FALLEN DRAGON (78 page)

"Where?"

"Two hundred meters southwest."

Lawrence expanded Nic's telemetry grid, meshing the sensor imagery to his own. There was something, a blur that wasn't all heat shimmer.

"I think we have a shadow," Lawrence told Ntoko.

"We've got a couple back here as well," Ntoko said.

Lawrence called up a tactical map. There was a small group of buildings a couple of kilometers ahead and to the east with small homesteads ranged around it, barely large enough to be classed as a village. The satellite sweep had re
v
ealed some activity, but that was a day out of date. Lyaute hadn't bothered investigating the place when they'd driven past that morning.

"Close in," Ntoko ordered.

"Easier target for them," Lawrence said over the secure command link.

"I know that. But they're sneaking in anyway, that means they're going to attack. This way we've got a better firepower concentration."

Lawrence's audio sensors picked up a number of warbling calls out amid the tall tigergrass. He was tempted to play one back at them on high volume. The Skin AS couldn't translate them.

A small bronze-colored bird darted above the tigergrass, moving fast toward them. It had three wings, one smaller than the others, and used some kind of spinning motion, like an asymmetric propeller. Silver-tipped wings traced bright spiral afterimages as they caught the sunlight. Nic shot it with his nine-millimeter pistol. It burst apart in a mist of blood.

"What are you shooting at?" Ntoko asked.

"Nothing, Sarge," Lawrence said. "Just a bird."

"You guys keep calm up there."

"You hear that?" Lawrence asked.

"I don't trust nothing in this place," Nic grunted.

Lawrence's sensors were picking up bursts of motion all around now. New-natives were dashing through the tigergrass, running for a few meters, then ducking down. None of them were closer than 150 meters. More of the bronze birds were being flushed out of the clumps of tigergrass by their antics. Lawrence watched them flitter about. He wasn't quite as suspicious as Nic, but he had his doubts. There were a lot of them. When he asked his AS to run a check through its files on indigenous life, there was no reference. But then the information was limited to a few dozen prominent species like the windshrikes and macrorexes.

The birds were clumping together in small flocks of six or seven, swooping and curving just above the tips of the tiger-grass. The more Lawrence watched them the more he was convinced that they were being driven in toward the platoon.

"Sarge?"

"Yeah, man, I got them. But I can't see us shooting every one—we don't have enough ammo for that, even if we could hit them."

One of the telemetry grids on Lawrence's display flashed red.

"Shit!" Kibbo yelled.

"What is it?" Lawrence could see from Kibbo's telemetry that his Skin suit had been struck by something.

"Took a hit. Ahh, shit."

Lawrence turned to see Kibbo fifty meters away, stumbling badly. He fell to his knees, clutching an arm. Skins were running toward him.

The telemetry grid was scrolling down weird data. Lawrence had never seen anything like it. Something had penetrated the carapace, but it was small, barely a couple of millimeters wide. If a bullet had split the surface, the tissue underneath should have absorbed it and clotted immediately. But the synthetic muscle around the puncture was starting to overheat. Its nerve fibers were failing.

Kibbo started screaming. His medical readouts were going wild.

"Down," Ntoko ordered. "Keep down, people."

Lawrence arrived just as Kibbo fell flat on his face. His arms and legs started thrashing, hammering into the ground.

"Some kind of convulsion."

"What's his medical program doing, for fuck's sake?"

"It's his Skin, it's spasming."

Ntoko hurried up, so Lawrence was looking right at him when the dart struck. It slammed into the grenade-launcher ammunition bag he was wearing on his back, nearly knocking him off his feet. He dropped to all fours, grunting hard at the impact Lawrence scrambled over and pushed his sensor focus on the little crater in the bag.

"What the hell was it?" Ntoko demanded.

"Don't know." Lawrence shifted to infrared. The small hole was damp. Spectrographic analysis revealed an unknown type of hydrocarbon fluid. "Shit. Could be some kind of bio weapon." His Skin deployed its aerosol nozzle and sprayed the area with a multispectrum neutralizing agent. The fluid fizzed a livid saffron.

Kibbo screamed again, his bucking lifting him off the ground. The rest of the platoon circled around, not knowing what to do. The Skin's AS and medical systems couldn't even stabilize him. The wild motions stopped suddenly. His helmet's emergency disposal valves opened. Blood poured out.

"Jesus!"

The Skins lurched back, fearful that any of the crimson fluid should splash against them.

"Was that the birds?" Nic asked. "Did they do that?"

"No way, man," Amersy said. "How could they?"

Lawrence risked a quick look around. The air was full of hundreds of fast-spinning birds, a sparkling river that hurtled through the sky. They'd formed a complete ring around the platoon.

"These are the people whose granddaddies invented Skin," Nic said. "If anyone knows how to shut us down, it's them."

"Shoot them," Ntoko ordered. "Carbines out; give me a circular formation, ten-degree overlap. Move."

They were firing as they rose to their feet hosing the bullets at the thick dazzling stipple gyrating around them. The birds broke apart, soaring higher in a scintillating plume. Targeting individual birds was impossible at that distance.

Foster screamed at the same time his telemetry grid flashed its alert. He toppled over, limbs jerking about. The rest of them automatically dived for cover.

"They're killing us," Jones cried. "We're fucking dead. Dead!"

Foster's agonized gurgling was filling the general communication link.

"Lawrence, incendiary grenades," Ntoko said. "We're going to start using this goddamn environment to our advantage. Range two hundred and fifty meters, semicircular pattern. You take north."

"Got it, Sarge." He rolled onto his back and angled the grenade launcher toward north, moving the muzzle until the targeting graphics confirmed he'd ranged ground zero. He began firing. The dull thud of the grenades was audible through his Skin helmet. Ntoko was firing in the opposite direction. Faint smoke trails appeared in the air, forming wide arches that radiated out from the huddled-up platoon.

The first grenade detonated. It was like the dawn of a blue-dwarf sun. A halo of fierce light rose out of the tigergrass. Designed for operation in a normal atmosphere, the incendiaries were burning far hotter than usual in the abundant oxygen. The undergrowth ignited immediately.

Lawrence kept firing, moving the launcher around in precise increments. The brilliant detonations merged swiftly into a solid wall of crackling light. Flames burned a vivid blue, consuming even the living vegetation. Sap sizzled and evaporated before the onslaught, leaving withered blades that burst alight instantly.

It took less than a minute before they were completely surrounded by flame. The circle began to burn inward relentlessly, though Lawrence's sensors could just see another, wider, ring burning outward.

"Use the rest of the grenades," Ntoko said. "I'm not risking the manufacturer's heat-proof guarantee on these ammo bags."

"Right." Lawrence waited until he'd fired all the incendiaries, then switched to fragmentation, using a random dispersal pattern. When he finished, he unslung the bag and threw it and the launcher away toward the advancing inferno.

The birds had all gone, zooming high over the rampaging flames. Foster lay dead on the ground, blood soaking into the soil as it dripped from his open disposal valve.

"Now we'll see," Ntoko growled.

"How do we get out of this?" Jones asked. His voice was panicky. "There's no way through the flame."

"That's the idea," Ntoko said. "You've got to believe in your Skin, my friend. This flame burns so fast it'll be past us in a couple of seconds."

"Oh, Jesus fucking wept, Sarge!"

"Just hold your place."

Lawrence nearly laughed. He'd worked it out just before he started firing. The time to object was long past. They'd all have to ride it out now.

His Skin's audio sensors were relaying the fierce roar produced by the flames. It grew steadily louder. They were approaching at a phenomenal rate as they consumed the tigergrass. His briefing had included strong warnings about fire in this atmosphere, but he'd never imagined anything this potent. There were screams now, rising above the background roar. A new-native charged past the platoon. He was bipedal, with arms that reached down to his knees. There was a long mane of ginger hair streaming out from his spine as he ran, already singed and smoldering. Lawrence caught sight of a narrow bandoleer, with some kind of cylindrical electronic modules slotted into hoops.

The terrified new-native saw the platoon and immediately altered course, more from fear than sense.

"You can run, asshole," Ntoko yelled after him, "but you can't hide."

Two more new-natives rushed past. One of them was a husky quadruped with some kind of canine DNA in its genetic makeup. Lawrence watched as it sprinted at the wall of flame sweeping in toward them. It jumped. He couldn't believe anything that big could get so far off the ground. Even with its muscular limbs it didn't get high enough. The ferocious blue flames speared into its underbelly, excoriating its tough amber hide. Raw splits opened into its blackening flesh, spewing out steaming fluid. It howled in agony as its entire epidermal layer ignited spontaneously. Death must have struck with blissful speed. It was silent and motionless as it struck the ground in the middle of the conflagration.

"Holy shit," Ntoko whispered. The flames were barely fifty meters away and closing fast. They were stabbing up seven to eight meters into the air.

Lawrence's display was already issuing heat cautions. His carapace was turning white to reflect the massive infrared input. He slowly stood to face the flames, seeing the rest of the platoon follow his lead and climb to their feet. Sensors had to bring two layers of filters online to combat the glare of hellish light given off by the flames.

He ordered the visual sensors off altogether in some crazy effort to make the horror go away. That didn't work: the darkness was even more unnerving. His indigo display grid hung in the middle of nothingness. The digits recording external temperature blurred as if they'd begun to count milliseconds instead. He brought the sensors back online. The flames were ten meters away.

A couple of the platoon were murmuring prayers. He wished he knew how to join in. The temperature warnings were now so ridiculous they were laughable.

All around him the tigergrass was withering, vapor effervescing out of every blade as it smoldered and blackened.

Then the grass burst into flame around his legs. The main tsunami of fire hit, nearly knocking him down again. Something gripped his Skin and started shaking him; it was like being trapped in a slow-motion explosion.

He could see nothing. No discrimination program could possibly make sense of the incandescent chaos buffeting against him. All he knew was the one display grid reporting his Skin status. Every thermal indicator was leaping toward overload. Yet here he was, perfectly comfortable at the center of the fury. He held his breath, tensing every muscle against imminent death, then forced himself to breathe out and inhale calmly. Nothing he could do would make the slightest difference. It was all down to technology, and just how much of a safety margin had been built into his Skin.

His hand went to the base of his throat, covering the lump that was his pendant Patterns began to appear around him, faint shadows that purled within the intolerable light, then slowly began to darken. It was as if water were sluicing down a muddy window, producing streaked images of what lay outside.

Flames shrank away, revealing a land that was completely black. Spiky root clumps of incinerated tigergrass mottled the baked soil, puffing out streamers of grubby blue smoke. A dense rain of ash fell, flakes settling gently on every surface, including Skin.

He turned to see the wall of flame not ten meters behind him and retreating rapidly. The rest of the platoon was standing in a loose circle, sable silhouettes against the solid glare. When he brought a hand up to examine it, he saw his carapace was glowing a dull vermilion as the weave of thermal fibers hurriedly expelled their excessive loading. He reviewed his status, relieved to see his Skin's reserve bladders had retained their integrity; with them and the spare bloodpaks he could easily make it back to the spaceport.

Laughter and delirious whoops began to fill the general communication band. The shouted jubilation
had
a strong note of hysteria.

Ash was still falling, but Lawrence extended his sensor range, trying to see what lay through it The second wave of wildfire was still rampaging out ahead of him, lurid flames chewing their way voraciously across the tigergrass, sending up a broad veil of smoke and yet more ash. He couldn't believe so much destruction had spread so quickly. The holocaust they'd unleashed was easily over a kilometer wide now and still expanding. He wondered how far it would continue for. Not that there was much guilt associated with the thought. Santa Chico must be used to such events.