Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [142]
'And we will remove the human trespassers. They will no longer bother you. Do not kill them.'
'They were here. This planet is ours.'
'They were unaware.' He stared directly at the angular face of the monster before him, but he could read nothing. 'We do not desire conflict. We wish to remove conflict. We are Ildirans. Klikiss had no quarrel with us before. We were once your allies. Your breedex must remember.'
'Our breedex knows everything,' the domate said. 'But these are not Ildirans. These are… something else.'
Zan'nh adjusted the translation device. 'And I have come to take these humans from your sight. You will have your planet back, exactly as you left it.'
The warriors scritched their armoured forelimbs together. Zan'nh kept his gaze focused forward, and the domates stared at him with faceted eyes in the cold. Why would the Klikiss be reluctant to let the humans leave?
Zan'nh persisted, 'Will you let me take them away? They are not part of your wars. Neither are Ildirans.' With his warliners overhead and the armed cutters nearby, he hoped the insect creatures did not wish to clash with the Solar Navy.
The tense stand-off lasted for a long moment. The breedex seemed to be considering every aspect of the problem, every advantage. Finally, grudgingly, the domates lifted their segmented limbs and took two steps backward. 'Take them. Remove them from here.' With a gesture of its jointed arm, the domate pointed to the thick-walled stockade, from which humans shouted for help. 'This planet remains ours.'
'This planet is yours,' Zan'nh agreed. He issued orders to his soldiers still waiting inside the cutter. They broke the stockade gates open, and desperate, grateful humans streamed out, some falling to their knees and sobbing, others clutching at the hands and uniforms of the Ildirans.
He had to move swiftly. 'Fill the cutters and take these people back to the warliners. We must do this in a single trip - before the Klikiss reconsider.' Fewer than fifty human colonists remained alive, and they easily fit aboard the transport vessels.
Zan'nh backed toward his cutter, staring at the domates, anxious to be gone from Cjeldre. He had fulfilled the Mage-Imperator's orders to rescue human colonists, but he did not feel overly triumphant.
Motionless, the Klikiss watched the Solar Navy depart.
Eighty-nine
Sirix
Before the black robots could destroy the main towers on Llaro, a sudden and overwhelming wave of Klikiss warriors poured from the main city, carrying the bell-mouthed energy weapons Sirix had encountered during the first attack on Wollamor. Could this be the same subhive? The Klikiss began to mow down black robots, Soldier compies, and even their own unarmed warriors who stood in the way.
With this new surge of unexpected reinforcements, the insect warriors began slaughtering Sirix's troops. He saw the disaster unfolding and knew he could not risk a continued pursuit of DD, nor could he keep fighting the Klikiss. Though the robots killed three insect creatures for every one of their own casualties, Sirix could not afford those losses. He had no choice but to sound a retreat.
To the dropships! Back to orbit.' He could expend some of his remaining heavy-calibre weaponry, the large-scale planetary jazers, to obliterate this infestation, or at least clear a path for his surviving comrades to escape. He might still achieve victory here, though it would cost him more than he had anticipated.
Several of the EDF landers had been damaged in their high-velocity descent, and the robots climbing aboard could not get the engines started. One dropship lifted off, lumbered into the air, and crashed with sufficient force to damage the occupants. Before any survivors could scramble out of the wreckage, the Klikiss fell upon it.
However, so many of the black robots had been wiped out that there were more functional dropships than the survivors required. Most of the craft lifted off into the sky and fled the battleground, intending to return with hellish fire from above.
But the Llaro breedex had one more unpleasant