CHAPTER 14

THE DELTA-SHAPED SHUTTLE descended through the planetary atmosphere, cutting a blazing swathe through the sky as it homed in on the source of the distress signal they had detected from orbit.

Lt. Jennifer Samuels leveled it out over a desiccated forest. Shuttle One banked into a light turn and headed toward a squat structure, the source of the signal, which sat squarely in the middle of a clearing. Samuels brought the chunky craft into a hover over a section of the desiccated forest, a short distance from the clearing.

“Major, we’re going to need a landing area cut out or else this is going to be a mighty short rescue.”

“Master Sergeant!” Brinks said.

“Sir!” one of the smallest men on the shuttle snapped, half rising from his seat as his restraints popped free.

“Deploy four men with cutters. Have them clear a space one hundred meters in diameter for Shuttle One,” Brinks told him as he slid behind a console and accessed the carnivore information stream.

“Yes, sir,” the master sergeant snapped, spinning, his finger picking four men, seemingly at random. “You heard the major! Cutters out. We’re kissing dirt, boys!”

The belly of the shuttle slid open, and four rappelling lines dropped down. They were followed quickly by four figures, tiny in relation to the delta-shaped mass above them, sliding down the fifty-foot drop into the dry timber beneath them.

“Okay, we’re clear.”

The figures looked up as an equipment crate descended toward them. Two of the figures guided the swinging crate to a steady landing, while the other two began a sweeping survey of the area, their weapons held at ready. Within minutes, the crate was opened and the contents were assembled into two laser cutters, just small enough to be wielded by hand.

“Shuttle One, the cutter team is beginning procedure.”

Powerful lasers sliced through the dry timber of the dead wood, the invisible beams vaporizing the material so quickly that it wasn’t given the chance to burn. Foot by foot, the timber was roughly sliced and left where it fell. In less than a half hour, a circular area over one hundred meters in diameter had been cleared of all obstructions.

Above them, two carnivore drones lazily orbited the area, extending the shuttle’s sensors by over a thousand times as they kept careful watch on the new inhabitants of the planet.

Brinks watched the surveillance information come in as the shuttle hovered on its CM-assisted jets. The Drasin, as Milla insisted on calling them, appeared to be much like drones from an ant colony back on Earth. They appeared to be dismantling a population center, about 150 kilometers north of the shuttle’s location, much the same way Milla reported they had in the previous system they had conquered, but with far fewer numbers.

Major Brinks had the drones make an estimate on the visible drones and shunted the information to the shuttle’s computer for comparison to the previous data. It would probably be useful, he decided, to see how they worked from an earlier point.