by David Drake
Now. . . .
Kacentas, War Dragon of the 5th Level, had planned for the possibility of retreat by sliding drums of waste oil across the home corridor. Three hard-faced girls of the Auxiliary were stationed there with torches to ignite the barricade if the raiders were driven back.
The disaster had been so abrupt that the girls lit the drums in the faces of their own warriors, rather than those of the enemy.
The leading warriors cursed and squealed, leaping the drums before the oil was properly alight. The pall of smoke rolled upward and down, following the convection patterns of Block 81's climate control.
An arrow took Kacentas in the air. He tumbled to what would have been the safe side of the barricade.
The Leaf brothers sprinted into the curtain of smoke. Peanut gagged, but the air was clear immediately in front of the barricade. Fuel blasted upward in terrifying columns to mushroom against the corridor ceiling.
The Patrol would arrive within minutes, but within seconds it would be too late.
"Come on!" Jacko cried.
All the other 5th-Level warriors had vanished—except Hurst, who lay at the base of the drums with eyes staring upward from a pool of blood. Hurst had managed to run all the way from the air shaft with his jugular torn open by a spearthrust.
Peanut skidded to a halt. "I can't!" he wailed to the barricade. The heat was a concrete presence.
"Come on!" Jacko repeated shrilly.
He picked up his brother by the throat and the seat of his pants. As he turned to hurl the younger boy to safety, a thrown club rang off Jacko's skull and stunned him.
Peanut fell to the floor. He had lost his steel mace back in the air shaft. There were 3rd-Level warriors all around them. His eyes were open, but his mind refused to accept what he saw.
Jacko was still on his feet. Two of the enemy prodded him with their spears. They didn't drive the points home. Instead, they thrust Jacko backwards, into the oil fires.
Jacko screamed. His arms flailed as if he were trying to swim away from the agony, but there was no way out. For a moment, Jacko's torso forced down the flames, but then the orange-red blanket roared up to cover him again.
And he still screamed.
Sirens and strobe lights flooded the corridor. The 3rd-Level warriors were running away, but Jacko did not move. His black arms lifted from the ebbing flames in a hollow embrace, and his skull greeted the Patrolmen with a lipless grin.
Jacko's throat had shrivelled shut. His brother screamed for both of them.
9
May 17, 382 AS. 1724 hours.
Newton was reloading. Brainard shoved past him and aimed his rifle.
He didn't fire. When the scorpion reared high over the trail it had a face like the heart of the sun and he had to glance away.
The roaring brilliance was barakite burning, not a vision of Hell.
When Brainard looked up again, the scorpion was careening away in a series of spastic convulsions. When its jointed tail straightened, the creature was more than twenty feet long from jaws to stinger . . . but the jaws were gone, the whole head was a blazing ruin, and so long as the decorticated monster continued in the current direction, it was no further danger to K67's crew.
Volleys of shots crackled and whined through the foliage as the ammunition in the backpack went off in the barakite fire. Cartridges without a gun-barrel to direct them weren't particularly dangerous. On a bad day, a bullet or fragment of casing might put an eye out.
That was nothing to worry about, since OT Wilding was gone and they were all dead without his special knowledge.
Just before the scorpion crashed out of sight through a thicket of hundred-foot willows, a human leg fell from the shriveled chitin of its mouth.
Brainard blinked at the purple afterimages of the flame. His ears rang, and his nostrils were numb with the smell of barakite and burning flesh. The suggestion of fried prawns was probably from the scorpion.
He didn't know what to do. He doubted there was anything they could do, now.
Leaf lay face down, moaning. Brainard reached out with his left hand and lifted the motorman. The bamboo had withered in the intense heat. It no longer clung to flesh and clothing.
"Good thinking," Brainard said. "With the barakite."
Must have been Leaf who ignited it, though it wasn't his pack because he was still carrying that. Caffey . . . no, Yee had been Number Two. Yee and Wilding were gone, just ahead of the rest of them.
The mat of flame-shrunken stems quivered, then moaned. OT Wilding's slim, aristocratic hand reached out of it.
"God help us!" blurted Caffey.
There was a swollen line across the torpedoman's neck, but he was enough himself again to push his way to the head of the column. He shifted the machine-gun to his left hand and snatched the cutting bar from where Wilding must have dropped it.
"Not that," snapped Brainard. "D'ye want to take his leg off?"
He knelt and began to pry the bamboo upward with one hand and the muzzle of his rifle. The laser communicator flopped awkwardly against his knees. With Wilding alive, they had a chance.
The desiccated stems splintered without resistance. Wilding could save them. . . .
Wilding was able to sit up by himself when they cleared the bamboo from his chest. Fresh growth, protected like the officer-trainee by the insulating mat, left nasty sores where it had begun to suck at his back.
"Is he okay?" Bozman called from the back of the line.
Leaf and the cautiously-used blade of his multitool worked Wilding's boots free.
"He's all right," Brainard said. A prayer of exultation danced in his mind as he heard his own flat statement.
"No," said Wilding. "I've sprained my ankle. You're going to have to leave me."
Brainard raised his eyes to the terrain ahead of them. It seemed to plateau, but they would have more climbing to do shortly.
"Who's got the first-aid kit?" he demanded. "Get a pressure bandage on the XO's ankle."
"You can't carry a cripple along with you," Wilding sneered. "Take what you need from my pack and get moving before something worse comes along."
Awareness that the officer-trainee might be right froze Brainard's heart. "Shut up," he snarled.
Wilding's face went blank. Leaf and Caffey, at the edge of Brainard's focused vision, stiffened.
Wheelwright said, "I got the kit," breaking the pulsing silence. "Lemme up to the front."
Men shifted. There was plenty of room in the broader pathway which the grasshopper had chewed through the jointed tangle. Caffey looked at the cutting bar in his hand and said, "Ah, I'll cut him a crutch, okay?"
Yee's rifle lay a few feet away. Brainard picked it up. Shreds of bamboo fiber were stuck to the plastic stock where the barakite had softened it.
"No," said Wilding. He looked at Caffey, purposefully avoiding eye contact with the ensign. "That won't work. The bamboo—any surface vegetation. It'll keep growing after it's cut, and. . . ."
He made a negligent gesture toward the sores on his back. Wheelwright coated them with a clear antiseptic, but the edges were already puckering upward.
The scorpion's pincers had cut the rifle's beryllium receiver almost in half. There were bright gouges through the barrel's weatherproofing and into the steel beneath.
"Right," said Brainard. "We'll use this for a crutch. It's not good for much else." He handed the rifle to Wilding.
Wilding's tongue touched his lips. He looked at the ensign. "Sir?" he said. "I still can't march—"
"I'll help him, sir," said Leaf.
"The junior personnel will assist Mr Wilding in rotation," Brainard said as his mind clicked through the minuscule tasks that he could understand, could deal with. "Newton, Bozman, Wheelwright. Thirty-minute watches."
He'd almost assigned Yee a place in the watch list.
"Leaf, I want you at the end of the column," he continued. He held out his rifle to the motorman. "Take this. Caffey, give me the cutting bar. I'll lead,
and I want you and the big gun right behind me."
Leaf turned his head as though he had not seen the proffered weapon. "I don't want a fucking gun," he snarled. "Why'n't you let me help the XO? I can do it."
"Newton's carrying the other bar, sir," Wilding said quietly. "You'd better use it. The charge on this one is almost flat."
Brainard slung his rifle. "All right," he said. "Newton, give me the other bar. Wheelwright, take the end slot. Watch yourself. Leaf, help Mr Wilding. Stay close. There's a lot of this place that I don't know anything about."
There was damn-all about this place that he did know anything about.
"Sir," offered Caffey. "Ah, d'ye want me to carry the communicator? It'll get in the way if there's much cutting to do."
Brainard looked at the torpedoman with a flat expression which he hoped hid the sudden terror in his mind. "We'll be following the grasshopper's path," he said coldly. "I'll keep the communicator."
The laser communicator was Brainard's lifeline. Its hard outlines were all that kept him sane. If he was still sane. . . .
* * *
July 23, 381 AS. 0301 hours.
The twenty-seven islands on Brainard's navigation display ranged from mere fangs of rock to a ridged mass rising to a thousand feet, worthy of a name.
Even the narrower perspective of the console's central situation display was splotched with islands. But the natural surroundings didn't matter, because a Seatiger warship was edging through a channel between two of the swampy blobs at a charted distance of 5721 yards.
"Ready torpedoes," Lieutenant Tonello rasped over the interphone. He stood to look over K67's cockpit coaming, while OT Brainard hid within his holographic environment. "Flank spee—"
A starshell popped. Tracers snarled overhead measurable seconds before Brainard heard the howl of the Gatlings that fired them.
"Torpedoes ready," Tech 2 Caffey reported. The interphone turned his voice into that of a soloist accompanied by the orchestra of Hell.
"Coxs'n, three degrees starboard."
K67 accelerated like a kicked can. Water slammed upward so near the port side that water drenched Brainard's console. The spout was luminous with the orange flames at its heart. The second shell was dead astern, the third astern to starboard.
Tonello had kept the fans on high, spilling air through the waste slots in the plenum chamber, as the torpedocraft nosed through the archipelago to find the targets he knew were present. OT Brainard cursed the CO in silent terror because that technique made K67 a sonic beacon. Brainard couldn't help matters at the countermeasures board, though the scattering effect of the islands themselves turned the two-vessel patrol into a flotilla.
It would have taken the fans 90 seconds to spin up from low-signature mode to full power. It took a half-second to slam the waste slots closed and lurch toward the enemy. That was many times the difference between a waterspout astern—and a fireball which scattered indistinguishable bits of crew and vessel after a 5.5-inch shell detonated K67's own torpedoes.
Brainard punched up an identification sidebar on his situation display. When his mind and fingers did something, the roar and flashes couldn't drown him in their terror.
The sea was orange with waterspouts; muzzle flashes boiled the whole horizon red and white. K44 vanished from the display. Even the islands blurred and shrank as the shell-storm degraded the data reaching K67's sensors.
Brainard's console told him their opponent was a destroyer-leader with a full-load displacement of 2700 tons and a main armament of six 5.5-inch guns in triple turrets.
He didn't believe it. He was sure from the volume of fire that they'd jumped a dreadnouoght. He reached under the panel and switched to the back-up system. The holographic display vanished for a hideous fraction of a second, forcing Brainard to see the carnage around him. Light trembling from flares twisted sea creatures on the surface into shapes still more monstrous than those of nature. Horrors fought and feasted at the banquet laid by bursting shells.
Then the back-up circuits took over. The new display told Brainard the same thing the old one had, that K67 faced a minor fleet element, not a dreadnought. Only a destroyer-leader, only a hundred times the hovercraft's size—
"Launch one!" said Lieutenant Tonello in a voice as clear as glass breaking. K67 shuddered as studs blew open and dropped one of the torpedoes into the sea beneath her plenum chamber.
"Launch two!"
"Tracking!" Caffey reported as he hunched over his guidance controls. The torpedo's own sensors gave the operator a multi-spectral view of the target. If the enemy tried to dodge, Caffey could send steering commands along the cable of optical fiber which connected the weapon to the hovercraft.
The release thump of the second torpedo was lost in the burst of explosive bullets which buzz-sawed across K67.
Lieutenant Tonello's head vanished in a yellow flash. His body hurtled against the back bulkhead. The shatterproof windscreen disintegrated into a dazzle of microscopic beads, and all the cockpit displays went dead. The coxswain screamed and rolled out of his seat. K67 wallowed broadside, still at full power.
Each side-console had an emergency helm and throttle under the middle display. Brainard rotated his unit up and locked it into position. Wind blast through the missing screen hammered him. The destroyer-leader was a Roman candle of muzzle flashes.
A starshell had drifted almost to the surface astern of K67. By its flickering light, Brainard saw another blacked-out hovercraft race across the wave tops toward the target. He hadn't had time to think about K44 since the shooting started.
Brainard spun his miniature helm hard to starboard. The hovercraft did not respond.
A salvo of 5.5-inch shells straddled K67 with a roar louder than Doomsday. Waterspouts lifted the hovercraft and spilled the air out of her plenum chamber. She slammed the surface again with a bone-jarring crash.
The main circuit breakers had tripped. A battery-powered LED marked the breaker box, but Brainard's retinas still flickered with afterimages of the explosive bullets that raked the cockpit. He groped for the box, barked his knuckles on the edge of it, and finally got it open while several rounds of automatic fire slapped K67's skirts.
Brainard snapped the main switch into place. The console displays remained dark, but the hovercraft answered her helm.
The coxswain lay moaning on the deck. "Medic!" Brainard shouted. "Medic!" The interphone wasn't working either.
The circuit breaker overloaded again with a blue flash. K67's fans continued to drive her, but the shell-frothed waves wrenched the vessel into a curve that would end on a rocky islet unless the Seatigers destroyed her first.
Brainard grabbed the circuit breaker with his left hand. He snapped the switch home and held it there. Sparks trembled and his forearm went numb. An overloaded component blew in the coxswain's station, but Brainard had control again.
He overcorrected. K67 reversed her curve as though Brainard intended a figure-8. A three-shell salvo ignited the sea along the hovercraft's previous course.
"Medic!" Brainard cried. He had no feeling on the left side of his body. His left foot thrashed a crazy jig against the cockpit bulkheads.
The sky behind them turned orange.
Brainard looked over his shoulder. Where the destroyer-leader had been, a bubble of light with sharp edges lifted five hundred feet above the horizon. Stark shadows ripped across the neighboring islands as a doughnut-shaped shockwave pushed trees away from the light.
It must have been the target's own munitions, because no torpedo warhead could wreak such destruction.
The destroyer-leader was almost two miles away. The blast made K67 skip like a flung pebble.
Leaf crawled into the cockpit, carrying the first aid kit. He wore gloves.
"Forget that!" Brainard squealed as the motorman crouched over the writhing coxswain. "Hold this breaker closed!"
K67 spewed air through dozens of holes in her skirts, but she would survive until a tender could take her aboard
. K67's torpedoes had lost guidance when the system power failed, but her consort had driven in and nailed the Seatiger vessel.
Because of K44, Officer-Trainee Brainard was going to survive this night after all.
10
May 17, 382 AS. 2148 hours.
Leaf heard OT Wilding say, "That's rock, we stop here," as they struggled past a tangle of thorny, interlacing vines.
The words didn't matter to Leaf. Wilding'd been muttering nonsense for . . . a long time, a lot of stumbling steps whatever the clock time might have been. The last time Wheelwright had dressed the bamboo sores on the officer's back, they had scarlet edges and centers of yellow pus.
But they weren't any of them in shape for a dress parade. Leaf saw only blurs because of the sweat in his eyes. He didn't have the energy to wipe his face with his right cuff. The multitool filled Leaf's right hand, and his left arm helped support Wilding . . .
Who was handsome, and rich, and not a pussy after all. During bouts of fever, the officer-trainee couldn't control his tongue—but he kept his feet moving forward. Their route was mostly uphill and the rifle made a bad crutch, but Wilding didn't flop down and die the way Leaf had maybe expected.
Wilding shook himself out of the motorman's grasp. Swaying like a top about to fall over, Wilding said, "We stop here," in a voice well accustomed to giving orders.
Leaf realized he was ready to fall down himself. Fuckin' A. He rubbed his right eyesocket a little clearer on the point of his shoulder. "Fish!" he shouted to the torpedoman's back. "Get the CO. Mr Wilding wants a word."
And a hell of a bad place to stop for one, but you didn't argue with officers.
There were in a belt of thirty-foot-tall grass which defended its territory against encroaching woody plants by sawing off their stems with glassy nodules along the edges of the narrow grassblades. The competition was as dynamic as that of surf and the shoreline.
