lips tight, the glittering eyes staring straight ahead.
“HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT INITIATED BY RED COMMANDO UNIT AT SOUTHWEST CORNER. THREE BLUE MECHANICALS INACTIVATED. RED LOSSES: ONE.”
“But what started all this going?” Jask wondered.
“Perhaps our presence did it,” Tedesco said. “Or maybe there are regular mock battles here all the time. I've noticed that some of the robots are in good repair, while others are dented, rusted, and some are missing parts of their bodies.”
As if anxious to provide an example of what Tedesco had said, another blue soldier shambled up to join his fellows in the limestone ring. He was missing his right foot and one bright eyeball, but seemed undeterred by his injuries.
“I have a feeling this might go on all night,” Jask said. Around them the soldiers clanked, fired sizzling bolts of light, all to the booming commentary of the unseen announcer.
“There's one way to be sure it doesn't,” Tedesco said. He lifted his power rifle and destroyed the nearest blue soldier. The blast did not merely deactivate it, but tore it in two. “We'll make sure that one side or the other wins as quickly as possible.”
Jask grinned. “Shall we begin?”
They wiped out the blue soldiers who had intruded into their campsite. None of the mechanicals offered a defense or even seemed to be aware that they were under attack by anyone but the red army.
“MAJOR COUP BY THE RED FORCES. CREATIVE STRATEGY AS YET UNANALYZED. MORE TO FOLLOW.”
“I see about a dozen blue soldiers over there,” Jask said, pointing, leading the way.
They sauntered across the field, violet streaks of light hissing by them, mechanical soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat on both sides, and they destroyed fifteen of the blue soldiers, leaving their red enemies standing stupidly in the tall grass, looking this way and that, perplexed.
“UNPRECEDENTED CROSSFIRE INITIATED BY RED FORCES, INFLICTING CATEGORY AB LOSSES ON BLUE. MORE TO FOLLOW.”
Ten minutes later Tedesco stepped in front of the last blue unit and charred it into a smoking lump of metal and plastic. “That's that,” he said, lowering the rifle.
“Now what?”
“We'll wait and see.”
For five minutes the surviving red soldiers stood dumbly where they were or took a few tentative steps in search of the enemy only to stop in confusion when their visual and audio receptors informed them that no blue survived.
At last the giant's voice said: “NIGHT GAMES CONCLUDED. VICTORY TO RED. BLUE SUFFERS UTTER DEFEAT. NO SURRENDERS. DETAILED ACCOUNTING OF INDIVIDUAL BATTLE INITIATIVE, AS APPLIED TO THE GENERAL PLAN, CATEGORY SITUATION KK, WILL BE OFFERED ON A PRINTOUT TO INTERESTED STRATEGY STUDENTS AS SOON AS TAPES OF THE ENCOUNTER ARE ANALYZED.”
At the closed end from which the blue army had originally come, squares of bright light appeared in the darkness, like doors opening magically in the air and giving access to secret, unseen rooms. Indeed, when Jask and Tedesco walked down there to have a look, they found that this was more or less the case. Four large elevator cabins had risen out of the meadow and were waiting for the mechanical soldiers to come aboard. The red troops filed into them, as did a few blue troopers who had been deactivated by the violet light beams and not utterly destroyed by Jask's and Tedesco's power rifles.
The last of the undamaged soldiers stepped into the elevators.
The doors remained open.
“UNITS MISSING,” the giant said.
The night was quiet.
“MUCH HIGHER THAN AVERAGE ACTUAL LOSS AMONG MECHANICAL BATTLE UNITS. ANALYSIS OF WEIGHTS IN RETURNING LIFTS INDICATES THIRTY-NINE UNITS MISSING.” There was a light humming sound while the disembodied voice thought things over. Then: “EXPLANATION INCLUDED IN PRINTOUTS, POST-BATTLE ANALYSIS. STUDENTS MAY HAVE ACCESS TO THIS DATA.”
The doors slid shut.
The elevators sank into the earth. The roofs were covered with plugs of earth and grass and blended perfectly with the meadow surrounding them, although, Jask soon discovered, the grass was plastic and the earth beneath was painted concrete.
“Maybe we should have taken a ride down there to see what's under us,” he told Tedesco.
“And we'd never be let out again.”
Jask nodded.
That was a possibility.
They walked back to their littered campsite in the limestone, carefully stepping over and around pieces of the demolished blue soldiers. They dragged the fallen mechanicals away from their camp and heaved them into the tall grass, and they straightened up the gear, which the red and blue men had thoroughly trampled.
“Now what?” Jask asked.
“Now we try to get some sleep,” the bruin said. But he did not make any move to lie down. He wiped at his blunt snout with one thick, furry hand, and he seemed not to be in a good mood — though his anger was not directed solely against Jask, for once. He cleared his throat, spat, and said, “We could have made a fatal mistake here.”
“How's that?”
Tedesco sniffed at the air as if he found something offensive in the crisp night breezes. “We forgot that we're in the Wildlands and not at home. Because the place looked so damned peaceful, we let ourselves get sloppy. We're not going to make that mistake again; we can't afford to make it if we're going to survive.”
“Aren't you exaggerating the situation?” Jask asked. Suddenly they seemed to have reversed roles. Jask never thought he would hear himself defend the peaceable Wildlands.
“No,” the bruin said shortly. “I'll take the first watch. I'll wake you in a few hours; then you can play sentry until after dawn.”
Tedesco scrambled to the top of the limestone formation and sat down where he could survey the entire meadow.
“But,” Jask said, “nothing really dangerous happened. They weren't out to harm us.”
“The next time they may be,” Tedesco said. “Now get some sleep. I'll wake you if I need help.”
16
In the morning, after a meal of roast rabbit and wild fruit and berries, Tedesco checked his compass and his maps, pointed the way, and started them on a new routine that lasted more than two weeks and was even more demanding than what they had subjected themselves to during their tedious journey through the bacteria jewels. After breakfast they walked no fewer than thirty and usually more than forty kilometers a day, no matter if the sky were clear or if they were pelted with cold rain. In the late afternoon or early evening they stopped and set up their camp, ate a dinner of fresh game and fruit. Then, together, they did their exercises — Tedesco, so that he might get back into shape after his ordeal in the jewel sea, and Jask, so that he could add muscle to his slowly thickening biceps and chest. They took turns at watch, slept a bit less than they would have liked to, and began the next day as they had begun the one before it.
In the rich forest through which they traveled there was an abundance of life unlike the beautiful but barren landscape of the jewel sea. At first they encountered only small animals that were too frightened of them to pose any serious threat. They killed what looked edible and went on, undisturbed, waiting for the moment when they would finally come across a formidable beast, as they knew they eventually must.
Among the trees lay the ruins of ancient metropolises, grown over with crawling vines, nests now for rats and rabbits and squirrels, all but unrecognizable as the works of man.
