“I mean, how many rockets should I launch if I must do so manually?”
Caine answered—“All of them”—but did not have the time to look at Thnessfiirm; six, no seven more of the attackers had leaped out of the far brush line. They were sprinting unevenly across the streambed, the two scouts rising to join them. There; that’s the attack. They’re committed.
Xue fired at the onrushing squad, the magazine of his survival rifle emptying when they were halfway across, just as Macmillan joined in. But, being even further from the enemy’s route of attack, the big Scotsman’s rounds were either not finding their mark, or simply not stopping the targets they hit.
Thnessfiirm’s voice was hushed. “You wish me to launch all of the rockets?”
Christ: are you still here? “Yes. All the rockets. Go.”
At which point, Riordan suspected that Thnessfiirm would not get to the AMP in time if the control rings failed to work. Caine glanced in Veriden’s direction; her position was being constantly peppered with counterfire, pinning her down.
Xue finished reloading, rolled to the other end of his fighting position, popped up — and was drummed back down by a storm of suppressive fire.
Caine moved slightly, so that he could peer down the targeting wand’s scope again. Its frequency sampling protocol allowed him to see what no one else could: the three-laser aimpoint arranged in a wide triangle just twenty meters in front of Xue’s position. He glanced at the closest of the clones — closing on thirty meters distance as they ducked and weaved through the brush — and was satisfied by their approach formation: a wedge, about fifteen meters wide and twenty-five deep.
It’s not going to get any better than this, Riordan decided. He made sure that the targeting wand was snugged firmly in place so that it would continue to paint the target zone and clicked the control rings together. Caine rolled out of his position, yelled “Fall back” at Xue’s spine, spun into a rising sprint that carried him through the curtain of fronds behind them. Bullets — not aimed at Riordan, just in his general direction — buzzed and snipped at the frond tops half a meter over his ducked head.
From one hundred meters to the rear, a rippling roar washed out toward him: a sudden, strident burst of massed rocketry.
Caine glanced behind, saw Xue clear his position, then clutch at a mortal spatter of torso hits. He went down, bloody and limp.
The roar grew, up-dopplered sharply and became a chorus of screams rushing overhead—
Caine sprinted hard, felt his chest burn, then constrict, then harden. But he needed to get more distance. Not being familiar with these rockets, there was no way of knowing how large their blast pattern was—
The overhead screams down-dopplered crisply into roars plunging toward the dried streambed. Or more precisely, the phased-laser triangle painted on an open expanse of water-smoothed rocks and scrub brush—
The stuttering cacophony of blasts didn’t just assault Riordan’s ears, it sent an overpressure wave bumping against his back. He staggered but did not fall. Pushing between closely spaced cone-trees, Caine realized that he was no longer hot, but cold, his palms clammy, his lungs no longer able to rise or expand without conscious effort. As debris from the explosions began fluttering down around him, and Dora’s Pindad resumed its duel far more decisively with whomever still had her pinned down, Caine stumbled forward, acutely aware that his field of vision was narrowing.
He broke out of the brush into the smoking clearing from which the AMP had launched its last rockets. Thnessfiirm edged out from behind a bush as Riordan, world swimming unsteadily, staggered forward to catch his balance against the bole of a bumbershoot. The Slaasriithi’s neck stretched toward him.
“Caine Riordan, you are not well.”
Caine almost laughed—you think? — but even the mild expulsion of air from the first chuckle was so painful that it smothered any momentary amusement. “Thnessfiirm, you and I need to stay together, to operate the AMP.”
“But it has no weapons left.”
“No, but. It can…distract the enemy. Make them…chase after…it. We have to—”
Dora’s distant Pindad was answered by a much closer automatic shotgun. Thnessfiirm started, jumped back toward the bushes.
Caine shook his head. “No, they won’t find us…right away. We can…”
But Thnessfiirm was continuing to back into the bush. Away from the sound of the guns. Away from Caine. “No, Caine Riordan. I am sorry you are so afflicted, but we cannot remain together. Humans are already slow in our forests, being unable to travel in the trees. You are now almost immobile. I would die if I stayed here with you.”
“You — you’re abandoning me?” Despite all the contingencies Caine had considered, despite all the unlikely events he had foreseen, this had not been among them.
“Caine Riordan, my species is not like yours. Individually, we avoid needless death.”
“So you’re just leaving me here?”
“I am saddened to say it, but you are sure to die. What good is it that both of us should perish?”
Riordan stumbled away from the tree. “We humans — it is our way to stand by each other. Even when it puts more of us at risk.”
Thnessfiirm’s sensor cluster oscillated slowly, “And it is our way to survive individually, and so be most numerous when we regather.” Thnessfiirm bobbed briefly and was gone.
Riordan looked after the disappeared Slaasriithi. And there, in two sentences, is why our races will never fully understand each other. Evolution has taught us lessons so radically different that a species-positive trait for us humans — sticking together as a team — is a species-negative trait for you.
Caine heard the shotgun’s stuttering cough close at hand, turned, and stumbled into the brush that stretched inland, away from the river.
* * *
Jesel bounded through the bush toward Suzruzh when he saw his distant cousin approaching, nursing his left arm and favoring his left leg. “Report! Immediately!”
Suzruzh waved an arm — prickled with red puncture wounds — back toward the streambed. “You heard the rockets. They waited until our assault, knew where we were coming.”
“And did you not pin down one flank, find their weak spot, and then—?”
“That is exactly what we did, cousin.” Suzruzh’s eyes narrowed. “I am not an imbecile. I know how to conduct a simple attack, arguably better than you do. But they must have eliminated Pehthrum’s flank attack — there were sounds of a pitched firefight there — and brought whatever resources they had left to cover against any move we might make across the streambed. One of them had an assault rifle. Two of my men pinned that one down, the rest charged across the flat ground. They were within ten meters of the other tree-line—” He shut his mouth abruptly.
“And?”
“And they were annihilated. It was comparable to a barrage from one of our own tactical support launchers. If I had not hung back, according the Nezdeh’s orders—”
“Yes, but now you are here and we must achieve our objective.”
Suzruzh looked at the one scout that had survived out of all of his men, then at Jesel’s reduced squad of six: one of his triads had been sent to join Suzruzh’s forces, to bolster the charge across the riverbed. “We have few tools left with which we may achieve anything, Jesel.”
“That is true, but our duty and our survival require our success. We must first know how many Aboriginals we are still hunting. How many did you kill?”
Suzruzh shook his head. “I am unsure. We could not search their abandoned positions thoroughly since one of the Aboriginals had us under fire. We did find their launcher, some kind of autonomous platform, hovering in a glade. It was no more than a frame. I suspect all its munitions cells were expended. We destroyed it, but we had no time to search for Aboriginal bodies. We had to see to our own wounded and hasten here.”