Their Master's War (11 page)

"My foot! My goddamn foot! It's gone. The wire got me!"

Again Rance was directly there.

"Calm down! Get a seal dressing on the bleeding and lie down, try and dig yourself in. The e-vac will pick you up. In the meantime, your suit will take care of the pain." The screaming sank to a drugged whimper as the suit blanketed its wearer with secreted analgesics.

"Move on," Rance told the others. "He'll be okay. Watch your own feet." The dust had drifted and settled and was no longer any use as cover. There was firing all around, but none of it was directed at them and the majority of it came from Alliance weapons, not those of the Yal. There was a bout of ragged cheering as the first human troops reached the base of the dome. A port in the dome

opened, and a squad of chibas rushed out, firing the weapons that they had instead of hands. They were quickly burned down.

"Okay, hold it. We can stop right here. The sappers can move up to the dome. The rest of us will hold this position."

They were standing on the edge of a trench filled with dead chibas. They had been dead only for a matter of minutes, and already they were starting to decay. The yellow-gray flesh was liquefying away from the metal skeletons that had supported it, turning back into the oily protein goop whence it had come. Nobody was in any particular hurry to get into the trench, and fortunately that didn't seem necessary. The only firing still going on was the mopping up of scattered chiba positions. Hark couldn't believe that it had actually happened, that it was over. He felt sick and dizzy—he believed that he would never be able to face food again. His hands shook except when he clutched his MEW, and yet, if anyone had yelled "Run," he would have run with desperation.

"Take the weight off but stay alert," Rance ordered.

Renchett had his knife out. "You want us to go and mop up the stragglers?"

"You've had your share of butchery for the day."

Renchett shrugged and sheathed the knife. The sappers were stringing explosives. Rance looked at the huge bulk of the dome and refused to imagine what might be happening inside the monster. He'd been inside Yal installations a number of times, and they always made him feel bad. They were just too alien. The outside was quite enough. What culture would fashion this gigantic curve of what looked like semi-polished purple stone? They must know what was about to be done to them. How did Yal panic?

Rance shook his head and looked away. Hark was staring back in the direction from which they had come. The poor bastard probably didn't believe what

had happened to him. The ground around the domes was like something out of a nightmare. There was charred and fused sand; some areas still smoked, others glowed. There were bodies all over, scattered among blackened wreckage from the downed dropcraft. "Mother of Gods!" Instinctively everyone ducked. Something was happening in the blazing sky. The halo of warring energy that was now directly above them had abruptly and radically altered. What had once been a glaring white had dimmed to a suffused, bloody red. Rance was one of the few around the dome who knew enough to suspect what might be happening. Was the Yal shield weakening? If his installation was going to be destroyed, it was a logical move for the commander of the battery to try to take as many of the enemy with him as he could. If he dropped his shields, the forces on the ground would be wiped out by their own orbiting guns. The real question was how long it would take him to shut down the shields. The sappers were through with their work. Rance started waving everybody back. "Back to the assembly points! On the double! We're pulling out!"

He tongued open the long-range communicator. "Bring down the e-vacs as fast as you can." A strange voice came over Rance's helmet.

"This is Lanza, topman of sappers. I'm staying here with a guard until close to detonation. I don't want any chibas coming out and dismantling the charges.

Sappers were crazy.

"Suit yourself. Don't stay too long."

The whole force was pulling back. The glare in the sky brightened, as if the Yal shields were recovering. Maybe there was time for them all to get out. The glare faded back to an angry red. It was absurd that their survival now depended on the strength of the enemy shields. The men were bunching at the prearranged as sembly points. They had the wounded with them. Rance took long leaping strides in order to catch up with them. There was the distant sound of ships coming through the atmosphere. The glow in the sky seemed to be lower than it had been a few minutes earlier. Rance was certain that the Yal screens were about to cave. He hated the idea that his death would be just another cruel joke in a war that was full of them. Where the hell were those e-vacs?

As if in answer, his phones crackled with static "E-vacs coming in. Watch out below." The squat circular craft came down vertically with their landing legs extended. The e-vacs had a slab-sided functional ugliness that was a complete contrast to the streamlined winged elegance of the dropcraft that had brought them in. All they had to do was fall fast to a planet's surface and pick up the largest possible number of men. They were the combat workhorses, and the troopers loved them. It was only natural. Other craft got them into trouble; the e-vacs got them out.

"Yo, e-vacs! Get us the hell out of here!"

"What are those damned redballs doing?"

"Who knows with redballs?"

A flight of red spheres was following the e-vacs down. The troopers knew that the red spheres were on then-side, but that was about all. The Therem had never seen fit to explain them to the human troops. They were small, little more than two meters in diameter, but they were incredibly fast and maneuverable. They appeared on battlefields, but they seemed to have the capacity neither to inflict nor to sustain harm. At other times, they could be encountered prowling the interiors of the cluster ships. Everything else was speculation. It wasn't even clear if they were machines or beings or just globs of raw energy. They didn't bother the troopers, and most

of the time the troopers didn't bother about them, except instinctively to dislike them. The men at one assembly point had to scatter to avoid the power wash as their ship came too close to the mark. Lanza's voice cut through the noise from the ships.

"We're getting out. The charges are armed, and nothing can stop them." Five e-vacs settled on the battlefield, each in its own cloud of dust. Wide ramps extended to the ground. The first two men up on each side dragged the others in. The wounded were passed hand over hand.

"Let's go, go, go!"

The ramps started rising before the last men were inside. The final ones stumbled forward, half falling through the ports. There was a lurching confusion of men reaching for any handhold as the e-vac tilted into the air. There were no seats in an e-vac, just lines of grab bars. Rance used his rank to swing up to the overhead crew blister. The darkened cabin was cramped even for the two-man crew, who were secured in contour frames, hunched over multiple control boards. The lights of the panels were reflected eerily in their faceplates. Like the dropcraft, the e-vacs weren't pressurized. The best that Rance could do was to crouch in the hatchway, bracing himself against the top of the steel ladder that led up from the main well of the ship.

"Have the charges blown yet?" he asked.

"Not yet, but the shield's sagging."

Rance craned to see the groundside screen. It was true. From the air, it was possible to see the battering waves of energy that were pouring in from space. The Yal shield had been reduced to a red halo with a definite concave dip at its center. The e-vac lurched, and Rance was almost pitched into the well. There was cursing from

below as a number of men lost their handholds and fell into those around them. One of the crew glanced around.

"Sorry about that."

Rance glared into the well.

"Turn up the grav on your boots, they'll anchor you."

Rance looked back just in time to see the charges blow. Rings of small explosions rippled around the bases of the domes. At first, there was no perceivable result. Rance bit his lip. Were they going to have to go through the whole bloody process again? Abruptly, the Yal shield winked out, and in the next moment, the visible world erupted. A huge fireball gathered on the ground. Shock waves spread to the horizon. The fireball started to rise. It was as if a star had been lit on the surface of the planet.

"Damn!"

The crew shielded their eyes. Blinding white light poured through the single armored viewslit. The screen threatened to burn out. The fireball started to rise. The area below it glowed white, a vast sea of liquid rock. The fireball was gathering speed and expanding.

"Hold tight. Here comes the shock wave."

The ship felt like God had kicked it. It was like a living thing. The kick was followed by a spasm of monstrous shudders. They were falling.

"I hope she holds together."

The crew were punching buttons. There was almost a detachment about the way they worked. Panels lit, others went out.

"Here's where we find out."

There was a sickening lurch as the crew tried to power out of the deadfall. There were shouts from below.

"Smoke! Something's leaking smoke!"

The crew was concentrating oh coaxing the e-vac to gain altitude.

"Tell them it's nothing to worry about. I'd have worried if we hadn't burst a few seams." The ship continued to spin and buffet, but they were making ground. There was the pressure of acceleration under their feet.

"The atmosphere is hosing out. We're riding the up-draft. It should take us halfway to the cluster." In the well of the ship, Hark clung to a grab bar, his eyes closed, and prayed for it all to be over,
ont
way or another. He didn't really care. He couldn't take any more. The courage that he'd found earlier seemed to have deserted him. He didn't even care that he'd been whimpering out loud when they'd been falling and that the rest of his messdeck had probably heard him over the communicator. The man next to him turned his head and looked at Hark.

"Suit stopped pumping?"

Hark couldn't recognize him behind the faceplate of his helmet.

"I don't understand."

'They don't tell you, but you find out. It's the suits." Hark was at a loss. "Suits?"

"It's the suits that do it to us. None of us want to do what we do in combat. We don't want to take the risks. Once the suit smells your adrenaline and starts pumping itself, you don't have a chance. You're blind and crazy. You'll go anywhere and do anything they tell you."

"What does the suit do? What does it pump into us?"

"Who the hell knows. Some endorphin cocktail of fearblockers, ones that can be absorbed through the skin. That's why the trip back from combat can be really rough. The battle's over, the suit stops pumping, and you

come down seeing the full forsaken horror of it. At least we get to get drunk when we get back. It helps."

"They get us every way, don't they?"

"You're learning."

Up in the crew bubble, Rance pursed his lips. He preferred that the recruits learn about the suits as late as possible. Doubtless Hark would tell all the others.

Seven

Naked, they filed into the blue room, carrying their equipment and weapons. The lock sealed. First the water jets came on and washed away the fine purple dust. Next it was the turn of the bright blue lights—the radiation would kill any native bacteria that they might have picked up. Hark noticed that some of the men had brought back small souvenirs of the battle. Helot had the severed metal claw-hand of a chiba gunner. He must have hacked it off one of the corpses in the gunpit while he was manning the captured PBA. It was being decontaminated along with everything else.

Dyrkin looked around at the others. There were thirteen of them. Of the nineteen who had gone down, five were dead; Kemlo, who had been snagged by the wire, had been taken to sick bay to be fitted with a prosthetic foot. They had been less badly hit than some of the other twenties.

"So now we get drunk."

"Polluted. I got to get rid of the taste."

Their ship clothes were laid out for them. They quickly dressed. The lights went out. The lock at the other end of the chamber opened. They filed out into the

receiving hold and were somewhat surprised to find that it was a hive of activity. Lights were flashing, and sirens were blaring. Nohan damage-control parties were hurrying to their battle positions. Fault-trace robots, no bigger than a man's foot, skittered about the floor. A gang of human core jumpers, wearing yellow radiation armor, doubled away down a corridor. The PA was issuing orders and bulletins in human, the whistling trills of the nohan, and a wash-of-sound speech that Hark couldn't recognize. Rance grabbed the first passing human. "What's going on?"

"A Yal battle wagon is closing with us, one of the big ones. We're going to engage." Dyrkin spit on the deck. "That's all we need."

Rance quickly gathered his men.

"We go back to the mes§decks. We're ground troops. There's nothing we can do in a space battle except get in the way."

Dacker grunted. "We can get ourselves killed."

"That's taken as given around here."

Once on the messdeck, there was nothing to do but wait. The thirteen gathered in the downden. Within minutes, Dacker and Renchetrhad become involved in an argument with Elmo.

"The least you could do would be to issue the booze."

"I can't cut loose a booze issue when the cluster's on full action alert. They'd bust me to trooper or worse. We're going into combat, damn it."

"We've already seen our combat, and after combat, we get drunk. That's the rule."

"And talking of combat, Overman Elmo, we didn't see you down planetside."

"Rance took the command. There was no reason for me to stick my neck out."

"Some of us didn't have the option."

"What are you scum trying to say?"

"Just that we missed you, Overman Elmo."

"You all know that I've seen my share of fighting." He fingered the bald patches on his skull where the hair had long ago fallen out. "I've got a right to sit one out now and again." Renchett wasn't prepared to let it go. He had absolute contempt for anyone who wasn't always in the thick of the action. It seemed to be the compensation for any second thoughts he might have about his own single-minded bloodletting. "Maybe you've seen too much," Overman Elmo."