Chapter 6 It is bad enough, I am finding myself thinking, that we have bumped into the .. Entity here in the Triple Point, that has been grazing on troops like vegetables in a garden.... bad enough that it has Found us. But then it is worse, when I look at who else is in the clearing in the fading Spring sunshine with us... the Siberians have found us too. And neither will be ignoring us for more than a few seconds, so I respond in the best way I can think of .... my fist pumps up and down in the air in Charge signal, as I feel adrenaline surging through my shocked body as the engines at my side ignite with an extravagant double thump of starting cartridges, a ripping of sound around me as the rotary engines in our mecha begin to spin, and diesel plumes gasp into the cold air horror-laden with the massacre that has been here, and for which we are meant as the second course in the Entity's unholy banquet.... "Los!" I howl, my helmet snapping shut and sealing, an instant later, the slight popping in my ears as the engine-driven pump pressurises the suit with filtered air... "Zentauren, charge !" What I am seeing as the bolts of my Mecklens and my flank cannons click forward ready to roll, is the clearing in the trees, where the light is shining oddly, the sunlight twisted as if the air's refraction is somehow going terribly wrong. The hovertanks are there, white-painted except for mid-grey cyrillic lettering on their turret sides, and a strange pictogram on the front plate of the Shaman's machine, this symbol glinting bright like polished metal. All of this swings into focus in an instant... as does the disturbed snow where the hovertank-riders are burrowing away from their vehicles with ancient skill and hard-fought practice. This is bad enough. Then I turn, and I discover exactly how bad things get. It is.... a thing like a whirlwind in slow motion, or a waterfall that is seeming to ... move, though I cannot name the direction it is plunging. And there is a cold sickness in the air, that my suit's thermometers are not seeing... the rangefinder is looking right through it, though this setting can fix the front edge of a smokescreen... and I am doubting if there is anything I can do to it except make it laugh, if such things laugh. "Fur Valduz und Schnellenburg!" I hear the Liechtenstein warcry from my starboard, as Natya's superchargers spool up to a scream, the centaur mare rearing and charging .. then the deep-throated thump as the low-velocity cannon speaks, hiding her for an instant in a splashing ball of blast-kicked snow. A short line of fire hangs in the air like a rope taut-stretched between her muzzle and the tower of screaming silence that has come to this place .... and there is nothing, neither the detonation of the high-capacity shell on the Entity, nor against the far side of the valley. A high-pitched keening sound is what I do hear, as from the far side three figures like white-suited ghosts emerge from the snow, more Siberians coming from the other arm of the pincer movement Vaclav's radio detected, their hovertank somewhere hidden in the other trees to the East. They are squealing something in their native tongue, that high-pitched chittering that long and brutal association has given us "bad vibes" whenever we hear it... three of them open fire, and the air crackles now with the buzzsaw-like chorus of Russian needle-rifles. For a few seconds the clearing rocks with sound, as the pillar of unfocussed space looms over us... and we see that tracer rounds are going into it, but not out the far side... as if it is an inside-out shape of trick mirrors, where nothing is in the place it should be and everything is Elsewhere. Natya reappears, her cannon cycling in a slow drumroll, the rocking scissor-arm of the breech thrashing like a fiddler's elbow.... when she staggers to a halt, ten metres away from that shivering surface. It is as if the air has suddenly grown thick, invisible strands of wire holding her there.... and then the Entity responds. But not against her. Air bends like unnatural heat-haze, a tongue of distortion lashing out away from us. It is the white-clad ermines on the far side.... an invisible hand scoops them up, holding them struggling like birds pinioned by the wingtips ... and then the air around them begins to lose focus, as the screams begin. Just at that instant, I hear an insistent voice in my head - not an alien entity, this, but a feeling I recognise ... it is Hanna, our psyker giving us a brief, insistent order that I obey in a heartbeat, my jaw switch working to swap the 35 mm loading cassettes for high explosive rounds as I put an end to the unfortunates who I know no power on the planet will save. For an instant the clearing rocks with a volley, and it hardly registers as surprising until later that two of the hovertanks have opened fire on their own men...... and what is left is dropped to the snow, as if it was no longer of use to that which had trawled it out of our world..... It is Hanna's voice, urgently ringing in my head, and I know it is not radio she is using... for my ears hear only a terrible high,cold roaring as of the wind on black stark rocks at the edge of an abyss.... and it is more of an impression, for I SEE what she means.... the Siberians pouring into their hovertanks, slamming hatches and dogging down the seals tightly. From the lead vehicle a white-clad figure stands tall, a shimmering white and glittering fabric suit impossibly clean for the inside of one of those vehicles... he strikes a pose on top of the turret, clutching a gold insignia of some sort at his throat... and from the speaker system comes again that strident rhythmic thumping, a different note and one that has the remaining Siberian diggers scurrying for their vehicles, every hatch popping open to pack a maximum of lithe mustelid bodies under the armour plating.... But it is not them that I am worrying about. The twisted air ahead is moving again, red-tinged like a tornado suddenly picking up dust and visibility. Natya is almost engulfed by it.... but it passes, and I see her still there, though lying flat in the snow. And now there are only ourselves standing out there on the field with the dead... and very soon it is looking as if we may all join them. I see the warping wall approaching, like a slowed-film of a thermonuclear shockwave punching out with a force to sweep worlds away.... and maybe I am snarling vulpine defiance to the end, for it is fight or flight, and I am knowing that running will not save me, any more than my weapons can even annoy this thing. Then it is all around me. How I am still alive, I cannot understand... for my mind tells me with no usual sense that this thing is like an acid, but alive, hungry and ....... foul, as if I am swimming in some charnel-house of endless corruption. But it is flowing right around me, blindly..... and though I cannot see it with my eyes, I know to the millimetre where it clings around the suit. And then comes an instant of panic, that I am almost sure is my last. It is coming through my visor. The metal-rich glass is designed to reflect microwave weapons, and between its shatterproof layers is sprayed with a molecules-thick sputtered coat of pure iron.... just enough to give a silvery sheen at some sun angles. Though the glass is not cracking, the .... presence that surrounds me like unseen acid, is pushing its.. aura, for want of any other word, through the glass, bowing in the space of my survival like the wet fabric of a tent in a lethal wind. If that touches me, I know as a cold fact that it will dissolve me like sugar in boiling water. My snout wrinkles in instinctive dread, and I brace myself.... Suddenly it passes, and I know that somehow I might live. It has washed past me like the crest of a wave of horror, and though I felt a brooding..... awareness in that form, it has not touched me. Yet it can tear materials apart that are tougher than my plain shell of crude iron, as the debris lying around me shows.... ceramic and high-grade alloy armour wrenched apart as easily as their owners. Now I collapse, my breath gasping, in a shock of reaction that I know would be enough to stop weaker hearts than ours on its own. But we are hybrids, we centaurs, and with natural hybrid vigour and hard training, we are hard to knock down. The thing is past, I turn round and see its swirling outline moving towards the Siberians. Natya and Vaclav are through it too, though I see Vaclav swaying drunkenly - he is imaginative, and this thing that is here brings with it a crawling chaos of ... possibilities that choke up any mind, with a crushing tide of things best undreamed of. On the Shaman's hovertank, I see his white figure standing alone, tall and unarmoured . The engine deck looks odd, I knew that at first sight, but only now do I see just how it is different. The usual storage bins and bundles of spare track skirts are missing: instead there is a flat, wide deck almost like a scaled-down helicopter platform, with big coloured tiles maybe a metre across, that I am just seeing now as I get the angle. As the Entity sweeps towards the Shaman, I am seeeing the tiles start to flash, a strange pattern like some alien semaphore. Then there is a puff of blue smoke from the exhausts, and the thumping sound from the speakers is joined by the eerie tones of the four hundred kilowatt diesel-electric guitars played from under the armour shielding. The shaman dances. It is a strange jerking, strutting dance, his finger pointing in the air, the white suit flapping as he spins and gyrates to the music, his jacket wide open revealing white chest-fur, picked out by the strange medallion at his neck. My eyes are drawn to it, and almost I move to unclip my helmet to hear the chanted words .... until a sharp thought from Hanna warns me. She is in my head without warning or apology, my arms jerking away from my helmet as she triggers a reflex. "WAIT." I hear her soundlessly loud. "It doesn't track by scent .. but it'll sense you if you unseal ... " This is what I am seeing. The great sick whirlwind towering above the lead hovertank ... it has not grabbed the Shaman as it did the others, and I am suddenly seeing why. Or I am not seeing, more accurately ... it passes right over the furiously dancing figure, who is now spinning on his back like a circus act, the flashing-tiled floor lighting up in what I see is the rhythm of the music pounded out by the concussion speakers and diesel-electric guitars, not of just the lead tank now but all of them, puffs of blue-grey vapour spitting from supplemental exhaust plumes jutting above the back plates. And something is happening. The Entity is passing right over, but bending aside, flowing around the Shaman like an invisible bubble was around him, only revealed in the deflection of the whirling thing that is now gropingly moving off into the distance. Very suddenly, it is over. I am looking right at it, but hardly have words to describe what I am seeing ... it goes Away ... shrinking into the distance, but not any direction that a compass can point. Almost as if it is falling away into some far depths that no eyes born to sunlight can focus on. I cannot say that I faint then - but I am suddenly lying in the snow, with no idea of how I have come down. There is a sudden convulsion inside and my stomach heaves - a struggle with numbed fingers and my helmet is open, fouling the clean snow as I vomit in a delayed reaction. For a minute I am helpless, trembling like a newborn cub - then I am looking around, life returning, feeling like an EMP-blasted computer must when it loads itself in again from safe backups. There is the clearing, that same clearing that any satellite could look at right now and see nothing but evidence of a wipeout-battle. The same twisted forms are there, now half-covered by powder snow, for which I am grateful. For there are certain .... subtractions and .... transformations made to what the Entity leaves behind, that I am trying not to look at or think about .... it is nothing that can be put into words, except to say that something very old and primal is triggered, some association that in waking life I can never have understood and lived, let alone stayed sane. Genemeld we might be, and of forms new to this world ... but the genes blended in our centaur forms are as ancient as any, and passed to us from ancestors who saw many strange things and escaped with mental scars that they carried long beyond the grave to warn and trouble even us, their latest and strangest children. I look around. Vaclav looks frozen still, his front and back legs splayed, wedging him upright ... as I watch, Torm and Eric our half-wolves are moving to his side, nuzzling anxiously. They have not run, those brave and simple children of our wild side - for our "little Brothers" shame us with their unstinted devotion to their Pack, and to our pride and sorrow so many sacrifice themselves with not a second thought, to save us. "Functioning .. I'm .. functioning , just about .." Natya comes walking stiff-legged towards me, her eyes bright with sick horror. "It's gone .... and we're still alive. But .... I don't know how." She gives a quick jerk of her muzzle towards one of the twisted things mercifully covered by the snow. "None of them made it - and they've got MUCH better kit than we have." There is a minute more of silence, as life slowly picks up in the clearing .. all of us are moving slowly, shaken to the core - I see on the hovertank twenty metres away, the Shaman sitting on the edge of the dancing floor, holding his head in his hands. Blood stains his muzzle from a nosebleed, but soon he is looking around, and then I hear him banging on the white turret side. The top periscope slides up like a cautious snail's eyestalk, and after a sweep around, the top hatch swings open. "Now," Natya is saying grimly, looking around, "Now, it's going to be Interesting." She looks down at the big magazine of her underslung cannon, and raises an eyebrow. All around us, a squadron of hovertanks is unbuttoning, and white-furred ermines and bleached wolverine heads are poking out. And I am agreeing, as I check the seals on my cold iron armour, that Interesting will be a good description. Hanna Ritter, is being our Psyker, and speaks good Russian, or so she has been telling me. But now she is standing next to the Shaman's hovertank, waving and gesturing, some of the gestures a press on her head and a waye towards the white-suited ermine's, as if she was suggesting plugging something in. Vaclav wades over to me through the hock-deep powder snow, and his ears dip. "Take a look at the unit markings," he suggests. "They're from somewhere around the Magadan River .. far-eastern Siberians. They never did speak Russian if they could help it, and these days..." he shrugs. "well, you know the Red Tsar tries not to push things any more. What's the chance anyone round here speaks Slava-Inuit ?" I nod to the deer, looking around. "Whatever, it looks like Hannah is getting some sort of truce for the minute .. the troopers there aren't bringing out armour-buster rockets." And indeed, none of the hovertanks' main cannon are moving - six of the low, slab-sided vehicles are at rest, hatches disgorging snow-suited infantry, who are looking at the far trees rather than us. It is our great comfort that our hard-faced mecha is proof against single rounds from their needle rifles - nobody here is carrying shoulder-fired rockets which would be intended for us. Suddenly a shot rings out. All heads turn - and we see a long-eared canine struggling up the slopes towards us, a pistol waving in the air. He is panting for breath, ploughing through the deep snow, and where his snow-suit is open and steaming with body heat, I can see a jet-black uniform, not the mid-grey that is standard Winter issue for them. "Scheisse," Natya growls, giving an inconspicuous "close-in" gesture with her tail to Torm and Eric. "Commissar. Must have been in one of the second bunch of tincans. He'll be trouble." The six of us take up a loose Diamond formation at the edge of the clearing, ready to break either way if we have to. But then it is that I see two odd things. There is Grimsley, the mouse sitting on top of the nearest hovertank - he had jumped off Natya early, and evidently took shelter in the only place he could. He is talking animatedly with one of the Siberians, though it is too far to hear what they are saying. Not twenty metres away the Commissar and the Shaman are also having words - by the sound of them, few of the words are friendly. "Heh .. Natya crowls, the mare's voice coming through the whisper mode of our rdios, speaking so quietly in her helmet that a hidden bug in the snow at her feet would not hear her. "I've heard about some of these Commissars .. the Siberians might be in combat a couple of hours a week with us, but they're united against HIM, seven days a week....." This is what we see. The canine and the ermine are almost nose to nose, shouting at each other in very clear, slow voices that make it clear they are not naturally speaking the same dialect .. when the canine, his snout wrinkled in fury, reaches for his pistol. And then stops, his ears hiked up, as he notices a dozen needle-rifles pointing pointedly in his direction. One of the tank commanders is carelessly tossing a big, double-edged native knife from paw to paw, grinning expectantly - and though we certainly know these Easterners regard taking heads for souveniers as a jealously garded right, the Commisar must know it far better than we do. His ears droop, and he very slowly stretches out his empty hands for all to see. The Shaman gives a brief, chittering command, waving in our direction, and most of his unit lower their weapons. Most of them are looking very disappointed, and I am thinking that some of them had already made plans about the tasteful placing of a certain canine skull in their huts by the Kolyma River. "Ey, folks," Grimsley calls out towards us, "If tha' feels like a bit o' cooperation, they's interested. They've a commander, name of "Strikes Side-Armour", if tha' believes it - happens to speak English, learned it off the radio, an' tells us his Commisar don't know a word of it." We look at each other, ears raised in interest under our helmets. At last, Hanna nods, and slips the safety catch on her Mecklen. She turns to Natya, and raises an eyebrow. "It looks like you're right," her tail twitches as she raises her left hand, in the "Enemy Not Sighted" gesture. "Now, this IS going to be Interesting." ********************************************************************