There were seven wounded civilians. Four of them had caught grenade fragments; one lost her arm to a stinger pellet because she jumped up screaming when the natives came out of the jungle in front of her. One civilian had died of a stroke.
None of them had been killed by the attack itself. Not one.
Ciler was bent over his diagnostic display. "Doc, I'm getting too damned old for this," Farrell said, his eyes slitted.
Both bulldozers snarled, clearing a campsite. The column hadn't gotten as far as Farrell would have liked, but there were too many injured to treat on the move.
"You're very lucky to be alive," Ciler said. "The spikes on the club passed to either side of a carotid."
He smiled tightly. "Under the present ridiculous circumstances, I have to class the injury as superficial, however."
"I feel like shit," Farrell said as he got to his feet. "That's good, because it reminds me I'm alive."
Massengill took a piece of grenade shrapnel—probably his own grenade—through a femoral artery. What with everything going on at the time, he may not even have realized he was dying before he finished bleeding out. A native chopped Buccolowski in the neck just like Farrell, but Farrell had blown his attacker's chest out while the club was in mid swing. Ski had been a lifetime less quick.
"The one who got me was a tough fucker," Farrell said. "Maybe we ought to recruit here for the Strike Force."
Abdelkader's legs were sprayed with caustic—concentrated potassium hydroxide, not an acid, the brain trust said. If the dickhead had told somebody about it as soon as the shooting stopped so they could flush the goop off him, he'd have been all right. Instead he waited till it really started to hurt.
Ciler said they'd likely save the legs, but Abdelkader was going to be gorked out on pain medication for the next month while he regrew a couple square feet of skin.
Al-Ibrahimi and his aide walked around a crew of citizens laying ground sheeting. There weren't enough staffers in the column to do the heavy work. Farrell noticed that the cits were actually better at the job once they'd learned the basics of what was required.
The project manager nodded to Farrell. "Major," he said, "I regret your casualties, but I congratulate you on your victory. I'm amazed that your troops were able to protect the column with such relatively slight damage. There were ninety-six humanoids in this attack."
"The warning was the difference," Farrell said, nodding in turn to Lundie. "It saved us." He grinned briefly. "Saved you too, I guess."
"But you had only a few seconds of warning," al-Ibrahimi said.
A striker fired a 4-pound rocket. Backblast, transition to supersonic flight, and warhead detonation merged into a three-note chord: bam/crack/wham!
The target was a tree a bulldozer was about to attack. Branches split and fell with creaking objections from the blasted peak. Some striker's helmet had given him a target; he'd taken it.
Farrell lifted his hand from the grip of his stinger and said, "Seconds count," he said. "At the muzzle, a pellet from this thing—"
His finger caressed the weapon's receiver like a cat owner rubbing his pet's jaw.
"—is moving at pretty near twelve kay. Twelve thousand feet per second."
Farrell kicked at bulldozer cleat marks in soil where the sheeting wasn't yet laid. "Ten feet doesn't sound like much, but if you've got to run that far across cleared ground to get to one of my people with a stinger—it's far enough, sir. It's plenty far enough."
"The natives have almost no brain," Dr. Ciler volunteered unexpectedly. "I'm surprised they can even manufacture clubs. It's more like dissecting an insect than even a reptile."
"Sir," said Tamara Lundie to her superior. She nodded to Farrell and the doctor, deliberately keeping them in the conversation. "I believe there's a system in the humanoid attacks."
Farrell's visor displayed a pattern of lines branching downward like a scheme of perspective. Al-Ibrahimi must have been seeing something similar, because his eyes changed focus to a point in what seemed to be empty air.
"Yesterday the humanoids attacked over a narrow front at effectively the same time," Lundie said. Twelve lines, too close to separate at the scale on Farrell's visor, glowed purple for an instant. "If the humanoids came from a common point, it would be in this region, approximately point nine three miles from where the attack occurred."
The wobbling line at the bottom of the display was the column's path through the jungle. A circle glowed around the indicated common point because Lundie was allowing for error. Farrell wondered how she controlled the imagery; her hands were empty.
People were lining up to be fed. The scouts and all strikers in the detached squad had their converters with them so feeding took longer than usual, but the process was entirely orderly. Even the hungriest folks weren't going to fight one another for cups of gray sludge.
Dr. Ciler was excluded from the discussion by his inability to see the display. He nodded and walked to where the wounded lay.
"The second attack was spread over a wider front," Lundie continued. The much larger skein of vectors glowed in turn. "There was a noticeable lag between when the humanoids initially attacked just ahead of the column's center and the attacks continuing in sequence forward along the line."
"Or trying to," Farrell remarked with a smile of grim satisfaction. "Meyer did a hell of a job on the w-w . . . the humanoids. With the dozer. I'll make her a sergeant for that. If we ever get to a place I can put in the paperwork."
Nearby, Mrs. Suares talked soothingly to the train of orphans she'd gathered to fill her own loss. The little dark-haired girl was crying; she refused to take the widow's hand.
Farrell shook his head, thinking about the Spook tank exploding on Active Cloak. "Meyer's got quite a talent for heavy equipment," he added.
"The time lag would be explained if the humanoids all left a common point in close sequence," Lundie said, "making a straight line through the forest toward the predicted location of the column. Our progress and the consequently changed angle spread the attack over a slightly greater length of time."
The vectors from the two attacks led back to the same point. Because of what she considered to be sufficient data, Lundie didn't bother to circle it this time.
"A village . . ." Farrell said.
"Our information isn't sufficient to judge," Lundie said, answering a question that was really just Farrell thinking aloud. Al-Ibrahimi smiled slightly but gestured his aide to silence while Farrell considered.
From what Ciler said, it was more likely to be a hive. Whatever. Farrell had to do something. Best to deal with a problem at the source.
"Right," Farrell said. "Three-three's more than halfway to the target anyway. I'd like to have more troops. Well, I'd like a lot of things."
He nodded curtly to the administrators and began transmitting his orders to Sergeant Abbado.
The hull of the Kalendru transport was proof against the jungle. Blohm had the first guard shift outside. A single minilight turned the tilted compartment into a volume, not a trap. The smell of dead flesh was the sort of thing you got used to.
The major's transmission ended. "Six, roger," Abbado said. "Three-three out."
"Shit, that's not what I wanted to hear," Matushek muttered. "How big is this wog village, does anybody know?"
Abbado shook his head. "There's about a hundred fewer warriors in it than there was a couple days ago," he said. "Hell, maybe there won't be anything for us to do but console the grieving widows, you think?"
"If the females look like the males . . ." Caldwell said as she took out her converter to make dinner. "I'd just as soon fight them, all right?"
Horgen looked through the opening to the jungle. She sang softly, "Let me be your sidetrack till your mainline lover comes . . ."
Abbado unfastened one bandolier and started checking the pockets. A fungus had begun to grow on the fabric, but the stinger magazines seemed all right. He wondered what he ought to do with the rocket whose warhead he'd expended to blow the cockpit open. It probably wasn't worth the weight of carrying it, but he hated to throw away anything of possible use when the margin was so thin.
Sergeant Gabrilovitch was crying silently.
"Hey Gabe," Abbado said while he continued to examine his ammo with the appearance of total concentration. "How's that shoulder of yours doing?"
"I can't do it," Gabrilovitch said. "I'm just going to die. I know it, I'm going to die."
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Caldwell said. Her powerknife whirred as she sliced off a thick vine stem. "I had a dream as real as could be before Placid Rose. You remember Placid Rose? The place smelled like a bad egg when we landed, but I guess my nose got used to it."
"The Spooks had packed up and gone home before we got there, right?" Abbado said. Gabe wasn't the first striker to have a bad moment. This was no damn time for it, of course; but tomorrow was likely to be worse. "The place stank like hell, though."
"Yeah, but I was sure, I mean sure, I was buying the farm," Caldwell said. "Say, anybody want to try this with me? I set it for beans and franks."
Gabrilovitch began crying openly. "I'm poisoned," he wailed. "The major knows I'll die if I don't get back to the column. I need a doctor."
Abbado's lips pursed as if he was sucking a lemon. Gabe wasn't talking, it was the fear.
"Abbado?" Caius Blohm asked over a personal channel instead of using intercom or calling through the opening from outside. "Want somebody to spell me on guard? I'll talk to him. Over."
"Hell, Gabe," Abbado said, speaking loudly enough that he was sure Blohm could hear him. "I never thought you could come with us. We're going to have enough trouble with the wogs not to worry about our walking wounded. I figured you'd wait here till we handled things and could come back for you."
Gabe was no damn good to them now, that Abbado could see. The problem wasn't the shoulder wound: a stinger only requires one hand to fire. The jungle had beat Sergeant Gabrilovitch down to his stumps. He might come out of it once things settled down—maybe even if he just got back to the column and was drugged into a night's sleep, something Abbado didn't dare do out here in the boonies.
Everybody's got a redline. It was creepy to be around somebody who'd gone past his, though. Especially if you weren't sure that you hadn't done the same thing yourself and just didn't recognize it.
"I think I better head back at daylight, Abbado," Gabrilovitch said. He hugged himself with his good arm and hunched over as if he had a belly wound.
"You'll be on your own, you know," Abbado warned. "I can't spare somebody to back you up."
And I especially can't spare Blohm, no matter how good buddies the two of you are.
"I'll be okay," Gabrilovitch said with his eyes closed. "I'll get back to the column and the docs 'll fix me up."
"Yeah, that's what I figure too," Abbado lied. "Say Caldwell? Give me a bite of your beanie-weenies, will you? Maybe I'll try a batch myself."
The tank melted around Meyer in the howling darkness. She was dying alone. She would be alone forever. She tried to shout, but her throat was filled with molten steel.
Striker Meyer. Esther.
She came awake flailing her arms. He tried to hold her wrists, but he wasn't nearly strong enough to control her for the first moments. Meyer had his throat in both hands before she returned to full awareness. A rush of white fire prickled across her skin.
She released Matthew Lock and slumped back onto the plastic. The night lived with the sounds of tight-packed sleepers. A few children cried openly. Adult sobs were more likely to be muffled. Snoring, sighing; the creak of plastic as someone rolled over or got up to walk to one of the pit latrines near the perimeter.
"I'm sorry I startled you," Lock said, wheezing slightly. He kept his voice down, though the only privacy in the encampment was that of exhaustion. There were sleepers or would-be sleepers within arm's length of Meyer in all directions. "You were calling out and I was afraid . . ."
"Was I?" Meyer said. "Oh hell. Hell."
Bezant had no moon. Lights in the camp and a few dying fires gave the air a soft presence that didn't really illuminate the occasional standing figure, guards and people picking their way among the sleepers.
Some of the trees were phosphorescent. They stood as pastel ghosts among their night-black fellows, blue and pink and a yellow that was nearly white.
"I'm sorry," Lock repeated. He shifted as if to stand up.
Meyer caught his hand. "I didn't know I was making a racket," she said. She closed her eyes to remind herself. The steel walls of the plenum chamber shrank down on her at once, even though she was awake and knew she lay in a clearing.
She pulled the civilian toward her again. "What?" he said. "What?"
"Don't fucking talk," Meyer said. She slid open her shirt's pressure closure with the side of her hand. "Don't fucking talk."
She kept her eyes open, on his, as she kissed him.
Horgen was on guard. Caius Blohm stood at the edge of the opening where she wouldn't see him if she happened to look back at the ship.
Blohm wasn't at the opening because he didn't trust Horgen's alertness. He just wanted better commo reception than he could get farther within the metal hull.
The humid air blurred the stars. The few bright enough to show through it were smears, not points. There was no breeze, but the forest sighed softly as it grew and planned.
Blohm's visor echoed images from the helmets of strikers with the column. He combed one at a time through the helmets of the camp guards, seeing each remote viewpoint in full fidelity rather than masking it over his own surroundings as a double image.
His fifth try was Dancey watching the east edge and the barricaded inlet track. Mrs. Suares sat nearby, stroking the hair of one of the younger boys. The other children lay around her. Mirica was curled in a fetal ball. Her back trembled as she sobbed.
Blohm continued to watch the distant image until he heard a buzz from within the compartment. Horgen was waking Foley to take over the guard shift.
Blohm switched his visor off remote and lay down. He moved with the silence of a vine growing.