Kathree saw all of this while leaning back against the steep pitch of the inner crater wall. Just above her was a line of vegetation that had taken root along its brow, where the ground was level and the sunlight was as plentiful as it would ever get in these parts. It spread for some tens of meters to her left and to her right, walling off the cove from the bog and the high country above.
Some loud grunting noises, and the sound of a lot of little sticks getting damaged, caused her to look sharply to her left just in time to see two large men, locked together, erupt through the wall of brush and tumble out into the open. Since the slope below was steep, they rolled together for several meters down toward the beach before the larger one—Beled—was able to lash out with one foot and plant it downslope, bringing both of them to a stop. At the same time he pushed up with both arms, shoving his opponent—a Neoander—completely off the ground, in a bid to flip him backward and send him tumbling down even farther. But the Neoander seemed to anticipate this and made his much longer arms whip around Beled’s torso, scrabbling for purchase on his rib cage.
Perhaps 50 percent of Beled’s body was still covered by ambots locked together to form a patchy carapace. The Neoander’s right hand came down on a cluster of them that was protecting Beled’s armpit, and those obliged their owner by delivering a clearly audible shock into the offending hand. This disrupted whatever grapple the Neoander had been attempting. Still, Beled’s gambit had basically failed, and he ended up toppling backward as his opponent’s momentum overthrew him. When he understood this he stopped fighting it and bent his knees, turning what might have been an ungainly sprawl into something more like a back somersault that employed the Neoander’s stomach as an impact cushion. Kathree heard a snapping noise but was a little slow to understand it as a rib being broken. The Neoander, on his back, involuntarily tried to contract into a fetal position, bringing his head up into Beled’s descending fist. The contact between the delicate structures of the modern hand and the massive bone arches of the Neanderthal skull was unequal and there was more cracking, to Beled’s disadvantage. Still, the blow gave the Neoander a jolt, which was enough time for Beled finally to draw a knife from a sheath and press it against the other’s throat. He kept pressing until the Neoander’s head was against the ground.
The fighting—at least that part of it—was over and Kathree was able for the first time to process a full image of Beled’s state: bloody, half-naked, spitting teeth, breathing much faster than he ever did when sprinting flat out on a treadmill. Anyway he was alive, and the fight was over for him, unless he chose to neutralize this opponent by cutting his throat. Which seemed inadvisable since he was now under the direct coverage of a bucky with a camera in it. The ancient Teklan-Neoander fights of asteroid mining lore might have ended with throat cutting, but not this one.
Other things happened in the bog that she did not see. Langobard emerged with Roskos Yur slung over his back in a fireman’s carry, and began tromping down the slope in some haste, not looking back. Beled, watching, called out a warning to him. In the same instant Kath heard movement from the bog and saw a human silhouette—not a Neoander—vault through the gap that had been torn in it by Beled and his opponent, and begin running after Bard. She was a squat woman with close-cropped hair, in military kit—a classic B. Kathree aimed her katapult at her and fired an ambot, then two more, but all of them somehow missed—the B was evidently wearing some kind of armor that was good at spoofing this particular model, and so she could stand there all day shooting at her and nothing would happen. Still, the B heard the katapult go whang and sensed the ambots zipping around her, which was enough to stall her for a moment. She turned toward Kathree. The look on her face suggested that she had not expected to see a female Moiran. As she was taking in this extraordinary spectacle, a fist-sized rock struck her on the downhill side of her head and, to all appearances, killed her.
Kathree looked down the slope to see Beled following through from having thrown the rock. He had transferred his unbloodied knife to his broken hand, and now shifted it back. Nearby was Bard, who had paused in his headlong sprint toward the beach and turned around to see what Beled was throwing rocks at. Blood seemed to be draining out of him.
On second thought, it was draining out of Sergeant Major Yur.
The Neoander that Beled had been restraining rolled up to his feet. Just as rapidly he went down again, and a katapult whang traveled up to Kathree’s ears. When Langobard turned around, she saw that Roskos Yur, badly mauled but still conscious, had brought his weapon into play with his free hand.
If there were other Red forces to be accounted for, they were either dead, unconscious, or in retreat toward the mountains.