Redliners(113)

"Now what they expect us to do, honey," Blohm said, "is dodge behind a tree. What we're going to do instead is stand right here like we'd froze to the ground. Spinning the way they do, those things can curve around a tree as easy as not and we wouldn't see them coming. Now, you stick with me. When they get a little closer—run!"

With the nearest of the pods ten feet from him in slant distance Blohm sprinted under the spinning missile. Bristles at the seed's tip twisted, tracking his body heat. The pod attempted to reverse its angle of descent.

It wasn't high enough to succeed, though the last of the sheaf of missiles came closer than Blohm had expected. All six hit the ground in close sequence and burst, spraying sticky fluid. The pools self-ignited in yellow-orange pillars which slowly merged in a single inferno.

"Most times running away's near as bad an idea as sitting with your thumb up your ass," Blohm explained with satisfaction to his companion. "You can't run faster than a laser bolt, right? Go toward them and at least you've got a chance to react to whatever they try on."

"Six-six-two, this is Admin Two," said the voice Blohm had learned to identify as Tamara Lundie. "Initial survey imagery showed a hill or mound in the region you just crossed. Have you noticed any sign of such a feature, over?"

"Admin Two, that's a negative," Blohm said. He saw a quivering glow through the undergrowth ahead, like an electrical arc softened by a foot of frosted glass. "The Spooks had one hell of a bulldozer to clear the track back there. Maybe they scraped the hill down too. Over."

"Six-six-two," said Lundie's cool voice. "The Kalendru had no equipment beyond small arms. Admin Two out."

Blohm used his knife with the power off to very gently pry one of a line of saplings to the side. The sapling's crown suddenly twisted down around the blade like a elephant's trunk coiling.

Blohm withdrew the blade. Savage thorns along the inner surface of the coil squeaked, but they couldn't mark the synthetic diamond. The sapling very slowly began to straighten, recharging the reservoir of hydrostatic energy which it had just emptied. Blohm slipped past while it was still harmless.

He was in a small clearing. A skewed oval door was set in the surface of the ground. Enclosing it, a discontinuity in the air itself like a gigantic soap bubble scintillated across the visual spectrum.

Blohm felt a rhythmic vibration. He wondered if it was an earth tremor. He'd have guessed a starship was landing, except then actinic radiation would have penetrated the layers of foliage above him.

"Six, this is Six-six-two," he reported. "Major, I've found you your door! Over."

Major Farrell didn't respond. After waiting ten seconds, Blohm echoed a remote view from the major's helmet.

He realized why everybody with the column had other things on their mind.





The End


The vibration wasn't initially severe, but the pulses built and formed harmonics. Standing waves humped the swampy soil. An old woman near Farrell at the front of the column fell down.

The thing rose slowly, visible both through the relatively sparse trees and above the spreading canopy. The segmented outer shell was rusty maroon with yellow-gray blotches. It would have passed for a hill of the coarse rain forest limestone.

It had passed for a hill when the survey ship orbited Bezant.

"C41 to the front," Farrell ordered as he extended the tube of a 4-pound rocket. It wasn't going to be enough. Heavy Weapons Platoon, full-strength and fully equipped, wouldn't have been enough, but hell, you had to try. "Strikers who pass the trailer, bring all the extra rockets. Admin, get the civilians moving back fast. Throw all your gear away but don't leave people behind. Six out."

The creature advanced like a snail on rhythmic pulsations of its undersurface. Because of its size it moved as fast as a healthy man could walk on smooth ground. The shell slipped down with every forward pulse, then lifted again. The lower edge of each shell segment was pointed the way a snake's scales are. They gouged away everything in the creature's path like the bite of a shark whose teeth were three feet long.

The civilians weren't healthy and the bulldozer's path wasn't smooth. Only a fraction of the Kalendru expeditionary force had escaped the snail's attack, and they were crack troops.

Strikers jogged to the front of the column. Most of them carried rockets. They waited for Farrell's fire command. No point in wasting warheads on branches when you knew the target was going to clear you a field of fire in a moment or two.

"Major," Manager al-Ibrahimi said. "Don't throw away your personnel! You can't stop that creature but you may be able to escape."

"Get your ass out of here, civilian!" Major Arthur Farrell shouted. "This is a tactical decision and I'm in tactical command! Get your people back. We won't be able to hold it long."