Redliners(70)

Ahead: screams, a stinger firing, and a whock-whock-whock that could have been several people chopping wood simultaneously.

Screams like large animals being disemboweled, probably an accurate description of what was going on.

Meyer dropped the bag and ran forward. "Get back!" she screamed to civilians who'd frozen on the trail. She rounded the corner.

The natives were humanoid and man-sized, brown-beige-green in color. Their skin had the waxy gloss of a healthy leaf. Tomaczek had killed at least one. His stinger ripped another standing over a civilian with a bloody club. The native lurched backward, spraying white ichor from the chest wounds.

Two more hacked Tomaczek from opposite sides. A third squirted the striker with thick liquid from a tube projecting above its forehead. Tomaczek's battle dress turned black where the fluid touched. He tried to aim his stinger but the pellets merely cratered the ground he fell on.

Meyer killed the pair continuing to chop at Tomaczek. There was blood, human blood, spattering everything. The barbed clubs slung it in all directions.

She jerked a civilian backward by the collar. The native striking down at the civilian hit the top of Meyer's helmet instead.

Meyer's knees buckled. Her vision reduced to black and white for an instant. She didn't have time to wonder if the problem was in the visor's electronics or her own optic nerves. Her stinger was almost in contact with the native as she fired, scooping his chest out like a shucked oyster.

Natives converged on her, still slashing at any unarmed civilians within reach. She shot one in the upper chest. He spun and went down, hacking at the body of a decapitated woman.

Short bursts because there wasn't going to be time to reload. She was alone.

Meyer squeezed off a head shot but let the stinger rise on recoil so that the pellets also shattered the raised right club arm. He was holding Matthew Lock by the hair with the other hand. The native's smooth skin broke instead of puckering like a human's. The native weapons looked like plastic extrusions.

The native with the tube on his head sprayed Meyer in the face. The visor saved her eyes, but the brown sludge was opaque on the outer surface. Her hands burned. She fired in the direction of the natives she'd seen coming for her when she shot the one with Lock instead.

A pair of clubs hit her helmet like trip hammers. She tried to squeeze the stinger's trigger but she had no feeling in her hands.

She felt the shock between her shoulder blades. There was no pain, only a flash of light that expanded into burning darkness.



"Medic!" Farrell shouted as he came around the angle in the trail. The colony's doctors weren't on the commo net but maybe a striker would relay the message.

The native's face was slimly oval. Its coloration would have been attractive on the outside of a house in a wooded setting. The black-throated tube projecting above the forehead looked like a cyclops' eye in the instant before Farrell's stinger blew the skull to white mush.

Farrell stepped aside or the civilian running in a crouch would have collided with him. Farrell bodychecked the native chasing the civilian and groped left-handed to hold the club arm. His stinger snarled a hundred pellets across and into the pair twenty feet distant hammering a fallen striker.

The native was stronger and heavier than its size suggested. The forest-toned body must not carry any significant amount of fat. Farrell's fingers slipped on the slick skin. The club struck awkwardly at his back, gouging stinger magazines in the crossed bandoliers. Farrell put his weapon against the native's neck and decapitated him with a short burst.

The body spasmed. Farrell flung it away and killed two natives still standing. Nessman came up the trail from the other direction and knocked the last one down with the butt of his stinger. He put half a magazine into the creature as it tried to rise. Nessman hadn't fired immediately because the native was slashing in the midst of a group of civilians trying to shield their offspring.

"Med—" Farrell said.

Dr. Ciler ran past and knelt. Dr. Weisshampl, eighty if she was a day, arrived literally in the arms of a pair of younger women. Four 2nd Platoon strikers were with her. Glasebrook, Methie, and a moment later Sergeant Abbado appeared behind Farrell. They turned to cover the jungle in all directions.

"Horgen's got our cits bundled together up the trail, sir," Abbado muttered without keying his helmet.

"C41," Farrell ordered. "Hold in place. Ten—twelve humanoids attacked section five with swords and acid sprays. The initial attackers have been eliminated. Echo my display but don't fucking interrupt unless there's an attack. Six out."

Farrell had left Tamara Lundie with the second tractor, fifty yards up the trail. The aide joined him, breathing hard. Her eyes had the open horror of a victim saved from drowning.