“We shouldn’t be around where people don’t . . . understand what we’re like, sir,” Farrell said. He met al-Ibrahimi’s still blue eyes. “We’re not, not the way civilians mean it. We’re not really human anymore.”
“I’m also concerned about my people, as you put it, Major,” al-Ibrahimi said calmly. “I appreciate the risks to all concerned rather better than you think I do. If I didn’t believe that the risks were justified by the benefits of the colony having C41 as its security element, I wouldn’t have accepted your assignment in the first place.”
Farrell braced to attention. “Yessir,” he said to a point beyond the manager’s right ear. “I’ll return to my strikers then, sir. You’ll find C41 ready to carry out its responsibilities insofar as humanly possible.”
He turned on heel and toe to the door. It was a parade-ground movement that strikers had little call for, but which al-Ibrahimi’s glacial calm seemed to require.
“Major?” al-Ibrahimi said. Farrell glanced back over his shoulder.
“Please recall that I am the project manager, Arthur,” al-Ibrahimi said. “You and your strikers are as surely my people as the civilians they guard.”
He smiled. The manager’s tone and expression were as sad as anything Farrell had seen at a funeral.
“Krishna!” said Caldwell as she watched the projected display. “They’re going to put humans here?”
“They’re going to put us here, Josie,” Ace Matushek said. “I’ve never been sure we qualified as human.”
Bipedal herbivores spread across the holographic landscape, killing everything in sight. “They weigh about forty pounds apiece,” Abbado said, quoting the figure from the database. The creatures’ forelimbs were modified into either horn-edged cutting blades or bulbous tanks of caustic which the creatures could spray a distance of several yards.
Individually the creatures weren’t particularly imposing, but the image taken from a survey ship orbiting Bezant showed tens of thousands in the swarm.
“Like locusts,” Foyle said. “Only they suck the plants dry instead of chewing the leaves off.”
3-3 had a compartment to itself, so Abbado had the squad view the mission background as a unit. Strikers would repeatedly go over the data as individuals during the voyage, but Abbado knew that mission success depended not only on good personnel but on their ability to work together.
He’d have been more comfortable if the major had been able to brief all C41 together, but the transport wasn’t configured to allow that. The major’d given C41 a pep talk in the rotunda of their deck, the only space available that held everybody—barely. The lifts kept opening, and there wasn’t a large-scale holographic projector. Projection from a striker’s helmet worked for one squad in its compartment, but you couldn’t enlarge the image enough for the entire company to see details.
“These things don’t fly,” Abbado said. “Locusts don’t bash farmers over the head if they’re in the field when the swarm lands, though.”
The creatures spooked an animal from its burrow. The solitary animal was an armored quadruped whose stubby limbs bore long claws. Half a dozen young clung to knobs on the adult’s back. The adult bobbed forward awkwardly, handicapped by its rigid carapace.
“What’re these bastards called, do we know?” Glasebrook asked.
“Anything you like, Flea,” Abbado said. “Or anything the cits like, I suppose. There isn’t anybody on Bezant to name them till we get there.”
Dozens of bipeds stopped feeding and jogged ahead of the main swarm, moving to either side of the quadruped’s track. The quadruped lurched to the right. A biped sprayed a cloud of white vapor over the quadruped’s head and forequarters.
The victim rose on its hind legs, clawing furiously with both forelimbs. Two of the young lost their grip and rolled to the ground. Bipeds chopped at them and the adult indiscriminately. The victim’s claws raked open several of the attackers and flung the bodies a dozen yards away, but the site crawled with more bipeds joining the fray.
A caustic fog covered the climax. Abbado didn’t have any difficulty imagining what was going on.
The viewpoint panned upward. Individual creatures lost definition against the background. A wedge of landscape, broadening as it advanced, showed the ashen gray of vegetation from which all life had been sucked. Another scar, similar but for the moment smaller, appeared hundreds of miles west of the first as the image area expanded still further.