“Thank you, Henry. Well done! Keep me updated, will you? Can you contact my office and send printouts to Corporal Simms?”
“Yessir. Right away!”
Fitz gritted his teeth. Well. They were still alive. So he would just have to go ahead. But M’Batha would have sounded less cheerful with his “good news” if he’d understood that it meant waking General Cartup-Kreutzler. Fitz was under no delusions as to how the general was going to feel about this . . .
“Got any food in this rattletrap?” asked Ariel, yawning.
Fitz grinned wryly. “In two minutes you can start on Carrot-up. How’s that?”
Ariel made a face. Which, on a rat, was something to see. “Blech! A little lard goes a long way.”
* * *
The gate guards were no match for Major Conrad Fitzhugh at his most glacial.
“Halt!”
“Private. I am going to count to three. If you don’t take that damnfool firearm out of my face, I’ll inspect it.” Fitz’s tone was cold enough to make liquid nitrogen seem like bathwater.
The rifle was hastily lowered. “Uh. Nobody is allowed in here, sir.”
Fitz raised an eyebrow . . . on the bad side of his face. “Do you know what happens when you use a high-velocity automatic rifle within interpenetrated slowshields?” he asked quietly. His voice was terrifyingly even.
His eyes swept the small squad of soldiers. After a moment’s hesitation, one of them spoke. The corporal in charge.
“Uh. Nossir.”
“Have you heard the word ‘ricochet,’ Corporal?” Fitz spoke between clenched teeth. “It means both of us end up dead. Outside the shield it is totally useless. Inside you’ve got just one shot. What sort of defense are you against the Magh’?”
“Uh. Major dien Thiem had us issued us with these, sir.”
“He and I will have words in the morning.” There was now helium frost in the major’s tone. “Now, stand aside. I need to see General Cartup-Kreutzler on a security matter of the highest urgency.”
“Erm. He . . . he’s not alone, Major Fitzhugh.”
The major smiled. The guards cringed. They knew who he was. Sometimes a reputation helped. So did a shark’s smile. “He needs to see me. And see me he will, even if he’s entertaining Shaw’s daughter to a private soireé. Now, open those gates.”
They did.
He drove past them, down the long curving avenue to the door of the general’s little country retreat, just outside of the town. The general had a handsome mansion in town too . . . with a wife and children in it. That didn’t have armed guards at the gates.
The pager bleeped again.
“Can’t a girl sleep around here?” muttered Ariel.
The major pulled up. Took the communicator out of his pocket. “Yes?”
“The infrared scan, sir! Definitely a vehicle, sir, and, and there was a huge heat trace further in. Really big.”
“I wonder if that was them buying it,” said Conrad with a trace of regret. “They can’t go on like this . . .”
There was a moment’s silence. Then a gleeful: “NO! They’ve just come out in between the next two, sir. They’re REALLY giving it to the Maggots, Major!”
Chapter 29: The paradigms of war.
Chip had to hold Ginny and steer. Words just seemed pitifully inadequate.
And then they rounded the corner. The floor was solid wall-to-wall Maggots and there was no way to slow down or stop. Chip knew that hitting two or three hundred slowshields at that speed was going to be like driving into a thirty-foot thick concrete wall.
Only . . . it wasn’t.
“Brace yourselves!” He shouted. They hit the Maggots. And kept plowing through. Crunch and splatter. Ginny was knocking them back with a shovel. The Maggots weren’t slowshielded. And they weren’t warrior types either. They were mostly small, weird-shaped specialists drafted into line as a solid cork.
Eventually, though, the tractor was brought to a stop by the sheer weight of crushed bodies. Chip grabbed the chainsaw from where it hung, ripped the pull cord and thrust it at Ginny. “Take this! Gimme that.” He snatched the shovel from her and belted at a pick-snouted Maggot. Beside him he heard the chainsaw ripping and growling.