SCYTHEWIRE

1544 4D

“All right. Time to get our dinner ready. Leads, get us some cooks!” Bermarin strode away.

Volunteered by Mentrius, Andrew and four others were soon plying skinning knives under the guidance of a female Novander Wye Coll soldier. They hung a big goat’s carcass on a tall steel frame, peeled off its hide, cleaned out its innards, and got a beamcooker rigged. The Novander woman started it up, and soon the smell of roasting meat wafted out into the mountain air.

Andrew‘s hunger intensified. He watched the turning carcass avidly, waiting for a chance to cut off a tasty bit, while others unloaded supplies from another cart to complete the meal. As he nibbled, he looked around.

A little man, bundled in a heavy, baggy, dark green coverall, limped up the road and passed in among the carts. Andrew watched him come nearer; when the man got to the edge of the deck, two soldiers stopped him. He pointed at Bermarin. They looked, called; Bermarin beckoned, and they let the little man approach him.

The man looked very old, decrepit and sluggish with age, so that everyone was completely surprised when he pointed from about three meters away and, with a single beamshot from his sleeve, blew Bermarin‘s head off.

The deck erupted with soldiers scuttling and diving for their packs and weapons. Four of them grabbed the little man and wrestled him to the deck, all flailing arms and legs. Andrew glanced around. His pack was on the far side of the deck, and he would have no time to reach his own weapons. He dived face-down to the ground just as a huge explosion ripped out from the melee, a loud buzz faded away, and screams and cries broke out everywhere.

He raised his head to a sight of widespread carnage. Where the little man and his captors had been lay a scatter of body parts and gore. All around this grisly space staggered soldiers, screaming, crying, dazed; some lay shrieking on the deck, limbs missing, blood rising in red fountains and sprays; others just lay dead.

Andrew leaped to his feet and raced to where he had last seen Nexi, calling, “Nexi! Nurumin! Alliji!” and then he remembered where they were and stopped in the midst of the chaos, squinting up at the mountains in the crisp, clear morning sky. There might be other attackers. He ran for his weapons.

He heaved a dead body off his pack, and then a severed leg. His fingers slipped on the pack’s bloodied fasteners. As he fumbled his beamer out, hands shaking, Nexi‘s voice came behind him.

“Andrew, for godsake forget that and come help me! It’s Nurumin.” Nexi‘s face had turned a paler tan, and a stroke of blood ran down his temple.

Andrew hurried after Nexi to where Nurumin lay beside two others already dead. The front of Nurumin‘s uniform displayed four nearly-straight parallel rips across the abdomen. Scythewire. The little man must have been carrying a junk bomb.

Scythewire had been a favored tool of terrorists in the City, at least before they’d been cleaned out in the most recent sweeps; it consisted of one-third-meter lengths of twisted, edge-drawn wire of extremely heavy metal, tempered for maximum tensile strength, and packed around a potent explosive charge to make a junk bomb. Here, in one blast, it had reduced many of the two hundred soldiers to a shapeless pulp.

“The stars,” Nurumin said, staring up at Andrew. His body arched once; blood surged like a spring from his abdomen, to wash in a wave across the warped boards. “The stars.” He died.

“Where’s Alliji?” Andrew asked, looking around. A woman knelt down over a man beside them, pounding his chest, swearing, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” with every blow.

“I can’t find him.” Nexi was trembling.

“Look, stay here and I’ll try. No, get your guns and come back. See if you can help anybody else.” Andrew moved out across the deck as if it was a harvested field and the dead and wounded were its crops, thinking, I’ve got to find Alliji.

“Luce, over here.” It was Mentrius, bending down by a woman holding her head. “Get me some water.”

On a far corner of the deck, Andrew made out Alliji‘s slim figure wobbling under the weight of an inert form over his shoulders. Mentrius‘s shout penetrated. “Come on, get the water! She’s got toxin in her!”

Toxin? Andrew looked around for a water source, seeing soldiers here and there going into convulsions. He raced off toward the autocarts, found a water tank and canisters, and a red sticker plastered on the side of the tank. Its green Incarnastar collechi script read:

WELCOME TO ABRIDOR. NOW GO HOME.

Andrew ran with a canister to Mentrius, who grated, “It’s too late, cock. She’s dead.” Then he said to Andrew in a flat tone, “Get out of my sight. This is just one more thing, and I’ll add it to your list, monkey.” He let the woman’s body down gently, covered its face with a bloodied vest, and stalked stiffly away.

Andrew pointed out Alliji to Nexi, collected his weapons, and sat down to assemble both his beamer and his ballistic, scanning the surrounding high points for activity. He wondered why no one had been posted, and no discipline was now in force. The little man couldn’t have been alone. Mentrius and the other surviving leads seemed in shock.

Andrew shook his head, stood up, and slung both weapons, looking for movement in the rocks. A woman stood near him, also scanning the mountainsides above them. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked her.

“There’s somebody up there who doesn’t like us,” she muttered, shifting her beamer to ready. She pointed. “I spotted a flash over there a few seconds ago, and something moved up here. Let’s let the medics work, and try to round up sentries.”

They managed to find about one squad of functioning soldiers not working on the wounded. They organized pairs to occupy posts overlooking the deck and the surrounding area. One by one the posts reported back via comm: no activity, no indication of presence except for a few discarded foodwraps at one position.