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Authors: Robert Buettner
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there with a yardstick and touch most anywhere inside.
Everything except the seating surfaces and controls is steel, white-painted to show fluid leaks, and as forgiving as your first drill instructor. An Abrams will break you before you break it, a lesson rookies learn nose-first. Rolling with the vehicle had become habit for me, but Cutler, and, to a lesser extent Kit, death-gripped one handhold after another and fought every lurch as Zhondro whistled the tank north across the uneven road surface.
Zhondro reclined up front, driving. I occupied the commander’s throne, to the right rear and high. Cutler sat in the gunner’s seat, below and in front of me. Kit sat on the turret’s left side, facing us, at Cutler’s level, in the loader’s position.
Kit predicted visits from the gorts’ less sociable relatives, so we rolled buttoned up, with the driver’s, loader’s and commander’s hatches closed.
Buttoning up makes a tank less like a limo in four ways. First, except for the gun sights, one sees the world only through periscopic prism windows, which is like peeking through cereal boxes with both ends cut out. Second, it’s hot. Third, it’s hot. Fourth is a corollary of two and three. Hot people sweat buckets, and stink.
So, when we arrived at Kit’s Line camp, everybody was ready to dismount, even into a cloudy, humid, one hundred two Fahrenheit afternoon. Cutler made for the air conditioned Sleeper. Cloudy or not, Zhondro scooted beneath the Abrams’ shade from habit, for a Tassini siesta.
I sat atop the Abrams’ turret, faced sideways with my legs dangling down through the open commander’s hatch. Kit mimicked my position, but seated on the loader’s hatch edge.
Zhondro had parked us atop a bald, granite plateau, looking out at a rolling green blanket of forest below, and a rolling gray blanket of cloud above, that stretched to the horizon.
Distant shrieks and bellows echoed, then hung in the damp air.
I rested my elbow on the receiver of the commander’s .50 caliber. “It’s safe to sit out like this?”
Kit pointed at the Triple-A ’bot atop the rock knob beside us. Steel clamshell doors bolted into the rock led into the artificial cave that was the Line Wrangler’s station. “The Wrangler’s station’son this plateau because the fields of observation and fire are clear. The Triple A ’bot and stationary mines out at the tree line have been emplaced long enough to teach the local predators lessons.”
Five hundred yards below and to our left front, where the barren rock surrendered to the encroaching jungle, trees moved.
I scooted on my butt behind the .50, rattled back the charging handle, and sighted down the barrel at the movement. Twenty feet above the ground, a fanged lizard head, tiger-striped black and yellow like an overripe banana, poked out through the branches. The head was as long as a squad mess table, and attached to a six-legged body the size of a forty-passenger bus. The beast stared up at us, a prey item just bigger than an overweight woog. I swallowed, then slid my thumbs toward the gun’s butterfly trigger.
The monster snarled, then lunged toward us.
Kit leaned toward me and touched my elbow. “Don’t—”
Boom! Where there had been a monster, the mine’s explosion left red mist adrift among shivering tree limbs. Bleeding ribs and drumsticks bigger than I was arced away in all directions.
“—Bother.” Kit sat back and sighed. “Lessons taught aren’t always lessons learned. It’s a good thing stripers are dumb, because they’re a handful up close.”
I shook my head. “Everything here has six legs, not just the bugs. Animals don’t eat plants. The sun never shines. This place makes no sense.”
She shook her head back at me. “You sound as condescending as Cutler, Parker. Since the War, we’re the only intelligent species left in this universe. Therefore, we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do
Everything except the seating surfaces and controls is steel, white-painted to show fluid leaks, and as forgiving as your first drill instructor. An Abrams will break you before you break it, a lesson rookies learn nose-first. Rolling with the vehicle had become habit for me, but Cutler, and, to a lesser extent Kit, death-gripped one handhold after another and fought every lurch as Zhondro whistled the tank north across the uneven road surface.
Zhondro reclined up front, driving. I occupied the commander’s throne, to the right rear and high. Cutler sat in the gunner’s seat, below and in front of me. Kit sat on the turret’s left side, facing us, at Cutler’s level, in the loader’s position.
Kit predicted visits from the gorts’ less sociable relatives, so we rolled buttoned up, with the driver’s, loader’s and commander’s hatches closed.
Buttoning up makes a tank less like a limo in four ways. First, except for the gun sights, one sees the world only through periscopic prism windows, which is like peeking through cereal boxes with both ends cut out. Second, it’s hot. Third, it’s hot. Fourth is a corollary of two and three. Hot people sweat buckets, and stink.
So, when we arrived at Kit’s Line camp, everybody was ready to dismount, even into a cloudy, humid, one hundred two Fahrenheit afternoon. Cutler made for the air conditioned Sleeper. Cloudy or not, Zhondro scooted beneath the Abrams’ shade from habit, for a Tassini siesta.
I sat atop the Abrams’ turret, faced sideways with my legs dangling down through the open commander’s hatch. Kit mimicked my position, but seated on the loader’s hatch edge.
Zhondro had parked us atop a bald, granite plateau, looking out at a rolling green blanket of forest below, and a rolling gray blanket of cloud above, that stretched to the horizon.
Distant shrieks and bellows echoed, then hung in the damp air.
I rested my elbow on the receiver of the commander’s .50 caliber. “It’s safe to sit out like this?”
Kit pointed at the Triple-A ’bot atop the rock knob beside us. Steel clamshell doors bolted into the rock led into the artificial cave that was the Line Wrangler’s station. “The Wrangler’s station’son this plateau because the fields of observation and fire are clear. The Triple A ’bot and stationary mines out at the tree line have been emplaced long enough to teach the local predators lessons.”
Five hundred yards below and to our left front, where the barren rock surrendered to the encroaching jungle, trees moved.
I scooted on my butt behind the .50, rattled back the charging handle, and sighted down the barrel at the movement. Twenty feet above the ground, a fanged lizard head, tiger-striped black and yellow like an overripe banana, poked out through the branches. The head was as long as a squad mess table, and attached to a six-legged body the size of a forty-passenger bus. The beast stared up at us, a prey item just bigger than an overweight woog. I swallowed, then slid my thumbs toward the gun’s butterfly trigger.
The monster snarled, then lunged toward us.
Kit leaned toward me and touched my elbow. “Don’t—”
Boom! Where there had been a monster, the mine’s explosion left red mist adrift among shivering tree limbs. Bleeding ribs and drumsticks bigger than I was arced away in all directions.
“—Bother.” Kit sat back and sighed. “Lessons taught aren’t always lessons learned. It’s a good thing stripers are dumb, because they’re a handful up close.”
I shook my head. “Everything here has six legs, not just the bugs. Animals don’t eat plants. The sun never shines. This place makes no sense.”
She shook her head back at me. “You sound as condescending as Cutler, Parker. Since the War, we’re the only intelligent species left in this universe. Therefore, we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do
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