On Kathree’s list, if they ever got out of this, was to sit down over a glass of pinot noir with Langobard and ask him where he had picked up his skills in this department, since, until recently, he had been sustaining a fairly credible cover story about being a peaceful wine merchant in Cradle. She already suspected that he would deflect any such questions by saying that the Antimer Neoanders, like many cultures throughout human history, had a tradition of teaching martial arts to their young ones.
A skeptic might remark that fighting with whips made of little robots might be all well and good in the clean and well-ordered confines of a space habitat or a hollowed-out asteroid, or when dueling in space suits in a vacuum, or in relatively uncluttered places, such as deserts and icecaps on the surface. But in a bog full of dense, head-high vegetation it was simply a mistake. Kathree’s ears were taking in vast amounts of data that her brain didn’t know what to do with. Someone who had grown up practicing these arts, as Langobard apparently had, might have been able to hear nuances in these repetitive bangs. A crack that landed on its target would sound different from one that dissociated into a burst of flying ambots, which in turn would sound different from one that had whipped back toward the attacker or gotten fouled up in vegetation. Instead of which, all she could tell was that they were fighting down there. By the time she had completed her circuit of the bog and returned to their original line of defense above the cove, they had been fighting for rather a long time, which she interpreted as good news. She was trying to think like Cantabrigia Five, who probably wouldn’t worry so much about trivial matters like casualties and the control of the battlefield. More important was the narrative of the battle. And so far what it looked like was that a small Blue group, conducting Treaty-approved survey operations on their side of the Treaty-defined boundary, had been pursued by bloodthirsty Red Neoanders until trapped against the ocean, where they were now putting up a heroic and surprisingly prolonged last-ditch stand to protect a few noncombatants. Kathree didn’t wish to be this cynical, for Cantabrigia Five really was a fantastically appealing and charismatic person, but she suspected, at some level, that a Blue fatality or two, up in the bog, and perhaps an on-camera interview with a maimed and bereaved survivor, might be the perfect counter for the propaganda coup that the Aretaics had scored a few days ago.
Thoughts such as those were luxuries she did not afford herself until she had reached a position above the cove, well behind the battle zone. And—no coincidence—also behind the line of camera-carrying buckies recording the heroic rearguard action.
She looked down at the lower camp. A sunrise, in weather like this, was too much to ask for, but the sky was getting brighter all the time, and was now illuminating the beach more effectively than the towering Aitken loop on the barge. Perhaps in response to the sounds of battle, half a dozen or so inflatable boats had emerged from the flooded hull of Ark Darwin and begun making their way in, each carrying a few people who appeared to be wearing helmets. Good. But, annoyingly to Kathree, they were maintaining some distance. Sonar Taxlaw was standing on the boulder waving them off. She’d been joined by Einstein, who was doing likewise. That was about to become an intolerably crowded boulder, because Tyuratam Lake was wading out to join them with that pizza box under one arm. He had managed to equip himself with a dry suit, which probably made the experience a good deal more comfortable for him.
Cantabrigia Five and Arjun were on the shore, facing out to sea, as if there were not a pitched battle going on a few hundred meters above them.
Two of the buckies dislodged themselves from their positions above Kathree and began rolling down the slope like wire-frame boulders. At first this seemed uncontrolled, like an avalanche, but then they began to stretch and deform in a way that accommodated the rocky ground rushing beneath them, and slowed to a mincing style of descent. One of them perched on a spot where it could get a clear view of the entire cove and the other picked its way down to the sand, angling for close-ups, apparently. Cantabrigia Five turned toward it and advanced a few steps. Facing squarely into its camera, she began speaking words that Kathree had no hope of hearing at this distance.