Deathtrap

by Craig Alanson

  “Oh, that’s,” Dave jammed the helmet back on his head and lowered the visor so he could control its sensors with eyeclick commands. “It’s just slang, you know? It’s like wearing a bucket on your head, to hold your brain. This Ruhar gear is way better than the helmets the US Army gave us.” For all the light weight and advanced technology of the helmet’s sensors and communications capabilities, he knew that if he took a direct hit to the head by a Kristang round, he might as well be wearing a plastic bucket.

  “What do you think is wrong?”

  Dave raised the visor partway up so he could speak quietly without his voice being muffled. “It’s probably nothing. The damned thing thought it was picking up a faint laserlink message, from backscatter. It’s probably just light reflecting off these puddles.” The area they were walking though was a meadow saturated with water from overnight heavy rain, forcing the two soldiers to slog through the ankle-deep water. “How’s your knee?”

  “Better,” the Verd-kris grunted. The nano machines injected near his knee, from the medical kit on his belt, had done amazing work as usual, stabilizing and strengthening the damaged tendons and cartilage. The tiny machines used his own tissues to create artificial fibers to do part of the work his natural tendons did, while also greatly accelerating the healing process.

  Dave used the same type of nano meds to repair his busted thumb, so he knew what the process was like. Accelerated healing was great in a hospital setting. In the field, the additional demands on his body made him tired and hungry, ravenously hungry. Part of the hunger was the meds stimulating his appetite, telling his body the little machines needed more raw materials to do their job. The field rations he carried tasted like sawdust and nearly broke his teeth when he tried to chew one of the iron-hard protein bars, but they contained the nutrients he needed to remain combat effective and to knit together his throbbing thumb. When he was unable to control his hunger and wanted to conserve his limited supply of field rations, he used an app on his zPhone to instruct the nano meds to dial down their activity. A wonky thumb could wait until he reached a base with real medical facilities, but if he ran out of food in the middle of nowhere, he was screwed. The life forms on Fresno were incompatible with human nutritional needs. When the energy bars ran out, Dave would go hungry. Knowing that, he had stuffed extra bars into every pocket, now he still worried about how far they would be walking versus how much food he had available.

  Jates’s situation was marginally better. Although his injured knee required more energy and proteins to repair, and therefore he also was always hungry, the native life of Feznako had been supplemented by Kristang plants and animals. The previous evening, they had walked through a grove of trees that alarmed Dave when he realized the trees were growing in regularly-spaced rows. It was not a grove of trees, it was an orchard. That implied Kristang were nearby. Even low-caste civilian farmers could be dangerous, if they sounded an alarm about a human and a Verd-kris traitor on their land.

  Jates had pointed out that the trees were overgrown and had not been pruned in years, and native grasses and shrubs had grown up under the spreading branches. Pausing for half an hour, Jates gathered a helmet full of hard purple fruit that he described as sort of an apple. The Verd crunched into the fruit with gusto, declaring it to be slightly over-ripe but delicious. The fruit would supplement his own field rations, allowing him to partly live off the land.

  “Better, huh?” Dave was skeptical of the big Verd’s knee. Jates had insisted on using a makeshift crutch rather than leaning on Dave all the time. He still spent most of the time with an arm draped across Dave’s shoulders, especially in terrain with tricky footing like the soggy meadow. Dave knew it killed the Verd’s pride to literally lean on someone else, and the fact that he required help from a puny human had to be humiliating.

  Dave was also not thrilled about Jates using him as a crutch, but neither of them complained or said anything about the awkward situation.

  “When we get into those trees ahead, I will try using the crutch again.”

  “I am all for that,” Dave’s own knees were aching from stumbling while supporting half of the Surgun’s weight. “Let’s see what it’s like, Ok? If you twist that knee again, we will be stuck here until you can walk. No way can I carry you more than,” he was guessing, “probably ten miles?”

  Jates shook his head. “No. If I am injured again, you go on ahead. I will not ask-”

  “Yeah, well, fuck that,” Dave declared with sudden determination. “I don’t know what it’s like for you Verds, but in the US Army, we do not leave people behind. You don’t have to ask, that’s just the way it is, you capiche?” Realizing that Jates’s phone likely did not understand Italian, he added “That means understand, do you understand?”

  Jates turned to look at Dave, their helmets bumping. “You humans are primitive, small, slow, stupid and weak.”

  “Gee, thanks for the-”

  “But any one of you is more honorable that the entire Kristang warrior caste.”

  “Oh, uh, thanks. Believe me, plenty of us humans are jerks, I wouldn’t call all of us honorable.”

  “All the humans I have met are exemplary. Czajka, when I was offered an opportunity to train aboard the Ruh Tashallo, I of course accepted, as it is a high honor to represent my people. When I learned the ship carried a crew of cadets, I was insulted. Then, when we learned that humans would be coming aboard,” he worked his mouth and spat into a puddle. “I resigned myself to being one of the few adults aboard a flying daycare center.”

  “Surgun, you might want to work on giving compliments. I’m just sayin’, you know?”

  “However,” Jates continued as if he had not heard Dave. “I soon learned that humans, despite all their physical disadvantages, are fine warriors. Steadfast, determined, brave, clever, inventive, adaptable. The Ruhar have much to learn from your people. Our patrons have been at war so long, their doctrine has become inflexible. Here,” they had splashed through the last of the puddles and were near the edge of the meadow. “I will try walking on my own again.”

  Dave examined the ground ahead. “Ok. I’ll go ahead. We can’t afford to have you step in a hole we don’t see.”

  “Don’t you step in a hole either,” Jates growled. “No way am I carrying your sorry ass.”

  Dave led the way, immensely grateful to have the weight of Jates literally lifted from his shoulders. He unslung his rifle and checked it, then dug part of an energy bar out of a pocket. When they got into the forest, the ground was cluttered with underbrush and fallen twigs, but Jates could see where he was putting his feet. Dave bit off a chunk of compressed sawdust and chewed it without enthusiasm. “Oh, crap,” he whispered with disgust, taking his helmet off again.

  “What is the problem?” Jates prompted from behind, where the makeshift crutch was tangled in a thorny vine.

  “My helmet sensors think they’re picking up laserlink backscatter again,” Dave complained. He looked up. “Maybe it’s the sunlight coming down through the tree canopy? I’ll just turn the damned thing off, it’s not doing us-”

  “Shh,” Jates hissed, grabbing Dave’s arm. “That is twice your sensors picked up backscatter?”

  “Ah, more than that. It happened off and on when we came out into that meadow. I ignored it at first, why?”

  “Because,” the Surgun flattened himself against a tree and unslung his rifle, bringing the scope to one eye. “Maybe there is backscatter around us.”

  Oh shit, Dave thought as his blood turned to ice water. If someone else was using laserlink communications nearby, then they were seriously screwed. He followed the Surgun’s lead except Dave’s helmet was operational, so he dropped the visor to view the rifle’s targeting data in better detail. “I don’t see any- wait.” As he panned the rifle around, he thought he saw a shimmer next to a tree. “There might-”

  “Do not shoot, we are Verd-kris!” A voice rang out, as a tall warrior dropped his skinsuit’s chameleonware and he stop
ped blending into the background. “Lower your weapons.”

  “Whoa,” Dave noticed the Verd had her rifle pointed straight at his chest. More warriors appeared, some rising from the meadow behind them. He dipped the muzzle of his rifle toward the ground but kept it pointed in the unidentified lizard’s direction. “Verd-kris, huh?” He asked warily. “What unit?”

  “My unit,” a female voice spoke softly from behind him.

  Dave safed his rifle and slung it. Enemy Kristang might be disguised in Ruhar skinsuits, but a female wearing combat gear and carrying a rifle? She had to be Verd-kris. Not only would the Kristang never allow one of their females to carry a weapon, the Verd woman standing behind Jates was taller than Dave. The Kristang had genetically modified their females to be small, weak and submissive.

  “Velt,” Jates addressed the woman by her rank, now that the muted colors of the insignia were visible on her skinsuit. “I am Surgun Jates. This human is Sergeant Czajka.”

  “Velt Oolentz,” the woman’s faceplate swung up so her face was exposed. “Surgun, what are you doing out here, alone? Did your aircraft crash?”

  “No.” Jates gave a brief account of how they had been ambushed, including the fact that Dave Czajka had killed a Kristang in unarmed combat.

  Hearing that sent a murmur of admiring, and somewhat skeptical, talk among the Verds, who had gathered around Dave.

  “Is that true, human?” Oolentz looked in the soldier’s eye, gauging his reaction.

  Dave stiffened, standing tall as he could and raising his chin. The strangers had questioned Jates’s story, that got Dave pissed right away. “Happened just the way the Surgun said. That’s how I busted my thumb,” he held up the bandaged and splinted digit. His own eyes narrowed. “And it’s ‘Sergeant’, not ‘human’ to you, Velt.”

  The murmur after that remark was less than friendly. The Verd team numbered eight, unless more had not yet revealed themselves. Oolentz tilted her head. “You killed him with a knife, in self-defense?”

  “I killed him with a knife because that is all I had,” Dave insisted. “Believe me, if I had a rifle at the time, I would have used that instead.”

  “Ah,” the Velt shared a look with her fellows. “So, you killed him because it was your duty as a soldier.”

  “Well, yeah,” Dave admitted. “Plus, you know, he did seem like kind of an asshole.”

  Oolentz threw her head back and laughed uproariously, joined by the others. She thumped Dave on the back hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. “I approve of your fighting spirit, human.”

  “That’s,” Dave gasped. “Great.”

  “Unfortunately,” she turned to address Jates, as the higher-ranking member of the two. “We cannot bring you with us. This is a commando unit, we are returning from a strike against the enemy. I cannot delay our return for-”

  “Sergeant David Czajka is a Maverick,” Jates interrupted, pointing to a flap on Dave’s uniform top, and lifting the flap with a soft tearing sound like Velcro. The Mavericks unit symbol was exposed in all its colorful glory. “I am assigned to the Mavericks as liaison.”

  Dave smoothed the flap back down. He was self-conscious about that Mavericks patch, especially since he was now technically a contractor. He had not corrected Jates when he referred to Dave as a sergeant, partly because Dave had forgotten about his still-new status. “Yeah, but Colonel Perkins said that was a waste of time, so the Surgun here is responsible for training us in Verd-kris tactics. Listen, Velt, if you can’t bring us with you, can you point us in the right direction? Also, I need to send a message.” He knew Emily must be worried sick about him. Or, he hoped she was worried sick, because if she was alive, she would certainly be worried about him. He did not want to think about the alternative.

  Oolentz’s expression softened, and she glanced at the display on one forearm of her skinsuit. “You are that David Czajka?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know of any others in UNEF.”

  The murmuring among the commandos was distinctly friendlier. “Colonel Emily Perkins is your lover?” The Velt asked, apparently without any sense of embarrassment at a very personal question.

  “Uh,” Dave didn’t know what to say. Technically, they were lovers. Technically, she was not his commanding officer, now that Dave was no longer in the Army. Unit leader? Yes, he could say she was his unit leader.

  He was too late with a reply. Jates nodded once.

  “We know of the Mavericks, and Colonel Perkins,” Oolentz’s eyes were open wide.

  Of course she knew. Any Verd-kris who paid even casual attention to current events knew of the famous humans. All the Verds in the Legion certainly knew of the human who had dared challenge the Ruhar to give humans, and Verd-kris, a chance to prove their worth on the battlefield. Dave knew Emily was considered a hero by the Verds, not so much for her actions on Paradise and Camp Alpha, as for being the founder of the Alien Legion. Verd leaders had been asking, even begging, their Ruhar patrons for an opportunity to fight directly against the Kristang, but the Ruhar had ignored them for centuries, until Emily Perkins used her fifteen minutes of fame to push the issue. The opportunity she had won was, the Verd-kris agreed, a steaming pile, but it was way better than nothing.

  Oolentz turned to speak rapidly with Jates, and Dave could barely understand one word in five. He knew enough of the Kristang common language to get by, but over the centuries the Verd’s dialect had drifted far enough from standard that it was technically separate. On the infrequent occasions when Kristang and Verd-kris met, they had to speak a simplified pidgin to understand each other. It annoyed Dave that he wasn’t allowed to listen to the conversation, and he did not like the grim expression on Surgun Jates’s face. When the mostly one-way conversation ended, the Verd commando team turned away and Jates waited until they were past causal listening distance before speaking. “They have agreed we can accompany them, if we can keep up. They will not allow us to delay them.”

  “Well, hell,” Dave spat in exasperation. “That’s no good. Your leg is still gimpy and I’m a slow human, no way can we-”

  “They are issuing skinsuits to us.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was about to tell you that, before you felt the need to exercise your crumb-catcher.”

  “Right. Got it.”

  The Verd Surgun looked at him skeptically. “Listen, Czajka, if you’re going to miss my beefy arm over your shoulder keeping you warm, you can draw a picture of me on a pillow.”

  “No, that’s Ok,” Dave’s face reddened. “I sure won’t miss the smell,” he stuck out his tongue.

  “You are saying all of my kind smell foul, because we are lizards to you?”

  Dave feared he had crossed a line. UNEF emphasized the soldiers needed to avoid making ‘species-ist’ remarks that might offend their allies. “Nah, I’ve smelled plenty of lizards. None of them smell as ripe as you do right now.”

  Jates broke the tension by lifting one arm and sniffing. “I am forced to agree. However, I can assure you that your own scent is not exactly a field of roses.”

  Dave grinned and waved a hand. “Hey, I know what I smell like. When we get back to civilization, I want to burn these clothes. Uh,” he looked around the empty forest. “Where are they getting extra skinsuits from?”

  Jates pointed ahead with his rifle. “They have a combat transport spider.”

  “Ugh,” Dave shuddered instinctively. Spiders were all-terrain transport wagon-crawlers, capable of carrying heavy loads pretty much anywhere a person could walk. The closest translation of the Ruhar term for the devices was ‘mule’, but the first humans to see one instantly christened it a ‘spider’ despite the wagons having six rather than eight legs. “They brought a spider all the way with them?” He asked in surprise. The wagon-crawlers had powercells that covered the entire under surface of their cargo beds, but they were typically short-range devices. Dave recalled training with one, and being told it could be expected to travel no more than two hundre
d kilometers roundtrip.

  “Yes,” Jates gestured for Dave to sling his rifle and help the Surgun walk. The Verd commandos had already engaged their chameleonware and surged ahead, scouting the area. “They only brought the spider here, to stage their attack. It is drained of power and will be abandoned, until the fighting is over.”

  “Oh.” That brought another question to Dave’s mind. “Damn. How far did they walk to launch this attack?”

  “They set out from their base within an hour after the fighting broke out.”

  “Crap. Hell, then, they’ve been in the boonies as long as we have. I got another question. Can you run with that gimpy knee? Even in a skinsuit?” The sophisticated suit would detect its wearer’s awkward motions and compensate, but there was only so much the suit could do on its own.

  “I will,” Jates grunted. “Because I have to. We have missed too much of this fight already.”

  “Hey,” Dave groaned as they began walking up a hill. “I hate to give you a breaking news flash, but we don’t even know what the hell is going on around the rest of this planet.” Over the days they had been walking, they had seen flashes of light high in the sky, heard a couple aircraft fly by at high speed, and heard and felt the ‘crump’ of missiles or artillery striking the ground far away. Other than that, they had no idea what was happening.

  “There are two things we know, Czajka,” Jates sounded irritated at having to explain things.

  “We do?”

  “Comms are still being jammed, so we know the fighting isn’t over.”

  “Ok, yeah. What’s the other thing?”

  Jates flashed an evil grin. “There are a whole lot of lizards on this planet who need killing.”

  “Oh, fuck yes. Let’s get up this hill double-time.”

  There was a soft whine of electric motors, plus an intermittent screech of something damaged and still rotating, as a truck pulled up near the command tent. Perkins stepped out to see who the guard force had allowed through the picket line, it must be someone important. She tugged on her uniform blouse to straighten the dirty and wrinkled material, assuming her visitor must be a high-ranking Verd official she would have to report to.