder with his left hand. He was icy cold. “Ah, ma’am?” he said.
“All right, Captain,” Kaehler said in a voice like hoarfrost. “I’ll enlarge—”
“Wait!” Bailey shouted.
Dresser didn’t know what was about to happen, but he wouldn’t have lived as long as he had without being willing to act decisively on insufficient data. He gripped Kaehler and tried to lift her out of her seat.