He wouldn’t miss this for worlds. What a tale.
Cholosta’an stepped forward cautiously. His sensors said that the human had last been somewhere on this ridge. But since she had cut off her last electronic device, he had lost her. It was possible she had fled over the ridge, but the steep, open slope meant that they probably would have spotted her. She was likely hiding in the bushes along the base of the bluff. If so, they would have her soon.
He had only gotten glimpses of her before, enough to determine that it was a human female, as Tulo’stenaloor had said.
His last thought at the sight over the barrel of the human rifle was “A nestling?”
Tulo’stenaloor flapped his crest as the datum appeared.
“So much for Cholosta’an,” his operations officer muttered.
“So much indeed,” the estanaar replied. “And so much for stopping the resupply of the threshkreen unit. Or even hitting them from behind, given that all the other forces in the valley are gathering to stop the SheVa.
“It’s a simple solution set,” he continued. “If we destroy the threshkreen in the pass, we can pour enough forces through the Gap to destroy the SheVa, no matter what. If, on the other hand, we can destroy the SheVa, we can eventually wear away the threshkreen. If we do neither… then we have failed.”
“So far we are doing neither,” the essthree opined.
“Agreed,” the estanaar replied. “And we have done no better at it than Orostan. It is our job to destroy the threshkreen in the pass. Part of that is pressure. When we begin moving forces back into the battle, we must have them moving steadily. We were hitting them in fits and starts, in waves. This gives them time to recover.”
“Yes, estanaar,” the lesser oolt’ondai said doubtfully. “The question is ‘how.’ Any time you have a line of oolt, they… move unsteadily, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. It is that which is causing the gaps to occur.”
“We’ll spread them out,” Tulo’stenaloor said after a moment. “Have elite oolt’ondai station their oolt along the route. Create gaps between the oolt that are marching into the battle. Thus, when one hits the fire of the threshkreen and is destroyed another will step into place immediately. This will give us the constant pressure we seek.”
“As soon as the hell-weapon detonates, estanaar.”
“Oh, yes, after that,” Tulo’stenaloor snarled. “Why waste more oolt’os than we must?”
Cally checked fire as the yellow skull disintegrated under the hammer of the 7.62 rounds and tracked right to where she thought the closest Posleen might be. But as she took up the trigger slack again there was a muffled series of pops and a wild flail from a railgun that bounced ricochets off the rocks above her head.
As far as she knew, the nearest humans (that would be fighting) was her dad’s battalion or maybe the rest of the gang. But none of them had been using silenced weapons. So who was out there? Friend or foe?
An assassin had been sent to kill Papa O’Neal years before and had only been stopped because he discounted the skills of an eight-year-old girl. But that didn’t mean that more wouldn’t be sent. Admittedly, sending assassins in in the middle of a nuclear fire-fight seemed to be overkill, but it wasn’t paranoia if people really were out to get you.
She heard a rustle from below, not even what a deer would make, more like a field mouse. Then there was a human standing over the dead Posleen.
It was a special operations troop, no question. He, probably he, was wearing Mar-Cam and a ghillie net over his back. As she looked he took a step to the side and seemed to just vanish. She squinted for a moment and realized that he now looked for all the world like a bush alongside one of the poplar trees. He was good, better than Papa, probably.
She watched as he stepped forward, slowly, testing each bit of ground, and then stopped again.
Alejandro stopped as he caught a faint whiff of human scent. He would have detected it, should have, before but the stench from the dead Posleen had overridden it.
The thing about scent is that it’s only mildly directional. There wasn’t any real wind under the hill and the air was wet, cold and still. But somewhere there was a human lying very still. But sweating as if… she had been in a hard run.
He looked around but, remarkably, couldn’t see anything. As close as she was she should have stood out like a mountain. Either he was getting old or she was going to smoke the advanced recon course.
“Cally O’Neal?” he whispered.
“Breathe wrong and you’re history,” Cally said in more of a sigh than a whisper.
Alejandro sighed and looked over at where the sound came from. The girl was under a ghillie net covered in leaves. He wondered how she hadn’t displaced her surroundings and then realized that she had shaken the small birch bush over her to aid in the camouflage. Clever.
“I was sent to extract you,” he said, straightening but keeping his MP-5 pointed to the side.
“Sure you were, pull the other one, it’s got bells on.” Cally heard another faint sound of movement to the side and realized that she was bracketed. Again. “And if your buddy gets any closer we’ll just have to see how many of you I can take out. Starting with you.”
“I think we’re at an imps arse,” Alejandro said. “You won’t trust me and I have no way of convincing you to.”
“Not quite,” a voice whispered from above.
Cally froze as a Himmit appeared out of mid-air and lowered itself to the ground.
“Miss O’Neal, we are here for your protection,” the Himmit whistled. “We have no proof of that, but I give you my word as a member of the Fos Clan, that you will come to no harm. However, there is a nuclear attack incoming in less than fifteen minutes…”
“WHAT?” Cally shouted. But she was drowned out by the Cyberpunk.
“Rally!” Alejandro shouted. “Where is it aimed at?”
“It is aimed at the Gap, Major Levi,” the Himmit said, shifting back into camouflage. The voice seemed to be moving away. “But the coverage area is… extensive. Consider this spot to be ground zero for a two megaton blast.”
“Wait!” Alejandro said. “Can your craft lift us out of here?”
“Ah, so now you trust me,” the Himmit said, from higher in the trees. “Head due west for six hundred meters. I’ll meet you there.”
“Well, Miss O’Neal,” the Cyber said, turning to the west. “You can come with us or not. Up to you.”
“Out of my way, commando dude,” Cally said, scrambling to her feet and glancing at her compass. “You move too slow.”
“Over here.”
The Himmit had again appeared as if out of thin air, its skin shifting from the color and pattern of tree-bark to its apparently “normal” purple-green. It gestured towards a crack in the ground and flowed rapidly downward and into the hole.
Cally stopped, panting and shook her head. “Hiding in a hole isn’t going to keep us alive in a nuclear explosion!” she shouted.
“You may come or stay,” the Himmit said, sticking the “rear” half of its froglike body out of the hole. “I was requested to retrieve you and the Cyber team. It was not a requirement of debt, however. And I am not going to stay here and be turned into radioactive dust! Four minutes.” With that it disappeared downwards.