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What could be moved to Geographic was aboard Minerva Two. Lightweight stuff, and all the food, was going into Hendrick's Skeeter; they would carry it to the Bluff. Equipment too heavy to be moved was going into the blockhouse. The grendels would never get through all that brick.
You had to believe that there were things grendels couldn't do.
Then there was the computer shack. It had been emptied of equipment.
Cassandra stood outside, and the shack now held nostalgia items, never more than ten kilograms from any colonist save one. Carlos still only half believed that they had let him put his bed in there.
And they'd brick it up to preserve Avalon's memories of civilization, but only if the grendels gave them time. Carlos set his load inside the wrecked Skeeter and staggered out. They'd almost finished bricking up the power house. Next, the computer shack; and Carlos wanted to help.
The wooden tower stood next to the main entry door to the main power room. Brilliant blue flame danced below as the welders completed their work on the power blockhouse door.
"Hear this. Fence power in thirty seconds. Get away from the fences. Hear and believe. Fence power in thirty seconds." Cadma
He had held off on this even after Minerva Two was hooked up. While gunmen could protect the fence, he could repower the Skeeters with all of the Minerva's power. But it was getting too dark to find the monsters and protect the fences. Now the fences would protect them.
Green lights turned to red on the console in front of him. "That ought to hold them," Joe Sikes said. "Fry the little bastards."
"And some of the big ones," Cadma
"How long do you think?" Sikes asked.
"Through tomorrow if we're lucky, but I'll be satisfied to have tonight. Okay, make the last run to Minerva. What are you carrying?"
"Cassandra, mostly."
"Right." Cassandra might as well live aboard Geographic. She didn't use oxygen, and it would be damned hard to rebuild without her.
Landing lights flashed as Skeeter One rose. The dark shape of Skeeter Four, Hendrick's wrecked machine, dangled below it. As the Skeeter crossed the fence perimeter its searchlight stabbed downward, circled, then flowed across the cornfields.
The fields were alive. Stalks fell, disappeared beneath large shapes.
"Holy shit," Joe Sikes said. "We won't be eating that for a while—"
The Skeeter hovered for a second longer. Cadma
Cadma
"Sure thing."
He sighted where the dark seemed to move and squeezed off a round. For a moment, nothing: then a feral scream from the field. More screams, and the area exploded with grendels. Cadma
"Shouldn't be difficult."
A gust of wind blew mist across his face. Cadma
"For what?" But Joe Sikes was already doing .it. The beam swung up and blazed against thickening cloud cover.
"We won't like it if it rains," Cadma
Chapter 30
CHALLENGE
As to moral courage, I have seldom met with the two o'clock in the morning courage: I mean unprepared courage.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, Memoirs
"Here they come!"
Darkness flowed across brown earth. There was too little sound: a hissing like ocean waves across sand, rustling of a thousand feet on loose dirt. They came in a wave, too much like an army.
Blue arcs flashed. Smoking meat suddenly flavored the humid air. Grendels seared by electricity smelled too much like a samlon just ready to come off the barbecue. It was distracting: it spoke to the wrong part of the brain.
"Here!" someone screamed. Blue arcs, closer, much too close. The tower searchlight swung over. Impossibly, a grendel had torn through the outer fence, past the minefield, and had fallen against the i
Cadma
The searchlight danced farther out, to the outer perimeter fifty meters away. Dark shapes were piled there. A dozen or more grendels had flung themselves onto the still-charged fence. Electricity sizzled deep within the pile, but other grendels climbed over the stack of corpses. Still more used their tails to drag dead siblings away from the fence.
"A scene from the Inferno, amigo."
Cadma
A moment later his voice boomed from the speakers on the colony buildings. "HEAR THIS. OPEN FIRE. TRY TO KILL SOME OF THEM OUT IN THE SPACE BETWEEN THE FENCES. OUT."
Carlos nodded, unslung his rifle and knelt beside Cadma
"Si, compadre."
Carlos's rhythmic gunfire was comforting. They've got to keep their heads. "SLOW FIRE. THAT AMMO HAS TO LAST." If only there had been time and ammunition for a full combat-rifle course.
Near him someone cursed viciously. Omar Isfahan wrenched at his rifle.
"Jammed, dammit, it's—"
"Slow down," Cadma
Omar took two deep breaths. Tension seemed to flow out of him in waves. "I'm... sorry. All right now."
"Sure. And be careful with that ammo." He handed the rifle back.
"We'll win this if we don't panic."
The engineer grimaced. "Sure." He went back to his place at the fence.
At least he's stopped shooting at shadows. Cadma
He slung his rifle and climbed rapidly.
"H'lo." Greg sounded calm enough. Cadma
Nothing. Grendels came over the pile of bodies, but as individuals.
They weren't pouring through as any decent army would.
"Like I thought," Cadma
"Yes?" Greg tried to keep his voice calm.
"Kill enough of them, most will stop to gorge. They don't keep coming. They're not an army."
"No. Thank God."
Rachel would be convinced it's God's doing. Maybe so. "I'm lying, of course."
"Uh?"
"I didn't think it at all. If I'd been commanding the grendels I'd have poured everything I had through that fence break." He clipped his comcard to the collar of his jacket. "Skeeter One. Are you fully charged?"
"Full charge, Cad." Stu sounded sleepy.
I'll wake you up. "Okay. Take up the load of kerosene. Dump between fences and all around the break in the outer fence. I'm going to try to drive them out so we can go repair that break."
"Repair that break. Jesus. Who'd do that? Okay, I'm off."
Dismembered grendels screamed in the minefield. More hissed as they fought and died. As in all battles, there was mostly confusion, but now he could see the entire perimeter. Grendels continued to come in through the break in the outer fence, but not in a wave; they came in ones and twos, and they separated to vanish in the darkness between the fences.