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  The holographic screen went gray.

  "The Board has reviewed the actions of the officers and men of torpedoboat K67, patrolling against the Seatigers the morning of July 23," said Captain Glenn. "We find the salient points to be as follows."

  The face of Tech 2 Leaf appeared on the back wall. The motorman looked even more pugnacious when his features were expanded to the size of monumental sculpture. Leaf had given his evidence with a brutal directness that suggested he was willing to beat the hell out of anybody who doubted him.

  "The crew of K67 believed their vessel was making its torpedo run alone," said Captain Glenn.

  Leaf's holographic image said, "The target's automatics opened up—that's before the main guns fired. Right then I seen K44 pop all four of her decoys and sheer to port. I had a good place to see 'cause I was checkin' Fan Three and Holman, his boat was on our port quarter."

  Leaf's image looked aside. Brainard had expected the motorman to spit, even here in front of the Board of Review. It had probably been a near thing.

  Not quite. Leaf stared at the hologram pick-up and said, "I figured they'd cut 'n' run back up the channel we just came out of. I still figure that."

  Glenn or a separate director blanked the holographic screen again. The captain resumed, "At the point Officer-Trainee Brainard broke off the action, K67 had received heavy damage."

  This time the holographic screen was split. The face of Tech 2 Caffey gave evidence on the left side, while a damage assessment record made after K67 limped back aboard her tender showed to the right.

  "I'd got my fish," Caffey said. The torpedoman was a slicker operator than Leaf, but recent memories gave his testimony a punchy credibility Caffey did not always command. "I was tracking. Then bam! The console was gone, just gone. Three explosive shells hit it."

  The damage-assessment camera tracked over the torpedo station. Wires dangled from the dual-tracking console. What was left of the faceplate lay on the deck, distorted by electrical fires which followed the shell bursts. Blood spattered the deck and bulkheads.

  "Wheelwright was hit," said Caffey's image. The torpedoman was trying very hard to sound calm. "He's my striker. Shrapnel in his legs, but he'd fallen down and I thought it was pretty bad. The interphone was out, and my suit lost its air. Turned out the hose was cut. I didn't know."

  The other camera shifted aft from the torpedo station. There was a gap on the stern rail so empty that Brainard had to think to remember what should have been in that place.

  "A salvo came in, then," the torpedoman continued. "Main gun. I swear I thought they was firing eighteens."

  He forced a smile, but the magnified image showed sweat beading at the line of Caffey's close-cropped hair. "Right overhead. There's a flash, just a flash, and the balloon rig's gone. A shell hit it, but it didn't go off till it hit the sea. That's why we're any of us here. They was using armor-piercing shells with time-delay fuzes, so the one that hit us didn't go off till it was in the sea."

  The damage-assessment picture switched to a general port-side view of K67. There were more than thirty thumb-sized dimples in the hovercraft's skirts. Each of the explosive bullets had further gashed the flexible fabric with stars of shrapnel around the black central hole.

  "I shouted to the cockpit then," Caffey said. "I said, 'Get us the fuck out of here.' I don't know if they could hear me with the interphone shot away. Anyhow, I thought they was all dead."

  He took a deep breath. The other camera steadied on the cockpit. Seventeen holes showed in the port-side bulkhead. Only a glittering memory of the shatterproof windscreen clung to its frame.

  How did they miss me? Brainard thought. Then he thought, Why?

  "I felt her take the helm," said the torpedoman's sweating image. "And I prayed to God, because I didn't think anybody else could bring us outa that one. But I was wrong. Mr Brainard could. Mr Brainard brought us out."

  The holograms froze, but whoever was directing the display let them hang in the air for several seconds after Caffey ended his testimony.

  Captain Glenn cleared his throat. The images vanished into a gray backdrop.

  "The findings of the Board are as follows," Glenn said. He glared at the room. "The crew of torpedocraft K67 reasonably believed themselves to be in action alone. The only evidence that their consort did not withdraw when the patrol came under heavy fire—"

  The captain nodded appreciatively to Lieutenant Cabot Holman.

  "—is that the Wiesel was destroyed after K67's own torpedo-guidance apparatus had been put out of action. All honor to Ensign Edward Holman and his crew, who attacked from an unexpected angle while the target concentrated its fire on K67."

  The change in Captain Glenn's voice as he continued was as slight as the click of a pistol's hammer rising to the half-cock notch. "The first duty of the patrolling hovercraft after they had released their weapons was to report the existence of the Seatiger ambush. Indeed—"

  The screen commander's face hardened still further.

  "—one might say the duty to report was more important than any potential effect four torpedoes could have on the enemy—"

  Glenn's visage cleared. "But in any case, Lieutenant Tonello lived and died by his decision, and we do not choose to second-guess him now. When Officer-Trainee Brainard took command, he extricated his vessel from a difficult situation and withdrew at the best possible speed to give his report—in person, since K67's laser communicator had been rendered inoperative by battle damage."

  The two junior members of the Board of Review watched Brainard with alert, open faces. Brainard stared past them, toward a wall as gray as his soul.

  "Mr Brainard, will you stand," said Glenn.

  Brainard wasn't sure his legs would obey, but they did.

  "Our recommendation, therefore, is as follows," the captain said: "That Officer-Trainee Brainard be commended for his actions on the night of July 22-23. That Officer-Trainee Brainard be granted a meritorious promotion to the rank of ensign."

  Glenn surveyed the hall. "Lastly, that Ensign Brainard be confirmed in command of Air-Cushion Torpedoboat K67 as soon as he has recovered from the injuries he received in action against the enemy."

  The audience unexpectedly dissolved into cheers.

  Brainard blinked. His skin crawled with hot needles. Men pounded him on the back. The three members of the Board were coming around their table with arms out to shake Brainard's hand.

  Across the bobbing faces Brainard saw the glaring eyes of Lieutenant Cabot Holman—the only other man in the hall who knew, as Brainard knew, that Brainard was a coward who had fled from battle with no thought in his mind but of escape.

  13

  May 18, 382 AS. 0615 hours.

  Caffey crushed a three-inch ant against the bark of the cypress with the muzzle of his machine-gun. The insect's needle-sharp mandibles clicked against the muzzle brake, but chitin could not scar the corrosion-proofed steel.

  When Caffey lifted the gun, the ant—still thrashing and alive—dropped almost onto Leaf as he squatted.

  "You bastard!" the motorman shouted.

  He jerked backward, trying to free his hands so that he could grab his multitool. He'd been kneading a lump of barakite into a ribbon, since K67 didn't carry det cord and they needed something to connect nodes of explosive.

  The ant twisted toward the motion. Dying or healthy, the insect warrior's only imperative was to attack whatever threatened the colony's tree. Leaf wasn't a member of the colony: that was all that the ant's instincts required in the way of threat definition.

  "Are you all right, there?" Ensign Brainard called. "Leaf?"

  Leaf slapped the wad of barakite over the squirming insect and squeezed the stiff explosive into a trough in the cypress's bark.

  "No problem," Caffey shouted back. "We're fine."

  "Just watch what you're fucking doing!" Leaf growled in a low voice.

  The two senior enlisted men worked while the remainder of K67's crew guarded them and one anot
her from attack. Leaf squatted among the cypress' gnarled roots. He couldn't see any of the others except the torpedoman.

  Like working in a fan nacelle during combat. The job required all your attention, but you knew your life depended on decisions made by people hidden from you. . . .

  Another ant warrior jogged swiftly down the trunk toward him. Leaf pulled his multitool down and locked the take-up spool so that the lanyard hung in the extended position.

  The island's peak was dominated by a cypress tree over three hundred feet in girth. OT Wilding had mumbled that the monster probably combined the trunks of up to a dozen individual trees which had grown together. The gigantic result had crushed all lesser vegetation in the neighborhood. Its mighty bole added several hundred feet to the island's thousand-foot elevation.

  Leaf's present job was to knock the cypress down.

  The ant trotted closer, drawn by scent and movement. Leaf held his multitool out. The ant slashed at it. Leaf pressed the stud. The welding arc popped the insect with a stench of formic acid.

  "Goddam!" Caffey shouted. "What're you trying to do, kill us both? What if the barakite had lighted, huh?"

  "Shut up and gimme some more of it," Leaf said.

  The motorman was dizzy with muscle strain and lack of sleep. There was a rash around the collar of his tunic; the others said it was bright red. The rash itched spasmodically, burning like a ring of fire at the random times something set it off. Leaf's limbs were crisscrossed by grass cuts, some of them poisoned and all of them festering.

  He had to keep going with the explosive, because if he stopped for more than a moment, he was going to tear Caffey's throat out.

  The torpedoman handed Leaf a wad of barakite, then looked into the knapsack from which it had come. "Not much left," he said.

  Leaf grunted. He began to form the explosive into a rope. His hands, particularly the muscles at the base of his thumbs, ached with the effort.

  Brainard had led the survivors as high as the ridge would take them. In order to send a laser message, they either had to climb a tree to the top of the canopy—or create a gap where it stood.

  "Hang on," the torpedoman muttered. "I'm going to shoot 'em."

  "Huh?" said Leaf.

  WHAM!

  "You fuckin' idiot!" the motorman screamed. He grabbed for Caffey with his left hand. The cutting blade winked from the multitool in his right.

  His legs cramped. He fell back as the torpedoman skipped away.

  "What is it?" Brainard demanded. His disembodied voice was as harshly emotionless as life in this surface wilderness.

  "We're okay," Caffey shouted back. In a lower voice, he snarled, "Look, I said what I was gonna do. Fuck off, will you?"

  Leaf looked up at the tree trunk. The gun's muzzle blast had driven fragments of three ants into the soft bark. The bullet scar was a white-cored russet dimple in the striated gray surface.

  It had been a fucking stupid thing to do.

  Leaf opened his mouth to snarl at the torpedoman. Light streaming through interstices in the cypress leaves illuminated Caffey.

  The torpedoman's bare skin was blotched with sores. He was allergic to insect bites, and the first-aid cream did him no more good than it did Leaf's own rash. The hard weight of the machine-gun had broken the skin over Caffey's shoulderblades on both sides. The wounds oozed in an atmosphere purulent with fungus spores. His staring eyes were red with pain and fear.

  Leaf shivered.

  "Don't do it again, huh?" he said. He worked one end of the strand of barakite into the glob of explosive containing the ant. That was the present terminus of the daisy chain he was weaving as far around the tree's circumference as possible.

  Climbing a tree was suicide. This particular monster was guarded by a colony of ants which ate fleshy berries the cypress grew for the insects' sustenance. The ants in turn patrolled the vast expanse of bark and foliage, slaughtering interlopers with a catholic abandon.

  No life form on the planet could survive the attack of up to ten thousand acid-tipped mandibles. Leaf and Caffey were at risk even on the ground, where they could move easily. Fifty feet up the trunk, with hands and feet constrained and gravity ready to strike the finishing blow, risk became the certainty of death.

  The other option was to blow the tree down. That was emotionally satisfying as well as practical.

  Leaf waddled two yards further around the trunk, pulling his thin strand of barakite with him. Though the bark had a smooth, glossy tinge, the explosive clung in an adequate fashion to fibrous irregularities in the surface.

  "More," the motorman ordered, holding out his left hand. Undergrowth brushed his shoulder, then the back of his neck. Tiny hooks bit in; Leaf's rash flared incandescently. He turned and slashed in fury with the short blade of his multitool.

  Caffey waited for the spasm to pass before he dropped a wad of barakite into the motorman's palm. "Just two besides this," he said. "And the one you've got in your pack."

  Leaf pressed the barakite against the trunk in contact with the ribbon he had just laid there. "More," he said, and another doughy wad dropped into his hand.

  The torpedoman crushed an ant to the bark with his gun muzzle. While the metal held the insect's head, Caffey reached over with his left hand and gripped one of flailing legs. He moved with care worthy of a man handling white phosphorous.

  When Caffey was sure he had the leg, he lifted the gun barrel and flicked the ant over his shoulder. It pattered into the undergrowth.

  "Jeez!" Newton shouted from the direction in which the ant had flown.

  Leaf and Caffey giggled hysterically.

  There was a deep cleft in the cypress's roots. The motorman had to bob to his feet in order to step across it. He continued to feed out the ribbon of barakite.

  K67's crew carried about a hundred pounds of barakite among them. They couldn't blow the gigantic cypress up with that amount of explosive, but with luck they could knock it down. Leaf and Caffey spaced the charges along one arc of the circumference. When the barakite detonated, it would shatter the tree's root structure and push the trunk toward the steep drop-off on the north side of the ridge.

  If the explosive push was hard enough, the toppling cypress would clear a line of sight to the navigational beacon-transponder in the center of Adonis Deep. If the blast didn't topple the tree—

  "More," said Leaf, holding out his hand.

  —the officers would figure something else out.

  Caffey fired a three-second burst from his machine-gun, emptying the ammunition drum.

  "You fucking—"

  And then the motorman saw the land crab which had rushed from the cleft in the roots kicked half-way back by the stream of bullets. Its armor was a deep blue-green. The claw which Caffey shot off was the length of Leaf's forearm. It would have severed the motorman's leg had the pincers closed as they started to do.

  "Technician Caffey, report!" Brainard ordered in a voice made tinny by the ringing in Leaf's ears.

  "S'okay, sir, we're golden," Caffey shouted.

  His face was white. His fingers fumbled as they replaced the empty magazine with a loaded drum.

  "Sorry, Fish," Leaf muttered.

  The torpedoman had dropped the knapsack. Leaf reached into it and removed the last wad of barakite. He pressed the explosive into the portion already in place instead of stretching it over another yard or two of circumference.

  "Now," said the motorman, "let's get the fuck outa this place."

  * * *

  November 12, 378 AS. 1027 hours.

  Seaman Mooker sat cross-legged on the upper bunk of the two-man room, wrapped in a sheet like a barbaric chieftain. His glittering eyes did not quiver when the two junior noncoms entered the room.

  A tribal chant thundered from the recorder lying on top of one of the lockers. The volume was so high that the barracks' massive walls had become a sounding board. The noise was noticeable in the courtyard and deafening in the corridor; in the room itself, you couldn't
hear yourself think.

  Several one-shot drug injectors lay on floor. They were empty.

  Tech 3 Leaf stepped quickly to the locker and switched the recorder off. The silence was a blow.

  "You bastard," Tech 3 Caffey growled. " 'Come help me get one of my watch up for fatigue duty,' you say. You didn't tell me he was stoned!"

  "Hey, Mookie," Leaf offered cautiously. "We come to help you."

  The seaman sat like a statue. Leaf looked at Caffey and muttered, "C'mon, you know Mooker as well as I do. You figured he overslept?"

  Caffey grimaced and toed one of the injectors. It was unmarked, so there was no way to guess what Mooker had been using.

  "Suppose that's all he's got?" Caffey asked. Leaf shrugged.

  The noncoms moved in silent coordination to either end of the bunk. Its height was a problem. "Hey, Mookie," Leaf wheedled. "How you feelin', man?"

  Mooker turned his head toward Leaf slowly, as though he were learning a complex skill. His eyes did not focus.

  Caffey's hand slid out with the speed and grace of a cat killing.

  "Gotcha!" he said with satisfaction. He flashed Leaf a peek at the trio of unused drug injectors he'd just palmed from the mattress. He slipped them into a sidepocket of his tunic.

  "Okay," said Leaf, "but how do we sober him up? If an officer sees him, he's fucked."

  "We're fucked if we don't report this," Caffey grumbled. "Look, Koslowski's running the clinic this morning, and he owes me one. If we—"

  "No!" Seaman Mooker screamed. "No!"

  Mooker tried to stand up. His head slammed the ceiling hard enough to stun a shark. He flopped back onto the mattress.

  "Now!" said Leaf as he grabbed the seaman's right ankle.

  Caffey had Mooker's left wrist. Mooker's right hand came out of the tangled bedding with a powered cutting bar.

  The noncoms sprang in opposite directions. Mooker swung the bar at Leaf, but the assistant motorman was already clear. The saw-edged blade struck the bed post and whined as it whacked through the tough plastic without slowing.

  A few drops of blood speckled the wall. Mooker had managed to clip the end of his own big toe.