Voyage Across the Stars (44 page)

The deck appeared to be sheet metal. Ned toed it with his boot and grimaced when his suspicions were borne out. An air-cushion vehicle wasn’t likely to set off a mine by direct pressure, but that wouldn’t save this truck from a command-detonated or rod-fused mine. There ought to be floor protection—and not concrete, which would shatter into deadly shrapnel in the initial shock wave.

Tadziki, on Ned’s left, noticed Ned’s examination. The adjutant clung to the side of the truck with his right hand to steady himself. He raised the other hand and ostentatiously crossed his fingers while giving Ned a wry smile.

Ned looked down at the beach. Weed and occasional lumps that could be either animal or vegetable splotched the shingle, but there were relatively few signs of life. The broken tuff was too loose to anchor the shellfish and other sessile life-forms which would have populated a more resistant shore. One blob of protoplasm a meter in diameter was surrounded by hand-sized things which waved forelegs as the truck bellowed past.

When the trucks got to the fortified settlement, Ned might check the shore life more closely for old times’ sake, but the Spiders weren’t going to spring an ambush from the surf. Ned turned, leaning his back against the side of the truck so that he could view the corniche. He wished he’d worn body armor, to spread the jolts to his rib cage as well as for protection.

The cliffs generally ranged two to five meters above the beach’s high-tide mark. One tongue of particularly refractory rock thrust so far west that the trucks had to drive around in a vast explosion of spray. Rainbows ringed the vehicles, and the salty mist cooled Ned’s lungs refreshingly.

The trucks’ ground pressure was too high for them to skim the wave-tops as lighter air-cushion vehicles could have done. The headland would be dangerous during the journey from Quantock at high tide.

A number of gravel-bottomed ravines drove deep into the interior. They were dry now, but they certainly held raging torrents when they carried storm water to the sea. The barren, rocky soil would do nothing to slow runoff.

The gullies were an obvious means of approach for Spiders who wished to reach the seacoast while remaining below the horizon of active sensing devices. The colonists probably planted passive sound and motion sensors in the low spots, but such gear would take a beating during every downpour.

There was nothing sexy or exciting about the business of maintaining detection apparatus. Ned doubted whether the colonists had the discipline to keep it up as religiously as safety required.

The colonist manning the cab’s tribarrel raised his muzzles to a forty-five-degree angle and ripped off a burst. The cyan bolts were nearly the same hue as the sky, but their brilliance—pure energy instead of merely the diffraction of sunlight—made them stand out like pearls against linen.

All eight mercenaries in the leading truck—and probably the contingent in the second vehicle also—had their weapons raised and off safe. Lissea poked her semiautomatic 2-cm shoulder weapon out of the cab, searching for a target like the rest of them. The colonists were grinning.

The man beside Ned leaned over and shouted, “We’re just letting them know in Quantock that we’re back. Nothing to get concerned about.”

To underscore his words, he aimed his submachine gun skyward and fired half a magazine. The pistol-caliber bolts were pale compared to the tribarrel’s heavy charges. Empties spun from the ejection port, disks of half-molten plastic matrix whose burden of copper atoms had been converted to energy in the weapon’s chamber. The hot plastic reeked, and ozone from the discharges bit the air.

“I prefer flares,” Tadziki said with a cold disdain which probably passed right by the local.

“I told you, the Spiders don’t come around here,” the militiaman said.

Watford drove the truck up a concrete ramp and down into a vast polder whose floor was below water level at high tide. A seawall, anchored at either end on the cliff face, looped far into the ocean. Within the protected area were a series of square-edged ponds, some of them greenish or maroon from the crops grown there. Several hundred buildings sheltered beneath the corniche.

The polder was defended from enemies as well as the sea. Every hundred meters along the seawall and on the corniche across the chord was a fully enclosed turret. For weather protection, the weapons remained masked until use. From the size and design, Ned judged that each emplacement held a tribarrel in a fully automated or remotely controlled mounting.

People stepped outdoors as the trucks pulled up in front of the long building in the center of town. The sign over the main doors read Civic Hall.

The hall was a two-story structure ornamented with whimsically angled ‘exposed beams’ painted white against the pale blue of the rest of the facade. The whole Quantock community was decorated in pastels, and most of the residences had window boxes or planted borders.

Watford got out of the cab and started around the front of the vehicle. Herne Lordling leaped over the side and executed a perfect landing fall, but neither man was quick enough to beat Lissea to her own door handle.

Watford put his arm around the woman who ran up to greet him and said, “Mellie, let me introduce you to Captain Lissea Doormann, who commands the
Swift.
Lissea, this is Mellie Watford. Mellie came to Quantock as factor for a Xiphian import-export combine. She’s the finest import
ever
to Ajax Four.”

“We’ve been married a week,” Mellie said. She looked down and blushed at her husband’s flattery, but Ned noticed that her left hand squeezed Jon’s hip firmly before she transferred her attention to Lissea.

The two women could have passed for sisters. Both were petite with dark short hair and a sort of elfin vivacity. Only in their present garments did they differ strikingly: Mellie wore a peach-colored frock, similar to those of the other women in the crowd, while Lissea was in gray utilities over which she’d slung a bandolier of reloads for her 2-cm powergun.

The sun hung low on the seawall. Its glow further softened the colors of the buildings, blending them with the ruddy tuff of the cliff face.

“I’m not really, ah, dressed for a banquet,” Lissea said.

Ned exchanged bland glances with Tadziki. The captain, who led a score of the most deadly men in the galaxy, was embarrassed at not having a party dress.

“Come on home with me,” Mellie said. “I’m sure I’ve got something to fit you.” She caught Lissea’s hand and tugged her unresisting toward a fuchsia house next door to the civic building. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to meet another woman from off-planet, not that there’s anything . . .”

Jon Watford glanced after the women, then returned his attention to the remaining locals and visitors. “Well, gentlemen,” he said generally toward the mercenaries, “I think maybe a drink or three would be a good way to break the ice and start the celebration. Any takers?”

“Yee-ha!”
somebody shouted. Ned wasn’t sure who the enthusiast was, but a good hundred throats took up the call as the crowd surged toward the broad doors of the hall.

Six hours later, the gathering was a good-natured success. That surprised and pleased Ned, and it must have absolutely delighted Tadziki. Individual members of the
Swift’
s
complement talked, in the center of large groups of locals like the grit at the core of pearls. The mercenaries were able to boast in a way they’d never have dared do among their own kind—and the listeners loved it.

The funny thing was that so far as Ned could tell, about half the stories were true and the others were fantasy. The fantasies were generally less amazing than the unvarnished accounts— which were sometimes told by the same man.

A number of the mercs had gone off with local women. That didn’t seem to have caused any problems. Dewey had gone off with a local man, which
would
cause problems when Bonilla heard about it, but for the moment, Bonilla was safe aboard the
Swift.

“Can I bring you anything?” asked a voice at Ned’s elbow. “Another drink?”

He turned to Jon Watford. “No, I’m not that much of a drinker,” he said. “I’m just looking at your chart here.”

The two-by-two-meter hologram on one of the room’s short walls was a 5000:1 relief map of Quantock and the terrain inland of the settlement. By manipulating the controls at the bottom of the frame, Ned found he could shift the alignment from vertical to a silhouette at any plane in the coverage area, and could decrease the scale to as low as 100:1.

“You know,” said Watford thoughtfully, “I don’t believe I’ve looked at this in the past ten years. We’re pretty much focused on the sea here in Quantock. That’s true everywhere on Ajax Four. But a map of wave-tops isn’t much of a decoration, is it?” He chuckled.

“Has there been any attempt to, well, make peace with the indigs?” Ned asked.

“What?” said Watford.

“The indigenes,” Ned said. “The Spiders.”

“The Spiders aren’t indigenous to Ajax Four!” Watford said with unexpected vehemence. “They’re aliens, just as sure as men are, and there’s curst good evidence that we were here first!”

“Oh,” Ned said as his mind worked. “I didn’t know that.”

“There’s no other land-dwelling life-forms bigger than algae,” Watford said. “Do you mean to tell me that the Spiders evolved directly from algae?”

“No, I see your point,” Ned said.

He pursed his lips. He wasn’t looking for a fight, but he
was
curious, and if he’d liked the experience of being steamrollered in an argument, he wouldn’t be the type to volunteer for the Pancahte Expedition.

“Thing is,” he continued mildly, “I had the impression the Spiders didn’t have any technology of their own. Not starships, anyway.”

“Look,” Watford said. He was getting red-faced. Ned recalled that it wasn’t only mercenaries who’d been having a good deal to drink this night. “We’ve got
every
right to be on this planet. And I’ll tell you another cursed thing: they aren’t really intelligent, the Spiders aren’t. They’re really just animals with a talent for mimicking human beings.”

“I see your point,” Ned said, as though Watford hadn’t made two mutually exclusive points. “You know, maybe I’ll have another drink after all. What’s good here?”

The funny thing was that this sort of philosophical problem concerned only decent people raised in civilized surroundings. Ned doubted that any two members of the
Swift’
s
complement besides himself would even bother talking about the rights of indigenous aliens. As for the right of survival of a life-form, human or otherwise, with hostile intentions—

Pacifists didn’t enter the Frisian Military Academy.

Watford cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Oh,” he said. “Well, we’ve got a couple of good wines, but if you’re willing to—”

“
Attention,”
called a voice so distorted by the hall’s multiple loudspeakers that Ned didn’t recognize Tadziki for a moment. The adjutant stood on the dais opposite the main doors with a microphone in his hand. “
Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but there’s some ship’s business to take care of. Yazov, Paetz, Westerbeke, and Raff—you’re next on the rota, and it’s time to relieve the anchor watch. Our hosts are loaning us a truck, so you don’t have to walk.”

“Hey, the party’s just getting started,” Josie Paetz called, though he didn’t look that disgruntled. The young mercenary did everything with verve, but only the prospect of combat really excited him.

Lissea stepped to the dais. She wore a tawny dress with gold polka dots. Her hand extended back toward Mellie Watford to show that she wasn’t abandoning the woman who’d been her companion throughout the evening. Because the mike was live, Lissea’s murmured “
Westerbeke went off with a girl
. . .” crackled through the speakers.

Ned strode toward the dais. “I’ll go, Tadziki,” he said.

Tadziki switched off the mike. “I want a ship’s crewman, Ned,” he said.

“I’m good enough for government work,” Ned said. “Besides, I’m sober.”

Tadziki looked at Lissea. She gave him a brief nod.

“Right,” said the adjutant. “Governor, you offered us a vehicle?”

Watford had followed Ned to the dais. “Sure, no problem,” he said. “Would you like one of our people to drive?”

“I’d just as soon drive it myself,” Ned said before the adjutant could answer. “Got anything smaller than those behemoths you brought us here in, though?”

“Sure we do,” Watford said. “Just come along with me.”

The
Swift’
s
complement had piled their weapons on a table near the door. The locals didn’t care if their visitors were armed, but Lissea did. Watford waited while the mercenaries rummaged for their equipment, then led them outside and down a ramp to the garage beneath the building.

Ned paused a moment and studied the unfamiliar stars. He’d spent five years on Nieuw Friesland without getting used to those constellations, but recently he’d found the night sky of Tethys looked distorted also.

“You coming, Slade?” Josie Paetz called up the ramp.

“You bet,” Ned said. He wondered whether or not there was a place in the universe where Edward Slade belonged.

The forty-some vehicles in the basement garage ranged from five-tonne trucks down to one-man skimmers. All were battery-powered, but two large repair vans were equipped with liquid-fueled generators as well.

The patrol radius of the heavily laden trucks would be a hundred klicks or less without a recharge. That didn’t strike Ned as far enough.

Jon Watford leaned over the driver’s side of the open utility vehicle he’d offered the mercs. “Here’s the power switch,” he said, pointing.

Ned flipped it up. The instrument panel lighted. There were a dozen individual gauges rather than a combiner screen.

“Fan switches—”

There were four of them. Ned snapped them individually, watching the dials as he did so. An unexpectedly high drain might indicate a short in one of the drive motors.

“And the collective,” Watford continued, touching the control yoke. “You’ve handled hovercraft, I trust? With this broken lava, we don’t have much use for wheels.”