Redliners(35)

"I brought a branch back from Glove White. It turned gray and went to dust in a couple weeks," Gabrilovitch said. He grimaced. "Don't know what I thought I was going to do with it anyway."

"That's not where they put base camps, though," Blohm said. "Remember Kaunitz?"

Gabrilovitch nodded vigorously. "And Stalleybrass," he said. "Or any other damn place, mud or dust, that's the choice. Sometimes I think there's a Directorate of Mud on Earth to make sure military bases never run out. But you know, snake?"

He turned his gaze directly onto Blohm. "If they'd built a base on Case Lion, it'd have been all mud in no time. And Glove White would have got just as dusty as Stalleybrass."

"Might be," Blohm said. The thought made him uncomfortable, though he didn't see why it should. It wasn't any of his doing, it was just nature. A hundred thousand troops in one place gave you a mud pit or a dust bowl, take your choice.

"The places that're kind of neat to look back at," Gabrilovitch said, "there wasn't time to think about it when we were there. They pulled us out of Case Lion as soon as we'd cleared the Spook command and control unit. What, six hours?"

"I sure didn't want to stay longer," Blohm agreed. "That tunnel complex went thirty miles in every direction, and that's just as far as we could trust the echo mapper. There might have been a million Spooks down there. It wasn't going to be long before they got their shit together and came for us."

"Sure, I know," Gabrilovitch said. "But sometimes I think it's a shame that we got to shoot first and ask questions later, so to speak."

Blohm's expression froze. He stared toward his reflection in his visor's outer surface, but his mind was on the children playing on Deck 8.

"Just shoot first, Gabe," he said. "Better not to ask questions at all. The answers'll confuse you."





Landing


"Now for God's sake remember it's not a real combat drop!" Farrell ordered. He spoke slowly and distinctly, because the magnetic flux bringing the ship to a soft landing played hell with radio transmission despite enhancement by the strikers' helmet AIs. "Wild shooting is going to scare the civilians. Six out."

10-1442's every plate and stringer vibrated at a different frequency. This single-use Pop Authority ship hadn't been built to the standards of the transports C41 was used to. Farrell didn't consider the situation worse, just different. Military transports, torqued by hundreds of liftoffs and landings, often clanged a single bell note that meant sympathetic vibration was doing its best to hammer to death the vessel and everyone aboard her.

"One minute to landing," Lieutenant Kuznetsov reported in a distorted voice.

Kuznetsov was at Hatch C with her former First Platoon; Farrell himself had Hatch A with most of Second Platoon. Sergeant Bastien had commanded Third Platoon at Active Cloak. He'd survived so he now had them at Hatch B. A scratch group of Heavy Weapons, the scouts, and four orphan strikers of line squads were under Sergeant Daye at Hatch D. It didn't bother Farrell that C41 was so far down on officers from its Table of Organization strength, but he sure wished he had more stingers and grenade launchers ready for the next few moments.

"Welcome to the pastoral beauties of Bezant," called Sergeant Kristal. "No expense has been spared to make your stay a pleasant one."

Second Platoon strikers close enough to hear her laughed. C41 was loose for this landing. Nobody was careless. The strikers were poised with their weapons aimed, reloads and backups ready . . . but nobody really believed the wildlife was a danger on the same scale as Kalendru troops.

It wasn't, of course. Art Farrell's real concern was what came next, guarding a thousand civilians from that wildlife.

"Thirty seconds to landing," Kuznetsov said.

The trouble with the transport's automatic operation wasn't the voyage, which had gone as smoothly as any similar period Farrell had spent on a starship, but right now: the landing. 10-1442 was a can of meat until the four bottom-deck hatches opened—which they would do whether or not anybody aboard wanted them to, and before the human cargo had the slightest view of what was waiting for them outside.

A Population Authority advance team had fabricated a landing grid from the system's asteroid belt, then used a robot lander to drop the mass to the colony site. The actual location might be miles away from the one planners on Earth had penciled in. That could be a problem anywhere; on Bezant, 10-1442 might land right in front of a swarm of murderous herbivores. Deck 1 was for C41 alone until Farrell was very damned sure the site was as safe as his strikers could make it.

"Five seconds to landing," Kuznetsov said.