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Hunters believed and understanding that she was free from them, that her human spirit had conquered.
With the help of a few carefully chosen words . . .
She'd told Shorty that he loved human women, and that he obviously wanted to father her children. How
wonderful, that it was his own conceit and intol-erance that had cost him the battle. How typical.
How veryyautja.
Noguchi stared down at the suffering Hunter for a moment longer, then knelt by him, staring into his
spiteful, hurting face.
"Human,"he spat, and Noguchi nodded, not at all surprised that he could speak the word clearly.
"That's right," she said, and plunged her wrist blades into his throat. She watched his eyes, watched the
spark of life leaving him, feeling only triumph.
A moment later, he was dead. Noguchi stood up, flicking the hot blood from her blades and retracting
them, looking around at the body-littered clearing. Nirasawa was gone, ruined, but he'd managed to take
out four Hunters first. Three had been unBlooded, but the fourth had surely been a challenge, the etched
star shape on his brow marking him warrior.
Noguchi reached up and touched her own mark, thinking of Broken Tusk, wondering if he would have
approved the things she'd done. She was still proud to wear his symbol, and thought that he would have
un-derstood but it occurred to her that it didn't particu-larly matter whether or not he would have
supported her actions. He wasn't there and as trite as it seemed, she knew that it was her opinion and
hers only that mattered. It had always been that way, but she'd for-gotten for a while.
Noguchi turned away, looking for her burner. She had a ship to catch.
Lara heard the bugs coming through the jungle and her heart sank. So close, they had to be less than half
a kilometer from the Hunter transport, and she simply didn't know how much longer she could go on.
Max was faltering, his steps slowing, and Jess had tripped and fallen twice since their encounter with the
Hunt-ers. They'd been through so much, the space station, Briggs, facing death again and again through
all of it
 and Jess is about to collapse, and Ellis could very well die any moment, and I'm so, sotired
Lara gritted her teeth, forcing the thoughts away. Theywere close, and she'd faced bugs before. It was
still very dark although it had to be early morning by now but drones made more than enough noise
to target. She was down to her last few rounds, but she was a good shot, she knew she could make them
count.
Ellis may not be able to help, but Jess will hang on . . .Whether or not he could aim very well anymore
wasn't something she wanted to consider, but she stepped closer to him, both of them standing close to
Max. If he couldn't do it, she'd take the burner when she ran out of bullets.
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They were getting closer, at least ten, fifteen of them, the sounds of their approach violent and wild, trees
snapping, their chittering shrieks growing louder.
"Ten o'clock," Jess said, and Lara nodded
 and then Ellis spoke, his shaky voice quiet and small.
"Stay back we kill," he said, and Max's arms both locked forward, Briggs's body sliding to the ground in
a heap.
Before Lara could consider the implications of "we," the first drone tore into the open, ten meters
away. And Max took one step forward and became death, the world catching fire at his touch.
Maxellis saw the first break cover and opened up, no longer certain of the best kill method, no longer
able to mark an exact distance. They fired everything, deciding in waves of red-and-black awareness that
a solid cur-tain of defense would probably work.
Flame erupted from Maxellis's right hand, a stream of napthal that stretched to meet the XT, its bounding
form halting, screaming, turning in circles as its fluids heated and expanded. Its exoskeleton burst, and
Max-ellis were already working the next moving forms, finding them, sending HEAP and incendiary
grenades into the midst of the tumbling bodies.
 we kill and thirteen more
Part of Maxellis had been injured by heat, when there had still been a separation. The fusion had been
necessary for the good of the whole, although elements of both halves had been lost. There was no pain,
but very little clarity, either, the entity's self-awareness muddled, incomplete.
Maxellis did not think of this as they sent two full cartridges of rounds into the jungle, two hundred
armor-piercers that tore through legs and arms, mists of drone blood flying, exo shrapnel from the
exploding bodies slamming into other bodies. The napthal contin-ued to stream across the congregation,
burning to death those that didn't fall right away.
In less than two minutes, it was over. The only movement in the burning was the burning itself, smoke
and flame rising and twisting up, finding new things to burn.
The Lara and Jess were speaking, but Maxellis's ca-pacity for speech was extremely limited, their
under-standing of language reduced to fundamentals.
We go now assigned parcel
The body. Maxellis turned and picked it up, doing
as little damage as they could to the fragile flesh. Then they turned and moved ahead, in the direction that
they had been going since before the meld.
In a matter of moments, they had reached the des-tination.
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Noguchi ran through the dark, aware that time was short. She'd heard the explosions only minutes after
leaving her battlefield, and knew that the Hunters would head for the sight and sound of action. It was
surely that suit, Max, and she hoped that the firefight meant Lara and Jess were still alive, that Ellis was
protecting them.
The trees whipped past, Noguchi concentrating on keeping balanced, on skirting obstacles and keeping
her speed up. She didn't want to be left behind; her fight on Bunda was over, and she was more than
ready to be away from the Hunt.
And the Hunters, who wouldn't mind at all if I missed my flight.
Noguchi picked up speed, moving faster.
The Hunter transport was twice as big as theNemesis shuttle, and looked something like a water pitcher
ly-ing on its side, a rounded body tapering at the neck. Jess wouldn't particularly care if it looked like a
giant dog turd; he'd never been so happy to see anything.
The ship had set down in an angled clearing, near the top of a gently sloping hill, the jungle they stepped
out of at the bottom. The sky seemed lighter, perhaps because of the open space, or maybe because the
end-less night was actually ending; they moved into the pale light away from the trees, Jess grateful to get
out of the secretive dark.
At least we'll see the next deadly thing coming... He considered crossing his fingers but thought it might
be his undoing, the final exertion that would knock him out cold. He wouldn't be good for much longer. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]