‘With luck, they’ll just leave you alone,’ the Partheni added. ‘I’m sorry. That’s all I can give you.’
19.
Idris
Solace settled them two metres into the trees, where they could get a glimpse of the Anchortown trail from cover. Kris was plainly unhappy being even that far in. After all, they’d seen Jerichan trees in action. Idris himself was strangely calm. He didn’t feel he had some magic rapport with the planet’s unpleasant ecology and one abortive groppler attack didn’t make him the Archdruid of Jericho. He knew they were very close to the buried avenue he’d felt stretching from Gold City to the next Originator site, and was really hoping the Originator construction would keep away the nastier predators. He might be wrong, though, which might make them dead.
What Trine thought of this development was anyone’s guess. They’d turned their face off so its glimmer wouldn’t give away their position.
The sound of oncoming engines had grown steadily louder in fits and starts. It sounded to Idris as though the vehicles were trying to make best speed but falling foul of the vegetation. He could distantly hear a shouted argument. Maybe the bad guys were more concerned with each other than a potential ambush.
He had lost sight of Solace completely.
Then three vehicles came into view along the trail, two open-cabined cars on balloon tyres and a big enclosed truck behind them. The lead vehicle had four men hanging on to it. The second had traded half its crew for a significant toothy gash in its flank, suggesting some manner of groppler had put the vehicle on the menu. The men seemed a mix of local mercenaries and Voyenni thugs.
Idris had assumed that Solace would pull some kind of highwayman stunt. She’d step out, point Mr Punch in their direction and they’d surrender in the face of her sheer panache. Instead she opened by just shooting up the lead vehicle and its occupants. She still had the accelerator set for chain shot, and it made a hell of a mess of the car’s hull, tearing through metal and plastic and just about slicing both engine and driver in half.
The rear end of their vehicle flipped over the front and hit the dirt. The two Voyenni who’d been reclining back there were flung forwards, which put them out of Solace’s eyeline and likely saved their lives. The second vehicle, damaged as it was, was going slowly enough to steer clear of the wreck and its crew jumped and hit the ground running. Solace began potshotting at them from the trees, individual pellets punching clean through the skewed car they were trying to hide behind.
Then men began to pile from the big vehicle at the back. There were at least half a dozen in the first wave, and they started shooting into the trees indiscriminately. Idris kept low, glancing back to check that the others were doing the same. Trine was crouching with their humanoid legs uncomfortably akimbo, chest close to the ground and propped up on their arms. The local mercs had projectile launchers and beanbag guns, but the Voyenni had magnetics and a couple of true accelerators. They would cut through Solace’s armour as easily as flesh.
Even as a particularly savage salvo shredded the native life over Idris’s head, Solace was suddenly kneeling by him.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Fall back.’
‘But we can’t,’ Kris objected. ‘The dig crew—’
‘Not to the dig, not yet. We’ll go further in. Hope we lose them. Come on.’ Solace gestured emphatically then raised Mr Punch again. As Idris scrambled in the direction she’d indicated, he heard the weapon’s high, ringing voice toll three times. He hauled himself over a rise, slipped and rolled helplessly down the other side until Kris caught him.
‘Ow.’
‘I was concerned that I would be the most inept fugitive here, old comrade,’ Trine observed acidly. ‘Thank you for sparing me that.’ Despite their limp they were keeping pace well enough.
Solace slung herself back over the ridge towards them, turning to send another few shots back towards the pursuers. As soon as the pellets had left Mr Punch, she was already moving. She dropped into cover of the ridge before the answering salvo could shred the leathery foliage where she’d been. Then they were stumbling deeper into the forest, squeezing between close-grown trees, tripping over roots that twitched and writhed beneath them. Not trees, remember? Just monsters who’ve got a good tree thing going on right now. He hoped the Voyenni ran into some trees that were considering an aggressive change of lifestyle.
He heard shouts behind them. Solace turned and sent a handful of shot back that way and shoved him onwards.