“All here except Priestess on the tacsite!” Coolhand replied.
“Go! Go! Across the valley,” I urged Redhawk. The assault door slammed shut.
“Brief me, Thinker,” Snow Leopard ordered, fully alert and clutching an E.
“Two guys on the ridge over there. Scanner says they may be carrying image suppressors.”
“Image suppressors!” The squadmod had slipped away beneath us and suddenly the valley was below. The thickly forested ridge came right at us.
“Have you got ‘em?” Snow Leopard asked.
“I’ve got ‘em,” Redhawk replied. I could see the two figures on the cockpit scope, nearing the ridgeline.
“Comtops!” Warhound started tossing the helmets out of the storage bins. We lost altitude quickly, approaching the treetops. I slipped a comtop over my head, and the darklight lit up the dimmed interior of the car, a ghostly green world, swirling with phantoms.
“They hear us! They’re running.”
“Splitting up!”
“Form two elements for foot pursuit,” Snow Leopard commanded.
“Deadeye, we’re after them,” I said. “Keep coming!”
“We are coming, Slayer! Thinker, Deadeye, out!”
The assault doors snapped open and the night wind whipped into the car. A wild-looking bunch, we had dressed for a quiet night in the squadmod, but we all had E’s and comtops, and our targets were in terminal trouble. Coolhand pulled on his liteboots. Psycho leaned out the door with his Manlink, grinning like a hungry cannibal. He hadn’t even put on his comtop. We saw nothing out there except a dark sea of writhing treetops.
“Hit ‘em with stunstars, then insert us,” Snow Leopard said.
“I’ve got this one,” Redhawk said. The forest flashed brightly beneath us and a thunderclap split the night.
“Get the other one.” The aircar banked steeply and we held on tight. I could see the second target on the scope, darting past the trees. Redhawk fired again, and the screen erupted in a sheet of light. A second thunderclap sounded.
“Get us down there, Redhawk!”
“I can’t get through the trees-I’ll put you down on those rocks.”
“They’re both still moving!”
“The stunstar’s weakened by all those trees!”
“Decar!” The aircar hovered dizzily as Snow Leopard leaped into the dark, clutching his E. I followed Coolhand and Dragon, dropping down onto solid rock. My darksight lit up the night, the aircar hovering in a storm of green dust, tall trees all around us, Psycho and Ironman suddenly beside me, then Warhound and Merlin-all there! The aircar shot skyward again. We had been dropped onto a great cliff of yellow stone, at the top of the ridge overlooking the valley. We hustled down into the forest.
“Priestess, Snow Leopard. We’re on the ground, going after the targets.”
“Snow Leopard, Priestess. Tenners.”
I ran crashing through thick shrubbery, between tall black trees, under a tangled canopy, along the ridgeline. Cold and dark and wet, a forest for winter wolves, a place for hunters and prey, a bad place to die. I saw one of the intruders, magnified on my faceplate, sprinting down the opposite slope. Dragon and Psycho charged along beside me, and now we hurtled downhill, a wild fall, bouncing off trees and branches, tearing through nasty spiked bushes.
“Eeyow!” Psycho was in shorts, his legs suddenly cut and bleeding.
“Stunstars and V,” Snow Leopard ordered, “nothing else!” Psycho raised his Manlink and fired a stunstar, splitting the night, a tremendous flash and bang, the concussion hitting me right in the chest. I slowed briefly, aimed at the fleeing target, and fired a burst of auto V, V-min. Dragon fired V as well. We ran forward, again. Suddenly I careened down a steep dirt cliff, grasping at roots and branches, falling heavily into a tangled mass of vegetation. I struggled to my feet and forced myself forward.
The target, still on scope, weaved and danced. Psycho fired his Manlink again, the stunstar ripping through the air, the forest erupting ahead of us, a tremendous crack.
“He’s down.” Another flash, off to the left, and the aircar whistled past overhead. The car fired at the other target, whirling around for a second pass, an evil bird, glinting starlight.
We approached the target carefully. He was down, not moving.
“Careful! Keep it on v-min.” Psycho and Dragon and I had him bracketed. Coolhand caught up with us.
The target was face down in the muck, limbs askew. We would not even have seen him without the darksight. He wore camfax, head to foot. A cylindrical package laid a few marks away, also camfaxed. I took hold of his shoulder and turned him over as Dragon and Psycho stood over him with their weapons. His head rolled back loosely, his face plastered with mud and leaves. I brushed them away. An Outworlder! His eyes were open, glazed.
“He’s not breathing!”
“I’ve got him!” Coolhand was with us, and pulled a medkit from his coldcoat. He slammed a biotic charger onto the man’s chest and triggered it. The shock coursed through the Outworlder’s body.
“No response!” Coolhand tried it again. The body twitched, without life signs.
“Deadman!” Coolhand tore off his comtop and tossed it away. His narrow face streamed with sweat, and his curly brown hair was plastered to his brow. He checked the life signs, then triggered the device again and again, until smoke began to rise from the body. The Outworlder’s eyes remained open, his mouth agape. His body twitched, but the life signs did not change.
“No response,” Psycho said. “He’s dead, Coolhand.” He was on one knee, kneeling by his Manlink. Coolhand finally pulled the device away.
“Deto!” Coolhand was furious. The biotic charge should have worked.
“That’s an Outworlder,” I said.
“That’s a Systie,” Dragon said. Full body camfax. Good stuff, but he couldn’t hide from the Legion.
“What killed him?”
“Must have been the stunstar.”
“Snow Leopard, Coolhand. We’ve got our target. Looks like a Systie-stone dead! We couldn’t save him.”
“What? Death’s gate!” The response came immediately. “Ours is dead, too! He won’t respond to the biotic charge.”
“What the hell, over?”
“Don’t know, Coolhand. Investigate thoroughly.”
“Tenners.”
“The star shouldn’t have killed him,” Psycho said.
“Well, the V shouldn’t have killed him either,” Coolhand said. “Look-a cold knife!” A big, nasty blade, strapped to his waist. “That’s not Systie issue.”
“He’s got to be a Systie!” I said.
“Certainly,” Coolhand replied. “Let’s examine him carefully.”
“No wounds.”
“No comtop.”
“What’s in the bag?” The lightweight nitex pack contained dried rations. A canteen was strapped to the pack.
“That’s civilian ConFree camping gear, gang. And the rats are also ConFree.”
“Wonderful. No other equipment! Except the knife.”
“That’s good camfax.”
“It’s not Systie made.”
“It’s not standard issue, we can say that.”
“He dropped something,” Dragon said. He stood over a cylindrical package wrapped in camfax.
“Careful with that!”
Dragon opened it gingerly. A soft, camfaxed weapons sleeve, covering an image suppressor case.
“Well, that’s something!”
“Any markings?”
“This looks like a standard civilian suppressor case, available in any good ConFree tech store.”
Dragon opened it slowly. It contained a V gun.
“Deadman!”
“A V gun!”
“Blackstar Industries, M-92 Guardian heavy-duty V gun,” Coolhand said, “freely available to any ConFree citizen. A very low-profile weapon. I believe we’ll find the ID strip has been scrambled.”
“The image suppressor is what di
d them in,” I said. “They needed the V guns, I guess, to deal with the Taka. And they had to hide the image from us.”
“No other equipment. Not even a chron!”
He had been a young man-a soldier, surely. But he was nothing now. His body was empty, as inanimate as a rock, the eyes vacant. The eyes of the dead. The person who lived there had gone. Death, for all his efforts. I wondered what had motivated him to risk his life for the System. I wondered why he had died. I could feel only admiration for him. Surely he recognized it as a perilous mission. He had gone anyway.
“The boots?”
“Ultra-light armorite,” Dragon said. “I don’t see any markings.”
“Looks like civilian hikers.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“Nice. You don’t get much more low-profile than this.”
“Coolhand, Snow Leopard.” The tacnet crackled. “How did your guy die?”
“We don’t know, Snow Leopard. There’s no wound.”
“Troubling,” Snow Leopard said. “This is not good.”
“Could be Systie commandos,” Psycho said, “using ConFree equipment.”
“Could be just about anybody else, too!”
“Two of them. Reconning the squadmod.”
“What killed them?”
“How could both of them die?”
“Where did they come from?”
“These are our Systies, guys!”
“Yeah. Yeah. So where’s the rest of them?”
A shiver ran over my skin. “Don’t know. Let’s call in the aircar.
It’s getting cold.”
Chapter 11: The Delegate from the Past
“We all here?” Snow Leopard looked us over critically.
We gathered around the table in the squadmod tac room.
“Beta here,” Coolhand confirmed. Merlin had been pondering a miniscreen full of data; he slipped it into a pocket. Psycho had a disassembled Manlink on the table; he continued to fool with it. Warhound and Ironman gave Snow Leopard their attention. Dragon brooded over a cup of dox at one end of the table. Priestess sat beside me, silent.
“If you’re through, Psycho, we’d like to begin.”
Psycho put down the parts and grinned. “Sorry, Snow Leopard. I try to keep occupied during these staff meetings so I don’t fall asleep.”
“Well, I appreciate that, Psycho, but nevertheless I would like your full attention, if you don’t mind.” Snow Leopard really had a way with words.
“Sure. Sure. You got it.”
“All right,” Snow Leopard began. “We don’t have these meetings as often as we should, but as you know we’ve been rather busy lately. The Second-Cubes-recently briefed all the CAT commanders, and our own Two Four-Lowdrop-briefed me and the other squad leaders. So I’d like to bring everyone up to date on the sit. Feel free to break in with questions. All right, I’m going to summarize this. These meetings go on for hours but generally contain about three to five marks worth of useful information. So I’m going to leave out all the nonsense.”
“We appreciate that, Snow Leopard.” Psycho gave him his best grin.
“And also we’re hoping that Psycho can stay awake throughout the meeting if we keep it short enough. All right, first subject-the mission to Andrion 3. There’s a lot of nonsense making the rounds about what was found and what wasn’t.
“The truth is as follows: The Fourth, that’d be Mobius, did the mission-CAT 44 downside and CAT 43 as backup topside. That’s a lot of people. Nobody called backup-in the best Legion tradition. The mission was bad, and so was the planet. It’s even more hostile down there than it looks. Even without the exos, it’s a struggle just to stay alive, and with the exos it’s quite a challenge. Mobius called it ‘interesting’ and if you know Mobius, you know that’s not the sort of place you want to visit.”
Snow Leopard had our undivided attention.
“Despite this, they had no serious casualties. Two main points. First, the environment was so bad-so noisy-it was not immediately possible to learn much more about the planet than we already know. Command has not yet reached any new conclusions. In other words, anything could be hiding there-even power systems.
“Second, 44 did capture some Dominants. They also picked up live samples of all the other non-indigenous species we have so far identified here on Andrion 2. Testing is still underway, but forget all that speculation about superior intelligence. Initial readout is the Dominants control the other exos through biochem. There doesn’t appear to be anything remarkable about the Dominants, except their ability to manipulate other exo species.”
“So there was no sign of the Systies?” Merlin asked.
“Nothing. But it’s an excellent place to hide. They could very well be there.”
“Then the mission failed?”
“I wouldn’t say so. The Fourth collected a lot of data and it’s undergoing analysis. Conditions did not permit the immediate resolution of the problem. Obviously, they could not physically search the whole planet. They went a lot further than they had to, spent a lot more time downside than planned, and did a lot more than was required. They gathered enough info to keep Command busy for a long, long time. It was above and beyond all the way, and I wouldn’t want anyone in Beta referring to that mission as a failure. Otherwise I’m going to have to volunteer us to do it better.”
“Good point!” My voice almost cracked.
“What it comes down to,” Snow Leopard said, “is that another, even more extensive expedition to Andrion 3 is planned. With luck, we may be on it.” Snow Leopard paused, and gave us a happy little smile.
“I’m thrilled,” Psycho remarked.
“Sounds like fun,” Coolhand added.
“Which brings us to the next subject, the sitrep for Andrion 2. First, the Taka. And by the way, let’s have no more talk of ‘Scalers’. It’s slang, and bad slang, and the Scalers don’t like it…” The tac room erupted in laughter. Snow Leopard flushed a deep red, then stifled a grin.
“I’m sorry. The… Taka…don’t like it, and neither does Firefall. He feels strongly about this, and Central is issuing a directive. Anyone using the term on the tacnet is going to have to explain why, and no explanations will be accepted. So let’s cut the use of this derogatory term. Remember, these people are our allies now.
“All right, the sitrep. We’ve about wrapped it up in the Sunmarch. The Hand of God is still on the loose, but it doesn’t matter. Almost all the Taka in Sunmarch have declared loyalty to us, and we have more auxiliary volunteers than we can use. The Cult is finished.”
Psycho held his hand up, waving anxiously.
“Yes, Psycho. Do you have to wee-wee?” Snow Leopard sounded like he was losing patience.
“No, I, uh…I know I’m going to get in trouble for asking this, but, uh…what’s Sunmarch?”
Snow Leopard looked at him, smiled patiently, and answered. “If you would sleep in your cube instead of on the lounge floor, you would know that Sunmarch is the Taka name for the primary continent here, on which we are operating.”
“Ah, I see. Actually, I knew that. Just checking on you. That was a good answer.”
“Psycho,” Dragon cut in, “will you shut down and let the rest of us listen to the briefing?” Dragon did not get along with Psycho at all.
“Does my existence disturb you?”
“Profoundly,” Dragon responded.
“All right, blackout,” Snow Leopard said. “Now, the lab report on our Systies is out. And they do appear to be Systies. The lifies went over the bodies with everything they had, but didn’t find much. Whoever sent them out took a great deal of trouble to make sure they were sterile. They chose Outworlders rather than some other race, which might have confirmed their status as Systies. All the equipment they carried was ConFree civilian gear.
“They’d both had c-cells, at one time, and both c-cells had been removed. DefCorps implants c-cells just as we do, for ID, health and tracking purposes. The former placem
ent of the c-cells was similar to what we know about DefCorps commando units. The preservatives on the teeth were Systie make. The soil on the boots did not, unfortunately, lead us anywhere.”
“So how did they die?” Dragon asked.
“Heart failure,” Snow Leopard responded, “in both cases.”
“Maybe we scared ‘em to death.”
“Yeah, they got a look at Warhound’s face.”
“No, they spotted Psycho’s outfit and died laughing.”
“All right, blackout,” Snow Leopard cut in. “It’s not funny. It’s likely they were psyched to die in certain situations. And those conditions were met.” We greeted Snow Leopard’s remark in silence. The contempt that the System showed for its own assets scared us. I wondered if the Systie troopers had known about their programming. If they had, it must have been a truly terrifying pursuit.
“So what have we concluded?” Merlin asked.
“Command has concluded that the Systies are here, in this system,” Snow Leopard replied, “and that there’s got to be more than two of them.”
“Well, then, where are they?” Ironman asked.
“We don’t know,” Snow Leopard said. “Possibly Andrion 2, possibly Andrion 3. But Command believes at least some of them are on-planet, right here. And the most likely location is somewhere in the exoseg zone. The exo presence here is certainly tied in with the Systies.”
“Why haven’t we spotted power systems, if the Systies are here?”
“If they’re here, they’re not using power systems.”
“But you can’t run anything without power systems.”
“That’s correct. All right, here’s what we plan. We’re going right into the Forest of Bones.” Snow Leopard flashed a tacmap on the screen. “No Taka have lived there in a hundred years. It’s crawling with exos, and the hives honeycomb the earth. It’s such a massive complex it will probably take months of work to close it down. We’re going in to search for Systies, and to kill exos, and to rescue any living Taka we may find. They feed on living Taka, and we’re not going to give up on the search no matter how slim the chances. The Taka are willing to go down those holes with no armor, hauling tridents and spears. I don’t think we can refuse to help them. This is the area in which Taka history places the first appearance of the exos, which occurred, we have learned, shortly after Star Survey visited the system.”
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