The Enemy was close now. He could hear them muttering to reassure each other, and hear their tortured breaths. They would have few more of those. He waited under the cut bank of the creek, just upstream from the crossing. Their voices resolved through the chuckling sound of the creek.
“—get across and we can rest,” Sergeant said.
“Thank God,” Gunner heaved out between strangled gasps. His voice was unclear yet. “We’ll need… ready… for when evac arrives. How do we… what happened?”
“We tell them exactly what happened,” Sergeant said. “There’s enough evidence in the monitors.”
They stopped at the beach and prepared to cross, and Cap took the moment to swim closer. A projection covered him, and he waited for them to splash into the chill water, the same water that tore painfully at the wound in his side.
Now. Their Guns were slung, they were knee-deepin water, and they couldn’t move as quickly as he did. He clambered up the bank, unheard over the water, and sprang, muscles releasing like a tensed spring.
He was on Gunner, and clawed his throat out. Six! Sergeant dropped his end of the Litter, and Cynd tumbled into the water to drown, next to the worms of red leaking up from Gunners wounds.
Seven! Cap turned, and saw Sergeant raising his Gun. He ducked and leapt, using Gunner as a base and felt the burn of a Bullet through his shoulder. It spoiled his attack, but he clawed Sergeant savagely with his right paw, tearing his arm and chest. He tried to force him under water, and Sergeant fired again with his other hand. He missed.
Cap sprang lightly back to his feet in the rocky shallows, sending agony through his side and shoulder. Sergeant was scrabbling for purchase, and wasn’t looking as he pounced again. He shoved the man’s head under water in the deeper pool, and leaned on it to hold it there. Gurgling sounds came, and he knew death would follow soon. He ignored the pain in his ribs, and the new pains as his Enemy cut him with a Knife. He shrieked, but pressed lower, closing with the blade until it could cut no more.
He fed on the pain, and pressed the attack. He could feel his foe weakening, and knew it would not be long now. Exhaustion was taking a toll, though, and he lacked the strength to attack again. Blood loss was making him weak, and spots before his eyes told him he was fading. But his Enemy was faring no better. He slipped under the water again, and emerged coughing, before falling back once more. Cap crept closer, begging strength from his tortured body.
They clashed again, Cap desperate to finish this, his Enemy desperate to survive. As they wrestled, he felt death hovering nearby. Or was that the sound of a Vertol?
It was a Vertol. Cap snarled in outraged frustration. The Gunners aboard wouldn’t shoot yet, but he had to leave or die. He drew back, dragging the limp, almost dead Enemy with him, keeping the man between him and potential Bullets. He slipped under water and headed for a moss-spattered rock, needing to get behind cover. Bullets like a deadly hail stirred the water, and he sank as he’d been taught. There was the cut in the bank, and there was the rocky shelf he’d taken on his way in.
Another burst shredded the growth as he fled, while burning with rage at not killing Sergeant.
He could not dwell on that now. He had to escape to make his Datadump, survive to fight again. Let the Enemy keep Sergeant and Cynd alive. They could tell them how the fight would go. Not only the soldiers, but the human settlers and their dogs and even the Leopards would fight.
Cap waited under a featherfern, eyes narrowed to cold slits, and held motionless as the Vertol passed over, then again, then a third time. They knew he was there, but couldn’t see him. Cap had played this game before, even though it wasn’t a game now. Despite their tools, people couldn’t find Leopards. Not one time in a hundred.
The Vertol flew over again, even lower, then the sound of it echoed away across the hills. In moments, the normal sounds of the northern forest returned, and Cap raised himself, all cuts and aches and bruises, to end his mission. It was nearly sunset, and he still had to hurry.
High in a tree, Capstick spent some time recovering from the exertion, feeling his heart thump, sensing his blood boil, hearing his thoughts roar. His injured shoulder was an agony that he would have to accept for now. At Home, it would need Surgery. His ribs might, also, and the wounds to his skin and tail. Then there was the pain within. He was weak, ill, and hot, but he would rest to recoup his strength and press on. The human doctors couldheal him, as they had before. People wore good at such things.
His thoughts were interrupted as his harness clicked and began its Datadump, and he heaved a deep sigh. He knew better than to roar in anger, pain, frustration.
David was dead. He knew other people, but David had been his friend his entire life. He could not yet think of existence without him. Loss… emptiness… he had no symbols to describe it properly.
Cap still had a purpose, however, and that would give him strength. But fatigue and exertion and his wounds called to him to rest. He would do that now. Tomorrow he would travel gingerly and painfully back to Home. There, he would be paired with a new friend, and he and that friend would hunt the invaders remorselessly. Perhaps the manhunters from Black Ops would join them. If not, he would teach his new friend what loyalty meant and they would hunt as a pair.
The Humans called it duty. To him it was simply the way things were.
CASUALTY
Even though it seemed to take every last vestige of her strength to drag herself into the kitchen, Jenny found the impetus to cook breakfast. While she was waiting for the frying pan to do its work, she ate a bowl of bite-sized Shredded Wheat sprinkled with sultanas. Then she ate two fried eggs, two pork sausages, four rashers of bacon, three slices of fried bread and two fried tomatoes. She washed it all down with half a liter of orange and cranberry juice and three cups of coffee with sugar.
There had been a time when she was proudly eating for two, carrying the future of the human race in her abdomen; nowadays she was just ravenous. She had hoped that the food would restore her strength and sense of well-being, but it didn’t. She didn’t want to vomit, but she still felt utterly drained, hardly capable of movement. She had too much pride actually to crawl back to bed, especially as she had put so much effort into getting dressed, but she collapsed onto the settee like the proverbial ton of bricks.
She called Jackie first, but Jackie was at work and had her mobile switched off. The “Ride ol the Valkyries” ran its course and then gave way to voicemail. Jenny cursed, not having realized that it was already after nine. She didn’t leave a message. She called the Health Center, where she was due to pick up her Genetic Profile results— and, if necessary, to discuss their implications with Dr. Kitteredge.
Her hand was trembling as she held the phone to her ear, although it weighed next to nothing.
“This is Jennifer Loomis,” she said, as soon as the receptionist answered. “I have an appointment at eleven, but I can’t make it. It’s just not physically possible. I know you don’t like giving out results over the phone, but could you just tell me whether the baby’s Genetic Profile is clear? I think I’m going to have to ask the hospital if they can take me in today—I’m supposed to have three weeks plus to go, but I just can’t go on. If I weren’t living in a ground floor flat, the stairs would have done for me already.”
She felt thoroughly ashamed of herself as she finished the rambling speech. She had always thought of herself as a strong person, capable of heroic effort when the need arose, and she had tried with all her might to believe what the veterans of the prenatal class told her about every first-time mother being taken by surprise by the awfulness of the experience, but she could no longer doubt that something was seriously amiss. It was one thing to be so lethargic that Jackie had to do the shopping for her, but quite another to find it impossible to move from room to room within the flat. She’d got into this mess because she’d heard the famous metaphorical biological clock begin to tick too furiously, but now its tick had been replaced by the knell of doom.
The receptionist seemed to have taken forever to summon her notes to the screen. “It’s a good job you rang, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said, scrupulously following the rule that required all maternity cases to be addressed as “Mrs.” Whether they were married or not. “Your appointment has had to be cancelled.”
“Well, thanks for letting me know,” Jenny said, unable to inject the requisite sarcasm into her tone. “He’s all clear genewise, then? Too bloody healthy by half, I dare say. It’s me that can’t take the strain.”
