“Call them back,” Morton screamed into the general channel. “Get them out of there!” He deployed two plasma carbines and started bombarding one of the Cruisers with pulses. They broke apart into energy flares that whipped impotently across the translucent boundary.
Mortars fired by the McSobels began to land amid the Cruisers, disrupting their fire as force fields hardened temporarily against the electron squalls. Loiter missiles sailed overhead, waiting for the moment when the kinetic fire resumed to slam down hard.
The Barsoomians opened fire. Streaks of violet light hammered into the Cruisers, almost invisible against the sapphire sky. Morton’s tactical software couldn’t classify the weapons at all. The force fields began to glow a perilous rose-gold.
Short-range defense X-ray lasers on the armored cars opened up. Stig and the other drivers coordinated their attack, concentrating on one Cruiser. Morton’s aim shifted with accelerant lubricated precision to join the barrage.
They were halfway down the slope now, ranged at four hundred seventeen meters from the MANN truck. Thick clouds of diesel gushed up out of its vertical exhaust pipes behind the cab, and it started to rumble forward.
“Don’t go,” the Cat yelled at it. “That’ll make me cross.”
The Cruiser they’d been concentrating their firepower on exploded. Morton watched in dismay as the Guardians continued to ride into the kinetic guns. “They’re being slaughtered,” he shouted accusingly.
“We are where we’re meant to be,” Scott replied levelly.
“Fuck that.” He had two HVvixen missiles left. Both of them burst out of his shoulder tubes. Two seconds later they stabbed down on a Cruiser, taking it out in a clean pillar of white flame.
“Bad move,” Rob said. “I think we’ll need them later.”
Morton ignored him. The surviving Cruisers were still shooting. “Cat, Rob: synchronize.” He stopped running, and crouched down as his hyper-rifle slid smoothly up from his forearm. The MANN truck started to draw away. Beside him the Cat and Rob had come to a halt. Charlemagnes charged past in pursuit of the armored cars. Masers from Institute vehicles had locked on to them. The shield webbing protecting the warhorses blazed with energy that was discharged through their elaborately woven saddle tassels; the big beasts raced onward trailing whirlwinds of sparks. Morton pulled targeting data out of the tactical display at accelerant speed, bundled some of it in a neat file that he shunted to the Paris team. “That one.”
Three hyper-rifles fired at once, joined a moment later by the boom of the particle lances. The Cruiser’s force field burned dark crimson. They fired again. The Barsoomians joined them. This time they punctured the force field. “Switching,” Morton told them. He picked a second target while the fireball was still expanding.
The Cruisers were on the move, bucking and juddering over the rough ground as they closed protectively around the MANN truck. Accelerants allowed Morton a seemingly leisured review of the fickle data coming in from the Guardian scouts up ahead. The vehicles carrying the soldier motiles were only three kilometers away now. Already a running firefight had broken out between the aliens and the lead riders of the mounted platoons sent to intercept them. It looked like the soldier motiles were equipped with a very powerful version of a plasma rifle. They were also shooting mini-missiles with enhanced-energy warheads. Once again, the horses were taking the brunt of the attack.
Morton’s wired scrutiny snapped his attention back to one of his own sensor feeds. One of the Cruisers around the MANN truck was firing missiles. A squadron of intense purple sparks went slicing through the air to detonate against the front of Bradley’s armored car with a ferocity that slammed the heavy vehicle back several meters. The blast wave nearly knocked Morton to the ground. He swayed back as the inside of his helmet reverberated with the roar of the explosion.
“This is a strategic balls-up of the first order,” Rob declared. “They haven’t got a fucking clue what to do.”
“Is there anything we’ve got that can split that bastard’s force field?” Morton asked.
“I don’t think so,” Matthew said. “If the zone killers couldn’t do it, nothing we’re carrying can.”
“Bradley,” Alic called, “what’s your plan now?”
“We’re going to ram the truck. That’s the only way left to stop it reaching the Marie Celeste. We must pray the planet is having its revenge.”
“Crazy,” Rob wailed. “This isn’t a battle, it’s a joke.”
Morton swiped his attention across various images. The MANN truck had almost made it to where the road began again. Two kilometers ahead of it, the motile soldiers were brushing off the wild attacks by the mounted Guardians. They’d link up soon enough.
Another flight of missiles from a Cruiser pounded into the armored cars.
“If it’s running for its ship it has to get out of the truck to transfer,” Morton said. “That’s when it’s vulnerable. We just have to keep up.”
“Morty, clever boy,” the Cat said approvingly.
“Are you with me?”
“Wouldn’t miss it, darling.”
“Let’s show these morons how to fight a real war,” Rob said.
“Okay,” Alic said. “We’ll take it to them.”
Morton’s smile was feral as he started running.
***
Amid the gray desolation of solidified lava that comprised the summit of Mount Herculaneum the hyperglider had become difficult to see. Dust churned up by the crash had settled on its white fuselage, sticking to the streaks of ice to tone down the shiny plyplastic like adaptive camouflage. Its sharp aerodynamic planform had disappeared the instant it struck the rock spur, crumpling and warping until it resembled the worn vacuum-boiled ripples of lava on which it had come to rest. In the dark cavity underneath what was the badly smashed-up cockpit a couple of small red LEDs glowed in the shadows, slowly dimming as the ruined power cells decayed.
The thin regolith around the wreckage had been disturbed when Wilson hauled himself out of the inverted pilot’s seat. A trail of meandering sulci led away to the rim of Aphrodite’s Seat, illustrating how he’d pulled his inert legs along behind him as he crawled the remaining two hundred thirty meters. Every now and then the trail widened with broad scuff marks where he’d squirmed around. The exposed lava was covered by flaking splotches of dried blood and little droplets of epoxy foam used to patch the splits in his pressure suit that had torn open again.
Wilson never looked back now. He’d found a smooth cleft right on the precipice that accepted his body like a comfy old sofa. His feet didn’t quite dangle over the eight-kilometer drop, but they were only a few centimeters from it. The pressure suit’s silver-blue fabric was dull beneath a grimy coat of regolith dust it’d picked up as he dragged himself along. Thick pleats of epoxy foam crisscrossed his shattered legs. Two of the blobby lines were still oozing blood; little droplets inflating out from the edges to bubble away in the vacuum. He no longer worried about such things. Painkillers insured his remaining time would be comfortable. The last of the Wild Foxes had successfully completed the mission.
To his right, the arrays and their supplementary electronic modules were arranged neatly on the rock with the broad sensor strips sitting on squat tripods, their matte-black multi-absorbent faces pointing east. The view was perfect, showing him the entire Dessault range all the way across to the tiny spire of Mount StOmer in the east. Far, far below him, the glacier ring was a bright diamante strip braided by thin wisps of cirrus. Farther down, the thick storm clouds continued to sluice around the tremendous volcano. After hours watching keenly, he was sure the power of the winds from the ocean were weakening now. It didn’t matter; the storm had provided the Guardians with more than enough raw material to manufacture their planet’s revenge.
While he lay there in the quiet peace of the vacuum he’d observed the clouds spreading east. From this altitude it was like seeing a white-water torrent pouring down a dry riverbed. The green valleys were sl
owly occluded by the cumulus, leaving just the rugged gray and white pinnacles sticking above the surface.
In the background Samantha and the others chittered away, their voices like some kind of insect trapped in his helmet. He didn’t say very much to them now, just the occasional comment to confirm some aspect of the observation. At first there was little to see. The storm for all its size and speed was perfectly natural. He lay there watching its progress as the sun warmed his chest and the lava slowly sucked heat out of his spine. Eventually he noticed how the winds were gradually speeding up; the strange way clouds were confined to the mountains. Ordinarily most of the storm would flow away out across the vast expanse of the Aldrin Plains, while on the other side of the Dessault range it spewed around Mount Idle to disperse over the southern pampas lands. Today it was blocked and channeled. As the morning went on he started to recognize the Guardians’ choreography. Between the mountain peaks, manipulator stations churned up gigantic whorls in the fast-flowing cloud, sucking stationary highs into the Dessault range, denying the storm any release. As a consequence, the cloud swarm rose in height as it thronged along valleys, layer after layer building into a solid thunderhead, kilometers deep. With every exit denied it had nowhere to go but east. A smile ghosted Wilson’s face as he watched the front roar along Trevathan Gulf, fed by fresh gales that the manipulator stations injected through every major valley.
Thumb jabbing down hard on the red button at the top of the joystick. Missile launch: its contrail streaking off into the sky. Bring the fighter around back to the safety of the Wild Fox pack. Watch the radar as the missile hurtles toward its target. Distant unfelt kill.
When the winds reached the end of Trevathan Gulf and hit the High Desert they were traveling in excess of five hundred kilometers an hour. There were no manipulator stations out here. They had become irrelevant. The storm was so powerful it was now self-sustaining. Uncontrollable.
The vast deluge of white cloud spread out to obliterate the High Desert. Wilson saw it change color, the cumulus darkening, not with the slate-gray of suspended rain but the ocher of particles siphoned up from the desert floor by an army of twisters that had grown to the size of the very mountains that they had rampaged through. He watched it race toward the final line of pinnacles that guarded the desert’s eastern boundary. The enraged mass grew higher and higher until its thrashing crests finally rose above the snowcapped peaks, eclipsing the lands over which they were about to fall.
***
The soldier motile came at Morton with a nimble arachnid gait, veering from side to side in precise controlled motions. It was different from the ones back at Randtown: each of the four legs forked, giving it eight hoofs. Two of the arms also divided halfway along. The damn thing was insectoid. Triggering deep phobias. Even with accelerant freeze framing its body actions for examination he could never tell which of its hooves it was going to pirouette around next. Targeting was nearly impossible. One pair of the creature’s arms held hefty long-barreled weapons, which Morton was urgently trying to avoid. He did so with a fast low zigzag run, always keeping his feet in contact with the ground, enabling him to switch direction when he needed. Using the ground-eating leap here would give the alien a clear shot as he glided along.
A plasma flare from the soldier motile’s weapon hit the earth beside his feet. The suit’s force field held, but his legs were yanked from under him. In Far Away’s gravity it was an annoyingly slow fall to hit the earth and regain stability. Annoying verging on lethal. The moment stretched in accelerant time. Another blast struck him on the chest. The suit force field flared purple, and he was spinning in the air. Legs flung wide, trying to jab a foot on the ground, anything to kill momentum. Virtual hand moved leisurely through the battle cluster icons, selecting his weapon. Another energy blast stabbed past his helmet. Upper arm plasma grenade canisters thumped out their munitions. Air around the soldier motile glared with fizzing electron static.
Morton hit the ground, flattening himself. The world swept back to operate in real-time. He crouched and sprang. Electromuscle enhancement propelled him forward like a kamikaze aerobot.
The electrons drained away, leaving the soldier motile braced on all eight hooved legs. It was wearing what looked like a loose robe of scaly gray-green fabric, which was also acting as a force field conductor. Its sensor stalks ended in a clump of golden electronic lenses. Some of its arms ended in a tripartite mechanical claw; while the torso was strung with flat metallic boxes webbed with flexible cables. Arm two swung a big gun around on Morton, its sub-branch gripping some kind of grenade. Arm three fired an ion pistol. Arm one was holding a long buzzing blade. Arm four shot the other large gun at a target off toward the road, micromissiles shrieking away from their rotary launcher in its sub-branch.
The ion pulse jangled Morton’s suit sensors as he careered into the alien. For a second he was blinded. Tactile feedback gave him the sense of the alien’s weight against him, its second arm bending to grip around his hips. The blade skating over his neck, hunting a weak spot. Virtual vision shrieked a warning that his force field was being overloaded by some drain mechanism. These soldier motiles were faster than the ones on Elan. Sensor vision returned. Incomprehensible montage of alien suit fabric, purple light, trampled grass. His own senses told him they were falling together. He triggered the electrification circuit, pumping forty thousand volts through his suit. The alien turned lambent crimson. It sought to roll on top of him, legs three and one bucking, trying to latch what felt like hundreds of hoof claws around his ankle and knees. Morton went with the roll, then amplified it with a savage body twist. Wound up on top. His gauntlet clamped around arm one and twisted with full electromuscle strength. Something beneath the alien’s flesh buckled, and the arm bent around at a sharp angle. The claw of arm three closed around his neck. His force field alarm went up a grade.
“For fuck’s sake,” Morton grunted. Five-centimeter talons slid out of every finger on his right hand. He punched down hard. Red lightning spat out of the impact. He kept pressure going as the dump-function on the talon tips pulled energy out of the soldier motile’s force field. A stressed whine cut through his insulation. Then the alien’s force field weakened around the talons. Morton’s hand ripped through fabric and flesh. He thrust it deep into the body turning as he went, ripping organs and blood vessels, then pulled back. It came free reluctantly, sucking up a honey-yellow gore. The soldier motile went limp.
“Morty, we don’t have time to make it personal, darling,” the Cat chided.
A micromissile detonated beside him. A cloud of hyperfilament shrapnel boiled out of the explosion, shredding through soil and surface rock. His force field glared scarlet on the point of overload as he was punched sideways by the writhing impact.
“Told you not to waste the HVvixens,” Rob said.
Morton scrambled to his feet. The Cat was right. They were getting swamped by soldier motiles, of which there was a seemingly endless number. Hundreds of them had jumped out of their vehicles as soon as they reached the MANN truck. Now they were blocking the way forward. Leaving the road to try to outflank them had been a big mistake. A hundred fifty meters to his left, the armored cars were driving down Highway One, their X-ray lasers slashing from side to side like a demented swordsman keeping his opponents at bay. They could pierce the force fields used by soldier motiles if they got within fifty meters, which gave them a small clear area. A flight of micromissiles hammered into the road just ahead of the armored car Bradley was riding in. Hyperfilament shrapnel shredded the concrete to fine gravel. The armored cars started to fishtail as soon as they drove into it, wheels throwing up grit as they spun.
Alic’s particle lances boomed, sending pulses streaming toward the cluster of soldier motiles that had fired the missiles. They toppled to the ground, then started to pull themselves upright again.
Morton scanned his sensors around, building a tactical profile. It wasn’t good. So far they’d traveled about three kilometers on from t
he original blockade. At least a hundred fifty soldier motiles had them effectively surrounded. The Guardians on their Charlemagnes were a kilometer behind, and holding off—not that they could help. His suit power cells were down to under fifty percent. There had been too many close calls in combat. None of them had any HVvixens left.
His radar scanned ahead, picking out the MANN truck with its escort eight kilometers away. It was traveling fast along the clear road. Bradley wasn’t going to catch it, let alone ram it.
“We’ll ride shotgun,” he said. “Stig, switch off your X-ray lasers. We’re hitching a ride.”
“Morton, we have to catch up,” Bradley said.
Morton could hear panic edging into his voice. “We can cut through if we combine our firepower.” He’d already started running; the other suits were beside him firing energy weapons into the elusive line of soldier motiles. Up ahead, the armored cars took more hits from micromissiles. The road surface was completely trashed, reduced to a mire of loose fragments that bogged them down.
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