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.The storm is interfering with transmissions.I’m not sure our onboards—”There was a moment in which the sound rose to a crackle, and then it died out.Dammit.Justin heard it overhead, coming in too low.The snow increased, another flurry driving itself against him, and he cursed.He couldn’t see anything.The earphones crackled again.“Trying to see—”And then—Stu leaned out the door of Skeeter II.Too much was happening too quickly to let him keep the whole camp under observation.He wasn’t worried.They had grendel guns far better than the ones the Earth Born used to win the Grendel Wars, and the Star Born were better trained, had better reflexes than the First.They’d rehearsed this in simulation, skeeters and Cassandra and the gunners operating together to bring maximum firepower to bear.That was in simulation, but this was different.Here the weather kept Cassandra blind, and he was nearly so, and his heart pounded and he sometimes forgot to breathe.He peered into the snow, but he couldn’t see clearly.“Stu, where the hell are they?” Justin’s voice yammered in his earpiece.“Bring it down a little closer,” he told Katya.“Justin needs help.”“Right,” she said.“Uh—I can’t—”“Yes?” he shouted.“Nothing.I’ll get in closer.”The meat milled right in front of Cold One, but the stink of death was in the air, and an alien chemical reek.There was much that she didn’t understand here.She bucked and snapped at a sister next to her, receiving a warning snap in return.It might have turned into a death match then and there, but for the meat—so much!--and for another thing.Others of her kind, others of her own brood had died here, and the stench of speed and grendel blood filled the air.The air was filled with smoke and thunder as her sister burst open, spewing blood and bone and shredded flesh and speed.Something like blind panic hit her.She couldn’t begin to comprehend what had just happened, but she had once seen the sky flash with light, rainfire, and that light climb down from the clouds to strike a tree.The tree had burst into flame.And this was something close to that.The meat! The meat! So much of it.Yet the world was turning upside down, and she smelled death in every wind.The world was changing.Hell was coming, and any strange thing might be worth her life.Like this: looming abruptly out of the sky was a burring thing that Cold One had only glimpsed between flurries, a birdie big enough to eat grendels, its wings invisible on speed.It swung down, then drew back as if suddenly aware that it had come too close to earth.A threat! A challenge!Speed flooded through her body.A grendel would attack what it feared.Justin saw Katya’s skeeter come in low, circle, come back even lower.The sound and pressure of its rotors bore down on them and swelled until they filled the entire world.Suddenly it was only a few feet over his head.“Sleet!” he yelled, reflexively flinging his hands up in a doomed attempt to ward off disaster.Katya was already trying to correct.The skeeter headed out into grendel territory, and began to rise.“God,” Derik said.“They’re going to make it—”The skeeter struggled to gain altitude against the wind and snow.The low power light winked on as she threw full power to the engines, but the skeeter tipped downward and fell.“Stu—we’re going in,” she had time to say.Snow exploded, a white cloud against the windshield.The skeeter didn’t want to respond to the controls, and a pale shape was coming at her eyes.She screamed and crossed her arms in front of her face as jaws came across the ship’s nose.The grendel smashed through the front viewscreen.The skeeter banked violently to the left, and she lost all control.The skeeter fell into the snowbank.She had time to hope that the fall would crush the grendel, but then the rotor caught and threw up a shower of snow and dirt, and they cartwheeled forward and over, crashing down nose first.Her harness straps dug into her flesh but they held.“Stu—” she shouted.“Stu, it’s not dead!”Stu wiped blood from his eyes.He’d lost his grendel gun in the crash.Up forward the slim torpedo head and much of its body were halfway through the shattered left-hand windscreen.The Jaws opened and closed.Snow heated by the internal heat of its speed steamed up from its snout and jaws.Those jaws snapped closed no more than a meter from Katya’s face.The grendel had been stunned by the fall but now it was coming awake.It was like a scene from one of their recorded Halloween movies, a serpentine ogre coming back from the dead.A long strip of the windshield’s frame had torn loose and partly eviscerated the grendel.It left a trail of hot blood and steaming intestines as it inched toward Stu.The stench of its dragon breath was nearly overpowering.Katya screamed.The thing whipped its head around and stared at her as if affronted by her noise, her motion, her very mortal fear.Stu saw the grendel, impaled, dying, work its way in through the window, saw its jaws close on her head.He closed his eyes, and wished that he could have closed his ears as well, the terrible cracking-ice wet crunching sound, the sudden explosive stench of blood and brains.He blinked, hard.Katya was still alive, the grendel hadn’t reached her yet.He threw off the quick-release buckles and dived forward.He screamed “Hey!” and swung his fist, connecting solidly on the side of its head.He felt his knuckle break against its armor, cursed and swung again, at its eye.It roared, deafening in the confined space, and turned to snap at him.Stu screamed, suddenly registering the insanity of what he had done, and jerked his safety webbing loose.He rolled out of the skeeter, spilling into the snow, and kicked the door shut behind him.The enraged grendel was coming through the Plexiglas windscreen.Ignoring the hysterical Katya, it pounded its way through the Plexiglas of the door and flowed after Stu like a shark through water.How could the dying beast move at all? Stu staggered flailing through the snow.He’d left his gun.he never would have had time to reach it, but how could it still move? It flashed into speed and was on him.He’d gone no more than a dozen meters.Justin was moving even before the skeeter struck the ground.The snow was driving now, a sudden flurry that blinded, but it would confuse the grendels as well.“Justin!” Derik yelled behind him.He didn’t care.Katya was in mortal danger, and there was no way that he could leave her to die.He pitched forward into the snow and peered out through his goggles.Feasting, near the skeeter.He recognized Stu’s jacket.Justin clamped his mind down on nausea and fear and grief.Business now.Mourn later.Think.That grendel was busy.It looked to be dying, ripped open, for that matter.It might even warn others away: its natural territoriality would protect Katya for a few moments.He heard Katya whimper, and almost lost his resolve.Almost.There was a plea, a cry of “Justin! Help me!” He felt it reach right under his logic, and twist.He remembered what Carlos said about his bride, up on the cliff.That he had never forgiven himself [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]