Seas of Venus (16 page)

"When I unpacked," Britten said as he doled out the plates and flatware with the skill of a croupier, "I found this, sir. I didn't know where you wanted it placed."

"This" was a visicube containing the image of a plumpish, attractive woman of middle age—Beryl Haynes.

"Umm, yes," said Dan. "I had one of our techs make it up for me back at the dome. It's by way of being a gift for Captain Haynes . . . but I'd rather he didn't know about it. Since you know Greider, his batman . . . can you get it into his quarters to replace the cube he usually keeps in his combat uniform?"

Sergeant Britten grinned. "With what Greider owes me from poker last month? You know I can! I can get you Haynes' desk and Greider'll help me carry it."

Dan began spooning out the savoury dish onto his plate and Johnnie's both. "You're a jewel, Britten," he said. "Try to come back from this operation, will you?"

"No fear," snorted the sergeant as he left the office with the cube and the empty platter. "If
you
buy it, try to get swallowed whole, will you? I don't want to have to carry a—"

The door closed. Vaguely through it: "—bloody corpse back."

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain. . . .
 

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Viewed through the image intensifier in Johnnie's visor, the water at the creek-mouth boiled with life.

And death.

The jungle glimpsed from a fleet's base or in the holographic environs of a simulator seemed to be the army of Nature arrayed against Man. Here the battle was just as intense and Man was not even an incident. The varied factions of Nature were too busy fighting one another to notice the beached submarine.

"For God's sake, hurry with that chute!" said the submarine's commander, Lieutenant van Diemann.

As though the words had flown straight to heaven from his lips, there was a hiss from the bulky apparatus four of the party were deploying from a cylinder welded to the sub's deck. A tube two meters in diameter, stiffened by a glass plate floor, began to extend slowly in the direction of the shore. Sergeant Britten, carrying a flamethrower, rode the tip of the protective chute.

"You may have to edge a little closer," said Commander Cooke. "I'm not sure the hundred feet will be enough."

"I can't!" van Diemann snapped. "We're already aground!"

Dan turned with the easy motion of a marksman and said, "I know you're aground, Lieutenant. I said you might have to edge a little closer to shore through the bottom muck. If you're incapable of carrying out the maneuver, I'm sure it's within the capacity of Ensign Gordon here."

Uncle Dan is scared, and he's taking it out on other people . . . who are scared too. 
 

Something huge had died or been washed up at the creek-mouth; Johnnie couldn't be sure whether the creature had come from the jungle or the sea to begin with. Now the corpse was a Debatable Land for scavengers and things which preyed on scavengers . . . and those who devoured them in turn.

Crabs a foot across the carapace backed together to form iron rings which rotated slowly across the carrion. One large pincer tore the flesh into strips of a size that the mandibles could worry loose, but the other pincer was always raised to threaten any creature that moved nearby.

Occasionally something with a long beak or armored paws would pluck at the defensive circles, but for the most part the crabs were safe—

Unless two groups collided. When that happened, the rings flattened against one another and all thought of food or defense was lost in a ravening urge to slay their closest kin—and therefore closest rivals. Other predators coldly picked their victims from behind or simply waited for crushed and fractioned debris to be flung away by other crabs.

"Sorry, sir," said van Diemann. "But we—I mean, a stranded sub would be a dead giveaway to an Angel reconnaissance flight, wouldn't it?"

"If you weren't the best submarine commander in the Blackhorse, Ted," Uncle Dan said, "I'd've picked somebody else for the mission. You're good enough to work her loose before daylight and the thermals."

"Shall I . . . ?" The lieutenant offered.

Dan shook his head. "The chute's going to reach. I was nervous, and you say things when you're nervous."

Something slithered from the sea, dripping with soft phosphorescence. Johnnie thought it was a root or a tentacle, but it bore jaws that slashed a chunk from the carcass. The whole creature vanished back the way it had come with a bulge of meat working its way down the throat. Moments later the fish was back for another piece, but this time an insect as large as the lid of a garbage can slid across the water's surface and stabbed.

There was a flurry like the explosion of a depth charge. As much as ten yards of the fish writhed to the surface at one time, but the insect kept its grip with suicidal intensity until both combatants were lost in the roiling water.

Life on Venus was a constant round of struggle and slaughter, meaningless except perhaps in some greater framework hidden from the participants. The humans on the surface of the planet—the mercenary companies—conformed to the same paradigm.

"Ready the lead element," snapped Sergeant Britten as the inflating tube neared the shore at the speed of a staggering walk.

"Lead element report," Johnnie ordered, letting the artificial intelligence in his helmet route the request to the men of his team. A block in the upper right corner of his visor glowed yellow, then went green in nine quick increments as the lead element reported ready.

The lead element. The forlorn hope.

"Lead element ready," Johnnie said crisply.

Long, trailing branches swayed toward the carrion from the canopy as if carried by a breeze, but the air was still. One of the tendrils curled vaguely in the direction of the beached submarine.

"Watch tha—" Johnnie said, butting his rifle to his shoulder.

As he spoke, a spark that the troops' visors blanked to save their vision slapped between the bare tips of two of the hanging branches. A squadron of crabs and hundreds of the lesser creatures crawling around them froze in varied attitudes of death. The tendrils began to twine around the quantity of freshly-electrocuted meat, ignoring the carrion.

Johnnie fired with the flash. His explosive bullet whacked the base of the branch questing toward the men. It dangled from a strip of bark for an instant, then fell into the water where a boil of teeth met it.

Others of the men on the cramped deck jerked around in surprise to look at the young ensign.

"You'd think," said Commander Cooke, removing all question about the propriety of the shot, "that the jungle would let us come to it . . . but I suppose it's a case of the early bird and the worm."

"The worm's got teeth," said Lieutenant van Diemann, who was about twenty-five years old. "Nice shot, kid."

"Send the lead element forward," said Sergeant Britten's voice in the helmet earphones. Johnnie, as head of the lead element, was part of the command net.

"Lead element forward," Uncle Dan—Commander Cooke—ordered.

"Lead element, follow me," said Johnnie as he slipped the magazine with one round fired into the pouch from which he'd just taken a fresh reload. He stepped into the tube; and, as soon as the protective walls were around him, began to jog from eagerness and a desire to release tension.

The chute was a standard design which most of the free companies used for fire-fighting and expanding their bases into the jungle. The walls were woven of fine-spun quartz monofilament, refractory in themselves and interlaid with bands of beryllium which could be electrified if necessary. Mounting one on the deck of a submarine was awkward, but nowhere near as difficult as most of this operation.

The chute would take the expedition to the edge of the jungle in safety. For the rest of the way they were on their own.

For a moment, Johnnie's boots echoed alone on the walkway; then the chute rocked in a multiplying rhythm as the members of his lead element clambered out the submarine's hatch and joined him.

Three of the men carried flamethrowers—Red Section; three of them carried reload tanks for the flamethrowers—Blue Section; and the remaining three men of Green Section had quad-packs of armor-piercing rockets. Many of the men were half again Johnnie's age; all of them had vastly more experience than Johnnie did—

And the raw ensign was leading the force because nobody knew as much about the jungle as the simulator had taught him. The Blackhorse fought nature only as an incident to fighting men.

The block of light in Johnnie's visor was still solid green. He could have asked his helmet for a remote view from any or all the men in the lead element, but they weren't going to get lost—and the jungle ahead needed his full attention.

Johnnie paused at the edge of the chute beside Sergeant Britten; aiming his weapon—outward, not at a specific target, for there was none. He projected a compass bearing in his visor, then moved back a half step to make room for the section leader who was supposed to be immediately behind him.

"Red One," he said. Johnnie didn't know the names of the members of his section, but their military job descriptions were all that mattered now.

He indicated an arc by moving his left hand beneath the barrel of his rifle/grenade launcher combination. "Sweep twenty degrees with a three-second shot."

Red One braced himself behind the nozzle of his flamethrower, but he didn't fire. "What am I aiming at?" he asked.

"Red One, you're relieved!" Johnnie shouted. "Report to the center element for assignment. Sergeant Britten, take over Red Section."

Britten's flamethrower snarled like a dragon waking. A pencil-thin rod spat from the nozzle in a flat arc. The fuel was magnesium-enriched; its flame was almost as bright as the electrical discharge from the tree a moment before. Foliage curled and crackled as the sergeant walked his lethal torch waist-high across
precisely
twenty degrees in
precisely
three seconds.

Johnnie's helmet visor automatically blanked the high-intensity core of the flame, but the reflections—from water, leaves, and even the smooth bark of some trees—made a dazzling pattern all around him. Something screamed horribly over the roar of the flame; he wasn't sure whether it was an animal or steam escaping from the trunk of a dying tree.

The white flame and its soul-searing noise cut off. Orange sparks puffed and showered; occasionally one of them flew against the breeze in a vain attempt to escape the destruction it carried. A wide section approximately fifty yards into the jungle was either clear or too stunned to pose an immediate threat to the expedition.

"Good work, Britten," Johnnie said. "Lead element, follow me."

He hadn't been sure of exactly what was in the section the flamethrower swept, but he knew that where the jungle met a beach or stream bank, the flux meant that the nearest life forms were particularly savage and determined. Once the team had penetrated the immediate wall, they had a chance with the jungle's ordinary denizens.

"What?" blurted Red One, who hadn't understood—and hadn't understood that orders must be carried out
instantly
if they were any of them to survive. "Wha . . . ?"

"Force Prime to all personnel," said Uncle Dan's voice over the earphones, "Lead Prime, your orders transferring Red One and Force Two are approved. Red One, trade weapons with Force Two so that he's got a full bottle. And
move out
!"

John Gordon, ensign in the Blackhorse for a matter of days, stepped forward as point man in an operation that was at least as dangerous as anything the veterans behind him had ever attempted in their years of service.

It felt good.

One had a cat's face,
One whisked a tail,
One tramped at a rat's pace,
One crawled like a snail. . . . 
 

—Christina Rossetti

Light enhancement gave Johnnie a good view of outlines, but he switched his visor to thermal imaging as he stepped out of the chute's protection. Sensors in his helmet mapped the temperature gradients around him down to variations of a half degree. His AI fitted the blotches of heat into patterns which it highlighted on the visor when required.

Vines were at air temperature. The stick insect, poised vertically along a tree bole near the course Johnnie planned, was several degrees warmer. Though "cold-blooded," the insect had warmed itself by muscle contractions so it could strike with maximum speed and suppleness when the line of men passed beside it.

Johnnie switched back to light-enhanced vision and aimed, using the lower set of sights.

"Sir, what're you—" Sergeant Britten said in a low voice.

The grenade launcher beneath the rifle barrel went
bloonk!
The heavy recoil jarred Johnnie's shoulder, even though he let it rock him back instead of trying to fight it.

The grenade detonated with a bright green flash, blowing the insect's head to pulp and throwing the fifty feet of body into furious motion as dangerous as that of a runaway bulldozer. Medium-sized trees crashed as the not-yet-corpse careened through the jungle in a series of jointed motions.

"God almighty!" said Sergeant Britten.

"Right, let's move," Johnnie said as he stepped into the reality of a forty-pound pack that he hadn't worn in the simulator. Some food, some medical stores. . . .

Mostly ammunition. For his rifle, grenade launcher, and the little pistol on his hip. The raiders couldn't shut off the jungle just because they'd emptied their magazines, and Nature's scoring program had very tough sanctions for losers. . . .

Twenty yards away, a patch of ground quivered in the midst of the ash and embers. Leaves lay on it, but the sheen of mud was bright around their edges.

"Watch it," Johnnie whispered, facing his first real test. "That looks like a swamp-chopper burrow. I'll move close and when it rises I'll—"

"Excuse me, sir," said Sergeant Britten blandly. He held the nozzle of his flamethrower in his left hand so that his right was free to unhook a heavy grenade from his belt. "Let's try it my way first."