THEIR MASTER

In the low gravity, the ridge was easy. They took it at a run. Near the top, the men dropped into a low crouch. They immediately came under fire again. The crest of the ridge flared and boiled. Hark was once again flat on his stomach, digging into the sand. Waed, who wasn't quite fast enough getting down, screamed and twisted backward. There was a gaping hole in his chest. Hark couldn't quite come to grips with the fact that death could be so sudden. There was something obscene about the way a man could be alive and ru

"This is going to be a fucking mess."

The growl belonged to Dyrkin. From the top of the ridge, they could see all the way to the base of the domes. There was only maybe a kilometer to go, but the ground was dotted with fortified gunpits and trenches. There was an odd metallic sheen on some areas of sand. The longtimers knew that this indicated strung molywire. The ultrafine filaments were more than capable of slicing off an arm or a leg, and where there was wire there were usually also mines and jumpers.

"How come we don't get no air cover?"

"I guess they figured gunships would be too vulnerable."

"What the hell are we? Dog meat?" "If any plane got too close to that burning sky, it'd be fried."

"What about armor? Don't we even rate armor?" "This wasn't supposed to be a full-scale landing. They're calling it a surgical strike." "Surgical my ass."

Rance cut through the complaining. "Knock off the crap. We're moving on." "We'll be cut to pieces."

"Shut up, Dacker. We'll take the two nearest gunpits. Half of you go for the one on the left, the others take the right. Keep firing all the way; we'll make it."

There was still fire hitting the ridge, and the group hesitated. Rance was bellowing in their helmets.

"Move, goddamm it, or I'll burn you myself!"

Suddenly they were on their feet again and ru

Two of the chibas were swinging around their tripod-mounted weapon, bringing it to bear on Hark and the men around him. For an instant, he thought that he was dead, then the first troopers were in the gunpit. Renchett was among them, going to work on the chibas with his knife, slashing at the soft, yellow-gray organic parts of their bodies through chinks in their somewhat minimal carapace armor. It seemed that a species that could grow-build its troops as it needed them paid little attention to protecting them on the battlefield. Renchett worked with a savage relish until his suit was slick with the transparent goop that fountained from their wounds.

"I hate chibas, they're an abomination."

He was carefully wiping his knife as he reported to Rance.

"We got the left gunpit secured." "Right gunpit also secure."

The gunpit provided a brief respite, an interlude wi no one shooting at them. Hark hunkered down an* leaned against the parapet wall. "What happens next?"

Rance wasn't slow in supplying the answer. "Anyon over there know how to fire a Yal PBA?"

Helot answered. "I've checked out on one of these."

"So stay with it and give us covering fire."

"A-firm."

"Volunteering your way out, Helot?" "Screw you, Renchett. I don't enjoy the shit the way you do. I'll grab at any chance to save my ass."

There were distant screams in their helmets. Another twenty must have walked into the grinder.

"Okay, let's move out. Keep that covering fire com-ing.

This time they ran in V formation, with the sappers finding what protection they could in the angle of the V, covering the ground with fast ten-meter leaps. They were flanked by fire from the two PBAs. Once again, Hark had the feeling that some external force had a grip on him-it was akin to the fighting madness that had overwhelmed the young men back on his planet. He was taking risks that he would not normally contemplate. By the time they had overrun two more gunpits, Hark was so pumped up that he almost stumbled into a foxhole containing two chibas. They had light-yield energy weapons fastened directly to the ends of their mechanical arms. Somehow he had the impression that they were surprised. Renchett was right-they were an abomination. Fortunately, they were also slow. Hark blasted by instinct before they could bring up their weapons. He noticed that the chibas wore no helmets. The word was that they could breath anything.

"Wirefield ahead!"

The charge halted as the men flattened rather than blunder into an expanse of deadly molecular wire. Blast fire roared over their head$.

"Alternate blast and concussion to plow that wire under."

The massed fire boiled the ground in front of them, and the dust swirled up into a purple storm. There were a dozen major explosions in fast succession, driving the dust even higher. Hark hugged the quaking ground. What had been the wirefield looked like the end of the world. The pale dust even blotted out the light of the blazing thunderhead above the domes.

"That's the mines."

"Stay down, there may be still be jumpers."

A jumper was a saucer-sized disk that, when triggered, jumped to a height of a meter and a half and then sprayed rotating fire through a full 360 degrees. Sure enough, there were flashes of swirling fire inside the dust. When they stopped, Rance ordered the troopers up again.

"Into the dust, it's perfect cover. Watch your step, though, there may still be coils of wire lying around. Take it slow and easy."

They moved cautiously into the dust cloud. They were walking almost blind. One of the recruits turned on his helmet light.

"Turn that damned thing off," Rance ordered. "You want to be a perfect target?"

The light went off. The men pressed forward. The dust was starting to settle. They were all covered with a fine purple film. They were about to get through the wirefield unscathed when somebody began screaming.

"My foot! My goddamn foot! It's gone. The wire got me!"

Again Rance was directly there.

"Calm down! Get a seal dressing on the bleeding and lie down, try and dig yourself in. The e-vac will pick you up. In the meantime, your suit will take care of the pain."

The screaming sank to a drugged whimper as the suit blanketed its wearer with secreted analgesics.

"Move on," Rance told the others. "He'll be okay. Watch your own feet."

The dust had drifted and settled and was no longer any use as cover. There was firing all around, but none of it was directed at them and the majority of it came from Alliance weapons, not those of the Yal. There was a bout of ragged cheering as the first human troops reached the base of the dome. A port in the dome opened, and a squad of chibas rushed out, firing the weapons that they had instead of hands. They were quickly burned down.

"Okay, hold it. We can stop right here. The sappers can move up to the dome. The rest of us will hold this position."

They were standing on the edge of a trench filled with dead chibas. They had been dead only for a matter of minutes, and already they were starting to decay. The yellow-gray flesh was liquefying away from the metal skeletons that had supported it, turning back into the oily protein goop whence it had come. Nobody was in any particular hurry to get into the trench, and fortunately that didn't seem necessary. The only firing still going on was the mopping up of scattered chiba positions. Hark couldn't believe that it had actually happened, that it was over. He felt sick and dizzy-he believed that he would never be able to face food again. His hands shook except when he clutched his MEW, and yet, if anyone had yelled "Run," he would have run with desperation.