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Chapter Fifteen

Duncan Solsohn stopped the instant he secured his helmet’s faceplate.

Bannor turned to stare at him, unlimbered the Dornaani coil gun as he did. “A contact?”

Duncan shook his head as he popped the faceplate. “Tell me what you see. Azimuth is about one o’clock.”

Bannor shrugged, sealed his own helmet. A moment later he opened it again. “UV dye marks. Three, I think. Only one is facing us directly.”

Duncan nodded. It was exactly what they were looking for, right down to the placement and the wavelength-hopping algorithm. The marks were set at south, southwest, and west: the directions from which any other jumpers would approach. And if an observer didn’t have the right algorithm, they wouldn’t see a steady UV signal: just random flashes as the wavelength crossed back and forth across their detection span. “Think that’s the first one?”

Bannor shrugged. “Sure looks like it. The transponder tracker indicates we’re between fifteen to twenty klicks from Newton. That’s the range band he chose for the first marking.”

Duncan closed his mask again, brought up the HUD’s spectral filter, focused on the dye marks, tagged them with the range finder: seven klicks. The rendezvous point was almost certainly within thirty kilometers. He glanced at the locally adjusted chronometer as he popped open his faceplate again. “I think we can make it today, if we push.”

Bannor’s hazel eyes were squinting in the same direction. “We’d be coming in at dusk, or a bit later.” His jaw worked slightly. “But it’s absolutely worth the risk.”

Duncan held in a relieved sigh, imagining the unprecedented luxuries of linking up with Newton. Night watch split three ways instead of two. Three firearms. And no more sleeping without reasonable—or any—cover. Judging from the slow, methodical movement of his transponder Newton had spent a day and a half surveying the rendezvous zone before settling upon a campsite.

Duncan hitched the combination pack and musette bag slightly higher on his shoulders; after consuming almost six days of rations, the latter was noticeably lighter. “Then let’s get going.”

***

Two klicks past the marker, Bannor stopped to make a perimeter sweep with the HUD, the way they did every three kilometers. Normally, that would have been a hazardously long interval, but on this billiard-table wasteland, it was reasonably safe. He closed his visor, powered it up . . . and stopped.

“Contact. West-northwest. Aerial. I make range as six klicks. Confirm.”

Duncan finished the sweep of the opposite compass point that he’d begun the moment Bannor reported the bearing. “No contacts visible to the rear.” He turned to check Rulaine’s spot. “Confirm bearing and range. But . . . multiple contacts.”

Bannor double-checked. “Good catch. Confirm your correction. Increasing gain.” Bannor increased the HUD’s magnification and centered the field on the contacts. “Thermal is slightly above background. Their movement is abrupt, fast.”

“Like insects,” Duncan added with a nod.

“Very big insects,” Bannor amended. “And I don’t think they’re all the same type.”

“I noticed that, too. Their outlines and even their patterns of movement vary. Kind of odd, a heterogeneous group of insects moving together.”

Rulaine shrugged. “Odd on Earth, perhaps, but maybe not so strange here. We saw stranger, when we were in Slaasriithi space.” He measured the range again. “Not closing, although they’re a little higher now.”

Duncan nodded. “Maybe looking us over.”

Bannor nodded back. “Let’s check on them every two kilometers.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He started marching.

Bannor took one last look at the tightly swarming contacts and followed.

***

Duncan increased the magnification on his HUD, then pointed. “Second set of dye markers. Range: five klicks.”

Bannor sealed up to confirm. “Yep,” he muttered. “We should be within ten kilometers.” He turned to glance toward the maybe-insects. “They’re gone.”

Duncan opened his own faceplate. “Yeah, they were just dipping under the horizon a few moments ago. Guess we’re not that interesting.”

“Assuming they ever saw us.”

Solsohn was careful to make his grunt more deferential than disputatious. “Sir, I—”

“Just ‘Bannor,’ here.”

“Uh . . . okay. Bannor, I did a lot of hunting as a kid. Rockies, mostly. Sometimes critters stay in sight because they’re busy doing something at that location. Like vultures waiting for a wounded animal to exhaust itself.”

“But?”

“But we’ve walked two klicks since we first saw the insects. And I saw them just a few seconds ago. That’s an awful long time for all of them to stay in the same place.”

“So you think they did see us but decided we weren’t worth the trouble? Or risk?”

“Probably. But like you said, Col— er, Bannor, maybe things work differently on this planet.”

Rulaine glanced to the west. “So we keep checking every two klicks.”

“That will delay us a bit.”

The colonel’s grin was rueful. “That’s why we’re going to pick up the pace.”

***

When they’d stopped after the first two-klick interval, Rulaine hadn’t seen anything, so Duncan expected the same thing when his turn came. Indeed, the horizon to the west was empty. Exhaling, he turned slowly, sweeping south.

He froze, both in terms of his motion and the icy chill that ran down through his core. “They’re back.”

Rulaine turned to look. “They’re close. Just under three klicks.”

Duncan nodded. “And spread out.”

“Following us, trying to tire us out?”

Duncan frowned. “I don’t know. Looks more like they’re trying to herd us. If they were trying to run us to ground, I’d expect them to press us more.” He shook his head. “They’re just trying to keep us going north.”

Rulaine turned slowly to the west, faced that way for several seconds before he grunted.

“See something, si—Bannor?”

The compact Special Forces colonel sighed. “Yeah. Dust plumes, probably seven kilometers out. Heading this way.”

Duncan glanced back at the insects that lay across the trail they’d left coming up from the south. “They’re hunting us, all right.”

“Then why not press us?” Rulaine sounded uncertain.

Duncan hitched his load higher on his shoulder. “Because they know the terrain. They know that there’s a river to the east of us and another to the north.”

Bannor nodded. “So they mean to box us into an area that we can’t move beyond: the juncture of the rivers.” The light was fading, so his lopsided grin wasn’t immediately obvious. “Good thing we’re going in that direction, anyway.”

“And bringing trouble right behind us,” Duncan added. Assuming it doesn’t overtake us first. “Should we radio Newton, sir?”

Rulaine was quiet for two long seconds before answering, “No. Let’s wait until we’ve got a better idea of what’s coming and just how fast.” He pointed to the west. “If they don’t mean to attack until they’ve pinned us against the rivers, let’s not give them any reason to speed up. Better to face them after rendezvousing with Newton.”

“Roger that. Maybe we should button up, though.”

Bannor studied the ground ahead. He nodded, pointing to a shallow wadi lying across their path, about a kilometer to the north. “We’ll zip up once we reach the wadi’s bed, kick on the thermaflage setting—”

“—and come out the other side without a heat signature.” Duncan nodded vigorously. “Even if they’re visual light hunters, it’s still going to make us harder to see. They might have to spend time finding our physical tracks to get back on our trail.”

“My thinking exactly. Lead the way.”

***

Bannor stopped to let Duncan catch his wind. Months on a spacecraft, even a Dornaani model with tethered spin pods for exercise, hadn’t been kind to any of them, but the IRIS analyst had been mostly at a desk for the year before he’d been attached to the Crewe at Delta Pavonis. The decreased aerobic activity was making its consequences felt now.

“Three kilometers . . . to . . . rendezvous?” he panted.

“Closer to four,” Bannor corrected.

“And the . . . pursuit?”

“Just under three kilometers, but not heading directly for us.” And that was about all they knew about the two creatures that had come out of the west, the taller, leaner one speeding ahead of the other for the past half hour. Storm clouds had come up from the south, hugging the western horizon and largely blotting out the sun. They were in the equivalent of late dusk an hour ahead of time.

They had only one other, tentative data point on their pursuers: that one or both of them could see in the UV spectrum. Instead of heading directly for the two fleeing humans, the creatures were veering more toward Newton’s final set of dye markers about a kilometer further north. But that wasn’t any kind of help; both groups’ paths were set to converge on that point.

Duncan straightened up, gulping in breaths so great that Bannor could see his chest heaving through the Dornaani suit. “And the insects? Still holding their distance?”

Bannor nodded. “But their intervals are wider.”

“Expanding the dragnet as they get closer,” Solsohn wheezed. “Hope they’re not more aggressive than vultures.”

“You and me both.”

“Sorry to slow us down, Bannor. I’m ready.”

Rulaine very much doubted that but nodded and set off toward the high ground ahead: apparently the location of Newton’s campsite.

“Think it’s about time to radio him?” Duncan asked, as if reading his thoughts.

Rulaine frowned. Under other circumstances, he might have done so two kilometers earlier. But Newton had drawn one of the weaker survival rifles and was in a duty suit. So he was comparatively lightly armed, lightly armored, and unable to engage from longer range. He was also a bit too courageous for his own good when it came to helping others. Rulaine and Riordan had both noted and discussed how Newton’s self-sacrificing stubbornness came very close to compromising military prudence at times. And if that happened now . . . 

“I’ll radio him as soon as we get past the last marker,” Bannor muttered between breaths. He glanced northeast at the high ground again, searching—

“Damn it!” Duncan swore, stumbling as he looked over his shoulder. He dug his feet into the sand to stop abruptly, popping the straps on the survival pack’s harness as he did; its remaining momentum sent it rolling away from him.

Rulaine turned to look in the same direction and discovered what he’d missed in the moment he’d turned his attention to the northern ridgeline.

The tall, thin creature was now approaching so swiftly that its thermal outline was slightly blurred. Furthermore, at this range—seven hundred meters and closing with ghastly speed—Bannor noticed that most of its heat was coming out of its mouth and eyes; its hide was preventing any significant loss of body heat.

It had closed another hundred meters in the seconds Rulaine had spent studying it. He unlimbered the Dornaani coil gun and glanced at Duncan.

Solsohn was busy sealing his helmet and readying his survival rifle.

Bannor raised the Dornaani weapon—it hardly looked like a gun at all—and blinked the HUD into smart-targeting mode. A guidon winked into existence near the creature, which had closed to four hundred and twenty-four meters. Its motions did not appear real, looked more like a hologram being played at three-times speed.

Rulaine raised the weapon to his shoulder, the tracking guidon prompting the necessary adjustment to put it on target.

Three hundred thirty meters. The creature had hands, but its strangely thin fingers tapered into long, wickedly pointed claws.

Rulaine activated the Dornaani weapon; it responded by vibrating like a perturbed tuning fork.

Two hundred and sixty meters.

The targeting guidon flicked from yellow to aqua; the weapon was now able to compensate for any correction required by the object’s size and speed.

Two hundred meters.

As Rulaine squeezed the trigger, his HUD’s compass spun wildly.

There was no report—just a loud, flat crack—as the supersonic projectile left the gun, which did not recoil but quaked in his hands. For an instant, the round marked its path with a flitter of flame—

It did not merely hit the onrushing creature, but went straight through, blowing a wide chunk out of its abdomen. Hot fluid sprayed, glowing in the HUD like gobbets of phosphorescent paint. The nearly bisected body bent obscenely at the waist, the upper half trying to fall in a different direction than the bottom.

But its shrill scream was solely one of rage.

“Holy shit,” Duncan breathed as he struggled to fit the monoscope onto the top of his survival rifle.

Bannor nodded, but was too busy, and concerned, to reply. The Dornaani weapon was not only emitting a steady wave of heat, but the HUD indicated it was not yet ready to be fired again.

“Problem?” Solsohn inquired.

“Waiting for this cannon to come back online.” Rulaine eyed the second bipedal creature—being?—approaching. Its only reaction to the gruesome death of the first was to launch into a headlong charge across the remaining eight hundred meters. “You ready yet?” He glanced back.

Duncan was lowering himself to the ground.

“What are you—?”

“Can’t shoot at range with my heart hammering like this. While I’m setting up, you might want to—”

A duller, attenuated report interrupted him: the downrange sound of a supersonic projectile. The second creature twitched, slapped at itself, but kept on coming.

“Well,” Solsohn amended, “seems like Newton doesn’t need to be alerted.”

Bannor was studying the oncoming creature as he carefully detached the battery that was connected to the Dornaani weapon and laid it aside.

“What are you doing?” Duncan asked, glancing away from the survival rifle’s data panel for a moment.

“Not counting on that cannon reloading in time.” He moved to the other’s pack. “Where do you keep your machete?”

***

Duncan shrugged. “Top of the musette bag.” Wouldn’t do me much good buried at the bottom! He tapped the charge-consumption indicator, studied the results.

Bannor reappeared beside him, his own machete in his right hand, Duncan’s in his left. “We’re running out of time.”

“I’m aware.”

Rulaine’s grip tightened on both machetes. “Five hundred meters with that smart monoscope should be an easy shot.”

“Not worried about hitting.”

“What do you—?”

“Sir, you learned about your weapon. I did the same with mine. This pop-gun’s battery will power one shot at maximum charge and deliver just over six hundred joules. Five shots at four hundred joules.” As Duncan extended the sliding stock, he saw Bannor glance at the Dornaani hand cannon: the orange indicator had changed to blinking white. Nearly ready.

Solsohn snugged the survival rifle close. Probably not much recoil, but having never fired it . . . “Engaging at two hundred meters,” he said and squeezed the trigger when the guidon glowed steady upon the upper chest.

There was no discernible recoil. The impact of the four-gram projectile staggered the creature, a thermal crease blooming at the base of its neck.

Bannor hesitantly put one machete aside and picked up the Dornaani hand cannon as he took on the spotter’s role: “Hit at center of sniper’s triangle. Minimal effect.”

“Yep,” Duncan confirmed as he changed the helical magazine feed to tungsten penetrators and increased the charge to maximum. He re-snugged the weapon.

“One hundred meters,” Bannor muttered. Duncan’s HUD showed the range, of course, but calling the marks was SOP.

“Holding to fifty,” Solsohn muttered back, just before the range indicator ticked down to that number. He fired again.

The charging figure—hulking, bipedal, vaguely boarlike—broke stride as a thermal bloom erupted underneath its left eye. It squeal-roared, shrugged off the impact, resumed charging—and then fell headlong.

The light on the big Dornaani weapon glowed aqua. “Cover me,” Bannor muttered, fastening the battery back on his harness.

“Just a second,” Duncan murmured, as he swapped a power cable into the back of the survival rifle. “Try not to get in trouble.”

“Didn’t know you cared, Duncan.”

“Naw, just might blow out the battery,” Duncan chuckled after Rulaine as the colonel trotted toward the intermittently flailing creature.

***

As Bannor jogged back, Solsohn was no longer covering him. The rifle—a misnomer, but too ubiquitous to overcome—was now hanging over his neck and one shoulder; his hands were busy with the hand light from his survival kit. “Newton signaled?”

Duncan nodded. “Confirming we received. He’ll send us UV signals every minute from the waypoints on the best route to his camp.”

“How far did he come out to help us?”

Solsohn shook his head. “Didn’t say. But judging from the range of his light, way too far.”

Rulaine suppressed a sigh. Of course he did. “Let’s get going then.”

As Duncan stowed his light, he looked over. “So what were we fighting?”

“Monsters. About which I’ve got more questions than answers.” He started toward the ridgeline. “The after-action report will wait until we’re safe.” He glanced at the insects which had slowed their approach. “They could still be after us.”

“Or waiting,” Duncan added.

“For what?”

The IRIS analyst nodded his jog-bobbing head toward the two slain creatures. “Safe carrion.”


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