Seas of Venus(101)

Peanut wasn't in the least doubt about that.

Mongo and Race were already down—which meant dead, unless the 3rd-Level warriors had been in too much of a hurry to make sure by slitting their throats. It had been a ratfuck, an ambush sprung in the air shaft while the 5th-Level war party was just setting out on what was supposed to be a raid.

Now. . . .

Kacentas, War Dragon of the 5th Level, had planned for the possibility of retreat by sliding drums of waste oil across the home corridor. Three hard-faced girls of the Auxiliary were stationed there with torches to ignite the barricade if the raiders were driven back.

The disaster had been so abrupt that the girls lit the drums in the faces of their own warriors, rather than those of the enemy.

The leading warriors cursed and squealed, leaping the drums before the oil was properly alight. The pall of smoke rolled upward and down, following the convection patterns of Block 81's climate control.

An arrow took Kacentas in the air. He tumbled to what would have been the safe side of the barricade.

The Leaf brothers sprinted into the curtain of smoke. Peanut gagged, but the air was clear immediately in front of the barricade. Fuel blasted upward in terrifying columns to mushroom against the corridor ceiling.

The Patrol would arrive within minutes, but within seconds it would be too late.

"Come on!" Jacko cried.

All the other 5th-Level warriors had vanished—except Hurst, who lay at the base of the drums with eyes staring upward from a pool of blood. Hurst had managed to run all the way from the air shaft with his jugular torn open by a spearthrust.

Peanut skidded to a halt. "I can't!" he wailed to the barricade. The heat was a concrete presence.

"Come on!" Jacko repeated shrilly.

He picked up his brother by the throat and the seat of his pants. As he turned to hurl the younger boy to safety, a thrown club rang off Jacko's skull and stunned him.

Peanut fell to the floor. He had lost his steel mace back in the air shaft. There were 3rd-Level warriors all around them. His eyes were open, but his mind refused to accept what he saw.

Jacko was still on his feet. Two of the enemy prodded him with their spears. They didn't drive the points home. Instead, they thrust Jacko backwards, into the oil fires.

Jacko screamed. His arms flailed as if he were trying to swim away from the agony, but there was no way out. For a moment, Jacko's torso forced down the flames, but then the orange-red blanket roared up to cover him again.

And he still screamed.

Sirens and strobe lights flooded the corridor. The 3rd-Level warriors were running away, but Jacko did not move. His black arms lifted from the ebbing flames in a hollow embrace, and his skull greeted the Patrolmen with a lipless grin.

Jacko's throat had shrivelled shut. His brother screamed for both of them.





9


May 17, 382 AS. 1724 hours.




Newton was reloading. Brainard shoved past him and aimed his rifle.

He didn't fire. When the scorpion reared high over the trail it had a face like the heart of the sun and he had to glance away.

The roaring brilliance was barakite burning, not a vision of Hell.

When Brainard looked up again, the scorpion was careening away in a series of spastic convulsions. When its jointed tail straightened, the creature was more than twenty feet long from jaws to stinger . . . but the jaws were gone, the whole head was a blazing ruin, and so long as the decorticated monster continued in the current direction, it was no further danger to K67's crew.

Volleys of shots crackled and whined through the foliage as the ammunition in the backpack went off in the barakite fire. Cartridges without a gun-barrel to direct them weren't particularly dangerous. On a bad day, a bullet or fragment of casing might put an eye out.

That was nothing to worry about, since OT Wilding was gone and they were all dead without his special knowledge.

Just before the scorpion crashed out of sight through a thicket of hundred-foot willows, a human leg fell from the shriveled chitin of its mouth.

Brainard blinked at the purple afterimages of the flame. His ears rang, and his nostrils were numb with the smell of barakite and burning flesh. The suggestion of fried prawns was probably from the scorpion.

He didn't know what to do. He doubted there was anything they could do, now.

Leaf lay face down, moaning. Brainard reached out with his left hand and lifted the motorman. The bamboo had withered in the intense heat. It no longer clung to flesh and clothing.

"Good thinking," Brainard said. "With the barakite."

Must have been Leaf who ignited it, though it wasn't his pack because he was still carrying that. Caffey . . . no, Yee had been Number Two. Yee and Wilding were gone, just ahead of the rest of them.

The mat of flame-shrunken stems quivered, then moaned. OT Wilding's slim, aristocratic hand reached out of it.