The first impact was so sharp and forceful that Jesel was on the ground even before he was aware he’d been hit. He rolled over, grasping for his weapon, saw a red crater of mashed gray snakes where the left side of his abdomen had been. He tried to control the blood flow, tried to make sense of what was happening.
He watched three of his clones go down: one round into each center of mass. So: a counterattack by professionals. Incapacitating each and then—
The last two clones, the ones that had been inspecting the dead water-strider, bounded deeper into the bush. Cowards, he wished he could shout after them, but he had to conserve his strength, focus his senses.
The fire was coming from the south edge of the clearing. He brought up his rifle, switched the propellant feed to fifty percent, the rate of fire to two hundred rounds per minute, swung it toward the bushes—
And fell back heavily, his neck and head riddled by eight-millimeter Colt Browning jacketed expanders.
* * *
Bannor Rulaine rose up, hand-motioned Peter Wu to circle around the clearing while staying within the tree line. Now to get the two clones who had—
A short stutter of gunfire from yet another eight-millimeter CoBro sent Bannor diving into the loam. It was usually a friendly sound, but today, that didn’t prove anything.
However, the small, limping silhouette that emerged from the northwest edge of the glade near the survival kits confirmed everything that Bannor could have hoped for: Miles O’Garran.
“Are we clear?” Rulaine asked, keeping his prone position, but crabbing around until he was covering the southeast end of the glade. “Always watch your back” was an axiom by which he lived, and had survived.
“Far as I know,” answered Dora Veriden, who emerged behind O’Garran.
Wu leaned out of the brush. “Bad landing?” he asked the pint-sized SEAL.
“I’ve had worse,” O’Garran replied. “Can’t remember when, though.”
Bannor rose up on one knee. “We’re going to have a hell of a time finding everyone.”
“If anyone else is left,” Wu amended faintly.
“Yeah, there’s that.”
“Look, guys, let’s save our own lives first.” Dora threw a hand up toward the sky. “This can’t be all of them. I’m pretty sure some beat feet back toward their shuttle.”
“They did.” Bannor felt a smile bending his mouth, a smile that his first DI had told him would terrify any human under the age of fourteen. “They aren’t going anywhere.”
Dora’s smile wasn’t any more heart-warming. “Oh. Good. And by the way,” she added, glancing at the dead Ktor, “lucky timing.”
“Not luck,” Wu corrected. “First we heard a shot, much farther inland.” He pointed west. “We were heading there when this area started sounding like New Year’s in Taipei. We just followed the sound of trouble.”
But Veriden was no longer listening; she was pacing around the glade, searching, frowning. “Where’s Riordan?”
Wu crossed the clearing to the northeast corner. “He was here?” He looked, saw the discarded filter mask.
Veriden looked up. “Yeah, I think—”
Wu saw a faint impression in the ground cover, a spatter of vomit, and, looking more closely, a faint trail of broken or bent ferns that led out of the clearing and straight toward—
Wu stood up sharply. “Everyone. We are going to need some help.”
“Help doing what?” Rulaine asked.
“Lifting this dead water-strider.”
* * *
Nezdeh Srina Perekmeres already knew what Zurur Deosketer would report: “Still no reply on the lascom from the strike team.”
Nezdeh leaned back in her command chair, watched the two new cannonballs race to fill the orbital gap above the assault zone. Jesel’s shuttle had signaled a safe landing three and a half hours ago. Fifteen minutes later, her sensors had picked out the thermal flare of the supposedly destroyed human corvette, performing what might well have been a suicidal maneuver that brought it briefly over the same zone. And then they had waited. And waited.
Nezdeh suppressed a sigh, turned toward Idrem, who was no longer at gunnery. He was here for counsel and, though she dared not even admit it to herself, for comfort. “Jesel has failed.”
“It seems so.”
“It was wise that we did not equip them with any of our technology. It would have fallen into the Aboriginals’ hands.”
Idrem nodded carefully. “The Terrans have been denied access to any conclusively incriminating evidence or advanced knowledge.”
“You are guarded in your words, Idrem.”
“I am hesitant to consider our exposure fully controlled. There are two corpses planetside whose genelines were on the threshold of Elevation. Their genetics will yield much to sustained examination.”
Nezdeh frowned. “Agreed. But what options do we have? We could fire a missile spread in an attempt to obliterate that evidence, but that presumes that the Slaasriithi do not have unrevealed planetary defense batteries, in addition to their drone ships. We might achieve nothing other than blatantly bombarding their world.”
“This is true.” Idrem nodded. “And I concur that the Slaasriithi, while reluctant to deploy offensive systems, seem quite ready to commit their defensive technologies. I suspect we do not have enough missiles to saturate the assault zone and eliminate the spoor of Jesel’s assault team.”
“So you agree that we must live with the marginal exposure that has occurred?”
Tegrese Hreteyarkus interrupted from her station at gunnery. “We do have one nuclear weapon,” she pointed out.
Nezdeh and Idrem exchanged surprised, then carefully neutral glances. Nezdeh turned toward Tegrese. “We are in a system adjacent to the Slaasriithi homeworld. We have trodden a terribly fine line between plausible deniability and overt responsibility for the attacks here. And you would have us ‘correct’ the faint evidence of our possible presence with a nuclear weapon?”
Tegrese looked away, her jaw bunching. “I merely mentioned the option.”
Nezdeh turned away, did not want Tegrese to see what might be in her eyes at this moment: the ruthless calculation behind her unbidden thought, She might have to be liquidated; she is worse than the males of this House. And she is only of a subsidiary gene line. Nezdeh shifted her attention to the holosphere. “Ulpreln.”
“Yes, Nezdeh.”
“Plot a rendezvous with the Arbitrage. We are done here.”
PART FIVE. October 2120–February 2121
Chapter Fifty-One. THE THIRD SILVER TOWER BD +02 4076 TWO (“DISPARITY”)
Ben Hwang leaned away from where Caine Riordan lay among, and in some cases fused with, a bewildering array of biots, all presided over by two small but efficient medical monitors. He stepped away from the living bed in which his friend was held, shook his head as the transparent osmotic membrane-dome lowered back down and sealed seamlessly into the rim of the cushion.