[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
fine. The heat and the radiation might kill them. But not the overpressure
unless they were at ground zero or picked up and
"tossed" by it.
Only two problems. Papa O'Neal had been inside the bunker when it collapsed.
The debris was likely to
have killed him. Second problem being that he wasn't there. It was pretty
evident that something or someone had come along and dug a body out of the
rubble.
"He was right there," Cally said quietly.
"Yep." Jake squatted and looked into the interior of the bunker. The rear was
down as well, but a doorway was faintly visible at the rear. "Is that how you
got out?"
"Yeah," Cally said, bending down to peer into the rubble. "He was right there,
Sergeant Major!"
"He's gone now, Cally," Jake said gently, straightening up. "Let's take a
quick look around to see if there's anything worth salvaging then get back to
the cache before whatever took him comes back."
"Posleen?" Mueller asked, looking at the ground. Most of the grass had been
flash-burned by the blast but there should have been tracks. Posleen made very
definitive tracks with their claws.
"Probably," Mosovich said after a moment's pause. "I don't see any tracks
atall
. But the most probable explanation is the Posties got the body."
"Fuck," Cally said. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, god damn, cock-SUCKER! He really didn't
want to get eaten. He really, really didn't."
"I'm sorry," Wendy said, wrapping her arm around the teenager. "I'm so sorry."
"Shit," Cally replied, wiping rain-mixed tears out of her eyes. "Shari is not
going to be happy."
Wendy snorted and hugged her to her. "No, she's not. None of us are."
Elgars was sweeping back and forth around the fallen bunker but after a moment
she came back shaking her head. "I find track of Cally. No other." Her voice
sounded odd. Low pitched and sing-song.
Mosovich looked at her side-long but Wendy just shrugged. "Annie, you're
channeling again." Ever since they had met, the Six Hundred captain
occasionally would seem to manifest personalities of other people.
In the very few cases where the personalities were obvious, and known, they
were dead people. It especially seemed to occur when she used a new skill,
such as tracking.
The captain looked up at the sky and sniffed. "Yes." She sniffed again, deeply
then looked toward the road. "Take cover. Someone come."
As Mosovich faded backward into the shadow of the ruined house his AID chirped
again. "Sergeant
Major, incoming message from Lieutenant Thomas Sunday, Fleet Strike ACS."
* * *
"Well, we have the pass," Tulo'stenaloor muttered. He had moved forward from
the protected bunkers and factories around Clarkesville and now watched the
streams of oolt'ondar moving up to the pass. "It only took two hundred
thousand oolt'os and uncountable Kessentai. And we only have it because they
Page 47
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
gave it to us. And the ground is torn to ribbons, which will require repair
before we can push through effectively. But we have the pass."
"But they will be back," Goloswin said. "They intend to fill it with fire
again."
The Kessentai was that oddest of individuals among the Posleen; a known
warrior who had quit the strife, settled down and been bitten by the bug of a
hobby. In Goloswin's case the bug was tinkering.
There was nothing that he loved more than getting a piece of equipment, human,
Indowy, Posleen or
Aldenata, and taking it apart to figure out how it worked.
Tulo'stenaloor had tracked him down on a planet a dozen systems away and lured
him to Earth with the promise of puzzles to drive him mad. As it had turned
out, every puzzle that had been thrown at him, from dissecting human sensor
systems to breaking into the ultra-secure AID net, had been apparent nestling
play.
However, he was still having a fine time. All this and the promise of riches
beyond measure in addition;
what could be better?
"Yes, but they will have trouble doing that," Tulo'stenaloor said.
"Will you pursue?" the technician asked carefully. He was well aware that his
understanding of the new methods of the estanaar were spotty. Most Posleen
oolt'ondar would latch on and chase the humans to their deaths. Like the
Tinkerer, Tulo'stenaloor had found a new way to do business. But in the case
of
Tulo'stenaloor, that business was gathering the finest minds he could and then
hammering the humans into so much thresh.
"No," Tulo'stenaloor said after a moment. "The route they took is difficult
enough for them; trying to pursue them with oolt'os would be nearly
impossible. We'll just have to let them go. But I will see what I
can do about this resupply mission. What news on their efforts to arrange for
. . .
fire-support
?" It was a human term that he had readily adopted.
"Their General Horner is no longer using his AIDs and the AID network is
beginning to attempt to counter my infiltration. But at last word the only
hope was still the SheVa gun they call 'Bun-Bun.' It is under repair and is
being upgraded near Sylva."
"Then something must be done about that infernal contraption." The warleader
sighed. He touched a control on his tenar and waited until it picked the
signature of Orostan out of the mass of other Kessentai.
"Orostan?"
* * *
The senior oolt'ondar looked down at the town of Franklin and the gathering
lake to the west with distaste. He recalled the first major check to their
advance when over a hundred thousand of the host had been trapped in the
collapse of the Sub-Urb. Now they were being pushed back to it, and it looked
no better than on the way through. Very little in the way of loot, hardly any
decent land that had not been torn to shreds. Basically nothing but a useless
dot on one of the human's "maps." Such a useless place to fight and die over.
"Estanaar?" he replied. He had hitched his star to Tulo'stenaloor all the way
back at the Great Gathering.
Most of his fellow oolt'ondar thought him mad; Tulo'stenaloor had been badly
defeated on Aradan Five and his "New Way" was heretical in the extreme. But
Orostan had been picking out all the information he could about these humans
and it was apparent that the usual method of the host, of the Path, to charge
ahead trying to use mass to overcome the enemy, was a quick route to suicide.
Tulo'stenaloor's attempt to use human tactics against them had been at least
partially successful.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]