Sergeant Singh had lowered himself to sit, breathing deeply, his eyes hooded in thought as if they were just on some especially difficult training mission and the sergeant had to figure out how to beat a tough scenario.
As if sensing Johansen’s gaze, Singh nodded to him. “Now that we’ve reached cover we’ll rest ten minutes each hour after we get going again.”
News which normally would have been greeted with muttered complaints from the tired privates brought nothing this time, a measure of their utter exhaustion, but Adowa stopped scanning the woods long enough to look at Singh. “Where are we going?”
Singh jerked his head in the direction they had been traveling since leaving the valley. “Before my armor gave out I spotted a place on the map. A small outpost of some kind along a river. At least one permanent building. We’re sure to hit the river if we keep going this way. Then we find that outpost.”
“Water,” Stein mumbled. “River’s got water.”
“Yeah. And maybe there’s food at that outpost,” Johansen said. They hadn’t carried much, just the usual emergency packs. The other rations had been destroyed with the dropships.
“We hope,” Singh replied. “And maybe some shelter. Depends what the Izkop did to it.” He didn’t have to elaborate. Amity had been intact when the dropships launched, but just before the Izkop erupted out of the soil they had blown apart all of the buildings, taking soldiers and dropships with them.
Nassar breathed out slowly. “Someplace safe, maybe.”
Adowa shook her head. “Safe? How many Izkop got to be looking for us, Sarge? There were thousands back there, and they know we got clear.”
“We haven’t seen them following us yet,” Johansen said.
“We didn’t see them in the valley, either, until we did. How much trouble would they have tracking us with eight suits of armor laying dead, pointing this way? Any fool could follow us.”
“Maybe,” Archer murmured, “they couldn’t keep up. Sarge moved us a long ways pretty quick.”
This time Nassar shook his head. “You heard the briefings. ‘On open ground, the Izkop are very fast and can maintain their speed over long distances,’ ” he quoted. “They may not be big like Stein, but they’re strong enough. Why did we get this far?”
Everyone looked at Sergeant Singh, who shrugged. “No idea. Shooting our way out of the valley wasn’t a low-profile op, and they nailed everyone else who was trying to get out in other directions.”
“So,” Adowa insisted, “why didn’t they run us down?”
“They didn’t want to lose any more of their own?” Goldera asked.
Nassar snorted. “You saw them swarm everyone down in the valley. No concern with casualties at all. If we hadn’t burned out the suits so fast, firing the energy weapons without a break and jumping up one side of those hills and down the other as fast as we could, we’d be back there with everyone else, getting our guts hauled out and danced on. It’s a miracle we made it this far.”
Burgos roused enough to glare at Nassar. “I’m not dying before I kill a lot more of them.”
The sergeant eyed her soberly. “Ramada’s dead. We need to stay alive.”
“Yeah.” Burgos barely whispered as she closed her eyes again, shuddering slightly, her left hand clasped tightly so the ring on it stood out clearly.
After a moment of silence, Nassar spoke. “They were waiting for us. How long did they just lay there, under the turf, waiting for us to come down?”
“Days,” Adowa said. “Crazy bastards. How do you plan for fighting against something that’d lay that kind of ambush? I got to tell you, I’m worried we left someone. Somebody still alive.”
“Us being dead wouldn’t keep them alive,” Johansen said.
Archer sat up wearily, brushing hair from her face with one hand and nodding toward the portable comm unit. “I’ve heard no signals from anyone else living since we got clear. For a while I kept picking up automatic distress signals from armor back at Amity, reporting occupants killed in action. No wounded needing pickup, just KIAs. But the KIA signals went off, I guess when the Izkop got around to smashing them. I can understand the Izkop pulling the bodies out of the armor, but why go to so much trouble to smash all the equipment on the armor, too, even while the fight was still going on?”
“I guess we can’t ask the civs we were supposed to be rescuing,” Adowa said. “Wonder how long they’ve all been dead and if they put up any fight?”
The sergeant shrugged again. “Probably a while and probably not. The civs here were just researchers. Their reports on file didn’t pay much attention to Izkop fighting methods.”
Johansen laughed bitterly. “The civ reports barely mentioned that the Izkop had spears. What did the civs call the Izkop? Competitive?”
“And non-belligerent. I keep getting the feeling they’re out there,” Goldera added. “Watching us. Sure wish I still had the scout sensors in my armor.”
“There’s a lot of stuff in the armor we’ll miss, but good soldiers can fight without it,” Singh said. He focused on Archer again. “Are you sure the comm unit didn’t take any damage?”
Archer smiled slightly and stroked the outside of the comm unit. “Aimee’s fine. Ready to talk when we find someone to talk to. The solar collectors on her shell can keep her charged indefinitely and recharge batteries for any other gear we’ve got left.”
“Too bad it couldn’t recharge the armor,” Goldera grumbled. “They took out the big ship. How the hell did they know how to take out the ship? Primitives, hell.”
“They used the research facility’s own protective system,” Johansen said. “The Sara wasn’t ready.”
“Nobody was,” Nassar observed. “The Izkop burned out everything taking down the Sara and our dropships and frying a lot of the satellite arrays and blowing up everything in that valley. Why’d the Izkop kill all the civs, anyway?” he asked again.
“Who cares why?” Burgos had both hands on her rifle. The lightweight slug throwers, emergency weapons usually stowed literally up on the back of the armor, had become their primary means of defense now. “Murdering scum. Their reasons don’t matter.”
“Yes, they do,” Singh corrected. “Understanding the enemy is critical. If we don’t understand them, we don’t know what they might do next.” The sergeant had always worn an old-fashioned watch, not depending on suit systems to keep him aware of the time as most others did. Now he consulted it. “On your feet, everybody. We’ve got a ways to go.”
They staggered onward, the sergeant always in the lead, Johansen always at the rear to make sure everyone stayed with them. There were plenty of times when he wondered if he would collapse as the too-long day on this planet kept the sun crawling slowly through the sky, beating brutally down on them even through the scattered screen of shade provided by the trees. But if he fell out somebody else might drop and be lost, too. So he kept going.
The river proved just as impossible to miss as the sergeant had predicted, meandering across their path, perhaps fifty meters wide but apparently shallow all the way across. As everyone drank their fill through filter straws, Singh studied the terrain. “The map showed some ridges on either side of the place we’re looking for.”