Their Master's War (10 page)

"You can cut that out "for a start!"

The cabin was filled with noise. The air screamed by

outside. The airfoils groaned and the structure of the ship protested as both were subjected to more and more stress. Then, without warning, the ship was blown to one side by a violent explosion. The first one was followed by three more in quick succession. Fear swamped excitement. The pilot's voice came on again. "The first wave are taking a beating. There's six of them down already."

"Where the fuck is the covering fire? We're flying into the biggest goddamn guns on the planet, and we ain't got no covering fire!"

"Put a lid on that, Renchett!"

"Signal from the cluster, they're opening up." Each time the pilot cut into their communicators there was a burst of static and the almost unintelligible ship-to-ship cross talk. Someone cursed. "Will you look at that!" "Look at what?"

"The whole damn sky's lit up! It's our barrage." The static in their helmets became deafening. Rance and the pilot were only just audible. "Hang on tight!"

"There's no more fire coming at us. Some of the first wave are safely on the ground." The dropcraft continued to bounce, shake, and buffet, but there were no more explosions. Hark was suddenly aware that he was gripping the lap bar so tightly that his hands hurt. The excitement was back.

"Ground coming up."

"Hang on!"

"Here we go! Wait for it...
nowV

The dropcraft hit ground with a bone-jarring jolt. Its wings feathered up. It plunged, bounced, and skidded over an uneven surface. For a moment, it seemed to be slewing sideways, about to roll over, then, at the last moment, it jerked to a stop. There was an instant of stunned silence before Rance started yelling in their ears again.

"Up and out, you bastards! Up and out! Loose those lap bars and go!" Two ports on either side of the ship swung down. Violet light, punctuated by flashes of brilliant white, streamed in.

"I said let's
go\"

Lap bars clanged up, and the men were on their feet, heading for the ports. Their boots clashed on the cabin floor. Hark grabbed his weapon and moved with the others. He was no longer thinking.

"Check equipment before you hit the outside."

It was a matter of rote. Helmet seal, energy packs, water bottle, minimed, supply case, trencher. All good. The port was in front of him. Other troopers were pressing behind him, and there was no chance of turning back. Rance slapped him on the shoulder, and he stumbled down the ramp. It was a violet world, a place of violet sky, purple sand, and jagged dark purple rocks. Hark stepped off the ramp and staggered. The sand was deep and incredibly fine. It behaved almost like a viscous liquid. He sank into it up to his knees. Other troopers had also bogged down.

"Cut boot gravity and jump!"

The planet's own gravity was considerably less than either the gravity in their parts of the ship or that generated by their boots. Hark jumped and found that he was immediately free of the clinging dust. A single stride could take him maybe three meters.

"Spread out! Get away from the ship!
Move Out!"

Out of the cover provided by the ship, Hark saw the four domes that made up the nearest Yal battery. There was so much in this war that dwarfed him. The domes were a line of mathematically perfect Yal-made hills. Brilliant radiation flashed from the apex of each dome, shooting straight up. The sky above was a maelstrom of blinding color, a continuous explosion as the Yal shields fought off the stream of energy from the cluster. The air itself seemed to be vibrating. The glare of the majestically undulating raw energy and plasma field cast distinct shadows and eclipsed the light of the planet's two-suns. Even the longtimers were standing and staring.

Rance himself was given a moment's pause. It was one hell of a spectacle. The whole sky was suffused by an instant of iridescent blue. Some trace element in the atmosphere must have burned. At least the median had been right. The shields were so stretched to hold off the bombardment from space that they no longer extended to the ground. He quickly gathered himself. "Don't stand there gawking!" Dyrkin's voice cut into their helmets. "Incoming! PBA from that ridge at oh-one-five."

"Everyone down!"

As the particle beam accelerator came to bear on them, broken beams of green light sliced through the area. A trooper simply blew apart. Hark didn't know who it was. Something hit him violently between the shoulder blades.

"Get down, you fucking idiot!"

For an instant, Hark thought that he had been hit. Then he realized that Helot was rolling off him.

"Dig in, you dumb bastard!"

Hark grabbed his trencher and twisted the grip, blowing the sand out from under his body. Dyrkin was on the communicator again.

"Confirm PBA on ridge."

"Helot, Hark, work your way over to those rocks!"

There was a spiny outcropping way over on their right. The space in between was crisscrossed by green flashes.

"Can we make it?"

"We can try."

Helot started crawling. Hark followed him with deep misgivings. Behind them, the dropcraft, which had been drawing fire, lifted off in a swirl of dust. The first half of the crawl was comparatively easy, the enemy fire well over their heads, then whatever was operating the particle beam cannon must have noticed their move. Pencil-thin beams blew up dust all around them.

"Dig down! Fast!"

Each trooper carved himself a shallow trench and lay there until the Yal gunner turned its attention somewhere else. Immediately the fire moved away, Helot was up on his feet.

"Run, boy!"

Hark thought that the longtimer had gone crazy, but he still jumped to his feet and followed his mad dash. As Helot ran, he let out a long bloodcurdling scream. Hark found that he was also screaming. Despite the terror that he would be blown to pieces by a particle beam at any moment, Hark found a reckless excitement in the way his blood pounded and his helmet was filled with the clamor of men in battle. Although the voices of his own twenty came through the loudest, there was a constant background of the shouts, orders, and screams of the other groups and the crackling interference from the blaze of energy in the sky. They came under fire again, but they were almost at the rocks. Both men dived and rolled into cover.

"Set to lasertrace—let's grease this sucker!" Helot snapped. They both fired. Twin streams of colored pulses arrowed toward the source of the particle beams.

"I think we got him vecced. Switch to concussion."

They fired again. There was a massive explosion on the ridge. Helot let out a whoop. Dyrkin was in the phones.

"Confirm PBA out."

He was straightaway followed by Rance. "Move up. Over the ridge." The troops advanced in an extended line. Fire burst above them, but while they were in the shadow of the ridge nothing seemed able to get a direct bearing on them. They could no longer see the domes, but the vio-. lent, angry halo above them was clearly visible. Before the drop, Rance had given them a simple briefing. All they had to do was get the sappers through to the base of the domes so they could place their explosives. He hadn't actually told the troopers that they were expendable, but the message was clear. On either side of them, other twenties were also moving up. They were a grim reminder that only one group had to get through to make the operation a success.

Rance halted them at the foot of the ridge. "There's no knowing what we're going to run into on the other side, but it don't make no difference, we're going anyway. We're going to go up fast. Don't bunch up, and go over the top low. Don't skyline yourselves. Okay?"

Eighteen troopers nodded.

"Let's go, then."

In the low gravity, the ridge was easy. They took it at a run. Near the top, the men dropped into a low crouch. They immediately came under fire again. The crest of the ridge flared and boiled. Hark was once again flat on his stomach, digging into the sand. Waed, who wasn't quite fast enough getting down, screamed and twisted backward. There was a gaping hole in his chest. Hark couldn't quite come to grips with the fact that death could be so sudden. There was something obscene about the way a man could be alive and running one moment and dead meat the next. It was one more underlining of how little they were worth.

"This is going to be a fucking mess."

The growl belonged to Dyrkin. From the top of the

ridge, they could see all the way to the base of the domes. There was only maybe a kilometer to go, but the ground was dotted with fortified gunpits and trenches. There was an odd metallic sheen on some areas of sand. The longtimers knew that this indicated strung molywire. The ultrafine filaments were more than capable of slicing off an arm or a leg, and where there was wire there were usually also mines and jumpers.

"How come we don't get no air cover?"

"I guess they figured gunships would be too vulnerable."

"What the hell are we? Dog meat?" "If any plane got too close to that burning sky, it'd be fried."

"What about armor? Don't we even rate armor?" "This wasn't supposed to be a full-scale landing. They're calling it a surgical strike." "Surgical my ass." Rance cut through the complaining. "Knock off the crap. We're moving on." "We'll be cut to pieces."

"Shut up, Dacker. We'll take the two nearest gunpits. Half of you go for the one on the left, the others take the right. Keep firing all the way; we'll make it."

There was still fire hitting the ridge, and the group hesitated. Rance was bellowing in their helmets.

"Move, goddamm it, or I'll burn you myself!"

Suddenly they were on their feet again and running. It was another mad, screaming dash, ducking, weaving, and zigzagging, weapons vibrating in their hands as they fired wildly. It was almost as if something was taking over their will and making them do things that were in direct opposition to all their natural instincts. One man went down, and then another, but they kept on going. They were close to the gunpit, and Hark was amazed that he was still on his feet. He could see the creatures that were manning the Yal PBA. The name "chibas" was repeated in his phones. The chibas were one of the Yal's favorite cannon fodder. Slightly shorter than a human, they were part organic and part robot. Their brains and squat bodies were tank-grown biomatter, but their arms and legs were spindly constructions of implanted metal. They were among the ugliest things that Hark had ever seen. Two of the chibas were swinging around their tripod-mounted weapon, bringing it to bear on Hark and the men around him. For an instant, he thought that he was dead, then the first troopers were in the gunpit. Renchett was among them, going to work on the chibas with his knife, slashing at the soft, yellow-gray organic parts of their bodies through chinks in their somewhat minimal carapace armor. It seemed that a species that could grow-build its troops as it needed them paid little attention to protecting them on the battlefield. Renchett worked with a savage relish until his suit was slick with the transparent goop that fountained from their wounds.

"I hate chibas, they're an abomination."

He was carefully wiping his knife as he reported to Rance.

"We got the left gunpit secured." "Right gunpit also secure." The gunpit provided a brief respite, an interlude wi no one shooting at them. Hark hunkered down an*

leaned against the parapet wall. "What happens next?"

Rance wasn't slow in supplying the answer. "Anyon over there know how to fire a Yal PBA?" Helot answered. "I've checked out on one of these."

"So stay with it and give us covering fire."

"A-firm."

"Volunteering your way out, Helot?" "Screw you, Renchett. I don't enjoy the shit the way you do. I'll grab at any chance to save my ass."

There were distant screams in their helmets. Another twenty must have walked into the grinder.

"Okay, let's move out. Keep that covering fire com-ing.

This time they ran in V formation, with the sappers finding what protection they could in the angle of the V, covering the ground with fast ten-meter leaps. They were flanked by fire from the two PBAs. Once again, Hark had the feeling that some external force had a grip on him—it was akin to the fighting madness that had overwhelmed the young men back on his planet. He was taking risks that he would not normally contemplate. By the time they had overrun two more gunpits, Hark was so pumped up that he almost stumbled into a foxhole containing two chibas. They had light-yield energy weapons fastened directly to the ends of their mechanical arms. Somehow he had the impression that they were surprised. Renchett was right—they
were
an abomination. Fortunately, they were also slow. Hark blasted by instinct before they could bring up their weapons. He noticed that the chibas wore no helmets. The word was that they could breath anything.

"Wirefield ahead!"

The charge halted as the men flattened rather than blunder into an expanse of deadly molecular wire. Blast fire roared over their head$.

"Alternate blast and concussion to plow that wire under."

The massed fire boiled the ground in front of them, and the dust swirled up into a purple storm. There were a dozen major explosions in fast succession, driving the dust even higher. Hark hugged the quaking ground. What had been the wirefield looked like the end of the world. The pale dust even blotted out the light of the blazing thunderhead above the domes.

"That's the mines."

"Stay down, there may be still be jumpers."

A jumper was a saucer-sized disk that, when triggered, jumped to a height of a meter and a half and then sprayed rotating fire through a full 360 degrees. Sure enough, there were flashes of swirling fire inside the dust. When they stopped, Rance ordered the troopers up again.

"Into the dust, it's perfect cover. Watch your step, though, there may still be coils of wire lying around. Take it slow and easy."

They moved cautiously into the dust cloud. They were walking almost blind. One of the recruits turned on his helmet light.

"Turn that damned thing off," Rance ordered. "You want to be a perfect target?" The light went off. The men pressed forward. The dust was starting to settle. They were all covered with a fine purple film. They were about to get through the wirefield unscathed when somebody began screaming.