War Games (8 page)

That’s why you took it real slow when you could. You wanted to give your sensors lots of time to probe the area in front of you. You didn’t want to blunder into any little surprises.

We crossed the clearing in a zigzag fashion, avoiding buried mines, gas pots, and bug bombs. Yes, they were there. Fortunately, none detonated. The surrounding lethality suggested there might be a real elven camp nearby. There would be fewer booby traps among the trees. You were pretty safe from them there if you resisted the temptation to walk on a trail. But there were other dangers in the forest.

I entered the trees a few meters ahead of the rest. I knew they would be scanning the forest, hoping my entrance would stir up something. But it was quiet. I walked slowly and carefully. The trees were about a meter in diameter and stood several hundred meters high. They were composed of aggregates of oxide crystals and polymeric hydrocarbons: emerald, tourmaline, sapphire, amethyst, aquamarine, and chrysoberyl matrix complexed with polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polybutadiene, polyisoprene, and a dozen other natural polymers. They “grew” by continually adding complexes to their substance. The complexes naturally tended to form tubular structures, so growth occurred in a linear fashion, at the ends of the tubes. They would have collapsed in a one-G field, but could be free-standing in the lesser gravity of Titan. They were “alive” by the standard criteria: individual complexes were organized into a greater whole and kept in organization by the expenditure of energy of crystallization, thereby conserving entropy. They reproduced by direct “budding” at the distal ends of their tubules, casting “seed” complexes to the wind.

Radiacrystal was the most expensive “wood” in the system–and the most useful. Our entire technology had become dependent on it. Titan was one of the few places where it could be grown outside of the laboratory. The trouble was you had to grow lots of individual crystals to get one that was suitable. Radiacrystal was an electromagnetic transducer/multiplier. Oxide-polymer matrix acted as an amorphous semiconductor. And electric current passed through radiacrystal would produce resonation in the crystalline structure, which caused minute amounts of the oxide to be converted into energy. The type of energy radiated by the crystal depended on the arrangement of the crystalline complex and could only be determined empirically, but included gravitational, magnetic, thermal, photal, and almost all other frequencies of radiation. Crystal trees were felled, hauled to mills, cut into sections and shipped to Earth. There they were tested and calibrated. Less than one percent were efficient enough to be used. The rest were scrapped. The crystals were fine-tuned by being precisely cut into various sizes and shapes. Elves had been developed to work in the forests of Titan. It was too expensive to house, feed, and supply air to nonhybrid workers. Now the elves had become uppity. They wanted a bigger cut of the pie. Radiacrystals were worth big bucks. They wanted their fair share. You couldn’t blame them. But that didn’t mean you were going to let them get away with it.

If not for the elves, the crystalline forests of Titan could have been quite a tourist attraction. Swirling hydrocarbon mist condensed on the facets of leaves–liquid pentane and butane dripped from their undersides. On the rare occasions the mist lifted, Saturn-light blazed from billions of gemstones embedded in transparent plastic in a myriad of dazzling colors.

But there were elves.

No tourist in his right mind would visit Titan for pleasure.

And I should have been more concerned about what lurked in concealment within the forest than I was with admiring its unique beauty.

Too late I heard Vichsn’s warning whisper in my mind. Already I felt strong legs cradling me. Long carbide claws clicked against my armor. A furry body embraced itself around my head.

I did manage to call myself a flyblown dumb son-of –an-elf before I froze, holding every muscle as still as I could. I tried not to move at all. If I did, I’d be dead in a few millisecs.

The most dangerous of elven traps were airbears. One had just fallen on me, clinging around my head. They were creatures bioformed from Terran koalas. But their modifications were more than those required to adapt them to the environment of Titan. Sure, they had respiratory and digestive functions switched like all Titanians: they breathed their food and ate their oxygen. Titanian lungs extracted hydrocarbons to be used as substrate for oxidation. Titanians derived elemental oxygen from the enzymatic degradation of crystal complexes in their alimentary tracks. They had plasmids in their cells with the coding for enzymes to convert methane and heavier hydrocarbons into carbohydrate. Otherwise their biochemistry was not much different from standard Terran; they just got the raw materials in a different fashion.

But elven genosurgeons possessed a sense of the macabre. For instead of storing free oxygen bound in brown adipose tissue, as did other Titanian creatures, airbears secreted it in distensible bladders that trailed from their backs. And they had eel bioelectricity organs in the membranes of their oxygen bladders.

They were, in effect, living bombs.

Pure oxygen exploded just as violently in the hydrogen/methane air of Titan as flammable gas would in the oxygen-rich air of Earth.

Airbears’ heavy bodies were almost counterbalanced by their oxygen-filled bladders. They floated among the upper branches of the crystal forest, browsing on buds and leaves of crystalline oxides. Carbide teeth ground the gems to powder. Plastic matrix passed through their gut and became feces, binding the silicon, aluminum, beryllium, iron, chromium, calcium, magnesium, and boron residues left after oxygen was extracted. They were perfectly harmless as long as they stayed up in the trees. But if a combrid, or anything else with unaltered Terran metabolism, should pass below them, they immediately let go of the branch they were clinging to and dropped to the ground. It seems they were attracted to free oxygen. Our higher body temperatures caused us to lose minute traces of pure oxygen, which boiled through both protective monomer and armor. Airbears thought we were walking dessert. They clung to whomever happened to be below them.

As it happened, that was me.

Airbears actually were gentle creatures. They didn’t normally hurt anything. But they were easily startled. The elven genosurgeons made them that way.

You were OK if you could slowly extricate yourself from their grasp. But if you scared them, they involuntarily discharged their electricity organs. This both disrupted oxygen bladders and provided a spark to ignite the contents of the bladders. The air exploded as hydrocarbon atmosphere burned with pure oxygen. The resulting concussion was relatively minor–umess you happened to be the one standing at ground zero. Then it was enough to flatten your combat armor like a crushed beer can. The flesh inside tended to take on a look of undifferentiated protoplasmic jelly.

I saw furry lips pressed against my visor, then a rough tongue scratched across the surface as the airbear tasted lingering traces of elemental oxygen. I didn’t dare move. Let the creature get settled, I said to myself. To the others: “Don’t come any closer, meat. And no sudden moves, please. I don’t want to be smeared into pulp.” Not that I had to worry about the others getting too close. They knew there probably were more airbears overhead. No one was anxious to be in my predicament. And if they were too close when my airbear detonated, they’d suffer the same fate as me.

I was desperately trying to devise a plan that would gently extricate myself from the bear’s hug, when I saw movement at the edge of vision. Someone was coming toward me.

“Stay clear, frog it!” I said as emphatically as I dared. They said even voice vibrations could spook an airbear. But I took the chance and vocalized anyway; it wasn’t any fun to curse silently.

“Hold still,” came a voice in my mind, “I know what I’m doing.” I recognized that voice right away. I’d been remembering snatches of conversation all day.

Peppardine approached slowly, walking with barely perceptible steps. Despite my situation, I almost had another testosterone storm. Combat armor fit skintight. Hers did her body credit–smooth musculature, firm belly, taut breasts, long, supple legs. She moved with lithe grace–they must have used considerable feline DNA in her xenogene complement. After what seemed like a long, hot summer on the bright side of Mercury, the chimera stood beside me.

I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out slowly. Water misted on the oxygen bubble surrounding my nose and mouth. I saw my face reflected from the inside of my visor; sweat beaded from my forehead.

The airbear began to suckle on my visor.

I sure as Akron hoped the chimera knew what she was doing.

She did.

Peppardine stood behind me, moving in close enough for our bodies to touch. Even through two layers of combat armor, I felt her nipples brush against my back and her pelvis press into my buttocks. She reached around carefully with both arms. I saw a curved claw slide out of a finger. A blue drop of liquid clung to its tip.

I knew her helmet visor was thrown back. She had little need for artificial sensors. The viper pit organs in her eyebrows scanned the bear, outlining the warmer tracks where blood flowed in vessels beneath its skin. Her claw neared the bear’s arm, smoothly passed through its fur, and slipped beneath skin to pierce a vein. So sharp were her claws, the bear never felt the prick in its skin. Neuropeptide coursed like blue fire into its bloodstream. I watched with fascination; the peptides carried by Peppardine’s claws had been the subject of several hours’ speculative fantasy by me. I wondered if the airbear felt the same euphoria I would have. I decided it did; its neurophysiology had not been significantly modified. The overdose of endorphine quickly went to the airbear’s brain; its grip weakened, then relaxed. It floated face up in the air beside me. The chimera came around and held it gently between her hands. Her claws had retracted.

“Though unconscious from endorphine,” she said, “it could still reflexively discharge its spark.” She pulled the lax body lower, gently, bringing its face close to hers. Its eyes stared wide open. The chimera pursed her lips. She nodded her head. A glob of blue spit formed on her lips, hung for a moment, then dropped like a sapphire tear. The droplet seemed to hesitate as it hit her oxygen bubble’s surface-effect membrane, but only flattened a little, then passed through. It splattered into the bear’s eye, spreading into a blue film to cover the conjunctiva. The bear’s fur shook briefly with fasciculations, then was still. Legs hung limp from the body. Oxygen bladders hung suspended over the body.

“Endolepsin laces my saliva,” Peppardine said. “A drop in the eye is enough to paralyze every nerve. Its bioelectricity cells can never fire now.” She turned to me and smiled. “You owe me a favor now. When can I collect?” Again the seductive note. Would she deliver this time? I wondered. Then a shiver ran up my spine. I looked at the airbear, paralyzed with euphoria, soon to die of pleasure. Playing with her claws would be a dangerous game. She could either please or punish. Her kiss could either soothe or kill. I remembered stories of depraved frenzy hidden behind the walls of paralyzed force of one of Nyssa’s floating towers–golden chains, spider-silk ropes, shining knives with jeweled blades, braided whips, rituals of torment in the night–and a sudden burst of violence ending it all. Yes, a very dangerous game. A game I should enjoy.

“Come on, Detrs,” Vichsn said from behind. “Get moving. We don’t have all day.”

I turned to look at her, but her face was hidden behind the mirror surface of her helmet visor. I’d thought I’d heard something in her voice. Something that pleased me. Maybe she was worried about Peppardine and me. Fine. Let her worry. If I had my way, she’d soon have something to worry about.

“Let’s go, Detrs,” the Gunny said. “And be a little more careful this time.”

I was more careful, but we didn’t encounter any more airbears.

We moved slowly through the crystal forest. Broken shards of shed leaves lay scattered on the ground. Sometimes a crunching sound was heard when someone accidentally stepped on one. When that happened, we all froze, expecting to see flashes of pulsar fire from concealed snipers. But none came until we approached the elves’ abandoned camp.

All that remained of it were the skeletons of criss-crossed saplings that had been their lean-to shelters, with smoldering cinders of oxide crystals in front, where their campfires had been.

The Gunny had us disperse around the periphery. Combrids scattered from tree to tree, using the trunks for cover, before finally taking positions at various vantage points. We watched the deserted camp for a long time. Sometimes elves left nasty surprises. Especially if they had sufficient warning before they left.

I cursed the spooks at Corps Intelligence as I waited. They were safe in their spook houses in orbit around Titan. When one of their sensors buzzed, we were the ones sent into the forest for target practice. Then I cursed the Lord Generals of High Command for good measure.

Everything stayed quiet. There was no detectable movement in the camp. Helmet sensors showed only an ebbing infrared glow where campfires cooled.

Finally, the Gunny had six of us advance, keeping the rest of the platoon in concealment. As before, I was on the point; Vichsn and Trinks flanked me, but were a little behind. Three other combrids followed.

As I entered the camp, I scanned the surrounding forest carefully. Everything remained quiet. Sensing fields were not disturbed. But drops of sweat had formed along my back. Something was wrong. I’d learned a long time ago to trust my intuition. I knew we were walking into a trap, but there wasn’t a mousy thing I could do to avoid it. We were bait, to force any elven snipers into revealing themselves. Target practice.

I was almost at the center of the camp when the trap was sprung. My intuition saved me. All six of us were well within the clearing. The elves probably figured six were all they were going to get. Did I say elves? Make that elf, as it turned out. Anyway, the hairs on the back of my neck rose. I hit the ground, yelling a warning to the others at the same time. But my warning came too late. As I was going down, I sensed a quick flurry of movement behind crystalline foliage, followed by a burst of automatic pulsar fire fanning out across the clearing. A bright pulse passed over me, where I had been millisecs before. But Trinks wasn’t quick enough. I saw him crumple as a pulsar quantum glanced off his body, partially deflected by his armor. His groans of pain sounded within my skull. But there wasn’t much I could do for him. I was more worried about keeping myself alive.