Chapter Nine

A fine gridwork of lime-green appeared before Colonel Gabhart's eyes.
Though it seemed to be about a foot-and-a-half from the tip of his nose, the map simulation was actually computer-projected on the inside of his helmet's visor. One of the squares at the extreme left side of the grid blinked on and off. They had more company.
"Key nineteen," Gabhart said to his battlesuit. The gridwork display instantly dissolved, and he was looking through the lens of a motion sensor at the edge of their defensive perimeter. Four humanoid figures carrying crude projectile weapons made a stealthy approach from the west.
"Nineteen off," he said.
Before resuming work on the rocket gantry, Gabhart checked the elapsed time, which was projected in the upper-right corner of his field of view. In exactly twenty-two minutes, the launch vehicle was going to pass through the rift. Because there was no direct communication with Earth from the Shadow side, there was no way for him to stop the transfer. No way to speed it up, either. The comm blackout was a function of the structure of the pathway. It dictated that the entire operation be organized around a prearranged timetable. Accordingly, Gabhart and his team were working on a tight and inflexible schedule.
Time was also critical because existing technology and resources were being pushed to the limit. It took an unbelievable amount of power to create the pathway. And once it was in place, it had to be sustained, or there was no guarantee it would terminate in the same location when reconstructed. Each time the Shadow end of the pathway was opened, it caused an even bigger power drain. On the Earth side, in an effort unprecedented in human history, countless millions were sacrificing their own comfort and safety for the sake of this expedition.
Gabhart was grateful for the rigid schedule. It kept his team focused on step-by-step details. There was no time to surrender to the gut-churning agoraphobia that the wide-open spaces produced. No time to stew over the terrible weight of their isolation, or of their responsibility to those who had sent them. No time to consider the danger. Though this wasn't supposed to be a suicide mission, it had plenty of potential for turning out that way, surrounded as they were by a vast uncharted territory full of unknown hazards.
From the base of the mobile gantry, John Ockerman, the systems engineer, and Pedro Hylander, the biologist, had uncoiled the heavy, blast-proof ignition and telemetry cables from their spools, and were dragging them across the street, toward the ATV and launch control. Nara Jurascik, the team biochemist, and Marshall Connors, the geologist, stood beside the ATV, prepping its onboard computer for hookup. All electronic and software systems had to be triple-checked to make sure they had survived the crossing intact.
Like Gabhart, the others were soldier-scientists, line officers blooded in the Consumer Rebellion of 2099, five volunteers selected out of a global human population teetering above one hundred billion. They had been judged the best not just by their academic training or combat experience, but also by their bio-compatibility with the latest generation of Totality Concept technology.
The entire interior surface of the battlesuit was its control panel. Complete mastery of one's physical bodytotal muscular controlwas required to operate the body armor at maximum efficiency. On top of that, few human brains were capable of collating the avalanche of information the battlesuits provided, of shifting back and forth under the most extreme pressure, between complex real and virtual environments, and, in a fraction of a second, making critical and correct decisions.
As Jurascik and Connors ran the launch-sim diagnostics, the colonel helped Ockerman and Hylander examine every bolt and weld on the gantry frame. They had just about completed the painstaking work when a Shadow female appeared at the far end of the street. Naked except for ragged boots, she walked closer, paused, then fell into a wild, hip-churning dance.
Captain Connors's voice filled Gabhart's helmet. "Well, at least some of the natives are friendly."
"She does look glad to see us," Ockerman agreed.
"I hope she's got a brother," Jurascik said.
"Yeah, sometimes moves like that run in families," Connors said.
"Or not, as in the case of yours," the biochemist said.
The grid map reappeared before Gabhart's eyes. One of the squares blinked in red. Out of their direct line of sight, a pod of laser mines had been tripped.
"Key 42," Gabhart said.
His battlesuit responded by playing a recording of events that had taken place just seconds before a lime-green light show, complete with sound. In slow motion, the mines' laser beams passed through thehumanoids as if they were made of smoke.
Of course, smoke never sizzled like that.
Appearances to the contrary, the laser mine was one of the most merciful killers in the team's arsenal. In about a second, it produced surprise, pain, oblivion. The antipersonnel system subunits launched in unison, flying in precise formation for 1.3 seconds. With perfectly synchronized rotations, their firing lasers and reflectors created a narrow zone of absolute destruction. When the subunits fell back to the ground, the impact automatically rearmed them for the next jump. Once dispersed in the field, the computer-linked mines never needed service or refueling. They operated via their own threat-level analysis program, based on input from automated, sight, chemical and sound surveillance.
In other words, they were perpetual death machines.
Gabhart declined the replay option and the inside of his visor cleared. Down the street, the naked female still gyrated gleefully.
The crack of a rifle shot from behind made the colonel stiffen. Before he could turn to face the source, the bullet had sailed harmlessly past him. Using an infrared scan, he quickly located the shooter crouching in the rubble 90 meters past the end of the street. When Gabhart cranked the visor's magnification up to eight-power, he saw the middle-aged Shadow male taking aim again. He noted the weapon's crude telescopic sight.
Then the muzzle winked at him.
Thanks to the sensory enhancements of the battle-suit, Gabhart could actually see the bullet in flight. In his visual array, it appeared as a bright red dot circled in brilliant yellow. Beside the display, three sets of numbers scrolled.
Projectile caliber 7.62 mm.
Projectile speed 860 meters per second, and falling.
Distance to impact 30 meters, and falling.
Twenty meters from impact, the battlesuit automatically triggered a narrow-band deflection pulse of roughly a terawatt. The colonel felt nothing whatsoever. Like magic, the rifle slug simply seemed to curve around him, and as it did, its whine abruptly dropped in pitch.
As the entire team watched, the shooter fired his weapon again, with the same result. Gabhart wondered how long it would take for him to wise up to the fact that he could fire ten thousand bullets, burn out that rifle barrel and still never come close to the target. Though the artificially intelligent body armor was by no means a perfect defense in every situation, it could handle dozens upon dozens of incoming projectiles at onceprojectiles of up to 40 mm.
Evidence notwithstanding, the shooter stubbornly persisted, preparing to fire once more.
"He's outside of our AP perimeter, Colonel," Hylander said. "Should we just ignore him?"
"No, I'd better go collect him," Gabhart said, "before he damages something important."
The colonel trotted over to the windowless black gyroplane. At the touch of his gauntleted hand on its side, a panel slid back, revealing the cramped, two-seat cockpit. Gabhart climbed into the front seat, which immediately inflated and deflated in places, conforming to fit the shape of his body. When that process was complete, the door panel swished shut and red interior lights came on, allowing him to locate the coupler for the gyroplane's onboard computer. Once he connected his suit's umbilical, the red rights and the blacked-out windows vanished. Both pilot and pilot's seat floated in space. Gabhart had an unobstructed view in all directions. An illusion, of course. The world outside the aircraft's black skin was being optically scanned by numerous sensors, and after the irrelevant details were filtered out, the end product was projected onto the inside of his visor.
The colonel felt a slight vibration as the engine started up. He couldn't see the rear propeller building up speed, pushing the main rotor overhead, because the control program determined those details were unnecessary. However, the climbing rpm and thrust levels were displayed inside his visor. When the rotor reached liftoff thrust, Gabhart released the skid clamps and the gyroplane rocketed into the air.
It was like flying an armchair, but an armchair that with a stomach-dropping lurch climbed straight up to three hundred feet. On command, the chair tipped forward, giving the colonel a panoramic view of the terrain below. He located the running man without difficulty. As he banked to intercept his target, G-force pressed him deep into the contour seat. It was a max-speed dive. At the outer edges of his vision the surrounding landmarksthe ridge tops, the rock walls, the three-story structuresblurred, then stretched like taffy. Glittering taffy.
Gabhart could have just sat back and watched, letting the computer do all the work, but he enjoyed hands-on flying, especially in combat. Below him, a magnified, lone figure ran inside a superimposed red circle, the gyro's kill zone. He tensed his left index finger inside the battlesuit glove and the circle shrank until he had the man's right arm isolated. It was the arm that carried the projectile weapon. When the colonel relaxed the muscles of his hand, the fire control system had its target locked in. The circle bobbed up and down, up and down as the man pumped his arms, trying desperately to escape onrushing death from above.

AFTER HIS THIRD SHOT missed, Gore automatically chambered another live round. Eye pressed to the scope's rear aperture, cross wires on his target's black-armored chest, he tightened the trigger to the break point, then paused. He was rapidly losing confidence in the longblaster, and starting to get spooked by these muties, who made no move to duck for cover.
Where were Spadecrawler and Jones? Why hadn't they backed his play?
Through the scope, he followed his chosen target as it walked over to the flatbed trailer and climbed up and into the weird black machine that sat on it. He stared, fascinated, as the bladed thing in back of the fuselage began to spin. Then the bigger-bladed thing on its roof began to spin, too. Gore had no idea what the machine was supposed to do, but he didn't like the look of it one bit. He was about to put a bullet through its middle, just to see what would happen, when it jumped off its trailer and shot high into the sky.
At the sight, Gore panicked. Vaulting over low rubble heaps, he dashed for the base of the ridge, where the boulder fall could provide him some cover. He had crossed no more than one-third of the distance when he sensed the black thing swooping down on him from behind. He felt the terrible pounding of its blades against the air, felt the impacts inside his body and reacted by cutting hard to the left.
The flying machine swept over him, whipping up a cloud of dust. And as it passed by, a pencil line of green light from above cracked a smoking slit in the earth to his right.
For a second it didn't even hurt. Gore felt a sudden sensation of extreme pressure, of constriction just below his right elbow, and something clattered at his feet. He saw the Steyr on the ground, his severed hand and forearm still gripping the forestock. Staring in disbelief at his brand-new stump, he smelled burning meat, then his elbow exploded in pain. Gore fell to the dirt, squealing.