The Parafaith War by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Read Free Book Online

that there was a thing Trystin could do about it. “Revs!”
    “Got ‘em, Ryla.” Except that he didn’t directly, only through the impacts of their weapons. Visual shielding? Trystin checked the impact angles of the incomings with a visual replay, then reset one of his rockets into a high-arc trajectory toward the dust puff on the far hill.
    Crumpt! Crumpt! The building shivered again under the revvie rockets.
    Using full scan, Trystin watched his rocket, noting the detonation on his screen. Outside of the gout of red soil, there were no additional explosions, but there were also no more shells impacting on the command center.
    The lieutenant nodded. His calculations had been good enough to silence the revs, but only momentarily. He recalculated, assuming forward or sideways motion to keep the revs out of the direct line of the gattlings. Crumpt! Crumpt! Crumpt!
    “The maintenance-door shield’s jammed, ser.” “Stet. Happened when I dropped the shields, but I figured I couldn’t do much in the middle of an attack. You all right there?”
    “I’d better be, ser. No place else to go that’s any safer-except the bolthole, and I’m not one for burying myself.” There was a pause before the noncom asked, “What they got there?”
    “Something that screens them, and a lot of rockets.” As he spoke, Trystin released another spread of rockets, then simultaneously sent an attack report to PerCon.
    Crumpt! Crumpt! The next round of revvie rockets slammed into the station, and Trystin winced as he watched for the impact of his own rockets.
    Not only was there a gout of dirt, but a secondary explosion on the flatter slope of one of the hills beyond the perimeter.
    Crumpt! Another rocket slammed the station. Clearly, not enough of a secondary explosion. Trystin recalculated and released another spread of rockets. Crumpt! Ping!
    Some of the revs were close enough for rifle fire, and Trystin didn’t like that at all, not when he couldn’t see much and when the revs had some form of new heatshielding clearly effective against the sensors. Ping! Ping! Crumpt)
    Finally, the three-screen identified the source of the shells and the boosted rocket pryers and reverse-tracked them to the backside of the nearest hill to the northeast. As usual, the revs had their weapons aimed at the station building itself, rather than at the heavy reclamation equipment.
    Still wondering why that seemed to be so, Trystin used a spread of rockets to reply, since the revs were out of gattling range. Ping! Crumpt! Crumpt!
    Another series of explosions, these visible on the short-range direct scanners, dotted the hillside-and one small secondary explosion followed.
    A series of distortions seemed to flow downhill toward the station, and Trystin flicked through scanning frequencies until he found one that gave him what amounted to flickering outlines.
    Even with the use of all screens and sensors, Trystin couldn’t seem to get a hard count on the revs, as if the sensors and the optical scanners were facing some sort of interference. He could see that, again, some of the flickering Figures carried the longer assault rifles.
    Crumpt! Crumpt! Crumpt! The entire station building shivered.
    Now that the revs were in range, Trystin triggered the antipersonnel gattlings and the antisuit bomblets, but the revs seemed to have avoided the artificial cacti with the bomblets, except for a few stragglers on one side.
    After the earlier attacks, Trystin had no desire to risk more revvie booby traps, and this was the most heavily armed group of revs he’d personally seen. The exterior sensors relayed the sprayed fragmenting of the osberyl-tipped depleted uranium shells across the revvie line. CRUUMPTTT!!!!
    The entire sector control building rocked with the explosion, and Trystin dropped from four-screen into status, flashing through the maintenance lines. Crumpt! Crumpt!
    So many subsystems reported overload or damage that the backfile flared red. Trystin