Rogue Powers (44 page)

This Lieutenant Lucy Calder led them on at a reckless speed, crashing through the thick underbrush, using a laser pistol or machete to hack down anything she couldn't get through. Twice she had dropped the laser, unholstered a heavy machine pistol and fired at
something
before Char-He had even seen whatever it was. Twice she had reholstered the heavy gun, scooped up the laser, and pressed on before whatever she had killed had finished falling to the ground. Twice he had stepped over shattered corpses that seemed nothing but teeth and claws.

And they had only gone about one kilometer.

He was scared, scared of drowning in the endless rain; scared of getting his foot mired in the ankle-deep mud they seemed to stumble into constantly; scared of some pocket-sized monster leaping out of the lurid greed fronds and weeds that hung down to brush against his suit with every step; scared of encountering some wild-living relative of the foam worm that might already be gnawing its way through some part of his suit where no one would notice it until it was too late; scared of his faceplate shattering; scared he might die of a carbon-dioxide reaction, his lungs hyperventilating, panic setting in—he forced himself not to think of such things. His breath was growing short, his heart was pounding. He felt himself close to vomiting, and
that
was a real nightmare in a pressure suit. Claustrophobia. Xenophobia. Did giving it names make it easier? He forced himself to look up, forced himself to watch more than the slogging feet and lumbering backpack of the figure ahead of him, forced himself to look around, told himself that this was a whole new world of life to explore, that his tutors in a new universe of biology, themselves a wondrous find, were just a few kilometers ahead.

It seemed to help. A little. It felt like his heart rate was down.

A rifle slug screamed past his helmet and splattered the muzzle of a brightly colored, fox-sized flying beast that was diving straight for him, keening for his blood in a high-pitched shriek. It fell out of the air and landed at his feet. That Captain Larson was a good man to have at your
back.

Charlie had never seen a flying animal that size. It was a whole new taxonomy, a discovery of the first importance. Time for that when they were safe. He stepped on the ruined, lovely little body rather than break stride, and kept on.

At the rear of the column, Mac wasn't in much better shape. He devoutly wished for someone to be at
his
back. That fox-bat thing had gotten too damn close. He decided to shift to heavier firepower, unloaded the slugs from the rifle and slapped in a long clip of mini-rocket rounds with explosive warheads. Those should stop damn near anything.

He got the chance to find out almost immediately. A low-slung lizard with two cruel, grasping arms that reached up for Joslyn burst from the shadows and Mac blasted it into bloody confetti. Lucy didn't even look back, she just shouted "Come on!" over the suit radio and upped the pace to a dogtrot. Even for Mac, that wasn't easy in the armored suit, carrying equipment. It must be real hell on Pete, but the middle-aged diplomat made no protest.

They slogged on and on, not going a kilometer that some nightmare beast didn't burst out at them to die under their guns. It was a grueling, mind-numbing nightmare, Lucy setting an arrow-straight course toward the beacon, Maddy just behind her, dividing her attention between the direction finder and putting one foot after another. The relentless pace ground them down into automata, capable of nothing but marching on, and gunning down anything that moved. The rain never ended, the morbid forest never ended, the cacophony of animal cries never let up. All there was left to life was the simple act of marching on.

None of them knew it had happened until it was over, and of course Madeline Madsen never knew it happened at all. Or perhaps she did, because she threw the direction finder clear, unless the herd of whatever they were simply knocked it from her grasp as they plummeted past.

One moment they were alone in the forest, just stepping out onto an empty game trail, and the next, they were watching the backs of some tawny-colored, fleet-footed herd flashing back down the pathway, carrying Madeline's new-made corpse away.

They had moved so fast! Mac had seen just the slightest flicker of movement, and then a single, moment frozen in his memory—a long, lanky body, its claws already raking open the armor of the pressure suit as if it weren't t there, life's blood already gushing from her chest, her death scream cut short, and then hunter and prey alike were gone, followed by a small herd of the fleet killers, and Pete was down, the arm of his suit torn up, and he was bleeding.

Before Mac could bring his rifle up to fire, they had vanished into the forest. Too fast! The five remaining humans stood frozen to the ground in shock, and the fear grew in all of them. Mac shook his head, came to himself, and suddenly knew that, Pete injured or no, it was death to stay near that trail. He scooped up the older man over one shoulder, and shouted "Joslyn! The finder! Lucy! Go! Go—Maddy's dead, for God's sake—before they come back! Sisulu—get your gun out and stop playing tourist. Move it!"

Lucy took off again, full tilt, and they didn't stop again until they had another five klicks between themselves and Maddy's killers. Mac called the halt, and carefully set Pete down. The three military people surrounded Pete and Charlie and stood a frightened watch as the biologist tended the wound.

Charlie did the best he could for his patient. Pete was semi-conscious, and the injury itself was pretty ugly. The claws of one of those fiends had ripped clear through the armor of the suit and torn up Pete's arm. He was bleeding, had already lost a lot of blood. Worse, Pete was already in carbon-dioxide shock, his face gray, his breath fast and shallow. Charlie used the chest panel on Pete's suit to up the oxygen flow and set up a positive pressure flow, flushing the CO
₂
out of the suit through the torn-up sleeve. Charlie pulled the first-aid kit off his backpack, cut away as little of the suit arm as possible, slathered an antiseptic/local anesthetic on the wound, and bandaged it up as best he could.

He hesitated, then used the kit's jet hypodermic to give

0Pete heady doses of anti-shock drugs and a stimulant. With the loss of blood, the drugs were risky, temptation to a heart attack. But if the group was to keep any sort of pace through this nightmare world, Pete would have to be on his feet. Mac was the only person big enough to carry Pete more than a few meters, and if Mac was crippled by exhaustion, that would put everyone else at greater risk.

The first-aid kit included pressure-suit patches, and Charlie slapped the largest one on the hole. Charlie worked the suit s chest panel again, backing off the pressure setting but keeping the oxy count high. Pete's color already looked better, and his breathing seemed easier. "That's all I can do," Charlie said carefully. "He should be all right if the blood loss wasn't too bad. Let him rest easy for just a few minutes before we go on. The patch on the suit needs to set."

Joslyn, watching the forest for whatever else was out there, felt a streak of moisture run down her cheek, and hoped it was a tear and not perspiration. She wanted to mourn Maddy Madsen, a bright young kid who had come a very long way to get killed, a fine young woman entrusted to Joslyn's care, who
died
in Joslyn's care. Joslyn wanted to feel guilt, wanted to feel sorrow, wanted to cherish Madeline's memory. But danger surrounded them still, and adrenalin coursed through her veins, and fear left no room for other emotion.

Groggy, shaky, Pete came back to himself and insisted he was strong enough to walk. He barely seemed aware of what had happened. Charlie helped him to his feet, grateful for the drugs that were holding the older man together.

They marched on.

The far sentries to the south of the camp had reported the sound of a faint far-off crash in the midst of the storm, and then an occasional ripple of rapid explosions, like many guns going off at once, and animals came charging out of the south as if pursued by something terrifying. It all brought the damnable Nihilists quite rapidly to mind. Who else would crash through the underbrush, unannounced, traveling through the hazards of the woodland instead of the relative safety of the Road?

C'astille was the only one who thought of an alternate explanation, but she did not suggest it, for she hardly dared hope it was true. She volunteered to lead the team that would venture cross-country to investigate the disturbance. Ten of them set out on foot, heavily armed, not only against the hypothetical enemy, but against the forest beasts.

C'astille led them at a good pace, and soon heard the noise of rapid-fire guns for herself. Moving cautiously, the Z'ensam let their ears guide them toward the sound. It soon became clear that not only were they moving toward the sound, but the sound was moving toward them. C'astille, for no logical reason, became more and more convinced
that they were tracking something far more exciting than a band of marauding Nihilists, and urged her companions onward.

It was a miracle that humans and Z'ensam didn't open fire on each other when the two groups nearly tripped over each other toward midafternoon. But C'astille was the first to spot the humans, and fortunately had the good sense to call out "Lucy! Lucy!" instead of galloping blindly forward to greet her friend. If she had taken the latter course, unquestionably she would have gotten her head blown off.

As it was, the worst she had happen to her was near-strangulation, when Lucy ran to her and flung her arms around C'astille's long neck. "Oh, C'astille! Thank God! I don't know how much farther we could have gone."

C'astille returned her friend's embrace. "Lucy!" she said in English. "You did come back. Welcome!" C'astille stepped back from her friend and turned to the other humans, who looked just a trifle alarmed at being suddenly surrounded by natives bearing what were quite obviously weapons. And it occurred to C'astille that the Z'ensam must look rather large and threatening to a human. She hurriedly signaled her companions to holster their guns, and did the same herself.

She carefully addressed the other humans in English. "My name is C'astille. In the name of D'chimchaw, Guidance of the Refiners, I bid you welcome and offer our hospitality." She had rehearsed that speech a long time, waiting for the day Lucy would bring her friends back.

The largest of the humans—in fact the largest human C'astille had yet seen—came forward and bowed. The big human, indeed all the humans, seemed exhausted to the point of collapse. "My name is Terrance MacKenzie Larson. This is Joslyn Marie Cooper Larson, Charles Sisulu, and Peter William Gesseti. In the name of the League of Planets, we thank you for your welcome."

C'astille hesitated a moment, and then recalled a thing the Guards had done. She stepped forward and reached
out her four-thumbed hand to Terranz Mac whatever-the-name-was. She could practice saying it later.

Mac seemed surprised by the gesture, but then he looked C'astille straight in her jet-black eyes and shook her hand in the pouring rain of Outpost's woodlands.

The weary humans were relieved beyond measure to find themselves with an armed escort through the deadly forest. There was something almost anticlimactic about their meeting with the natives. C'astille and Lucy walked side by side, chattering like two long-separated school chums in a mixture of O-I and English that no one else could follow. The other Outposters seemed curious about these new and strange halfwalkers, but they were used to seeing Lucy about and some of the novelty had worn off. Besides, none of them could speak English.

Mac, Pete, Joslyn, and Charlie could do little but try not to stare at their hosts. But safety, and a pressurized wagon where they could peel off their suits, lay ahead, and that added a spring to their step. Even so, it was near nightfall when they finally reached the Refiner's camp, and the humans were just barely able to do more than stagger into the wagon and collapse that night, Pete being half-carried by Mac and Charlie. C'astille and Lucy agreed it would be wise to wait until morning to meet with the Guidance.

Lucy re-entered her old pressurized wagon with mixed feelings. She was glad to see C'astille, glad to be out of that suit, but—all that effort, simply to return to her mobile prison! Nothing had changed in the time she had been gone. One table, one oddly-shaped chair, the possessions she had left behind neatly stacked in a corner, the beacon whose signal they had followed so far carefully hung on the wall. At least she wasn't alone anymore.

Pete was weakening, rapidly, his last burst of energy barely enough to get him to the wagon. The humans rushed him inside as quickly as possible. Pete fainted dead away in the airlock. They got him into the main room and stripped the pressure suit off.

Inside it, Pete was a bloody mess, and the stink of blood and sweat filled the wagon the moment they got his helmet off. The bandages must have worked themselves loose, and Pete had bled for a long time before the wound finally had clotted up. He was pale and weak. They got his clothes off Lucy grabbed some washing sponges and soaked them at the wagon's water spigot. They washed him down as best they could and wrapped him in blankets to keep him warm, to try and ward off shock. Charlie peeled the old dressing off and took a look at the wound. Nasty, but not dangerous. "I think he'll be all right," Charlie said. "The wound seems to have just about closed, just oozing a little bit. His real problem now is loss of blood."