Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

History-chip images taken from HelmetCams, and Holowood special effects, had shown every kid on Earth what Slugs looked like, but Jude Metzger was now the only member of his generation to share a planet with live ones.

Zzzzeeee. Zzzzeeee. Zzzzeeee.

I knelt and tugged Jude down alongside me.

He said, “We have armor on!”

“Armor’s good against mag rifle rounds, not Heavys.”

The first Slug Heavy volley slammed the meadow. The rounds just plowed dirt.

Slug rounds were as dumb as Napoleonic cannonballs, but the hole in Blackbeard demonstrated that, in war, smart isn’t everything.

I looked back at the Fair. At ten-second intervals, volleys crashed into the close-packed wood, hide, and canvas tents. Already, flames flickered where the red hot rounds had started fires.

Ord had voiced our Cargo’Bots to life and tasked them to carry our Plasteels. Now he held my M-40 out to me.

I grabbed my rifle from Ord, cocked, and loaded it, as I looked out to the river. A Heavy volley pounded like driven sleet against the Marini trading vessels. Torn sails erupted flames, then thrashed in the wind, as friction-heated rounds slashed them. Spray geysered as rounds bracketed ships. A mast, snapped like straw, toppled onto sailors rowing a small boat, and exploded it in a fountain of oars and bodies.

Ord, his visor up, held his targeting binoculars to his eyes. “Let’s see how they react to the river obstacle.”

Beyond the ships, the Slug skirmish line approached the opposite bank.

Ord hardly needed his binoculars. The skirmish line was so close that individual Slugs were distinguishable to the naked eye.

A Slug warrior looks like a puke-green zucchini nearly six feet long, tip-to-tail. A warrior has no eyes, just white patches along its anterior taper that sense infrared light. A warrior doesn’t have permanent appendages, either, just a pseudopod that toothpastes out of a hole in its body armor, which the warrior wraps around its rifle. Slug body armor is black, shiny, and segmented, and an M-40 round cuts it like cheese.

Slugs crossing open ground look just like oversized garden pests. When they’re scrunched up and oozing, the anterior crest of their armor stands less than five feet tall, and they move as fast as double-timing infantry.

Howard said, “We’ve never seen how It reacts to water.”

A Casuni woman pointed back at the Slugs as she ran away, and screamed, “The Devil! The Devil!”

Howard turned, hands-on-hips, and watched her run. “She didn’t say, ‘What’s that?’ She seemed to know.”

“Goddammit, Howard! Load your weapon!”

The front rank of Slugs reached the water’s edge.

Ranks of half a dozen oozed forward, carrying logs wrapped by their snaky pseudopods, like a rowing team carrying a scull to the water. Each half dozen dropped its log in the water, then the next rank and log oozed along the first, extending a thousand bridges, each one log wide, across the river in minutes. The next rank followed, then the next.

The Heavy volleys stopped, and the only sounds were the crackle of flame, distant human screams, and the splash of water and creak of logs.

I said to Ord, “They’ve lifted the barrage.”

Jude asked, “Now?”

Howard cocked his rifle. “Wait.”

Ord had our ’Bots loaded, with the two carrying explosives and ammunition thirty yards behind us, and the two carrying inert equipment hunkered down in front of us like mobile pillboxes. They would move when we moved, screening us from Slug fire.

I knelt behind the ’Bot that sheltered Jude and me, and sighted on the water’s edge, a hundred yards away. Behind their ’Bot, so did Ord and Howard.

Jude lay alongside me, his rifle at his shoulder.

I turned my head toward him. “Just like the Sergeant Major taught you on the Simulator. Aim. Breathe. Squeeze. Okay?”

He nodded. “But — why don’t we just run?”

“We can’t outrun them forever. We fight when we can take out the most of them with the least risk. When I say fall back, you fall back with me. Keep your head down, and keep the ’Bot between you and the Slugs. Reload on the run. Howard and the Sergeant Major will cover us, then we’ll stop and cover them. You keep doing that until I tell you to do something else. If I don’t tell you, do exactly what the Sergeant Major says.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell— Oh.”

A warrior rank dropped a log that touched the river’s near bank, in front of us, then another bridge was completed, and another.

I asked Ord, “Did you clock ’em?”

“I calculate the water crossing slowed them about two miles per hour, Sir. They’ve always been full of surprises.”

They were ten feet from shore, now, all across their advancing front.

Bang.

Jude fired and hit nothing.

I said, “Wait till the first one hits land. Then we’ll back ’em up on their logs.”

“Jason, I’m scared.”

“Me too.”

Ord said, “I have a target.” His rifle popped, and a warrior splashed dead on the river bank’s mud.

Zeeeee.

I flinched at the sound of the first mag rifle round I’d heard in years.

But not the last. For the next three minutes I fired, moved, reloaded, and fired, over and over. A half dozen rounds grazed my armor without effect.

Jude didn’t stay behind the ’Bot, as he was told, and took a round full on his chestplate. The blow’s force knocked him onto his back, and I dove toward him, screaming.

He came up on one knee, coughing and rubbing the dent in his chestplate. “Pug! That stung!”

We retreated fifty yards, while the Slugs we killed became hurdles that slowed the warrior ranks behind them. Then the rear ranks surged over the corpses. The four of us lay, panting, behind the two Cargo’Bots. The remaining Slugs, still too many to count, pressed forward, and their rounds thunked as they struck the ’Bots’ carapaces.

I told Ord, “Time to break contact.” I turned to Jude and pointed upslope. Black smoke from the burning tents oozed across the ground like a great wall. “When we get up this time, run till we’re all obscured in that smoke.”

Jude said, “But Slugs can see in the dark.”

Howard said, “Not exactly. Air that’s as warm as bodies moving through it will make it harder for those warriors to see us.”

I looked one more time at Jude, Ord, and Howard. “Ready?”

Jude grabbed my arm. “But, Jason, what about them?”

He pointed to our left. Fifty yards away was The Block.

Its stage was empty. The Auctioneers had fled moments after the crowd. But a hundred slaves and slaves-to-be remained chained to the iron rings that hung from the stage. Slug rounds cracked against the stone, powdering small clouds into the air.

A half dozen slaves already lay still and bloody. The rest screamed, clawed the ground trying to dig holes to hide in, or tore at their chains. The slight girl with the baby and the blue hair comb bled at the ankles as she struggled to tear free of her leg shackles.

If we turned and ran from the Slugs now, we would make it to the smoke’s safety with fifty yards to spare, easy. But the Slugs would slaughter the slaves. If we detoured to help the slaves, we would likely be overrun — and killed — ourselves.

I turned to Ord. “We can’t leave them, Sergeant Major.”

Ord was already working the combination on a Plasteel balanced on a ’Bot’s back. “Thermite sticks should cut those chains, Sir.”

I pointed up the hill and told Howard, “You take Jude up there. Ord and I will rejoin you after we get those people loose.”

Jude said, “No way. I stay with you.”

Howard shook his head at me. “You’ll need covering fire.”

I looked downslope, where the Slug wave rolled on toward us, and blinked. As a soldier, it was Howard’s privilege to spend his life, and my duty to order him to do so. But Jude was no more a combatant than those screaming, bleeding people trapped in chains. He was a child. My child.