Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

Casus’s eyes bugged, and he paled beneath his beard.

Casus had been surprised at our rifles, our armor, even our ’Bots. They were next-year’s models of things familiar to him. But moving pictures that hung in the air were beyond any Bren human’s imagination.

Casus extended his hand until his fingers touched the image, then he thrust them into it, wiggled them, and whispered, “You’re not half-breeds! You’re warlocks!”

“No. We’re your best friends,” I said.

I voiced Jeeb to pull back to panoramic. Once he did, I pointed at the tree line visible in the image, and the Slugs massed a thousand yards beyond.

I asked Casus, “You and these Marini aren’t planning this together, are you?”

“Make common cause with Marini?” He pointed at the red head of one of the muzzled monsters, as it flickered in the air, and Casus snorted. “I’d sooner bed that wronk.”

“I didn’t think so. But even if you aren’t working together, you have a chance to destroy the devil whole, if you’ll take it.” I pointed at the floating image. “If—”

Casus nodded, and pointed his finger at the Escarpment, where it appeared on the holo. “Yes! If my army attacks frontally now, we’ll draw the black worms in upon us. Once they engage with us, the black worms will be stuck to us like tar. They won’t be able to wheel, and defend their flank. Then, if the wronkers attack the flank, they’ll roll the black worms up like a bed mat.”

I said. “Otherwise—”

He nodded his huge head, and narrowed his eyes. “Otherwise, the black worms will concentrate against two weaker forces in succession, and defeat each of us in detail.”

TOT-link overhead holography might have seemed like witchcraft to Casus, but he saw a battlefield as clearly as Lee had seen Chancellorsville.

Then he frowned. “But what if we cross the Escarpment, and the Fisheaters don’t attack? The worms would drive us back against the cliffs and crush us.”

“You can see that the Fisheaters are about to attack the black worms anyway. Why would they hold back?”

“The Marini are in league with the devil. These black worms are the devil reincarnate after three times ten thousand years. This may be a charade to lure my army into a killing box.”

“No. Trust me. Us warlocks know who’s in league with the devil.”

He cocked his head at me, and nodded. “I suppose so, if anyone does.”

“So I say attack. Together, your Clans will sweep the black worms from the field.”

He pointed at the holo generator. “Your glass foretells victory?”

I took a deep breath, and tried not to blink. “Guaranteed. But you need to move fast, or—”

Casus spun away from me, and remounted his stallion.

He reared the huge white duckbill, and shouted to his army, “Today!”

Four thousand men fell silent. The only sound was banners snapping in the wind. Casus pointed his sword toward the Escarpment’s edge. “Today, we send the devils back to hell! Forward!”

Four thousand warriors roared. Trumpets echoed through the ranks. Then the ground trembled under massive footfalls, and the vast army rolled toward us like a living tsunami.

Jude, an eyeblink before the rest of us, turned his mount toward the Escarpment, kicked it to a gallop and yelled, “They’re gonna run us over!”

The remaining three of us, and the ’Bots, followed Jude. But the vast cavalry charge swallowed us up as it cascaded over the Escarpment into the impending battle and bore us along like leaves on a roaring wind that smelled of dust and overheated animal.

Howard bounced side-to-side, clutching his saddle. As his duckbill leaped over the Escarpment for the second time in days, Howard shouted to me, “You said we weren’t getting involved!”

THIRTY-TWO

THE SLUGS BUNCHED into an armor-touching-armor phalanx, as the Casuni bore down on them.

Galloping two-ton animals occupy lanes wider than Electrovans on a Guidepike. Therefore, Casus’s charge couldn’t overrun the Slugs in a single, broad wave. The cavalry had to funnel itself into lines, one behind the other, and attack in successive, weaker pulses. And as the rear ranks waited to move up, they milled around, exposed to Slug artillery. Slugs were alien, but they weren’t dumb.

Zzzzeee. Zzzzeee.

Slug Heavys tore into the Casunis all around us. Animals and men screamed, as soil, blood, and flesh whizzed through the air around us.

I swung Rosy around until I spotted Jude. This was his first sight of men, not alien blobs, torn into arms and legs and meat by battle.

He raised his visor, leaned off his mount, and puked.

Ahead of us, the leading ranks of cavalry and Slug infantry came within range of one another’s direct-fire weapons. Casuni pistols rumbled, and Slug mag rail rifles howled in a collective moan.

Duckbills stumbled, then cartwheeled, tails thrashing, spraying blood. Riders somersaulted ahead of their mounts, until the reins in their hands snapped them to the ground.

Casus’s stallion reached the Slug front rank, hurdled the black picket fence of Slug-warrior helmet crests, and Casus slashed left and right with his sword.

Casus’s second wave slowed, as cavalrymen jerked left and right around fallen duckbills and riders. At slow speed the cavalry made better targets.

I peered to our left, through milling riders, at the distant trees that had hidden the Marini. If their commanders were all as smart as Bassin seemed to be, they should recognize the opportunity presented by the Casuni attack, and exploit it.

But nothing stirred.

I chinned up my magnification, scanned the tree line, saw nothing but leaves, and muttered, “Come on! Now!”

The Casuni third wave surged forward into massed volleys of mag rail rounds. In sixty seconds, the momentum of the charge would carry Howard, Jude, Ord, and me into the front rank.

“Ahh!”

Alongside me, a helmeted Casuni clutched the stump of his leg, the foot and calf torn away by a Slug Heavy.

Even as he fell, Rosy carried me past him.

I tapped my M-40’s magazine to be sure it was seated in the well, thumbed off the safety, and stared one last time at the vacant tree line.

My blunder became obvious. The Marini wouldn’t attack. Why would they? They could simply hang back, and watch an old mortal enemy and a new one punch and counterpunch one another into hamburger. Decades of fighting Slugs, Buddhists, Atheists, Christians, Muslims, and assorted lunatics should have taught me that what makes sense to one culture usually doesn’t make sense to another.

I clenched my teeth. The only thing that made sense to me, at this moment, was to get Jude, and Ord, and Howard, through this debacle alive. Time enough later for recrimination about bad advice.

I spun Rosy until I picked out Jude again, a billboard in his infrared-cheating crimson armor. I swiveled my rifle muzzle toward his duckbill. I could shoot Jude’s mount out from under him. Then Jude would lie here in the rear, nose in the dirt, away from the close-quarters battle. With luck, the bulk of his mare’s corpse would both pin him to the ground and shield him from stray rounds. In the chaos, Jude would never realize what I had done.

I aimed at the flank of Jude’s duckbill. A three-round burst would tear her heart out. She would go down in seconds, and die almost before she felt it.

Before I squeezed the trigger, I coughed, and paused to wipe my eyes.

Bren gunsmiths had advanced far enough that their single-shot weapons fired unified bullet-and-casing cartridges. But their gunpowder was decades away from smokeless.

Already, the Napoleonic pall that spawned the phrase “fog of war” shrouded the battlefield, so thick that its acrid tang overloaded my helmet ventilator.