Redliners(42)

Farrell had retained just under half his force near the ship as a reserve. If he'd concentrated all of C41 here any Kalendru attack, even a single sniper, might slaughter scores of civilians before strikers could get into position to stop them.

There were too fucking many civilians for C41 to draw a close cordon around them. If the strikers were to provide a forward defense, Farrell needed to know where forward pointed.

President Reitz and Councillor Suares had joined al-Ibrahimi. Farrell didn't see Lock, but the other councillor might be anywhere in the mass of civilians. Some of them now wanted to go back into the ship to get additional belongings. Lundie had asked Farrell to prevent that: the elected monitors, two per deck, were busy organizing the people for whom they were responsible, and the building staffers were emptying heavy cargo despite the threat of 10-1442 going over.

Farrell didn't much like putting his people on what amounted to crowd-control duties, but he didn't see a better solution. Sergeant Daye chose ten strikers for the job.

"Major?" al-Ibrahimi called. Ms. Reitz broke off whatever she'd been saying to the manager.

"Sir?" said Farrell as he moved a step closer. His visor's upper range echoed in miniature the view from the four perimeter squads. There was no reason he shouldn't talk to his superior until something popped.

"We've landed one hundred and twelve miles east of the intended site," al-Ibrahimi said, speaking to Farrell and the civilian officials together. "The asteroid the Kalendru placed was more massive than the grid that the Population Authority intended for us."

Al-Ibrahimi smiled. His thin, swarthy face was capable of humor all the more remarkable for flashing from his usual expression of reposed detachment.

"The degree to which these transports are automated," he added, "is a matter I'll take up with the relevant bureaux when we reach the correct site and the communications capsule prepositioned there."

"Aside from their active hostility our surroundings bear no resemblance to those the briefing chips led me to expect," Suares said. "Have we perhaps landed on the wrong planet, Mr. Ibrahimi?"

"No, though I'm afraid it's a particularly insalubrious region of the correct one," the manager said. "We're in a large crater which orbital imaging showed to have uniquely dense vegetation. Unfortunately, the attack and defense mechanisms so notable in vegetation elsewhere on BZ 459 are abnormally developed here as well."

Farrell nodded, thinking of Blohm's Spooks. He wondered if the managers' headsets received military transmissions. All Farrell had reported was the fact of the Spook bodies.

"The crater walls separate the local biota from the remainder of the planet," Lundie said. "The population pressures appear to have increased the rate of adaptation."

"What about the animals?" Suares asked. "Are they different as well?"

"The survey didn't use techniques that would penetrate the jungle canopy," Lundie said. "The probability is that the same pressures affected the zoobiota as well as the phytobiota. Perhaps more so."

Her words were chillingly emotionless.

"If the Kalendru landed here by chance," al-Ibrahimi said, "they were remarkably unlucky. As we most certainly are."

"We've got to begin ferrying people to the correct place at once," Reitz said. "We won't be able to complete the job before dark, but if this is as dangerous a place as you say we need to begin."

"Ma'am, you're right," said Farrell, "but I don't want to risk our only aircar until we know what the Spooks, sorry, the Kalendru, are up to. If the car overflies them, they'll shoot it down."

"Why are Kalendru here?" Reitz demanded. "Is the Unity sending colonies to the war zone? Is that it?"

"No," al-Ibrahimi said flatly. "The Spooks—"

He looked deliberately at Farrell and nodded.

"—shouldn't be here. A probe this far into human-settled space is risky, and that they chose to land on BZ 459 would be unthinkable had they not done so."

"A crash landing, perhaps?" Suares said. "Castaways?"

"No," said Lundie. "A prepared landing, on a magnetic mass placed with considerable effort."

"I just want to avoid them," said Farrell. "When we make it to the commo capsule, I'll call in a proper force to deal with them."

"That shouldn't be difficult," Lundie said. "I'll be on the aircar—with your agreement, sir?"

"You or me," al-Ibrahimi said. "I haven't decided yet."

Lundie's face went still in a fashion Farrell had learned was equivalent to another person's scowl. "There will be strikers in the car as guards," she resumed. "The military sensors in the helmets are capable of identifying Kalendru equipment at ranges beyond risk to us in this dense vegetation."