So Lawrence hadn't grumbled too much that evening when Sergeant Ntoko announced 435NK9 had been assigned a hinterland patrol. They assembled early the next morning outside the hotel that was serving as their barracks. A convoy of eight jeeps to carry the three platoons, accompanied by five ten-ton trucks that would bring back any assets they found. They rolled out through the center of town and onto the eastbound start of the Great Loop Highway.
Although most settlers on colony worlds lived in towns and cities that were built on gamma soak patches, some had chosen to establish themselves out among the native vegetation and animals. These smaller townships and homesteads were almost always founded to harvest a valuable native crop or mine some mineral. Out in the mountainous hinterland behind Memu Bay there were several dozen such settlements, all of them linked by the Great Loop Highway that ran in a rough oval around the Mitchell Mountains, a series of high volcanic peaks dormant for thousands of years.
Thirty-five kilometers from Memu Bay the Great Loop Highway was still a wide, level tarmac road that had just cleared the modest barrier of mountains that encircled the coastal town. The Mitchells were rising out of the thick jungle ahead. Lawrence sat in the front passenger seat of the jeep while Kibbo drove on into the foothills country. He could see the range stretching away into the vanishing distance. Vulcanism had pushed an enormous plateau ridge up out of this side of the continent, running parallel to the coast for over two hundred kilometers. The table of the plateau was reasonably level, a kilometer and a half above sea level. Because of its size, it had a microclimate all its own. Amid the continent's pervasive tropical heat its domination of wind patterns pulled in a cooler, moist air that irrigated the whole area. Some of the most vibrant vegetation on the planet ran rampant around the plateau's lower slopes. Two major rivers flowed down from its heart, along with hundreds of smaller watercourses. But it was the peaks themselves that dominated the skyline, varying from small rounded mounds to giant jagged rock cones over seven kilometers high. Snow gleamed on over half of them, astonishingly bright in the clear air.
"Anyone ever climbed those mothers?" Kibbo asked.
"I think so," Lawrence said. "I saw some tour offices in town that ran trekking holidays up on the plateau."
"I hope the poor schmucks wear some kind of power suit. It looks tough up there."
"Mount Horombo is the tallest, eight kilometers. You wouldn't need a power suit for that, just really good thermal underwear. And an oxygen gill as well, I'd imagine."
"You fancy trying it?"
Lawrence laughed. "Not a chance."
"I wouldn't mind a go," Kibbo said. "It must be a fantastic sight from up there."
"I bet it's covered in cloud most of the time."
"Jeez, Lawrence, you're such a pessimist."
Lawrence had a private smile at that. It had been long enough since that miserable, emotionally confusing time that had been born out of his assessment in Amsterdam. The memories no longer hurt when he brought them out to examine them. In fact, now he could look back in wonder at how he'd ever fallen for a girl as weird as Joona in the first place. Fate below, the signs he'd ignored!
There were even times when he thought about reapplying for starship officer college. Z-B might be run by a bunch of pricks, but it was still his only chance of realizing his old dream. Despite everything that had happened to him over the last few years, he'd never quite let go of the hope. And he'd notched up a damn good record with strategic security. Sergeant Ntoko said he was going to recommend him for a corporal's stripe once this Thallspring campaign was concluded. And he was damned certain his stake was large enough to satisfy the college's deputy principal now.
Life was good for him at the moment. Pessimism played no part in it.
The convoy started to wind its way up the plateau's slope. As the climb progressed, so the trees on either side of the road became progressively taller. Their branches were swamped with vines, enormous webs of them strung between boughs and trunks in a thick, shaggy lattice, sprouting cascades of gold-and-black flowers. Ripe gray fruit was dropping all around the vehicles, making the tarmac slippery with their pulp. Humidity closed in around the convoy, with layers of warm mist coiling between the tree trunks. Their Skin was almost white as it repelled the heat.
"Great Loop, my ass," Sergeant Ntoko grumbled from the lead jeep. The road was now down to a single band of tarmac, whose edges were being remorselessly chewed away by tufts of aquamarine grassmoss. He was often slowing for fallen branches, using the jeep's front grid bars to push them aside. Even the surface was cracking open, revealing dusty red earth underneath. Insects similar to terrestrial termites were busy building their soil castles up around the base of trees. The tiny creatures secreted a chemical cement, bonding the minute grains of dirt together so the odd-shaped tumuli glimmered with a metallic purple-and-blue sheen under the intense sunlight.
The air was noticeably cooler when they finally drove out onto the top of the plateau. Ahead of them, the trees were thinning out, although the individual specimens seemed to be even larger than those on the slopes, reaching thirty to forty meters high. In between them, the ground was carpeted in monster plumes of spiked crown reeds, their withered leathery seed pods swaying three or four meters into the air. The Great Loop Highway degenerated to a heavily compacted dirt track with deep wheel ruts that had been burned through the reeds. Sooty black clumps lined the sides where the highway maintenance robots had incinerated any living frond that crept back across the designated route. To prevent any possible misdirection, slender metal pillars were spaced every kilometer, wearing a high collar of solar cells to power their beacon lights and transponder.
Lawrence went back to mountain-gazing again. There were more Mitchells visible now, thrusting bluntly out of the lush subtropical plain, the awesome monuments of tectonic petulance. Long strips of dark cloud scudded round them, raining hard on the lower slopes.
The convoy reached Rhapsody Province first—an area marked out by dozens of slate-gray slag heaps thrown up across the plain where mining equipment bit deep into the plateau's stratums, hunting out bauxite deposits. The spoil was fresh and dark, slick with dank chemicals that prevented anything from growing on its treacherous, shifting sides.
Aluminum was not one of the metals that Auley supplied to the planet. And capturing another asteroid that had it in quantity wasn't cost-effective given the amount used by Thallspring's industrial concerns. Most cities had secured their own source, and Rhapsody Province even produced enough of a surplus for Memu Bay to export to other settlements.
Located almost dead center of Rhapsody was Dixon, a mining town, or at least an engineering center where the mining machinery was maintained and repaired. A full quarter of the town was given over to huge sheds of corrugated composite where cybernetic tools and humans worked alongside each other to service the mining and processing equipment. There was even a small fusion plant sited a kilometer away, a squat white concrete hexagon with a slightly convex roof. It was surrounded by pylons that carried bright red power cables out to the active mining sites.