I remembered Brigantia and decided maybe the Tahni weren’t that different from us after all. This was their world, and in their eyes, we were worse than invaders, we were blasphemers. It was hard for me to think that way, probably hard for anyone raised on Earth. No one on Earth believed in anything as much as the Tahni did. Not enough to die for it. Even the gangs didn’t believe that hard. But I’d learned a lot of history during my time in the Marines, and gained a perspective not just on how people used to live in the past but how they still lived out in the colonies, where belief still counted for something.
And I believed it had worked. They’d stopped shooting at us, whether because they thought we were bugging out or because they couldn’t see us anymore. I was sure they had spy cameras out here, but this place had been pounded by EMP when the deflector dishes went down and I doubted if any electronics not shielded by military-grade insulation could have survived it.
At least I didn’t have to worry about mines or booby traps. That was one area where the Tahni believing so hard hurt them. Their religion didn’t allow automated weapons. Life and death were the purview of their version of God, and God worked through them, his chosen people, to give life and to take it. We were far enough ahead of them in computer engineering that I think we could have disabled or hacked anything they could set up for us even if they didn’t have the screwy belief system, but it would have taken time we didn’t have. And again, was it really so screwy? After all, we didn’t go for automated weapons either, and if we justified it by bad experiences in the past, was that any more logical than saying “God doesn’t like it?”
The lookouts at the warehouse weren’t automated, though. They were civilians, old males, dressed in the strange arrangement of braided and woven strips of cloth Tahni of both sexes wore. There was a certain look about them, a sturdiness across the shoulders and a straightness to their backs that told me I was right, that they were old soldiers. They disappeared back into the rear doors of the warehouse at the sight of us and I knew we were running out of time.
“Hit the jets!” I said, then threw myself forward, not waiting to see how quickly the rest of the platoon obeyed.
We were two hundred meters away from the side door to the warehouse, oval and segmented and big enough for three of us to pass abreast if we wanted, and it took a good three seconds of flight to reach it. Kries was a good leader and a good follower too, and his squad hit the doors first, but I was right behind them, probably too close, but I had to see. The civilians retreated before us, skittering back across the open causeways through the stacks of cargo containers spaced about four meters apart and rising up twenty meters high to the curved ceiling overhead. I had been worried they might have weapons, might try something stupid, but they were playing it just right if their aim was to convince us they were harmless refugees, just trying to sit out the battle. Their eyes, though, were sharp and watchful, and not nearly scared enough.
“No females,” Kries commented, entering the building with a slow, healthy caution, his rounded footpads scraping against the concrete.
“Not unusual,” I told him, scanning the cargo containers before I followed Fourth squad inside. “The females live apart from the males once they reach sexual maturity. Apparently, and no, I’m not making this up, the Tahni males go into heat and can’t control themselves around females.”
“Yeah, I remember being a teenager, too.” He paused about ten meters into the building. “I ain’t seein’ no enemy troops in here, boss.”
“And you won’t,” I assured him. “That’s the point. Watch my back.”
I advanced and kept one eye on the civilians as I scanned the floor. Solid concrete as near as my thermal and sonic sensors could tell, all the way through the first sixty or seventy meters of stacked containers. Nothing in the containers, either, no heat sources, no chemical signatures, no sound. The males moved back as we moved forward, but only to a point. They clustered around a dull-grey dome of poured concrete near the center of the warehouse.
I’d seen them before, had been told by people who claimed to know that they were intended to store valuable goods, things that were easy to steal. I wasn’t sure if I believed that. The Tahni were so fanatical, so devoted to their belief system, it was hard for me to grasp the concept of one of them stealing, but maybe I was idealizing the enemy. Captain Covington had warned me that was a problem some militaries had faced in the past when fighting someone outside their own culture, the temptation to either write them off as subhuman animals or to put them on a pedestal as some sort of warrior ideal.
But I didn’t think the dozens of retired Tahni soldiers huddled around the five-meter-tall concrete dome were there to take advantage of the attack to loot it. I levelled my plasma gun and aimed it at the center of them.
“Move,” I ordered, and my public address speakers translated it into Tahni, a consonant-heavy trip-hammer of a language. “Move now or I fire.”
They still looked reluctant, but they slid aside as if they’d rehearsed the motion and I grabbed the handle for the heavy, metal door with my armor’s articulated left hand and yanked it open. The interior was empty of cargo, empty of any goods the Tahni or anyone else might want to steal. It
