Filters clamped his nostrils. The cavern walls glowed through veils of smoke swirling toward the peak of the enormous tree. Three of the giant guards were down near the mouth of the passage. A fourth stood gripping his club, but he’d been blinded by grenade shrapnel. Giants who’d been farther from the entrance lumbered toward the strikers.
Abbado ran ten feet into the cavern and knelt, aiming his rockets at the mother’s abdomen again. Green fluid oozed from the previous wound. The creature coiled like a maggot on a spike. Her limbs were too small to touch the ground, but the whole body writhed.
Abbado fired, right and left together. The backblast shoved him like a hot pillow but didn’t knock him down this time.
He caught the flicker of a club swinging at him. Five grenades fuzed for point impulse went off in quick succession. The charges shattered the guard’s cranial vault just as they would have done body armor or a vehicle’s engine. The great arms continued their swing, but the weapon sailed across the cavern instead of driving Abbado into the ground like a tent peg. A bit of grenade casing whacked his helmet.
Launched grenades burst on two other of the shambling guards. The charges were light enough to minimize the risk to the strikers. Using hand grenades in an enclosure, even an enclosure as large as this one, was next to suicidal; though it might come to that.
Abbado sent two more rockets into the mother. He saw the flash of warheads through the creature’s skin. Caldwell emptied a stinger magazine into the face of a guard; Blohm raked his across the rows of capsules.
The mother had pulled her beak from the wall. Sap dripped from the tip and from the hole in the wood. Abbado put another rocket into her abdomen. Fluid pooled inches deep on the floor beneath the creature; its bloated flesh sagged like a half-inflated balloon.
Foley dodged a swinging club and slipped. The stroke took his legs off at mid thigh. He was too stunned to scream. He twisted, trying to seat a fresh magazine. The launcher had flown from his other hand when the club hit. Matushek and Horgen fired grenades into the giant’s skull. The guard fell forward, crushing Foley beneath it.
Abbado aimed his last rocket at the center of the mother creature’s chest. The projectile flew high without the weight of the warhead. The motor was still burning when it punched through the beaked face and into the wall of the cavern.
“Three-three elements disengage!” Abbado shouted through the bedlam as he sighted his stinger. Ten of the troll-like guards were down; one was clubbing the wall thirty feet away and the last kept coming despite what must have been a dozen fatal grenade blasts. “Three-three and scouts, disengage!”
The guard had no more neck than a rhinoceros. Abbado fired at the throat anyway because it was the one part of the creature’s kill zone that grenades hadn’t cratered. Low flames spread across the fluid leaking from eggs punctured by shrapnel and gunfire. The chamber was becoming noticeably warmer and smokier despite the updraft.
“Get out, for Chrissake!” Abbado said. Using the panoramic display as he backed toward the door, he avoided the guard sprawled behind him.
Three of his strikers were out of the chamber. Horgen reloaded her grenade launcher. Abbado grabbed her by the shoulder and shoved her toward the passage.
The head of the oncoming giant rotated sideways and fell. It continued to roll down the smooth slope toward the burning egg capsules. The body took another step before the weight of the club pulled the decapitated corpse over.
Abbado dodged out of the passage. He dismissed the thought of throwing another grenade behind him. They were likely to need the ordnance on the way back.
And he was so tired. So very tired. The rain-drenched jungle felt unexpectedly cool.
“Good work, people,” Abbado whispered. He tried to reload his stinger and found he’d already done that. He couldn’t imagine when. “Six, this is Three-three. Mission accomplished. We’re heading home. Out.”
“Out” rather than “over.” That was Abbado’s way of saying that nobody was going to task 3-3 for another mission until they’d had time to resupply and recover.