CHAPTER 37

"Visors down."

I reached for my helmet in response to Adena's order and slid the transparent visor down until its lock clicked in place against the neck ring of my armor.

The clouds were breaking up and patches of blue were spreading across the sky. The snow glittered under the wintry sun, a featureless expanse that rolled out as far as the eye could see. Not a tree or a rock broke the ocean of white.

I stood up, peering out from behind the laser cannon, to study the field in front of us. Adena, I noticed, was crouched just inside the cave's entrance, her eyes glued to the small display screen of a gray metal box that rested on the rocky ledge where she had posted herself.

At first I could see nothing out there. Then, gradually, I began to make out the tiny specks of moving forms trudging slowly, inexorably, across the snow, heading at us.

"They've got bears in the vanguard," Adena's flat, emotionless voice called out to us. "And smaller game scouting ahead—wolves, it looks like."

I strained my eyes to make sense of what she was saying. Gradually I realized that the forces marching toward us were mostly animals, rather than the humanoid brutes. Gray wolves were at their front, with silver-furred foxes slinking among them. Farther back I could see the lumbering shapes of great bears, some of them white, most of them cinnamon brown. They were huge and muscular, trudging toward us on all fours.

Eagles, hawks, and smaller birds filled the sky. Smaller animals—raccoons, badgers, wolverines—became visible against the glistening snow. It was as if the whole planet's fauna had united to attack us.

Now, as they approached to point-blank range, I could see the humanoids behind them. Gray-skinned, powerfully muscled men dressed in skins. Smaller, slimmer females among them. Each of them carried long, spear-like weapons in their hands.

"Hold steady," Adena told us, in an expectant whisper. "Pick your targets. Leave the animals to the cannon crew."

I crouched behind the transparent plastic shield that curved across the front of the cannon. My assigned task was to monitor the power being used by the laser and warn the firing crew when the energy drain became dangerous. It was a job a monkey could do; all that was necessary was to watch the gauges on the power conversion panel that was built into the cannon's main console.

I looked up from the panel and stared at the advancing army of beasts, fascinated. How could Ahriman's people control them? As I watched, the animals seemed to hesitate for the span of a heartbeat, and then they broke into a running, galloping charge, heading straight for us.

"Fire!" Adena snapped, and the cave was suddenly filled with the hum and crackle of blazing energy weapons.

A hideous roar arose from the icy field outside, and I looked up to see the gleaming virgin snow turned into a sea of flame as the heavy laser cannon swept out an arc of raw burning energy, boiling the snow, roasting the beasts that were charging at us, filling the air with noisome oily smoke.

The soldiers were firing their individual weapons through the clouds of smoke and flame. What they were aiming at, I could not see. But a few of them pointed their guns upward, against the falcons and other birds that were swooping down toward the cave's mouth. An eagle smashed into one of the helmeted troopers, knocking him off his feet and killing itself with the impact.

I could see snarling wolves dashing across the snow toward us, leaping across the smoldering arc of blackened snow and burning animal flesh that the cannon had left. As we swung the laser to one side of the field, the animals would charge at us from the other side. The gunners shortened the range of their beam and roasted the beasts in their tracks, but more kept coming at us, closer and closer. The other troopers were picking them off, but always they got closer.

Suddenly a bear loomed right at the mouth of the cave, frighteningly huge, snarling and slavering, towering over us on its hind legs. It smashed a heavy clawed paw into one of the troopers, ripping the soldier in half and sending him sprawling bloodily against the cave wall. Four troopers blasted at it with their laser rifles, burning its guts open and nearly severing its head from its body. But the giant beast lumbered into the cave, screaming with pain and rage, striking blindly, bowling people over as it staggered forward on sheer inertia.

Without even thinking of what I was doing, I leaped out from behind the cannon's shield and threw myself in a rolling body block at the beast's legs. It felt like hitting the concrete pillars of a towering skyscraper, but the huge bear toppled and fell to the floor of the cave. A half-dozen laser blasts killed it; I felt the sizzle of their heat, smelled the burning hair and flesh as the beast died with a final strangled scream.

There was no time for congratulations. I snatched up the rifle from the fallen trooper and saw from her shoulder insignia that it was Rena. Her helmet visor was spattered with blood, her broken body plainly lifeless.

"They're infiltrating along the wall of the cliff!" Adena shouted to me.

I shouldered my way past the visored troops who were still firing into the advancing army of animals and stepped halfway out of the protecting mouth of the cave. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Adena doing the same thing on the other side of the entrance.

A dozen yards in front of me, a sleek gray wolf was edging its way along the face of the cliff, pressing its flank against the rock wall so that we could not see it from inside the cave or detect it with our sensors. Behind it, in single file, I could see a mountainous gray-white bear and more wolves.

The wolf stopped when it saw me. For an instant we looked into each other's eyes. I saw an intelligence there, and a burning red hatred that shocked me. The beast snarled and leaped for my throat. I squeezed the trigger of the rifle and burned it from jaw to crotch. It was dead when it hit me, and I staggered back a step under its impact but did not fall. The bear roared up onto its hind legs and came at me. I shot it through its fanged mouth; I could see the red beam of the laser emerge out of the roof of its skull. As it fell ponderously at my feet, I blazed away at the rest of the beasts. Wolves, foxes, badgers—whatever they were they scattered in all directions and ran away.

For just an instant I stood there, breathing heavily, feeling exultant. Then I spun around and saw that Adena was doing an even better job on her side of the cave entrance. Several dead beasts littered the ground around her, and she was picking off the others as they fled from her.

The area directly in front of the cave's mouth was a sickening carnage of charred bodies and glazed ice. The snow had been boiled instantly by the laser's power and then refrozen in the frigid air.

I suddenly realized that the battle had stopped. The only sound I could hear was the soft sighing of the wind. The clouds had blown away, leaving a crystalline blue sky marred only by the wafting black smoke from the smoldering bodies of the beasts.

"Get back inside the cave," Adena's voice commanded in my earphones. I could not see her face through the visor, but she sounded as if she was smiling at me.

I trudged inside and lifted my visor. The others were either clustered around Rena's dead body or checking the cannon and power packs.

"Is that it?" I asked Adena. "Is it over?"

She shook her head. "That was merely the first attack. They're regrouping. They'll be back in a few minutes."

"But... it's a slaughter," I said. "We've killed hundreds of them."

"We haven't killed anything but animals," Adena countered. "The brutes are fighting a war of attrition against us. They send in the animals to make us use up our power. Then, when our guns are out of energy, they make their real attack."

It took a few moments for the meaning of her words to sink in on me. "You're saying that they'll keep sending those animals against us until our weapons run out."

"That's what they've always done in the past," Adena said.

"Then what chance do we have of winning?"

Her smile came back, but it was the grim smile of a woman who appreciated irony, even when the joke was on her. "It all depends on whether they run out of beasts before we run out of power."

I must have looked unconvinced.

"It happens, Orion. Ahriman's people are not invincible. They're just as desperate as we are. That's the last group of them out there. If we can kill them, there will be no others to bother us."

"And if they can kill us..."

She nodded. "They win. For all eternity."

I was about to reply when one of the troopers called out, "Here they come again."

We rushed back to our battle stations. Rena's corpse was left on the bare rock floor, deeper back in the cave. Every man and woman took their assigned posts. Without being told, I hefted Rena's rifle and placed myself at the edge of the cave's entrance, where I could guard against infiltrating animals that could not be detected from further inside the cave. It was an exposed position, but the enemy had to come to within grappling distance to do me harm, I reasoned. As long as my rifle held out, I was safe enough.

"Visors down," came Adena's calm command. I obeyed and looked out at the approaching army of beasts.

Four times in as many hours the animals charged at us. Each time we beat them back: energy beams against fang and claw. The air became sickeningly heavy with the stench of burning fur and flesh. Dark clouds of death smeared the blue sky as the pale sun climbed across the heavens and began to throw lengthening shadows across the blackened, body-strewn field of snow and ice.

Every muscle in my body ached. My head buzzed wearily. The cave itself seemed dank with human sweat and the cloying odor of ozone. Marek made his way through us, handing each trooper a pair of yellow capsules. Food pills, he told me. Enough nutrition to sustain a man for twelve hours or more. I almost laughed. Less than a hundred yards from us was more meat than the sixteen of us could devour in a month, and we were subsisting on capsules.

Marek was speaking quietly with Adena, his face somber. I caught her eye, and she seemed to indicate that I should join them.

"How many more attacks can we handle?" she was asking him as I came up and stood beside her.

He gave me a suspicious look before answering, "Two, at least. Maybe three."

Adena glanced at the sensor screen, still resting, slightly crookedly on the rock ledge near the cave's entrance. "They still have enough animals for three attacks or more."

"Then we can't stay here," I blurted.

Marek glared at me. But Adena said, "What do you propose?"

"That we stop fighting dumb animals and carry the attack to the real enemy."

"Do we invite them to come here to the cave?" Marek asked sarcastically. "Or do we walk out into the snow and go to their camp?"

"The latter," I said. "We send out two or three volunteers to make their way into the enemy camp and attack them there."

He snorted. "They'd be torn to pieces by the beasts out there before they got close..."

"Not if they could get out of this cave undetected and circle around the beasts," I said. "They could attack the enemy from the rear."

"How could you get out of here undetected?" Adena asked.

"I'd go right now, and follow along the cliff wail until I'm beyond the flanks of their army of beasts. Then I'd cut across the snow field and make for their camp."

"That would take hours and hours, even if they didn't spot you," Marek said.

"Yes, I know. It would be nightfall before we even got near their camp."

"Suppose you waited until nightfall before you started," Adena said, "and then attacked at dawn. We could lay down a bombardment on them from here in the cave, with the cannon. That would take their attention off you."

Marek shook his head. "They have the advantage at night. They have animals out there that can see in the dark, where we can't."

"We have sensors that are as good as any beast's," Adena said. "And they never attack at night. You give them too much credit, Marek. We have the advantage in the darkness."

"I don't believe it."

"But I do," she said. "Orion, we're going to try your plan. It's worth the risk. I'll pick two troopers to go with us."

"Us?"

"I'm going with you."

"You can't do that, Adena!" Kedar snapped.

"I've got to. The others won't follow Orion; he's a stranger. But they'll obey my orders without hesitation."

"But the danger..."

"I would never send any of my troopers on a mission that I wouldn't undertake myself," Adena said. "Never."

I could see by the fire flashing in her eyes that there was no sense trying to change her mind. And, to be truthful, I was glad that she would be coming with me.

"But what about the rest of us?" There was real fear in Kedar's voice.

"You will be in command here," she told him. "Start a bombardment against the beasts at the first light of dawn. We should be in position to attack the brutes' camp by then."

"And if you're not?"

She grinned at him. "No matter. If we're not ready to attack them by dawn, it will be because we're dead."