20
Rev stepped cautiously through the undergrowth, senses straining to pick out anything that didn’t belong. It was difficult. Preacher Rolls had plenty of wildlife, and unlike most planets, some of that life was alien.
Or native, he corrected himself.
Earth life was alien here. Normally, once a planet was terraformed, any native life was either eradicated or was subsumed by the Earth invasion. Preacher Rolls was one of the relatively few planets where enough native life survived to live together with Earth stock. Odd, fungus-looking stuff hung from Ponderosa Pines, and brightly colored fuzzy things flitted between Mountain Laurels.
Much of the native life could be eaten, if it came to that. Not that Rev intended to try it. As much as he disliked Sludge, the high caloric paste he carried, he would be sticking with the Marine issue sustenance.
All the life made for a busy environment, and that made picking out possible signs of Centaurs difficult. But that was his job. He was there to make sure the rest of the team didn’t stumble on a Centaur and get wiped out in one fell swoop.
He had a feeling that the only way he was going to be able to warn the rest of the team was if he was to eat a beam. Humans tended to sizzle when hit, which was rather hard for anyone else to miss.
Rev turned around. Thirty meters behind him, Sergeant Nix gave him the encircled-fingers sign for a question. Rev gave him the negative slash. He just wanted to make sure he hadn’t strayed too far in front.
The rest of the team, minus Hussein Černý, would be following Nix. Hussein hadn’t shown up at the assembly area, and after waiting an extra hour, the lieutenant had made the difficult decision to move out. The mission had the priority.
Hussein not making it didn’t mean he was dead. A meter or two less altitude flying over the pass and Rev wouldn’t have made it either. He had to hope that he’d faced something similar and was now heading for their rally point.
The brush got thicker, thorns digging at his PAL-5. They looked like Earth life, and Rev wondered why some long-ago terraformer had decided that they needed to be in the planet’s package. What possible benefit did they offer?
Rev could just bull through, of course, but that would cause more noise and commotion than he was comfortable making. Then there were his Yellowjackets. If a Centaur was lying in wait, he needed more space if he was going to engage one of his missiles. They need thirty-six meters to arm, and that was if he could avoid hitting trees or branches, knocking it off course. No, he didn’t want to go much farther into the thickets.
No problem. He wasn’t committed to following an azimuth where he had to offset. He always knew where he was heading. He turned and signaled to Nix that he was deviating. They wouldn’t be getting lost either, but if he was supposed to be running point, they needed to be following in his trace.
“Any Centaur sign?” he asked.
Which was stupid. His AI would tell him if any of the sounds being picked up could indicate Centaur presence.
<Negative. Only Earth and native life.>
“What about our target?”
<Negative. Nothing I can identify.>
Which wasn’t surprising. They were still almost two klicks away.
Rev crossed a small creek, then moved up along the other side. The undergrowth was a little less dense, and he could see farther into the trees. There might even be distance enough to arm his Yellowjackets if need be, and he could see sky through the towering canopy, even if it was fifty meters above.
A squirrel ran out onto a branch and scolded him for a moment before darting away. He was tempted to drop it, but he really didn’t have it in him. The squirrel was just being a squirrel. He just hoped that the Centaurs were not attuned to animals being disturbed. Even a Marine moving at full stealth couldn’t overcome all of the natural alarms in the forest—the churring bark of a squirrel being one such giveaway.
But there were many more.
Rev bent his course back, heading for their target. As he closed the distance, he slowed, sweeping his eyes across every bush and tree. Every rustle, every small critter darting by, made his nerves shout.
At seventy meters out, he focused forward, trying to see what was up there . . .
. . . and about shit himself when a figure rose ten meters to his right.
He spun around, his M-49 ready, and the raggedy looking woman held up a hand, palm out, and said, “Easy there, big boy.”
She was slim, almost gaunt, with long silvery hair. Her face was one of those ageless kinds—she could be forty or eighty, for all he could tell. She had on a cloak of sorts, adorned with torn strips of cloth, and in her hand was a cannon of a shotgun, the barrel looking huge as it pointed at him.
“You must be my Marines,” she said, lowering the monster weapon.
Rev had never seen a weapon of that type, but he would have bet credits to doughnuts that whatever it fired would have done a number on him, combat suit or not.
“Private Rev Pelletier, Union Marines. And you must be our contact.”
She nodded, then asked, “Where’s your commander?”
“Coming up.” Rev stepped back, then as soon as Sergeant Nix came into view, signaled objective.
Rev’s heart was still racing. How had he missed her? Admittedly, he was on passive scanning, but still—
“What are you wearing?” he asked, his curiosity piqued.
She looked like some of the homeless back in Swansea, but while her appearance was a mess, her jacket had a kind of purposefulness about it.
The woman laughed and asked, “You’ve never seen a ghillie suit?”
“No, ma’am, never.”
“You military-types, you all love your tech, don’t you,” she said, leaving it at that.
Nix, Tanu, and then the lieutenant arrived.
“Pelletier, move forward fifty meters and stand by. We don’t need anyone creeping up on us.”
Rev wanted to stay and finally get confirmation on their actual target, but an order was an order. He’d find out soon enough.
With a barely suppressed sigh, he went farther into the forest, taking a position behind the bole of a large tree. He had decent observation and adequate fields of fire, even if they weren’t very deep.
“Now, what the hell’s a ghillie suit?” he asked his AI.