Dogs of war by David Drake

Author:David Drake [David Drake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9780446610896
Published: 2002-01-01T10:00:00+00:00

The Bolo's trail was a twenty-five-foot-wide swath cut through the virgin jungle; the tread-prints were pressed eighteen inches into the black loam, where it showed among the jumble of fallen branches.

“It's moving about twenty miles an hour, faster than we can go,” Crewe said. “If it holds its present track, the curve will bring it back to your town in about five hours.”

“He'll sheer off,” Blauvelt said.

“Maybe. But we won't risk it. Pick up a heading of 270°, Blauvelt. We'll try an intercept by cutting across the circle.”

Blauvelt complied wordlessly. The car moved ahead in the deep green gloom under the huge shaggy-barked trees. Oversized insects buzzed and thumped against the canopy. Small and medium lizards hopped, darted, flapped. Fern leaves as big as awnings scraped along the car as it clambered over loops and coils of tough root, leaving streaks of plant juice across the clear plastic. Once they grated against an exposed ridge of crumbling brown rock; flakes as big as saucers scaled off, exposing dull metal.

“Dorsal fin of a scout-boat,” Crewe said. “That's what's left of what was supposed to be a corrosion resistant alloy.”

They passed more evidences of a long-ago battle: the massive, shattered breech mechanism of a platform-mounted Hellbore, the gutted chassis of what might have been a bomb car, portions of a downed aircraft, fragments of shattered armor. Many of the relics were of Terran design, but often it was the curiously curved, spidery lines of a rusted Axorc microgun or implosion projector that poked through the greenery.

“It must have been a heavy action,” Crewe said. “One of the ones toward the end that didn't get much notice at the time. There's stuff here I've never seen before, experimental types, I imagine, rushed in by the enemy for a last-ditch stand.”

Blauvelt grunted.

“Contact in another minute or so,” Crewe said.

As Blauvelt opened his mouth to reply, there was a blinding flash, a violent impact, and the jungle erupted in their faces.

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