Their Master's war

Eleven

What was left of the twenty crouched on the crest of Hill 3837. It was the perfect vantage point from which to watch the big push up the Ten River valley, although nobody was relishing the advantage. The valley was a wide sweep, curving north from where the Ten ran into the gulf. It had cut a deep, steep-sided path through a range of young jagged hills. On either side of the slow, passive river was thick fungoid jungle, walls of gray, fleshy growth like luxuriant death. The jungle was so primitively virulent that it had climbed most of the way up even the most precipitous slopes. What was left of the twenty waited on their bare hilltop well above what was ^! oosely called the tree line. As soon as the order was given, though, they'd move on down, burning their way into the dank heat of the pallid leprous jungle that was almost certainly concealing a full menu of Yal rearguard nastiness.

All terminology on this planet was loose. The expanse of brown soup that rolled along down to the equally brown sea could scarcely qualify as water. The men hated this forsaken planet. They had fought in both its major theaters of war and taken serious casualties in each. They'd started out on the permafrost, and now they were in the jungle. Siryn, one of the new intake, had started coughing. The air was also only an approximation.

The troopers now and again cracked their facemasks for a brief respite from the metallic taste of canned air. Siryn had left his mask cracked for too long. The native spores, microorganisms, and all kinds of other unknown crap had their hooks into his lungs. He'd probably get sick. That was the trouble with new meat-they kept finding new ways to act dumb. Hark ignored the kid, who was still having spasms. He'd been around too long to jump each time a newcomer fouled up. There had been so many replacements in this campaign that they had to be with the group for a good while before any of the longtimers even bothered to remember their names. He checked that his MEW was still charging, then he rolled back his suit from the front of his body and lay back on the rocky ground. There was no way anyone could wear a full suit in this heat unless he was actually in the middle of a firefight.

The troopers were dressed in what was known as the dense-atmosphere combat suit, the DAC. They were supposed to be lighter than the full vacuum kit, and technically they were, all else being equal, but since dense-atmosphere planets invariably had higher gravity than those with light or no atmospheres, the kit actually presented the men with a greater relative burden. The bulky helmets, although they still contained communicators and brainlink displays, were modified so that they didn't completely enclose the head. The dark visor was only half-face, entending to just below the eyes; the lower half of the face was covered by a transparent breathing mask. In the back, the protective shell extended to the cushioned neck ring but wasn't sealed to it. The backpack was actually larger than that of the full vacuum kit. Since, in this theater, the troopers could expect to be out in the bush for days on end without ever coming in to a service base, the pack had to incorporate air and water tanks, recyclers, spare energy pacs, minimeds, F-rations, and' even a deflated one-man bubble environment. The podlike casing of the backpack did come with a small floater in the base that offset the weight, but its bulk and inertia still made it a cumbersome piece of equipment. Most of the men had modified their kits for safety and comfort. The suits themselves had been persuaded to roll back, leaving arms and, in some cases, legs bare. Helmets were decorated with camouflage scrim, decked with fungus and foliage. Some of the troopers had hung small combat souvenirs around their necks. Taken as a whole, the effect, particularly among the longtimers, verged on the barbaric.

Although the medians steadfastly refused to say as much, the Therem troops were bogged down on this planet. They had been on JD4-1A for over two hundred days. It was supposed to have been a relatively simple operation. The Yal had a large ground garrison dug in on various parts of the planet, but they had withdrawn their large battleships and left only satellite weapon systems and smaller interplanetary craft. In the beginning, it had all gone according to the book. The cluster had moved in, and the small Yal space force had been wiped out in a matter of minutes. The larger ground installations had been pinpoint nuked, and Therem troops had gone down to mop up the survivors.

It was at this point that things started to go wrong. More than just survivors waited for the ground troops. The Yal had seeded the planet with every kind of booby trap and sleeper weapon. Large forces of specially adapted chibas had been concealed in the most difficult terrain. Packs of vicious semiintelligent miggies roamed the ice fields and the jungles, making random attacks on the Therem forces. What had looked like a routine occupation quickly turned into a slow, painful planet clearing, a war of attrition that the Therem would win in the end by sheer firepower and weight of numbers but that would cost them dearly before the last Yal surrogates were destroyed.

The suspicion began to spread through the ranks that they had been maneuvered into a trap. JD4-1A wasn't a poorly protected garrison planet but one huge sucker bet, a piece of bait that the Anah command had swallowed whole. There didn't seem to be a way out. If the cluster withdrew, the action would constitute a major retreat. The Therem couldn't allow a Yal-occupied planet to remain in a sector that was otherwise under their control. The only alternative to the bloody, protracted warfare was the total destruction of the planet, something certainly within the cluster's power to do. The only reason that the thirteen big ships didn't stand off and pound this world into a brand-new belt of asteroids was that it was against the only basic rule in this eternal conflict: A planet with natural indigenous life must not be destroyed. The rule was a legacy from the early period of the war, when planet smashing had been carried on wholesale. Both the Yal and the Therem had begun to see the eventual outcome of this behavior, and almost spontaneously and certainly without any formal communication, they both had stopped the practice. Even though, on JD4-1A, the Yal were using the rule to their advantage, the planet could not be blown to bits without a major change in policy-and it was a policy that wasn't likely to be changed. Even in this ultimately destructive war, there seemed to be a need for some limit on the destruction. In the meantime, the troopers fought and died.

The twenty had greatly changed. There were a lot of new faces. Dyrkin and Renchett were still there, seem ingly indestructible. Helot was still hanging on. Kemlo, because of his prosthetic foot, had been retired to ship duties, but when the losses had started to build, he'd been brought back into the line. Elmo had also been brought back as overman, and he was one old-timer no one was pleased to see. Following the return from the recstar, Elmo's performance as a noncom had gone right down the tubes. The situation had deteriorated to the point where the twenty who were supposed to be under his control simply wouldn't take him seriously. Rance, out of a sense of loyalty, had covered for him as long as he could, but the time had come when it was no longer possible to hide Elmo's mistakes without endangering the men. Rance had organized a little computer trickery, and Elmo had been removed to a post in the supply center where he couldn't do any harm. As the war on JD4-1A dragged on, however, the easy, rear-echelon jobs were eliminated one by one. The fatalities among non-coms were particularly high, and according to. the records, Elmo was a perfectly able overman. He was therefore returned to his old unit to replace Overman Macin, who had been killed by chiba fire out on the plains in front of Range 27. He'd arrived only a day or so before the push up the Ten River, and as Dyrkin put it, he hadn't had time yet to foul up. None of the veterans in the twenty, though, doubted that he would.

Renchett walked over to where Hark was lying with his eyes closed. "Taking it easy there, boy?"

"Taking it while I can." Hark opened his eyes and raised his head. "Any sign of the task force?"

Renchett shook his head. "Nothing."

Hark let his head flop back. "I ain't in no hurry."

Renchett didn't say anything-he probably was in a hurry. Hark accepted that Renchett was completely unbalanced. He was part of the crew-what, for Hark, was the original crew. A man had to be true to his crew. Be sides, Renchett was very good at killing, and the more he killed the enemy, the less enemy there was to try to kill Hark.

"What about goddamn Elmo?" "What about him?"

"You realize we may have to do something about him?"

"I'm doing one minute at a time, and right now I'm lying down."

Renchett shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Elmo was sitting apart from the others and staring fixedly down the river. Since he'd arrived at the unit, he'd hardly communicated with the men except to give a few curt orders. He looked burned-out.

One of the replacements pointed down river. "They're coming!"

"It's the big dynes," someone said.

Hark pushed himself up on one elbow. The dynes were the biggest land fighting machines in all of the Therem Alliance. He wearily stood up. No matter how many of them he saw, he couldn't help being awed. A dyne was over a hundred meters tall, an ovoid body supported on three long spindly legs and packed with every imaginable kind of weapon. It wasn't clear whether they were composite beings or machines manned by very complex creatures. It was probably an academic point.

"Just look at those suckers!"

There were four of them wading out of the gulf and up onto dry land. Their huge feet effortlessly crushed the fleshy jungle. Hark knew that there were human troops down in that jungle, advancing behind the dynes. He was profoundly glad that he wasn't one of them. It was the worst place to be in this kind of operation. The dynes were preceded by a flight of drone ultralights, which were supposed to trigger any buried Yal weapons that might run on the command of a simple mass detector.

The gunsaucers came next, moving slowly just above treetop level. They tended to stay close to the dynes, floating in among the legs of the enormous machines. Their task was to fire on any movement on the ground. They were supposed to be the first line of spot and destroy, taking care of chibas that broke cover or miggies that started massing for a suicide attack. The problem was their skittish crews, whose fear of a ground blast or a delayed-action mine made them destroy first and spot second. They were notorious for firing on their own infantry.

Simultaneously, four mild explosions erupted out of the jungle directly under the line of ultralights. The drones had triggered a baby mine cluster, probably the kind that crawled blindly around inside deep cover. One ultralight was flipped into a stall and went down like a stone. It was only an opening salvo, but the Therem task force immediately responded. The saucers lifted quickly away from the trees like a flock of nervous birds. The dynes halted. They were powering up. Dyne weaponry was all projected from what could only be described as a ruby-red eye in the front of its ovoid body. The multiple pupils of that eye slowly began to glow. Renchett stood fingering his knife. "Think we're getting under way here."

The electronic chatter of battle started up inside Hark's helmet as the task force moved forward again. The saucer crews were apparently incapable of maintaining communication silence; they continuously yelled to each other, bolstering against their nervousness. There was also a subbass rumble, almost too deep to hear, that some said was the dynes talking. Another series of small explosions geysered out of the jungle. A herd of the big green lizards started bellowing in panic. They smashed their way out of the fungus, stampeded down the riverbank, and splashed into the oily brown water. One of the gunsaucers opened fire on them. Two of the lizards went down kicking and thrashing. Someone whooped. Hark scowled. There were too many assholes who thought it was funny to shoot at the big lizards. Hark didn't think it was funny at all. The green monsters were one of the few things he liked on this goddamn planet.

The next explosion was huge. A broad expanse of jungle seemed to lift straight into the air before it disintegrated into a blazing roar of fire and smoke. Communication was swamped in a howl of static. The twenty-scattered, hitting the dust. They knew all too well what was probably coming next. Green fire was flashing from inside the pall of smoke.

"They've sprung a firetower!"

Although the jungle was still burning, the smoke had partially cleared around a cylindrical black tower almost as tall as a dyne. It was a Yal static robot. Until the task force had approached, it had lain dormant in a protective silo under a cover of jungle. It was only when the mines and blastpits that surrounded it had been detonated that it pushed its way upward and started blazing multiple fire. Yal firetowers didn't last long. Even without what was being pumped at it from the dynes' glowing eyes, it wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes. The fire-tower was a blaze-of-glory device. It let go of everything at once in the hope of obliterating everything around it. The dynes were big enough to be equipped with rudimentary shields. They didn't have enough power to walk and keep their shields up at the same time, but it was better than nothing. Only one dyne was taken by surprise. It was hit in the knee joint by a blast of accelerator, and in an instant, the whole leg was melting. It stumbled, tried to right itself on two legs, and then crashed down, sprawling like a mighty corpse across jungle and river. The ovoid slowly began to sink. Th other three stood their ground and vaporized the tower with a saturation of energy weapons. To the men crouching on the hilltop, it seemed as if the whole river valley had been turned into a caldron of black smoke, colored fire, and pulsing energy. Their helmets were filled with an electronic scream, and the ground shook continuously. Each one could imagine what it must be like to be one of the companies down in the valley, huddling below this battle of the giants, bellies pressed to the soft jungle floor, trying desperately to bury themselves in the fungus mold before they were fried or vaporized. It didn't seem possible that anyone could live through a hell like that-but they knew from experience that men did. That was why the war was still in business.

When the firing stopped, there was a terrible silence, broken only by the patter of falling debris. The men on the hilltop peered into the smoke for any sign of further fire on the ground. It was always possible that the chibas had come out of their rat holes and were engaging what was left of the ground forces. All seemed to be quiet. The smoke was slowly being blown upriver by a lazy offshore breeze, uncovering what remained after the exchange. The firetower was nothing more than a dead melted stump. It was at the center of a burned and blackened area that extended over more than a third of the river valley. Two of the dynes still stood where they had fought. Despite the shields, their outsides were discolored by heat and radiation. The third dyne that was still standing had moved to where its comrade lay, legs stretching out of the river. It had extended a long umbilical into the water and was probing for the body section of the fallen machine. It was the saucers that had taken the worst punishment. Over half of them were history, and the survivors hung back behind the dynes as if unwilling to go on. The twenty were on their feet, staring down into the expanse of destruction. Elmo decided that it was the moment to assert his authority.

"Don't bunch up there. You never know when you're going to come under fire."

Dyrkin rounded on him. "What are you talking about? You think there's going to be a Yal air strike? Or maybe the chibas are going to come boiling out of the fungus — and hit us on open ground?"

Elmo went red behind his facemask. "In case you hadn't noticed, there are a whole lot of replacements in this twenty, and I don't want them getting into bad habits."

Dyrkin lifted his mask and spit on the ground. "Most of them've got more on the ball than you."

"You can't talk to me like that."

"Can't I? What are you going to do, shoot me?"

He turned his back on Elmo and deliberately walked away. The overman shouted after him.

"You'll be on a field punishment when we get back to the ship. This is a capital charge, Dyrkin."

"I'll worry about that when we get to it."

The others watched the confrontation in silence. It was the worst thing that could happen to a twenty. A noncom who'd lost it could be a death sentence for his men, and nobody in the twenty was in any doubt that Elmo had lost it. He stayed on his own again until the order came through that they were to move down into the fungus. The twenty fell automatically into single file and started downhill. Elmo didn't have anything to say or do until they came close the edge of the fungus. Their approach to the jungle had become so routine that Renchett, without question, started organizing four of the relacements into the front-line burning party to start carving into the dense, pulpy growth. He was quite amazed when Elmo stopped him.

"No burn?"

"We don't want any chibas knowing where we are." "They always know where we are." "We still don't burn."

Renchett shook his head and looked to Dyrkin for support. "You want to check out what's going on over here?"

Dyrkin shrugged. "Whatever the overman says. I'm already on his bad side."

Renchett turned back to Elmo. "So what does the overman say?"

"We move along the line of vegetation until we come to a natural trail. Then we move into the woods."

Renchett put his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky.

"I don't want to be bucking no orders here, but I've been in these woods a lot longer than you have, and one thing I know is that a natural trail is a damn-fool thing to be walking on."

"That's as may be, Renchett, but as of now, and in these woods, we do it my way."

Renchett turned away, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "You're the boss."

"One more thing, Renchett."

Renchett halted, but he didn't turn. "What's that?"

"Take the point."

"Me?"

"You."

"I don't walk point no more. I did it for too long."

Elmo smiled nastily. "Now you do."

Hark had been watching the exchange. Up until Elmo had smiled, he'd been willing to give the overman any reasonable break. The smile cut it. Elmo shouldn't be enjoying this. Hark wouldn't go against him, but if it came to it, he wouldn't be backing him, either.

They walked slowly along the edge of the fungus. Elmo took up a position back along the line. He seemed to be forever glancing nervously into the jungle. Such behavior was known in the trade as seeing shadows, and it was considered a bad sign in anyone but the most raw recruit. They'd been walking for maybe a half hour, and the single file had started to loosen up. Kemlo fell into step beside Hark. He seemed to be favoring his artificial foot.

"Foot hurting?"

"Yeah, a little. It's the forsaken damp. I ain't as bad as him, though." He jerked his thumb back to where Siryn was having trouble keeping up.

Hark looked back at the new fish. "He looks like he screwed up his lungs back there."

"He ought to be e-vaced out."

"That's Elmo's problem. Nothing we can do about it."

"We ought to say something."

"I don't figure Elmo's interested in anything we got to say. Renchett tried to tell him not to go down a natural trail, and he put him on point."

"So you're taking an attitude, too."

Hark looked sharply at Kemlo. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it's supposed to mean. Are you going to get with Dyrkin and Renchett and ride him into the ground?"

"I ain't riding no one, but I ain't pretending that he's not a disaster waiting to happen, either. He's the worst. He knows he ain't going to live through this, but he's not quite ready to die. He's likely to take the whole lot of us with him."

Elmo's voice sounded in their helmets. "Cut the gab and get back in line up there."

Hark muttered under his breath. "Fuck you, asshole." "You say something?" "Not me, boss."

Kemlo moved into place in front of Hark, and they walked in silence for a while. When it looked as if Elmo had forgotten about them, Kemlo fell back to rejoin Hark.

"You figure we'll see any chiba action?"

Hark shook his head. "Not yet. Not until we reach the head of the valley. Seems to me that the tower was supposed to slow us in this section."

Kemlo cracked his mask for a couple of seconds.

"If it wasn't for this damn mask, I'd grow a mustache."

JD4-1A had a weird system of night and day. Its natural rotation was 960 standard minutes. It didn't, however, revolve directly around its parent sun. Although everyone referred to it as a planet, it was in fact the largest of the satellite moons of JD4-1, that sun's huge single planet. It took seventy-four of its days to circle the planet, and of those, forty-eight were a sequence of bright sunlit days and a strange half night, illuminated by the light reflected from the giant planet that all but filled the sky on the side that was turned away from the sun. After this cycle was complete, it passed into the sun's shadow and went through twenty-six days of total darkness. The operation on the Ten River was taking place roughly halfway through the light period.

The sun was still high when Renchett called into the communicator. "Looks like we got a trail here, boss."

The twenty halted. Elmo walked up to inspect the opening in the jungle.

"What do you think made that?"

It was Renchett's turn to grin. "It could be a lizard trail, although lizards don't usually come this high, or it could've been cut by the Yal so we could walk down it like a bunch of fucking idiots."

Elmo hesitated, but Renchett offered no further advice. Finally he made up his mind.

"We'll take the trail."

"Do I still walk point?" "Until I say different."

Renchett raised his weapon and gave the overman a hard look. For an instant, it appeared that Renchett was actually considering shooting Elmo, but then he turned and started down the trail.

"Keep a careful watch on your detectors."

Renchett glanced back. His lip curled. "You're telling me?"

Elmo started moving the other men down the trail.

"Keep a good distance between you. Stick to the edges of the trail."

It was the most obvious advice that he could offer to a jungle patrol and totally redundant for men who had been through it before, but he insisted on repeating it to each man as he passed, The troopers largely ignored him. They adjusted their suits to full cover and ducked grimly under the overhang. Only Siryn seemed unwilling to plunge into the fungus. He appeared scarcely able to walk.

"I… don't think I can go much farther." "You got a problem, boy?" "I can't breathe."

"Shouldn't have opened your facemask, should you?" "Couldn't I just stay here? I'll only slow up the others."

"You just keep going, boy. I don't have no cowards in my twenty."

"I'm no coward. It's my lungs; they're screwed."

Elmo gestured with his MEW. "Get walking, boy. I don't want to hear no more out of you."

It was in the jungle that the fear really started. It closed in with the damp heat and the shadows. Very little light penetrated the thick overhead canopy, and heavy moisture dripped constantly from the sweating porous fronds. It was a place of gray monochrome gloom, ide ally suited to traps, ambush, and surprise attack hi sects, small lizards, and land crustaceans rustled ami scuttled in undergrowth that was festooned with the \ i cous webs of giant arachnids. The continual small noises stretched the troopers' nerves to the limit. They tried not to look into the shadows-that way led to hallucination and madness. The one thing that they were spared was the smell of fungoid rot. They were protected from that by their masks, but they could still feel its presence They tried to keep their eyes fixed on the green detector displays that were projected in front of their visors and would give them first warning of chiba movement or antipersonnel devices.

The first leg of the advance down the overgrown hillside was largely uneventful. A replacement almost blasted a large albino butterfly but managed to restrain himself in time. In a small clearing, they stumbled across a dozen of the small, shovel-nosed lizards rooting in the mold. There was a flash of panic as the creatures blundered away into the fungus, but Dyrkin quickly took charge.

"Hold your fire! It's nothing! Nobody fire!"

The company halted. Some were shaking; all could feel sweat running down inside their suite.

"Okay, everybody calm down. It was just a bunch of grunters."

Elmo was moving down the line. For a moment, it looked as if he were going to come down on Dyrkin for taking command, but he must have thought better of it. He simply waved the column forward again.

"Okay, let's keep going."

The trail faded to nothing, and they had to burn their way through virgin jungle. Elmo made no argument when Renchett called up three replacements to do the burning, incinerating the fungus with their MEWs set on low-yield heat ray. Eventually they reached a water course where a tiny stream danced down the hillside in a series of sparkling waterfalls.

As the terrain began to flatten out, the going became more difficult. The ground underfoot, which had previously been dry, turned into semiswamp. The mold now had the consistency of thick, clinging soup, and the men found that they were sinking almost to their knees. Even with the grav in their boots assisting them, progress was exhausting. With each step, swarms of tiny creatures flew up in billowing clouds. They tried to stick to the troopers' suits and helmets. The suits shook them off with spasmodic twitches of their black hides, but the visors had to be constantly wiped, otherwise the displays became distorted and unreadable. There was also another annoyance: The wheezing rasp of Siryn's breathing was audible in everyone's helmet.

"Something should be done about him."

"It looks like the jungle's going to do it."

Siryn had fallen well behind the rest of the column to the point where if he dropped back any farther, he would be out of sight.

"Hey, Elmo, Siryn isn't going to make it."

Everyone in the company heard Hark's voice, and they stopped to see what would happen.

"Shut your mouth, Hark. That fool isn't about to get any preferential treatment. He can hump his pod same as the rest of us."

Siryn chose that moment to give up. He stumbled forward and fell helmet-down in the muck. Elmo slung his weapon over his shoulder and walked back down the line. The column halted, and the recruits stopped burning the fungus.

"You all want to see what happens to cowards in my twenty?"

He stood over the fallen rookie.

"Get up, boy."

Renchett was starting back from his front position "Leave him alone, Elmo."

"Stay where you are, Renchett." Elmo bent over Siryn. "Are you going to get up?"

The rookie's voice was little more than a gasp. "I can't."

"Then take off your helmet. You ain't fit to wear it." Renchett was on the move again. "You're crazy Elmo."

"I told you to stay where you are." Dyrkin was also coming down the line. "You can't kill him," Renchett said. "I said take off your helmet." "No!"

Elmo reached down. He was almost gentle as he lifted off the helmet. "Now the mask."

Siryn didn't say a word. There was a soft sucking noise as Elmo pulled the mask away from his face. He pushed the rookie down and held his head under the dirty water. It was only a matter of seconds before the boy stopped breathing.

"You're insane!"

Renchett was almost on top of Elmo. The overman straightened up. His MEW was in his hands and pointed at Renchett's stomach.

"It'd give me a lot of pleasure, Renchett."

Renchett halted. His own weapon was unslung but not aimed. Dyrkin caught up with him. Elmo continued to hold his gun level.

"You too, Dyrkin?"

Dyrkin also halted. "You didn't have to kill him. He could have been moved out."

"Sometimes there has to be an example." "We all know what a corpse looks like."

"The new meat have to know that this ain't no picnic."

"Are you just going to leave him there?"

Elmo took a step forward. "You got a better idea?"

Both Renchett and Dyrkin were silent. Elmo smiled.

"Not so brave now? So what's it going to be? Are you going to get back in line or do you want to join this one in the swamp?"

There was a long moment of silent tension, then the two longtimers turned and walked back to their places in the line. Elmo actually laughed.

"Hope the rest of you sorry bastards took a good look at that. There's just one leader in this twenty, and I don't want any of you to forget it."

Hark hefted his MEW. Elmo had made a bad mistake, and sooner or later someone would see that he paid for it.

"Okay, get moving and let's not have any more delays."

The burning started again, and the smoke drifted back down the line. The twenty resumed their slow progress. They moved as if there were an extra weight on them; an ugly sullenness had been added to the heat, humidity, and fear. They continued cutting their way through the jungle for another forty minutes, and then the fungus started to open out a little and there was no longer any need to keep up the continuous burn.

"You can spread out some."

The column, which had bunched up behind the burners, opened up a little. The spaces between the men increased. The resentment seemed to decrease a little as the men became more watchful. This kind of country was a favorite with the chibas. There was enough space for an open order attack but also enough cover for them to lay an ambush. Hark cracked his mask for an instant and breathed out hard. Sweat had started to collect in the base of the mask, and that was the only way to get rid of the accumulation. If it built up for too long, it would start getting in his mouth. He would be glad when this day was finally over. He was tired and hungry and heartily sick of putting one foot in front of the other. When a trooper felt like that, he was no good to either himself or the twenty; he would fall into a dull semi-trance and never sense the danger until it was too late. Hark was close to that state when Renchett's voice rang in his helmet.

"Hold up there! Everybody stop!"

Hark came back with a start, angry that he'd allowed himself to drift. He held his weapon at the ready and quickly looked around, but there was nothing that he could see.

Renchett's voice was immediately followed by Elmo's. "What are you trying to pull now, Renchett?"

"I ain't trying to pull nothing. You'd better get up here and take a look at this."