DATASHEET

1544 4D

A grayness, profiling the mountain peaks above them, at last hinted at a morning. Mentrius, back in control of himself, came by and poked Andrew with the toe of his boot. “Let’s go. Patrol duty, down the road and back, two hours. Light pack, full arms.” His voice was toneless.

Andrew rolled out and was soon following Mentrius, Urvios and another man across the paved apron where the autocarts were parked. They walked, nerves at a keening pitch, beam weapons ready, along the side of the road farthest from the upslopes, scanning in every direction. Mentrius carried a counterfire gun, its parallax scopes and brains bulging beside its barrels. At a point where the road turned sharp right and its descent steepened, he motioned them to a stop.

“Luce, Welken, probe ahead. Luce, you’re on point. We’re covering from here until you clear that reddish outcrop above the road. Signal us by hand, no comm.”

The trouble with being on point was the feeling of being the bait in the trap: the bait got chewed first. Andrew led the other man forward; they moved slowly, checking every possible opening, obstacle, ditch and shrub. They had almost reached the outcrop when a stone cracked into the road beside Andrew; he started and looked up.

Another stone, larger, shattered almost at his feet; he saw movement in the outcrops overhead, aimed his beamer, and fired nearly straight up. The blazing bar of light from his weapon sank into a dark patch of something that blew apart in a whoosh of steam. As he squinted up, his unprotected eyes still recovering from the flash, he saw a second blast of light, and heard a rumble, and Welken yanked him backward, shouting, “Luce!”

They both staggered back and dived away onto their bellies; a fifty-ton boulder smashed into the road from above, spraying rock fragments everywhere.

The two men picked themselves up. “Prick in a sharpener,” said Welken, “That was close.” Beam blasts banged and flickered up into the outcrop from where Mentrius and Urvios covered them. Andrew pulled Welken over to the rock wall under the outcrop. A thud in front of them, and a partially-burned body in a coverall lay in the road, sprawled across the shards of the fallen boulder. The coverall bore a crazed gray-brown pattern; the body’s undamaged areas of skin were andro-pale.

Mentrius and Urvios came sprinting up. Fingers of beamlight reached up from the road behind them, raying into the upper reaches of the jagged rocks. “I’ve called support,” Mentrius said, “but we’re stretched here.”

“We’re barely out of the camp,” said Welken. “This eats pure shit.”

Mentrius pointed at the body. “That’s an andro. How can that be? Are they just throwing bodies at us?”

Urvios said, “Not the first I’ve seen. Andros out here can fight.”

Mentrius said, incredulous, “Fly me! That’s andro termination cause, anywhere, any time.”

“Not out here.”

“But it’s built into them. They can’t attack people.”

“Out here they can. One of them damn near killed me last year.” Urvios shrugged and turned away, scanning the heights.

Andrew looked past the outcrop to where the road began a steeper descent. “We going further?”

“You are, you and Welken.” Mentrius said. “Go check that body.”

The two men knelt over the pale corpse draped face-down over the rocks. A beamshot had cut a cylindrical shaft through the chest from left to right, vaporizing parts of the ribs, heart and lungs.

It was definitely an andro, but something nagged; Andrew said to Welken, “Let’s turn it over.” They did. It was a woman, hair cropped close, her breasts, now released from their burned bindings, pressing up against her scorched coverall. Her face was expressionless, uncoordinated eyes staring off into different parts of the sky, creamy skin mottled with tiny brown flecks. Andrew turned away, nausea welling up in him. Welken recoiled.

“Come on, Luce, search it.” Mentrius.

Reluctantly, Andrew checked all the pockets and packs in the coverall, trying to avoid touching the still-warm skin. He took a strip of beamer cartridges, a package of dried nutrients, several skin-base bandages, a pair of beam eyeshields, a small datasheet, a medkit, a small ballistic pistol with four clips of ammo. On an impulse, he palmed the datasheet, slipping it into his own thighpack before returning to hand the weapon and eyeshields to Mentrius. They headed back to the deck.