Return Fire (Earth at War Book 3)

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Return Fire (Earth at War Book 3) Page 9

by Rick Partlow


  “And you think this excuses you for what you have become?”

  “I think if your civilization had gunpowder or the internal combustion engine dumped in your laps when you were less than six thousand years from your first cities being built that you’d have wiped them all off the map by now,” I shot back at him. “I think it’s easy to be high and mighty about how you haven’t dropped an atom bomb when you probably can’t even dig uranium out of your crust. I think you have the self-righteous arrogance of someone who had everything handed to them and feels like you got it because you deserved it.”

  Uh-oh. I might have gone too far there. No, fuck it. He already said he wasn’t going to support us in the vote, so yeah, fuck it.

  “You have insulted me,” Anu said, coming so close to my face that I could smell his breath. It smelled just like my old German Shepherd’s after he’d finished dinner. “You have insulted the Skrith Federation. This may not go unanswered. I challenge you, Major Andy Clanton of the humans, to a blood hunt.” He snarled, as viciously as he had when he’d been ripping into the roast pig. “If you refuse, or if you fail, then the Skrith will oppose the inclusion of the Earth Coalition into our Alliance. If you win…”the look of amusement returned. “Well, you will not win. Not against me. But if you do, I will support you in the vote. And with my recommendation, the Federation Alpha will agree to it. On my honor.”

  “Oh, shit,” Julie murmured beside me, here we go again in her eyes.

  Olivera and Garcia were staring at me, Joon-Pah was staring at me, the whole Skrith delegation was staring at me. What else could I say?

  “I accept.”

  Chapter Nine

  “What the hell is a blood hunt?” I wiped pig juice off my chin with a napkin Julie handed me and tried to ignore all the people giving me death glares.

  “Now’s a great time to be asking that,” Olivera snapped, falling into a seat in the common area of the suite of rooms we shared. It was a surprisingly human arrangement and I wondered if this was common to both races or if they prepared it for us after the Helta had given them the details about our species.

  Then again, seeing how the Skrith treated the Helta, maybe I was giving them too much credit for hospitality. At least here we could actually sit, albeit on low and overly-soft couches, instead of crouching or kneeling.

  “Are we sure we want to be allies with these people?” Julie asked, arms folded, seeming disgusted by the whole turn of events. “I mean, they’re rude, confrontational, insanely aggressive…and this is the second species we’ve run into in this Alliance with some sort of fight to the death challenge, which seems insane to me for a race that has faster-than-light travel.”

  I was nodding in agreement with anyone who wasn’t yelling at me for being an idiot, so I nodded even more vigorously.

  “It’s not a fight to the death,” Garcia told us.

  He had, amazingly, not been among the ones yelling at me. In fact, he hadn’t said a word the whole rest of the dinner, which we had been obligated to finish despite the awkwardness. Neither had Joon-Pah, who had waved me to silence when I’d tried to talk to him about it.

  “If you knew what it was,” Julie asked him, “why didn’t you say something back in the dining room?”

  “Because this is a huge opportunity for us,” he told her, looking as if he wanted to rub his hands together gleefully like a greedy loan shark in a 1950s mob movie. “And I didn’t want Anu Neeme Klas to be able to take it back.”

  “My friends, I beg your leave to enter.”

  The voice came from outside our suite, and the verbal request was necessary because not only was there no doorbell or intercom system, there wasn’t even a door. Apparently, the Skrith didn’t share our notions of what constituted privacy. But I recognized it and so did the others.

  “Come in, Joon-Pah,” I said, pushing away from the couch, grunting with the effort it took to rise from the quicksand-soft cushions.

  He was alone and like Garcia, he didn’t seem that upset by the turn of events.

  “Joon-Pah,” Olivera said, sounding as put out as I felt, “can you tell us what this blood hunt is?”

  “The Skrith are hunters, predators, as you may have gathered from our feast.” I don’t know that any human has been around Helta enough to pick up dry sarcasm from their body language, but I was sure it was dripping off that statement. “Yet they are also what your people would call conservationists. There are quotas, limits, and a tradition of ‘touch hunts.’ That is, sneaking up close enough to an animal to touch it. When they have public disagreements that could affect the reputations of those involved, one party challenges the other to a blood hunt. A blood hunt is rare, but it is to the death…the death of the animal being hunted. Whichever of the parties involved in the dispute makes the kill first is considered to have been in the right.”

  “Thank God,” Olivera sighed, his shoulders sagging. “At least no one is going to get killed.”

  “And,” Garcia added, practically bouncing from one foot to another, “Anu agreed to vote in favor of including us in the Alliance if Clanton wins!”

  “Yes,” Joon-Pah agreed, also seeming pleased. “And I was not sanguine about the Skrith’s vote until now. We have political allies among the Chamblisi and the Vironians, but as you may have gathered, the Helta and the Skrith do not get along quite as well.”

  “Then why did we have the conference here?” Olivera wondered.

  “As a sign of respect. We hoped it would make them more favorably disposed to the vote.”

  “Look,” I said, “it’s great that this isn’t a duel to the death, but there’s one little problem. I haven’t been hunting in almost twenty years, and when I did, it was with a gun. Somehow, I don’t think Eddie Munster is going to let me use a gun.”

  Julie snorted, punching me in the arm as punishment for the joke.

  “I’m not going to have to take down a deer with my teeth, am I?” I implored Joon-Pah,.

  “Some allowances are going to be made for your different physiology,” he assured me. “I believe a spear was mentioned.”

  “A spear?” I exclaimed. “Do I look like I know how to use a fucking spear?”

  “As the challenged, you are allowed a second,” Joon-Pah informed me, unaffected by my histrionics. “Someone to help you on the hunt, although you must be the one to make the actual kill.”

  “That’s awesome,” I sighed. “Who? Who do we have available that’s got some experience at this? General?” I asked Olivera.

  “Don’t look at me,” he said, shaking his head. “Last thing I hunted was squirrels with my cousin in Kentucky, and I wound up getting lost for sixteen hours. They had to bring out dogs to find me.”

  I remembered my comms and touched the button on my ear bud.

  “Colonel Brooks,” I called, the cell phone-like device on my uniform belt connecting me automatically.

  “Go,” Brooks said. She was still outside with the Rangers.

  “Colonel, do any of your people have hunting experience? Preferably without firearms?” I paused, wondering how much of this to share on what was probably an unsecured line. “It’s important.”

  She didn’t reply and I wasn’t sure if she was checking with her squad or just boggling at the question.

  “Maybe I should take Pops,” I said aside to Julie. “I know he doesn’t hunt for fun, but he’s worked with indigenous militaries all over the world. One of them has to have taken him hunting.”

  “Wait one,” Brooks interjected, addressing the suggestion I’d made to Julie. “Don’t do anything yet. I’ll be right there.”

  Brooks wasn’t kidding. It was a good half a mile from the entrance she had to use, but two of them were in our suite inside three minutes. They had to have been running, and I would have paid good money to see the Skrith reaction to the exoskeletons clomping through their stone palace.

  She’d brought Quinn with her, their visors up, curiosity written across both of their faces.
r />   “I got your man here, Andy,” she said, gesturing at the corporal. “Now tell me why you need him.”

  I eyed the younger man doubtfully but gave her a summary of what happened at the dinner. She was laughing by the time I’d finished, and not in a good way.

  “Oh, Lord, Andy, your mouth gets you into more trouble than any three people I ever met. Didn’t anyone tell you that majors are supposed to be boring, paper-pushing staff officers keeping their noses clean until they get promoted to lieutenant colonel?”

  “That’s a natural major,” I corrected her. “I’m a major because my position was too important to give to a captain but I’m way too irresponsible to be a colonel.”

  “At least you’re self-aware,” she conceded, “which is better than most majors.”

  “Quinn,” I said, trying to bring us back to the subject at hand, “tell me you’re a hunter.”

  “I am a hunter, sir,” he assured me with the sort of confidence only a Ranger or a Marine can exude. “I’ve been hunting feral hogs since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Quinn,” I said, blanching at the accent he’d let slip through, one I’d never heard from him before. “You never told me you were from Texas.”

  He laughed, thinking I was joking, the poor fool.

  “I am not, as a matter of fact, from Texas,” he informed me. “Though I hunted there with my uncle. I’m from Oklahoma originally, but I’ve lived in South Carolina since I was twelve.”

  “Whew,” I said, wiping pretend sweat off my forehead. “And you’ve done it without a gun?”

  “I don’t know I’ve ever hunted pigs with a gun. And we did use a boar spear a couple times.” He shrugged. “And I hunted deer with a compound bow, though I don’t know if that’s going to help.”

  “Any experience you have is going to help,” I insisted. I addressed Joon-Pah. “You seem to know more about this than we do. When is it supposed to happen? And what are we hunting?”

  “Normally, there is a three-day preparation ritual, but this has to happen before the other delegations arrive, so I have been told you will all be flown down before dawn tomorrow.”

  “Oh, great,” I said, sagging against a curved wall support. “So much for getting a good night’s sleep first.”

  “You would’ve been too keyed up to sleep anyway,” Julie pointed out. I glanced around furtively and she rolled her eyes. “They know, Andy.”

  “Everyone knows,” Olivera confirmed. “No one cares. Get over it.”

  “Knows what?” Quinn asked, frowning.

  “Never mind, kid,” Brooks consoled him, patting his arm.

  “You said fly us down, Joon-Pah,” I reminded him. “Down where?”

  “Into the canyons. The river valleys. That’s where game congregates. The Skrith have farms and ranches down there as well, where they raise most of the food for their cities. Almost nothing lives up here, at least nothing larger than a coyote.”

  That made sense. I’d been thinking there wouldn’t be any pigs living up here on the bare rock. They must have brought up the ones they’d fed us.

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Olivera said. “The air should be thicker there, so you two won’t be staggering around and wheezing the whole time. The only problem will be beating this Anu to the punch.” He asked Garcia, “Do we call him Anu? What’s the convention here?”

  “To say the full name unless invited not to,” was the reply.

  “Wonderful. Then the only problem will be beating Anu Neeme Klas to the kill. He’s obviously done this sort of thing before. And he knows the lay of the land. He’ll know where the game is, how it behaves.”

  “Pigs are pigs, sir,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter if they’re in Florida or Russia or some alien planet, they always behave the same. They dig up the ground the same way everywhere, leave the same hog wallows. You get me down there, I can find their sign for you.”

  “I’m afraid there’s been some misunderstanding,” Joon-Pah said. “The Skrith hunt wild pigs for food and also raise them for slaughter, but that is not for the ritual. The ritual always involves something with more risk to the hunter, more challenge, else there wouldn’t be as much sport.”

  “I don’t know if I would characterize a wild hog as not risky to the hunter,” Quinn said, “especially when we’re just using spears. I’ve seen what they can do to a dog that gets too close.”

  “Yes, well, the Skrith idea of risky is an order of magnitude greater than our own.”

  “How come you needed us if you have them?” I wondered. “They seem like they’d be fairly fierce in battle.”

  “As individuals,” Olivera explained. “As hunters. Maybe if they had someone like us to train them for a few years, they’d be useful. Humans hunted wolves long before we had gunpowder. It’s been a damned long time since the reverse was true.”

  “So, what are we hunting?” Quinn pressed.

  “Not wolves, I hope,” I said. I didn’t think the Skrith would hunt predators, being so close to them in evolutionary terms, but you never knew.

  “No, something the wolves would compete with you to kill.” Joon-Pah smiled, imitating with might have been an attempt at reassuring us. “Bull elk. In rut, at the moment.”

  I pictured the elk I’d seen in Yellowstone, the size of a horse, with sharp, pointy horns ready to gore any minivan that came near them during the mating season. Then I pictured me trying to kill one with a fucking spear. I tried not to whimper.

  “I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut.”

  Chapter Ten

  “This is gonna be one of those war stories I tell over a few shots of tequila,” I confided to Randolph Quinn. “No shit, there I was, hiding behind a tree in a river valley at the bottom of a mile-deep canyon on an alien planet run by wolfmen, dressed in BDU’s and smeared with mud and elk urine, getting ready to try to kill a 700-pound bull elk with a wooden spear tipped with polished ivory blades from mastodon tusks.” I shook my head. “What a damned silly way to get dinner.”

  “We should try to be quiet,” Quinn admonished, dark eyes locked on the herd of grazing female elk drifting toward our position.

  Great. Now I was being lectured on fieldcraft by a fucking twenty-one-year-old Army Ranger. I made the mistake of breathing through my nose and nearly gagged. Elk urine really stinks.

  It was beautiful here in the canyon, I had to admit that. Canyon was an odd word for it, an inexact translation of what the Skrith and the Helta meant. When I’d heard it, I’d pictured the Grand Canyon in Arizona, but this had more in common with the Rift Valleys of Africa or Valles Marineris on Mars. Blood Canyon—and yes, that is what the Skrith call it—was sixty miles wide and two thousand miles long, and the only way to see both walls of the rift at once was from space. If the cool, dry, thin air of Highland had reminded me of my adopted state of Nevada, then Blood Canyon, wetter, hotter and thicker, was much more reminiscent of my home state of Florida. I swatted at a mosquito and remembered why I’d moved away.

  The bush, or tree or whatever it was we were using for concealment seemed to be a magnet for bugs, and we couldn’t use chemical repellants or the elk would smell it. I was sure Quinn had to be getting bitten just like I was, but the kid didn’t move a muscle, didn’t seem to notice. Bracing himself against the soft ground with the butt of his spear, eyes focused ahead, he could have been some Stone Age hunter reincarnated.

  I was not. I was, medical revitalization notwithstanding, a forty-something writer who hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night. I could embrace the suck with the best of them as a twenty-something platoon leader, but I’d lived the easy life too long, and even the combat of the last year or so was the sort of combat that involved lots of air conditioning and machines that did the work for me.

  I eyed the elk cows and their yearling calves, grazing by the placid river, hooves squishing in the mud and tried to will them to come closer. The bull was about a hundred yards away from us, tossing
his head back and bugling to warn any rivals away. He was a warrior king with a headful of curving horns that any hunter on Earth would have paid a year’s salary to hang on his wall. I was never a big hunter, just went after some hog and deer with my family in Georgia, and I’d never understood trophy hunting. The animal was never going to look anywhere near as good hanging on the wall as it had alive, doing its thing. But to each their own, and since the trophy in this case was helping the Earth become part of a galactic alliance, well…adios, Mr. Elk.

  If we could get him to come close enough to us to use these spears. If he didn’t kill us both in the attempt. And if Anu Neeme Klas didn’t get it first. He was out there, somewhere. We’d been dropped off at opposite ends of the herd, about three miles away from each other, and I was sure he’d made it here before us since he knew the place. I wondered if he was just sitting out there, watching us, hoping to get a good laugh at the stupid hairless apes trying to kill an elk.

  “We need to speed this up,” I told Quinn. “It won’t do us any good to be the stealthiest assholes on this planet if the other guy gets to the horny bastard first.”

  “Well, there’s one thing we could try,” he said, thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s kinda the opposite of stealthy. But if he thinks we’re going after one of his cows, he might charge us.”

  “Fuck yes, he would,” I agreed. “I’ve been to Yellowstone in the fall and I saw one almost as big as that guy….” I indicated the bull with a tilt of my spear. “…ram his antlers right into the side of a minivan when it got too close.” Then it hit me. “You want to get him pissed off at us? Are you nuts, Quinn?”

 

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