I shifted back to my VR without waiting to see if Arnold reacted. The busters were just coming in for the second pass, and Marvin had stacked them two-deep. The leftover buster trailed the group, ready to take out a target of opportunity.
The second pass took out three hippogriffs, and injured the wing of a fourth. The clouds of red were now making it hard to see. SUDDAR was not particularly effective with biomass—bodies showed up as dim ghosts—and infra-red was having a lot of trouble with all the fresh blood floating around.
The injured hippogriff lost altitude quickly, but it was a controlled descent. We probably couldn’t depend on the impact killing it. We now had eleven busters—no, nine. Two busters had collided and taken each other out—and five attackers left. It was going to be tight, unless they turned around and retreated. If they were anything like sharks with blood-spoor, though, that wasn’t going to happen.
The busters came around for a third pass. There were fewer hippogriffs now, though, and they were spreading out. And the damned things really had quick reflexes. Despite buster pairing, we only took out three of the attackers. We were down to six busters, and had two healthy and one injured hippogriff to deal with. Still reasonable odds, except that they were now close enough to Camelot to present a real danger. And we didn’t have the uninterrupted line anymore for a supersonic approach.
“Switch to bludgeoning and harassment. Guppy, where are the reinforcements?”
[Five minutes out]
Not good enough. I checked the action in Camelot. The mesa didn’t have much in the way of caves or any other kind of overhead protection. It was ideal for protection from a ground assault, not an air attack. The Deltans were streaming out of the village, down the two available paths. But with the bottleneck, they couldn’t get the whole tribe evacuated in time, and they would be sitting ducks until they reached the trees.
We commenced low-speed bludgeoning of the hippogriffs. They were even better at dodging at this speed, but they couldn’t really do anything else at the same time.
We finally managed to bounce one off the head of a hippogriff. It went down immediately. The other hippogriff ignored the byplay and tried to take a pass at the Deltans on one of the paths. But the busters kept it too distracted and it passed overhead without completing the attack. Unfortunately, a couple of Deltans panicked and fell or leaped off the path. I could see them tumbling down the steep scree.
The Deltan hunters laid into the unconscious hippogriff. It was my first opportunity to get a good feel for relative scale. If the Deltans were human-sized, then the hippogriffs were about the size of a Clydesdale, with bat-like wings. The animals looked more reptilian than anything. Teeth and claws were disproportionately large, resulting in an impression of something built for nothing but killing.
It took only a few seconds for the Deltan hunters to ensure that the animal wouldn’t be waking up. The live hippogriff, though, was still a major threat, and I had no idea where the injured one had gotten to.
The busters continued to harass the healthy hippogriff, and it apparently decided to reduce the defensive zone by landing. Well, not a bad strategy, really. Now the busters could only buzz it from above.
As it landed, the hippogriff changed its coloration to match the ground and rocks, but no one was going to be fooled at this stage. The animal snapped at the busters as they came within range, and it managed to snag one. It looked as though this would turn into a process of attrition, until the Deltans brought in their “A” game. Twenty to thirty spears flew at the animal in a solid cloud. Fast or not, the hippogriff simply couldn’t dodge that amount of incoming. Within moments, it resembled a pincushion. The hippogriff screeched and snapped at the spears sticking out of it. Arnold grabbed another spear from someone, ran straight toward the hippogriff, and made an Olympic-caliber throw from point-blank range. The spear went right through the animal’s neck and it dropped instantly.
There were cheers from the hunters. The jubilation lasted only a moment, however. Screams from the retreating tribespeople brought our attention back to the paths out of Camelot. The injured hippogriff had made its way to the base of the scree, found one of the people who had fallen, and was eating him.
I sent all my remaining busters straight at it, with no allowance for pulling up if they missed. Two impacted with enough force to kill the last animal. It was too late for the Deltan, though.
*
The good news, if it could be called good, was that we’d only lost three Deltans. A fourth had a broken leg, and I was going to have a confrontation with the medicine woman if she didn’t listen to me this time. I’d lost eighteen of my twenty busters. Twenty more made it down from orbit, too late to do any good. And once again I was pulling all my printers off of their assigned duties to make more busters.
The Deltans had called another tribal council. For them, two councils in a month was akin to panic. This time, I was invited, or maybe summoned. I doubted it was to give me a medal.
I had noticed that some people were giving Archimedes a bit of cold shoulder. They couldn’t overdo it, of course. He and Moses were still the only source of shaped flint, and Moses wasn’t moving around much these days. If I was to describe the attitude in human terms, it would be “coldly formal.” Since Archimedes hadn’t done anything to deserve it, I had to conclude that it was guilt by association.
Arnold was sitting in council now. After that display with the hippogriff, he was man of the hour. Hopefully that would mean at least one sympathetic voice.
There was some discussion among themselves, then they called me over. I floated down to head height and waited.
“Are there any other surprises that you have for us?” Hoffa said without preamble.
“That was a surprise to me, too. You’ll remember that I asked why you’d left Camelot. Only Axler had an inkling, and he didn’t remember enough to warn us.”
“Just the same, by following your advice, we seem to get deeper and deeper into trouble.”
“By following my advice, you’ve retaken a location that you can defend against gorilloids and that has flint for weapons. I know a lot of you have trouble following my explanation, but I maintain that in the old camp, your children would have been the last of the Deltans.”
I paused for dramatic effect before continuing. “As for the hippogriffs, they’re a problem because they’re a surprise. I’m going to find out more about them, then I’m going to remove them.”
“I’ve noticed,” Hoffa said, “that despite your talk, it’s still we who do most of the fighting.”
“Really? When was the last time a group of your hunters had to beat off a gorilloid attack? Did you hear the sonic booms? Two hands and four hippogriffs approached Camelot, but only three arrived.”