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Mogutu admitted, "but at short range they're very effective. There's a small
cylinder of compressed gas in each stock that accelerates the arrow, or bolt
as it's called, and gives it added range to maybe, oh, fifty to a hundred
meters depending on the target. Even when you run out of gas cylinders, so
long as you've got bolts, you'll still have a weapon that can handle twenty,
thirty meters sure. Ask the doc for sighting it's her weapon, basically. It's
pretty easy, though."
Harker sat down next to the woman, who was checking her own crossbow out.
"You actually good with this?"
She nodded. "Sure. Against targets. Used to be a hobby of
mine ancient and medieval weaponry that didn't require a lot of upper body
strength. If they'd invented these gas cylinders back then, women wouldn't
have had such a tough time getting equality."
"Doc Katarina?"
"Kat. It's easy and it's kind of an identity thing, like a meow-type cat or
maybe a lion."
"Okay Kat. I'm Gene. No use for rank here, except maybe with the colonel. So,
how do you sight this?"
She showed him, as well as some of the other finer points. Actually getting
decent enough to hit the broad side of a mountain with one of those bolts,
though, would be a different story.
Other weapons included a Bowie-style knife with a ser-rated blade
made of a substance that looked and felt like steel but could cut into
softer rocks without problems, and a kind of formalized blackjack, a baton,
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
which he knew from the military police. Weighted, it could knock people cold
and crack heads, but it wasn't considered a deadly weapon. In a close fight
against too many of the enemy, it might just be an equalizer.
Beyond this there were a couple of weeks of concen-trated rations, a bottle
each of desalinization and steriliza-tion pills, and a small medical kit. That
was about it.
The colonel supplemented his rifle with a rather fancy saber which he wore in
a scabbard, hanging from his pants belt, and he, too, had a baton but on the
other side in its own carrier.
Each had all his or her spares in backpacks and they then buried the duffels
in the sandy soil just in back of the driftwood, so tidal erosion wouldn't
uncover them. Only the Pooka, which the colonel had called Hamille, reveal-ing
a name for the first time, had no pack or apparent weapons. There was no
telling what it ate or drank, but it was damned sure it had no shoulders to
carry a pack, and it seemed quite happy to just be itself. Harker decided not
to ask right then, but wondered whether the creature's civili-zation was so
industrialized and automated that they no longer had the means to
produce these things that didn't require power. Or perhaps the Pooka was in
its own way as alien and inscrutable as the Titans.
Finally, they settled down in the bushes to wait until morning.
Nobody really slept, but nobody really wanted to talk and risk disturbing the
others, either. The sudden heavy gravity, the bumpy ride down, the tensions
and stresses and the anticipation of the unknown all combined to make
each one feel older than the old diva who'd brought them all
together, yet too young to die.
Harker could barely suppress his satisfaction at seeing the great
Colonel N'Gana, legend and mercenary, seasick as a rookie in
weightlessness training as they paddled their boats in toward shore.
The colonel's dark brown com-plexion seemed to have lost its luster. In its
drab new exte-rior it had gained a little green and gray.
Of course, Katarina Socolov wasn't doing much better. Clearly sailing wasn't
in her background, either. It was difficult to tell about the Pooka, who
couldn't row anyway, but it had withdrawn into a coil with its head near the
bottom of the boat.
Fortunately, Mogutu seemed to either be experienced at it or at least have it
in his blood; with the colonel and the
Pooka in his boat, he was really the only one doing any real work at rowing
them in toward shore.
At least it wasn't all that rough, not for open ocean, anyway. Harker
suspected that there was a definite continental shelf not far below and
that it probably had either a great deal of sand built up or some sort of
reefs, perhaps coral-like, that broke up the waves.
He also had an extra pair of hands rowing, although they dared not get too far
from Mogutu's struggling boat. The supplies, among other things, were in that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]