Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

The three of them frowned at me.

Jude whispered, “But it’s our fault!”

I stiffened. “No. We didn’t expect this. We didn’t wish evil on these people.”

The three of them kept staring.

I said to Jude, “I promised your mother when I left her on New Moon that I’d keep you safe. Nobody promised we’d save this world. My mission is keeping us alive. That means getting us all away from this mess, and keeping us away. You all want me to take charge? Fine. We aren’t getting involved.”

Jude said, “You say you’re keeping a promise to Mom. Mom said that if a person makes a mess, he should clean it up. Even if it was an accident. We made this mess.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. But I wasn’t going to admit that if doing so would risk Jude’s life.

I stood, crossed my arms, and glared at Jude. “I don’t have to decide this now.”

The ground shook.

Howard’s eyes widened as he stared at the prairie behind me. “Yes, you do.”

THIRTY

I TURNED AND STARED. A miles-wide dust cloud sizzled on the horizon as Casus’s army thundered toward us. I chinned my optics and spotted Casus, on his white beast, out ahead of his army. He twirled his sword above his head, shouting. Scarlet, gold, and purple banners, borne by other riders, boiled in the dust that churned behind him.

I bit down on my threat-count tab, and my optics began counting individual riders. I turned off the tab when the counter on my display whirred past four thousand, and kept spinning.

Casus, now there was a commander. Literally larger than life, skilled in the arts of war as he knew them, courageous, charismatic. Me, I couldn’t even persuade a sixteen-year-old, a geek, and a Sergeant Major who reported to me to save their own skins.

Three minutes later, Casus’s great army slowed to a canter, then halted, a thousand yards before they reached the Escarpment lip. His commanders rode from their units to confer alongside him. Casus seemed content to let the Slugs bring the fight to him.

As the four of us remounted, Ord said, “This is bad, Sir.”

I nodded. “Casus wants to fight the Slugs out on the plains, where his cavalry can maneuver. But the Slugs’ll overwhelm them. Those single-shot Casuni hand cannons shoot dinosaurs out from under opponents fine. But when the rider shoots the first four Slugs out of a hundred, what does he do about the ninety-six left?”

Ord said, “Digging in at the Escarpment is their best option.”

I sighed, and shook my head. “I’ve been talking to Casus. Like that heckler at the auction said, ‘You can always tell a Casuni. But you can’t tell him much.’”

Howard said, “Show him, don’t tell him.” He had unfolded a holomap generator, and balanced it across his saddle. The generator popped as its display crackled on. Howard voiced up a direct feed from Jeeb, who hovered high enough above the Fair’s flames to show the whole area.

In the river shallows, the smudges of sunken ships showed beneath the surface, or jutted bow or stern up, above the water. Dead Slugs littered the meadow between the river and the tents like spilled caraway seed. Smoke and flame still obscured most of the tent city’s wreckage, but too many charred human silhouettes lay sprawled in the ashes. There had to be tens of thousands dead.

Jude gulped, then turned his face away.

The Slugs were visible, too, of course. They maneuvered in a black mass, surging toward the Escarpment. The threat counter identified ten thousand individual warriors.

I said to Howard, “Only ten thousand left? We only killed a few hundred.”

He said, “I’ll want to review Jeeb’s broader survey to see the big picture. But this is a smaller force than It normally deploys.”

Ord pointed to a tree line off the Slug right flank. “What’s that?”

Visible from Jeeb’s overhead vantage, but screened from the Slugs at ground level by the trees, scores of foot troops and vehicles drawn by animals lay behind rough earthworks. The berms were being improved as we watched, faster than ants could empty a sugar bowl.

I said, “They’re not Casuni. Casus says earthworks are for snakes. I’d guess they’re Marini.”

I overrode Howard’s generator and tasked Jeeb. “Oblique close up.”

Unnoticed by the combatants, Jeeb dove, flattened his flight line, and hovered a hundred feet from the force hidden behind the trees.

The animals dominated the image Jeeb transmitted. They walked on hind legs, like Casuni duckbills, but fifty feet long, where a big duckbill stallion might go twenty-eight. And these monsters had tumorous, blood-red heads, set with ranks of teeth as large and scabrous as overripe bananas. Their hides were elephant-gray, and their forelimbs like clawed twigs.

They snorted, so loud that Jeeb’s audio picked up the sound, and they pawed the ground as they swayed their great heads side-to-side.

Howard whistled. “Theropod carnosaurs.”

Jude asked, “T. rex?”

“Same niche. But I can’t imagine a tyrannosaur could look that mean.”

Iron muzzles clamped the beasts’ jaws, the muzzle halves joined by a pin from which hung a chain. The chain, and two more chains that hung from rings that were pinned into each monster’s head just behind the earholes, hung in arcs that gathered and ran beneath the beasts’ centerlines. Reins.

A rigid harness attached each carnosaur to a two-wheeled cart behind it. A chariot. In each chariot stood two men, one who held the massive reins, and the other whose armor bristled with pistol holsters and a short sword. They wore the same black-lacquered helmets and armor as the Marini whose scent had spooked Rosy yesterday at the Fair.

I muttered, “No wonder she was scared.” Those jaws could bite a duckbill in half at the neck.

The Marini infantry wore the same round helmets and armor, but dull blue. They carried rifles so slim that they were as obviously single-shot as the Casunis’ pistols. They crouched in ranks, waiting.

The scurrying Marini troops wore brown tunics and helmets, and armor hung with scabbards that held short-handled axes. Squad-sized groups hefted phone-pole-sized logs, ran them forward as precisely as ballet troupers, then fitted them together to form causeways that bridged a creek bed that separated the Marini from the Slugs. Once the causeways were in place, the carnosaur chariots could roll to battle in seconds.

Ord said, “Sappers.”

Jude cocked his head. “Sappers?”

“Combat engineers. And good ones.”

Their officer stood hands on hips, directing his men. A man stumbled, his group dropped a log, and the officer ducked in and lent a hand. There was something awkward, yet familiar, in his gait.

I tasked Jeeb. “Right five.” The image we saw centered on the officer. “Closer.”

The back of the officer’s helmet filled our image.

He turned, shouted to his men, and I saw that he wore a black patch over one eye. The other eye looked familiar.

THIRTY-ONE

I WHISPERED, “Bassin, you mendacious, one-legged son of a bitch!”

But my former hut-mate’s duplicity was the least of my immediate concerns.

I motioned Howard to bring the holo generator, and to ride with me to Casus. Ord and Jude rode behind us.

Jude said, “Casus won’t trust you. He thinks we’re Marini.”

“No. He thinks we’re Marini half-breed crooks. He knows we won’t cross him, because we want to run guns to him.”

When Casus looked up and saw me, he frowned. Then he shooed his commanders back so we could parlay. “You’ve reconsidered my proposal?”

I shook my head. “I’m here to make you a better one. Free combat intelligence.”

Howard had been hidden behind Rosy. He walked his mount out where Casus could see the translucent, holo-generated image.