Redliners by David Drake

The dozer spiked a large tree and started to lug. Farrell eyed the wobbling canopy with concern, but his helmet AI didn’t warn him of anything about to drop on the vehicle. Besides the armored striker behind the cab, Sergeant Abbado and one of his people followed the dozer closely. The other five squad members flanked the civilians, a little back of Farrell himself.

“Clearing the road is going to be a slow process,” al-Ibrahimi said as he watched the dozer struggling against the forest giant. “Though most of the larger trees can be avoided, I hope.”

“Slow is a good thing,” Farrell said, though his attention was concentrated on the forest. “The civilians aren’t going to be able to move fast, and we don’t dare let the dozers get too far out ahead. We can’t afford to lose—”

A tentacle of bark detached itself from the bole and trembled across the tractor. White wood gleamed for a hundred and fifty feet up the side of the tree.

The driver was either too busy with his controls to notice or saw so little through his grilled windows that he didn’t realize anything more was happening than a piece of debris flying up. He shifted from reverse to neutral, preparing to hit the tree again.

“Get those civilians back before they’re fucking killed!” Farrell said, aiming at the tentacles. He wasn’t sure himself if he was speaking to his strikers or to al-Ibrahimi, but it was God’s truth that he wanted the manager out of the way also.

He fired at the target quivering twenty feet in the air. Things were bad enough without a stray round hitting one of his strikers.

Two more, twelve more, tentacles separated as the first one had. The entire bark sheath squirmed toward the bulldozer. Pressley’s flame gun carbonized the end of a tentacle. The portion above the flame’s destruction could no longer reach the dozer, but the brown serpent continued to twist and strain like a vicious dog on its chain.

The driver realized his danger and shifted into reverse. Tendrils gripped the blade and clogged the drive gears. The tree swayed like a fishpole bound to its catch by a score of cable-thick lines.

Pressley’s armored body flew in a parabola that ended when he slammed the trunk of another tree, fifty feet in the air. The tentacle released him. The striker fell, tumbling like a mannequin. The hard suit was undamaged, but the body within had been crushed despite the padding.

Farrell unhooked a 4-pound rocket and armed it by twisting open the launch tube. He checked behind him, turning his head rather than trusting the panorama display. Civilians were still too close though they surged backward under the lash of fear. Manager al-Ibrahimi shouted orders in a voice like dry thunder.

Farrell stepped to the side so that the backblast would singe forest, not the colonists his life was pledged to protect. Something nuzzled his left leg. He ignored the touch and squeezed the bar trigger.

The rocket snarled away, the motor a white glare in the half second before burnout. The last of the exhaust gases batted Farrell like a huge, hot cotton swab. Thrust against the sides of the tube rocked him back a step. The tentacle closed around Farrell’s ankle, two ropy tendrils to either side of his boot.

Farrell’s rocket hit the central pole of the tree a hundred feet in the air and blew it to toothpicks in a thunderclap. The peak and all the bark tentacles tumbled down like the head of Medusa.

The grip on Farrell’s ankle tightened, then relaxed. He’d been straining against the tree’s pull and fell backward when the tension released.

Flaccid tentacles slid from the bulldozer’s cab and blade. The vehicle began moving. Other ropes still clogged the tracks and drive gears, but vegetable fibers flattened beneath density-enhanced metal.

The tracks accelerated slowly. The driver struggled with the lifeless tentacles choking his cab, oblivious of the fact that he was clanking backward toward the mob of civilians.

Farrell staggered to his feet. Sergeant Abbado was already trotting alongside the cab with Horgen. Abbado gave her a lift onto the platform. Brown fragments of a tentacle still dangled from Horgen’s waist. Whatever she said to the driver was sufficient, because the bulldozer immediately shuddered to a stop.

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