“You’re right. It’s taunting us,” Harmer said in a mixture of disgust and fascination, “Daring us to come after it again.”
She passed her Hexiomatic over to Deschane, who took his turn squinting down the scope at the grisly trophy the enemy had left for them to see. Cpt. Caitliff had ordered the section to pound the enemy’s last known location and everything around it within a five-klick radius. The head stuck up from out of the lifting clouds of gun smoke, in brazen defiance of the explosive shells that crashed and flattened the bush all around it.
“Maybe,” Deschane murmured noncommittally.
Ven wondered how the navigator could remain so unaffected by the mutilated remains of a man he’d seen killed only minutes ago. She couldn’t see the expression on his face through his gasmask, but his body language betrayed nothing more than an air of heightened attention. Ven ducked as the cannons roared once again, tearing craters into the loam of the opposite bank and felling whole stands of trees. After a few minutes the guns fell silent and Lt. Shylo came over to join them.
“Whatever the case may be, it’s certainly feeling confident,” Caitliff was saying.
“Of course it’s bloody confident,” Shylo said with a manic giggle, “It just carried off a score of men from right under our noses. Can’t you see that it’s making sport of us all?”
“You will sequester that morbid mewling, lieutenant,” Caitliff’s reprimand cut like a scalpel through his hysteria, “We’ll see who’s hunting whom before this business is through. Continue the barrage.”
“Sir, we’re almost out of explosive shells,” Shylo protested, “Colonel Leelan had us cover his regiment’s retreat with our guns, too. We haven’t been resupplied since yesterday.”
“So send out a runner.”
“I’ve already sent a messenger to the signalling station several hours ago.”
“Then where is your ammunition?”
“I didn’t send him to request a resupply, sir. I’ve asked permission to make an immediate withdrawal from this position. I’m expecting their reply any minute now.”
“You want to retreat?” Caitliff spat, “And leave the rest of us unsupported? Unacceptable.”
“But command—”
“—has ordered me to salvage this sector by any means necessary. Until you receive a reply in the affirmative you are staying right where you are. Save the shells and switch to round shot. If I see a single gun being limbered, I’ll destroy you. Get me?”
“Aye aye, skipper,” Shylo gave a half-hearted salute and plodded back to his position.
Ven could hear the angry rasp of Caitliff’s breathing through her intake valves and knew the captain was spoiling for a fight, her grief transforming into a simmering rage that threatened to boil over at any moment. Despite her eagerness to avenge her fallen comrades, Caitliff was taking a remarkably level-headed approach to things—likely the fate of her corporal had scared some sense into her.
She wasn’t the only one. Ven felt as if her bones had turned to jelly. Once again she was confronted by the sudden impartiality of death, and the shock of it had yet to wear off.
The officers from both outfits were kneeling in a semicircle some distance away from the twelve-pounder guns, calmly talking over their next move under the overall supervision of the captain.
Deschane had deployed the platoon forward in a standard skirmish pattern on the river’s edge. Caitliff on her part had ordered her drakenguard to dismount and form a line behind them, resting their shotguns and carbines on the saddles of their unmoving steeds to steady their aim. Together they all kept their eyes peeled for the slightest hint of movement. There was a pause in the cannonade as the gun crews brought up the round shot from the caissons, during which the smoke clouds slowly parted like a veil, allowing them to see the other side clearly.
“D’you see that?” cried one keen-eyed pathfinder, pointing at a new shape that had materialized next to the first, “What the devil is that?”
“Why, it’s one of ours! Klemens from A Company, I think,” Lemings sang out, “They’ve gone and put Klemens up there!”
Cries of outrage and revulsion went up from the soldiers as they spied a second man set on display alongside Haikes. A pathfinder was draped atop the crown of a nearby palm tree like a sheet of torn and dirty linen, his gasmask dangling off his waxen face to show the rolling whites of his eyes, pupils staring blankly up at the heavens. His killer had torn open the back of his mud-brown sealant suit to carve out his haunches and buttocks.
Ven felt as if she had stumbled into someone else’s fevered nightmare. The eradicator had used the clouds of smoke from the cannonade to move in unseen and erect another one of its trophies for them to see, openly making a mockery of the mightiest weapon the Fleet possessed.
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Eradicator. Ven realized that she had been consciously resisting the urge to call the creature by that name, knowing full well that such words held power over the mind. But was this lifeform truly the harbinger of doom which had levelled entire civilizations? If so, then Ven had to admit that it was living up to its reputation.
But if there was one thing she knew about her fellow pathfinders, it was that they never could admit when they were beaten.
“The cunt knows he can’t beat us in a standup fight,” Pretty Boy seethed, “If we could just catch him out in the open, we’d tear his arse up, by god!”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Deschane handed back the Hex and stood up, “Nothing we had seemed to put a dent in it.”
“Who’s to say we even hit anything?” Harmer pointed out.
“Didn’t you take a shot at it?” Ven asked the markswoman. Harmer shook her head and replied:
“You know me—I never squeeze one off unless I’m dead sure of hitting a nerve cluster.”
“Who’s to say it even has a nerve cluster?” Deschane said, thoughtfully scratching at his bandages.
“What are you suggesting?” Caitliff asked. Everyone knew the answer to that question, and the implications of it frightened them all. If it had no nerve cluster, then could it even be killed?
Ven had caught a glimpse of the eradicator when it had taken Haikes and the other rider, but all she could clearly remember was that it had far too many legs and arms the length of train rails. And the speed of those lashing limbs! It had struck like forked lightning and disappeared just as quick. Nothing that big had any business moving so swiftly, considering that it was as tall as the trees it had so effortlessly impersonated.
Now that she had a moment to collect herself, Ven tried to reconstruct the scene in an effort to glean what they were up against. Its waist or thorax or trunk—whatever you chose to call it—was slender in the middle but thickened where it met the thigh segments of the legs, which Ven had mistaken for large buttress roots digging their anchorage into the soil. The eradicator’s carapace presented a perfect imitation of mossy bark, the arms holding up a panoply of green branches that she suspected were living epiphytes that it wore to complete its disguise.
“It can’t be an Amit,” Ven decided at last, “The physiology’s all wrong. The tactics, too.”
“What are you, some kind of expert?” one of Caitliff’s non-commissioned officers mouthed off.
“When’s the last time you heard a gourd-head talk?” Ven countered, “They don’t even have vocal cords. This thing let the bulk of your patrol pass, waited for you to turn your backs, then lured in your rearguard by mimicking human speech patterns. Only then did it choose to strike. Amits don’t have that kind of tactical acumen.”
“I’d pay attenshun to her if I was you,” Pretty Boy glowered at him, “She’s got college.”
“I don’t care if she’s a summa-cumma-valley-dick-torian!” the non-com forced a laugh, doubling down on his arrogance, “She’d have us believe that we’re facing unkillable phantasms, when in reality there’s no problem in the world that enough bullets can’t solve.”
“Tell that to your dead,” Ven said, regretting it immediately. Caitliff’s officers stiffened as if she had doused them with a bucketful of cold water. She had insulted their regimental pride, their esprit de corps. Drakenguard were a notoriously prickly bunch. They were mounted infantry, the first of their kind, a departure from the traditional lance and warhammer-wielding shock cavalry that had proven their worth on a hundred blood-soaked battlefields. Their role was to be a reactionary force that could swiftly reinforce critical sectors of the line, overwhelming the enemy with massed firepower. The jury was still out on whether or not they were worth the incredible expense of equipping and maintaining their unit. As such, Caitliff’s people had a lot to prove.
“If you footsloggers don’t have the stones to face the enemy and take losses, then what good are you?” said a younger drakenguard who wore a flower tucked into his breast pocket.
“Stones? Oh, I’ll show you stones,” Pretty Boy promised, hand flying to his backsword, “I’ll shove mine so far down your throat you’ll think it’s folk medicine.”
Oof, Ven winced. Talk about adding fuel to the fire.
“I’ll measure my steel against yours anytime, anywhere,” was the cavalryman’s eager reply.
“Gentlemen!” Caitliff slammed her fist against the side of the twelve-pounder, the cannon tolling like a muted bell, “A soldier of the Fleet lies slaughtered before you, and all you can think to do is argue over who has the bigger cock? You shame us all, sirs. You disgrace us.”
Doyd and the young man both had the decency to duck their heads in embarrassment. Ven had seldom seen Pretty Boy so cowed. Caitliff continued:
“From now on we will all conduct ourselves as officers of the Expeditionary Force. Navigator,” she rose and turned to Deschane, “I’m told your pathfinders are the finest scouts this side of the Iron Crescent. They say you people can sniff out a fart in the eye of a hurricane. Any truth to that claim?”
Deschane was taken aback by her forthrightness, and took a while to answer:
“An exaggeration. But if any one of us can lend credence to it, it’s this man right here. Private Greymoss!” he called to the skirmish line, “Front and centre.”
“Suh?” the bog-man came over at a sprint.
“This is the best tracker in your platoon?” Caitliff cast an appraising eye over the bog-man. Covered in a brown poncho made of dried grass and chewing on a stalk of wild oats, Greymoss cut the very opposite of a dashing figure.
“Best in the regiment, bar none,” Deschane said without hesitation.
“Fine. Navigator, I need your troopers to help smoke that thing out. How do you suggest we do that?”
“With respect sir, I don’t. I think we should all fall back behind the wagon circles and link up with the main force.”
Ven couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Pretty Boy openly goggled at him. The drakenguards threw up their hands in disgust as if he had just confirmed their worst suspicions, while Caitliff’s own forbidding silence spoke volumes. Deschane calmly weathered their contempt before speaking the rest of his piece:
“Col. Leelan made the right choice to retreat considering the circumstances, though I will admit the retreat itself was handled poorly.”
“Are you refusing to carry out my orders?” Caitliff’s voice had gone ominously flat.
“No, skipper. I’m merely stating the course of action that I believe will save the most lives. It’s my opinion that this enemy is beyond our ability to combat effectively through conventional means. If we engage it here and now, we will probably suffer another mass casualty event. Are you willing to pay that price in blood?”
Caitliff glanced at her people, then back at Haikes. Ven heard the creak of her leather riding gloves as her hands curled into fists.
“Let’s nail this bastard to the wall,” she snarled.
“Very well, skipper. Here's what I propose..."
Deschane squatted back down and with his fingertip scrawled out a plan in the dirt.