The Garden - Melissa Scott [89]
She lifted the control box, summoning the nearest harvester, and it rolled toward them, shedding the sled and several pairs of arms as it did so.
"Where are we going?" Renehan asked, but followed the Kirse onto the narrow platform behind the harvester's head.
"To the nearest launch point. It isn't far." Grayrose squinted up at the white sky, then tilted her head as though to listen.
"What is it?" Paris said.
"The drones. They're designed to destroy the shuttles before they lift. I thought I heard them." Grayrose touched the control box again, and the harvester shed its last pair of arms. It looked like a completely different machine now, Paris thought, capable of speed.
"If they've got drones out, I don't want to be caught
in the open," Renehan said, and Paris nodded, pulling himself up next to her on the little platform.
"You must come with me," Grayrose said. "The gardeners, and anything else adapted, for that matter-the attack will upset them, you'd be in danger from them if you stayed."
"Not to mention the Andirrim," Renehan said.
"And them also," Grayrose agreed, with perfect seriousness.
"Right," Paris said. "Let's go."
Grayrose touched the control box a final time, pushing all the toggles fully forward, and the harvester jolted into motion. Paris tightened his grip on the protruding frame as the cumbersome machine lurched across a shallow ditch, but then they had reached one of the golden roads that crisscrossed the planet, and the harvester steadied again. It began picking up speed, power plant humming more strongly now, and Grayrose glanced again at the sky.
"The main body will be heading for the citadel, of course, but there will be raiders-"
Even as she spoke, something flashed against the sky, low on the horizon. Paris swore again, scanning the clouds, but whatever it was had vanished.
"Did you see something?" Renehan asked, and Grayrose pointed beyond the harvester's head.
"There's the launch site."
It was at least two hundred meters away, a low, unremarkable hill, except for the half-moon opening, too regular to be a natural cave, just below the summit. Paris could just see the nose of a shuttle like the one he had flown in protruding from the opening. More Kirse, at least three of them, all winged, were busy with something beneath the left wing.
"Great," he began, and his words were drowned in a sudden shriek of displaced air. Something small and
brilliant silver skimmed past a meter or so above his head, followed by two more similar objects.
"Drones," Grayrose cried, and reached for the phaser she carried at her waist. She braced herself against the harvester's head and fired twice after them-less in any real hope of hitting them, Paris realized, than to warn the Kirse at the launch site.
"More behind us," Renehan said sharply, and drew her own phaser. Paris copied her, thumbing the setting to high, and aimed at the triple points of light that swept up the road toward them. He fired twice himself, heard Renehan's shots echoing his own, and then the first drone was on them. It spat fire, the bolts scorching the pavement alongside the harvester, and Grayrose fired once, aiming directly for its nose. The drone wobbled, then recovered itself, curving up and away to position itself for another run.
"Get down," Paris called, and flung himself off the harvester. He hit the ground hard and rolled out of it, distantly aware that he would be bruised in the morning if he lived that long. The second drone dove after him, firing, and he dove for the shelter of a shallow ditch, flinging himself onto his back to fire back at it. His shots came nowhere near, but the machine swooped away, and he rolled to his knees, searching for the third drone. For a second, he couldn't see where it had gone, but then he saw it, coming low and fast along the line of the road, bolts