Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [81]
These gunships circled like vultures over the jungle. The trees constantly hummed with the sounds of heavy repulsorlifts and turbofans.
The hums rose to roars and fell to insectile buzzing, mingled to swarms and split to individuals that curved through the invisible sky. Now and again flame poured into the jungle from above, bringing harsh orange light to the gloom under the canopy, casting black shadows among the green.
I don't think they were actually expecting to hit anyone.
They harrassed us constantly, often firing down at random through the jungle canopy, or sweeping overhead to set vast swathes afire with their Sunfire flame projectors. To return fire would only fix our position for their gunners, and so all we could do was scurry along below the canopy and hope that we would not be seen.
The guerrillas barely seemed to notice. They slogged along-those who could walk-with heads down, as though they had already accepted that sooner or later one of those carpets of flame would fall upon them all.
Korun to the bone, they never uttered a word of complaint, and nearly all could draw strength from the Force-from pelekotan-to keep them on their feet.
Those who could not walk were bundled like baggage upon the backs of their grassers. Most of the animals now bore nothing but wounded; the supplies and equipment looted from the Balawai rode crude but sturdy travois that the grassers dragged behind them.
On this march, too, the ULF would endure a new tactic from the militia: they had begun night raids. They didn't appear to have any hope of actually catching us-that wasn't the point. Instead, the gunships flew high overhead and fired laser cannons down at random. Just harassment. To spoil our rest. Keeping us awake and jumpy.
Wounded men and women need sleep to heal; none of them would get it.
Every dawn, a few more would lie still and cold on their bedrolls when the rest of us arose. Every day a few more would stumble, blind with exhaustion, and stagger away from the line of march to lose themselves among the trees.
Usually permanently.
There are many large predators on Haruun Kal: half a dozen distinct species of vine cats, two smaller variants of akk dogs as well as the giant savage akk wolves, and many opportunistic scavengers such as the jacuna, a flightless avian creature that travels in bands of up to several dozen monkey-lizard-sized birds-which are equally adept at climbing, springing from branch to branch, or running on flat ground, and are not at all picky about whether what they eat is actually dead. And most of the large predators of Haruun Kal are intelligent enough to remember the good feeding to be had in the wake of a column of wounded Korunnai. Which is why stragglers rarely caught up with us again.
We were, as Nick would say, a walking all-you-can-eat buffet line.
This is also why the ULF didn't have to post much of a guard on the prisoners.
There were twenty-eight, all told: two dozen jungle prospectors and the four surviving children. The jups were left to stagger along supporting each other as best they could, dragging those who could not walk on smaller versions of the travois hauled by the grassers.
They were watched by only a pair of Vastor's Akk Guards and six of their fierce akk dogs; as Vaster led Mace past, he explained that the guards and dogs were there only to make sure the Balawai did not steal weapons or supplies from wounded Korunnai, or otherwise attack their captors. The guards didn't need blasters; any prisoner who wished to escape into the jungle was welcome to.
That is, after all, what was going to happen to them anyway: stripped of everything but their clothing and boots, they would be turned loose in the jungle, left to make their way to whatever safety they might be able to find.
Tan pel'trokal. Jungle justice.
Mace leaned alongside