The driver realized his danger and shifted into reverse. Tendrils gripped the blade and clogged the drive gears. The tree swayed like a fishpole bound to its catch by a score of cable-thick lines.
Pressley's armored body flew in a parabola that ended when he slammed the trunk of another tree, fifty feet in the air. The tentacle released him. The striker fell, tumbling like a mannequin. The hard suit was undamaged, but the body within had been crushed despite the padding.
Farrell unhooked a 4-pound rocket and armed it by twisting open the launch tube. He checked behind him, turning his head rather than trusting the panorama display. Civilians were still too close though they surged backward under the lash of fear. Manager al-Ibrahimi shouted orders in a voice like dry thunder.
Farrell stepped to the side so that the backblast would singe forest, not the colonists his life was pledged to protect. Something nuzzled his left leg. He ignored the touch and squeezed the bar trigger.
The rocket snarled away, the motor a white glare in the half second before burnout. The last of the exhaust gases batted Farrell like a huge, hot cotton swab. Thrust against the sides of the tube rocked him back a step. The tentacle closed around Farrell's ankle, two ropy tendrils to either side of his boot.
Farrell's rocket hit the central pole of the tree a hundred feet in the air and blew it to toothpicks in a thunderclap. The peak and all the bark tentacles tumbled down like the head of Medusa.
The grip on Farrell's ankle tightened, then relaxed. He'd been straining against the tree's pull and fell backward when the tension released.
Flaccid tentacles slid from the bulldozer's cab and blade. The vehicle began moving. Other ropes still clogged the tracks and drive gears, but vegetable fibers flattened beneath density-enhanced metal.
The tracks accelerated slowly. The driver struggled with the lifeless tentacles choking his cab, oblivious of the fact that he was clanking backward toward the mob of civilians.
Farrell staggered to his feet. Sergeant Abbado was already trotting alongside the cab with Horgen. Abbado gave her a lift onto the platform. Brown fragments of a tentacle still dangled from Horgen's waist. Whatever she said to the driver was sufficient, because the bulldozer immediately shuddered to a stop.
Farrell looked around. The colonists had halted a hundred feet back. Strikers from the lead squad were in position nearby, reloading weapons. Some of them had raised their visors. They looked shaken. Farrell damned well felt shaken.
His visor overlay showed that C41 had held position pretty well, though there'd been a little easing forward. Fighting drew the strikers even though they knew there was more risk of an attack from the sides or rear than there was of the tree pulling up its roots and charging down the column.
Not that Farrell was ready to count that possibility out completely.
One of the bark tentacles slowly uncoiled on the ground. That was gravity, not malevolence. The tree was dead, waiting to be uprooted and flung to the side as soon as the bulldozer got moving again.
"C41, all clear," Farrell ordered. "We'll hold five minutes to get reorganized. Tell your civilians. They're not on the net, so they won't know what's happening. Over."
Manager al-Ibrahimi walked toward him. His aide came from where she'd been in the center of the column, her concern for al-Ibrahimi obvious even though her face was without expression.
Farrell rubbed his right wrist where the backblast had seared him. The manager would probably have to replace the bulldozer's driver until the original staffer had a chance to settle down.
Farrell needed to pick another striker to ride the deck.
He'd been thinking of the march in terms of miles and days. Now he started wondering how long it would be before he ran out of strikers.
Local Visitors
The air was hot and still and humid, but at least the trees towering to either side of the cut shaded the column from direct sun. Abbado noticed Dr. Ciler nearby, helping a woman with a cane. She was tramping along determinedly instead of riding on top of a trailer.
"Hey Doc?" he called. "How long do you think it's going to be before the leaves all go transparent so the sun can shine on us full strength?"
The old woman turned in horror. "Oh, dear heaven," she said. "Is that going to happen next?"
"The sergeant was joking, Mrs. Trescher," Ciler said. "Certainly I would applaud if I thought I'd have nothing worse to treat than sunburns, though."
A stinger fired from the front of the column, just a short burst. When a squad from First Platoon took the lead after four hours, 3-3 and the civilians they guarded let the front half of the column move past them. It didn't seem to Abbado that any location was more dangerous than another, but a lot of people were going to be convinced that wherever they were was the hot seat. God or the major kept the level of bitching down by rotating the order of march.