Their Master's War (20 page)

Simultaneously, four mild explosions erupted out of the jungle directly under the line of ultralights. The drones had triggered a baby mine cluster, probably the kind that crawled blindly around inside deep cover. One ultralight was flipped into a stall and went down like a stone. It was only an opening salvo, but the Therem task force immediately responded. The saucers lifted quickly away from the trees like a flock of nervous birds. The dynes halted. They were powering up. Dyne weaponry was all projected from what could only be described as a ruby-red eye in the front of its ovoid body. The multiple pupils of that eye slowly began to glow. Renchett stood fingering his knife. "Think we're getting under way here." The electronic chatter of battle started up inside Hark's helmet as the task force moved forward again. The saucer crews were apparently incapable of maintaining communication silence; they continuously yelled to each other, bolstering against their nervousness. There was also a subbass rumble, almost too deep to hear, that some said was the dynes talking. Another series of small explosions geysered out of the jungle. A herd of the big green lizards started bellowing in panic. They smashed their way out of the fungus, stampeded down the riverbank, and splashed into the oily brown water. One of the gunsaucers opened fire on them. Two of the lizards went down kicking and thrashing. Someone whooped. Hark scowled. There were too many assholes who thought it was funny to shoot at the big lizards. Hark didn't think it was funny at all. The green monsters were one of the few things he liked on this goddamn planet.

The next explosion was huge. A broad expanse of jungle seemed to lift straight into the air before it disintegrated into a blazing roar of fire and smoke. Communication was swamped in a howl of static. The twenty-scattered, hitting the dust. They knew all too well what was probably coming next. Green fire was flashing from inside the pall of smoke.

"They've sprung a firetower!"

Although the jungle was still burning, the smoke had partially cleared around a cylindrical black tower almost as tall as a dyne. It was a Yal static robot. Until the task force had approached, it had lain dormant in a protective silo under a cover of jungle. It was only when the mines and blastpits that surrounded it had been detonated that it pushed its way upward and started blazing multiple fire. Yal firetowers didn't last long. Even without what was being pumped at it from the dynes' glowing eyes, it wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes. The fire-tower was a blaze-of-glory device. It let go of everything at once in the hope of obliterating everything around it. The dynes were big enough to be equipped with rudimentary shields. They didn't have enough power to walk and keep their shields up at the same time, but it was better than nothing. Only one dyne was taken by surprise. It was hit in the knee joint by a blast of accelerator, and in an instant, the whole leg was melting. It stumbled, tried to right itself on two legs, and then crashed down, sprawling like a mighty corpse across jungle and river. The ovoid slowly began to sink. Th

other three stood their ground and vaporized the tower with a saturation of energy weapons. To the men crouching on the hilltop, it seemed as if the whole river valley had been turned into a caldron of black smoke, colored fire, and pulsing energy. Their helmets were filled with an electronic scream, and the ground shook continuously. Each one could imagine what it must be like to be one of the companies down in the valley, huddling below this battle of the giants, bellies pressed to the soft jungle floor, trying desperately to bury themselves in the fungus mold before they were fried or vaporized. It didn't seem possible that anyone could live through a hell like that—but they knew from experience that men did. That was why the war was still in business.

When the firing stopped, there was a terrible silence, broken only by the patter of falling debris. The men on the hilltop peered into the smoke for any sign of further fire on the ground. It was always possible that the chibas had come out of their rat holes and were engaging what was left of the ground forces. All seemed to be quiet. The smoke was slowly being blown upriver by a lazy offshore breeze, uncovering what remained after the exchange. The firetower was nothing more than a dead melted stump. It was at the center of a burned and blackened area that extended over more than a third of the river valley. Two of the dynes still stood where they had fought. Despite the shields, their outsides were discolored by heat and radiation. The third dyne that was still standing had moved to where its comrade lay, legs stretching out of the river. It had extended a long umbilical into the water and was probing for the body section of the fallen machine. It was the saucers that had taken the worst punishment. Over half of them were history, and the survivors hung back behind the dynes as if unwilling to go on. The twenty were on their feet, staring

down into the expanse of destruction. Elmo decided that it was the moment to assert his authority.

"Don't bunch up there. You never know when you're going to come under fire." Dyrkin rounded on him. "What are you talking about? You think there's going to be a Yal air strike? Or maybe the chibas are going to come boiling out of the fungus -and hit us on open ground?" Elmo went red behind his facemask. "In case you hadn't noticed, there are a whole lot of replacements in this twenty, and I don't want them getting into bad habits."

Dyrkin lifted his mask and spit on the ground. "Most of them've got more on the ball than you."

"You can't talk to me like that."

"Can't I? What are you going to do, shoot me?"

He turned his back on Elmo and deliberately walked away. The overman shouted after him.

"You'll be on a field punishment when we get back to the ship. This is a capital charge, Dyrkin."

"I'll worry about that when we get to it."

The others watched the confrontation in silence. It was the worst thing that could happen to a twenty. A noncom who'd lost it could be a death sentence for his men, and nobody in the twenty was in any doubt that Elmo had lost it. He stayed on his own again until the order came through that they were to move down into the fungus. The twenty fell automatically into single file and started downhill. Elmo didn't have anything to say or do until they came close the edge of the fungus. Their approach to the jungle had become so routine that Renchett, without question, started organizing four of the relacements into the front-line burning party to start carving into the dense, pulpy growth. He was quite amazed when Elmo stopped him.

"No burn?"

"We don't want any chibas knowing where we are." "They always know where we are." "We still don't burn."

Renchett shook his head and looked to Dyrkin for support. "You want to check out what's going on over here?"

Dyrkin shrugged. "Whatever the overman says. I'm already on his bad side." Renchett turned back to Elmo. "So what does the overman say?"

"We move along the line of vegetation until we come to a natural trail. Then we move into the woods." Renchett put his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky.

"I don't want to be bucking no orders here, but I've been in these woods a lot longer than you have, and one thing I know is that a natural trail is a damn-fool thing to be walking on."

"That's as may be, Renchett, but as of now, and in these woods, we do it my way." Renchett turned away, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "You're the boss."

"One more thing, Renchett."

Renchett halted, but he didn't turn. "What's that?"

"Take the point."

"Me?"

"You."

"I don't walk point no more. I did it for too long."

Elmo smiled nastily. "Now you do."

Hark had been watching the exchange. Up until Elmo had smiled, he'd been willing to give the overman any reasonable break. The smile cut it. Elmo shouldn't be enjoying this. Hark wouldn't go against him, but if it came to it, he wouldn't be backing him, either.

They walked slowly along the edge of the fungus. Elmo took up a position back along the line. He seemed

to be forever glancing nervously into the jungle. Such behavior was known in the trade as seeing shadows, and it was considered a bad sign in anyone but the most raw recruit. They'd been walking for maybe a half hour, and the single file had started to loosen up. Kemlo fell into step beside Hark. He seemed to be favoring his artificial foot.

"Foot hurting?"

"Yeah, a little. It's the forsaken damp. I ain't as bad as him, though." He jerked his thumb back to where Siryn was having trouble keeping up.

Hark looked back at the new fish. "He looks like he screwed up his lungs back there."

"He ought to be e-vaced out."

"That's Elmo's problem. Nothing we can do about it."

"We ought to say something."

"I don't figure Elmo's interested in anything we got to say. Renchett tried to tell him not to go down a natural trail, and he put him on point."

"So you're taking an attitude, too."

Hark looked sharply at Kemlo. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it's supposed to mean. Are you going to get with Dyrkin and Renchett and ride him into the ground?"

"I ain't riding no one, but I ain't pretending that he's not a disaster waiting to happen, either. He's the worst. He knows he ain't going to live through this, but he's not quite ready to die. He's likely to take the whole lot of us with him."

Elmo's voice sounded in their helmets. "Cut the gab and get back in line up there." Hark muttered under his breath. "Fuck you, asshole." "You say something?" "Not me, boss." Kemlo moved into place in front of Hark, and they

walked in silence for a while. When it looked as if Elmo had forgotten about them, Kemlo fell back to rejoin Hark.

"You figure we'll see any chiba action?"

Hark shook his head. "Not yet. Not until we reach the head of the valley. Seems to me that the tower was supposed to slow us in this section."

Kemlo cracked his mask for a couple of seconds.

"If it wasn't for this damn mask, I'd grow a mustache."

JD4-1A had a weird system of night and day. Its natural rotation was 960 standard minutes. It didn't, however, revolve directly around its parent sun. Although everyone referred to it as a planet, it was in fact the largest of the satellite moons of JD4-1, that sun's huge single planet. It took seventy-four of its days to circle the planet, and of those, forty-eight were a sequence of bright sunlit days and a strange half night, illuminated by the light reflected from the giant planet that all but filled the sky on the side that was turned away from the sun. After this cycle was complete, it passed into the sun's shadow and went through twenty-six days of total darkness. The operation on the Ten River was taking place roughly halfway through the light period.

The sun was still high when Renchett called into the communicator. "Looks like we got a trail here, boss."

The twenty halted. Elmo walked up to inspect the opening in the jungle.

"What do you think made that?"

It was Renchett's turn to grin. "It could be a lizard trail, although lizards don't usually come this high, or it could've been cut by the Yal so we could walk down it like a bunch of fucking idiots." Elmo hesitated, but Renchett offered no further advice. Finally he made up his mind.

"We'll take the trail."

"Do I still walk point?" "Until I say different." Renchett raised his weapon and gave the overman a hard look. For an instant, it appeared that Renchett was actually considering shooting Elmo, but then he turned and started down the trail.

"Keep a careful watch on your detectors."

Renchett glanced back. His lip curled. "You're telling me?" Elmo started moving the other men down the trail.

"Keep a good distance between you. Stick to the edges of the trail." It was the most obvious advice that he could offer to a jungle patrol and totally redundant for men who had been through it before, but he insisted on repeating it to each man as he passed, The troopers largely ignored him. They adjusted their suits to full cover and ducked grimly under the overhang. Only Siryn seemed unwilling to plunge into the fungus. He appeared scarcely able to walk.

"I... don't think I can go much farther." "You got a problem, boy?" "I can't breathe."

"Shouldn't have opened your facemask, should you?" "Couldn't I just stay here? I'll only slow up the others."

"You just keep going, boy. I don't have no cowards in my twenty."

"I'm no coward. It's my lungs; they're screwed."

Elmo gestured with his MEW. "Get walking, boy. I don't want to hear no more out of you." It was in the jungle that the fear really started. It closed in with the damp heat and the shadows. Very little light penetrated the thick overhead canopy, and heavy moisture dripped constantly from the sweating porous fronds. It was a place of gray monochrome gloom, ide ally suited to traps, ambush, and surprise attack hi sects, small lizards, and land crustaceans rustled
ami
scuttled in undergrowth that was festooned with the \
i
cous webs of giant arachnids. The continual small
noises
stretched the troopers' nerves to the limit. They tried not to look into the shadows—that way led to hallucination and madness. The one thing that they were spared was the smell of fungoid rot. They were protected from
that
by their masks, but they could still feel its presence They tried to keep their eyes fixed on the green detector displays that were projected in front of their visors and would give them first warning of chiba movement or antipersonnel devices.

The first leg of the advance down the overgrown hillside was largely uneventful. A replacement almost blasted a large albino butterfly but managed to restrain himself in time. In a small clearing, they stumbled across a dozen of the small, shovel-nosed lizards rooting in the mold. There was a flash of panic as the creatures blundered away into the fungus, but Dyrkin quickly took charge.

"Hold your fire! It's nothing! Nobody fire!"

The company halted. Some were shaking; all could feel sweat running down inside their suite.