Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [73]
Instantly, the dimness of the cave grotto changed to the bright glare of sun blazing down on the salt flats. Squinting, he kept going forward to avoid being trampled by the soldiers marching through behind him.
Even before his vision cleared, though, the General could tell something was wrong. He heard a humming in the air, a chittering, and the rustle of what seemed like thousands of bodies moving. His own soldiers began to shout as they came through the transportal, adjusting goggles and visors on their helmets.
Now Lanyan saw monsters--a numberless swarm of them.
Instead of a Hansa colony with a few hundred settlers, he and his men found thousands of giant bugs that looked vaguely like Klikiss robots. But they were alive, organic. It was all he could do to bite back a scream. Some of his soldiers yelled.
The bugs noticed them.
As Lanyan staggered forward, shouting for his soldiers to ready their weapons, he spotted a group of haggard people in makeshift corrals. Only twenty or thirty scarecrowish prisoners were left alive. He saw butchered human bodies strewn about, many of them floating in the brackish pools. New towers built of salt, sand, and white borax shone like stalagmites rising out of the alkaline pools.
The surviving Pym colonists let out a chorus of shouts and pleas for the EDF to rescue them. Lanyan instantly reacted. He was commander of the Earth Defence Forces, and these were Hansa colonists in danger.
The insect monsters raised scythelike forelimbs, hissing and whistling and clicking. They began marching toward the transportal and the oncoming EDF soldiers. Unaware of what they were about to face, uniformed men kept pouring through from Rheindic Co.
'Open fire! Defend yourselves!' Lanyan ran ahead, blasting with a pulse rifle that was no longer merely ceremonial. The insect monsters made eerie, nerve-jarring sounds as they swarmed forward. The EDF soldiers, still emerging from the transportal by the hundreds, launched their attack.
Forty-three
Rlinda Kett
Her first mission as Trade Minister seemed awfully lonely without BeBob. At one time Rlinda Kett had been content to be the only person aboard the Voracious Curiosity, but recently she'd grown fond of having her favourite ex-husband along. She enjoyed his sense of humour, his conversation (such as it was), and most especially the sex.
But now that she was returning to the Hansa under uncertain political circumstances, she didn't dare bring BeBob along. He already had a death sentence for 'desertion', and she intended to keep him safe. She could do this little meet-and-greet herself - if, that was, she found anybody receptive to what she had to say. This scouting expedition was official business (though the Chairman would probably call it 'spying'), but nobody else needed to know why she was here. She would play the part of a simple trader with run-of-the-mill goods.
Approaching Earth, Rlinda requested permission to land. The standard orbital traffic lanes were a scrapheap of empty hulks not yet towed out to a safe holding zone. She could see crews working among the derelicts, dismantling them for parts. Some chunks slowly spiralled down and burned up in the atmosphere. The nightly meteor showers must have been something to see.
A small piece of debris - apparently a loose spacesuit glove -caromed off the Curiosity's hull. Dodging larger pieces of space junk, Rlinda contacted the space traffic substation on the ground. 'How the hell do you expect to receive any trade ships with this demolition derby in your own back yard? Can somebody give me a safe path through this obstacle course so I can get to the Palace District?'
'We're still working on the situation,