Chapter 30
CHALLENGE
As to moral courage, I have seldom met with the two o'clock in the morning courage: I mean unprepared courage.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, Memoirs
"Here they come!"
Darkness flowed across brown earth. There was too little sound: a hissing like ocean waves across sand, rustling of a thousand feet on loose dirt. They came in a wave, too much like an army.
Blue arcs flashed. Smoking meat suddenly flavored the humid air. Grendels seared by electricity smelled too much like a samlon just ready to come off the barbecue. It was distracting: it spoke to the wrong part of the brain.
"Here!" someone screamed. Blue arcs, closer, much too close. The tower searchlight swung over. Impossibly, a grendel had torn through the outer fence, past the minefield, and had fallen against the inner fence. The grendel was dead, but the two who chased it were both on speed.
Cadmann leveled his rifle and waited. The fence arced. One grendel leaped back. The second leaped after it. Cadmann smiled grimly. "Save ammunition," he called to the others. Let the fences kill them. We won't have fences for long...
The searchlight danced farther out, to the outer perimeter fifty meters away. Dark shapes were piled there. A dozen or more grendels had flung themselves onto the still-charged fence. Electricity sizzled deep within the pile, but other grendels climbed over the stack of corpses. Still more used their tails to drag dead siblings away from the fence.
"A scene from the Inferno, amigo."
Cadmann didn't turn. "I expected the outer fence to hold longer than that." He took out his comcard. "Com shack. Exec one here. Patch me to the loudspeaker."
A moment later his voice boomed from the speakers on the colony buildings. "HEAR THIS. OPEN FIRE. TRY TO KILL SOME OF THEM OUT IN THE SPACE BETWEEN THE FENCES. OUT."
Carlos nodded, unslung his rifle and knelt beside Cadmann. He squeezed off rounds in slow and deliberate fire. Elsewhere mad volleys sounded. Cadmann winced. "I'm going up in the tower. Hang on here."
"Si, compadre."
Carlos's rhythmic gunfire was comforting. They've got to keep their heads. "SLOW FIRE. THAT AMMO HAS TO LAST." If only there had been time and ammunition for a full combat-rifle course.
Near him someone cursed viciously. Omar Isfahan wrenched at his rifle.
"Jammed, dammit, it's—"
"Slow down," Cadmann said brusquely. He took the rifle from Omar's hand and worked the bolt. "It's not jammed, it's empty. Now just relax and get yourself together, mister."
Omar took two deep breaths. Tension seemed to flow out of him in waves. "I'm... sorry. All right now."
"Sure. And be careful with that ammo." He handed the rifle back.
"We'll win this if we don't panic."
The engineer grimaced. "Sure." He went back to his place at the fence.
At least he's stopped shooting at shadows. Cadmann hurried toward the tower. Break in the fence. They'll pour in. How long have we got? There were sounds everywhere. Gunshots from across the compound. Half a mile away. What could they be shooting at?
He slung his rifle and climbed rapidly.
"H'lo." Greg sounded calm enough. Cadmann nodded and took over the searchlight. He swung it to the fence break—
Nothing. Grendels came over the pile of bodies, but as individuals.
They weren't pouring through as any decent army would.
"Like I thought," Cadmann said.
"Yes?" Greg tried to keep his voice calm.
"Kill enough of them, most will stop to gorge. They don't keep coming. They're not an army."
"No. Thank God."
Rachel would be convinced it's God's doing. Maybe so. "I'm lying, of course."
"Uh?"
"I didn't think it at all. If I'd been commanding the grendels I'd have poured everything I had through that fence break." He clipped his comcard to the collar of his jacket. "Skeeter One. Are you fully charged?"
"Full charge, Cad." Stu sounded sleepy.
I'll wake you up. "Okay. Take up the load of kerosene. Dump between fences and all around the break in the outer fence. I'm going to try to drive them out so we can go repair that break."
"Repair that break. Jesus. Who'd do that? Okay, I'm off."
Dismembered grendels screamed in the minefield. More hissed as they fought and died. As in all battles, there was mostly confusion, but now he could see the entire perimeter. Grendels continued to come in through the break in the outer fence, but not in a wave; they came in ones and twos, and they separated to vanish in the darkness between the fences.
The fields beyond the outer fence were a shambles, torn by knots of struggling monsters, the very earth grooved by their speed-augmented frenzy. They've plowed it for our next planting. Cadmann chuckled grimly.
"Something?" Stu's voice spoke from his collar.
"No. Forgot the mike was on. Random thought."
More explosions in the mine fields. We'll be running low on mines. I should have had someone counting, so we'd know how many are left. Doesn't matter. Nothing to trigger mines but grendels, and there are plenty of them!
Too many grendels. "How the fuck can they grow so fast?" Cadmann demanded.
"You want the long answer or the short one?" Greg asked.
"Neither. I've heard both."
"Cadmann! Minerva calling Cadmann!"
Cadmann frowned. "Cadmann here."
"I've got to take off!"
"What?"
"I hear them! They're out there, in the lake—"
Who was that? Marty hadn't been hit by Hibernation Instability, had he? But how could you really tell? "Of course they're out in the lake, Marty. They're samlon—"
"No, no, I mean right here, I hear them pounding on the hull! Cadmann, they'll get in the air intakes! We'll lose the Minerva! I'm going to take off—"
Cadmann took a deep breath. "No. You're not going to take off. If you take off now, we lose all our power. Our fences go. We can't recharge the Skeeters. Everyone here in this camp will die. You stay there until you're told to leave."
"We have to have the Minervas! What happens to the people up in Geographic? I've got to get out of here!"
"Stay tight," Cadmann said. Skeeter One rose from the center of the Colony compound. "Look, we've got a situation here. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Stay tight."
The Skeeter reached the area between the fences. Cadmann played the tower light around the outer fence break. Other lights moved in the area between fences. Grendels tried to attack the light.
The Skeeter whirled past in tight circles. Two men and a woman leaned out of the doorway to dump kerosene. The rotor blades scattered the oily liquid. The stench merged with burning flesh and the heavy Avalon mist.
"Three more cans and we're done," Stu reported.
"Right."
The Skeeter was forty feet off the ground. A grendel standing atop the piled corpses at the fence break leaped upward. The tower light caught it in mid flight. Its upward arc stopped just short of the Skeeter. Then a smaller dark object followed it down.
"Jesus!" Cadmann shouted. "Get up higher! I swear, Stu—"
"I know. Ida saw it. She says it damn near got its jaws on the skid! Cad, they're not even grown yet!"
"How's the kerosene?"
"She dropped the can on top of that one. We're done."
"Get upwind." Cadmann flipped switches. His voice boomed from the loudspeaker. "FLARES. CARLOS. ISFAHAN. USE THE FLARES. BE CAREFUL."
"Cadmann! Damn it, they're out there!"
"Marty, for God's sake!" Cadmann snapped. "We've just used up part of