"The corp said they weren't."
"In which case we're in deep shit," Jones said. "If they fight like that and they're smart with it there's no telling what they'll throw at us next."
"You think I don't know that?" Amersy grumbled.
"So why did they dump this place?" Kibbo said.
"Who knows?" Amersy said. "They still use machinery. You saw the lights in Roseport last night. Our communications links are being screwed by their jamming. And the spaceport runway was intact. One of the engineers I talked to this morning said the spaceplanes they found in the hangar were still flightworthy. Somebody's been maintaining them."
"So there's some real people left? So what? That doesn't mean there's anything here for us."
Lawrence agreed with Kibbo, though not for the same reasons. He didn't think the new-natives were animals. They might not have quite the same behavior pattern as humans, but they were certainly sentient. Exactly where that put them on the evolutionary scale he wasn't sure.
Captain Lyaute got everybody into the vehicles and ordered them back to Roseport's spaceport. When he called in their return to the governor, he was informed that all the similar exploratory missions had found the same thing. The cities were occupied by extremely hostile new-natives, while the factories were abandoned and decaying. No real dialogue with the new-natives had been established. The admiral and Simon Roderick didn't know what to do next. They were considering sending a starship to rendezvous with the big captured asteroid that was in a two-thousand-kilometer polar orbit. Sections of the planet's space-based industry were obviously still functioning, although a lot of the stations and microgee modules had been destroyed when the induction webs were eliminated. If nothing else, the starships could take the surviving orbital industrial facilities back to Earth; that would show some kind of gain on the balance sheet.
In the meantime, the governor advised, they were probably going to boost the platoons straight back up to orbit, although there were worries about the availability of hydrogen at the spaceports that had already been secured. Roseport spaceport did have several storage tanks full, but the refinery itself had been switched off. The engineers were going over it now to see if they could restart production.
Lawrence drove one of the jeeps, with half of 435NK9 as his passengers. They were eighth in the long convoy as it wound back along the route it had taken to the factory. It was slow going; the road was thoroughly overgrown with tiger-grass and creepers, although there was evidence that some kind of vehicles still used it occasionally. Lawrence remembered the Great Loop Highway back on Thallspring and quietly wished for something that clear and level again.
The terrain they were driving through was hilly, a landscape of crumpled valleys and short, awkward slopes. Tall trees thrived along the upper slopes of the ridges, projecting impossibly slim spires above the forest roof. Topped with fluffy violet leaf plumes, they looked like the battle pennants of some medieval army marching to war. Down in the valley floors the trees were fat bruisers, nearly spherical, their gray-silver bark bristling with hard, venomous thorns to repel wood-drillers and acidlice. The upper half of their swollen boles sprouted concentric circles of whip branches, shaking small leathery leaves in the breeze to produce a continuous discordant clattering. They grew together in an almost solid fence, pushing and straining at each other as decades-long battles were fought for ground and light. Those that lost and died were riddled with holes as animals burrowed their nests into the rotting wood. Swarms of fungus leeched to the crumbling bark, producing a glistening rampage of color as they wept glutinous fluids saturated with spores. Ferns and tuber leaves dominated the dim floor of the forest, banishing tiger-grass and bushes, while carnivorous coilwraiths hung from forks in the overhead branches to catch insects amid their wriggling fronds.
The road reached the first swath of forest a couple of kilometers from the factory. Its builders had tried to avoid the trees where possible, curving it around along valley walls or letting it run beside the fast-flowing streams. As a consequence, the lead vehicle could rarely see more than two or three hundred meters ahead.
Lawrence frowned as they began to slow. He couldn't see any reason for it. The road was a mess, sure, but it didn't pose too much of a problem for their vehicles. They weren't even in the forest yet; it was running along the side of them fifty meters away. Up ahead there was a sharp curve around the base of a small hill. But there was no barrier, nothing blocking the track.
"What's happening?" he asked over the command link. They were almost stationary now.
"Something up ahead. The ground's moving."
"Moving?" Lawrence didn't understand.
"Can you hear that?" Nic asked.
Lawrence braked to a halt. "Hear what?" He ordered his AS to turn up the Skin's audio sensitivity. That was when he realized the jeep was shaking slightly.
"That!" Nic insisted.
The Skin's receptors were picking up a bass rumbling.
"Six-nine-three and Seven-six-two, deploy forward with carbines," Captain Lyaute ordered. "Five-four-one, watch our tail."
Skins were jumping down from the jeeps, moving forward in a double buddy formation. Squat muzzles had emerged from their arm carapaces.
Lawrence didn't like the situation at all. None of his briefings had mentioned this being an earthquake zone.
The herd of macrorexes lumbered around the side of the mountain, a wall of beasts over eight meters high, with the smallest weighing in at ten tons. Unlike Earth's dinosaurs, they didn't have long necks and tails. Their bodies were husky cylinders fifteen meters in length, with three sets of legs. It was an arrangement that allowed them to move in a sequence of synchronized jumps, arching their spine so that a wave motion rippled down their dorsal column, each set of legs bounding forward in unison. A flattened heart-shaped head rose and fell as the body undulated, swinging occasionally from side to side as far as the stumpy neck permitted. The end of the jaw was caged by three curving tusks longer than a man's arm, two pointing up, one down; they opened and closed in a steady rhythm. The sides of the head swept together in a series of bladelike triangular fins that looked as if they could cut through steel. Their eyes were invisible somewhere among the sharply crinkled bone ridges of the upper skull.
Now that the macrorexes were in full view, their trumpeting cries split the air. Shrubs and bushes simply detonated under the pounding impact of their legs.
Lawrence thought yesterday's drugs must still be kicking through his blood cells. He remembered the giant beasts from his briefing files, but couldn't really grasp that forty or fifty of the monsters were coming at him in a motion that resembled a perpetual skidding crash.
"You've got to be fucking kidding," Nic groaned. There was real fear in his voice.
The Skins out in front of the jeeps opened fire. Lawrence couldn't even tell if the bullets were penetrating the filthy ash-gray hides. They certainly weren't having any effect The trumpeting rose to a crescendo, and Lawrence realized the macrorexes were only 150 meters away. Nothing was going to stop them.
Captain Lyaute was yelling incoherently in the command communication link. Someone else was calling desperately for helicopter support. Skins were running hard, ripping through the cloying tigergrass as the macrorexes pounded toward them. Lawrence jammed down hard on the accelerator and pulled the wheel over. Tires spun wildly in the greasy soil. There was absolutely no way he was going to be able to loop around a full 180 degrees before the front rank of macrorexes reached them. "Hold on," he shouted, and sent the jeep skidding and bouncing toward the edge of the forest Out of the corner of his eye he could see a couple of macrorexes charging along the treeline. Smaller trunks were pulverized into a cascade of splinters as their huge armored legs plowed into them. Long whip branches were severed cleanly by the fin-blades on the edges of the beasts' heads, twirling away through the air.
The first rank of the herd caught up with the fleeing Skins. Jaw tusks flashed behind the slowest, puncturing his carapace without even slowing. He was tossed aside, fountaining blood as he cartwheeled through space. A couple more were overtaken, vanishing below the thundering legs. The tusks chomped down again. Screams reverberated along the communication link, cut off with horrifying swiftness. The macrorexes were moving at a phenomenal speed. A cool part of Lawrence's mind knew they'd never be able to keep it up for long, not even with this planet's oxygen feeding them. They must have started the charge just seconds before meeting the company.
The corpulent trees were only fifteen meters ahead of him. His view jounced about wildly as the suspension thrummed over rocks and hidden furrows. He turned the wheel savagely, aiming for a gap that was probably wide enough to take the jeep. To his right, the macrorexes were closing fast amid a debris plume of shattered timber.
That was when he caught sight of something sitting on the neck of one of them. A crouched profile of a man-leopard hybrid, forelimbs windmilling with wild enthusiasm. Mouth flung wide in an insane jubilant laugh.
That Couldn't Be—
"Lawrence!" Amersy shrieked.
Lawrence yanked at the wheel. The front fender of the jeep clipped a spiky, bloated trunk, knocking them violently to the right. Lawrence fought the motion, Skin muscles and power steering forcing the wheels around. Inertia shunted them through the gap at a wide angle. One tire burst as it slammed into a rock. Lawrence kept the accelerator hard down, sending them plunging farther under the trees. Whip branches slapped across the windshield. Then there was a giant tree dead ahead. Lawrence thrust his other heel down on the brake, which made no appreciable difference to the chaotic rush. The jeep's front bumper hit the tree full on, sending everybody tumbling forward. Skin carapaces hardened, protecting the vulnerable bodies from the worst of the impact "Out!" Lawrence ordered. "Move it."
It was as though the crash were still happening. The sound of disintegrating wood grew louder. They could barely balance on the shaking ground.
Lawrence staggered onward, hoping to hell he was heading in the right direction. His orientation was screwed up. The AS display grid was out of focus.
Three meters behind him, a giant leg descended vertically on the jeep, crushing it into the soil. The shock wave sent Lawrence sprawling. Then the pillar of flesh was lifting. He managed to shift his helmet so the sensors showed him the compacted wreck, just before the beast's midlegs streaked down. Lawrence crawled forward as fast as he could. The final set of legs landed, flipping the jeep through ninety degrees. It stood on its ruined tail as the legs disappeared up into the sky, then slowly toppled back. Several shredded whip branches rained down on top of it Lawrence twisted around. His nine-millimeter pistol had deployed from one forearm, while the carbine was sticking out of the other. He swung his arms in fast arcs, covering the trail of devastation the macrorex had left in its wake. Targeting graphics slid around the scene on semiautonomous seeker mode, hunting for any conceivable threat. Now would be a perfect time for ground troops to finish off the Skins. Neither Lawrence nor his AS could find a new-native.
His weapons retracted. He could still hear the herd thundering away, but the loudest noise right now was his yammering heart. The medical grid display showed just how much adrenaline was coursing through his blood. Beneath Ms Skin, his skin was already chilling as the immediate danger faded out.
He called up the telemetry grid, checking on the Skins under his command. Everyone, it seemed, had survived the jeep's madcap dash. Looking around, he could see them picking themselves up. Dust churned through the air, glowing ocher in the bright sunbeams pouring through the broken forest canopy.
"Sarge?" Lawrence asked. "You intact?"
"Holy shit, man," Ntoko spat. "Yeah, I guess so." It was the lead vehicles that had taken the brunt of the macrorex charge. Too close to get out of the way, either they'd raced into the forest like Lawrence, or the Skins had abandoned them to take their chances on foot. The jeeps toward the rear of the column had enough time to turn and drive clear of the rampage, though most of the trucks were too bulky and slow to maneuver like that. In total, four jeeps and one truck had survived. Over twenty Skins had perished, either mauled by tusks or trampled to death. There were a number of other casualties, as well.
One of the macrorexes had been felled, the victim of intense carbine fire from three Skins who made their stand from the edge of the forest. They'd managed to shatter its enormous skull. Even so, raw inertia had kept it slithering forward until it crunched into one of the bulky trees, knocking the trunk almost horizontal. It had plowed up a broad furrow of slick black earth behind it Captain Lyaute set up a field camp on the side of the forest. There were fifty-four survivors, of whom seventeen were injured; another five had damaged Skin. Two platoons were assigned to gather up what weapons and equipment they could find amid the trail of destruction left by the macro-rexes. Communications with the spaceport were patchy. There seemed to be something wrong with the satellite relay. Lyaute's urgent request for airborne evacuation was tamed down flat. Two helicopters were already down. Other scout companies had been attacked. The governor was keeping the remaining helicopters assigned to guarding the spaceport.
A platoon dispatched to find out what had happened to the macrorexes reported that they were now milling about quietly a kilometer down the road. There was no sign of the new-natives who'd been spotted riding them.
Lyaute announced they were going to pile the wounded onto the remaining vehicles and make their way directly back to the spaceport. It was going to be a slow trip: some of the injuries were bad, and everyone else was going to walk escort. It had taken two and a half hours to drive out to the factory, and it was midday now; he estimated they should be able to make it back for nightfall. Lawrence knew that was bullshit.
"We'll take point, sir," Ntoko told the captain. "Scout out any trouble lying ahead of you."
Lyaute agreed quickly enough. None of the other sergeants volunteered their platoons.
Lawrence switched to a secure link and asked the sergeant: "Why? Those dinosaur monsters were only the start; they won't be the last assault today, no way. We'll get hit by whatever it is they've got out there."
Ntoko was walking along the line of salvaged weapons. He picked up a couple of rotary feed grenade launchers and handed one to Lawrence. "Maybe, maybe not" His voice was quiet and intent. "Look at it this way. The captain's just given us the pick of the weapons. We can deploy in a decent formation so nobody takes us by surprise. And we'll be a good distance out in front."