Colonists were another matter. Planets were scouted thoroughly before settlement, a luxury that an invasion force didn’t have. If the microbiota was too dangerous, the Population Authority could simply pick another world. The number of nearby Standard Planets—Earthlike within tight parameters—was in the tens of thousands.
“But colonists?” Nessman said.
Meyer rubbed her scalp. Nessman looked like he was going to say something he shouldn’t, like, “You want me to do that?” But he shut his mouth again and raised his right palm in a peace sign.
“I can’t figure out what Military Command thinks it’s doing,” Meyer said. “Don’t ask me to figure out the Pop Authority.”
Nessman had been a rocketeer on Maxus. His crew had launched two of their rounds when a Spook lasered the third. Nessman came out of it okay because he happened to be squatting on the other side of his sergeant when the missile blew up in the cradle. He and Meyer were all C41 had left from Heavy Weapons; though Bateson had survived without his legs and when the strikers left Stalleybrass the medics still thought they might save Lieutenant Whichard.
Steve Nessman was a handsome fellow who liked women, or at any rate liked screwing them. He’d made a pass at Meyer a couple days after she was posted to C41.
Meyer turned him down flat. She’d met the type before. They were too full of themselves to be any damned good, and she wasn’t naive enough any more to believe they actually meant any of the things they said before they got into your pants.
A few days after that, she’d been checking inventory alone when Nessman entered and closed the storehouse door behind him. He wouldn’t take no, so she clawed for his eyes instead.
Nessman was stronger and he’d obviously had experience with this sort of thing before. He wasn’t enough stronger that he’d be able to rape her without killing her first, though, and after thirty seconds or so he realized that was the choice. Nessman had banged her head against the floor, but although Meyer was groggy she came close to biting his nose off a moment later.
He’d gotten up then, dabbing at his scratches as he backed out of the storeroom. They hadn’t spoken about the incident afterwards, neither between themselves nor to anyone else. In fact, they’d kept as wide a berth from one another as a unit the size of C41 permitted.
Active Cloak gave them a shared bond. The operation had been tough for everybody, sure, but it was damned near suicidal for Heavy Weapons Platoon. Meyer and Nessman hadn’t become friends, but they were colleagues for the first time. Meyer hadn’t asked to transfer to a different compartment when Kuznetsov automatically billeted her with Nessman and 1-1.
“I dunno, Essie,” Nessman said. “There’s a fuckup somewhere, and we all know where that leaves strikers. Swinging in the breeze. I don’t like it.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, Nessman,” Meyer said. “But if you want to know the truth, I’m looking forward to a place that doesn’t have Spooks in it. Especially I’m looking forward to a place that doesn’t have Spook tanks.”
She glanced sharply at the other striker. Nessman was the closest thing Meyer had to a friend in this universe, and even on his best day she couldn’t convince herself that she much liked him.
She chuckled at the irony. Nessman raised an eyebrow.
* * *
Blohm and Gabrilovitch watched as the image of a white mass launched itself from the top of a tree, expanding into a sticky sheet as it fell. It splashed onto one of a herd of small quadrupeds rooting for nuts among the tree roots. A thin umbilicus still tethered the sheet to the high branch.
The victim thrashed wildly. The net grew tighter, constricting as it congealed. The umbilicus began to retract.
“Hell, the animals are bad and the plants are worse,” Gabrilovitch muttered. “This is going to be a bitch for you and me, snake.”
The projected scene was a computer creation based on vertical imaging. You could never be sure how accurate a construct like this was. It was extremely dangerous because it looked perfectly real even though it wasn’t. The virtual run-throughs of Active Cloak had all three floors of the garrison barracks occupied by Kalendru soldiers, for example.