The bladder twitched and deposited another egg high up on the wall. The bladder was alive. Its head and torso were as large as those of the giants but dwarfed by the swollen obscenity of the abdomen to which they attached. Its beak was thrust into the wall of the tree. A line of scarred punctures around the cavern indicated that at intervals the creature changed the point from which it sucked sap.
The mother.
Abbado fired his rocket into the abdomen of the mother in instinctive revulsion instead of killing the right-hand guard as his conscious mind had planned. Backblast reflected from the cavern wall flung him forward. The giants’ clubstrokes, scissoring from either side, struck behind him.
The giants stood between Abbado and the entrance. They raised their clubs with the deft ease of elephants lifting their trunks. Abbado dived between them, collided with the first bend in the passage, and pulled a pair of grenades from his belt. He tossed them into the cavern, then tossed two more.
He’d managed to dodge around the second baffle before the bombs went off. The blast spat him like the cork from a champagne bottle instead of smashing him against the dense wood. He sprawled on the bare ground, then rose to all fours with difficulty.
“How many rockets we got?” Abbado asked. His eyes were closed. His back and neck ached, and his calves had a chilly prickle that probably meant they were bleeding. “I want all your rockets.”
“Sarge, you can’t go back in there,” Matushek said.
“We all go back in there,” Abbado said. He pushed himself upright and turned around. “The rest of you keep the big fuckers off me. And I take care of that filthy thing, I swear I do. Fast! Give me the rockets now.”
They only had six including the motor whose warhead Abbado’d used to pop open the bridge hatch. The patrol was heavy on ammo and grenades; Horgen, Foley, and Matushek carried grenade launchers as well as stingers. 3-3’d prepared for a shipload of Spooks without much in the way of rocket targets.
Well, they’d need the grenades. Maybe the stingers too, though Abbado doubted pellets had enough penetration to bring down one of those guards in time to do him any good.
He armed the six rockets. He carried one in each hand; the other four—three and a half—dangled from his belt. Arming the rockets was about the most dangerous thing Guilio Abbado had done since he enlisted, but it wasn’t like there was a lot of choice.
“You all saw what’s waiting in there,” he said to the other strikers. “Blohm and Caldwell, you go as far as the second turn and each throw two grenades into the chamber. Don’t waste time getting back. When they blow, I go in and start doing my job. Grenade launchers follow, then Blohm and Caldwell again. Don’t know how much good stingers’ll do, but it can’t hurt.”
Abbado smiled. “Watch how you come,” he added. “I don’t want you all stuck in the doorway while the folks inside are pulling my legs off.”
It didn’t occur to Abbado that his strikers wouldn’t follow. They had to follow. Otherwise the job wouldn’t get done.
“Ace, give me an electrical,” Blohm said. Matushek handed him one. The scout carried a pair of fuel-air grenades. Mixing the effects was a good idea.
Blohm thumbed both grenade switches. “Let’s do it,” Caldwell said as she stepped into the passage.
A thousand one, a thousand two, a thousand three—
Abbado didn’t bother to remote the lead team’s display. Caldwell wouldn’t be going far enough to see anything and Blohm was behind her.
A thousand four—
Blohm reappeared and jumped to the left side of the opening.
A thousand five—
Caldwell, her mouth open to equalize pressure, dodged out and to the right. None of the strikers were in the path of the angled shockwave.
A thousand s—
Red flame belched from the opening. A spurt of acrid black smoke followed.
Abbado stepped into the passage with the grace of a dancer. He held his rockets upright. If he knocked a fuze against passage walls, he’d blow himself and Horgen behind him to hell in little pieces.