Redliners(114)

We won't be able to hold it at all. But hell, you've got to try.



Seligman was so focused on the ground twenty feet in front of the bulldozer that he didn't notice the creature rising out of the jungle three hundred yards to the side. He increased power to the left tread by minuscule increments to avoid losing traction as he tore the blade through a root.

The ground was shuddering like a lake in an earthquake, but you didn't notice that aboard the tractor. Matt had seen the creature, though. Was it a snail?

Esther Meyer raised her visor's magnification to x64, as high as she could focus on the vibrating deck. The thing's teeth were the plates of its shell. They sawed from side to side as the creature advanced, grinding trees to bits the way a gear train chews twigs that fall in.

The snail must have a mouth on the underside, though, or there'd have been a wrack of destroyed vegetation to the sides of the path through the jungle. Meyer had wondered about that trail when she echoed Blohm's imagery. She'd learned a lot about clearing jungle by riding the dozer.

A rocket skimmed the jungle canopy and struck near the peak of the snail's shell. That wasn't the target Meyer would have chosen for the round she'd started to arm, but the lack of result showed her it didn't make any difference.

The warhead burst with the usual blue-white flash and a spurt of dust blasted from the shell. The dust settled. One of the snail's teeth had shattered. The stump dropped from the socket shielded by the points of overlying denticles.

As the snail throbbed forward to take another bite from the jungle, the segments of its covering shifted and reformed. Meyer couldn't see any change from the normal chewing motion of the teeth, but at the end of it the shell showed no sign of damage. Denticles had moved forward from the back or sides. The creature's ability to shape its body beneath the armor meant that no part of its flesh would be unprotected despite C41's firepower.

Matt fired his stinger. Seligman heard the weapon's snarl and turned to see what Matt was shooting at.

"Holy shit!" the driver cried.

"Aim us at the thing!" Meyer said. "Raise the blade just off the ground. Maybe we can slow it down."

Seligman rotated out of his seat and jumped from the bulldozer before Meyer could stop him. The driver hit face down, splashing waterlogged dirt to all sides. He lay there while the bulldozer crawled away with no one at the controls.

Matt stepped into the cab. "I'll drive!" he said in a voice as bright and jagged as shards of glass. He adjusted the hand switches. The tractor bucked briefly. Matt had lowered the blade for a deeper bite instead of raising it as he'd intended. He corrected quickly and began swinging the vehicle to the left to face the monster.

There was no way to compare a machine twelve feet high and twenty feet broad with a living creature three hundred feet in either dimension. Driving into the snail wouldn't make any more difference than a fart in a whirlwind, but Meyer didn't know anything else to try.

Matt increased speed. Now the treads didn't need to maintain traction while shoving a load of vegetation and topsoil. The snail was only a hundred yards away. Six rockets hit it simultaneously. An instant later another sheaf hit the same points in the shell. At least some of the latter must have struck temporary gaps in the armor because flesh filtered the warheads' sharp radiance.

The snail continued its advance unaffected. One throbbing pulse after the volleys hit and the frontal armor again was whole. It was like trying to stop a Spook tank with 4-pound rockets.

Just like a tank. Meyer did know what to do.

Matt twitched his controls to avoid a hummock supporting a tree ten feet in diameter. That was the last obstacle between them and the snail.

Meyer leaned into the cab. "Matt, bail out!" she said.

He ignored her. The tractor's speed increased to a fast walk. Reeds and thin mud splashed to either side.

Meyer rapped Matt on the side of the head. He rolled from the seat, stunned by the armored gauntlet. Meyer grabbed a double handful of shirt and tossed him as far as she could.

Alone now, Meyer walked onto the left side of the quivering deck. The snail was fifty feet away, too close to see the huge body entire. It was like trying to view the building you stood beside. Rockets smashed against it like hail on a truck's cab, doing damage but no fatal harm. Meyer had armed her four, but it wasn't time to launch them yet.

An instant before she jumped down Meyer threw a fuel-air grenade to the side of the bulldozer. She fell flat, hitting just as hard as she'd known she was going to.

She hugged the ground for the remaining two seconds of the grenade's fuze train. When the bomb went off, the snail was so close that Meyer wasn't able to feel the shockwave. She scrambled to the wide crater and threw herself in. The cavity was already filling with water.