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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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Again Halloran shrugged. "I'll be happy to keep the possibility of foul play in mind," he said. "But until and unless we come up with something approaching h...
In other words, he thought Jonny was making a dangerously big deal out of nothing. And he was probably right. Still . . .
Fifteen minutes later, they landed at the village of Paleen.
A visiting syndic generally called for a minor official fuss, or at the very least the welcoming presence of the local mayor. But Jonny had called ahead with...
Jonny nodded acknowledgment and indicated Halloran. "This is Cally Halloran, your soon-to-be teammate here. What have you got on the dead spine leopard?"
"Not much more than we had yesterday," Kier admitted, leading them toward an open car parked at the edge of the field. "The experts are still studying it up ...
"You're the one who found it, right?"
Kier nodded. "I was out doing a water survey when I spotted the carcass lying in a small hollow."
"Water survey?" Halloran put in. "You were hauling a sounder around by yourself?"
"Here you just measure the diameters of the gluevines that climb around some of the trees," Jonny explained absently. "It gives you a direct reading of the s...
"The ground was pretty badly torn up," Kier said as they got into the car. "I spotted some marks nearby that looked like gantua tracks, but if they were the ...
"From the tapes I've seen I can't see any reason a gantua should ever bother to run," Halloran commented.
Jonny nodded. As big as elephants, their bodies armored with snake-patterned horny plates, gantuas were the closest thing to living tanks he'd ever seen. "A ...
"No," Kier said as he turned the car and headed west. His tone sounded more than a little defensive. "I thought my immediate duty lay in sounding the alarm ....
Jonny nodded grimly. It was a rationale he well remembered-and logical though it was, he knew how cowardly it could make a Cobra feel. Perhaps Kier would get...
They left the car at a section of reasonably dense forest at village's edge and headed into the trees on foot. The forest gave way barely a hundred meters la...
"Uh . . . over there, I think. It's near a-"
"Shh!" Halloran hissed suddenly. All three men went instantly rigid . . . and in the silence, Jonny's auditory enhancers picked up a strange rustling of gras...
The twenty-meter reconnaissance jump had usually been considered too dangerous to use during the war, leaving the Cobra as it did in a helpless ballistic tra...
"Gantua," Kier said as he hit the ground, knee servos taking the impact. "Looked sort of sick-"
And with a crash of breaking blussa, the brown-gray monster appeared across the plain . . . and charged.
"Scatter!" Jonny snapped, his own feet digging into the ground as he sprinted in the general direction of a tall cyprene. He would never have believed a gant...
Veering like a hill on legs, the creature shifted to an intercept course.
Jonny picked up his own speed, raising his hands as he did so to send twin bursts of laser fire at the gantua's head. Other flickers of light, he noted, were...
And lost his grip completely as the tree swayed violently in time with the thunderous crash from below.
The programmed Cobra reflexes included a catlike maneuver for righting oneself in midair, but Jonny was far too close to the ground for it to be effective. H...
For several seconds he just lay there, fighting to clear away the spots twinkling in front of his eyes. By the time he was able to force himself to his knees...
And abruptly he was hurled in a flat dive to the side. Rolling back to his feet, he turned just in time to see Halloran and Kier launch their attack.
For something that spur-of-the-moment, it was as tight a maneuver as Jonny had ever seen. Halloran, waving his arms and shouting to attract the gantua, waite...
Pulling his phone from his belt, Jonny keyed for local broadcast. "Hold your fire," he murmured into it as, across the plain, Halloran and Kier fumbled out t...
"What the hell is that thing made of?" Halloran asked tightly. "That blast would've taken out a Troft APC."
"Gantua plates are highly ablative," Kier told him. "The cloud of vaporized material scatters all but the first couple of milliseconds of beam-and the damn t...
"Even if they did, it'd take too long to get it here," Jonny shook his head. "If the gantua bolts, we could lose it for good."
"We go for head shots, then?" Halloran asked.
"Take a long time to kill it that way," Kier said doubtfully. "Gantua central nervous systems are a lot more decentralized than anything you're probably used...
"Only if we can get it to roll over," Jonny pointed out. The gantua's panting, he noticed uneasily, was already slowing down. Another minute or two and it wo...
Moving carefully, attention on the gantua, Kier glided toward the tree. "Cally," Jonny continued, "when Niles gets the gluevine free, he's going to toss you ...
"Clear," Halloran acknowledged. "Do we slice the vine open in the middle with fingertip lasers?"
"If we have time," Kier told him. "Otherwise we'll just have to hope the impact will open enough of the skin to release the glue."
Kier was at the tree now, judging with his hands the best places to cut the vine. "What happens if it charges one of us instead of you?" Halloran asked.
Jonny was almost in position now, between the other Cobras and perhaps fifty meters behind them. "Wait as long as you can, then throw your end of the vine at...
"Ready." Kier took an audible breath. "Okay, Cally-look sharp."
And with twin flashes of laser fire the vine came loose.
The light, or Kier's sudden movements, triggered the gantua. With a hoarse roar it lumbered forward. Jonny yelled at it, waving his arms, and the creature ch...
The gantua hit it full tilt, and with a crash that shook the area like a minor earthquake, it slammed headlong to the ground.
Down, but not out. Even as Jonny raced toward it, the creature rolled to its side, treetrunk legs straining against the vine wrapped around them. Lousy lever...
And as he raised his antiarmor laser, Jonny abruptly realized the gantua's legs were blocking his intended target.
"Uh-oh," Kier muttered as he and Halloran joined Jonny. "We may have outsmarted ourselves on that one."
"Let's try wrapping more gluevine around it," Halloran suggested. "Maybe we can take it alive."
"Taking a berserk gantua alive is not my idea of a solution," Jonny told him. "There isn't a facility within a hundred kilometers for a quiet one, let alone ...