When the Devil Dances

Generally, if you’re going down a cliff or the face of a building, the best way is to rappel. Tie off a rope, hook up any number of devices and lower yourself on the rope. However, there are any number of cases where this is impractical; ropes are not infinitely lengthy. There was another device available that used a very thin wire for the same purpose. And Mosovich really wished he had one with him. But they were much harder to construct than the static repulsion boxes and weren’t standard issue. Given the number of times this sort of thing came up, he was definitely getting one for everyone in the team and keeping them.

The problem was that static repulsion systems didn’t slow your fall at all until they came near solid materials. For example, this system was going to completely ignore the trees he was just about to hit.

* * *

“Fuscirto uut!” Orostan shouted, jumping over the corpse of the last oolt’os and darting to the edge. His talons scrabbled on the rock as he almost slid over the side then he looked down the cliff face just in time to see the human disappear into the trees below.

“You cannot escape me that easily!” the oolt’ondai shouted to the winds, knowing that the words were a lie. “I will still eat your heart!”

Orostan looked out over the valley below and screamed in rage. The sun was sinking to the northwest and before anyone could get to the landing area the human, if it was alive, and he doubted that it had just committed suicide, would be kilometers away. In any of three directions.

Cholosta’an came up beside him and looked down. After a moment he pointed downwards with a flap of his crest.

“Yes,” Orostan ground out.

“Alive?” the younger Kessentai asked.

“Probably,” Orostan snarled. “And there was only one.”

Cholosta’an thought about that for a moment. “The last time we had a good count it was over by the town of Seed. There were four.”

“Yes,” Orostan said. “Four.”

“And now there was only one,” Cholosta’an said. “One. And no bodies.”

“No.”

“Oh. Fuscirto uut.”

“I’ll send someone around to look for a corpse,” Orostan said after a few moments’ contemplation. “But I doubt they’ll find anything.” He looked at his tenaral and started to wonder who. Finally he turned away and started back down the hill. The human might have escaped today, but it undoubtedly was “based” beyond the Gap. Its time would come. Soon.

* * *

As the last Posleen normal faded out of sight, the “rock” that Mosovich had been standing on shifted and rippled, revealing something that looked very much like a four-eyed, blotchy, purple frog. The creature, if it was stretched out, would have been about eight feet from four-fingered foot-hand to foot-hand and was perfectly symetrical; it had two hands and two eyes on either end with a complex something in the area where a nose might be.

The Himmit scout leaned out from the rock, its rear two foot-hands spreading out over the surface for purchase, and noted the faint heat signature moving away that was probably the human. He then levered himself back and looked towards the retreating Posleen. Such decisions. Human/Posleen, Human/Posleen? Finally, deciding that humans were always more interesting than Posleen — who basically ate, killed and reproduced and who could make a story from that? — it leaned sideways and started flowing from handhold to handhold down the cliff.

Such exciting times.

CHAPTER 14 Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III 0928 EDT Tuesday September 15, 2009 ad

Mike looked around the room and then undogged his helmet. The command and staff of the 1^st/555^th was grouped in a kindergarten schoolroom, sitting on the floor to use the undersized tables. The battlescarred combat suits made an unpleasant contrast to the colored drawings on the walls and the prominent poster of the five food groups.

“Well, we’ve had worse meetings.” He chuckled as the last of the gel underlayer from his suit streamed off into his helmet. “Much worse.”

“Yep,” Duncan agreed as he set his helmet carefully on the desk in front of him. The plasteel was still heavy and hard enough to mar the stick drawing of a little girl with “Ashley” written below it. “At least nobody is shooting at us.”

“We’ll get back to that pretty soon,” Mike said. He worked the ball of tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other and spit into his helmet. The nannites of the semibiotic underlayer gathered up the disgusting glop which, from its perspective, was simply moisture, nutrients and complex carbon molecules, and carried them off to be reprocessed. “There’s groups of Posleen holed up all along the bottom of the Plain. We’re going to help with the mop-up for the next week or so as reaction forces. After that, Horner has ordered us to move to our barracks and take some time off. Given that we had to reconsolidate without Alpha company, I think some time in barracks is called for.”