Redliners(39)

"Okay, everybody hold up," Abbado said. "Methie, you slide back behind me."

Abbado knelt. He could see that the object beneath the seared vegetation was flat and angular if not square. The AI didn't warn of a booby trap. He extended his stinger toward the mound, using the fat barrel as a probe.

Maybe he ought to have one of the hard suits do this. Their gauntlets weren't as delicate as Abbado's bare hands, though; and besides, he was squad leader.

He prodded the object. Dead leaves rustled bitterly. Nothing exploded. The AI was right. It wasn't a bomb. Abbado picked the thing up in his left hand.

It was a fabric pouch with individual cells for three batteries. Two batteries were in place. They were of a type familiar to Abbado: they would fit into the butt compartment of a shoulder-fired Kalendru laser.

"Six from Three-three," Abbado said, still kneeling. He used the identifier to key his transmission to Farrell rather than switching his helmet manually. "I've got a Spook ammo pouch here with two batteries in place. It doesn't look too weathered. Over."

He tried to scan the treeline. IR told him there were no large animals but as for the rest, while none of the saplings in the intermediate zone was more than an inch and a half in diameter, there were enough of them that they concealed the details beyond them as effectively as a gauze curtain.

"Three-three, understood," the major's voice said. "Break, C41, we've got recent Spook equipment north of the ship. Patrol leaders continue to advance to the forest edge but hold there. Look particularly for any sign of a trail. Out."

"You heard him, people," Abbado muttered as he rose. He ducked around another grim tree that looked like a stick figure wearing spiked boxing gloves. This one still had its leaves. "Keep your eyes open and—"

He heard a crackswish behind him. He didn't have any idea what it meant—except it meant Guilio Abbado had fucked up.

"Watch—" he shouted as his instincts tried to throw him to the ground. Something whacked him in the middle of the back and hurled him twenty feet without his boots touching the ground.

Abbado's nose rapped the inside of his visor, bloodying it. His ribs ached. His body armor had stopped the blow and spread it evenly across the whole surface of his backplate, but it had still been one hell of a wallop.

"Sarge, the tree hit you!" Caldwell said. "The tree!"

The ground cover where Abbado landed was still alive. Thorns were tearing the backs of his wrists and hands. He swore and pulled himself loose. Pain stabbed up and down his sides, but that was stressed muscle. He knew the feeling of a broken rib stabbing splinters toward a lung.

"C41," he said, unable to prevent his voice from wheezing. "The trees that have spikes on the branch tips, mark—"

He blinked to load the image of the sapling he was looking at. The ground cover at Abbado's feet still waved leaves toward him like the paws of a rending beast. Drops of his blood splashed the shiny surfaces.

"—can bash you like you wouldn't believe if you come close. And watch the fucking ivy, too, it moves and it bites. Three-three out."

Abbado scuffed his boot across the vegetation, tearing stems from the roots. Leaves caressed his legs to mid-shin, but the barbs couldn't penetrate the boots or tough battle dress leggings.

The sapling that he'd stepped close to had three branches spaced equidistant around the slim trunk. Two of them were still cocked up at about a forty-five degree angle skyward as they had been. The third now lay flaccidly against the trunk. Some of the thorns had broken off when the knobby end smacked Abbado's backplate.

Stinger pellets didn't ricochet at short range—they were moving way too fast. They and generally whatever they hit disintegrated. Abbado still aimed deliberately because the starship was downrange.

He triggered a ten-round burst, blasting the tree apart at the roots as effectively as a charge of explosive could have done. The sapling toppled toward him as though it was trying to get in one last blow. It wasn't tall enough by a foot or two to reach.

"Three-three, let's go," Abbado said.

There hadn't been any real point to chopping the tree down: there were hundreds more just like it in the immediate area that the strikers would just have to avoid. It was the only thing Abbado could do to solace the ache in his ribs, though.



Caius Blohm squatted among uprooted trees which lay against their living brethren like strikers flung dying into the arms of their fellows. Blohm touched nothing but the ground. Leaves brushed his shanks and boot tops with the dry sound of snake scales. He ignored them as he merged himself with the forest beyond.

"Do you see anything, snake?" Gabrilovitch asked. He knelt, fidgety, a dozen feet from Blohm. The sergeant wore gloves. He'd cleared his immediate surroundings with his powerknife, but the sight of leaves groping vainly toward him seemed to get on his nerves.