[The Damned 02] - The False Mirror by Foster Alan Dean

Author:Foster, Alan Dean [Foster, Alan Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Unknown
ISBN: 9780345358561
Publisher: New York : Ballantine Books, 1992.
Published: 1996-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ninteen

Intelligent shells dueled in the airspace between the mountains and the distribution complex, darting and feinting, occasionally annihilating each other in spectacular bursts of high explosive. Others released enervating gases, which were as quickly rendered harmless by receptor-seeking neutralizing bonders. Rapid-mutating biological agents had not as yet been utilized, since they had an awkward habit of infecting those who employed them as readily as they did those they were intended to incapacitate.

Set afire by explosives, much of the flora proximate to the combat zone blazed hellishly around Ranji as his floater shot down the canyon he’d chosen. The coniferous forest which coated the rugged mountain slopes had been turned into a crackling, snapping inferno. He ignored the conflagration. The lightweight field armor he wore kept him cool and comfortable while supplying him with fresh, filtered air.

Just ahead a giant tree exploded from the heat, showering him with flaming splinters. The floater rocked slightly but stayed on course as he continued to descend, hugging the bottom of the canyon tight enough for the air-repulsion vehicle to send droplets flying from the debris-laden rivulet that coursed muddily below.

Then he was out of the foothills, screaming through the steep-sided gully. Smoke from burning plains grass and scrub formed dense red-brown clouds which settled in the gully, choking off forward vision and forcing him to rely on instruments.

Informed of his intentions, the scouting squad was waiting for him, hunkered down on both sides of the narrow, soot-filled stream. As he neared the shapes that materialized out of the gloom, he carefully brought the floater to a halt. Gravel crunched beneath the craft’s landing struts as it settled to the ground.

Something scrabbled through the muck under his boots. Looking down, he saw a dark green multilegged shape desperately scrambling for the perceived safety of shallow water. Some kind of local reptile or amphibian. For a single pure instant unsullied by war or confusion or self-damnation the universe stopped. In it nothing moved, nothing existed save for him and the single poor mud-dwelling creature beneath his feet whose misfortune it was to have found itself caught up in the maelstrom of a higher confrontation. He thought of Itepu.

With the toe of his boot he gently boosted it over the last obstacle in its path and watched until it had found obscurity beneath the water’s soot-laden surface.

His instruments indicated three troop skids and half a dozen escorting floaters strung out in line down the winding canyon. That was the best the gully would permit. If it narrowed any further, they would have to begin advancing vehicles in single file. The Ashregan squad leader had properly concerned herself more with avoiding enemy detection than concentrating firepower.

She was understandably surprised that battlegroup commander Ranji-aar, the Field Unifer, would expose his valuable person to such conditions.

“Greetings, honored Unifer.” She was short and petite even for an unmodified Ashregan, but there was strength in her greeting and in what he could see of her face through the protective visor. ”Do you wish to take personal command of the squad?”

“Not at this time, officer.

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