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  “The base?” Sergeant Shiva asked.

  “It has to be,” Gorilla acknowledged.

  Gorilla manipulated the robot to climb a tree and zoom in on the caves with its close-up lenses. The rest of the team breathlessly viewed the scene through their helmet monitors. Curiosity consumed us as the camera uncovered intense activity. None of us had ever seen the enemy before other than in rare photos, and now Blobs seemed to be everywhere in the valley. Higher-higher was apparently correct in their assumption of an advance Tslek base on Aldenia.

  Verti-form maintenance robots coasted about checking and repairing an obvious force field around the base. Roving security balls flew back and forth above combat bots unlike anything I had ever seen. These were huge tracked machines bristling with weapons protruding from various orifices. Gorilla’s tech gear also exposed transmissions from placed sensors and smart mines, along with low-level energy transmissions from aerial space defensive weapons.

  “It’s heavily fortified,” Captain Amalfi murmured appreciatively, “and so sophisticated it’s virtually undetectable except at very close range.”

  A phalanx of Blobs on patrol appeared on the screen, moving in wedge formation around the outer boundary of the fortification. They were huge individuals, fully Gorilla’s height but even bulkier. They appeared solid and heavy. They were gray to black in color, wore no clothing, and appeared to be forming and reforming themselves to the terrain as they oozed rapidly, covering territory. Each individual carried several strange looking weapons in retractable appendages.

  “Good God, they’re ugly!” Ferret breathed through the intercom.

  “You haven’t seen a mirror in awhile,” Atlas responded with a trace of his old humor.

  Gorilla was engrossed in the screen. “Record it, sir?” he asked.

  “In detail,” Captain Amalfi concurred.

  The monitor transmitted the recordings directly to the waiting pod’s memory system, so that a record would be made in the event something happened to the team on the way back and the pod took off without us.

  “Sir, we’ve got it all confirmed on tape,” Gorilla reported directly. “We got what we came for. I suggest we return to the pod via the most direct route.”

  “Hallelujah!” came Ferret’s voice. “I’m going back to my baby!”

  The news revived the team’s morale. In a moment, everyone except Blade was laughing and bantering and the helmet intercoms were buzzing. Blade looked preoccupied, nervous.

  “At ease!” Captain Amalfi said sharply. “Your assessment now, Sen?”

  My ears prickled. Why couldn’t I sense that these beings were even Blobs? Had I somehow lost my extrasensory abilities?

  “I sense one Tslek, sir. One.”

  Captain Amalfi looked at the Blobs on the screen. He looked at me. “One?”

  “Sir. One.”

  His brow creased. The scar-faced Team Sergeant squatted in front of Gorilla’s monitor. He jabbed a thick finger.

  “Are you crazy, Kadar? Look. You can see at least a hundred or more,” he growled.

  I said nothing. My ears twitched.

  “Fu-uck,” snarled Blade’s voice in my helmet. “If the only DRTs to return from a Blob patrol had a Sen along, it’s a cinch it wasn’t one like this fucked-up elf.”

  “The Blobs divide and reproduce themselves,” Captain Amalfi speculated. “Could it be that the reproductions don’t communicate, don’t think or feel so that you can pick up their thought patterns?”

  That wasn’t the intel we received at the mission briefing. Each cloned Blob was supposed to be a perfect being with all the qualities of the parent. I pointed that out, adding that I didn’t have to read thought per se in order to feel the presence of another sentient. Thought didn’t matter anyhow, since I didn’t understand their language whether it was thought or spoken.

  The Captain remained silent while he digested my input.

  “There could be a very large invasion force hidden inside the ridge,” Gorilla said. “They may have the technology to hollow out that entire mountain and fill it with warships and troops. The sooner we get back and report it, the sooner our fleet can act and nuke the bastards.”’

  “They’re there,” Atlas argued. “We can see them. Let’s get out of here before they spot us and we blow the whole mission.”

  “I need a closer look,” the Captain decided to a general round of protests from the team. “At ease, DRT-bags. Gorilla, bring some of your tricks. You and the Sen come with me. Sergeant Shiva, prepare the rest of the team to move out in case something happens.”

  He gave me a hard look. “Sergeant Kadar, if you’re not right …?”

  “One,” I replied. “One Blob.” My senses couldn’t be mistaken, could they?

  “Cap’n, the elf is setting a trap. He’ll get our asses waxed …”

  “Shut up, Blade.”

  Captain Amalfi led the way scrambling to the ridgeline, followed by Gorilla and me. Cautiously, we found a place among a pile of boulders where we could see into the valley. Curtains of rain swept up and down it. Through helmet binoc-vision, we studied the activity around the Blob camp. Patrols coming and going. Unconcerned pickets.

  “They’re thick down there,” Gorilla breathed.

  “What do you have in your bag, Gorilla?”

  He had a viewster, a small biotic bot that resembled a gerbil or a large rat, complete with fur, tail and whiskers. It would likely go unnoticed among the other rodent-like mammals. Gorilla launched it piggyback on one of the sensor bots, which carried it rapidly down into the valley and released it near the Blob garrison. The bigger bot returned. The viewster was programmed to scurry through and among the other pickets, find Blobs and make near contact with them. We saw everything it encountered through its bionic eyes on Gorilla’s monitor. The scenes in turn were relayed to the pod’s memory.

  The tiny viewster easily penetrated the Blobs’ outer security by engaging in all the natural things little animals did on their own: feeding, excreting, sniffing and scampering about. Apparently, the Blobs’ sensors were not designed to respond to non-autochthonous life forms. It was simply one among many small mammaloids in the area. Further in, there might be “clean” zones which even a mouse could not access, but so far, so good.

  A herd of the monstrous Goliath Beetles rumbled through, pushing over trees and creating a pathway through the rain forest, their armor carapaces shimmering maroon and black in the downpour. The insect beasts went out of their way to avoid the Blob force field. The viewster scrambled out of the way.

  “Damn!” Gorilla muttered, unable to get his LF sensors operating. There was increasing concern that our equipment might not survive Aldenia’s charged atmosphere long enough to get us back to the pod.

  The viewster discovered a small animal trail and followed it to within a few hundred yards of the caves. There was enough Blob activity that it shouldn’t have to wait long for contact. It began feeding, upturning small stones and scratching around rotted logs, munching on insects that resembled pillbugs. I hadn’t realized until now that there were insects on the planet smaller than tigers and one-family dwellings.

  Soon, a Blob patrol came by, moving as silently as wind ships passing in dark space. Gorilla manipulated the viewster into the line of march. The Blobs continued moving, paying it no attention. The viewster halted directly in front of the patrol. Through its eyes, we watched on the screen as the Blobs descended upon it, amorphous and imposing, but clearly oblivious to their surroundings.

  “They’ll discover it!” Captain Amalfi hissed.

  Suddenly, Gorilla’s monitor went blank. We lost all contact with the viewster and, through it, with the Blobs.

  “It’s out of the bag now,” Gorilla hissed.

  Captain Amalfi studied the distant camp through binoc-vision. “I don’t know,” he said. “They haven’t set off an alarm. The viewster might have malfunctioned or hit a force field that crippled it. We have to send a patrol down.”

&nbs
p; “Sir, do you think that wise?” Gorilla asked.

  “No. But it’s necessary.”

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  TWENTY ONE

  Ferret and one of the remaining security bots took point across the marshy lowland basin from our ridge to the Blob mountain. Vision inside the forest was minimal, as was hearing because of the constant howl of rainfall and the flashing boom of lightning. Sergeant Shiva led the patrol. I went along as a sensitive to pick up Blob telepathic signs. Blade brought up drag with his Gauss 7mm. Sergeant Shiva thought we might have need for his long-range marksmanship in case we ran into an unavoidable confrontation.

  I felt uneasy with Blade at my back, considering what I had learned snooping through the rubbish of his mind. It seemed clear to me that he murdered at least some members of his long-ago explorer mapping expedition over a mysterious treasure. I thought I was comparatively safe, at least for the time being, as long as he remained unaware of what I knew. It was something I dared not share with anyone else until we were back aboard the Tsutsumi, or until and unless the Presence led him to the artifact over which the Humans of a previous mission had met their doom.

  Maid and I had beat Blade back to the domed shelter last night. When he returned, he spoke briefly to Ferret on monitor watch at the door. Ferret glanced back into the dark room where Maid and I merged in the shadows with the others, I sitting alone, as usual, while Maid took her place next to Atlas and pretended to be sleeping. Blade swaggered over to me.

  “It’s dangerous out there by yourself, elf,” he snarled. “One of those big ol’ bugs or snakes could eat you up and nobody’d ever known what happened to you.”

  It was a not-so-subtle threat. Ferret must have told him I had followed him outside. He assumed that it was I instead of Maid he sensed while he was busy digging.

  Don’t taunt him, I warned myself. But his insolent and badgering nature was something hard to resist.

  “Verily, though I walk through the Valley of The Shadow of Death,” I quoted from an inscription I once saw on a prolie’s t-shirt, “I will fear no evil — for you are the meanest sonofabitch in the valley.”

  Blade looked at me. I smiled innocently.

  “Fu-uck. One of these days, elf, you’re going to let your pellet-sized asshole overload your cannonball mouth.”

  He was probably right about that. Now, I felt his eyes boring into my back as the patrol made its way cautiously across the floor of the basin toward the Blob stronghold. I knew he was wondering if I might have read his thoughts and if now might not be a good time to get rid of me.

  Ferret up front slowed the pace as we came near the Blobs. We waded knee-deep up a stream with high, wooded banks. Rain churned the surface of the water. Creepy-looking leeches hung from the overhanging tree branches like parasitic intestines. Ferret sliced one in two with his laser-machete. It squirted black blood in a thick spritz for thirty meters. Out of the blood erupted tiny intestine leeches, hundreds of them, which wriggled frantically into the stream and tried to attach themselves to our legs with teeth as sharp as needles.

  We fought them off and got out onto land. A short distance later, Ferret gave the danger signal.

  Two combat robots, each about the size of a small land rover, were running purposefully across a clearing directly toward us. Our chameleons obviously didn’t work against non-life forms that used sensors as their primary mode of identifying targets. Both bots bristled with weapons suddenly hammering and winking death. Heavy lead and missiles cut swaths through the trees, splintering branches and exploding clouds of leaves, bark, and twigs. Little bombs and grenades detonated in a deadly circle of exploding steel to our rear.

  I had not been in combat before. Instinctively, I dropped on my belly into a shallow depression. For some insane, incongruent reason, I recalled one of the holographic cartoons back on Galaxia in DRT-213’s team room. Two soldiers were lying behind a single small tree branch while enemy fire burst all around them. I can’t get any lower, Ivan, one was saying to the other. Me buttons is in the way.

  Me buttons were definitely in the way.

  I controlled my taa output with an effort, telling myself that our attackers were merely machines and that the Zentadon moral prohibition against killing sentients did not apply to bolts, nuts, hard drives, and microchips. I drew my Punch Gun as the two combat bots split up and charged into the trees to make short work of us.

  Behind me, Blade took cover behind a tree trunk and was trying to get a piece of target as the bots flitted in the jungle. I heard automatic Grav fire forward from Ferret. Sergeant Shiva was shouting, “Envelope! Envelope right and left!”

  Envelope right and left? What the Human Hades did that mean?

  All I knew was that I had to fight off lintatai while fighting off the robots. Okay. Deep breath. Now move.

  I jumped up and ran to my left. Was that an envelope? I dodged and darted on minimum taa, running between the hard fire and laser energy. Bolts of light streaking. Brilliant explosions. Trees erupting. Ground torn up. And the din of it all! A grunt once told me that a single combat bot carried firepower equal to an entire old line infantry company. I believed him now. These Blob bots sounded like they were equivalent to a battalion. A battalion was bigger than a company, wasn’t it? How could anything possibly survive such a barrage. I was glad now that I didn’t have a tail. It would only have made of me a larger target.

  I ran through the forest tangle to engage the robot on my side of the woods. It was chattering away. The world was exploding all around. Yet, miraculously, I remained unscathed and completely in control of my taa output. What was all this about war being Hell?

  I glimpsed a sheen of green-black mottled metal. I dropped to my belly and crawled forward, pulling myself with my elbows and pushing with my feet. A Punch had a limited range. I had to make sure my first round did the job, or the bot would do the job on me.

  I saw it. Eight feet tall and, curiously enough, built like a metal Human man. It looked like the Tin Man in the ancient Wizard of Oz film. The Tin Man on steroids with enhancements and fitted with enough artillery to knock down a dreadnought. Old Earth movies were something else the Human side of me liked, along with cocktails. Much of what I knew about my Human half came from their movies.

  The Tin Man hammered away with a cannon in each hand and two machine guns sticking out of his belly. I crawled close while it was occupied shooting at my teammates. Just as I took bead with my Punch Gun, I noticed that the bot was shooting high. Shooting over our heads!

  Its sensors picked up on me. It whipped around in my direction, guns blazing. Taa would have given me the ability to easily escape, but I didn’t bother.

  Sure enough, the Tin Man shot into the forest canopy over my head instead of at me. It didn’t even attempt to lower its fire. I stood up and coolly shot the bot with a single round from my Punch. Pieces of it spurted from a center core of blinding light. I ducked to avoid flying metal.

  The woods went silent with the Tin Man’s demise. Blade or one of the others must have likewise assisted the other robot into its component parts. I stood with the Punch Gun hanging from my hand, marveling at my own courage in the face of danger. After all, I hadn’t known until the end that, for some incredible reason, almost like the mechanical monster was partly blind, it had been programmed not to kill us.

  A snicker of mechanical laughter grabbed me by the throat. I wheeled to confront the Presence and found Blade instead. He stood not thirty meters away in real life form after having turned off his cammies. Rifle raised, muzzle pointed at me, finger on the trigger. His eyes burned through the faceplate of his combat helmet.

  “I can drop you now,” he said. “I want you to know it’s coming and to see it clearly when it happens. I’m using a Hornet round. You don’t have enough taa left to get away from it.”

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  TWENTY TWO

  Good work!” Sergeant Shiva called out in intercom, scuttling through the woods in his chameleons w
ith a burst of infrared energy. “Wha …?” he said when he realized Blade was holding me at rifle point.

  Blade slowly lowered his Gauss, but his eyes continued to burn through the helmet facemask. He had missed his moment.

  “There are Blobs in the other treeline,” he explained, pretending that he had been aiming at them.

  I left it at that. My ears flicked wildly, but now was not the time for a confrontation when no winners other than the Blobs could possible emerge.

  Sergeant Shiva quickly reconsolidated the patrol; no one was injured, except for a minor shrapnel scratch on Ferret’s arm.

  “I’m a wounded hero,” he crowed. “Naleen will love me.”

  “If she still remembers you,” Blade poked at him, still ill-tempered.

  The clearing ahead of us, across which the battle bots had charged, rose in an incline toward a distant treeline. Beyond the trees loomed the ridge into and at the foot of which the Tslek were constructing their advance assault base. We burrowed into cover and gave the open park a good optic-glassing before deciding on further action. Sergeant Shiva had also noticed how the Blob bots appeared to lift their fire to avoid hurting us.

  “They had us dead to rights,” he pondered, troubled. “Why didn’t they finish us?”

  “Did you see the big bastard Kadar shot?” Ferret exclaimed, still on an adrenalin high. “He was built like a real man. The other was Blob-like, but this guy had legs and arms.”

  “And a machine gun for a dick,” Blade added sourly.

  “It must have been a bot the Blobs stole from us on one of their raids and converted,” Sergeant Shiva guessed. “Why aren’t they sending more forces out against us?”

  A particularly heavy deluge of rain obscured the distant ridge. Lightning splintered a nearby tree. Then, suddenly, the storm lifted and light weakly touched the tops of trees and the crest of the mountains.