Gorilla put the bigger bot down and sent it on its way. He’d programmed it to pick a course and meander down as if feeding. He could adjust its path if need indicated, through the wire it was laying behind itself as it scurried under ledges and behind rocks, making good use of the terrain. At every pause it sent another image back.
“I hate to rush you, Gorilla,” Bell Toll said, “but it’s about three hours until dawn and we’ll need to be making trail soon.”
“Gotcha, sir. Let me get it into the trees and I can speed things up.”
And he did. Once the rock started giving way, he dialed the creature up to a fast trot, using what image there was to “drive” the bot through the woods. Its own circuits gave it a certain amount of decision making, and with his interpretation of the terrain ahead, it traveled quickly.
“Less than three thousand meters to go,” he reported. “Slowing back down.”
The device stopped a safe (they hoped) two hundred meters from the outer perimeter. The viewster biobot dropped off its back and darted for cover under thick grass. It too was programmed to move “naturally.” In this case, it snuffled forward until it found a small game trail and trotted along it toward the site. To any sort of sensor it would look like what it was, a furry little animal. There were no electronic systems on it, no evidence that it was a construct. It would be invisible unless the sensors were designed to search for nonautochthonous life forms.
In a spot of good news, it appeared they were not, because the little creature was able to penetrate without any of the sensors going off. Further in there would probably be “clean” zones into which even a mouse couldn’t penetrate. But the outer sections were relatively easy, with only local terrain, predators and the biobot’s diminutive size as obstacles.
It took another solid hour for the creature to do its penetration, just one of many small mammaloids running around in the area. Once it did, it found a rock under which were several of the local roach lookalikes. They were edible to earth creatures and the viewster hunted them avidly until another party of Blobs, or perhaps the same one, came back through. When it saw the low, grey creatures it quickly scuttled across their path where the swift moving creatures would run over it and continue on their way.
“Here we go,” Gorilla said, and everyone watched the repeated image from his controller. The “Tslek” flopped and rolled right over the sensor-creature, leaving it, and the nearby grass and twigs, unharmed. They were excellent holograms, but nothing more.
And the base was a trap.
The encounter had been in clear view of the sensors Dagger and Gorilla had deployed and that was that. Gorilla looked at Tirdal, who stared back but didn’t even change expression, then down at the team. Whatever was there was apparently a fake.
“I can send the viewster into a few emplacements and possibly get more information, sir, but the likelihood of detection increases with each exposure. And I think the answer we have is short and sweet.”
Bell Toll shook his head for a negative, then used hisses and hand signals to get the attention of the rest and order them back. The Aldenata tech-based communicators they had were absolutely secure, but he wasn’t going to trust them this close to an enemy base that was obviously set to trip them up. It might, in fact, be best to go back to old-fashioned laser signals, even if it limited them to a line-of-sight formation. After this, they had to exfiltrate by a different route to avoid possible detection, then get the acquired intel back to the sector command. The slim facts they had would nevertheless rule out many wrong avenues in this game of deception. Negatives could sometimes, in fact, prove more valuable than concrete answers.
But that was for the analysts to decide. Their job was to hump back out and stay alive.
Following Gorilla’s preprogrammed orders, the viewster headed back up the game trail as the two recon troops and Tirdal slid down the reverse slope of the ridge. The larger bot had already headed back over so Gorilla told it and its companion to head out on point. The reverse trip would actually be shorter than the insertion and they should be able to make it in a week. It would be a tense week of careful movement and thorough concealment. Whether or not the Tslek had planned for them to find the site, they had to assume that the Tslek knew they’d found the deception. So being found now would mean death. A pawn stays alive only so long as its purpose is served, and from a Tslek viewpoint they were now a liability even had they been valuable before.
The team bivouacked again within the trees, the nearness to the Blobs being a slightly better risk than trying to slog out fast, risking noise and discovery as they traversed terrain in daylight. They’d save the forced march for tomorrow night.
Later that day, the viewster came darting back over the shards of the ridge and found the place where it had been told to report. It sat patiently under a ledge and waited an hour for signals or orders, but there was nothing there. Having lost contact with its control it snuffled around until it found a hole in the ground, crawled in and died. Specially bred internal bacteria would dissolve it in under three hours, leaving nothing but a smell and some bones. At some level, everything is expendable.
Chapter 9
TheIR RETURN route cut through the low hills that had intervened before. For a while they followed some game trails that paralleled the hills. The hills probably were ancient remnants of mountains, worn down from staggering ranges, most likely foothills of the taller mountains that rose to east and west of the glacial valley and river plain in between. There were other signs of old vulcanism, indicating that this area had had a violent youth.
Once away from the Tslek “installation,” they moved quickly and surely, and off the game trails. Predators loved game trails for obvious reasons, and no one wanted a fight. There was no other reason to be more than normally cautious, and every reason to get off-planet as soon as possible, so they slogged fast. Ferret made good time and showed considerable skill at finding routes with fair footing and clear space to hike, while still keeping tall growth around them for concealment. He rarely caused them to backtrack around obstacles, though he did have them detour around another log that might contain a nest of the biting ant things. Tirdal watched and tried to deduce how Ferret did this. It was a skill he had no experience in.
The second night out, they came to a fairly deep and strong stream that had cut a chasm through the rocks ahead.
“We’ll have to detour downstream until we find a place to ford,” Ferret said. “Unless we’re going to build a moly-rope bridge?”
“No,” Shiva said. “Safer and likely faster to go around. Five minutes to rest and on we go.”
The path downstream was a rubble and boulder-strewn igneous mass with trees growing at chaotic angles near the edge, straight and tall further back. The soil was rich and fragrant, made dark and fertile by minerals from the broken rocks and well-rotted foliage. It wasn’t a hard route for trained troops, as it was downhill with lots of handholds. They swiftly covered three kilometers of steep, rocky bank as the bots led the way.