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Burak's wrist and give it a practiced twist, sending the Perytonian's handgun
bouncing across the floor. Then Jack hit him with a right cross,
sending him staggering into the wall.
Tesla sensed what was going on and strove to reassert his dominance over
Jack, sending a mental bolt at him just as he went to grapple with Burak. Jack
somehow endured the attack, but he was off balance.
Knocking aside Jack's clumsy defense, Burak used an instinctive attack, one
the Sentinels hadn't seen from a Perytonian yet, and that Jack wouldn't be
looking for. Rather than use hands or feet, Burak faked, then lowered his head
and gored Jack Baker.
The long, dart-keen, tapered horns ripped through the tough fabric of the
man's uniform and through flesh and muscle, opening twin channels across his
midsection. One horn hung up on a rib, and Burak was pulled off balance.
Jack managed to land a hammer blow to the base of Burak's neck with his fist,
but the Perytonian lifted him from his feet and dropped him like a bull
tossing a matador.
As Jack fell, Burak looked around dizzily for his gun. But a burst from a
Badger made him duck, and he rushed madly for the bunker's entrance. Karen
fired again, but with no way to aim, she was lucky she just stitched a line of
shots across the ceiling.
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Lucky I didn't shoot my own young tush off! she told herself.
As it was, she had through some miracle managed to squirm over to
Burak's gun, rolling over it backward to get it.
As Burak fled, he kicked something that skittered ahead of him. He
instinctively scooped it up as he ran, barely breaking stride: Jack's comset,
which had bounced loose in the struggle.
Karen fired one more burst blindly, then let Burak go and set the Badger
aside. She went back to work on the makeshift bonds. By the time she had her
wrists loosened up a bit, the rumble of her ascending VT shook the air.
Burak didn't have the flight helmet, but with luck and a little skill he could
get back to Tesla using sheer manual controls.
Other hands, slick with blood, fumbled to help Karen free herself. In seconds
she was kneeling by Jack, and he curled back on the floor. The goring had been
savage, and he was losing blood fast. But she could see that he had shaken off
Tesla's influence.
She looked around for her flight helmet to call for a medevac but saw it lying
in pieces, an inadvertent victim of one of her own unaimed bursts.
Jack managed a pale ghost of one of those maddening grins. "Isn't Prince
Charming supposed to awaken Sleeping Beauty with the kiss? Penn, can't you get
anything right?"
Armed with all the non-Protoculture weaponry they had been able to muster, the
Sentinels dropped into Beroth to throw themselves in on the side of the
blinking Invid.
If the Brain had been more devious, it might have had its troops imitate
Tesla's strobe signals and confuse things again. But, an aging and somewhat
obsolescent organism, it practiced only the standard, brute tactics of Invid
warfare.
The Sentinels had come in armed with everything from Karbarran pneumatics to
Garudan slingshots, but most were carrying REF-style non-Protoculture weapons.
Even the Praxians had put aside their polearms and swords and dart-throwers
willingly for submachine guns loaded with explosive bullets, heavy machine
guns that fired discarding-sabot rounds, and portable recoilless rifles.
There were also mortars, flame guns, Garudan things that squirted molecular
acid, blowtorches, and a lot more. The VTs and the few remaining
Hovertanks couldn't use Protoculture weapons either, of course, but there had
only been time to retrofit a few of them with old-style autocannon and rocket
pods. Still, even lacking firearms, a multi-ton mecha throwing armored punches
or swinging a superalloy club as long as a utility pole could do a lot of
damage.
It was easy to sort out friend from foe; Tesla's new subjects' cyclopean
eyes flashed brightly. The Sentinels launched themselves into the fray with
that same hunger for revenge and victory that they had brought to other
battles.
But Tesla was beginning to feel misgivings. Burak was already on his way back
with the Fruit-slowly, because he wasn't used to handling a VT, and certainly
not without the special thinking-cap flight helmet-but the Sentinels might
discover Tesla's treachery at any time, if Baker or Penn could get word back
somehow.
Was it luck or was it the Shaping of the Protoculture that Penn's helmet had
been shot up and Baker's comset taken by Burak? Tesla steeled himself against
doubts. Though every Inorganic he could command was sorely needed in the
battle, he detached several and sent them toward the bunker, to do away with
two troublesome Humans before they could interfere any further.
In the meantime, sensing the deployment of the Sentinels and the manner in
which the battle was taking shape, he began a series of strategic withdrawals,
in order to shift the burden of the fighting over to his former captors. He
would need his own troops for other things.
On Optera the Regent, still dripping from nutrient immersion, viewed a
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recording of the brief fragment of message that his Spheris garrison had
managed to send.
"Under attack by-"
Then the screen went blank, because the main communications installation had
been the first thing against which Tesla directed his troops' fire.
But the Regent could hardly know that. He could only quake with rage and
fright, that an enemy could so suddenly overwhelm his most important remaining
stronghold outside of Optera.
Burak barely survived his landing, crumpling the Guardian's powerful leg under
it with a creaking of metal, and stoving in the radome.
"Can you fly it?" Tesla demanded of Gnea.
She shook her head somewhat groggily; leakage from Tesla's mind let bits and
pieces of the fierce battle through into her own. "Not without a helmet."
Tesla roared and reached out to swat her like a bug; she never even flinched. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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