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air-suspension vehicle heading north. She had an ill-fitting seat forward,
right next to the pilot and away from the Human soldiers clustered in back.
To see them in full battle armor, dripping weaponry and related means of
destruction, would have been for an ordinary Wais something out of a
particularly bad nightmare. Lalelelang was not only familiar with their
appearance; her studies enabled her to identify by name and function many of
the destructive devices they carried. Even so, she found proximity to so many
of them more than daunting. As usual, the exercises helped.
Every soldier in the transport was larger than Lieutenant Umeki, and some were
truly massive. She kept her distance from them while they ignored the fluttery
alien dropped in their midst.
Strange to see the comparatively diminutive female Umeki decked out in similar
gear, with less armor to allow for more freedom of movement but wearing fully
functional double sidearms and a brace of concussion darts. Lalelelang
recorded it all for posterity and future study.
Before leaving the base she d dosed herself with a duet of stabilizing drugs,
knowing that exercises alone would be insufficient to protect her stability
should she find herself in an actual combat situation. It was entirely
possible she was the first of her kind to intentionally place herself in such
inimical surroundings.
From a social standpoint the information she expected to gain by being a part
of the experiment instead of merely an observer ought to prove invaluable.
Already she had secured enough data to have made the long, difficult journey
from Mahmahar worthwhile. In her mind s eye she could envision the reaction of
her professional colleagues.
Hopefully she might even see enough to allow her to retire the unpleasant
theories that had from the very beginning served as the main impetus behind
the expedition and indeed, behind her choice of career.
The terrain visible through the armored transparency that fronted the troop
carrier changed from grassland to scrub-covered hill country as they advanced.
Occasionally she saw other vehicles accelerating past them or whizzing by in
the opposite direction. Some were considerably larger than the transport in
which she rode, and boasted frightful arrays of destructive technology. Once,
one of them fired repeatedly at a target out of her range of vision, and later
something deadly and unseen sent a fountain of soil and gravel blossoming
skyward not far to port.
A terse shiver ruffled her feathers. So this was combat, she thought. This was
the tactile actualization of one intelligent species attempting to destroy
another: what the Amplitur had finally resorted to in their attempt to bring
the members of the Weave into their all-encompassing Purpose. The unnatural
act the representative species of the Weave had been compelled to embrace in
order to preserve their independence.
Praise to all Elevated Spirits for the existence of the prolific Massood, who
had been one of the founding members of the Weave and who had carried the
burden of actual fighting for so long. Praise also to the legendary Massood
explorer Caldaq, whose team had first made contact with the disagreeable but
invaluable Humans, who were at long last turning the tide of battle against
the enemy.
The single enemy miss did not upset her as much as she thought that kind of
encounter might. Easy enough to mentally classify it as kin to a natural
calamity, like a bolt of lightning or a meteor falling from the sky. Terrible
to contemplate but relatively simple to abstract.
The transport slowed as it entered a forest of taller trees, flora different
from that of home. Tall and straight-boled, their branches were dense with
long, pointed shapes instead of leaves. Surprisingly few bushes sought the
shelter of large, glacially polished boulders.
Umeki materialized next to her, flipping a coppery colored visor down over her
face.  Get ready.
Anxious but excited, Lalelelang rose from her seat, awkwardly adjusting her
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own modified visor. Umeki helped her with the improvised face shield,
grumbling as she did so. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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