Horza tapped his hands on the old rifle and blew through his mouth at the mist of condensation forming on the top edge of his visor. It made it worse, just as he thought it might. Perhaps he should open his visor, now that they were inside the planet’s atmosphere.
The shuttle shook suddenly as though it had clipped the top of a mountain. Everybody was thrown forward, straining their seat harnesses, and a couple of guns went sailing forward and up, to clatter off the shuttle ceiling before slamming back to the deck. People grabbed for the guns and Horza closed his eyes; he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if one of these enthusiasts had left their safety catch off. However, the guns were retrieved without mishap, and people sat cradling them and looking about.
“What the hell was that?” the old man, Aviger, said, and laughed nervously. The shuttle began some hard manoeuvring, throwing first one half of the group on their backs while the people on the other side were suspended by their seat webbing, then flipping in the other direction and reversing the postures. Grunts and curses came over the open channel into Horza’s helmet. The shuttle dipped, making Horza’s stomach feel empty, floating, then the craft steadied again.
“Bit of hostile fire,” Kraiklyn’s clipped tones announced, and all the suited heads started to look from side to side.
“What?”
“Hostile fire?”
“I knew it.”
“Oh-oh.”
“Fuck.”
“Why did I think as soon as I heard those fateful words, ‘easy in, easy out,’ that this was going—” began Jandraligeli in a bored, knowing drawl, only to be cut off by Lamm.
“Hostile fucking fire. That’s all we need. Hostile fucking fire.”
“They are gunned up,” Lenipobra said.
“Shit, who isn’t these days?” Yalson said.
“Chicel-Horhava, sweet lady; save us all,” muttered Dorolow, speeding up the tracings of the Circle over her visor.
“Shut the fuck up,” Lamm told her.
“Let’s hope Mipp can distract them without getting his ass blown off,” Yalson said.
“Maybe we should call it off,” Rava Gamdol said. “Think we ought to call it off? Do you think we should call it off? Does anybody—”
“NO!” “YES!” “NO!” shouted three voices, almost in unison. Everybody looked at the three Bratsilakins. The two outer Bratsilakins turned their helmets to look at the one in the middle, as the shuttle swooped again. The middle Bratsilakin’s helmet turned briefly to each side. “Oh, shit,” a voice said over the open channel, “all right: NO!”
“I think maybe we should—” Rava Gamdol’s voice started again.
Then Kraiklyn shouted, “Here we go! Everybody ready!”
The shuttle braked hard, banking steeply one way, then the other, shuddering once and dipping. It bounced and shook, and for a second Horza thought they were crashing, but then the craft slid to a stop and the rear doors jawed open. Horza was on his feet with the rest of them, piling out of the shuttle and into the jungle.
They were in a clearing. At its far end a few branches and twigs were still tumbling from huge, heavy-looking trees where the shuttle had just seconds before torn through the edge of the forest canopy as it dipped in for the small area of level, grassy ground. Horza had time to see a couple of bright birds flying fast out of the trees near by and caught a glimpse of a blue-pink sky. Then he was running with the others, round the front of the shuttle where it still glowed dark red and vegetation beneath it smouldered, and on into the jungle. A few of the Company were using their AG, floating over the undergrowth between the moss-covered tree trunks, but hampered by creepers which hung like thick, flower-strewn ropes between the trees.
So far they still couldn’t see the Temple of Light, but according to Kraiklyn it was just ahead of them. Horza looked round at the others on foot as they clambered over fallen trees covered in moss and swept past creepers and suspended roots.
“Fuck dispersing; this is too hard going.” It was Lamm’s voice. Horza looked round and up, and saw the black suit heading vertically for the green mass of foliage above them.
“Bastard,” said a breathless voice.
“Yeah. B-b-bastard,” Lenipobra agreed.
“Lamm,” Kraiklyn said, “you son of a bitch, don’t break through up there. Spread out. Disperse, damn it!”
Then a shock wave Horza could feel through his suit blasted over them all. Horza hit the ground immediately and lay there. Another boom came through the hissing helmet speaker as it fed in the noise from outside.
“That was the CAT going over!” He didn’t recognise the voice.
“You sure?” Somebody else.
“I saw it through the trees! It was the CAT!”
Horza got up and started running again.
“Black bastard nearly took my fucking head off…” Lamm said.
There was light ahead of Horza, through the trunks and leaves. He heard some firing: the sharp crack of projectiles, the sucking whoop of lasers and the snap-whoosh-crash of plasma cannon. He ran to a small earth and shrub bank and threw himself down so that he could just see over the top. Sure enough, there was the Temple of Light, silhouetted against the dawn, all covered in vines and creepers and moss, with a few spires and towers sticking out above like angular tree trunks.
“There she is!” Kraiklyn shouted. Horza looked along the earth bank and saw a few of the Company, in the same prone position as he was. “Wubslin! Aviger!” Kraiklyn shouted. “Cover us with the plasmas. Neisin, you keep the micro on each side of the grounds beyond, as well. Everybody else, follow me!”
More or less as one, they were off, over the tangled bank of mossy ground and bushes and down the other side, through light scrub and long, cane-like grass, the stalks covered in clinging, dark green moss. The mixture of ground cover came up to about chest height and made the going difficult, but it would be reasonably easy to duck down out of a line of fire. Horza waded through as best as he could. Plasma bolts sang through the air above them, lighting the dim stretch of ground between them and the sloping temple wall.
Distant fountains of earth and crashes he could feel through his feet told Horza that Neisin, sober the last two days, was laying down a convincing and, more importantly, accurate fire pattern with the Microhowitzer.
“There’s a little gunfire from the upper left level,” the cool, unhurried voice of Jandraligeli said. According to the plan, he was supposed to be hiding high in the forest canopy watching the temple. “I’m hitting it now.”
“Shit!” somebody yelled suddenly. One of the women. Horza could hear firing from ahead, though there were no flashes from the part of the temple he could see.
“Ha ha.” Jandraligeli’s smug voice came through the helmet speaker. “Got them!” Horza saw a puff of smoke over to the left of the temple. He was about halfway there by now, maybe closer. He could see some of the others not far away, to his left and right, pushing and striding through the cane grass and bushes with their rifles held high to one shoulder. They were all gradually getting covered in the dark green moss, which Horza supposed might be useful as camouflage (providing, of course, that it didn’t turn out to be some horrible, previously undiscovered sentient killer-moss… He told himself to stop being silly).
Loud crashes in the shrubbery around him, and smashed bits of cane and twigs fluttering past like nervous birds, sent him diving for the ground. The earth beneath him shuddered. He rolled over and saw flames lick the mossy stalks above; a flickering patch of fire lay directly behind him.