by David Drake
The lieutenant gave his axe-blade smile again. "In particular," he said, "you may have to command the vessel if something happens to your commanding officer. So stay alert, hey?"
He clasped Brainard's wrist and gave it a gentle shake for emphasis.
Brainard would have swallowed, but the lump in his throat was too big.
5
May 17, 382 AS. 1610 hours
Leaf had known plenty of brave men—
"Keep her moving!" ordered Ensign Brainard, darting quick glances in all directions as he walked ahead of the six-man crew at the draglines. Leaf was the man nearest the skid on the left side. "Don't lose your momentum!"
—but he'd never met somebody as willing to hang his balls on the wall as Brainard. Don't waste ammo, he says, so when a leech goes for him, he don't even bother to shoot it, just swats it away.
"Sir, should I . . . ?" Yee called from behind them, in K67's gun tub.
Leaf looked up. Sweat blurred his vision, but if those morning stars weren't within the fifty feet Wilding gave as their trigger range, they were sure damned close to it.
Only thing was, Brainard was out in front.
"Not yet!" the CO said.
They were using safety lines as drag ropes for the skid. Reeds flattened into the slippery ooze, creating a perfectly lubricated surface over which to pull the massive warhead—but the same muck gave piss-poor traction to the boots of the men tugging the sucker toward the wall of jungle.
Leaf wheezed and staggered in the discomfort of his heavy suit. It didn't seem to him that he was pulling his weight, but somebody among the six of them must be doing the job. The skid moved, and the twisted trees were goddam close.
At least they hadn't had problems with large animals. Leaf had been raised in Block 81 of Wisconsin Keep, a slum; he understood territories. The snake and spider he'd attracted had kept this stretch of marsh to themselves. There hadn't been enough time since the local bosses got the chop for replacements to take over.
The crew gave the pond itself a wide berth. Whatever lived on its bottom had been given a big enough meal to occupy it for a while, anyhow.
"Mr Brainard?" gasped Wilding, on the far end of Leaf's rope. "I think—"
Brainard had offered to take a rope and let Wilding control the operation. The officer-trainee refused, saying he'd be useless as a guard because he couldn't shoot. Leaf didn't figure a pansy like Wilding'd do much good on the line, either; but at least he was trying.
"Right," ordered Brainard. "Everybody down. Yee!"
Leaf flattened. He clapped his hands over his ears and opened his mouth. The man beside him, Newton, was still upright. He either hadn't heard the order or—more likely with Newton—hadn't understood it.
Leaf grabbed the butt of the coxswain's slung rifle and tugged it hard. Wilding must have been pulling from the other side, because Newton flopped down an instant before Yee's twin seventy-fives cut loose over their heads.
Even fifty feet away, the big guns' muzzle blasts punished bare skin and stabbed agony through the ear Leaf had uncovered to save Newton. The ballistic crack of the supersonic bullets snapping just overhead was worse for the motorman's nerves.
These rounds were aimed high deliberately. Too often in Leaf's small-boat service, a snap!snap!snap! meant the enemy was about to correct his sight picture and put his next burst through your hull.
Ropes of brilliant scarlet tracers raked the edge of the jungle, concentrating as planned on the copse of morning stars. The explosive bullets went off with white flashes against the black bark, hurling bits of wood in all directions.
The explosions released tension within the trunks. Sawed-off boles leaped into the air. Their spiky branches slashed at one another during the moments it took them to fall.
The guns scythed a 10o arc through the living barrier, then stuttered into silence. Yee had shot off the entire contents of his ammo drums. Powder gases, explosive residues, and the thick smoke of green vegetation burning hung in the air. A beetle the size of a cheap apartment stepped into the cut, then rushed away through a path it tore for itself.
"Come on!" Brainard shouted. His voice chimed through the ringing in the motorman's left ear. "Move! Move! Move!"
Leaf got up. For an instant he thought he was having difficulty because he was exhausted; then he noticed that during the time he hugged the ground, reeds had grown about him. Their tips probed at the folds of the environmental suit. He swore and tore himself free.
"Come on!" the CO repeated, reaching back to grip the upturned front of the skid. "Before something else moves in!"
Leaf threw his weight against the rope. The skid had begun to sink into the marsh. They got it moving again, somehow. The warhead's weight had one advantage: it dimpled the plastic decking into a cradle, so there was no risk that the burden would roll off the skid.
Ten feet. Twenty feet. A shrapnel-pithed frog, three feet long with lips of saw-edged bone, flopped in a ragged circle at the edge of the jungle in front of them. A dozen blood-sucking insects gripped it. An ilex tree stabbed a branch down from the canopy, harpooned the frog, and withdrew more slowly with its prey.
If the frog had not been there—
"That's enough!" Brainard ordered. "Go back, get your packs, and prepare to move out. Watch yourselves!"
He looked at the motorman. "Leaf, light the warhead. But don't get in the way."
In order to give himself a moment to catch his breath, Leaf deliberately fumbled with the multitool slung beneath his armpit. The hot, humid air his lungs dragged in wasn't much help. The suit suffocated him, but it was his only hope of staying alive. . . .
The warhead was a black steel dome twenty-three inches in diameter. It lay sideways on the skid with its flat base pointing in the direction of the jungle. Caffey and Wheelwright had unbolted the thin baseplate, exposing the cream-colored barakite.
They'd also removed the fuze from its pocket in the nose.
Heat alone wouldn't set off barakite. Heat would set off the booster charge in the fuze, and that would detonate the unburned portion of the barakite. The blast would kick what was left of the hovercraft back out to sea, let alone what it did to the crew.
The motorman's powered multitool was a compact assortment of grippers, drivers, cutters—and an arc welder. Leaf snapped the arc live and touched it to the upper surface of the exposed barakite.
The white spark went blue. A puff of vapor spurted from the explosive. Leaf stepped aside.
Not far enough. Ensign Brainard grabbed his shoulder and pulled him, just in time.
A billow of flame with a blue heart roared outward in all directions. The barakite burned back so that the casing could direct the blaze. After a moment, it steadied into a forward-rushing jet. Combustion products from the explosive and the plasticizer which made it malleable boiled outward in a vast white cloud.
"Don't breathe that!" the CO shouted from a vast distance. He released Leaf's shoulder and strode back toward the packs waiting on the torpedoboat's deck.
Leaf didn't move. He had sucked in a double lungful of the poisonous vapors. He viewed his world from multiple viewpoints.
The initial gush of fire baked a wide fan of marsh to the consistency of a cracked brick. The reeds had vanished. Now that the flames had steadied, green tendrils were already breaking their way to the surface at the fringes of the cleared area.
The warhead was designed to release all its energy in a microsecond flash, shattering battleship armor and sending a spout of seawater a thousand feet in the air. When the barakite was ignited instead of being detonated, the energy release spread over a minute of furious burning—but there was just as much energy involved.
A twenty-three inch hose of blue-white flame roared into the jungle. It vaporized everything in its direct path and shriveled vegetation ten feet to either side.
Leaf watched:
A man-sized salamander lunged up as the concealing leaf mold burned away. It bit at the gout of flame as though it wer
e a quivering serpent. The salamander's head vanished in the 2,000o heat, but the tail and body writhed away.
Reeds, stunned by the fire's temperature, recovered enough to squirm over Leaf's boots. They were looking for entrance to his flesh as he stood transfixed.
A bright golden reptile sailed from a tree top and performed three consecutive loops. The diameter of the loops increased as the creature's feathery scales burned away. It finally plunged toward the sea, trailing smoke behind it.
Crewmen caught the packs Yee tossed them from the hovercraft's deck. They began to waddle toward the jungle again.
Marshy soil humped a few inches upward in a line that extended toward Leaf at the speed of a slow walk. Reeds bowed aside from the intrusion among their roots.
"Leaf!" Ensign Brainard shouted from the hovercraft. "Are you all right?"
A free-standing walnut tree burned furiously on the side toward the devastation pouring from the warhead. Its branches flailed downward, stabbing the flames with hollow tips through which herbicide squirted. This enemy could not be poisoned. The branches added fuel to the self-devouring blaze.
OT Wilding dropped his pack and began to run toward Leaf. He tugged his pistol awkwardly from its holster.
Most of the barakite had burned. The tongue of flame shrank back and curled, like a tiger clearing away traces of a recent meal.
Leaf's boots had sunk six inches into the muck. The line of raised soil was within a yard of him.
Wilding fired into the ground. He was almost close enough to touch his target. The first bullet splashed mud a hand's breadth from the motorman's ankle; the second round was lost somewhere in the unburned jungle.
The third shot punched through the side of the mound. Six feet of mud slid upward from an iridescent surface. Blunt horns extended from the front end as the creature nuzzled the oozing bullet wound.
Leaf came to in an eyeblink. Suction and the questing reeds gripped his feet firmly. He triggered the welding arc of his multitool and raked it in a long line across the slimy surface of the monster.
Flesh blackened and shriveled, twisting the creature into a writhing knot. A tongue armed with glittering conical teeth extended from the mouth.
Reed-tops touched the body and clung, sucking greedily.
"Mole slug," Wilding wheezed. He grabbed the motorman's shoulder to balance himself. His pistol wavered in a dangerous circle that included the feet of both men. "Ah, are you okay?"
Leaf bent and seared the vegetation away from his boots. "Yeah," he said, "I'm fine. I'm great."
His mouth was dry. He chewed his cheeks and tongue to release the juices. The warhead had burned out. A breeze carried the remaining fumes toward the jungle.
"I'm as good," Leaf said deliberately, "as I've been since I joined this fucking outfit."
* * *
April 1, 372 AS. 2214 hours.
The hand-lettered sign outside the door announced that Enrique's Bar was closed for a private party. One of the neighborhood regulars rattled the latch anyway. His eye appeared at the small triangular window in the door panel. When he saw that the "private party" was a Free Company's recruiting drive, the man vanished as if whipped away by demons.
Inside, the woman who writhed on top of the bar wore nothing. Her hair was blond. It was held in a high, drifting fan by a process that must have cost as much as a drug dealer in Block 81 earned in a week.
The woman's face was aristocratically beautiful, but her eyes were a million miles away. She rotated slowly, ignoring the thirty-odd young men crowded into the room.
The handsome lieutenant wore a row of medal ribbons on the right breast. Over the left pocket was a nametag reading congreve, in blue letters on silver to match the color scheme of his uniform. "Well, I must have made a mistake," he said in a sneering drawl. "I thought there were men here, but men wouldn't leave a poor girl in that state."
Congreve leaned against the bar in a pose of false relaxation. An electronic data file was open beside him. He watched everything in the room from beneath drooping eyelids.
Tub Caffey stood up suddenly. His brother-in-law tried to pull him back to the table. All the guys on that side of the bar ran with the 3d Level gang.
"I'll give the bitch what she needs!" Caffey muttered. He headed straight for the woman. He could have been on the other side of Venus for all the notice she took of him.
Leaf was the only member of the 5th Level gang in the bar tonight. He knew Caffey pretty well. His index finger absently traced the knife scar up his cheek to his hairline.
Lieutenant Congreve stepped between Caffey and the woman. Jessamyn, the senior sergeant who worked the floor with Congreve, moved his big body between the potential recruit and the friends who might have other ideas for him.
"Here you go, lads," Jessamyn said, holding out three puce applicators on the back of his left hand. The knuckles of the clenched fist on which the drugs balanced were a mass of white scar tissue. "Let's all stay happy, shall we?"
Caffey's brother-in-law and the two men who had jumped up at the same time hesitated, then accepted the applicators and sat down again. Jessamyn smiled. His front teeth had been replaced by metal the cold blue-gray of a gun barrel.
Caffey laboriously signed the screen of the data file. The imager built into the lieutenant's signet ring had already snapped the recruit's retinal prints and encoded them into the electronic contract.
Congreve tapped the woman's instep with a finger. "Back room, Kimberly," he said. He opened the bar's swinging gate so that the new recruit could stumble through.
The woman stepped down and walked through the door into what was normally Enrique's private office and storage area. She didn't look behind her.
Caffey collided with the redhead who came out of the back room as the blond entered it. The door closed.
Someone moved close to Leaf. He looked to his side and saw the sergeant. "Here you go," the mercenary said. He offered a three-striped mauve applicator in the middle of his left palm.
Leaf squinted at it. He didn't recognize the markings. "What's this?" he demanded.
The redhead mounted the bar and began a slow dance. Her diaphanous garments concealed nothing, but she used the floor-brushing length of her own hair as a curtain to display and reveal alternately.
"Tsk," said Jessamyn. "A good time, lad, that's what it is."
The big noncom touched the applicator to the inside of his left elbow and squeezed, releasing the contents into his bloodstream. He turned his hand palm down, then up again with another applicator on it in a feat of minor legerdemain.
Leaf flushed and took the drug.
The redhead turned her back. Her long-fingered hands now lay on the cheeks of her buttocks, spreading and closing the white flesh. Her fingernails were the color of fresh blood.
"The girls look like they just stepped off a holoscreen," Leaf whispered.
The familiar barroom had a glow over it now. Everything blurred except for the woman at whom he stared. She faced the audience again. Her left hand was behind her back; her right was in front of her. She was manipulating herself with her index fingers.
The woman's pupils were dilated so wide that the color of her irises was indeterminable.
"They've been on the holos, often enough," Jessamyn murmurred. "And at the very best parties, they have. Ashley, there, she's a Callahan from Wyoming Keep, she is. That's one of the best families there."
"Who'll be man enough to give little Ashley what she needs?" Lieutenant Congreve asked in a cajoling tone. "You can see how she's looking forward to meeting a real man."
Jessamyn put a big, gentle hand on Leaf's shoulder. "I can see you're a hard one, lad," the mercenary said. "She likes that, I can tell you. All her sort like that."
There was a tinge of bitter sadness in Jessamyn's voice. Leaf heard the tone, but it didn't matter any more.
He got up. His legs propelled him toward the woman in the center of a rosy haze.
6
May 17, 3
82 AS. 1628 hours.
"Let's go, let's go!" Brainard ordered. "Newton, carry your pack, don't try to sling it. You'll be taking off your suit in a hundred feet and you can put the pack on then."
The coxswain blinked at him. He made one last, half-hearted attempt to thrust his arms, doubled in size by the baggy fabric of his environmental suit, through straps which could not possibly hold them.
The walnut tree blazed in the center of the area its poison had cleared. The ferns and bamboo in the warhead's direct line had vanished; those on the edges now smoldered and struggled to pump life into the shrivelled foliage before undamaged neighbors strangled them.
Bright green shoots speared up from the devastated swath.
Footlockers, like bunks and air-conditioned quarters, were for the crews of major fleet elements. The personal gear of a crewman aboard a hovercraft was limited to the contents of a .8-cubic foot backpack which could be hung, slung, or stuffed into what little space the flitterboats offered.
Now the packs were stuffed with dried food, ammunition, and wads of doughy barakite scooped from the warhead of the second torpedo. Brainard didn't know how much good the explosive was going to be, but he knew they needed something.
"These black balls on the soil," Wilding called. He pointed to a sphere the size of a snooker ball. There were dozens of them, obvious against soil from which all the cover had been burned away. "Leave them alone. Don't for any reason touch them!"
Wilding ought to be in charge. He was educated, so he knew the environment. To Brainard, it was all a lethal blur. He was afraid to focus on anything except the peak that was his goal . . . and the peak was invisible, merely something taken on faith from the charts.
