Tamman nodded and slid out of his pack to extract a two hundred-meter coil of synthetic rope. While he and Sean rigged safety harnesses, Harriet and Sandy went on trying to analyze their readings without much success. Sean wasn’t too happy about that, yet there wasn’t a lot he could do about it, and he waved Tamman over the side.
Tamman picked his way as carefully as he could, but the hundred-meter slope, while less sheer than the bare rock face to the west, was both steep and treacherous. The soil was soft and shifting despite a covering of grass, and he slipped several times. Harriet had it easier. She was taller than he but as slender as her mother; even with her scanpack she was much lighter, and she had the advantage of watching where he’d put his feet ahead of her.
Sean should have found the descent easiest of all, despite his height and weight, since he was behind both of them and placed to learn by their mistakes, but much as he knew he ought to, he couldn’t seem to keep his mind on where he was going. He kept looking up at the ruins on the far side of the valley, and when he wasn’t doing that his attention kept trying to stray to the ones out in the middle. He knew he should ignore them—after all, Sandy was keeping watch on them and he was anchor man for the safety rope—but he just couldn’t. Which was another reason he’d put Tamman in front, where they needed someone who wouldn’t let curiosity distract him from the task in hand.
Yet perhaps it was as well he was distracted. It meant he was looking up, not at his feet, when Sandy suddenly screamed.
“Something’s coming up over th—!”
A boulder two meters to Harriet’s right exploded, and she cried out in pain as a five-kilo lump of stone slammed into her shoulder. It didn’t break her bio-enhanced skin, but the impact threw her from her feet, and that, Sean realized later, was what saved her life. The heavy energy gun needed a handful of seconds to reduce the boulder to powder; by the time the first energy bolt hit where she’d been standing, she wasn’t there anymore.
He dug in his heels instinctively, hurling himself backward to anchor her, but the next bolt of gravitonic disruption sliced the rope like a thread. Her fall accelerated, and she tumbled downslope, slithering and bouncing. She tried frantically to avoid Tamman, clawing for traction as she gathered speed, but the loose soil betrayed her and he couldn’t get out of the way in time. Her careening body cut his feet from under him, sending them both crashing downward in a confusion of arms and legs, and more bolts of energy came screaming out of the night. Gouts of flying dirt erupted all about them as ancient, erratic tracking systems tried to lock on them, and only their unpredictable movement and the senility of the defenses kept them alive.
Sean almost fell after them as soil crumbled under his heels, but he managed to hold his position, and his grav gun leapt into his hands in pure reflex. The scarcely visible energy gun fire was a terrible network of fury to his enhanced vision, and a fist squeezed his heart as it reached out for his sister and his friend. But he’d been looking in exactly the right direction when it started. Whatever was firing on them wasn’t shooting at
It hissed, spitting explosive darts across the valley at fifty-two hundred meters per second, and savage flashes lit the dark as they ripped into the ruins. Each armor-piercing dart had the power of a half-kilo of TNT, and the crackle of their explosions was a single, ripping bellow as ancient walls blew outward in a tornado of splinters.
He held the trigger back, firing desperately and cursing himself for not having brought any heavy weapons. Even his implants couldn’t “see” well enough to target the energy guns; he could only pour in fire and pray he hit something vital before their control systems killed Harriet and Tamman.
A fist of pulverized soil slammed the side of his head, and a corner of his mind noted that the defenses had finally noticed him, but it was a distant thought as his three-hundred round magazine emptied. He ripped a fresh one from his belt, then grunted in anguish as the energy bloom of a bolt of disruption clawed at him. He rolled desperately to his left and managed—somehow—not to plunge downward after the others. Sandy had gotten her grav gun into action as well, and the thunder of her fire filled the valley as he finished reloading and opened up again. He cursed viciously as Harriet and Tamman slithered to a halt, but Tamman had figured out what was happening. He wrapped a powerful arm around Harriet and hurled both of them back into motion a split second before the automated guns could lock on.
Flames licked at the brush atop the ruined structures as Sean and Sandy pounded them, and Sean cried out as an energy bolt blew his backpack apart. His nervous system whiplashed in agony, the stunning shock threw the grav gun from his hands, and he heard Sandy screaming his name through the roar of her fire. He clawed after his weapon with numb, desperate fingers, and then an explosion far more violent than any grav gun dart lit the valley like a sun at midnight. The ruins vomited skyward as the capacitors feeding the energy guns tore themselves apart, and the concussion blew Sean MacIntyre into unconsciousness at last.
“Sean?” The soft, anxious voice penetrated his darkness, and his eyes slid open. He was still on the slope, but his head was in Sandy’s lap. He blinked groggily, and she smiled and brushed dirt from his face.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“I—” He coughed and broke off, wincing as a fresh wave of pain spun through him. His implant sensors had been wide open as he tried to find a target, and the corona of the energy bolt had bled through them. His nerves were on fire, and he moaned around a surge of nausea, but he was alive, and he wouldn’t have been without his enhancement. Not after taking a shot that close to his heart and lungs.
“I’m okay,” he rasped as his implants recovered and began damping the pain. He swallowed bile, then stiffened. “
“They’re all right,” Sandy soothed, pressing him back as he tried to sit up. “The guns never managed to line up on them, and—” a ghost of humor lit her face “—at least they got to the bottom faster than they’d expected. See?”
He turned his head, and Harriet waved up at him from the valley floor. Tamman wasn’t looking in their direction; he was down on one knee, grav gun ready as he scanned the valley for any fresh threat. Not, Sean thought muzzily, that there was likely to be another. All the ruckus they’d raised dealing with the first one should have drawn the attention of anything else that was still active, and he relaxed.
“Thanks. If you hadn’t gotten to it in time—”
“Hush.” Sandy’s hand covered his mouth, and his eyes smiled up at her as she kissed his forehead. “
Chapter Twenty
Harriet watched Sandy and Sean work their way down the valley wall, and her anxious eyes noted the way her twin favored his left side and leaned on Sandy. She’d almost started back up when she realized he couldn’t get up at once, but Sandy’s wave had reassured her … some.
She ran to meet them as they slithered down the last few meters, and Sean gasped as she enveloped him in a fierce hug.
“Hey, now!” He raised a hand to her dust-smutted black hair. “I’m in one piece, and everything’s still working, more or less.”
“Sure it is,” she said tartly, accessing his implants with her own, but then he felt her relax as they confirmed what he’d told her. What that near miss had done to his enhanced musculature was going to leave him stiff for a week, yet the damage was incredibly minor.
“Sure it is,” she repeated at last, softly, and raised her head to peer up into his eyes, then kissed his cheek. He smiled and touched her face, then tucked one arm around each young woman and limped over to Tamman.
