Redliners by David Drake

“You know . . .” Flea said. “I could almost feel sorry for the poor bastard Spooks.”

“All right, let’s get back,” Abbado said. “They’ll need us at the column.”

The crash had thrown loose personal gear which covered the compartment’s lower side like plant debris in a forest swale. It was within the realm of possibility that a Spook was hiding deep enough in it that IR didn’t spot him, but it wasn’t worth 3-3’s time to check out.

“Three-three, this is Administrator Tamara Lundie,” said an unfamiliar voice. Because the helmet AIs had to fill gaps caused by signal attenuation through the ship’s metal hull, the words were almost toneless. “Kalendru vessels of this class have a separate control room reached through a hatch here—”

A deck schematic with a pulsing caret appeared briefly on one quadrant of Abbado’s visor.

“—which is at the moment concealed by litter from the crash. Out.”

“Who the hell was that?” Caldwell asked.

“The blonde with the broomstick up her ass,” Abbado said, straddle-walking forward to keep his balance on the shifting surface. He tossed aside a pile of torn containers, Spook dufflebags or bedrolls, to expose the hatch where Lundie said it would be.

It was locked from the other side, but cloth pinched on the lower side of the hatch showed it’d been open at some point after the crash. Judging from tears and blast patterns, 3-3’s grenades had flung the gear that hid it.

Abbado unscrewed the warhead of a rocket, set it for point effect/five second delay, and struck it hard enough against the lock plate to trip the fuze. “Fire in the hole!” he called as he scrambled away.

The blue flash of the electrical warhead lit the compartment. The shock wave clanged into the hatch like the tip of a three-ton ice-pick, shearing the bolt and flinging the panel open in reaction. Tattered debris flew up in a cloud like dirt tamped around a charge set in an excavation.

“I’ve got him!” Horgen cried even as she dived through the hatchway. “I’ve got him and he’s alive!”

Caius Blohm watched the foliage react to the single, sharp blast that made the wreck’s hull ring. Leaves quivered, pods turned; the whole forest was listening, waiting.

“I’ve got him! I’ve got him and he’s alive!”

Foley looked at the opening above him, desperate to join the rest of his squad. Sergeant Gabrilovitch nodded to Blohm and muttered, “Great. Now we’ve got a prisoner to nursemaid back to the column.”

“He won’t be any more problem than Abbado’s lot,” Blohm said. And not much more problem than you, Gabe, he thought, but he didn’t say.

“C41,” broke in the voice that this time didn’t bother to identify itself as Tamara Lundie. “Increased carbon dioxide levels suggest that another party of native humanoids coming from the north is now within a few seconds or minutes of the column. The region between the first and second tractor appears the most likely point of contact. Out.”

Blohm felt his body prickle. He had a vision of Mirica in the grip of a humanoid with a face as remote and remorseless as a storm cloud; of Mirica dead, not on a jungle track but on the threshold of a room filled with the grenade-blasted bodies of other children. He began to shiver.

Gabrilovitch swore softly. “How long do you figure it’ll take us to get back to the column, snake?” he asked.

“Too long,” Blohm said. Too long, or I’d be headed back right now even if they hang me for desertion when I get there.

There was less than an hour to sunset. It would arrive like a curtain falling in these latitudes. Besides, even if he tried to make the last of the distance at night—and maybe he could, just maybe—the attack would be over by a few minutes from now.

“Those kid-killing bastards,” Blohm said, his lips barely moving. “Those bastards.”

Sergeant Abbado stuck his head out of the opening in the ship’s hull. A moment later he and Matushek thrust a Spook through, dangling him by arms that looked so pale that they were almost transparent. The prisoner was humming loudly, a Kalendru sign of misery and despair.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *