Death Dance

by Jack McKinney

  Tesla put his hands behind his back and paced back and forth, the crown of his head inches from the longhouse rafters. The breathing gear the med group had fashioned for the Invid was a jury-rigged affair of masks, tanks, and tubes, giving Tesla a decidedly elephantine appearance.

  "How's this?" he asked at last, swinging around to face Jack, Cabell, the chief, and a few others. "Divert attention away from the farm by initiating a raid-"

  "We're one step ahead of you, Tesla," Max said, interrupting. "Infiltrate a small party at the same time, and end up giving your troops more hostages."

  "It doesn't have to end that way," Tesla argued. "Not if I'm with the commando team."

  Jack grunted. "What do you know that Rick didn't know? We went in quiet as mice and they nailed us."

  "It was the mecha-your Hovercycles-that gave you away. The farm's defenses can sense Protoculture activity. So even though you got past the Inorganics..."

  Tesla left the sentence unfinished, pleased to see that the Sentinels were offering one another surprised glances.

  "No wonder they got the jump on us," Jack remarked.

  "What about weapons, Tesla?" Cabell thought to ask.

  "Weapons, too," the Invid answered him.

  Max looked around the longhouse. "Where does that leave us?"

  "Swords, crossbows, spears," Gnea said proudly.

  Cabell shook his head. "They're no use against Inorganics."

  "Grenades, then," Learna chimed in. "Rocket launchers-"

  "And these," said the chief, as two of his tribesmen dragged an odd-looking crate into the hut.

  Inside were a dozen Karbarran firearms not unlike Lron's own small-bore. Each wooden and metal-fitted rifle had a large globular fixture forward of the trigger guard and forestock lever. "We received many such crates during the final days of the Masters' empire," the chief went on to explain as Lron hefted one of the weapons.

  "Yes," Lron said, "Karbarra was exporting rebellion then." He glanced over at Tesla. "Until the Invid appeared."

  Max, too, was studying the Invid. "All right, Tesla," he said, coming to his feet. "We'll play this one your way. But all deals are off at the first sign of any monkey business."

  Tesla regarded Max and the others through his hastily fashioned mask. "Now, why would I want to do that when I've had enough trouble just trying to act Human?"

  This time the team was principally XT-Lron and Crysta, Gnea and Bela, with Learna as guide. That Jack would accompany them had been taken for granted; and, after Tesla's plan had been given the okay, Janice signed on. The Praxians felt more comfortable with their one-handed crossbows, shields, and shortswords than anything else the Sentinels could offer in the way of weaponry, and Gnea wouldn't part company with her spearlike naginata. But the others carried Karbarran air rifles, satchels of command-detonated explosives, conventional fragmentation grenades, and rocket launchers. Shortly after Garuda's midnight, the eight-member team was inserted by Garudan flitters to within twenty miles of the crater, allowing them ample time to reach the farm-hive before sunrise.

  At the same time, Wolff and the Sterlings met back at the shuttle to coordinate plans for their joint diversionary raid against two neighboring farms. It was decided that the Veritechs and Hovertanks would commence their strikes at sunrise, when the Garudan slaves would still be in the camps.

  "We're going to concentrate our fire against the orchards, here and here," Max briefed his squadron later on, pointing to areas on the maps Learna had provided. The hives themselves-processing plants really-were almost certainly protected by energy shields like the one the Invid had thrown over Tiresia's Royal Hall during the battle for Tirol. But since the Sentinels' main objective was to draw out the enemy mecha, Max saw no reason why targeting the precious Optera tree plantations couldn't achieve the same result.

  "Colonel Wolff's tankers will position themselves along this ridgeline and move in after you've completed your initial runs. Then you're to pulverize that hive. If we dump enough into that shield we might be able to punch through." Similar all-out bursts had worked against the Karbarran hives. Max scanned his small audience. "Any questions?" When all the headshaking was over, he added, "All right then, let's saddle up."

  Outside the shuttle, he caught sight of Miriya, who had been off briefing the Skull's Red contingent, and hurried over to her just as she was scampering up into the Alpha's cockpit. She had seemed preoccupied during the meeting with Wolff, and absent even now when he asked her if everything was all right.

  "Yeah, fine," she said, offering him a weak smile beneath her transpirator.

  "You don't look fine," he told her, touching her hair. "Maybe you should sit this one out." She laughed at the suggestion, more out of surprise, he suspected, than anything else. A former Quadrono sit out a fight?

  "Max, I'm just a little tired." She donned the thinking cap, climbed the notch ladder, and settled herself in the cockpit seat. "Now wipe that concerned look off your face," she told him before lowering the canopy.

  He forced a smile her way, readjusted his mask, and ran to his own mecha. In five minutes both squadron teams were up, tearing through Garuda's crimson predawn skies.

  The farms they had chosen to hit were some fifty miles southwest of the crater farm, surrounded by extensive forests of Optera trees, which from Max's point of view resembled outsized melon patches; the hive itself was a freeze-frame shot of a hydrogen bomb's first-stage canopy.

  He took hold of the stick and ordered the Skull to follow him in, loosing a dozen napalm torpedoes from the Alpha's undercarriage pylons at treetop-level. Angry plumes of liquid fire fountained above the ground fog behind him as the VT went ballistic; Max turned to look over his shoulder as the rest of the squadron dove in for their runs, each explosion spreading dollops of burning stuff from tree to tree. Skull One rolled over and went in again, incinerating a patch of forest west of the hive now, while Miriya's team gave the east quadrant hell. Then all at once there were Invid Shock Troopers in the air, rising out of the leaping flames and black smoke like a swarm of angry hornets.

  "We've got company, Skull Leader," one of Max's wingmen reported. "Multiple signals at eight o'clock."

  Max turned his attention from the ascending mecha and twisted around to his right: twenty or more Pincer Ships were approaching from the direction of the crater farm.

  "Coming around to zero one zero," Max said into the tac net. "Help me engage, Blue Danube."

  "On my way, Skull One. Rolling out..."

  Max went for missile lock on the lead Pincer and thumbed off two heat-seekers; they found the ship as it climbed, quartering it and a second Pincer in the process. But the Invid were answering the challenge, and Max was forced to break high and right as streams of annihilation disks screamed into the pocket he had vacated. His wingmen split and boostered out in the nick of time, chased by clusters of Shock Troopers from the Invid's counteroffensive group.

  Max imaged the Alpha over to Battloid mode at the top of his climb, targeting data scrolling across his display screens now, and the net a tangle of requests and mad shrieks. A hail of missiles tore from the VT's open shoulder racks and dropped into the midst of the Invid pursuit group, wiping out five of their number. Max went to guns with the remaining two, hands clenching the HOTAS, trapshooting the Invid with the Alpha's rifle/cannon as they streaked by him.

  Elsewhere in the field, Miriya's team was holding its own against the mecha born in that inferno below. Half the trees were on fire now, thick smoke roiling in Garuda's dawn, while

  Humans and Invid exchanged salvos of death. Battloids and Troopers grappled gauntlet to claw.

  "Guess we succeeded in getting their attention," Max said to no one in particular. He chinned Miriya's frequency and asked for an update; he repeated the request when she didn't respond, then reconfigured his ship and dropped down to have a look for himself.

  Miriya had gone to Battloid and was executing her own version of a Fokker
Feint when Max caught up with her. There were four Shock Troopers hovering around her mecha, pulling sting-and-runs. He smiled as he watched her ace one of them with the autocannon; but that look collapsed when he realized how slow she was to react to follow-up energy Frisbees delivered by the remainder of the group. Max was close enough now to throw himself into the fight; but the sight of her sloppiness had left him shaken, and he almost got himself dusted.

  "Miriya, what's wrong?" he said when the last of the four had been dispatched. "Miriya!"

  "I...don't know, Max," she answered him after a moment. "Dizzy spell."

  "I want you to return to base."

  Miriya's face came up on Skull One's commo screen. "I'll be all right. It's better now."

  "Forget it-"

  "Max!" Wolff's voice suddenly boomed through the net. "We've got troubles! Inorganics-hundreds of them!"

  Max looked away from Miriya's image and chinned the com freak. "Your Pack should be able to handle those things, Wolff," he said.

  "It's not us they're after, Commander," Wolff said, just as gruffly. "The sons of bitches have turned them loose on the camp-they're attacking the Garudans!"

  A short distance from the besieged orchard, Wolff's Hovertank team was well into the forests surrounding the second farm. From the ridgeline above the dome-shaped hive, where the Pack had been Guardian-configured, Wolff had been able to observe the Skull's fiery treetop passes. He had then given the order for his tankers to open fire. They hadn't lobbed five minutes' worth of projectiles into the forest when the first wave of Inorganics had appeared-Hellcats, galloping across Garuda's tundra and heading straight for the ridge. They were followed a minute later by ranks of the bipedal demonic-looking Robo-trolls known as Cranns and Odeons.

  Wolff had hated the things ever since he went up against them on Tirol, and had been looking forward to engaging them-anything to get Minmei off his mind for a while, to keep his hand from reaching out for a bottle...So he had ordered the Pack over to standard mode and led the charge down the rocky slope, only to find that the Inorganics had changed course. And it had only taken a moment to figure out the reason behind the tactic: the Invid were planning to use the Garudans as the Sentinels had the Invid's life-giving trees-for diversion. The XT labor force was strung out for more than a mile along a sparsely wooded hillside guarded by a company of armed and weapon-wielding Invid soldiers. It was then that Wolff had opened the net to Max.

  The Skull fighters were overhead now; Wolff could see them through breaks in the trees' clustered, billiard-ball canopies. Shock Troopers and Pincer Ships were right on their tails.

  Wolff's Hovertanks broke out of the forest a moment after Skull One Touched down; the Alpha was in Guardian mode, with the rifle/cannon gripped in one gauntlet, stammering its harsh greeting to the Hellcats. Dozens of Inorganics burst apart as armor-piercing rounds ripped into the pack, but five times that number made it through the VT's still-forming line, bounding over the mecha and continuing their mad rush for the Garudans. Aware of the situation now, the helpless slaves had broken ranks and were attempting to flee; most of them were cut down instantly by bursts from the soldiers' forearm guns, while others fell to the first wave of Inorganics, torn apart by Hellcats or roasted by bolts from the Cranns' orifice-dimpled weapons spheres.

  Wolff ordered the Pack to spread out and form a second line; the Hovertanks reconfigured and began to fire at will, decimating much of the second sortie wave, but suddenly forced to deal with the Shock Troopers as well. Annihilation disks stormed into the tankers' midst, tearing up the land and overturning two of the mecha. Wolff could see that members of Max's blue team were going over to Battloid and repositioning themselves opposite the Pack to form the second leg of a V formation. Wolff called for a cannonade as the Inorganics rushed into the notch. Pounded with explosive rounds the tundra shook and bellowed; the ridge trapped the concussive sounds and hurled them back, as Inorganics and Shock Troopers alike were reduced to gobs of white-hot metal, geysers of fire in the already superheated air.

  Miriya's Red team came in just then to add their deafening movement to the score. Pincer Ships and VTs went face-to-face, hammering away at one another, while missiles and projectiles corkscrewed through the firestorm and smoke.

  Wolff told his B team to hold their ground; at the same time he and the other A tankers battled their way over scorched terrain and through flaming stands of trees toward the Garudans' march of death. Prevented from ascending the hillside by rows of Invid soldiers and vulnerable below to the Inorganics' unchecked advance, the vulpine XTs were being slaughtered. Wolff thought he could hear their wailing clear through the tank's canopy and the tac net's cacophony of calls. The Pack couldn't fire for fear of killing even more of them;

  so instead Wolff led the tankers on a flat-out collision course straight to where the Inorganics had become bunched up at the base of the hill. The tanks smashed their way into the thick of the slaughter, down-swept deflection bows cutting Cranns and Odeons in half. Hellcats leaped on the hovering mecha, only to be blasted to smithereens by in-close guns, or crushed by hand when some of the Pack reconfigured to Battloid mode.

  Meanwhile, at the edge of the forest Max's VT teams were getting the upper hand. Pincer and Shock Trooper ships were falling out of the sky like ducks on a bad day at the marsh. Miriya's Reds accounted for most of those kills; Wolff could just discern them overhead, flying circles around the enemy pilots. He caught sight of one VT in particular as it was completing some sort of aerial pirouette that had left three Pincers in ruin; he was thinking that it must have been Miriya's, until he saw the VT sustain a shot any cadet could have dodged. Wolff watched it plummet toward a ravaged area of woodland.

  "That's the place they got jumped," Jack said, pointing out a damaged row of Optera trees at the bottom of the slope. The hulks of the three Scout ships had been removed, but there was evidence of the fires the explosions had touched off. "Then they were dragged into the hive." Jack handed binoculars up to Lron, once again indicating the direction. "You can just make out the entrance or whatever it is."

  Tesla gave him the Invid word for the portal, mumbling something Jack found unintelligible.

  "Like I said: whatever it is."

  Careful not to disturb his transpirator, Lron took a look through the armored glasses and passed them along to Crysta. She was upping the intensity some, when Learna's trill-like signal reached them from somewhere in the trees. A moment later, the Garudan appeared at the base of the slope, motioning the team down. Gnea and Bela were crouched behind her, masked and vigilant, looking more than ever like barbaric gladiators lifted from some Roman arena. Jack tapped Janice on the shoulder and got everyone under way.

  They had reached the crater well before dawn, without incident despite the presence of stepped-up Inorganic patrol teams. Not just Hellcats, but Cranns and Odeons-bizarre enough creatures by daylight, and positively frightening in the predawn ground fog. Even these hadn't deterred the free Garudans from putting in an appearance, though; only this time it was more than curiosity that motivated them: many had armed themselves with Karbarran air rifles, hoisting them in a display of support as the team passed. Just before sunrise at the crater rim, Jack had seen flashes of explosive light in the southwestern skies, rolls of distant thunder-the Skull's bombing run against the neighboring farm. Shortly thereafter, scores of Shock Troopers had risen from the basin and flown toward the sound of the guns.

  "Any activity?" Jack asked when he reached the base of the slope.

  "Nothing so far," Learna told him. "We went as far as the hive."

  Jack turned to Tesla. "What do you think?" he said angrily. He had no patience left for the Invid's malingering. Keeping Tesla concealed on the trail had led to more than a few hairy moments; and on the slope he had behaved less like a sentient creature than an out-of-control boulder. But now the time had come for Tesla to earn his keep. "What's their routine?"

  Tesla glanced at what could be s
een of the hive through the trees. "Difficult to say, what with all the activity you've stirred up. Normally, the slaves would be arriving any minute now." Tesla looked up at one of the trees' vine-encrusted globe canopies. "Pity, too," he mused. "All this ripe fruit going to waste."

  Jack brandished a long-bladed dirk as Tesla reached out to pluck a particularly succulent-looking piece. "You haven't earned it yet, Tesla. Besides, you don't really want to take off the mask, do you?"

  Tesla thought it over. There was no reason he couldn't lift the mask for the time it would take to gobble down some fruit; but he decided not to bother arguing the point. So he simply left the fruit to rot Instead of adding it to the samples he had already stuffed into the pockets of his robes.

  "No, I suppose not," he said after a moment.

  Jack ordered him to take the point; and in ten minutes the team arrived at the hive's entrance. It was faintly lit, a half-moon-shaped tunnel twenty-five-feet high and composed of what looked like solidified sea foam. There seemed to be a slight shimmering to the air inside, but this ceased when Tesla identified himself to the scanner. A voiceprint, Jack thought, but he couldn't be sure.