War Games (10 page)

But I’d had to laugh every time the newsholos ran another feature on her. There was much speculation about why she had renounced her nobility to become a guerrilla terrorist. Lots of psychological theories were bandied about. But the real reason was simple: she carried the same scars as I did; she’d known the same pain as a child. The same frenzies that had made me an orphan running away from my past had made her an ideological orphan—an expatriate from her father’s politics. You could seek revenge with political activism just as easily as with a sonic knife. Maybe it was sweeter that way, the hurt more deep and lingering. She had always been more devious than I.

But she’d kept our secret. She’d not betrayed me yet. But when the spooks caught her she would. They had techniques of extracting information. Foolproof techniques. Sometimes a little hard on the merchandise. Breakage was to be expected. My anonymity was safe only as long as Grychn could stay out of the hands of the spooks. Which wouldn’t be much longer.

Not if Kramr had his way.

Kramr had almost caught her twice before, but both times she’d managed to escape. It would be quite a coup for the spooks to capture her. Something that would generate lots of air time on the holos for them, Kramr didn’t want anything to queer the deal. So he came along to supervise the mission himself.

Grychn had been underground in the six months since her previous near-capture. They thought she mIght have flown the coop. Then a spook fieldman had seen her in an elven village. She’d been covertly observed for a while, in hopes she’d lead the spooks to Maizay or that he’d surface in her vicinity. But after two weeks of waiting with no sign of the elven leader, the spooks became antsy and decided to take her alone. A bird in the hand, and all that. No telling when she’d go underground again.

A mission was launched.

That meant four hoverbuses converging on the village, with a cargo of 160 veteran combrids, and two swift gunships flying cover. All to apprehend one leftist radical. Plenty big medicine. Someone was going to die for their trouble. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t me. And when they did catch her, someone was going to be in plenty of trouble. That someone was me. I had two choices: make sure she escaped, or kill her myself. Some choices.

I leaned back in acceleration harness and closed my eyes. There had to be some way out. If only Kramr hadn’t come along to supervise the mission personally. If anything happened, he’d get suspicious. There was nothing more dangerous than a suspicious spook. Especially if you had something in your past you wanted to keep hidden. He’d poke around until he found some smoke. Then he’d fan the embers to flame. I had to come up with a perfect plan. In the next few minutes.

Images from the past rose in my mind. I let them. Better now than later. You can’t be a fugitive from your memories. They always catch up. I’d been running for ten years. I knew there was no escape from dreams. But you could choose whether they’d be day- or night-dreams. Daydreams were easier to stand.

Two marble statues leered at me from a pool of crimson water. White flesh hardened. Eyes dulled, as scarlet water brightened. I ran over to the pool. Too late. Their faces were already stiff. As hard as I might knead with my fingers, I couldn’t deform smiling lips of white acrylic. I imagined laughter echoing down empty corridors. I looked up. Another face watched mine. Its eyes studied mine seriously, with a sulfur gaze. Pale lips spoke softly. A hand took mine. We ran. Mocking voices resonated inside my own hollow skull.

A BATTLE GONG
sounded.

Visors were lowered and the acceleration harness was unsnapped. We lined up four abreast in the aisle, facing toward the rear of the bus.

Drop hatches blew. Yellow hydrocarbon mist swirled into the cabin and frosted on its inside surfaces. Two gunships peeled off and began spraying the forest below with pulsar fire. That meant there was no clearing. We were going to have to jump through the forest. Sometimes the gunships could clear the area of booby traps. Usually they couldn’t. But maybe there wouldn’t be any elf snipers waiting for us.

The four combrids nearest the hatch jumped into the opening and disappeared. The rest of us shuffled down the aisle until it was our turn to jump. Nobody spoke. There was nothing to say. It was just another mission. Soon the open hatch was before me. Sulfurous fog billowed in around its edges. I stepped into the mist and dropped downward. Too fast. I nudged a flicker from the gravtubes on both sides of my pack. Concentric rings of p-grav flared down, slowing my fall. Crystalline forest waited below. Filamentous gems waved in the wind. It was cold. At least a hundred below.

I locked around. No wonder we were called Ghost Cavalry. That’s just what we looked like as we dropped through the murk—ghosts. Camofilm adjusted itself to blend perfectly with the surrounding mists. We appeared as vague outlines sinking slowly into fog, like shed skins cast to the wind. Even my eyes were fooled by camofilm. But not my sensors. Infrared lenses showed heat dissipating into the surrounding cold like tongues of flame. Gravmeters displayed twin cones of pseudograv fanning down from thruster tubes. Magnetometers detected deflections in the planetary flux caused by the metal components in our battle dress. Sonar and radar pinged from solid surfaces. Olfactometers sniffed lingering traces of oxygen. I “saw” four equally spaced hoverbuses flying a circular drop pattern. Combrids streamed from their bellies and drifted silently toward the ground. A one-kilometer-diameter circle would be ringed by combrids when we all had landed. If we all landed safely. We hoped the elves didn’t have electronic sensors. Camofilm could fool unaided eyes. A naive hope. Forest reached out.

Then I was drifting through the trees. It was dangerous to jump blindly into the crystalline forest. Sometimes elves left nasty little surprises waiting in the upper terraces. So I prepared myself to be blown away, No such luck. Crystal leaves crumbled to dust as I touched them. Glass branches shattered into glittering shards. Filaments broke into needles that danced in the air. Bare skin would have been sliced to shreds. But combat armor was impervious to even sharper edges. A wry thought occurred to me: I had just broken thousands of credits’ worth of radiacrystals. Enough to make me a rich man on Earth.
C’est la vie.

I passed through the upper terraces and dropped past slender trunks devoid of leaves and branches, before crashing through the underbrush. I hit the ground with my knees flexed, rolled once, and came back up on my feet with my weapon ready and helmet sensors turned to max gain. But the only movement was that of other combrids landing.

The Gunny spoke in my mind, taking roll. I checked off and listened as the others did in turn. No casualties yet. The Gunny ordered us to advance.

I walked slowly through a forest of glass. Vichsn was on one side, Peppardine was on the other. Leaves shattered underfoot. Sensors probed ahead, searching for booby traps. But the woods were clean. That meant the elf village was probably civilian. Elf guerrillas didn’t bother to protect civilian villages. They knew noncombatants were safe from attack by us. Frog help us if we accidentally killed a noncom. It was good propaganda for the rebels if we did.

The nights weren’t so good if there wasn’t a little killing during the day. Nothing like a smoking corpse to elevate sex-hormone levels. Lethality and libido were linked. If combrids didn’t get to smoke a few elves, their night games sometimes turned a little rough. Nothing nasty for me, thank you. Straight debauchery would do nicely. I’d played all the S&M games I ever wanted to before I left home. I still carried the scars to prove it, although they were all on the inside now. Everyone in the company knew it would be nasty that night if we didn’t do some shooting. So I was hoping someone would get carried away and accidentally kill Grychn before she could be captured. A good firefight would provide the perfect opportunity.

The first shirt must have read my thoughts, because his voice whispered in my mind: “And remember, meat, no shooting umess we’re fired on first. I don’t want any accidental casualties. The sinister holofaxes are burning their tubes already about all the innocent victims you lovely folk produce. Leave us only shoot guerrillas today.”

That meant one of us was going to die before we could shoot back. Elf snipers didn’t miss their first shot. But only after they’d shot first could you prove they were guerrillas.

The village became visible ahead. Clusters of iridescent spheres budded from the tree trunks just below, where the crystal foliage began. Each sphere had a round hole through its bottom surface. Elves clung upside down from the sides of the crystal bubbles, gripping the smooth surface with treefrog fingers and toes. Their wings hung limp between ankles and wrists. Gray fur glistened with hydrocarbon dew. It seemed incredible they had once been human—or that their ancestors had included humans, along with half a dozen other species. But mostly human DNA made up their genes. The miracles of modem science.

Elves watched with passive lemur eyes as we approached. Other eyes peered at us from within the openings of spheres. I imagined I also saw the blunt muzzles of autopulsars moving in synchrony with my cautious advance. Sweat beaded along my spine. At any moment, I expected photonuclear beams to stab out. I could almost smell the odor of burnt flesh. My flesh. I didn’t much like the smell.

So I held my assault rifle at ready. I wanted to be able to spray back a burst of fire. If the elf sniper happened to pick me out first, it wouldn’t matter—I’d be dead. But I was dogged if I was going to be his second target. I wanted to make sure he didn’t get a second shot. Bad enough to lose your buddy; that meant one less bedmate. No sense getting yourself shot; that meant no more bed games at all. No point dying if you could help it.

I intended to help it.

I even had an operational plan on what to do about Grychn. As soon as she flushed, I’d start a firefight, claiming I was fired on. Maybe someone would shoot her by mistake. But I had to wait until she revealed herself, or she might escape in the confusion. That would be OK, too. As soon as I saw an armed elf, I’d smoke him. That should stir things up.

We slowly closed around the elf village. It was about half a klick in diameter. Though I could not see through the trees to the opposite side of the village, my other sensors told me it was entirely ringed by combrids. Grychn would have to be lucky to escape, or to get a little help. Or someone was going to have to kill her to keep her from being captured.

The Gunny must have read my thoughts again. He spoke in our minds: “Looks like we’ll have to flush her. Every third in line advance and begin searching the village, bubble by bubble. The rest of you stay in position. I don’t want the renegade to escape. But don’t kill her under any circumstances. The spook wants her alive more than he wants you alive. There’s certain things he wants her to tell him. So take her alive.” He left unsaid what the spook would do to anyone impious enough to kill his plaything.

Vichsn went on into the village, leaving Peppardine and me behind. She and the other searchers began shimmying up tree trunks to peer into the openings of the spheres clustered around the glass boles. Elves watched silently. But they didn’t move. They knew the rest of us had our assault rifles trained on them as we covered our buddies. They thought we wouldn’t need much of an excuse to open fire on them. They were right. At least about me. I kept hoping for an excuse to start a firefight. It wouldn’t take much to change them from simple elven peasants to nasty guerrillas—a sudden movement, a reflection from a metal surface, a glowing pulsar tube. But I saw nothing suspicious enough to let me start firing. Not with the spook so close.

Kramr stood in the middle of the search parties, watching impassively as each tree was checked. He held his face immobile, but I knew he must be excited. I could guess how badly he wanted to capture this renegade terrorist. She’d been an annoyance to the spooks for too long. They weren’t a forgiving sort.

I saw his eyes light up. I followed his gaze. There was a flurry of movement in a tree, followed by the flash of a pulsar. A combrid fell to the ground amid a shower of glass shards. Smoke rose from his body. For a fragile instant, everything was still.

Then all Cleveland broke loose.

Bursts of pulsar beams stabbed into the elven village as combrids along the periphery began firing. When a combrid fell, the area automatically became a free-fire zone. All the elves in the immediate vicinity were instantly reclassified to combatant status.

Elves dropped out of their trees like dried flies. Fur smoldered around crisp pulsar wounds. There was mad scrambling among the treetops as elves sought cover. I fired several short bursts at gliding elves and smiled as they crumpled and fell in flames. It was more fun than the grouse shoots my parents used to host on our estate on Earth. And in all the confusion, perhaps Grychn would escape or get killed by accident. Either one would be OK with me.

We couldn’t keep the elves bottled up inside our circle— there were too many of them. More and more succeeded in breaching our line and losing themselves in the forest behind our backs.

Then I noticed a different shape passing overhead.

At the same time, Kramr yelled in my cortex: “That’s her! That’s the frogging renegade! Don’t shoot her down. I want her alive. You, Detrs. After her. Don’t let her get away. But don’t shoot her, either.”

Grychn was already in the forest behind me. I was going to have to change my plan. The solution came to me in the proverbial flash. Now was my chance.

I took off after her. You could make good time on Titan by taking long, skimming jumps. In the weak gravity, hundred-meter leaps were easy. But Grychn was airborne. I couldn’t see how I was supposed to catch her without shooting her down. She was wearing pseudowings, which enabled her to fly almost as well as the elves. Polymeric wings stretched between her ankles and wrists. Gravcloth was sandwiched between two layers of surface-effect fabric, creating a wing that provided internal buoyancy combined with an augmented airfoil, as air squirted off both surfaces, providing forward thrust. By undulating her body, she could increase this thrust. When a tree got in her way, she reached out and grabbed the trunk, clambered up it as fast as she could go, then launched herself into the air again. I was forced to follow on the ground, as I couldn’t use my thrusters in the forest. I’d risk breaking my neck if I used them among the trees. So I had to trail the fleeing guerrilla on foot. I could easily keep her in sight—she too was slowed by the thick timber. I didn’t think she could lose me. But I couldn’t catch up to her, either. That suited me fine. I’d follow her for a bit and then say I’d lost her. Gave it the old college try, but failed to catch her.

Behind, the spook followed. That complicated things a little. I wasn’t going to be able to sandbag now. He’d know if I was purposely laggard. I heard Kramr’s curses as he labored to keep up. His modifications were cosmetic—he only looked like a combrid; he lacked our augmented muscles that gave us four times normal strength. Not to mention our dual nervous systems. With Kramr following, I dared not let her escape, nor could I shoot her. Either one would cast suspicion on me.

I chased the girl through about ten klicks of forest, slowly narrowing the distance between us. She looked back and saw how close I was, then sprayed a clip of pulsar quanta in my direction. I quickly ducked behind a tree. Luckily, her aim was erratic. The beams only scattered foliage around me. But I made my point. I established that she was armed and dangerous. I followed at a more discreet distance. She must have guessed I was under orders not to shoot; she made no attempt to use natural cover. But she knew the lay of the land. She must have some plan of escape.

Before long, I figured out what she was trying to do. She was a clever little toad. But I was even more devious. I knew what I had to do. And it almost worked.

We had slowly gained altitude, maybe a couple of thousand meters. She turned and fired at me again. I hit the dirt. Pulsar beams cracked overhead, where I’d been standing an instant before. Her aim was improving. She could have fried me if she’d fired again, a little lower. But she didn’t. She had another plan. She only wanted to slow my pursuit.

Ahead, the forest ended on the edge of a cliff. Grychn glided to the last of the trees, grabbed on to one, and climbed to the top. She leaped into the air over the cliff and flew away.

I made it to the edge of the forest in one jump. A deep chasm about a klick across and a half-klick deep lay ahead of me. The floor of the canyon was forested, but its walls were sheer cliffs of ice and rock. Grychn was sailing across on outstretched pseudowings. Just as I’d hoped. I couldn’t follow her on foot. No way. That left me one choice. She’d made a mistake. I had her. I laughed out loud, pleased as a plump lizard.