Athaclena’s triple pulse beat fast as she saw Robert’s silhouette stand on the turret of the tank, over the crumpled body of the Talon Soldier. He raised an arm to signal, and suddenly the clearing was filled with running forms.
Chims hurried among the tanks and floaters, carrying earthenware bottles. Behind them shambled larger figures bearing bulky packs. Athaclena heard Benjamin mutter to himself in suppressed resentment. It had been her choice to include gorillas in this operation, and the decision was not popular.
“… thirty-five… thirty-six …” Elayne Soo counted off the seconds. As the dawn light spread they could see chims clambering over the alien vehicles. This was gamble number three. Would surprise delay the inevitable reaction long enough?
Their luck ran out after thirty-eight seconds. Sirens shrieked, first from the lead tank and then from the one in the rear.
“Look out!” someone cried below.
The furry raiders scattered for the trees as Talon Soldiers tumbled out of their hover barges, firing searing blasts from their saber rifles. Chims fell screaming, batting at burning fur, or toppled silently into the undergrowth, holed from front to back. Athaclena clamped down on her corona in order not to faint under their agony.
This was her first taste of full-scale war. Right now there seemed to be no joke, only suffering and pointless, hideous death.
Then Talon Soldiers began falling. The avians hopped about seeking targets that had disappeared into the trees and were struck down by missiles as they stood. The fighters adjusted their weapons to seek out energy sources, but there were no lasers out there to home in on, no pulse-projectors, not even chemically powered pellet guns. Meanwhile crossbow bolts whizzed like stinging gnats. One by one, the Gubru warriors jerked and fell.
First one tank, then the other, began to rise on growling blasts of air. The lead vehicle turned. Its triple barrels then started blasting swaths through the forest.
The tops of towering trees seemed to hang in midair for brief moments as their centers exploded, before plummeting earthward in a haze of smoke and flying wood chips.’ Taut vines whipped back and forth like agonized snakes, spraying their hard-won liquors in all directions. Chims screamed as they spilled from shattered branches.
Is it worth it? Oh, can anything be worth this?
Athaclena’s corona had expanded in the emotion of the moment, and she felt a glyph start to take shape. Angrily she rejected the unformed sense image, an answer to her question. She wanted no laughing Tymbrimi poignancies now. She felt like weeping, human style, but did not know how.
The forest was afroth with fear, and native animals fled the devastation. Some ran right over Athaclena and Benjamin, squeaking in their panicked desperation to get away. The radius of slaughter spread as the deadly vehicles opened up on everything in sight. Explosions and flame were everywhere.
Then, as abruptly as it had started firing, the lead tank stopped! First one, then another barrel glowed reddish white and shut down. Half of the noise abated.
The other fighting machine seemed to be suffering similar problems, but that one tried to continue firing, in spite of its crackling, drooping barrels.
“Duck!” Benjamin cried out as he pulled Athaclena down. The crew on the hillside took cover just in time as the rear tank exploded in a searing, actinic flash. Pieces of metal and shape-plast armor whistled by overhead.
Athaclena blinked away the sharp afterimage. In a momentary confusion brought on by sensory overload, she wondered why Benjamin was so obsessed with Earthly waterfowl.
“The other one’s jammed!” Somebody shouted. Sure enough, by the time Athaclena was able to look again it was easy to see smoke rising from the lead tank’s apron. The turret emitted grinding noises, and it seemed unable to move. Mixed with the pungent odor of burning vegetation came the sharp smell of corrosion.
“It worked!” Elayne Soo exulted. Then she was over the top and gone, running to tend the wounded.
Benjamin and Robert had proposed using chemicals to disable a Gubru patrol. Athaclena then modified the plan to suit her own purposes. She did not want dead Gubru, as had been their policy so far. This time she wanted live ones.
There they were now, bottled up inside their vehicles, unable to move or act. Their communications antennae were melted, and anyway, by now the attacks in the Sind had surely begun. The Gubru High Command had worries enough closer to home. Help would be some time coming.
Silence held for a moment as debris rained to the forest floor. Dust slowly settled.
Then there was heard a growing chorus of high shrieks — shouts of glee unaltered since before Mankind began meddling with chimpanzee genes. Athaclena heard another sound, as well … a rolling, ululating cry of triumph — Robert’s “Tarzan” call.
Good, she thought. It is good to know he lived through all that killing.
Now if only he follows the plan and stays out of sight from now on!
Chims were emerging from the toppled trees, some hurrying to help Dr. Soo with the injured. Others took up positions around the disabled machines.
Benjamin was looking to the northwest, where a few stars faded before the dawn. Faint, warlike rumblings could be heard coming from that direction. “I wonder how Fiben and the city boys are doin’ at their end,” he said.
For the first time Athaclena set her corona free. Released at last, it crafted kuhunnagarra … the essence of indeterminacy postponed. “It is beyond our grasp,” she told him. “Here, in this place, is where We act.”
With a raised hand she signaled her hillside units forward.
46
Fiben
Smoke rose from the Valley of the Sind. Scattered fires had broken out in wheat fields and among the orchards, injecting soot into a morning fast growing pale and dim.
A hundred meters high in the air, perched on the rough wooden frame of a handmade kite, Fiben used field glasses to scan the scattered conflagrations. The fighting had not gone at all well here in the Sind. The operation had been intended as a quick hit-and-run uprising — a way to hurt the invader. But it had turned into a rout.
And now the cloud deck was dropping, as if overladen with dark smoke and the sinking of their hopes. Soon he wouldn’t be able to see beyond a kilometer or so.
“Fiben!”
Below and to the left, not far from the kite’s blocky shadow, Gailet Jones waved up at him. “Fiben, do you see anything of C group? Did they get the Gubru guard post?”
He shook his head, exaggeratedly.
“No sign of them!” he called. “But there’s dust from ” enemy armor!”
“Where? How much? We’ll give you more slack so you can get a better—”
“No way!” he shouted. “I’m comin’ down now.”
“But we need data—”
He shook his head emphatically. “There are patrols all over the place! We’ve got to get out of here!” Fiben motioned to the chims controlling his tether rope.
Gailet bit her lip and nodded. They started reeling him in.
As the attack collapsed and their communications unraveled, Gailet had only become more frantic for information. Frankly, he couldn’t blame her. He, too, wanted to know what was happening. He had friends out there! But right now it might be better to think of their own skins.
And it all started so well, he thought as his craft slowly descended. The uprising had begun when chim workers employed at Gubru construction sites set off explosives carefully emplaced over the last week. At five of the eight target sites, satisfying fiery plumes had risen to meet the dawn sky.