Redliners(37)

Meyer was in her hard suit, ready to push her dolly of cannon shells down the ramp to wherever Top or the major decided they wanted the weapon emplaced. Now she jerked the two heavy cannisters out of their clamp restraints and let the little support device bound off one side of the lowering ramp.

The gun was dollied-up also. Nessman switched his lift fan off, collapsing the air cushion. The dolly continued to slide down the increasing slope. Nessman jammed a boot in the crack between the hull proper and the lowering hatch. With that purchase he was able to keep the heavy gun from spilling wildly out of the ship.

Meyer tried to drag her cannisters up the deck to where she could hook an arm through a cargo strap. When that didn't work she sat down. Her boots had non-slip soles, but the seat of Meyer's ceramic armor was close to being a frictionless surface. It still seemed like the natural thing to do when she was trying to keep from falling out of a starship that was about to topple on whatever was below it.

"C41, watch for cargo shifting," the major's voice warned. This boarding deck had no partitions, just stanchions and the lift shafts which acted as structural columns. The circumference of the deck was open. Items too large for the lifts to carry to higher levels were secured in the remaining volume.

It was possible that one of the vehicles was going to break loose, but that wasn't Meyer's first concern. She'd chance having a bulldozer land on her and hope it wouldn't crush the hard suit. The entire mass of 10-1442 was something else. She'd never be found.

The ship stopped tilting. "Everybody out!" Sergeant Daye ordered, pausing at the edge of the hatch to make sure his people were clear before he jumped. Daye gripped the jamb with one hand and bent to help Nessman with the cannon's weight.

"Fuck it I'm caught!" Nessman shouted. He thrashed his right leg. The hatch had flexed. It pinched his left boot.

Meyer let one of the ammo cans go. Daye tried to pull Nessman free. Meyer judged the distance and swung her remaining can against the back of Nessman's armored foot. The shock sprang him loose.

Meyer and Nessman, clumsy with their hard suits and the equipment they still clung to, tumbled down the ramp to ground only marginally softer than the steel deck. Sergeant Daye grabbed both of them by an arm to help them up. "Set it where the bitch won't fall on you!" he said, pointing vaguely to the right. "Christ what a ratfuck!"

Meyer scooped up the handle of the second can and moved, using the ammo's momentum to swing her body for each next step. Nessman cradled the gun in both arms and waddled forward as though he was carrying an anvil. A good-sized anvil wouldn't have been any heavier or more awkward than the load he did have.

Trees a hundred and fifty feet high formed the main wall of the forest, swathed in vines and curtainlike mosses. For a hundred feet out from where 10-1442 now teetered, retro rockets had seared to death the larger trees; the asteroid's final impact shattered the boles to blazing splinters. Brush had already grown twenty feet high, but the leaves of the nearer shrubs were curled.

The lesser ground cover, mostly plants with claw-tipped leaves the size of a man's hand, was dead and gray. Stems crumbled under Meyer's armor. Even strikers in ordinary boots and battledress strode through the shrivelled tracery without noticing. The only green near the ship were vines growing inward along the ground from the edge of the blasted area. They looked like the spokes of a gigantic wire wheel.

There wasn't a good field of fire anywhere. Nessman picked a stump uprooted when the magnetic mass hit and laid the barrel of the plasma cannon across it. He was only ten feet from where Hatch A wiggled in the air, no part of it touching the ground. The weapon was too awkward and heavy to carry any farther.

Meyer, bent like a knuckle-walking ape, dropped the ammo cannisters beside the gunner and gasped with relief. They were probably clear of the ship when it went over, but if they weren't she was too wrung out to care.

She'd heard the warning about Spooks, though she didn't understand it. She switched her sensors to high sensitivity. The immediate blur of warning signals—movement, vibration, and IR sources, all careted in different colors on her visor—virtually blinded her.

Fuck it. She'd rather be able to see a Spook if he hopped up in front of her than hope to identify him before he was close enough to be a danger. Meyer cut back immediately on all inputs except electronic. The AI notched striker gear out of the search spectrum unless the user deliberately entered friendly signatures, so that wasn't a problem.

The ground was coarse red limestone that scuffed to gritty dust beneath the strikers' feet. The thin topsoil didn't look sufficient to sustain trees the size of those surrounding the site. Obviously it was, but Meyer could see why the impact of the magnetic mass had so thoroughly cleared the area.