by David Drake
"The only way I can think to break our people loose is to go down into the canopy and circle," Ricimer continued in a voice that was controlled to perfect flatness, not calm. "The men on the ground don't have any targets, but the Molts aren't camouflaged from their own level or a little above."
"Right," Gregg said. "Take us down." He turned.
"Stephen!" Ricimer said.
Gregg looked back. Ricimer risked a glance away from the viewscreens so their eyes could meet. "It will be very dangerous," Ricimer said. "And I have to stay here."
"Do your bloody job, man!" Gregg snapped in irritation. "Leave me to mine."
He climbed onto the locker again and moved Tancred aside. "Get ready," he ordered his fellow gunmen as he lowered his visor. "We're going down. Everybody take one side."
The Peaches shuddered and lost forward way for a moment. The stern dipped. The featherboat dropped into the canopy with its bow pitched up 20°, advancing at barely a fast walk. An arrow clanged against the underside.
Shadows and the faceshield's tint came dangerously close to blinding Gregg. He saw movement over the Peaches' bow, three Molts on a platform anchored where a pair of branches crossed between trunks. A catwalk of vine-lashed poles led into the green curtain to either side.
One Molt was cocking a shoulder-stocked weapon with a vertical throwing arm. Another fired his similar weapon at the featherboat's bow, not the men above the hatch. A crewman's rifle spoke.
Gregg squeezed off. The carapace of the Molt cocking his launcher exploded. The blast of vaporized flesh threw both his/her companions off the platform.
The Peaches nudged into a tree bole and crushed it over, tugging out the distant roots. The catwalk separated and fell away. Gregg saw poles flying from another walkway, unguessed until the moment of collapse. All his men were shooting, and he thought he heard muffled gunfire from the ground.
The laser was the wrong weapon for a close-quarter firefight like this. He couldn't see well enough with the visor down to react. "Give me a rif—" he shouted as he fed a fresh battery into the flashgun's stock.
The plasma cannon fired. The shockwave threw Gregg backward. If the Peaches hadn't bucked at the same time, he might have fallen flat. The directed thermonuclear explosion bored a cone of radiant hell hundreds of meters through the mid-canopy. Foliage to either side of the path withered and died.
Gregg saw a Molt plunging toward the ground like a flung torch. The aliens wore no clothing, but the creature's entire body had been ignited by the discharge.
Ricimer guided the featherboat along the ionized track. Molt constructions showed vividly where the leaves were burned away.
Gregg saw an alien clinging to the poles of a catwalk whose farther end had vanished. Instead of shooting the Molt he saw, he aimed at the high crotch where the poles were still attached. The flash of his bolt illuminated a pair of Molts crouching in the darkness. They hurtled to either side, while their fellow dropped in the tangle of his poles.
The featherboat nosed to starboard. Ricimer needed to encircle the site in order to free the raiders pinned down below. He or Dole had corrected the attitude to lower the bow. A gnarled, wrist-thick branch struck Gregg hard enough on the head to make his eyes water despite the helmet.
At least a dozen Molts fired a simultaneous volley. All the missiles were aimed at the gunmen this time. An arrow struck just in front of the hatch coaming and glanced upward into Gregg's chest. The impact stabbed daggers through his ribs.
A crewman screamed behind him. A pair of Molts reloaded on a catwalk only twenty meters ahead of the Peaches. The bow would throw them down in a moment. Gregg fired anyway and saw the bodies cartwheel away, one of them headless.
He flipped up his visor and turned. "A rifle!" he shouted. "Give me a—"
Leon was trying to keep Bailey from climbing out of the hatch. An arrow had plunged into Bailey's right eye and down, pinning his face to his left shoulder. The crewman gobbled bloody froth. His remaining eye was wild.
Tancred bellowed wordlessly as tears streamed down his cheeks. He didn't appear to be physically injured. He worked the bolt of his repeater and pulled the trigger, but the weapon's magazine was empty.
"Get down, all of you!" Gregg ordered. He dropped his flashgun and gripped the repeater at the balance. Tancred resisted momentarily. Gregg punched the boy in the pit of the stomach. He crumpled. Gregg snatched the bandolier and broke the strap free with the violence of his tug.
Bailey suddenly collapsed. Leon straightened and brought up his breechloader. Molt projectiles crossed in the air between Gregg and the bosun. "Get down!" Gregg repeated as he thumbed cartridges into the integral magazine.
The Peaches rocked into a series of tree trunks in quick succession. One splintered at the point of impact. The other trees pulled out of the thin soil and tilted crazily, half-supported by vines and branches interlocking with those of their neighbors. As the featherboat passed over the tangle, her superheated exhaust devoured those impediments and sent the trunks crashing the remainder of the way to the ground.
A Molt aimed his weapon down at the hatch. Gregg shot the creature through the body. Recoil brought a sharp reminder of the injured ribs. He chambered the next round, rotated to his left where motion shimmered in the corner of his eye, and smashed the triangular skull of an alien seventy meters away.
Leon fired. A projectile grazed the back of Gregg's helmet, making his vision blur.
"God rot your bones in Hell!" Gregg screamed in the bosun's face. "Get down and load for me! I've got armor!"
As he spoke, he fired the last round in his magazine. A Molt dropped his weapon to one side of a catwalk and fell to the other. He managed to grasp a guy rope of braided vine and cling there for the instant's notice Gregg had to give anything that wasn't immediately lethal.
He dropped the repeater. Tancred offered him a loaded rifle, stock-first, from the featherboat's bay. Leon ducked down as ordered. Either the words or the sense or the naked fury in Stephen Gregg's face had penetrated the bosun's consciousness.
With his visor up, Gregg felt like a god. He could see everything, and he couldn't miss. The Peaches was unstable at low speed even without grinding her hull into huge trees, which themselves weighed tonnes. It didn't matter. Gregg and the gunsights and each Molt were one until the flash/shock signaled the need to seek another alien target.
Two more arrows hit Gregg—on the right side and in the back, squarely over the smear where he'd been struck while boarding the featherboat. He was aware of the impacts the way he saw the black and green of vegetation—facts, but unimportant when only the mauve smudges of Molt bodies mattered.
He didn't bother to look down when he'd emptied a rifle, just dropped it and opened his hand to take the fresh weapon a crewman would slap there. The carbine from the Tolliver's officer had a five-round magazine and was dead accurate. Gregg used it to shoot the eye out of a Molt warrior at least a hundred meters away.
A corner of Gregg's mind noted two trucks glimpsed where the Peaches had cleared a sight line to the ground. Men huddled beneath the vehicles and behind nearby trees. A few of them waved. Molt projectiles stood out from the thin panels of the truck bodies like quills on a porcupine, and from sprawled men as well.
The featherboat yawed uneasily as Ricimer brought her bow onto a new heading. Gregg hadn't fired for—he didn't know how long. There weren't any targets, though occasionally he glimpsed an empty platform or catwalk.
The Peaches nosed onto the track her thrusters had cleared on the way to the ambush site. Over the bow Gregg saw the trucks again, all three of them, retreating toward the ships. They jounced over the buttress roots of trees at the best speed they were capable of. He realized he couldn't hear anything, not even the roaring thrusters, though he felt the vibration through his feet and the hatch coaming against which he braced his belly.
The clearing the Tolliver had blasted was a bright splotch without the shadow-dappling of the jungle beyond. The flagship had ru
n out several of her big plasma cannon. Men rose from hasty barricades to greet the returning trucks.
"That's okay, sir," said a voice close to Gregg's ear. "We'll take over now."
A wet cloth dabbed at his forehead. He wasn't wearing his helmet anymore.
"Jesus God! What happened to his head?"
"Arrow must've hit right over the visor. Jesus!"
The last thing Gregg saw was the worried face of Piet Ricimer, framed by the hatch opening above him.
17
Punta Verde
Gregg didn't recognize the ceiling. He turned his head. A wave of nausea tried to turn his stomach inside out. Nothing came up except thin bile, but the spasms made his rib cage feel as though it was jacketed in molten glass.
Piet Ricimer leaned over him and gently mopped the vomit away with a sponge. "Welcome back," he said.
"I feel awful," Gregg whispered.
Ricimer shrugged. "Cracked ribs, a concussion, and unconscious for three days," he said. "You ought to feel awful, my friend."
"Three days?"
"I was beginning to worry a little," Ricimer said without emphasis. "The medic thought most of it was simple exhaustion, though. You were operating"—he smiled wryly—"well beyond redline, Stephen."
Gregg closed his eyes for a moment. "Christ's blood, I feel awful," he said. He looked up again. "Sorry."
"You've had quite a time," Ricimer said. "The Lord makes allowances, I'm sure."
"Where are—" Gregg began. He broke off, winced, and continued, "Just a bit. I'm going to sit up."
"The medics—" Ricimer said. Gregg lurched up on his right elbow and gasped. Ricimer slid an arm behind his friend's back but followed rather than lifted Gregg the rest of the way up.
The gentleman sat with his eyes closed, breathing in quick, shallow breaths. At last he resumed, "Where are we?"
"The argosy hasn't moved, if that's what you mean," Ricimer said. "You and I are in a cabin on the Tolliver."
His smile had claws of memory. "They were going to put you in the sick bay," he added. "But I didn't think you ought to be disturbed by the other wounded men."
"I don't think I'm going to stand up just yet," Gregg said deliberately. He opened his eyes and saw the worry on Ricimer's face melt into a look of studied unconcern. "We're going to lift off, aren't we?" he pressed. "Mostert can't possibly think we can capture enough Molts here to be worth the, the cost."
"As a matter of fact . . ." Ricimer said. Gregg couldn't be sure of his tone. "The village we attacked—city, really, there are thousands of Molts living in it. The Molts were impressed. They've dealt with the Southerns before, but they'd never met anything like us."
Looking at a corner of the ceiling, Ricimer went on, "Leon's in the sick bay, you know. Splinters through the shoulder from an arrow that hit the hull beside him."
Gregg pursed his lips, remembering flashes of the way he'd shouted at the bosun. "I didn't know that," he said.
Ricimer shrugged. "He'll be all right. But I heard him telling a rating from the Tolliver in the next bed, 'Our Mr. Gregg, he's a right bastard. He went through them bugs like shit through a goose. As soon kill you as look at you, Mr. Gregg would.'"
"Lord, I'm sorry," Gregg whispered with his eyes closed. "I was . . ."
"He's proud of you, Stephen," Ricimer explained softly. "We all are. Our Mr. Gregg. And the Molts were so impressed that they want us to help them against their neighbors forty klicks away. In return, we get the prisoners."
"Well, I'll be damned," Gregg said.
"Not for what you did three days ago," Ricimer said. "Eight of the men with the trucks were killed, but none of them would have made it back except for us. Especially for you."
"Especially for you," Gregg corrected. He met his friend's eyes again. "Bailey?" he asked.
Ricimer shook his head minusculy. "No. But that's not—anyone's fault."
"When do we . . ." Gregg said. "The raid, the attack. When is it?"
"Three days from now," Ricimer said. "The Molts are getting their army, I suppose you'd call it, together. But Stephen, I don't think—"
"I'm going," Gregg said. He set his lips firmly together, then held out his hand toward his friend. "Now," he said. "Help me stand . . ."
18
Punta Verde
Because the four men stationed at the Peaches' hatch all wore body armor and helmets, Gregg knocked elbows when he twisted to either side. Even so, the hatchway was less crowded than the featherboat's bay in which twenty more heavily-armed men waited.
The Hawkwood at three hundred meters altitude led the expedition. She wobbled across the sky, losing or gaining twenty meters of elevation in an instant and slewing sideways by twice that much. The Hawkwood had a good enough thrust-to-weight ratio to make atmospheric flight a possible proposition, but not an especially practical one. They were using her because Mostert needed the firepower and the hundred men he could cram into the vessel's hull.
Four lifeboats, each with a dozen or more men aboard, veed out to the Hawkwood's flanks. They skimmed the treetops, buttoned up but still washed dangerously by hot, electrically-excited exhaust from the leading vessel's thrusters. Occasionally one of them, buffeted or simply blinded when the Hawkwood slid to the side, dipped into the forest. As yet, none of them had been noticeably damaged by such mishaps.
The featherboats closed both arms of the vee. Gregg noted with grim amusement that the Desire to starboard porpoised almost as badly as the Hawkwood did, while Piet Ricimer kept the Peaches as steady as if she ran on tracks.
A kilometer ahead of the expedition's leading vessel, Gregg saw an incandescent rainbow: sun catching the plume of another spaceship's thrusters. The reason the Molts had allied themselves with the Venerians was that their rivals were in league with the Southerns, trading captives for firearms.
No one would hear Gregg if he shouted. The flashgunners in the hatch had their visors locked down against the retina-crisping dazzle of the Hawkwood's exhaust. That and the engine roar isolated them as individuals. The other three came from the Rose. Gregg wouldn't recognize any of them with their helmets off.
Anyway, it wasn't the hatch crew which had to be warned but rather the vessels' captains. Their view was even blurrier than Gregg's through his filtered visor. It was possible that the distant vessel wasn't hostile . . . but it was equally possible that pigs flew on some undiscovered planet.
Gregg aimed his flashgun at the top of the distant plume where the other vessel had to be. He tried to steady his weapon. The shot was beyond human skill, but the vivid lance across the optics of the expedition vessels would at least call attention to the interloper.
The world fluoresced with a shockwave that felt for an instant like freefall. Forest vaporized in the bolt from the Peaches' plasma cannon. Despite the featherboat's distant position, Ricimer had seen the target as soon as Gregg had.
The interloper appeared startled, though it was untouched by the blast. It lifted from where it lurked in the upper canopy and ripped a series of brilliant sparks toward the Hawkwood. It appeared to mount a multishot laser rather than a plasma weapon.
The 14-cm Long Tom in the Hawkwood's bow belched a sky-devouring gout of directed energy toward the interloper. Foliage exploded. Eighty meters of a giant tree leaped upward like a javelin, shedding leaves and branches as it rose. It had been struck near the base. The target dived to vanish within the forest again.
Mostert brought the Hawkwood's bow around to starboard. He ignored the danger to the cutters on that side and the Desire in his eagerness to bring his port six-gun battery into play. These lighter weapons, 8- and 10-cm plasma cannon, had no target by the time they bore, but the gun captains loosed anyway. Gregg could imagine Piet Ricimer white-lipped at his controls as he watched his cousin's actions.
The squadron's destination was in sight: flat mushrooms rising beneath the topmost foliage. The city's extent seemed greater than that of the one Platt had tried to attack. These domes were mottled gray i
nstead of being beige.
The Peaches swung wide and dipped as the other Venerian vessels homed in on the Molt stronghold. Ricimer was waiting for the Southern vessel to reappear. Gregg tightened his grip on the flashgun, then forced himself to relax so that he wouldn't be too keyed-up to react if he had to. The featherboat's plasma cannon was still too hot to reload, so it was up to him and his fellows if the target appeared.
It didn't. The Southerns had already shown more courage than Gregg would've expected, engaging a force that was so hugely more powerful.
The Hawkwood lowered toward the canopy, pitching and yawing. As she neared the treetops, her starboard battery fired. Four fireballs flared across the nearest Molt dome. Farther back across the stronghold, misdirected blasts blasted another structure and the topmost fifty meters from one of the forest's emergent giants.
The squadron's leader sank into the jungle at the edge of the stronghold in a barely-controlled slide. The cutters and the Desire settled in beside her.
The Peaches swept over the outer ring of domes and into the interior of the stronghold.
Gregg glanced down. The cellulose-based roof of the nearest dome was afire where the plasma discharges had struck it. Gangs of Molts sprayed the flames with a sticky fluid. Warriors on the roof of the structure fired point-blank at the featherboat with rifles as well as indigenous weapons. An arrow that missed the Peaches arched high over Gregg's head.
As he took her down, Ricimer rotated the Peaches on her vertical axis like a dog preparing its bed. The dome they'd overflown was completely alight from the plasma exhaust. Warriors and members of the firefighting team were dark sprawls within the sea of flame.
The Molts had cut away the undergrowth and mid-level vegetation within their stronghold. The boles of emergents split and corkscrewed as the thrusters seared them. Walkways connecting the domes burned brightly. The city stretched nearly a kilometer across its separate elements.