Free The Veiled Threat by Alan Dean Foster Page A

luck held he would be inside the barracks and online on his computer within minutes. He darted through the gate—only to have to halt sharply as a vehicle he did not recognize pulled up to block his path. He waved furiously at the pickup’s driver.
    “Move, move—get out of the way! Don’t you see what’s happening? I have to send word!”
    Something creaked beneath the pickup. No, not beneath, he told himself. Within it. Metal began to crumple and fold, to rearrange itself. Staring, Ghiwa slowly backed up toward the gate from which he had just emerged. As he did so it occurred to him that the pickup’s driver had looked exactly like a lower-level guard named Vashrutha.
Had
looked like, because now there was no driver. There was no need for one.
    Dropkick contemplated the single human retreating before him. “You are not armed. I am disappointed. Even an unequal contest is better than none.”
    Feeling it was futile but hoping for luck, Ghiwa drew his service pistol and began emptying its clip at the monster. If nothing else, maybe the .45 would distract it. Slugs that would have drilled completely through a human barely made a sound as they bounced off the Decepticon’s body. As he fired, the major turned and fled back the way he had come.
    In an attempt to make the contest interesting since he could not make it fair, Dropkick did not unlimber any of his main batteries. Instead he reached out, grabbed the nearest section of fence, and pulled. Poles and wire mesh tore out of the ground. When he had extracted a suitable length, the Decepticon rolled ittightly, flung his arm back, and then snapped it forward. The coiled metal unfurled like a flattened whip. The pole at the end struck the unfortunate Ghiwa and sent him sprawling. When his body stopped rolling, it remained still.
    It was not what Dropkick had intended. His aim had been to catch the fleeing human in a roll of fence and draw him back. The Decepticon did not dwell on the failure. Turning, he started toward the empty barracks. There would be communications devices inside that needed to be eliminated. There might also be weapons or combustibles. He hoped for the latter. Far from home, and with the Allspark destroyed, it was vital to stockpile potential sources of distilled Energon whenever possible. Depending on the type of material here, it was a potential source, though he wondered if the yield would be worth the effort.
    Behind him and within the boundaries of the supply depot, combat continued to rage. He felt neither need nor hurry to join in. Macerator had not called for assistance. Given the feebleness of the forces arrayed against them, Dropkick doubted his comrade would do so.
    A series of shells heavier than any that had yet struck him slammed into Macerator’s torso. While unable to penetrate his armor, they were powerful enough that the outside possibility existed they could do some minor damage if they happened to strike an especially vulnerable point when he was not paying attention. There being no reason to take chances, while he evaluated the new threat he took a couple of steps to one side and sought temporary shelter behind a small mountain of metal parts.
    What he saw would have brought a lump to his throat except that such comparisons with organic reactions were utterly invalid. Grinding in his direction, a pair of armored vehicles were firing steadily at him with quadruple cannons. Their purely mechanical aspect gave them the appearance of a squad of legless representatives of his own kind. While the shells being fired by the multiple Bofors barrels were not of threatening dimensions, they traveled at high velocity and with considerable accuracy. It might prove awkward should one or more of them explode against a joint or a lens. As explosions erupted all around him, Macerator considered how best to counter this latest human assault. He had to admit that if the natives’ weapons were not the most advanced, they at least had the virtue of