THIRTY-FIVE

Kay had the point and was out of sight.

Singh, just ahead and to her right, took the incoming round on his carbine, and while the round blew right through the gun’s action, the combination of that and his armor was enough to stop the bullet from getting through to his body.

At least enough so he didn’t fall down dead.

So much for the fake transponder sig.

Gunny didn’t have a shot—Singh was between her and the shooter, and she looked up to see two more Pahali soldiers in front of her she had to deal with, so she swung her carbine’s muzzle to the left and tapped the trigger, a pair of deuces for each—

Pap-pap! Pap-pap!

By the time she looked back, Singh had pulled his big knife. He charged the soldier who’d shot him.

Gunny flicked a glance at the third Pahali and saw he was fumbling with a magazine, trying to reload.

She had the shot now, but Singh was almost on top of the guy, his knife cocked, and Gunny could see that he’d get there in another heartbeat. It was gonna be tight, and even as she lined it up, she saw she would be a hair slow, Singh would be in the line of fire again…was in it—

She eased off the trigger and lifted the muzzle, which was okay because—

Singh faked high, then skewered the guy in front of him, shoved his grandfather’s knife at an angle under the man’s armpit as he raised his arm to block, just over the top of his armor’s cutout.

The blade went in to the hilt—

The soldier dropped his useless carbine and reached for Singh’s knife with both hands

Didn’t expect to get stabbed out here, did you?

Singh twisted the blade as he pulled it out. He thrust-kicked the wounded soldier with the heel of his right boot, hit him in the low ribs, and knocked the man sprawling.

Gunny saw the blood pumping from the fallen man’s wound.

Hit an artery—

Singh kneeled and cut the man’s throat. Still on his knees, Singh did a quick snap down and to his right and slung blood from his blade. He resheathed it. He picked up the dying man’s weapon, took the magazine pouch from the man’s belt, and attached it to his own. He pulled a fresh magazine out of the pouch, locked it into the carbine, and thumbed the bolt release, chambering a round. He did a 360 sweep, looking for new targets. He pulled the gun’s muzzle up when he came to Gunny.

He did it all easily, matter-of-factly, as if it were a drill.

Gunny grinned. “Way to go, Singh.”

She waved the advance jive. He nodded.

They continued their run through the woods.

He was gonna be okay, the kid. That was a fine combat encounter, the knife, the gun, the reload and scan. If they made it back to the transport and got back to base alive, it was gonna be a good story over drinks. And one Singh could tell to his kid someday when he passed the knife along to him or her.

She glanced back. Where the hell was Wink? He was supposed to be right behind them.

“Ease up,” she said. “Wink? Where the fuck are you?”

Gunny and Singh were doing okay up there clearing the forest, and Wink didn’t have much to do. He heard her com.

“Two hundred meters back, Gunny. Be there in a few seconds. Don’t go slow on my account, I’m just enjoying the scenery here—hello?”

Then he came across a stray picket of his own…

He had the advantage when he saw the Pahali soldier.

Wink knew who his friends were; the soldier, if his transponder was working, probably thought that Wink was one of his own. Since Gunny and Singh had been shooting up ahead, maybe the transponder trick wasn’t working, but this guy wasn’t pointing his gun at Wink.

Against the rules of war, to fake a sig that way, but this wasn’t CFI’s war, was it? The rules didn’t apply to them—both sides would shoot them if they had a chance.

All he had to do was raise a hand and wave at the soldier in greeting. The man would automatically return the wave, and at twenty-five meters, it would be an easy shot.

That was the smartest thing to do. Also the safest.

Save for his running activity, his heart rate was relatively slow and steady, there was no bubble of adrenaline popping in him. He wasn’t afraid, and given the situation, he should be at least a little bit nervous.

Again, the perils of an adrenaline junkie’s habituation. You needed a little more to spark it if you went to the edge a lot, and this one soldier thinking he was a buddy wasn’t gonna spike anything.

So Wink yelled: “Hey, Pahali! Welcome to Balaji!”

The soldier started as he realized what Wink had said. The transponder was wrong! This was an enemy!

Time seemed to slow down:

The Pahali began to raise his weapon…

Wink waited. Not yet…

The carbine’s muzzle came up, oh, so slow…

No…Not yet…not yet…

Now!

Wink snapped his own carbine up and point shot.

The Pahali soldier’s carbine went off maybe a quarter second later, and the round blew past Wink’s left ear close enough for him to hear the whine and feel the wind of its passage—

Wink’s shot was better. The round blew through the Pahali’s armor and the man collapsed.

Wink’s heartbeat went up a hair. He felt a little surge of excitement, but…

Not enough

“What the fuck are you doin’?” Gunny said, coming up behind him. “Why didn’t you just shoot the sucker?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“Doc, you are gonna get killed, and it will be a shame because then we’d have to break in an FNG, and that will be a pain in the ass. You need to think of us.”

“Says the woman who practices her fast draw against an already-drawn gun?”

She shook her head. “Different. Let’s go. The hopper is most of a klick that way—”

Then they heard Kay toggle her com and say: “Why are you here? Has the Rajah sent you?”

“What the fuck?” Gunny said. “Sent who?”

“Go see,” he said. “I’ll collect Gramps, be there right behind you.”

Kay said, “Why are you here? Has the Rajah sent you?”

Ganesh grinned. “No. I am here on my own.”

Kay said nothing, but she understood immediately then why he had come.

“You will not take me by surprise this time, kara¯hiyat animal!”

They seemed fond of that word here: abomination.

He held his knife in front of him, point facing her. Kay kept her silence as she circled slowly to her left.

The others had heard her com. They would be coming…

Gunny arrived and pointed her carbine at Ganesh. “Put the knife away,” she said.

“This matter does not concern you!”

“On this, we agree,” Kay said. She didn’t look away from Ganesh. “Mine.”

Gunny raised the muzzle of her weapon to point skyward. “Ah was just tryin’ to do you a favor, Ganesh. It’s your ass. But hurry, Kay, the clock is running, we need to get gone. Got too many soldiers roamin’ around.”

Wink came into the clearing, followed by Gramps. They looked at Gunny. She waved them off. “Kay’s got it.” Then she subvocalized into her com: “Jo? You want to see Kay dance with Ganesh? Better move.”

“Thirty seconds,” Jo said.

“Probably won’t last that long.”

Kay continued to circle. She had yet to extend her claws.

She noticed that something about Ganesh’s motions seemed off. He wasn’t fast, but it seemed as if he was holding back. She sniffed the air. He was downwind, but she caught a faint trace.

Ah.

Gunny also got it. “Kay, Ah b’lieve our true-believer boy Ganesh here has had some alterations done on himself.”

“Yes, he has. I can smell them—even over his fear.”

“Reckon that makes him calling anybody ‘an abomination’ kinda suspect, doesn’t it?”

Ganesh edged a little to his left, seemed a little more nervous. So much for his element of surprise.

Enhanced speed, Kay guessed.

Jo arrived. “Did I miss anything? I—wait. Kay, he’s augmented.”

“She knows,” Gramps said.

“No matter,” Kay said. She opened her hands. Her claws snapped out inaudibly.

“Gets me every time I see that,” Wink said.

Ganesh looked increasingly fretful.

“You can still walk away, Ganesh,” Jo said.

“I cannot. This creature insults me.”

“How? You jumped her. She kicked your ass. Ah make that your fault.”

“She insults me by her existence!”

Gunny looked at Jo. “Can’t say we didn’t try—”

Ganesh jumped, and he was a lot faster than he had been in the recording Gunny had seen of that first encounter. He led with the blade, but Kay was already moving as soon as he stepped, and she wasn’t getting out of the way—she was charging at him.

He had fifty to sixty kilos on her and his reach with the knife was a lot longer than Kay’s, but of a movement, she dropped lower, blocked with her left hand, and was inside Ganesh’s arm, right in his face—

He tried to pull the knife back and twist away, but she raked her left claws across his knife arm and opened it from elbow to wrist; at the same time, she jammed her right claws into his throat and tore out his voice box. Then she climbed him, got her feet onto his chest, and shoved away, pushing him backward as she arced up and back, turning a high back dive into a tucked somersault, landing lightly on her toes as Ganesh collapsed onto his side like a felled tree.

Maybe three seconds, attack to ending, tops.

Kay dropped the gory part of his neck’s anatomy she held as Ganesh gurgled, spasmed, went completely slack.

Gramps shook his head. “Another fucking show-off. You and Gunny could take your act out on the road.”

Kay whickered.

“That was no fun at all,” Wink said. “Rip-claw-thank-you-sah. I’d paid for this show, I’d want my money back—”

Jo said, “We need to go—”

Tracers blew through the clearing, and the suppressed rifles firing them became audible at the same time, cough-cough-cough-cough—

“Fuck!” Gunny yelled. She spun around.

Wink saw blood blossom from a wound on Gunny’s unarmored upper right arm—

As he watched, her carbine retracted. She crouched, pulled a pistol with her good hand, pointed it into the woods, and started shooting—

Jo and Gramps were already hosing the forest with their carbines on full auto, spraying fifteen rounds a second waist level at the unseen shooters. Wink heard screams from the forest as he ran for Gunny, a smart dressing already in hand. He got there, peeled the trigger-stik cover off, and pressed it against Gunny’s wound. The battle dressing hummed as the rudimentary computer’s sensor locked the bandage down, came online, and flashed its diagnosis. He looked at the dataflux.

The shooting stopped.

The bandage whirred: fragmented round, got the arm, shoulder, broke the collarbone on that side. No big arteries hit. Could be worse—

The dressing assessed Gunny’s augmentation status and added what it thought was enough painkiller to make up any difference. It also pumped coagulants and steroids and PH balancers into the wound, along with antibiotics and adrenaline.

Enough damage so that she wasn’t going to be using that arm for a while—

Either the dressing gave her too much chem, or shock set in. Gunny fell.

Wink managed to catch her and lower her to the ground.

Gramps said, “Jo, you got it?”

“I got it,” Jo said.

Kay had vanished into the woods, and there came another scream as she found somebody too slow to get out of her way.

Gramps spun and dropped to his knees. “Megan!” He put one hand under her head.

Wink touched the control panel on the rudcomp and the dressing gave Gunny a squirt of revivant. Her eyes fluttered open. She looked up and saw Gramps bent over her, his expression was full of worry.

“Megan?”

“Crap. Ah died and went to hell, didn’t Ah? Got to be if you’re here, Roy.”

“You’re not dead yet, Chocolatte. You don’t get to do that if I can help it.”

They looked at each other and had a moment…

Wink hated to break into it, but that was his job. “We need to get to the transport, people, and apply more than a smart Band-Aid to Gunny’s injuries.”

Jo used her com: “Colonel?”

“We’re on board,” he said. “You need to stop dicking around out there and join us.”

“On the way.”

“Will Ah be able to play the piano, Doc?”

“Not if you couldn’t play it before.”

“Heard that one already, huh?”

“No more than eighty or a hundred times. Help me get her up.”

They got Gunny to her feet.

“Can you walk?”

“Nobody shot me in the leg, did they? Can’t tell, all the dope.”

“Legs are fine. Let’s go.”

Gunny looked at Ganesh. “What about him?”

“He’s dead-thirty, and who gives an aardvark’s ass?” Wink said.

Wink was not the kind of doctor who would shoot somebody and then hurry to fix him, especially if he had just hurt one of Wink’s own. He was the kind of doctor who would shoot somebody and spit on him as he lay dying if he’d done that. Maybe kick him, too. Not a great bedside manner, but what you wanted in a fellow soldier.

“Ah do believe Ah might could go lie down for a bit. Ah’m a little tired. Long day and all.”

“I’ll put a mint on your pillow, Chocolatte.”

They moved out.

There was a thought rattling around in Jo’s head, she couldn’t quite pin it down, something about Ganesh…

Wait. There it was:

How had he found them?