“But what is it?” Kumar allowed his annoyance to show.
“It’s a Threshold. Requiring only a fraction of the energy we use, and completely beyond our capabilities. It’s tiny, and only appeared for an instant.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s there. The readings all check out. But that’s not the point.”
“Stop playing games.”
“How I wish this was a game.” Woomer sat down, looking exhausted. “Here’s the point. That Threshold came into existence just as we were about to Step Olech’s capsule on the first leg of his voyage. It preceded the event perfectly. And it took him.”
“It took him?” Fear of Horace Corlipso entered Kumar’s voice. “You mean he might still be alive?”
“This is bigger than all that. No human capability could have generated that focused a Threshold. Whatever created it timed its appearance to coincide with Olech’s expected launch. They snatched him at exactly the right moment, which means they knew what he was planning to do.”
“This is crazy. You’ve cracked under the strain.”
“Look at the data. It’s all there. The only way they could have timed this so perfectly was by knowing his plan.” Woomer fixed Kumar with a look of scorn. “Don’t you see? This means Mira and her friends are right. Whatever gave us the Step uses it to monitor our thoughts. They read Olech’s mind during one of the earlier Step voyages. And they accepted his invitation before he even sent it.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“We’re ready to move out,” Mortas said to Dak on the radio. The platoon sergeant and his small patrol had successfully strained out twenty gallons of drinkable water during the night, and Mortas was about to bring the platoon to collect it.
“Negative, stay put. We’re coming to you.”
“You sure?” Mortas mentally calculated the weight of the collapsible containers Dak’s veterans would be carrying. “That’s a lot to haul.”
“I’ll explain when we get there. It’s not far.”
Word passed all around the perimeter, every man fully awake even as the new day’s sun began filtering through the vegetation. Everything around them was damp, and an eerie ground fog had come in with the moisture. Mortas moved around the legs of the triangle, making sure everyone knew that the patrol was coming in, noting the dirt on the men’s faces and clothing. The jungle on Verdur was famous for eating flesh and equipment, and already the platoon seemed to be part of the smelly decay.
Code phrases came and went through the helmet speakers, and then a hunched-over figure appeared to the west. The platoon had traveled in a northeasterly direction to reach the position the night before, so Dak had taken his patrol out on a different azimuth, to the east, before circling back to the stream. Following the maxim never to use the same route twice, he’d headed north that morning before turning east again and emerging from the undergrowth.
The patrol’s point man was waved in, and Dak and the others followed silently. The water containers were eased to the ground with relief, and individuals began peeling off from the perimeter to refill their canteens. Dak knelt next to Mortas.
“Crazy thing happened last night. A group of the Vree Vrees came up to the stream to get a drink. I know they saw us, because the males backed up the rest of them and they all moved away.”
“That’s funny. I didn’t hear them.”
“That’s what I mean. They didn’t make a sound. It was like they’d come across a group of Sims. I’ve never seen that before.”
Mortas was about to summon Captain Pappas when Dak leaned in close and sniffed.
“Yeah, I know I reek.”
“No, that’s not it. I should have noticed this already. My patrol was made up of men who’ve been here before. Nobody taking the stink pills. And the Vree Vrees didn’t go crazy.”
“It’s the smell from the pills?”
“Gotta be. Every time I’ve been here, we always had new guys with us, stinking up the whole platoon. Newbies are always spread out with the old hands, and after a day in the bush everybody smells like a goat anyway. I never even considered this.”
An hour later, the platoon’s lead element signaled their arrival at the segment of jungle that Almighty had inexplicably struck with rockets weeks before. The front of the platoon had been reconfigured to contain only men who’d been to Verdur before, and hence lacked the stench of the stink pills. Traveling two hundred yards ahead of the rest of the platoon, they had jubilantly confirmed Dak’s theory when a gang of Vree Vrees had scattered before them without screeching even once.
Mortas had transmitted the revelation to Dassa, who was both astounded and elated. Second Platoon was now manning the perimeter at Cordvine, but Dassa had elected to send Third Platoon down the ridge’s northern slope. Kitrick had recovered from his error, and Third had already discovered an enemy cart trail that ran along the base of the escarpment below the remains of Broadleaf. The Sims had obviously grown quite comfortable working in the vicinity over the months, and the revelation about the Vree Vrees suggested a major opportunity. Some aggressive patrolling might uncover the enemy’s main camp, without the warning usually provided by the jungle animals’ howls.
“You gotta see this place, El-tee,” Sergeant Katinka, leading the advance squad of Verdur veterans, radioed back to Mortas. “Whatever Almighty used here, it messed up the vegetation.”
“Like a defoliant, you mean?” Mortas asked, sweating heavily inside his armor. Now that the lead element had reached the day’s first objective, the rest of the platoon moved quickly to catch up with them.
“Negative. It’s all discolored, like something’s messing with the internal processes. Everything’s still standing, and so far we haven’t found any indications of rounds impacting here. Can’t figure it out.”
Code signals were exchanged at the head of the column, then Mortas pushed through a lush green wall of leaves and vines only to find himself surrounded by the fallow colors of a cornfield in winter. The trees in this region were sparse in number and dimension, but they were choked with bushes and creepers and appeared to still be alive. However, every leaf and stem that should have been a vibrant green was a sickly brown or yellow.
Mortas turned to Pappas while the platoon ringed the area. “What would have caused something like this?”
“Well, Almighty’s a Victory Pro station, and Victory Pro’s all about food. Maybe they thought Sam was growing something here and wanted to kill it.”
“Naw, that’s not it, sir.” Ringer’s voice came into his ears, speaking from the other side of the affected zone. “I saw this kind of thing on Tratia when I worked with the sanitation department.”
Mortas and Pappas exchanged glances, and when Ringer didn’t continue, Pappas spoke. “So what is it?”
“It’s knockout gas. We had these big protests in the park, and the police hit ’em with this stuff in a pretty heavy concentration. I didn’t see it happen, but when they had us clean the place up the next day, all the greenery looked like this. Took months before it straightened out.”
Mortas ran a hand over a long, drooping leaf. Despite the discoloration, it felt damp and normal. “Why would they hit a patch of the jungle with knockout gas? Would that stuff work on the Sims?”
“Yes—their respiratory systems are almost identical to ours. But according to that footage, there weren’t any Sims here.” Pappas looked skyward, his eyes fixed on a series of calculations that weren’t adding up. “This mission is getting weirder by the minute.”
The revelation regarding the stink pills paid off only a few hours later. Third Platoon, patrolling northwest of Broadleaf’s ruins, surprised a pair of Sim soldiers who’d been pulling a two-wheeled cart along a well-worn path. One was killed and the other escaped into the brush, but the intelligence yielded by the incident was important.
“The dead one was
wearing one of those heat-shielding smocks, and from what we saw of the other one, he was too.” Dassa relayed his observations to First Platoon in the jungle and Second Platoon at Cordvine. “What a stench! Walking around in that thing in this heat. Anyway, his boots are pretty rotted, and it looks like he repaired them with that tree sap goop more than once.
“Now here’s the good part. The two-wheeler was loaded with what looked like logs cut in three-foot sections. But the logs were hollow, and they’re filled with a rubbery substance that’s also smeared on the sides. Smells like the junk they used on the smocks and the boots, so I’m going to guess it’s more of the tree sap.”
“I think we figured out how they set Broadleaf on fire,” Pappas stated.
“Agreed. The stuff can be made into an incendiary as well as an adhesive. We dug a chunk of the rubber out and lit it on fire, and it caught right away. Stack enough of these against just about any structure and set ’em off, you’ll burn the place down.”
Listening, Mortas imagined what the scene had looked like. Columns of Sims, invisible in their special smocks and loaded down with the incendiaries, clawing their way up the steps cut out of the slope that led to Broadleaf. All in darkness, pulling the fence down with the tree-trunk contraption and rushing up to stack the log-bombs against the walls of Broadleaf’s biggest building. Setting off the conflagration before hurrying back down, leaving just enough troops to fire on anyone fleeing. Hoping that the humans would bring the rockets down and finish the job for them.
“All right.” Mortas looked over at Pappas. “Let’s get going.”
“Just a second.” Pappas held up a hand, receiving an incoming call that wasn’t on the company radio net. All around them, the platoon waited in an oval defensive ring with the Verdur veterans up front. Mortas wanted to keep moving, encouraged that the new formation created by Dak’s discovery had yielded the company’s first kill.
“Captain, we need to move. Sam knows where Third Platoon is now, but he might not know about us yet. Those two Sims with the firebombs were headed west, and that could mean we’re getting close to their camp.”
“Actually, we’re not close at all.” Pappas slid the lenses back up, a broad smile on his dirty face. “I figured out where they are.”
“The Vree Vrees love the not-bananas, and until this morning they shrieked their heads off every time they encountered a human.” On the radio, Pappas was briefing Dassa on his latest find. “Remember that abandoned Sim camp we found two days ago? We passed through a grove of not-banana trees just short of that. I didn’t notice it because those trees are everywhere.”
“And the Vree Vrees hollered at us before running off.”
“Yes. They were there because Sam has figured out how to use them as guard dogs. He sets up near a grove of not-bananas, then transplants more of them so that he’s got Vree Vrees on all sides. Sam’s always had a green thumb.”
“Well what else do you do, when you’re sitting in a jungle with no communications and no supplies?”
“Right. I thought of this after Sergeant Dak’s visit with the Vree Vrees, and I asked the botanists on Cordvine to help me prove it. Their satellites monitor everything from rainfall to surface temperature, and they just sent me what I’m going to show you.” Pappas transmitted an image into the goggles of B Company’s leadership at their three separate locations. In front of Mortas’s eyes, a diagram of the ridge and the surrounding area came to life. Slowly, red dots began to appear in the jungle near the high ground. Some were large, and others ran together almost in a red smear. A meter in the corner of the diagram started to run, indicating that he was seeing ecological change over the past year.
“The scientists at Cordvine have got specific identifiers for just about everything that grows out here, and when I asked them to filter out everything but the not-bananas, this is what remains. See that?” Pappas inserted a cursor over the image and directed it to the location of the abandoned Sim camp. “There was already a pretty large grove near there, and over time it expands until it’s all the way around that spot.”
The image continued to morph, dots disappearing in various places while others formed lines and barriers that elongated and spread. The jungle was still loaded with the plants, but when the motion stopped, there were two very large red ovals to the north and northwest of Almighty.
“Got you, motherfucker.” B Company’s ASSL, squatting in the jungle with Dassa miles away, hissed with glee. “Now we’ll see who likes fire.”
The Orphans crept through the jungle with the last of the day’s sun. Second Platoon was still at Cordvine, but on high alert because an enormous concentration of rockets was about to land on the suspected enemy base. Third Platoon was northeast of Almighty, poised to move west as soon as the bombardment began, and First Platoon was west of the station, ready to launch a similar attack north.
“Remember, we still can’t see Sam on the instruments. He may be home, in which case we’ll just be counting the bodies, but if he isn’t, he’s gonna be mad as hell,” Dassa had counseled Mortas on the radio a short time earlier. “Get yourself a jump-off point that’s also a good defensive position, and wait for my order to advance.”
Dak and the Verdur veterans had scouted ahead of the rest of the platoon, locating a good-sized creek. Mortas now brought up the rest of the platoon, arranging its machine guns and grenade launchers inside a tight circle with most of the firepower directed across the water. The platoon’s supply of goggle batteries was nearly depleted, and so he and Dak had been forced to make some tough decisions. The leaders still had batteries, as did Vossel the medic, all the machine gunners, and most of the chonks. After that they’d paired the men off, one with functioning goggles and one without, but even those with power sources were now running out. The light was almost gone, and the dense growth around them was already cast in darkness. The water flowed with a gentle gurgle, and the opposite bank began as a low patch of deadfall and knee-high bushes before rising to a wooded finger.
The men facing the creek were belly-down in the brush, weapons ready. Mortas found a good spot just back of the line, next to a tree heavily wrapped in vein-like vines, which gave him an acceptable field of vision. When he went into the prone, Vossel took the other side.
“Not smelling much more than body odor, sir,” the medic stated flatly.
“You surprised? I bet nobody in B Company is taking the stink pills anymore.”
“Oh, I’m not surprised—but you and the other new guys may be. You haven’t been here long enough to build up an immunity. A day from now, half of B Company’s gonna come down with the screamin’ shits.”
Mortas tried not to laugh, excitement going through him in a gentle throb. Despite the loss of Broadleaf and the dead men in Third Platoon, the company had performed quite well. His platoon’s discovery about the Vree Vrees had helped Pappas determine the enemy’s location. Dassa had maneuvered the company with great competence, in spite of their surveillance systems’ inability to see the enemy, and now they were going to deliver a blow from which the Sims might not recover.
He was just recognizing the possibility that they might retire the Verdur mission permanently, that very night, when his earpieces clenched and a rocket landed a mile to his north. The explosion was dampened by the foliage and the undulating terrain, but a brief crack of volcanic light passed through the jungle’s dark curtain anyway. Birds shrieked in the darkness, and they were soon joined by the cries of the Vree Vrees. Mortas flipped his goggle lenses down and turned the device on, but the answer to his questions came on the radio.
“Dammit, Almighty! Can’t you stick with a plan even once?” B Company’s ASSL shouted, furious that the station had launched the strike prematurely.
Another rocket landed, still a good distance away, and Mortas spoke to his troops. “Party’s starting a little early, but the plan’s the same. Watch for S
am, and wait for the word.”
North and west of their position, a volley of rockets landed on one of the two enemy strongholds. Quickly viewing the imagery, Mortas decided that Dassa had ordered the bombardment to commence now that Almighty had jumped the gun.
Rockets were raining down on the first target, and the jungle’s shroud wasn’t enough to contain the light. Spasmodic flashes of white and orange outlined the tangle of trees, vines, and bushes, reflecting off of the stream as if it were glass. The Dauntless and the two remaining stations’ weapons satellite slammed rockets into both targets, the explosions coming one after the other like echoes.
Prone figures shifted about in front of Mortas, the men enjoying the huge aerial assault taking place a mile distant. More lightning strikes and claps of thunder, and Mortas was just thinking that it should be raining when a group of men in ponchos ran up and over the low ridge on the other side of the creek.
“Movement! Movement to the north!” one Orphan called out.
“There they are! Comin’ right at us!”
The figures were running hard, now that they’d emerged from the thick vegetation and come down onto the flat. Dark robes billowed behind them, and many of them were hunched over with heavy loads. Mortas was counting them, amazed to get past twelve, when the entire line opened up.
The goggles kept the sudden light from blinding him, adjusting so that the scene was all clear and crisp. The prone figures fired like a line of troops on a training range, bright flashes from the muzzles of individual weapons while a stream of dashes shot out of the machine guns. Special chonk rounds, designed for close-in fighting, detonated in the soft soil and created even larger spasms of white.
The Sims never had a chance. More of them were coming over the slope when the line roared forth its devastating produce, and their forward momentum carried them into the deadly field. Bodies stopped abruptly in midstride, falling sideways or forward or flipping over backward. Raising his Scorpion, Mortas zeroed in on a Sim running in a zigzag, his tattered battle smock flapping behind him. He fired a three-round burst dead center, and the figure crumpled into the muck. A slug hit one of their packs just then, and it burst into flames. The man carrying it spun around madly, fighting with the straps, while riflemen attracted by the light blasted rounds into him. He dropped to his knees and then fell forward, the pack turning him into a pyre.
Dire Steps Page 17
