Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

Ord would be out of touch for an entire day.

I drummed my fingers on the radio. “Owl, I need you to do something. Fast.”

“I’m glad you called. You’ll never guess what happened.”

I rolled my eyes. “You pulled back the cover on a supply wagon, and found Ordnance Rifle ammunition, instead of your junk.”

Silence.

“How did you know?”

“Never mind. Load that ammunition on a Cargo’Bot. Ride the ’Bot to me.”

“I hate riding. And you know I can’t read maps.”

“Just dial the ’Bot to head west twenty degrees north from your location — don’t tell me where you are now! — and hang on. Call on your helmet radio at random intervals. Short transmissions. When you get close enough that I pick up your transmission, I’ll guide you in.”

The ’Bot would beeline Howard and the ammo over thirty miles of mountains, which had taken us days to cross, in thirty-six hours. If we had a battalion of ’Bots, this war would have been won long ago.

“Can’t somebody else do it?” Howard’s voice quavered.

I smiled at my mental picture of the ’Bot spidering Howard up sheer cliffs, then dashing across mountain ledges, while Howard screamed like a bridesmaid handcuffed to a rodeo bull.

My smile faded.

The journey could kill or cripple even a young, fit Scout, even if the Slugs didn’t intercept the ’Bot.

I said, “Nobody but you and Falcon’s willing to touch a ’Bot, even if they knew how to program it. You have a helmet radio, and nobody else but Falcon and I do. Pack animal transport is too slow, anyway.” I drew a breath. “You can do this. You have to do this.”

Howard sighed. “Okay.”

I transmitted, “Godspeed. Eagle out.”

“Bye-bye.”

For the next thirty hours, we all sat hidden in our observation post, and watched newly grown armored warriors pour out of the Troll. They formed into units, then boom-boom-boomed around the low stone buildings. Then they headed down the valley to reinforce the Slugs that Casus’s army was painfully, and too slowly, driving back this way. As long as the Troll remained intact, the Slugs were replacing more warriors than Casus could kill.

Jeeb overhead here would have reassured me, but Casus’s army needed his tactical intelligence more. Besides, we had a screen of thousands of Scouts scattered through the forest that provided eyes and ears.

On the next cloudy afternoon, thirty-eight hours after Howard departed from Casus’s headquarters, I paced a rise two miles further back from the Slug Troll than Bassin’s HQ. I checked my ’Puter again, and swore.

Howard should have come within helmet radio range hours before. The rise was overgrown with a stand of redwoods bigger around than silos, and five times taller. From this vantage, I should have been better able to receive Howard’s transmissions, and Howard could spot the light of the Marini lantern I carried, so he could guide in on it.

I worried for our missing ammunition, but I worried as much for Howard.

I stomped around the redwood copse muttering to myself.

“Eagle, this is Owl, over.”

I grinned. “This is Eagle. How was the trip, over?”

“Fair. Please show your position with colored smoke and I will identify, over.”

Howard actually knew how to soldier. Whenever he started behaving like one was when I knew he was dead serious and dead tired. Smoke grenades had been a simple location marker on Earth for a century.

But I wrinkled my forehead.

If Howard was thinking straight, even he would have known we were on a different planet, and we didn’t have smoke grenades.

“Sorry, Owl. I have no smoke. I say again, no smoke. I will mark my position with light, over.”

I swung the lantern overhead in the gray, fading afternoon.

“Eagle, I do not identify your light. I say again, please show… your light again, over.”

“Owl, are you okay?”

“Had a little fall… on the way.”

My heart skipped. “Wait twenty, Owl. I will reposition my light, over.”

Howard just breathed.

I roped the lit lantern to my back, walked to the tallest redwood, and craned my neck toward its crown, three hundred feet above me.

Then I popped the wrist and sole-plate crampons out on my Eternads. With my feet together, the tines touched each other and rattled, because I was shaking inside my Eternads.

I took a step back, jumped against the tree, and my crampons nailed three-thousand-year-old bark. I hugged the redwood like I was an armored Koala, shinnied for the sky, and never looked down.

By the time I cleared the shorter redwoods, which the trip altimeter in my visor called two hundred feet, the sun sat low on the horizon. My underlayer was sweat-soaked despite the suit ventilators, and I trembled, more from the altitude than the exertion.

I looked up.

I would shinny twenty feet higher, then call Howard again.

Swoosh.

Something shot past me, behind my back, and I flattened myself against the tree trunk. I panted inside my helmet, my cheekplate against bark.

Neither Slug sniper rounds nor friendly fire went “swoosh.”

I inched my head around and peered between branches. A hundred yards away, a forty-foot pterosaur wheeled, then glided back for another pass. It wouldn’t be able to bite through my armor — theoretically — but it could sure knock me off my perch. I forgot about climbing twenty feet higher.

I transmitted, “Owl, this is Eagle. Do you identify my light, over?”

Swoosh.

My right arm slipped. I tried to swallow, but my mouth had been dry for a half hour.

“Eagle… I’m not sure. Can you shake your light?”

“Goddammit, my light’s been shaking since I left the ground!”

Swoosh.

Something thumped the lantern on my back, as the flying lizard swept past, and I inched around to the other side of the tree trunk.

Howard’s voice chirped in my headset. “Eagle, I identify yellow, I say again yellow, light.”

“That’s me.”

“Estimate arrival your position one-zero minutes. Owl out.”

Even as I shook, I smiled, and relaxed. The pterosaur, puzzled by an unappetizing intruder, swung into view again, but now two hundred yards out and receding.

Magnificent, free, and soaring, it looked nothing like its cousin’s tangled corpse, crushed by our dropped Ordnance Rifle. Collateral damage. Us four Earthlings had, in our short time on this planet, butchered every sort of animal that walked, flew, or swam on it, polluted rivers with alien blood, and forced our enemy to burn the land itself.

War is cruelty, and there is no refining it. Sherman said that to the Mayor of Atlanta, then demolished the city’s rail yards, so Sherman’s enemy couldn’t use them to move troops against him. The rest of the city burned, despite Sherman’s contrary orders. The cruel and unrefined collateral damage I had ordered befell a resilient ecology bigger than we were. At least killing animals was better than killing noncombatant humans.

I moved my left foot down, and began descending, when I realized that from up here I could not only see the Troll. I could see the Troll from a different heading and elevation than we got from our observation posts.

In the dusk, I upped the magnification and switched to night passive.

“No.”

I zoomed my snoopers, then shook my head inside my helmet.

“No, no, no!”

SIXTY-NINE

MILES AWAY, across the artificial green dusk of my visor display ghosted pale, spindly shapes. They poured from the long, low, windowless ancient stone buildings that surrounded the vast clearing alongside the mountain that was the Troll.

I toggled my threat counter, and it spun into the thousands. I zoomed my optics, and my eyes widened against the surrounds.