I must have looked unconvinced.
“It happens, Orion. Ahriman’s people are not invincible. They’re just as desperate as we are. That’s the last group of them out there. If we can kill them, there will be no others to bother us.”
“And if they can kill us…”
She nodded. “They win. For all eternity.”
I was about to reply when one of the troopers called out, “Here they come again.”
We rushed back to our battle stations. Rena’s corpse was left on the bare rock floor, deeper back in the cave. Every man and woman took their assigned posts. Without being told, I hefted Rena’s rifle and placed myself at the edge of the cave’s entrance, where I could guard against infiltrating animals that could not be detected from further inside the cave. It was an exposed position, but the enemy had to come to within grappling distance to do me harm, I reasoned. As long as my rifle held out, I was safe enough.
“Visors down,” came Adena’s calm command. I obeyed and looked out at the approaching army of beasts.
Four times in as many hours the animals charged at us. Each time we beat them back: energy beams against fang and claw. The air became sickeningly heavy with the stench of burning fur and flesh. Dark clouds of death smeared the blue sky as the pale sun climbed across the heavens and began to throw lengthening shadows across the blackened, body-strewn field of snow and ice.
Every muscle in my body ached. My head buzzed wearily. The cave itself seemed dank with human sweat and the cloying odor of ozone. Marek made his way through us, handing each trooper a pair of yellow capsules. Food pills, he told me. Enough nutrition to sustain a man for twelve hours or more. I almost laughed. Less than a hundred yards from us was more meat than the sixteen of us could devour in a month, and we were subsisting on capsules.
Marek was speaking quietly with Adena, his face somber. I caught her eye, and she seemed to indicate that I should join them.
“How many more attacks can we handle?” she was asking him as I came up and stood beside her.
He gave me a suspicious look before answering, “Two, at least. Maybe three.”
Adena glanced at the sensor screen, still resting, slightly crookedly on the rock ledge near the cave’s entrance. “They still have enough animals for three attacks or more.”
“Then we can’t stay here,” I blurted.
Marek glared at me. But Adena said, “What do you propose?”
“That we stop fighting dumb animals and carry the attack to the real enemy.”
“Do we invite them to come here to the cave?” Marek asked sarcastically. “Or do we walk out into the snow and go to their camp?”
“The latter,” I said. “We send out two or three volunteers to make their way into the enemy camp and attack them there.”
He snorted. “They’d be torn to pieces by the beasts out there before they got close…”
“Not if they could get out of this cave undetected and circle around the beasts,” I said. “They could attack the enemy from the rear.”
“How could you get out of here undetected?” Adena asked.
“I’d go right now, and follow along the cliff wail until I’m beyond the flanks of their army of beasts. Then I’d cut across the snow field and make for their camp.”
“That would take hours and hours, even if they didn’t spot you,” Marek said.
“Yes, I know. It would be nightfall before we even got near their camp.”
“Suppose you waited until nightfall before you started,” Adena said, “and then attacked at dawn. We could lay down a bombardment on them from here in the cave, with the cannon. That would take their attention off you.”
Marek shook his head. “They have the advantage at night. They have animals out there that can see in the dark, where we can’t.”
“We have sensors that are as good as any beast’s,” Adena said. “And they never attack at night. You give them too much credit, Marek. We have the advantage in the darkness.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“But I do,” she said. “Orion, we’re going to try your plan. It’s worth the risk. I’ll pick two troopers to go with us.”
“Us?”
“I’m going with you.”
“You can’t do that, Adena!” Kedar snapped.
“I’ve got to. The others won’t follow Orion; he’s a stranger. But they’ll obey my orders without hesitation.”
“But the danger…”
“I would never send any of my troopers on a mission that I wouldn’t undertake myself,” Adena said. “Never.”
I could see by the fire flashing in her eyes that there was no sense trying to change her mind. And, to be truthful, I was glad that she would be coming with me.
“But what about the rest of us?” There was real fear in Kedar’s voice.
“You will be in command here,” she told him. “Start a bombardment against the beasts at the first light of dawn. We should be in position to attack the brutes’ camp by then.”
“And if you’re not?”
She grinned at him. “No matter. If we’re not ready to attack them by dawn, it will be because we’re dead.”
CHAPTER 38
Whether or not my plan would have worked, we never found out. The brutes attacked us before we had a chance to try it.
Adena picked two troopers to go with us: Ogun, the burly armorer who looked at the world from behind a scowl, and Lissa, a tall, lithe, dark-haired beauty whose specialty was explosives.
“If we catch the brutes asleep in their camp,” Adena explained to me, “Lissa can rig her grenades to destroy them with a single blow.”
The lowering sun had dipped behind the cliff in which our cave was set, throwing the blackened and littered field in front of us into deepening shadow. Adena ordered the four of us to sleep, since we would be on the move once true night covered the area.
I have never needed much sleep, but I commanded my body to relax as I stretched out on one of the floating cots. I closed my eyes and within minutes I was drowsing.
If I dreamed, I do not remember. But I was awakened by a strange, cloying odor that tingled in my nostrils and made me feel as if I were choking. I opened my eyes and tried to sit up. The cot tilted beneath me and I slid to the stony floor with a thump.
Adena lay asleep on the cot beside mine, her arms and legs limp, her face turned in my direction, utterly relaxed. I started to gag on the strange odor; it was like having your face pushed into a thicket of exotic tropical flowers.
I staggered to my feet, only to see that all the other troopers were asleep, too. No one was on guard. Gas! I realized. Somehow they were filling the cave with a gas that had knocked everyone unconscious. The only sound in the cave was the soft hum of the power packs, which kept the lights on.
Lurching, gagging, I battled my way past the fallen bodies of the troopers and out into the fresh air beyond the cave’s entrance. It was black night, clear and frigid, the stars shimmering coldly in the icy air. I filled my lungs once, twice, as my head cleared.
They must be about to attack us, I thought.
Unless the gas is lethal.
I plunged back into the cave, holding my breath as I dashed to my cot and the helmet that rested beneath it. I pulled the helmet on, slid down its visor, and pressed the stud at my waist that activated the suit’s life-support system. A tiny fan whirred to life, and I felt clear air blowing against my face. I breathed again. Quickly, with one eye on the cave entrance, I pulled Adena’s helmet over her head and put her on suit air. Then I went to the cave entrance to be on guard there.
“What happened?” I heard Adena’s voice in my earphones, wobbly, confused.
Looking back into the cave toward her, I began to explain. But out of the shadows deeper in the cave I saw one of the brutes looming, a long, pointed shaft of crystal aimed at Adena’s back.