The climb up the ridge was steep, with footing made treacherous by a scree slope of shattered flat shards of ancient lava under the tangled skein of weeds. Pieces slipped and skipped downhill, tore lose under boots and gloved fingers and threw dust even through the plants. That combined with alien pollen to create swollen, oozing sinuses and itching eyes. Even through the gloves, chips and nicks from the impact trauma of the rocks caused niggling discomfort. Then the splinters worked their way in, along with thorns and burrs. Balance was precarious, and Gun Doll and Gorilla skidded several meters down the abrasive surface because of their awkward loads. Swearing and griping, they forced their way back up. Tirdal was clearly exerting himself, to the secret delight of some of the others, but his denser build kept him slipping and sliding as he dug fingers and toes into what solid surface he could find.
After several hundred meters of angled frustration, they found plants solid enough to grip. That made the climb easier, though it added sore shoulders to the tally of aches and pains. The coarse, fibrous stalks with leaves like nettles gave way to low, flexible bushes, then to trees. The terrain was thoroughly un-Earthly; Earth hills would have had loam followed by broken rock with solid basalt higher up. This was flaky followed by loam-covered solid surface with more slatelike shingles above the treeline. What odd eruption and surface effects had caused this? A shallow lake, perhaps, that cracked the lava, boiled away, only to ooze out again from the ground and shatter the bottom? Or had it all slid down from above? Exposed by weather or animals and then eroded?
The ridge was long and twisty, which was why Bell Toll had decided to go over rather than around. A small part of him wondered if that had been the right choice, even though intellectually he knew it was.
A few moments later, another colony of antlike insects attacked. These ones were larger, almost five centimeters long, and they chewed at the tough fabric of the suits as if it were some other form's carapace. "Hold still!" Gorilla spoke up. "They're big enough to bite. I'm sending out bots."
The little flyers Gorilla had rose into the breeze and alighted on each of the troops, skittering along limbs and gear and flicking the little pests off.
"Captain, Thor, hold still. There's more on you and they killed all the flyers. We'll have to take them off by hand."
"Hurry, Gorilla," Bell Toll suggested. "I can feel the damned things getting through the fabric."
"Right there."
Shortly, all the gnawing annoyances had been accounted for. Bell Toll hadn't been exaggerating. There were two holes through the fabric of his suit and one halfway through his right shoulder strap. It was a molecularly grown fabric, knitted and then woven into something tough enough to stop knives, most pistol ammo and even slow kinetic rifle rounds. The mandibles from those creatures had shredded it. But there was no injury and nothing to be done about the damage, so the advance resumed.
They rested briefly and silently once among the bushes, and again in the lower trees. It was as swelteringly hot tonight as the day had been. Sweat was pouring from all of them, and even Tirdal had a sheen to his waxy features. His breath was ragged but controlled.
"Nice night for a walk, eh?" Shiva teased. There were faint mutters or snickers in response. "You okay, Tirdal?" he asked, looking over.
"I'm fine," was the response. "I'm concentrating on Sensing, and meditating to calm my body."
"Too much exercise even for you to ignore, Tirdal?" Dagger asked.
"Dagger, I have never pretended to be more than I am. If anyone here carries a false face, it is not I."
"Right, if you can jaw, you can climb," Shiva said, cutting off more talk. "Back to it." There were groans and muttered comments from Thor and Gun Doll. But they were softly voiced, pro forma protests, and the ordeal resumed.
"I do think I'm beginning to sense Tslek," Tirdal said as they resumed the climb. "There's a pattern of thought there."
"Details?" Bell Toll asked.
"None yet, sir. Just indications of presence."
"Right, we'll take it as a warning. Concealment and discipline, folks. I don't have to tell you."
"You don't, but will anyway," Shiva said. "And I'll echo that. No dumbassing."
The ascent through the trees was fairly rapid, the roots being as useful for traction as they were for tripping. All it took was caution to navigate them. Some of the trees resembled pines with knotty roots, straight and tall with tapering branches. They oozed their own sticky, syrupy sap, too, as Ferret and Tirdal found when they slipped by too closely to one. After that, they tried to avoid the trunks.
By the time they reached the ridge, the growth was back to scrub forms and sparse trees, with stark shadows cast by the moon, leaving lit areas the color of dried blood. They took to cautious crawling and occasional darts across barren ground. Their coveralls adapted to the local colors and shifted their IR emissions, but that latter came at a cost: heat retained inside. Powered armor had a substantial heat sink capability. The Intruder Chameleon Suits the team wore could handle it only for a short time. They were glad to shelter behind an outcropping below the military crest of the hill and let the heat disperse to the breeze. Even if it was a muggy night, it was cooler out there than in the suits.
"Okay," Bell Toll said, a hint of satisfaction in his voice, "we're ready to rock. Gorilla, Dagger, sneak us a peek."
This was the way of DRTs. Days of slogging and pain had brought them here, all of it merely the commute to work. Now the mission proper began. Rucks were left under a shelf of rock to enable faster and easier movement. They'd recover them when done. If they were forced to abandon them, it was likely to be a situation so hot that they wouldn't live long enough for the extra supplies to be missed.
Dagger slithered forward and higher, suit sealed and scanners in hand. As Gorilla unfolded a bot from his ruck, the captain looked at Tirdal again. His expressions were readable to the others now, and he was clearly concentrating.
"Got something?" Bell Toll asked.
"Perhaps," Tirdal said with a flick of his ears. "I'm sure there's a Tslek there. I can feel it. That's the problem."
"Why's that a problem?"
"Captain . . . I only sense one," he explained.
"One." Bell Toll bristled alert, hair on his neck standing up and goosebumps running down his arms despite the heat.
"Yes."
"That is very not good, Tirdal. Are you sure?"
"I'm sure I sense one. There could be others hidden behind unknown shields, or blocking me, or sensing me and affecting my mind, though I don't think that's the case. But I only feel one of them."
"Are they underground maybe?"
"No, I'd still sense them," he assured the captain. "And this one is . . . not worried. Not military. It feels like a caretaker going through a routine."
"I'm not showing any Blob genetic material on my sensors," Dagger interjected. "No nonnative molecular activity except us. Though we are making a lot of 'noise' that might hide things. And I don't see anything down there—" he indicated the far side of the ridge "—that indicates much travel by anything bigger than a rat. All clean. Spooky," he admitted.
"That doesn't make sense," Shiva said. "Any kind of base, even inactive, even if it's just a supply drop not yet built into a base, should have patrols and sentries. Technicians. Enough shifts to work around the clock. Thirty, forty at least. More likely a couple of hundred. Minimum."
"I know," Tirdal agreed. "But I sense one. Only one."
"Well, I admit to being freaked," Thor said. "What do we do?"
"We wait for Gorilla's bots to tell us what they see," Shiva replied. "We check around here. Then we decide from there."
"Right," Bell Toll said. "Gorilla, ready?"
"Ready, sir," he agreed. He set a small "animal" down and let it scamper off.
"If this was a big base, you'd expect patrols," Dagger muttered. "I'm not even getting particulates or aromatics from metal or plastic, which you always get with bots. If they've been running patrols they are really stealthy. And there's no reason for that kind of stealth. They didn't know we were coming."
"Did they?" Thor asked. "Could they?"
"No way," Ferret assured him with a choppy shake of his head. "And if they could, we'd be dead already. Why wait? But why no patrols, even if only bots? It doesn't make sense." He was trying to reassure himself, too.
"Tirdal," Thor asked, "are you sure you've got the right feel? How can you know what a Blob feels like if you've never felt one before?"
"I can't explain color to the blind. I know. Believe me or not, but I'm telling you what I have." Tirdal gave him a look that was almost a glare.
"Relax, Thor," Bell Toll ordered. "Gorilla, how's the bot?"
"Running, sir. Or walking, more accurately. Got it on molecular wire. Halfway down the slope and nothing so far."
"Describe, please."
"It's a glacial valley, very heavily forested once past the lava. On the far side there are some dark spots that are probably caves. It is just possible to see under the canopy . . . wait, I have movement. Here's the image," he said as he plugged them all in to his view. "Bringing up mag now."
There was definitely movement. "Are those bots?" Gun Doll asked. She lit a cursor and waved it over the area in question.
"Might be," Gorilla agreed. "We'll get a better view shortly. Stand by."
The view faded as the bot scurried ahead, shutting down most of its sensors as it entered the thicker growth. It ran with only its navigation and warning circuits live, as Gorilla coaxed it through the brush.
The team sat still, patiently, as he moved it in closer. This was something they trained for almost beyond all else. The stars shifted overhead, occasional small forms scurried past, including one as big as a fox. It was a half hour and more before Gorilla said, "Got it. Here." The images came back on screen.
There was a cleared area, and within and around it was activity. Vertical maintenance bots moved around vehicles and performed functions. Sensor globes flew slow orbits around the area, weaving around trees and other obstacles like so many intelligent tennis balls. Armored combat bots, unlike Alliance or Republic gear but obvious as to design, rolled around the perimeter.
There was a pause as Gorilla's bot detected and moved around a mine. At Gorilla's prompt, the screen lit with locations of sensors, mines and self-guided weapons, the drone detecting their faint idle signals and extrapolating. It wasn't yet as accurate as it would get after prolonged exposure, but it was good enough.
As the bot's view panned across the edge of the encampment it revealed a group of Blobs moving in a wedge formation. The patrol ambled and flopped across the clearing and into another part of the woods in a gait that seemed impossible.
Everyone had seen the patrol. Bell Toll looked over at Tirdal, who deliberately shrugged, that not being a Darhel gesture.
"I'm not sure what those are. But I don't sense them. Nor any distortion from the machines. I sense one Tslek only. Still."
"Something else is bothering me," Dagger said. "That clearing is too small. It's as if it's supposed to look like a base, but isn't one."
"How do you mean?" Thor asked.
"I see it too," Gun Doll said. "A proper facility would have a second perimeter, the trees would be downed and either removed or placed as revetments. They have no safe zone, and any attacker on foot or skimmer can come right up to the edge."
"This doesn't make sense," Thor said. "They understand security and threat discipline as well as we do. Why are they being so stupid?"
"Maybe they aren't," Dagger said. He had everyone's attention. No matter his façade, the man could stalk anything and find any hole in a perimeter. Under the sweaty grime and ragged, unshaven whiskers, his eyes had a sharp, squinty cynicism. He wasn't assuming the Tslek didn't know exactly what they were doing.
"What do you mean, Dagger?" Shiva asked into the pause.
"Tirdal says he senses one only. Let's assume that's true. We have one Blob. We have a lot of gizmos. We have a crappy perimeter a troop of Space Scouts could crack. We have a formation of what look like Blobs stomping around like a dictator's guard. Sensors get no good reading of any minor effects like waste. I say it's a decoy."
Shiva and Bell Toll frowned. Shiva spoke first.
"This is a big camp. If this is a decoy, those are holograms . . . so an insertion team would come someplace like right here," he said, jabbing his finger at the ground, "see all this and boogie in a hurry, without doing a detailed check. They'd see what the Blobs wanted them to see and not start a fight with a force that size. But why?"
"Because they want us to call in a report of a major facility building up and request space support," Bell Toll extrapolated. "The Navy sends a major force in, and somewhere they're waiting to cream it."
"Tirdal, you say they might be able to block you?" Gun Doll asked.
"It's possible, of course," he admitted. "It's never happened, but I can't rule it out. They'd be just as likely, more so, to note your signatures. I can . . . suppress mine. Do as a matter of course. Humans, nonsensat humans, do not."
"What are you thinking, Doll?" Shiva asked.
"If they tracked us coming in and want us to leave with that intel, we're fine. If they haven't pinged on us yet, we don't want them to. We can't assume those are holograms."
"One way to find out," Gorilla put in. "The biotic mole."
"We didn't bring it this far to not use it," Bell Toll said reasonably. "Do it. But be careful."
"Believe me, sir, seeing that dance down there makes me very careful," Gorilla replied.
The item in question was a hamsterlike bio-animate. Grown from Earth rodents, it was a "dumb" biorobotic brain with tiny sensors encased in a real and retarded animal that had just enough brainpower to eat, excrete and move where told. It wasn't good for any detailed scans, but it excelled at missions like this. Even if detected, it would look like one of the local minor mammals.
"Send it scurrying in, however it's supposed to move, and have it contact something, preferably a dumb bot," Bell Toll ordered. "We'll go from there. Gun Doll."
"Sir?"
"Get the transmitter ready. If we get doinked, the report has to go out before we die. But don't push it without my orders."
"Yes, sir," she agreed. And if it came to that they were well and truly fucked, because the emergency transmitter would burn a signal through subspace that would be easily readable at the Navy's station thirty-five light-years away. They might as well set off fireworks and wave their arms.
"Primary plan is to walk out with the data, no matter what it is," Bell Toll reiterated. "I'd rather fly out than fight. So don't get horny. This is a walk, not a dance."
Gorilla was done digging in his ruck, and had the tiny creature in his hand. It sat there, dumb and still, its only sign of life being the little turd it chose to drop right then. Ignoring the minor distraction, Gorilla traced instructions on the touchpad in front of him, then set the creature atop the larger standard "pill bug" that would carry it to the perimeter. He gathered up the pair and shimmied higher toward the crest. There was no real reason, just the psychology of being a bit closer. Tirdal followed behind. The few meters would help him sense better. This was not a good situation. Behind him, Dagger came up with his sensors, and squirmed between two rocks like a lizard.
Gorilla put the bigger bot down and sent it on its way. He'd programmed it to pick a course and meander down as if feeding. He could adjust its path if need indicated, through the wire it was laying behind itself as it scurried under ledges and behind rocks, making good use of the terrain. At every pause it sent another image back.
"I hate to rush you, Gorilla," Bell Toll said, "but it's about three hours until dawn and we'll need to be making trail soon."
"Gotcha, sir. Let me get it into the trees and I can speed things up."
And he did. Once the rock started giving way, he dialed the creature up to a fast trot, using what image there was to "drive" the bot through the woods. Its own circuits gave it a certain amount of decision making, and with his interpretation of the terrain ahead, it traveled quickly.
"Less than three thousand meters to go," he reported. "Slowing back down."
The device stopped a safe (they hoped) two hundred meters from the outer perimeter. The viewster biobot dropped off its back and darted for cover under thick grass. It too was programmed to move "naturally." In this case, it snuffled forward until it found a small game trail and trotted along it toward the site. To any sort of sensor it would look like what it was, a furry little animal. There were no electronic systems on it, no evidence that it was a construct. It would be invisible unless the sensors were designed to search for nonautochthonous life forms.
In a spot of good news, it appeared they were not, because the little creature was able to penetrate without any of the sensors going off. Further in there would probably be "clean" zones into which even a mouse couldn't penetrate. But the outer sections were relatively easy, with only local terrain, predators and the biobot's diminutive size as obstacles.
It took another solid hour for the creature to do its penetration, just one of many small mammaloids running around in the area. Once it did it found a rock under which were several of the local roach lookalikes. They were edible to earth creatures and the viewster hunted them avidly until another party of Blobs, or perhaps the same one, came back through. When it saw the low, grey creatures it quickly scuttled across their path where the swift moving creatures would run over it and continue on their way.
"Here we go," Gorilla said, and everyone watched the repeated image from his controller. The "Tslek" flopped and rolled right over the sensor-creature, leaving it, and the nearby grass and twigs, unharmed. They were excellent holograms, but nothing more.
And the base was a trap.
The encounter had been in clear view of the sensors Dagger and Gorilla had deployed and that was that. Gorilla looked at Tirdal, who stared back but didn't even change expression, then down at the team. Whatever was there was apparently a fake.
"I can send the viewster into a few emplacements and possibly get more information, sir, but the likelihood of detection increases with each exposure. And I think the answer we have is short and sweet."
Bell Toll shook his head for a negative, then used hisses and hand signals to get the attention of the rest and order them back. The Aldenata tech-based communicators they had were absolutely secure, but he wasn't going to trust them this close to an enemy base that was obviously set to trip them up. It might, in fact, be best to go back to old-fashioned laser signals, even if it limited them to a line-of-sight formation. After this, they had to exfiltrate by a different route to avoid possible detection, then get the acquired intel back to the sector command. The slim facts they had would nevertheless rule out many wrong avenues in this game of deception. Negatives could sometimes, in fact, prove more valuable than concrete answers.
But that was for the analysts do decide. Their job was to hump back out and stay alive.
Following Gorilla's preprogrammed orders, the viewster headed back up the game trail as the two recon troops and Tirdal slid down the reverse slope of the ridge. The larger bot had already headed back over so Gorilla told it and its companion to head out on point. The reverse trip would actually be shorter than the insertion and they should be able to make it in a week. It would be a tense week of careful movement and thorough concealment. Whether or not the Tslek had planned for them to find the site, they had to assume that the Tslek knew they'd found the deception. So being found now would mean death. A pawn stays alive only so long as its purpose is served, and from a Tslek viewpoint they were now a liability even had they been valuable before.
The team bivouacked again within the trees, the nearness to the Blobs being a slightly better risk than trying to slog out fast, risking noise and discovery as they traversed terrain in daylight. They'd save the forced march for tomorrow night.
Later that day, the viewster came darting back over the shards of the ridge and found the place where it had been told to report. It sat patiently under a ledge and waited an hour for signals or orders, but there was nothing there. Having lost contact with its control it snuffled around until it found a hole in the ground, crawled in and died. Specially bred internal bacteria would dissolve it in under three hours, leaving nothing but a smell and some bones. At some level, everything is expendable.