"Get her out of here!" Kuznetsov shouted as her powerknife cut a tendril reaching around her for the blonde. She ignored the tip probing where the cuff of her battle dress bloused into the top of her right boot. The tendrils might have slowed when the strikers' fire severed the supporting vine, but for the time being they retained life and motion.
Blohm gripped the blonde's coveralls at waist level and heaved upward. She had enough presence of mind to grab his shoulder. For an instant Blohm thought they were going to overbalance and land face first in the nodule, but a striker caught his equipment belt from behind and anchored him.
Kuznetsov bent and sawed through the tendril. Its tip had disappeared beneath her boot top. The severed end writhed. It continued to writhe as the lieutenant's body arched backward and her limbs spasmed. The powerknife flew aside, still whirring.
Blohm tried to throw the blonde onto the ground behind him, the fastest way to put a barrier between her and the remaining tendrils. She misunderstood and continued to cling to his arm. The tip of a tendril brushed Blohm's breastplate and curled onto the civilian's bare wrist.
Instead of cutting the plant, Blohm slid his knife between the tendril and the blonde's arm, shaving flesh and the tip of a wrist bone. The blade's vibration spit blood in all directions.
The civilian gasped but didn't scream. Blohm rolled himself backward, taking her with him in a somersault. Gabe ducked aside, dodging Blohm's knife.
Blohm hit on his shoulders and tucked by reflex. He managed not to fall on the blonde, but the breastplate she slammed against was a lot harder than the ground beneath him.
A striker from 3-1 leaned over the tilted aircar, stepping on the laced hands of one of her fellows. "Blast that—" Blohm wheezed.
A gush of dazzling white fire spewed from the muzzle of the striker's weapon. She carried a flame gun using high pressure oxygen to throw a jet of metal-enriched fuel. It carved the vegetation with a ferocity only a plasma bolt could have bettered.
"Striker Blohm, I think you'd better get me to medical help," said the blonde civilian. She'd clamped her right palm over the wound, but blood and serum leaked around the edges. "Or your courage will have been for nothing. Some of the toxins have already entered my system."
The forest gave an angry sigh. Perhaps the sound was air rushing to feed the blaze the flame gun had ignited.
Simple Wrong Answers
"I knew Daniello, jeez, must be five years," Seligman said. "He was flying the car. Did you know that?"
"I didn't know any of the civilians," Meyer said without emphasis. She paused to check the diagram on her visor again. A sidebar provided the compartment manifests. "We need the next door, not this one."
Lieutenant Kuznetsov had been all right. Meyer had never served directly under her, but C41 was a small world. Kuznetsov looked out for her people.
"I don't see why the hell they need building supplies anyway," Seligman complained. "They ought to be thinking about getting us where we're supposed to be instead. You know, if they'd carried a couple more aircars, we'd be a damn sight better off!"
Meyer wondered if Top had picked her to guide Seligman because she'd worked with the staffer before. She didn't like being inside the ship, knowing that if it fell she might be trapped in the crumpled hull.
"The First Sergeant said we'd be using rolls of roofing to sleep on at night," she said aloud. The sooner she completed her job, the sooner she'd be able to get out of this metal tomb. "I guess they're afraid that if we lie right on the ground, something might come up out of it while we're sleeping."
She patted the hatch with the flat of her hand. "Try this one."
You'd have thought the support staff would have their own way to navigate around 10-1442. Would have drawn maps, at least, during the voyage. Nope. And Meyer wasn't counting on cargo being stowed where the manifest showed it, either.
Seligman opened the hatch with the electronic key for all the locks on Deck 17. The air had a chemical odor. The compartment had probably been closed since the cargo was stowed.
"It don't make any damn sense all of us having to hike through the jungle," he said. "They ought to, well, send a few of you guys to the right place and bring in aircars in another ship. You guys hike a lot, right?"
"Not a lot, no," Meyer said. "Mostly we ride."
By assault boat. But Seligman wouldn't get the point even if she said that.
Seligman knelt and checked code tags with an electronic reader. "Yeah, this is it," he said. He looked over his shoulder at the striker. "I still think some of you soldiers ought to fetch help. It's what makes sense to me."
Right, divide your force when you know there's a shipload of Kalendru troops in the immediate vicinity. Meyer shrugged. She said, "I just follow orders, buddy. The decisions come from the manager, not me."