Seventeen
Once we got inside the Wrangler’s station, which was a series of chambers blasted out within the granite knob, Kit’s first job was to report our safe arrival to Eden Outfitters. Radios didn’t work much better on Dead End than Handtalks, but old hard-wired field telephones worked fine.
Kit sat at a stool in front of a camp table, speaking into an ancient pedestal microphone, while the voice of Oliver, her boss, crackled through an analog speaker box alongside the mike.
After the usual unpleasantries, he said, ‘‘Tell Mr. Cutler his people downshuttled last night.’’
I thought we were Cutler’s people. Surprise!
Oliver continued, ‘‘They’re moving gear into the warehouse he rented.’’
Kit glanced at Cutler, and he nodded. ‘‘He’s got the word, Oliver.’’
‘‘Kit, people here aren’t stupid. Cutler’s crew look more like pirates than taxidermists. And it doesn’t take thirty ex-Legion psychos to stuff a dead grezzen.’’
‘‘So what are you saying, Oliver?’’
I could almost hear the shrug over the land line. ‘‘I dunno. Just that even the prospect of a dead grezzen inside the Line makes people jumpy.’’
Kit shrugged back. ‘‘Okay.’’
‘‘Kit, you don’t take any ’bots off the Line for escort when you go out in the bush, got it? Mr. Cutler doesn’t know what a grezz loose in here could do.’’
She nodded. ‘‘The ’bots stay in place. Got it. Oliver, I wasn’t planning on pulling them out anyway—’’ While Kit had been talking, she had been gazing at the glowing Animap that hung on the cave’s wall.
Whoop-whoop-whoop!
An alarm echoed in the chamber. Kit pointed to a red dot that inched across the Animap. ‘‘Gotta go, Oliver. A ’bot just went live.’’
She stood while Cutler, Zhondro, and I stood behind her and followed her stare.
Two dozen red dots shone against the map’s green background, but only one had begun to move.
Kit said, ‘‘That ’bot’s sensed a grezz within a half mile of it.’’
Cutler stood, then stepped to the map and stared at it, hands clasped behind his back. ‘‘Are you sure? The ’bot could be chasing one of those buffalos, or a striper that’s stalking them.’’
She shook her head. ‘‘The Rover ignores anything as small as a woog or as slow as a striper. And a grezz makes random direction changes. The Rovers are also programmed to respond to that.’’
Cutler stroked his chin. ‘‘Why does it change direction?’’
‘‘The grezz didn’t used to do it. Even now they only do it near the line. It’s probably proactive evasive maneuvering. They’ve learned that the Rovers can sneak up on them.’’
Cutler nodded. ‘‘Rovers aren’t as dumb as these woogs of yours.’’
The red dot on the map stopped moving.
Cutler leaned forward. ‘‘Did the ’bot blow the grezzen up?’’
Kit shook her head. ‘‘The grezz just moved out of range, so the ’bot shut down again. When a ’bot detonates, its dot flickers out. This dot’s still there. This was no big deal. Grezz are solitary hunters. They forage over defined territorial loops. But as they orbit within their territories, their territories rotate. Like planets around a sun, and moons around each planet.
I said, ‘‘You mean one grezz knows what the other ones are doing?’’
Kit shrugged. ‘‘Does one moon know what the other moons are doing? Lots of predators warn peers away by marking territory. The grezz that triggered that ’bot was just foraging its territory, and its loop took it close to the Line, then away from it. So the Rover activated when the grezzen came close, then shut down when the grezzen moved away.’’
I said, ‘‘Well, at least we know it’s here. Fortunately, it doesn’t know we’re here.’’
Zhondro nodded. Kit, however, didn’t. Neither did Cutler.
The workshop cavern just inside the station’s armored doors was big enough not only for the Wrangler’s vehicles and the ’bot armory but for us to park the Abrams and the floater. Therefore, after dinner, Kit reprogrammed a Rover, and Cutler disappeared into the living quarters in the adjacent chamber.
Zhondro and I sat on a parts crate, legs dangling, watching while our six-legged maintenance ’bot replaced the third right-side road wheel. The job, if performed by last-century tankers, or by this-century Tassini, was a muddy wrestle that cost a couple of soldiers several square inches of knuckle skin.
I smiled at Zhondro. ‘‘How many tankers does it take to change a road wheel?’’
There are no comedy clubs in the desert. He frowned, counted on his fingers, scratched his head, then said. ‘‘I don’t know.’’
‘‘Ten. Two to change the wheel, and eight to stand around and criticize their technique.’’
After a heartbeat, he threw back his head, laughed, and slapped my thigh. He hadn’t been laughing the first time we met.
‘‘Max mil speed my ass!’’ I coughed a mud of spit and Tassin powder sand into my glove as the captain’s voice vanished from the command net. Tassin powder was four microns finer than Saharan Desert sand on Earth. It was also four microns finer than the sand on every outworld the Legion had operated on before Bren.
Therefore, the geniuses at Lockheed who had designed the filters that protected a Kodiak’s moving parts were shocked— shocked—that Kodiaks choked themselves to death in seconds if operated in the Tassin desert at more than half of maximum military speed. Filter redesign was the manufacturer’s current top priority. Meaning that in the meantime our enemy could run circles around us with antiques.
I was in command of five nano-’puter guided, composite-armored, gunned-to-the teeth war machines that could outrun any armored land vehicle in the universe, over rock, mud, water, or grass. Except here and now, where they could barely outrun dismounted infantry.
I toggled back to platoon net. ‘‘Red Group, this is Red Three. Come about and withdraw echelon left, at one eight zero. Maintain best speed but hold formation. Red Three will take left flank.’’ We couldn’t flat outrun the Tassini, so our best chance was to back up, presenting the enemy our heavier, frontal armor, in an orderly withdrawal that allowed us to fire on the bad guys, and protect one another. And hope that help arrived.
‘‘How many, Jazen?’’ Edwards asked.
‘‘Thirty. Inbound, hot.’’
‘‘Thirty? Echelon, my ass! Jazen, just turn around and boogie full gas!’’ The trouble with a brevet command is subordinates still think they’re debating over coffee with their buddy. Edwards was a tank commander, like I had been. In fact, by date of rank he was senior. He should’ve been breveted, not me, when Lieutenant Haren closed his real estate deal.
‘‘Run? Then the people eaters blow your ass off for sure, Edwards!’’ Suarez was a tank commander, too. Edwards had a point, but Suarez and I had a better one. Kodiaks, like most tanks, had thinner armor on their rear and flanks. They were designed to fight facing their adversaries.
I said, ‘‘Stuff it! Echelon. Now. Move.’’
The chatter died.
My driver slewed Red Three around.
‘‘Jazen?’’ Edwards again.
I rolled my eyes, though he didn’t sound argumentative.
‘‘Jazen, my forward impellers just quit.’’
Goddamn powder sand.
‘‘What’s your best speed, then?’’
‘‘Zero.’’
My gunner pressed his earpiece. ‘‘I got purple chatter. I can’t make out a word, but there’s lots of ’em.’’
Normally, we didn’t pick up Tassini intercom chatter until they were close, minutes away, and so committed to battle that they didn’t care who knew it.
The school solution was leave Edwards’ tank to the wolves, and save the other four. Pick him and his crew up, if there was time. But there wasn’t time. And the school solution didn’t say how four tanks could outrun thirty that could move twice as fast as the four, anyway.
Surrender was no option. Intel said the Tassini, purple people eater nickname notwithstanding, didn’t actually cannibalize captured legionnaires. But they did burn Legion prisoners alive on the spot, as a favor, so we could enter Paradise as warriors.
I sighed. ‘‘Red Group, this is Red Three. Form up on line and blow down.’’
One thing a hovertank can do that a crawler can’t is put itself into hull defilade. In other words, by concentrating all the tank’s impeller power, coupled with its weight, a hovertank on loose substrate can blow out a hole beneath itself, and bury itself turret-deep. Blowdown piles the displaced substrate around the tank, and basically turns a tank into a revetted pillbox, protected by the earthworks it throws up around itself. If you’ve ever seen a nature holo of a flounder flapping itself down into the sand, you’ve got the idea.
Of course, in the nature holo, once the flounder has immobilized itself a shark swims into the picture and eats it. Like the flounder, we would get eaten. Unlike the flounder, we would bite back first.
My gunner’s eyes met mine. ‘‘Yes, sir.’’ He raised his thumb as he firewalled the impeller throttles. Clang.
Clang.
In the man-blasted cave on Dead End, our maintenance ’bot laid down the dog-bone tool that allowed it to change the road wheel, then sank down on all six legs and whined into sleep mode.
Zhondro stretched, yawned, then tapped my thigh again, smiling. ‘‘Tonight we sleep, too. Tomorrow, we find out how many tankers it takes to make a monster sleep.’’
Across the room Kit stood up from the ’bot she had been working on, and stretched, too. She watched Zhondro walk away from me, shook her head, then dragged off to bed herself.
That left me alone with the Abrams and Kit’s sleeping Rover ’bots, in silence so complete that it echoed. I lay back and stared at the pocked granite ceiling for a moment. I didn’t think I dozed, and when I sat up and looked around the cavern was as empty as before. But I felt as though a stranger was listening to me breathe.
The next morning, we pushed off for the Line at Break of Morning Nautical Twilight, for a four-hour sightsee beyond the Line, just a risk-free toe-dip along the edge of the big pond that was grezzen land.
We were topped up with diesel, the turbine purred, not a bad light showed on the boards, and I sipped coffee that actually tasted good from the thermcup. Everybody’s helmet radios were operating static free, and all hatches were safely buttoned up against avian predators.
I rocked in the commander’s cupola, humming. Kit sat in the loader’s seat, facing Cutler down in the Gunner’s well, and both actually were smiling. I smiled, too. The only downside was that our closed steel box was already an oven and the morning was young. But this was shaping up as a safari after all, not a bus wreck.
Two miles later, Kit raised her palm. ‘‘Stop!’’