Sleeman had not stopped staring into the scope. “But can’t we check—?”
Jeez, she must really like Tygg. Well, no accounting for taste—“Dr. Sleeman, you need to take a deep breath and think. We can’t send radio messages through the Slaasriithi jamming. If we tried, the only thing we might accomplish is giving our enemies a lock on our position. And right now, we have to—”
The comm channel from the drive room was suddenly alive with sounds of chaos and shredding metal. “Shit! Karam?”
“Yeah; talk, Tina.”
“Coolant line just blew out. And I mean blew; sprayed shards into the control panel and cut some cables. It’s a friggin’ mess down—”
Karam stole a glance at the engine readouts. One showed steady with the power plant temperature rapidly climbing into the red. The other readout on the dynamic display had gone dark; its relay had probably been in one of the cut cables.
“Karam, what do we do?”
“Tina, you hold tight. I’m going to need you and Phil back there when I try to land this thing.”
“Yeah, well hurry up about it.”
Karam couldn’t help smiling at Melah’s salt-encrusted truculence as he triggered the canopy covers. They retracted quickly, revealing—
Green, black and violet expanses rolling further and further away until they ended at a thin blue line that rimmed the horizon: the straits separating the north and south continents.
“Will we make it?” Lymbery asked.
“Don’t know,” Karam grumbled as he studied the gauges. The power plants and engines were both spiking their temperatures toward the red line. But even without doing the math, he knew what would happen if he nursed those systems along at lower power levels: they’d remain only moderately compromised — until they disintegrated under the impact of their crash, at least one hundred kilometers short of the sea. Karam sighed, resolved to take the only action that might save them. And to do so before he could consider it in detail, because then he would probably soil himself. “Everyone: hold on.”
“Why?” chorused Lymbery and Sleeman.
There wasn’t enough time to explain. But apparently Phil Friel knew what was coming: over the engineering circuit, the Irishman shouted for Tina to strap in, for the love of God—
Just as Karam pushed the engine and power plant gains to maximum.
Bucking, shuddering, Puller’s nose rose back up into a faintly skyward arc, the red limit indicators of the ship’s thrusters and power plants rising even more quickly.
Melissa Sleeman’s voice was uncharacteristically small. “Will this save us, or blow us to pieces?”
Karam shrugged. “Damned if I know.”
Chapter Forty-Six. SOUTHERN EXTENTS OF THE THIRD SILVER TOWER BD +02 4076 TWO (“DISPARITY”)
The Aboriginal binoculars were quaint, but Pehthrum discovered them to be reasonably effective. Although they lacked the sophisticated analytical electronics of the models he was used to, these purely optical systems had one immense advantage: simplicity. There was no possibility of malfunction or misreading. The lenses magnified what your eyes could already see. And these did so quite well; they had revealed the tell-tale signs of a revetment on the far side of the silted streambed.
The clone Pehthrum had chosen as the assistant squad leader — Beta-Three — raised his Pindad caseless assault rifle to his shoulder. Pehthrum pushed it back down. “No. If we rush this position directly, we could take significant casualties. We have to clear almost sixty meters of soft open ground. If they have any modern weapons, they could cripple us.”
“Leader, I understand. But if we lay down suppressive fire with our rifles while the shotgunners charge across—”
“Be still. There is a better way.” Pehthrum motioned to Xi-Two, who passed forward two long cases.
Beta-Three shrank back. “Will that work — here?”
“Most assuredly, given that we know the biochemistry of our Aboriginal targets.” Pehthrum opened the two containers. After a moment, upt’theel started streaming out, noses questing desperately: they had been in food-deprived hibernation for more than a month now. Pehthrum palmed a piece of bait and waved it in their direction — briefly — before throwing it as far as he could toward the revetment.
The milling brood of weasel-pangolin monsters had just caught the scent — ominously — as the rotting meat described an arc that ended with a sloppy thump only twenty-five meters in front of the revetment. As if controlled by one ravenous mind, the upt’theel spun in that direction and swarmed over the ground toward the bait.
Beta-Three started to rise. Pehthrum cuffed him with the back of his gauntleted hand. Not enough to inflict a concussion: just a love tap that partially severed the top of his ear. “You wait for my order. And for our pets to do their work.”
The upt’theel certainly seemed eager to do just that. They flowed over the lumpy, partially marshy ground like a clattering, squealing carpet. When the first few reached the bait, they struggled, rolled in furious arabesques of mortal competition — until one put up a sharp nose and detected the scent of more sustenance. Its head swiveled, others following, toward the revetment. With a renewed cacophony of clacks and shrieks, the majority of the horde swept toward it.
* * *
Unsymaajh looked at Riordan, who was keenly aware of the many, massive eyes watching him from behind the fronds, straining to either run or protect—
Caine waved his hand, spoke one of the commands the humans had used in directing the water-striders: “Go.”
The gigantic creatures trampled out of the brush with a chorus of ululating hoots, like enraged foghorns testing their vocal range. In three strides they were into the wave front of the startled upt’theel, which, true to their nature, launched themselves at the striders’ lower legs.
However, for every one that managed that feat in time, half a dozen were smashed into screaming, writhing pulp.
Caine saw one of the loathsome octopedal monsters begin burrowing into a water-strider’s lower leg — just as another strider grazed its own wide leg across that of its afflicted herdmate. The upt’theel’s rear half was kicked away like a writhing rag, the front half screeching starved outrage at the immense animals towering over it.
Caine swallowed, discovered his throat was as dry as sun-baked leather. “Thnessfiirm.”
“Yes, Caine Riordan?”
“Has the AMP relocated?”
“Yes, and it has self-stealthed again.”
“Arm the launch pods.”
“It would be best to prepare to designate the targets. And you will need to keep the targets in the designator’s line of sight until—”
“I understand. We have a similar guidance system: we call it fire-and-forget.” Riordan raised the wandlike designator. “I’m just waiting for our real enemies to show themselves.”
Qwara had been silent beside him the whole time. “They are rising up, now. Look — wait, is that — are they—?”
“Those are Optigene clones, Ms. Betul.”
The same kind that were sent to kill me just last year.
* * *
Pehthrum did not understand what he was seeing, at first. The tall stands of ferns and frond-trees on the downstream side of the Aboriginal revetment had vomited out large, impossible quadrupeds. Some as high as ten meters, sounding like a collection of war-trumpets and bone krexyes horns, they charged the flank of the upt’theel swarm, stomping as they came. The small creatures, ferocity undiminished, were no match for the close-furred colossi: bright spatters and sudden smears marked the carnivores’ demise beneath the massive feet of the counterattackers.