Thumb jabbing down hard on the red button at the top of the joystick. Missile launch: its contrail streaking off into the sky. Bring the fighter around back to the safety of the Wild Fox pack. Watch the radar as the missile hurtles toward its target. Distant unfelt kill.
When the winds reached the end of Trevathan Gulf and hit the High Desert they were traveling in excess of five hundred kilometers an hour. There were no manipulator stations out here. They had become irrelevant. The storm was so powerful it was now self-sustaining. Uncontrollable.
The vast deluge of white cloud spread out to obliterate the High Desert. Wilson saw it change color, the cumulus darkening, not with the slate-gray of suspended rain but the ocher of particles siphoned up from the desert floor by an army of twisters that had grown to the size of the very mountains that they had rampaged through. He watched it race toward the final line of pinnacles that guarded the desert’s eastern boundary. The enraged mass grew higher and higher until its thrashing crests finally rose above the snowcapped peaks, eclipsing the lands over which they were about to fall.
***
The soldier motile came at Morton with a nimble arachnid gait, veering from side to side in precise controlled motions. It was different from the ones back at Randtown: each of the four legs forked, giving it eight hoofs. Two of the arms also divided halfway along. The damn thing was insectoid. Triggering deep phobias. Even with accelerant freeze framing its body actions for examination he could never tell which of its hooves it was going to pirouette around next. Targeting was nearly impossible. One pair of the creature’s arms held hefty long-barreled weapons, which Morton was urgently trying to avoid. He did so with a fast low zigzag run, always keeping his feet in contact with the ground, enabling him to switch direction when he needed. Using the ground-eating leap here would give the alien a clear shot as he glided along.
A plasma flare from the soldier motile’s weapon hit the earth beside his feet. The suit’s force field held, but his legs were yanked from under him. In Far Away’s gravity it was an annoyingly slow fall to hit the earth and regain stability. Annoying verging on lethal. The moment stretched in accelerant time. Another blast struck him on the chest. The suit force field flared purple, and he was spinning in the air. Legs flung wide, trying to jab a foot on the ground, anything to kill momentum. Virtual hand moved leisurely through the battle cluster icons, selecting his weapon. Another energy blast stabbed past his helmet. Upper arm plasma grenade canisters thumped out their munitions. Air around the soldier motile glared with fizzing electron static.
Morton hit the ground, flattening himself. The world swept back to operate in real-time. He crouched and sprang. Electromuscle enhancement propelled him forward like a kamikaze aerobot.
The electrons drained away, leaving the soldier motile braced on all eight hooved legs. It was wearing what looked like a loose robe of scaly gray-green fabric, which was also acting as a force field conductor. Its sensor stalks ended in a clump of golden electronic lenses. Some of its arms ended in a tripartite mechanical claw; while the torso was strung with flat metallic boxes webbed with flexible cables. Arm two swung a big gun around on Morton, its sub-branch gripping some kind of grenade. Arm three fired an ion pistol. Arm one was holding a long buzzing blade. Arm four shot the other large gun at a target off toward the road, micromissiles shrieking away from their rotary launcher in its sub-branch.
The ion pulse jangled Morton’s suit sensors as he careered into the alien. For a second he was blinded. Tactile feedback gave him the sense of the alien’s weight against him, its second arm bending to grip around his hips. The blade skating over his neck, hunting a weak spot. Virtual vision shrieked a warning that his force field was being overloaded by some drain mechanism. These soldier motiles were faster than the ones on Elan. Sensor vision returned. Incomprehensible montage of alien suit fabric, purple light, trampled grass. His own senses told him they were falling together. He triggered the electrification circuit, pumping forty thousand volts through his suit. The alien turned lambent crimson. It sought to roll on top of him, legs three and one bucking, trying to latch what felt like hundreds of hoof claws around his ankle and knees. Morton went with the roll, then amplified it with a savage body twist. Wound up on top. His gauntlet clamped around arm one and twisted with full electromuscle strength. Something beneath the alien’s flesh buckled, and the arm bent around at a sharp angle. The claw of arm three closed around his neck. His force field alarm went up a grade.
“For fuck’s sake,” Morton grunted. Five-centimeter talons slid out of every finger on his right hand. He punched down hard. Red lightning spat out of the impact. He kept pressure going as the dump-function on the talon tips pulled energy out of the soldier motile’s force field. A stressed whine cut through his insulation. Then the alien’s force field weakened around the talons. Morton’s hand ripped through fabric and flesh. He thrust it deep into the body turning as he went, ripping organs and blood vessels, then pulled back. It came free reluctantly, sucking up a honey-yellow gore. The soldier motile went limp.
“Morty, we don’t have time to make it personal, darling,” the Cat chided.
A micromissile detonated beside him. A cloud of hyperfilament shrapnel boiled out of the explosion, shredding through soil and surface rock. His force field glared scarlet on the point of overload as he was punched sideways by the writhing impact.
“Told you not to waste the HVvixens,” Rob said.
Morton scrambled to his feet. The Cat was right. They were getting swamped by soldier motiles, of which there was a seemingly endless number. Hundreds of them had jumped out of their vehicles as soon as they reached the MANN truck. Now they were blocking the way forward. Leaving the road to try to outflank them had been a big mistake. A hundred fifty meters to his left, the armored cars were driving down Highway One, their X-ray lasers slashing from side to side like a demented swordsman keeping his opponents at bay. They could pierce the force fields used by soldier motiles if they got within fifty meters, which gave them a small clear area. A flight of micromissiles hammered into the road just ahead of the armored car Bradley was riding in. Hyperfilament shrapnel shredded the concrete to fine gravel. The armored cars started to fishtail as soon as they drove into it, wheels throwing up grit as they spun.
Alic’s particle lances boomed, sending pulses streaming toward the cluster of soldier motiles that had fired the missiles. They toppled to the ground, then started to pull themselves upright again.
Morton scanned his sensors around, building a tactical profile. It wasn’t good. So far they’d traveled about three kilometers on from the original blockade. At least a hundred fifty soldier motiles had them effectively surrounded. The Guardians on their Charlemagnes were a kilometer behind, and holding off—not that they could help. His suit power cells were down to under fifty percent. There had been too many close calls in combat. None of them had any HVvixens left.
His radar scanned ahead, picking out the MANN truck with its escort eight kilometers away. It was traveling fast along the clear road. Bradley wasn’t going to catch it, let alone ram it.
“We’ll ride shotgun,” he said. “Stig, switch off your X-ray lasers. We’re hitching a ride.”
“Morton, we have to catch up,” Bradley said.
Morton could hear panic edging into his voice. “We can cut through if we combine our firepower.” He’d already started running; the other suits were beside him firing energy weapons into the elusive line of soldier motiles. Up ahead, the armored cars took more hits from micromissiles. The road surface was completely trashed, reduced to a mire of loose fragments that bogged them down.