Orphan's Triumph

FIFTEEN

MY RIGHT ARM wrapped the Slug’s midsection, where a human infantry soldier’s breastplate would have been. The Warrior lurched, thrashed, and twisted the mag-rail rifle toward me. In a fight, a single maggot’s no more effective than a ten-year-old throwing a tantrum.

My gloved fingers found the lip of the armor’s anterior opening, and I stabbed the knife in with my opposite hand.

There was no need for accuracy, no slashing the windpipe or carotid artery, because Slugs had neither. When punctured, they gushed like squeezed grapes and dropped like sacks.

Howard panted up behind me, the Ganglion bouncing feathery in his wake, like a balloon on a string.

I stared down at the Slug, an armored banana against green-stained whiteness, and toed it. In these few seconds, the dead Warrior’s lifeblood had jellied the snow.

Howard was already past me. I ran, caught up, and dug in the snow for the other rope trailing from the Ganglion’s motility plate. The wind buffeted the floating saucer, but its own leveling systems whined, and kept it upright, as we towed it.

Zzee. Zzee.

I heard mag rifle fire behind us, over the wind. But nothing whizzed close.

Howard said, “The Warriors are reacting without coordination! We really did isolate them from command and control.”

“They won’t come after us, once the storm breaks?”

Howard waved his free hand as we pulled our prisoner through the snow. “They will. But in a disorganized way.”

“Howard, twenty thousand against two don’t have to be organized.”

“It may not come to that.”

“Why not?”

“We could freeze to death first.”

I put both hands on my rope and picked up the pace.

Five hours later, the average wind speed had increased to one hundred thirty miles per hour, and we were reduced to crawling at, according to my ’Puter, a half mile per hour.

Howard’s Eternads were keeping him warm and hydrated. “We” weren’t going to freeze to death.

However, the heavy that had sheared my armor’s back left me with only my ’Puters. The basic principle of Eternad technology hadn’t changed since the start of the war. The energy of the wearer’s movement charged batteries that ran the suits ’Puters, air-conditioning, heater, and miscellaneous life-support systems. I didn’t miss the air-conditioning, and my exertions plus the armor’s passive insulation kept me warm, though feeling in my fingers and toes had gone AWOL hours ago.

My biggest problem was the loss of those miscellaneous life-support systems. The dry cold of a Weichselan blizzard sucked an exercising human dry like he was crossing the Sahara. Scoops on Howard’s boots sucked snow in, melted it, ran it through his purifier, and stored the resultant drinking water.

I had to stop periodically, pack snow into my helmet’s spare barf bag by hand, then tuck it inside my armor until my body heat melted it. The worst of it was that a crate full of Weichsel’s extra-dry powder melted down to just a glass of water.

I had knelt to scoop snow into my bag with ice-cubed fingers. That left Howard, who flunked out of Cub Scouts, on point. He plodded ahead, like a tin Saint Bernard. While I scooped, I watched him, to gauge visibility. By the time he got ten yards away from me, he had faded to a shadow.

I panted into my mike, “Hold up, Howard. Don’t get too far-”

He vanished. The Slug on the saucer, tied to him, disappeared an eye blink later.