The Military Form by Christopher Rowley

Author:Christopher Rowley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-08-28T04:51:58+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE MILITARY FORM LED THE WAY, STRIDING INTO THE storm with the urge to battle rising. Life was suddenly unbearably sweet. The mental dust of hundreds of millions of years was gone, wiped clean by the pleasurable fury of action.

And yet not everything was running absolutely perfectly. The waterflakes were piled waist deep in places and the horn plates on the soles of the feet made progress on top of the snow difficult. The feet were narrow, and they sank through in the drifts. The pups were unable to penetrate some of the drifts, and the battleforms paused to pick them up and carry them on their shoulders.

The Military Form had never confronted such a world, a frozen snowball. The Empire had fought wars untold in its ancient conquests, but the Military Form’s experiences had been on Frog worlds, warm and wet, in the subterranean cities of the great Batrachian enemy.

Now, the beasts were having to plough through the snow, expending too much energy too soon. But to grow more useful feet would take hours and consume energy. The battleforms traced a complex path around the worst drifts.

But the inconvenience of the snow was more than compensated by its effect on the enemy’s ability to see. Lightning flickered in the clouds to the north, the thunder boomed out over the city above the whistling of the winds.

The battleforms marched on.

It took far longer than anticipated, but eventually the beasts reached the perimeter wall. They rested a moment while the Pramod form used its telescope to peer through the drifting snow. It was difficult to see much, but the bipeds used electric light without fear of detection. A couple of bright concentrations were nearby. Might they be centers of population and activity? It seemed very likely.

The stomach organ of the Pramod beast rumbled and growled. The battlebeasts were starving. The Military Form recognized their plight. As great as was their strength so was their hunger.

The warm-blooded, nonarmored, metabolic processes of the creatures were hard to refine by more than a single power, and though they were hardy enough, as befitted their frozen home world, they must eventually feed. Indeed they required prodigious amounts of food to maintain their high metabolic levels. Fortunately they were omnivores.

They would feed, the Military Form promised itself, from the food lockers of the enemy. Soon. The stomach rumbles continued.

Beyond the wall lay the poorly lit streets of a warehouse and factory district. The buildings were large, often filling a single block. They showed few lights.

Except one, close by, a block-long complex dominated by a long, four-story building that boasted hundreds of small yellow rectangles. Around the structure was a high wall. No entrance or exit could be seen from this vantage point.

This then could become the primary target. The Military Form locked on and undertook a short reconnaissance. Quickly the battleforms sped up and down the length of the walls. A pup was sent to climb a nearby structure to study the windows of the interior building.

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