May, Julian - Rampart Worlds 2 - Orion Arm by Julian May

Author:Julian May
Language: eng
Format: mobi

Chapter 9

We were about 250 meters south of Corkscrew Pinnacle, emerging from a dense group of volcanic crags, when we caught our first clear glimpse of the new smoke plume rising straight up into the dead calm morning air. Its source was very close to the base of the twisted sandstone formation, concealed among large broken rocks at the far right-hand side.

Our excursion had so far been rapid and uneventful. I hadn't shared my fear that we might no longer be safe in the tuqo, nor my doubts about the loyalty of Zorik O'Toole. If Commander Iron Nuts had sold us out, Ildiko didn't need to know about it yet.

"That's the new smoke Joe spotted from orbit," I said. "Right about at Zorik's last known position."

"A lot smaller than the three plumes farther west," she murmured into her helmet mike. "Almost like a burning pile of rubbish or something."

I said, "Yeah."

Or something.

We hunkered down together behind a desk-sized fragment of black basalt. Our filo ponchos turned us into part of the scenery. The entire base of Corkscrew was hidden from our view, nor could we see anything beyond it because of other intervening formations.

Earlier, I had spoken about the very real possibility that O'Toole might have accidentally broken through the cinder crust and plunged into a fiery crevasse. Now Ildiko proposed a more hopeful scenario.

"Maybe he came under attack. I know you said Joe couldn't find any live-body signatures, but how about this: a Haluk sniper hits O'Toole's packframe or one of his weapons with a glancing beam. The EM pulse fries his com equipment instantly. Maybe wounds him pretty bad. He takes cover, launches an HE grenade. Whammo! Exit the hostile sniper down a furnace hole that opens up. O'Toole dives deep into the rockpile out of sensor range and starts regrouping."

"Mmm." I was noncommittal, but it was a possibility.

Over two hours had passed since Zorik's scheduled transmission. We'd raced out from the tuqo as fast as we could, following coded polarized trailblazes that were only visible through our powered visors. I half expected Haluk fliers or Galapharma hoppercraft to appear overhead at any moment, but the sky remained empty.

So had the sublight communications spectrum on the portable scanner Ildiko carried.

An enemy force alerted and on the hunt would not be able to use a stealthy laser relay system to keep in contact, as we did. Hoppers or goons on the ground would probably communicate via ordinary radio because the Qastt planet had no com satellites. I doubted that they'd bother keeping radio silence during a search-and-destroy mission—ergo, nobody was out looking for us yet. And it seemed fairly certain to me that no ambush had taken down Zorik, either, or the sniper would have reported the incident to base.

Gently, I pointed the latter out to Ildiko. "Besides that, if O'Toole had been struck by a hostile shot, we'd have picked up a last squawk as his LC unit went out. There was nothing. But if he dropped through the cinder crust, the relay beam would have clipped off silently.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.