A hundred and fifty yards didn’t seem like all that far with forty or so murderous aliens charging towards you across it.
• • • • •
If, In fact, the Shongairi had simply charged—charged as quickly as they could possibly move, taking their losses to close the distance—it would all have been over in a hurry. Human troops, realizing they were taking fire only from a pair of semiautomatic weapons, might well have done just that. The Shongairi weren’t accustomed to taking aimed rifle fire at all, however. There were very few veterans of combat against humans in Laifayr’s patrol, and even their experience was limited. So instead of charging, or even using one squad to lay down suppressing fire while the other one charged, both squads surged forward in a sort of half run, half trot, firing as they came.
It gave them the worst of both worlds. They were moving too rapidly to aim, but moving slowly enough to give the humans more time to engage them.
• • • • •
Dvorak ejected A spent magazine and slapped in another.
“Next-to-last!” he shouted to Wilson.
“Told you those big-assed bullets took up too much frigging space!” Wilson snarled back.
“Squinchy little Irish bastard!” Dvorak replied, squeezing off another round and watching yet another Shongair fly backward. “At least when I hit one of them, the fucker goes down!”
“When you hit one of them!” Wilson agreed as Dvorak’s next target stumbled just as he fired. The bullet missed completely, and Dvorak snarled, readjusted his point of aim, and fired again.
“Better!” Wilson congratulated him.
“Glad you liked—”
The bullet wasn’t aimed, not really. In fact, the Shongair trooper who’d fired it was already going down with one of Rob Wilson’s .308 slugs in his chest when his finger jerked convulsively at his trigger.
None of which made any particular difference when it slammed into Dave Dvorak.
Wilson heard a hard, slapping sound. Then his brother-in-law grunted explosively and he felt something that wasn’t rain—something hot, not cold—splash the left side of his face.
He couldn’t turn his head and look, not then. Not with the Shongairi still coming for them.
“Dave?” he called. “Dave?!”
• • • • •
Laifayr realized one of the human weapons—the heavy one which had punched so effortlessly through anything in its way—had fallen silent, and he felt a sudden surge of hope. Despite the fear still hammering through him, he’d been listening, and he’d realized what none of the rest of his troopers had. The weapons firing at them were firing single shots, not automatic. And now it sounded like there was only one of them left! So if he could just get his own warriors across the remaining twenty urma or so of wet grass and pavement between them quickly enough—
“Yes!” he shouted, coming to his feet behind the twelve and a half of his remaining troopers. “Yes! Now—charge the vermin!”
• • • • •
Rob Wilson saw them coming.
Steam rose from his rifle’s barrel in the rain, and he’d lost track of how many rounds were left in the current magazine. There wasn’t much time to think about things like that, either.
As the Shongairi came to their feet in a single wave and started forward, he rose on one knee, firing with deadly precision, speed, and accuracy as he worked his way across their line. One of them went down, then another. A third. A fourth.
He knocked them down like wooden bowling pins in a Friday night pin-shooting contest against Sam Mitchell back at the range, but for every Shongair that went down, the survivors gained another half stride. It was a race between how quickly he could kill them and how quickly they could get to him—or one of them could finally manage to put a bullet into him—and it was a race he was losing.
He fired again, and his ninth—or was it the tenth?—target went down, but the bolt locked back on an empty magazine. There was no time to load another one, if he still had one left—he wasn’t sure, anyway—and he dropped the rifle.
Over the years, Rob Wilson had instructed more Marines and cops than he could count in the proper use of handguns, and he’d always made a point of depressing the pretensions of any would-be two-gun pistoleros who crossed his path. That kind of fancy shit looked good in movies, he’d told them cuttingly. Of course, in that case both the writers and the director were on the side of the hero as he unerringly picked off individual targets with each hand while simultaneously hurling his body in a graceful, headfirst, slow-motion, midair roll of a leap through a solid hail of automatic fire. In real life, the hurlee would almost certainly end up shredded and dead, he’d pointed out. And even if the idiot survived—miracles did occasionally happen, after all, and he’d been told God sometimes took pity on lunatics, drunks, and fools—all he’d really achieve was to totally waste the ammunition from both of the guns in question. Even standing still he’d waste most of his shots because the human brain had this odd little quirk: it found it quite difficult to focus on two separate sight pictures simultaneously.
Especially if the targets weren’t standing conveniently side by side where the shooter could actually see both of them at once.
He couldn’t remember the number of times he’d said that, and every time he said it, he’d meant it. Which was one of the reasons his brother-in-law had ribbed him mercilessly when he tucked one .40 caliber HK USP automatic into his old USMC shoulder holster and a second into a tactical drop holster on his left thigh before setting out on their current excursion.
He’d told Dvorak the second gun was only a backup, but they’d both known that wasn’t quite the truth. Because, while it was absolutely true that nine pistoleers out of ten couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with their off hands if they tried to fire two handguns at once, Rob Wilson was the tenth pistoleer.
His hands found the grips without any conscious thought on his part. The pistols cleared their holsters, coming up, settling into position, even as he stood fully upright. Something whizzed viciously past his left ear, but he paid no attention at all.
He had other things on his mind.
• • • • •
Laifayr saw the single human come to its feet. Its hands didn’t even seem to move, but suddenly there was a big, black pistol in each of them. The sight registered on the senior squad commander with strange, almost frozen, crystalline clarity.
And then those pistols began to spit fire.
• • • • •
If even one of the six surviving Shongairi had thought to pause long enough to actually take aim it might have been different.
But they didn’t. Instead, obedient to Laifayr’s order, they hurled themselves forward . . . directly into Wilson’s fire at a range so short their body armor was completely useless.
• • • • •
The last of Senior Squad Commander Laifayr’s troopers went down, and Laifayr gawked across their fallen bodies at the demon who’d killed them. The half-twelve of shots had come so close together they’d been a single fist of sound, like some angry giant ripping a sheet of fabric in half, and so far as he could see, not one of them had missed its target.
You should have stayed up closer behind them, a little voice told him as he brought up his own sidearm in the prescribed two-handed shooting position. Maintaining a little extra distance had seemed like a good idea, but now—
You’re too far away to hit anyone from here with a handgun, you fool!
He squeezed off a shot, then another one. The human didn’t even seem to notice. Instead, he turned slightly away from Laifayr, raising one hand in the Shongair’s direction in a movement that seemed oddly elegant, graceful despite the squatness of the human’s chunky, alien body.
Then Rob Wilson’s raised hand flashed fire, and Laifayr discovered he wasn’t too far away to be hit with a handgun, after all.
. XXXII .
“Yes, Fleet Commander? How may I serve?” Ground Base Command
er Shairez asked, folding her ears respectfully as Thikair’s image appeared on her comm display.
“If even a quarter of the rest of my personnel served as well as you do, Ground Base Commander,” Thikair replied, “we would conquer this Cainharn-bedamned species after all!”
His voice was hard, sharp-edged with anger, and the tips of his canines showed. But then he drew a deep breath and visibly forced himself to calm, if not to relax.
“Unfortunately, they do not . . . and we won’t,” he said more heavily.
“Should I assume there have been additional . . . unforeseen problems, Sir?” she asked quietly.
“Indeed you should,” he told her, and rubbed the bridge of his muzzle with one hand.
He looked old, she thought. Not simply older, but old. The thought sent a pang through her, and she felt one hand stir at her side, as if to rise and extend itself in a gesture of sympathy. But she would only have shamed him if she had allowed it to do that, and so she simply waited.
“Our efforts to collect the necessary research subjects for Ground Base Commander Teraik . . . have not prospered,” Thikair said finally. “I don’t know how much of ‘Governor Howell’s’ advice was sincere and how much of it was more of the humans’ ‘sabotage,’ but Teraik believed—and I agreed—that there was logic to it. Whatever Howell’s actual attitude may be, Ground Base Two Alpha’s ZOR is the only one on the entire planet we can really consider relatively tranquil. Please do note that I used the qualifier ‘relatively.’”
His ears twitched in a wry smile which contained at least a ghost of the dry humor Shairez had always associated with the fleet commander before their arrival in this star system.
“At any rate, Howell pointed out that if we began collecting research subjects in the necessary quantities from within his state of North Carolina it would generate unrest. Given your recent discoveries about this species’ psychology, I think he was probably correct about that. Dainthar only knows how these humans’ ‘family groups’ would react if we started dragging off their cubs or their sires or dams! And, of course, if we were to experience general unrest in Teraik’s zone, that would tend to undercut any future claim on our part that the area had been thoroughly pacified and so, of course, we would never have deliberately released a bioweapon within it, of all places.
“Because of that, I instructed Teraik to collect his specimens from outside North Carolina. He attempted to do so. Unfortunately, his first two convoys of captured humans were both ambushed before they could reach his zone. Indeed, before they ever crossed the border into North Carolina, at all.” The fleet commander’s ears grimaced. “I fear we’ve had very little luck trying to locate Teraik’s prey after it bolted, either. It would appear one of our routine patrols may have stumbled into contact with the humans who ambushed the second convoy. We can’t be certain, since there were no surviving troopers from either the convoy or the patrol.”
Shairez felt her own ears pressing close to her skull, and Thikair snorted.
“I’m inclined to believe Teraik is correct that none of the human Howell’s personnel were involved in the attacks upon the convoys themselves. I’m less confident that none of them were involved in hiding the escaped specimens or helping them to escape afterward. Analysis of the attacks themselves, however, suggests that they were carried out by one of the band of raiders we’ve been tracking as best we can. They appear to have been working their way south for some time now, and we’ve amassed an unfortunate degree of familiarity with their handiwork. They routinely display a high degree of precision in both their timing and their maneuvers, and they obviously have an excellent appreciation of our doctrine and tactics, and Teraik has assigned them responsibility for the attack on the basis of their . . . style, for want of a better word. I think I agree with his assessment, based on the reports I’ve seen so far. The attackers seem to have used their shoulder-launched antiair missiles to destroy the convoys’ RC drones in the same pattern that band has previously employed, and their evasion techniques—fleeing into areas we’ve already devastated and going to ground, probably in preselected positions, in the ruins—also fit what we’ve seen from them in the past.
“I’ve diverted additional personnel to Teraik to assist in hunting down those raiders. Unfortunately, in their attacks on his convoys, they’ve already destroyed an additional eight GEVs and a full twelve of APCs, in addition to perhaps twice that many cargo vehicles. We can ill afford to continue sustaining such losses, and so I’ve instructed Teraik to suspend the gathering of specimens until the raiders have been located and destroyed. Frankly, given the persistent survival of this particular group of vermin, I have no idea how long that will take.
“In the meantime, however, I see no reason why we should allow this to delay the development of the necessary bioweapon. Have you sufficient specimens on hand in Ground Base Seven to begin the required research there, instead of in Ground Base Two Alpha?”
“I think . . . yes, Fleet Commander,” Shairez said slowly, considering resources and availability even as she spoke. “I have approximately a double-twelve of humans left from my experiments with the neural educators. That should be enough to make a start, but, obviously, it would be grossly insufficient for a development program on the scale we’ll require. I would have to collect more.”
“Will that be a problem?” Thikair asked.
“I think not, although I’d like to consider the best approach to the operation for a few day-twelfths before I respond definitively, Sir,” she said. “Things have been so quiet here in my zone—relatively speaking, at least”—his ears twitched in amusement as she allowed herself to use his own qualifier, and she smiled back—“that a considerable proportion of my combat equipment and troops have been redeployed to Ground Base Six. Ground Base Commander Fursa has been having a far worse time dealing with the numerous human attacks in his ZOR.”
She was too tactful, Thikair noticed, to point out that the real reason she’d been forced to send her armored vehicles to Fursa had less to do with the number of human attackers in Fursa’s zone than with their effectiveness. The truth was that the Cainharn-damned humans—and not just in Ground Base Six’s zone, although losses had been heavy there—had shot up enough of Ground Force Commander Thairys’ original inventory of combat equipment to leave him spread desperately thin. There simply wasn’t enough of it to go around; no one had the GEVs and APCs he really needed, far less the cushion the TO&E normally assigned.
“In addition,” Shairez continued, “I share some of Ground Base Commander Teraik’s concerns. Particularly in light of my . . . shortage of ground combat power, I would much prefer not to agitate the humans in my immediate ZOR. I think it would be wiser if I collected my specimens at some distance from the base itself.”
“Do you have a specific supply of specimens in mind?” Thikair asked.
“Not at this moment,” she admitted. “That’s one of the points I wish to consider, and I’d prefer to confer with Regiment Commander Harah and seek his advice, as well. It would be best, I think, to select some relatively isolated area where there would be few human eyes to notice we were collecting specimens at all. That would be one way to minimize the . . . disturbing effect throughout my zone. And, to be honest, at this point I have more assigned shuttles and shuttle lift capacity than I have troopers or equipment to move about.” She allowed her ears to stir in a sardonic smile. “Transporting my catch, even from a relatively distant hunting ground, would not pose any significant problem.”
“Very well, Ground Base Commander.” Thikair’s ears nodded in agreement. “I’ll leave you to your conference. As soon as you’ve satisfied yourself as to the best fashion in which to proceed, by all means do so. Report back to me when you’re prepared to begin actual development. In the meantime, hopefully Teraik will have some success against these elusive raiders of his. Whether he does or not, however, I see no reason why the ‘accidental release’ shouldn’t still occur in his ZOR. Bear that in mind durin
g your research. It would be well for your documentation ‘proving’ all of the work was carried out in Ground Base Two Alpha to be in order from the very beginning.”
“Of course, Fleet Commander.”
. XXXIII .
“Ouch! Easy there, Florence Nightingale!”
“Oh, shut up,” Sharon Dvorak said tartly as she finished adjusting the pillow. “And stop being such a baby! I swear, Malachai whines less than you do!”
The universe, Dave Dvorak decided grumpily as he tried to settle himself into something like a remotely comfortable position, wasn’t exactly running over with justice where the wives of heroically wounded warriors were concerned. Somehow he didn’t think Penelope had given Odysseus such a hard time when he got home to Ithaca.
“You wouldn’t think I was whining if you had to put up with this,” he told his wife severely.
“I don’t think you’re whining; I know you are,” she retorted. “Besides, I told you to be careful out there and you come back this way?” She shook her head with a disgusted expression. “You’re not going to get any sympathy out of me because you didn’t do what you were told to do in the first place. You and Rob—idiots the pair of you! Who did you think you were, anyway? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”
Since his brother-in-law had shared his very thought to that effect with him, Dvorak wisely maintained silence.
Sharon glared at him for a moment longer, hands on her hips. But then her blue eyes softened and she leaned forward, resting one hand on his uninjured right shoulder, and kissed him gently on an unshaven cheek.
“Now stop carrying on like a big baby and get better,” she whispered in his ear, her voice going husky. “And don’t do something like this again. I was . . . that is, the kids were worried about you.”