The fog rising from the snow gave the landscape a dreamlike quality, but it was a nightmare that they fled. Nanuli led the way through the rhododendron forest, grateful of the heavy-soled combat boots on her feet. Mahmood had been right, she could never have run in her dress footgear.
Now Mahmood and Vladilen Ivanovich would lie in a common grave along with an unknown number of salvagees, Indowy and Posleen. The ground had finally stopped shaking, so she had to assume that the explosions were over and everyone was dead and buried. At least the fusion bottle had never lost containment, or the whole mountain would've disappeared in a flash and a mushroom cloud, and there would have been no one at all left to run.
Trying to keep the Indowy going in the same direction was easier said than done. Only about half of them understood any Russian, and all of them were panicking, scattering all over the mountainside. Even the one who'd greeted her moments after her ejection from the tunnel had since gone from numb shock to flat-out terror and was running like all the demons of hell were on his butt.
Worse, not all the Posleen had been in the compound when it blew. Scattered and confused as the centaurs might be with so many of their God-Kings dead or incapacitated by the blasts, they weren't so witless that they'd pass up easy prey like a hundred or more fleeing Indowy. Screams of agony echoed through the scrub.
Having the AK made it almost worse for Nanuli, since it took all the discipline she could manage not to go firing full-auto at every scream. She'd already made the mistake of wasting her whole first clip shooting air after she hit Vladilen Ivanovich. The ammunition she was carrying was all she had to use, and she had to spend it wisely. Three-round bursts, Mahmood had drilled into her day after day.
Still, two weeks of an hour a day in the firing range couldn't make a soldier out of a retired MD. Not even a rejuved one.
She was so tightly concentrated on picking off Posleen that she almost didn't see the salvagee jump down from the rocky crest ahead of her. His lips drew back in a feral grin and he pulled a crooked-bladed knife from the belt of his ragged cherkessa. The Indowy in front of him froze in goggle-eyed horror.
"No!" A quick squeeze of the trigger and the salvagee slid off his perch to go tumbling down the slope, bouncing against the trunks of the rhododendrons until their branches finally entangled his mane of wild hair.
But it was already too late for his victim, whose throat lay open clear back to the white of the vertebrae. Worse, Nanuli recognized her -- the female craftsman whose birthing she'd attended only days earlier. Her babies must have been in a creche back in the compound, since none of them were on her.
Further down the mountain she could hear more gunfire, some of it Posleen but some clearly human. Salvagees most likely, since most of them still had enough mind to handle a relatively simple weapon like the older-style Kalashnikovs. At least they were keeping the centaurs busy, which might give her a chance to lead some of the Indowy to safety.
And that meant getting the roly-poly little aliens to climb. Many of the Indowy would not even try, just kept running along the trail even when she called for them to follow her up.
But some did. They were technicians from hydroponics, from the Earth-plants area, so they would be used to strange new things and ideas. No more than a dozen, all young, they scrambled over the rocks like little teddy bears, right up the slope. Nanuli had no idea how far they needed to go to reach even a modicum of safety, but she didn't intend to stop until she couldn't hear any more shots or screams.
The fog grew steadily thicker as they ascended, until they could scarcely see one another even at arm's length. Although calling to one another ran the risk of attracting unwanted attention, they had to keep together and it simply wasn't possible to hold on to one another when both hands were essential for climbing.
When the fog gave way to clear sunshine, she looked down at a sea of thick cloud from which other peaks emerged in the distance. She turned, counted her charges. Eleven Indowy, out of four thousand who had been illegally transported to Earth by the mafiya to staff their secret base, those the survivors of a clan of over eighteen million who had once lived and toiled on the distant world of Diess before the Posleen came.
Eleven exhausted Indowy, to judge by their posture. Much as she would have liked to put a few more klicks between herself and the battle, she knew that pushing them any further would only lead to their collapse and death. Rest was essential, even in this marginal safety. Time to dig in.
A little looking and Nanuli located a sheltered depression between two boulders. A little work piling brush and she created a space in which they could huddle, protected from the cold mountain air. A tiny fire provided a little extra warmth, enough that they would be able to survive the night.
As soon as her charges were rested enough that they could safely, continue, Nanuli urged them on, although the sky was hardly more than touched by the first light of dawn. Before they left, she gave them each a thumb-sized chunk of nutrient paste from one of the emergency food tubes in the rucksack Mahmood had given her. It was one of two that didn't list any animal products among the ingredients, and she had no idea how long either would stretch when divided among eleven Indowy.
While rationing out their food, she worked at drawing them out, learning their names. Except they had none. For Indowy, or at least those of Clan Tk'shvi, a personal name was not a birthright but something given to those who needed be marked out as individuals. Since having eleven hey-you's was unworkable, Nanuli named them all. The senior transfer-neuter, who was now technically clan chief, she gave the name Iosebi, while his two sub-chiefs became Yakov and Vasili. The other eight she gave various Georgian and Russian names.
They soon settled on a comfortable routine, with Nanuli in the middle so she could cover both ends of the column. The eight lower-ranking Indowy took turns leading the way, pushing through the brush and clearing the trail for the rest. They fit in pauses for rest or the replenishment of water and food as the need came.
Three days later, eleven Indowy abruptly became ten when Zviadi fell victim to a booby-trap. He was one of the three true males in the much-diminished clan, and had been taking his turn at the front when the ground erupted in front of him.
Nanuli squashed her instinct to rush to help him, and instead worked her way slowly, wary of further such surprises. The other Indowy murmured in their own language, their little bat faces wrinkled up in their expression of fear.
For Zviadi it was already too late, but two his fellows who'd been immediately behind him had received shrapnel injuries severe enough to need attention. Nanuli hesitated at opening the medkit. She had taken a human life, in violation of the physician's oath. Did she have any right to continue using her medical skills, now that she stood forsworn?
Arkady's choked-back whimpers decided her. He would die if she didn't get the bleeding stopped. Moving almost automatically, she stanched the flow of greenish ichor, closed the wounds and sprayed them with quick-heal, that Galactic wonder that doubled as a bandage and a skin graft, self-adjusting to whatever species it was applied to.
Now that they were aware of the danger, the Indowy watched the trail carefully. Within half an hour the new point located a second booby-trap. Its slender trigger of nylon fishing line would be almost invisible to someone not looking for it, but the explosive device to which it was attached would have blasted the life out of whoever tripped it. Someone had to have set it recently, since wildlife hadn't triggered it, but it was far too complex to have been set by even the most capable of the salvagees. Which meant that the Posleen had not yet wiped out all human resistance in these mountains.
But to find these potential allies, they first had to get past this barrier. Nanuli was trying to decide how to safely detonate it when one of the Indowy walked up.
She threw up an arm to block his path. "No, I cannot permit you to throw away your life--"
Iosebi interceded. "We cannot allow you to needlessly risk your life when all our survival depends upon your skills, both medical and military." Although only the Indowy equivalent of a twenty-something, the clan chief was already gaining skill in command.
Nanuli's horror gave way to amazement as the Indowy nimbly disarmed the booby-trap. Incapable as they might be of setting any device to kill another living being, they certainly had no such disabilities in regards to removing them. In five minutes she was presented with a detonator and a lump of explosive, carefully separated so they could do no harm. She hesitated only a moment before tucking them away among her gear. One never knew when they might come in handy.
However, the elation of having gotten her charges safely past that hurdle did not last long. It was nearing nightfall when the trail took them up to a cave entrance that had been partially blockaded with hasty brickwork.
The silence made Nanuli's skin prickle. There should be sentries, some sign of activity. Or were they watching her, deciding whether she was a friend to be welcomed or a burden, even one who would betray them?
She took a risk, laid the AK on the talus before her and raised her hands in the air. "I come as a friend." She shouted in both Russian and Georgian, not sure which language the defenders might know. Still no response. She called a greeting in Ossetian, hoping she had the pronunciation right and wasn't inadvertently insulting them. In growing desperation she called out, "Salaam!" which Mahmood had once told her was the Arabic word for peace.
An evening breeze blew at the door, or rather half a door that swung loose on its hinges. A night-bird, or perhaps a bat, flapped its way out.
Nanuli's throat tightened. They would find no hospitality here, for the Posleen had found it first. Still, the cave would shelter them for the night. She retrieved her weapon and led the Indowy inward.
The floor of the cave bore silent witness to the violence, and the mountain-folk's bravery. Yellow stains mingled with the brown ones on the stone, among the wreckage of human occupation. But with some searching she located a fair amount of salvageable material, mostly ammunition and tools, but also a few cans of food that had rolled into out-of-the-way spots when the Posleen cleaned out the larder. Dented as they might be, they were welcome supplies with the emergency rations rapidly dwindling in spite of efforts to eke them out by foraging what few wild roots and berries remained at so late a season.
Nanuli was despairing of how they could possibly pack all these things out when she heard a shrill cry from one of the Indowy. Fearing the worst, she hurried down to find them all busily suppressing delight.
In a side-cave, half-hidden under a detritus of branches from the mountain oaks, stood an old truck. Hope filling her, she scrambled to clear the vehicle of its overburden. The tires were low, but those could be aired back up, and the rest appeared intact.
Her hope melted as soon as she lifted the hood. Even in the fading light of evening, she could see that the truck had not been started in months, even years. Cobwebs covered the engine and a bird had built a nest in the air breather intake.
In frustration she slammed a fist into the sheet metal of the fender, swore in Georgian. The suddenness of her anger made the Indowy flinch back, but they didn't panic and flee as they might have only weeks earlier.
"Please, do not be angry." Iosebi pressed his hands together and made that little half-bow of "apologetic interruption." "We can repair it."
"This wreck?" Nanuli paused, smiled. "Of course, you are Indowy. But how will you do it when you lost all your tools and equipment?"
"You said that you had found tools within the main cave. We can learn to use them and improvise."
Nanuli had her doubts, but decided to give it a chance. Particularly now that she'd found a map in the main cave and re-oriented herself, she was having serious doubts about their ability to hike all the way to Grozny. If the Indowy were as good as their word, getting that truck running would turn weeks of walking into a few days' drive.
In the meantime, there was nothing to do but settle in.
The nightmare was back in force again. She watched in helpless horror as the Posleen massacred Ataman Masuyev's caravan. One of them knocked the rifle from Beso's hand with one swipe of that leaf-shaped blade, then split him in two with a second.
Soselo bolted up the gravely slope, only to get no more than a dozen steps before a second Posleen grabbed him. This one didn't even bother with a knife, just tore the boy's arm right out of its socket and shoved it into a toothy maw even as he struggled, blood pouring--
Nanuli awoke gasping for breath in a blanket soaked with her own sweat. As quickly as she sat upright, she was seized by nausea. She barely managed to get to the mouth of the cave before she hurled the contents of her stomach into the brush. She would have to get sick right now.
A quick press of hand to forehead detected no fever, but not all gastrointestinal upsets caused it. Time to make that GalTech medical sensor earn its keep.
She'd been expecting it to tell her that she'd picked up a mild bug, or perhaps that the can of chicken soup she'd eaten last night was spoiled. Certainly not that she was pregnant.
It was absurd. However well GalTech rejuve could restore her appearance to that of a teenager, it couldn't possibly restore a woman's fertility. Oogenesis in humans occurred entirely during fetal development. A baby girl was born with all the eggs she would ever have, and by the time she reached puberty, most of them had been reabsorbed by the body for reasons still unknown to human medical science. The remainder would be shed once a month throughout her reproductive life, until by menopause a woman's ovaries looked like shriveled potatoes from all the burnt-out egg follicles.
As a doctor Nanuli knew the facts, yet the readings before her were unequivocal. The GalTech medscanner had detected the characteristic hormonal changes of pregnancy in her blood. One way or another, her ovaries had been restored to function. How would her having been rejuved affect the fetus? From what she understood of the process, the nannites remained in her body after the initial treatment and maintained her body at its current youthful state.
So she was pregnant. Nanuli looked down at her abdomen, still flat at the moment, and imagined it swelling as it had with each of her two sons. Except this would not be Irakli's child. There was only one person who could be the father.
Perhaps it was poetic justice. She had taken Vladilen Ivanovich's life, and now she would give life to his child.
Or could she? Nanuli's throat tightened and she swallowed, hard. She had prior obligations: to the Indowy refugees, to the people at Grozny who had been promised her services as a physician. Did she have any right to carry through this pregnancy for some private atonement while other people were depending upon her?
On the other hand, did she have any right not to try, when the future of humanity as a species might well depend on how quickly the enormous losses of the war could be replaced? She had the hips for childbirth -- both her sons had come out smoothly, without a hitch, although Dr. Merekhadze had been a bit amused to have her as patient rather than colleague.
She got no further time to dither, for at that moment Arkady walked in and bowed to her. "We have finished."
That was the roaring she could hear -- the truck engine, repaired at last after three days of steady work by all eleven of the Indowy. They had been as good as their word, even if they'd lost the first day just to learning to use the strange human tools.
Now there was nothing to do but load up their supplies and roll out. Only then did she realize how little she had prepared in the meantime, fully anticipating several more days. Half-filled sacks lay everywhere, a roll of nylon fishing line sliding from the mouth of one. Irritated, she stuffed it into a pocket of her jacket.
At least now that she had the help of the Indowy again, she could get things packed and in the truck quickly. Then it would just be a matter of finding their way to the Georgian Military Highway and avoiding Posleen patrols until they arrived in Grozny.
As it turned out, getting down wasn't that hard, since the Posleen had opened up the overgrown service road when they came up here, clearing out the booby-traps with their lives. Nanuli saw the broken and scavenger-picked remains of more than a few in the brush just beyond the cut path. A path just wide enough to let the God-Kings' ground-effect vehicles pass.
They quickly decided that Nanuli couldn't drive and defend them at the same time. However, Indowy were simply too short to drive a human vehicle. After a little discussion among themselves they worked out a system. One steered while another worked the pedals, and a third handled the gearshift. It made for a hair-raising ride, but Nanuli soon decided that it wasn't that much worse than Georgian roads before the war, when many drivers considered their cars a means for expressing their individuality and their contempt for bureaucratic foofaw.
The little band of refugees had brought the map with them, and as clan chief Iosebi took great pleasure in navigating, charting their progress along the narrow mountain roads that lead to the Georgian Military Highway and their goal. Since the rest of the Indowy took turns as lookouts, watching for any trouble, Nanuli had time to rest and think.
And she had plenty to think about. Everything looked different with a new life nestled within her. Even after her rejuvenation she'd still thought of herself as an old woman whose time was done, but now she had a stake in the future.
What kind of world would her child inherit? She watched the passing countryside, the slopes and peaks scarred by the weapons of Posleen and human alike. Even if humanity could drive the damned centaurs off their world, what would be left? Would there even be a Georgian nation left to rebuild? Many of the small nationalities of the northern Caucasus, those represented by only one or two villages, were already extinct, either wiped out by the Posleen or swamped by the refugees from southern Russia, from Rostov and Astrakhan and even Stalingrad. Might the Georgians end up not much better off, reduced to a handful who would have to choose between preserving their culture in impoverished enclaves or assimilating to the larger Russian culture in order to follow professions of wealth and prestige?
The hiss-crack of a Posleen weapon snapped her out of her reverie and to full alert. The truck skidded to a halt sidewise of the road.
"Get out! Get out!" Nanuli threw open her door and jumped, AK already in hand.
The Indowy piled out just in time as another hypervelocity missile came hissing at them. This one didn't miss, but went straight through the front end of the truck. With a deafening thud the engine erupted in flames so hot that Nanuli could feel it through her camo jacket. Two of the Indowy weren't quite far enough away, and were engulfed by the flames, their little bodies turning to charcoal even as they ran. The rest of them dived into a snowbank, while Nanuli prayed that there was enough snow on the brush to keep it from bursting into flame and starting a forest fire that would kill the rest of them.
Relief was brushed aside by fury as it registered upon her conscious mind that this was no accident, but a Posleen attack. "You tried to kill my baby!" The words came out so harsh her throat hurt.
The Indowy huddled under cover as Nanuli fired at the three Posleen trotting down the narrow mountain road. The sheer brilliance and heat of the blazing truck must've made it impossible for them to focus on her as a distinct target, for their shots went wild while hers found their marks.
Then it was over. In the shaky comedown of the adrenaline crash, she realized three things. First, those Posleen were just scouts for a much larger unit, who had to be alerted by now. Second, there was no way in hell that she could fight off a whole platoon or company of Posleen, even if the Indowy could give her a miracle and convert the Posleen weapons. Third, they had just lost their transport and supplies, and there was no way they could run the rest of the way to Grozny with the Posleen on their tails. Ten klicks might as well be the distance to the moon.
Miserable, she looked through the trees at the slope below, at the yellow forms trotting along the road which would inevitably lead them up here. She had failed everybody -- the Indowy, the fighters of Forward Firebase Grozny, and most of all her unborn baby. She rested her elbows on her knees and set her chin in her cupped hands to cry.
Something pressed against her left breast, now tender with the hormonal changes of pregnancy. Puzzled, she pulled out a thick palm-sized disk -- the spool of nylon fishing line. She might have lost all the explosives, but there were other possibilities.
Half an hour later she was crouched in the brush, holding a hastily converted Posleen railgun while her trusty old AK lay at her side, ready in case the conversion didn't work quite as planned. She just hoped that the Indowy wouldn't be traumatized by seeing the result of the "harmless" little strands she'd persuaded them to string from tree to tree.
She counted the seconds as the Posleen came trotting down the road. At least a full platoon of them, and they were bunching up rather than trying to fan out into the brush. Better yet, their God-King was zipping right along at their rear, urging them to a gallop with nudges of his little saucer.
Now.
A quick squeeze of the modified trigger and the railgun spat steel needles which tore at the bark of the tree just down from the last of her little surprises. The Posleen reacted just as she had hoped with a burst of speed that threw them right into the nearly invisible lines of nylon monofilament. The slender lines might slide off the bony armor, but eventually they would find a vulnerable joint and cut into flesh. Eventually they would break under the sheer press of bodies, but it slowed and confused them enough that she had time to lay a decent field of fire on them. And did that railgun ever do the job -- its rounds smashed right through the thickest carapace, unlike AK rounds that had to be aimed at particularly vulnerable parts, something she still wasn't overly skilled at doing.
But it was the God-King that took it worst. Panicking at seeing his normals falling victim to some unseen menace, he gunned his saucer for all it was worth. It proved his undoing, for he hit one of the last and highest lines fast enough that it sliced straight through his neck. The huge crocodilian head went flying, while the ground-effect saucer bounced along with the rest of the body.
Nanuli gritted her teeth, fully expecting it to smash into one of the trees and explode. Instead it just skidded to a stop along the shoulder of the road, not far from the burnt-out carcass of the truck. Only when she let out her breath did she realize she'd been holding it.
"Here's our ride." She heaved the beheaded Posleen corpse off and waved to the Indowy. "Let's get the controls cracked on this thing."
Iosebi looked it over, wrinkled his brow in thought. "It will require time."
Nanuli brought her field glasses to her eyes. "You've got about thirty minutes before the main body of the poska force gets up here. If we're not out of here by then, we are all dead meat."
It was a measure of just how much being survivors of two massacres and having worked for so long in close co-operation with a human had given courage to the Indowy that they did not panic at her words. Instead all of them set to work with the tools they had thankfully taken to wearing in pouches on their persons.
Within a matter of minutes they determined that there was too little room for them all to work together. While Iosebi and Vasili, being the oldest and most experienced of their number, assumed the task of cracking the controls on the ground-effect saucer, or tenar, as it was properly called, the rest set to salvaging what they could from the wreckage of the truck.
The minutes passed with agonizing slowness for Nanuli, who had nothing to do but alternate between cleaning her weapons and monitoring the progress of the main body of the Posleen force. If she hadn't kept her nails trimmed down to the quick, she would have set to biting them. Part of her longed for a cigarette, although her medical knowledge told her that smoking was not good for her unborn child, even with the rejuve nannites swarming in her body to protect both of them.
And it grew steadily more obvious that they were not going to be done in time. Iosebi and Vasili almost had the tenar ready, but with their makeshift tools, the conversion was taking longer than it should have. Nanuli wanted to cry from sheer frustration.
Arkady walked up to her, two of the transfer-neuters beside him. "We will go down and make a diversion."
Nanuli knew how totally incapable of violence Indowy were, how completely unable to resist any attack. "But you'll be killed--"
"It is better that a few lay down their lives and the clan survive than all perish." Arkady's voice had a strength she'd never heard in an Indowy.
Before she could stop them, all three scrambled down the slope, cutting across the long switchback to the road where the Posleen were approaching. The tears Nanuli had to wipe from her eyes were no longer of frustration, but of pride and incipient grief. Perhaps Indowy couldn't fight, but they could learn how to die meaningfully, instead of as stampeding sheep fleeing their devourers.
She could barely make herself watch the Posleen ranks break in confusion, scatter into the brush on either side of the road in pursuit of three mad Indowy. She knew how it would have to end, and swore to see that those three gallant little aliens were remembered alongside the human heroes of the war, Mahmood Dudayev and all the other people who had given their lives in the faint hope of stemming the yellow tide and making Earth once again a human planet.
Vasili's cry of triumph was almost human, not exactly what one would expect of the usually demure Indowy. But there was no mistaking it, and Nanuli scrambled back to join the five surviving aliens in piling onto the tenar.
There were only moments for Iosebi and Vasili to instruct her in the operation of the tenar and its pintle-mounted plasma cannon. The first Posleen were already coming around the bend. Nanuli hit the dual triggers for the plasma cannon almost by instinct, fired a gout of eye-searing whiteness down the road at the enemy. Their first ranks simply vanished.
No time for awe. She spun the tenar around on its axis and pointed it down the road, toward the ruins of Grozny and the firebase that was supposed to be waiting for her. At least she was beyond the last of the lines they'd strung, so she didn't need to worry about being hoist by her own petard. If any of them remained to surprise this bunch of poski, that was just icing on the cake.
It took her a few tries to get the tenar to go where she wanted to, and she didn't dare run it in a straight line, not with the rest of the Posleen still after her. Whenever the hiss-cracks of their weapons got too close, she'd spin the tenar around and give them another taste of their own medicine.
And then she burst out of the scrub forest and into the ruins that had once been the capital of the Chechen Autonomous Republic. The firebase was supposed to be in a cave on the mountains to the south, right over there--
Coming under AK fire was such a shock that her brain "missed a step" before she could really register it. Instantly she realized what it must look like, coming in on a Posleen God-King's vehicle/badge of rank, with five little Indowy bunched up behind her.
She waved her arm over her head, opening her hand to show her five fingers. Moments later she heard shouts of "check fire" coming from all over the slope ahead of her. Followed by orders to give her covering fire as the Posleen burst forth from the forest and spread out, guns firing.
The battle was pitched and to the point. The fighters of Grozny threw everything they had at the enemy, including fire from more than a few captured pieces of their own. Once Nanuli got the tenar safely under the cover of their fire, she turned it around once more and laid down the fire until the plasma cannon threatened to overheat. Although she had no way to know how long she could keep going before the tenar "ran out of gas," this was no time to hold back. As soon as the plasma cannon was cool enough to operate, she set to it again.
The Posleen fell in waves under their fire. It had been at least a company of them that had been marching along the road that entered Grozny from the north, perhaps more since Posleen military structure was shaky at best. Such warm work could not last for long, and even with the benefits of terrain and strategy, the humans could not win without taking losses of their own. Which meant that she would have her duties waiting.
She was greeted by a pleasant young Ossete who introduced himself as Suslan. When she introduced herself, his eyes went wide.
"Nanuli Tamarashvili? But we were told that you are... that you were an old woman, a grandmother."
"I was." Nanuli's mouth twitched into a wry expression. "I had some adventures on the way up here."
With a little encouragement Nanuli told of the ambush of Ataman Masuyev's caravan, the flight to Vladilen Ivanovich's secret base and her time with him. When she got to the Posleen attack and Vladilen Ivanovich killing Mahmood, her throat tightened and she had to force the words out. "Then I killed Vladilen Ivanovich. Do I have any right to do medical work when I have broken the physician's oath and taken a life?"
"Are you sure he's dead?"
"I shot him in the chest. I didn't go back to check for a pulse, but he still would've had to escape the explosion. In any case, the oath commands, 'do no harm,' and to that I stand forsworn."
Suslan shrugged. "Let's leave that for after the war, when there's time to convene a board of Inquiry. In the meantime, we need someone to treat our wounded, beyond first aid. We thought you were lost along with Ataman Masuyev's caravan, with the grain shipment." Hunger was plain in his face, in his words.
Nanuli nodded in sympathy. "We couldn't save the grain shipment, but I've brought something better." She gestured for the five surviving Indowy to come forth. "Indowy technicians, with experience in hydroponics and waste recycling. If you have any seeds, any suitable vessels, your days of hunger are over."
It took a moment for the significance of her words to sink through, but when it did, there were cheers throughout the cavern.