Head-down around the curve of the trunk, he caught sight of her. She was indeed fighting, though her form was almost completely obscured by the lumpy, humping shapes of more of the hand-sized attackers. They shoved and jostled over the surface of her armor, as--blindly, with groping hands, because they occluded her faceplate as well--she clutched at them, grabbed and peeled, hurled them aside in a mess of bridging sparks. More dropped from the branches around her, however; the undersides of nearby trees writhed with the things, and for every one she got off, two more attached themselves.
Benedick hooked his knees over a thick, bent limb, having checked the underside for attackers, and--hanging like a sloth--stretched out both hands. The microwave projectors that had so successfully heated his supper had other uses now. While he didn't dare point them directly at Chelsea, even within the protection of her armor, the first step in getting her free was stopping the reinforcements. He couldn't do much about the ones humping down the cable toward her, like malevolent drops of molasses slipping along a string. But the dozens clustered on the undersides of the tree trunks, waiting their opening--those were fair game.
'Toolkit,' he said. As his helm unsealed, he felt its silken fur uncoil from around his neck. A second later, it slithered the length of his arms. It plugged itself into a wrist outlet and reared up, spreading its fragile-seeming arms wide.
The liver-colored things sizzled but made no other sound. Like insects frying in the concentrated rays of the sun, they writhed, convulsed, and scaled from the trunk in showers, tumbling away below. Some, he heard hit solidly--a meaty thump as they smacked into a trunk or a limb. Some just brushed the leaves aside and vanished into the depths.
It didn't take long, which was a godsend. Microwaving burned stored power, and unless he was moving the armor couldn't use his own kinetic energy to recharge its batteries. Unassisted, the power cells wouldn't support this kind of expenditure long--and the toolkit couldn't have handled that sort of burn without his armor's help at all. But after less than ninety seconds, the only attackers remaining were the ones clinging to Chelsea and a few others too close to her to burn.
Benedick missed his anchor cable now. As the toolkit scampered back inside the safety of his helm, he grabbed the limb supporting his weight--and the equal weight of his armor--freed his legs, and pumped twice hard to make the swing-and-grab to Chelsea's side. He couldn't hear her, but it was possible that the fleshy, leechlike attackers were blocking her comm out but not in.
'It's me,' he said reassuringly, as she got her gauntlets under the edge of a leech-thing on her faceplate, peeled it off, and cast it aside.
Like the others, it made no noise as it fell. He could see that the clear panel of her faceplate was etched where the thing had gripped her; he might have improved her vision slightly, but only just.
'We'll get those off you,' Benedick continued, and reached for one that was humped up, prying at the join of her chest plate and helm.
It took doing. The ones next to it grabbed at his fingers with toothed, suckery margins. The one he meant to dislodge was strong, slick with mucus that scarred the fingertips of his gauntlets, and prone to firing off blue sparks when touched. Benedick's armor handled the electricity well, but when he finally got the little bastard off Chelsea's neck, it writhed in his fist and wrapped his gauntlet. His armor reported a sharp and immediate drop in power.
'Leeches,' Benedick said, disgustedly, and slammed his hand against the branch he was hanging from to crush it.
At least that worked, resoundingly. The creature sparked and went limp. As he threw it away he caught a glimpse of ripped muscle, a translucent slime of blood, and through that, the dulled gleam of circuitry.
Chelsea's armor arced, her struggles weakening. She still fought, but sluggishly; all her strength was devoted to moving the armor, which now impeded rather than assisted her. Benedick hooked his legs around another nearby bough to free both hands. Now that he had a better idea of the enemy, he didn't bother peeling them away. He just pressed paired thumbs into the center of each, feeling for a power source or heart. The muscle was tough, resilient. Fibers mushed unpleasantly aside until he felt things crunch.
He had gotten three of them off her--and could make out the shadow of her conscious face and open eyes behind the milky, etched faceplate--when the second wave arrived, dropping through the leaves above with a patter like falling rain. He swung his hands up, summoned the toolkit, and opened fire without concerning himself with whatever might be behind them. There were times to worry about collateral damage. This was not one.
The first group died as they fell, sizzling and smoking. Behind them came more, though, in such numbers that he couldn't kill them all. The dead ones knocked his arms aside, then living ones struck and clung. He lost the toolkit when they knocked it from his wrist. He heard it shriek as it fell, and flinched from the sound.
Through the armor he felt no pain, but he heard the hiss of the ablative coating being eaten away, and the armor transmitted the hump and suck of the leeches' suckered bellies all too well. Power levels spiraled; the biomechanicals swarmed across his visor, obscuring vision with their flat, fleshy bellies, as if someone had thrown handfuls of organ meats across his face. He scraped his fingers across the helm, squeezing, and felt the muscle and fluids of the one he gripped pulp and ooze around its internal core of electronics and wires. Whatever scraps were left, he cast aside, and reached for the next leech, only to halt as something whipped softly around his wrist, restraining him. He pulled, feeling elasticity but no give. Something in them blocked all the armor's extended senses. Chelsea was somewhere to his left, still hanging from the cable, her armor powered down and incapacitating, but he couldn't feel her. If he could reach--
But now something tangled the other arm as well, and stretched against his waist. More and more, but whatever entangled him was also dragging the leeches off. He caught flashes of bright gold and fuchsia movement beyond his scarred, milky faceplate. Through an unscarred corner he thought he saw a beribboned, crested head like that of a fanciful dragon toss one leech up and gulp it down like a pelican gulping a fish. Then he felt pain, the burn of something along his left arm, and would have struggled as tendrils infiltrated the crushed, eroded elbow joint and pried the vambrace loose.
It slithered away. He would have snatched after it, but something held his wrist. Gently. More gently than he would have expected.
'Who are you?' he said, as the faceplate opened, too, and he became conscious of another burning on his face. The digestive fluid of the leeches, which he was feeling now as adrenaline ebbed. 'Who are you? What are you? What do you want?'
Pain faded. Something sticky and cool bathed his arm; tender fingers--or something--picked around the edges of his wound, debriding. He blinked, saw bright silken fabric ripple before his eyes, and bent to peer around it to look for Chelsea.
She slumped two meters off, armor cracked open and bright swaths of green gel decorating her face, her shoulders, and a portion of her chest and collarbone that was marked with the angry red of acid burns. Petals hung all around her face and head like halos--a spray of enormous orchids, white harlequined with thick, wet-looking crimson--and something had disconnected her cable and hauled her to firm footing on a broad limb. That seemed friendly, but Benedick was not comforted by the green coils at her wrists, waist, and about her throat.
Green coils that matched the tendrils restraining him.
'Hello?' he said, as he was lifted to his feet. 'Hello, who are you?'
'Be still,' said a voice, awkward and breathy. Not human, and more like the sounds of silk rubbing silk than those produced by vibrating vocal chords with air pushing through them. 'Don't struggle, mammal.'
'Who are you?' As Benedick lifted his face to return what
Behind the blooms, he had the impression of an asymmetrical body assembled of fat, irregular tubers and bladelike leaves as wide as his torso. They lay flat against the tubers now, like the plates of a spiny echidna, but he had reason to suspect that if the orchid was unhappy, they might not always look so sleek.
'We're the carnivorous plants,' the voice said, words made of a sound like the rubbing together of hands. 'Now be
