by Becky Black
Shoot the Humans First
Becky Black
Copyright 2013 Becky Black
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Shoot the Humans First
Becky Black
Chapter 1
The lizards wanted to frag the lieutenant, which pissed me off, because I knew it meant they had to do me too. How is that fair? Did I get the unit lost halfway up a mountain and then pinned down by shellfire? No, I didn't. But they had to kill me too, otherwise I'd report they killed an officer and High Command would send a pointy letter to the lizard brass. Officers are expensive.
I could have slept, even with the shelling, but I made myself stay awake. Boots on, pack on, helmet on, rifle in my hands. And I watched the lizards sitting around the heaters and hissing at each other, flicking glances from their big yellow eyes at the lieutenant and me.
I smiled at them, like I was their mate.
"What you lads talking about?"
They looked at me for a long time. Most of them didn't speak Earth, so couldn't know what I'd just said anyway. Finally the corporal spoke.
"Females, Sergeant Jadeth." He hissed the S sounds like a snake.
Yeah, sure you are, boys.
The lieutenant didn't have any trouble staying awake. Everyone knows the lizards are touchy buggers and he'd got fifteen of their pals barbecued down in the valley two days earlier. Now he couldn't get the rest of them back to base. He should be scared. The scaly bastards would probably eat him. Most of them looked scrawny anyway. Probably only joined up to get regular meals.
Soon as it all kicked off I'd be gone. I've always been good at getting out from under right before the non-survivable shit hits. Skills honed from years of experience.
But the damn lieutenant nearly screwed that for me. Soon as one of them came at him with a knife the lieutenant grabbed me by the arm and shoved me in front of him. The knife glanced off my body armour, but I knew I wouldn't be so lucky next time.
The shell exploded just as I raised my rifle. It seemed like a couple of metres over our heads, though it was probably more like two hundred. Shrapnel rained down and the lizards scattered, screaming in weird, high shrieks that I'd still not got used to. I looked myself over and even though I'd felt shrapnel patter down on my helmet I hadn't got a scratch on me.
The lieutenant was a different story. A much gorier story.
No sense in pissing about here then. I took off like a blue streak, dodging the chunky bits of lizard and lieutenant that fouled the ground, I ran into the darkness, searching for cover. I engaged night vision mode on my helmet visor. The lizards didn't have that, but they had better natural night vision than humans, so I couldn't rely on the darkness to hide me.
They yelled a lot behind me and I tried to get my head around it. Never been much good with the languages. Were they pursuing me, or were they too busy trying to take care of their wounded?
I stopped and crouched behind a rock. After a moment I spotted them, two of them, coming after me. They moved around the rocks and stunted shrubs, but were just a bit clumsy compared to me. I'm trained to move around silent and invisible, leaving no trace. Unless I lay down and went to sleep and one of them tripped over me they wouldn't find me.
I knew they were after me for revenge now, not to cover up a murder they hadn't even managed to pull off. Right now they just wanted to stick their knives into some soft human flesh. I kept moving downhill. Things looked hot in the valley. I could see the flashes of fire fights and rockets from up here. But that meant I had a chance to hook up with a friendly unit, maybe even an all human unit, and get my sorry arse back to base. Out here for a week and I hadn't taken my boots off once.
A few minutes later I lost the lizards and breathed easier. I slowed my pace, wary of the treacherous ground underfoot. Loose screes of stone could give way under me any time and take me off down the mountain a lot faster than I'd gone up it.
We'd climbed up the damn thing because the lieutenant thought there was a pass over into the next valley. He'd been wrong wrong wrong and like a typical bloody officer he wouldn't admit it and kept us marching until we reached a dead end. A dead end, which just happened to be right under where two artillery positions had decided to start blasting shells at each other. The shelling cut off our retreat and we were in prime position to catch any that fell short.
Though I felt knackered my training told me to keep moving. Don't sleep in the open. Find cover. Find someplace safe, where you won't get your nodding head blown right off. I had to wonder if anywhere on this whole damn planet qualified. So I trudged on through the darkness. Way above me the shells kept on falling, and I wondered if any of my unit was still breathing.
The explosions were dull and muffled now, so I engaged the scanner mode on my visor and started watching out for a cave or even just an overhang in the rocks. I didn't want to get into the valley until first light. Less shelter down there and it would be hard to find a friendly unit in the dark. Besides I'd likely get myself shot if I approached at night without a password.
There. More an indent than a cave, a metre or so deep, and not much taller, but sheltered from the wind and dark as a tomb. Tomb? Oh, nice, Jadeth, real cheerful thought. I crawled into it, took off my pack and took my bedroll out. I folded that to sit on. The air wasn't too cold, but sitting against cold rock would leech the heat right of out my body.
I checked my watch. At least six hours until dawn. Six hours sleep would just about fix me up. I set an alarm on my watch, then drank some water and scarfed down half of an emergency combat ration bar. Checking my pack I found I only had three more of those. Shame I didn't have the time to snag the ones from the lieutenant's pack before I bugged out of there.
Time to rest. I put the rest of the bar away and settled down, leaning back against my pack. My rifle lay across my knees and my hand lay near the trigger. I can't even start to count the number of times I've slept in this position. All I know is it's too many in comparison to the times I've slept in a nice warm bed with a nice warm girl.
****
The light, or perhaps the quiet, woke me before the watch alarm did. Down in the valley smoke rose from several places, but the guns had stopped. So had the shelling up the mountain.
First things first. I ate the rest of that protein bar while I heated up a cupful of my water and made a brew. The tea helped me get my eyes all the way open and I dug in a pocket of my jacket for my Snapper. I could access maps on it, info about what I could eat around here. Might even manage to get the communications working, if I was outside of the jammers and maybe get in touch with some friendlies.
"Oh shit."
A piece of shrapnel stuck into the back of the Snapper, one sharp point poking right through the shattered screen inside the front cover. Without the Snapper in the way the shrapnel could have penetrated my armour. Well it had kept me from getting a chunk of metal in my belly, but on the other hand without the information stored in the Snapper I could be really screwed out here.
Okay, spilt milk and all, no sense crying over. I looked at the broken Snapper. Just useless weight now. But if I dumped it I'd end up getting charged for a new one. I already had enough bloody stoppages. Combat damage was the only excuse for getting a new one gratis, but you had to prove it. I shoved it back in my pocket. Then I thought for a second and put it in a different pocket.
I pulled my visor down, tapped it to put it in magnify mode and scanned the valley, looking for movement. I soon spotted some. A lot of movement,
possibly a column of troops moving through the vegetation. I'd aim for that and if they were friendlies, I was golden. If not I'd follow unseen and for damn sure they'd run into somebody on my side soon enough.
I loaded my kit into my pack, got up and settled it on my back. My rifle hung on its strap in front of me. The sun was already bright in a sky the colour of emeralds. I increased the level of shade on my helmet visor and left behind my rocky bolthole.
****
Well, Jadeth, I told myself as I sank down onto a rock, you're going to die. No two ways about it. A day and a night and another day wandering around this fucking valley. And did I mention days around here are thirty seven hours long? I'd not seen a sign of intelligent life in all that time. I'd heard it, plenty of it. Gunfire, rocket fire, but never managed to find any of the people, of whatever species, who were kicking up the fuss.
I'd found enough water to keep me going, but food proved trickier. I'd eaten all the combat ration bars before nightfall the day before. They told us that one of those things could fill a man up for a day, but, in my humble opinion, as one of the poor bloody unfortunates who had to eat the things, that was a load of bollocks. Or maybe, like my instructors used to say, I'm just a greedy bastard.
I'd racked my brain to remember what I could eat around here, plant wise. Mostly I just went by my old drill sergeant's advice.
"If it tastes crap it's probably okay, if it tastes good, prepare to die." Well that about fitted in with what I'd learnt of life in my thirty two years in it. That life liked to screw with you. It sure screwed with Sarge. Only man I know who died of cynicism. When someone pointed out he'd just walked onto a live firing range his last words were:
"Those amateurs can't hit the broadside of."
I'd actually reached the other side of the valley, a good sixty klicks from where I started and felt worn out, hungry, filthy, and pissed off. The last time I'd had this much fun I'd been having a big hunk of grenade shrapnel taken out of my leg by a hung-over field medic.
Well I had a couple of choices. Climb up this side of the valley and before it grew too dark try to get a fix on a better landmark than yet another BFR. Or make camp now and figure something out in the morning. I suspected I'd wandered way off from the combat zone and into some wilderness area nobody would fight over--there being no big world shortage of bugs and stunted bushes made entirely of thorns. Then again I'd seen people fight over bits of land not worth spitting on, so what the hell did I know? Left that sort of thinking to the officers, that's what the buggers are paid for.
I'd just about decided on the camping out option when I saw the light. A dim glow, a few miles off, along the lower slope of the valley side. I watched it for a minute and it stayed still. A lantern. I grinned like a maniac. A lantern meant a camp. Friendly or hostile, right now I didn't give a fuck. At least they'd feed me.
I climbed back onto my feet and engaged the night vision on the visor. It fritzed out a couple of times before it settled down. The batteries wanted replacing. I had a couple somewhere in my pack. That could wait though. I set off for that beautiful glow.
Chapter 2
I approached with caution, hungry but not suicidal. My night vision flared and I turned it off as I looked into a small clearing in the bushes. Several tents were set up, a few lanterns scattered around. Humans, six of them, moved around or sat on the ground. I sighed with relief at that. Humans, so I could assume probably friendlies. I wasn't one hundred percent sure though, because they were a weird looking bunch. Different uniforms, a mix of marines and star ship crew by the look of it and one of them actually in civvies. None of them showed any insignia.
Lying low behind a bush, on dry grass that prickled my face, I used the magnifier and checked out the tents. A heap of packs lay by one of them, all various sizes and issued by different units.
Could they be deserters? We didn't get many. What was the point? Where would you go? Just earn yourself a demotion and six months in the glasshouse.
Whoever they might be they had food, and the scent of the meat cooking over an open fire drove me mad as it drifted on the breeze. Might as well introduce myself and finagle a dinner invite.
I stood up, checked my rifle and approached the camp, watching for guards. Not a sign. Sloppy, very sloppy. Which told me this lot weren't engaged in the action going on in the area. Deserters, they had to be, on their way out of here. But where did the star ship crew come into that?
I walked into the camp unchallenged. As I emerged into the glow of the lanterns the guy in civvies saw me first. A skinny looking fella, with light brown hair worn too long for a soldier. He gasped and his jaw dropped. The others turned and jumped to their feet. I held my hands wide, well away from my rifle.
"Don't shoot, I'm friendly," I told them. I smiled. "You boys and girls are pretty slack. I shouldn't have got this close without somebody pointing a gun at me."
"You didn't."
The voice came from behind me and I spun, ducking, bringing up the rifle. Just on the edge of the camp a woman pointed a pistol at me. She wore a marine uniform. I got myself under control and straightened up, taking my hands away from the rifle again, letting it hang on its strap.
"Friendly," I said again.
"Identify yourself," the woman ordered. No insignia, just like the others, but the tone of her voice told me right away she was an officer.
"Staff Sergeant, 54th armoured infantry, serial number -"
"Name?" she interrupted me. I was surprised. Most officers didn't care about your name. "Hey you" being good enough for them.
"Jadeth."
She moved closer, looked me up and down for a while. I returned the favour. Five-six, lean and fit with short reddish-brown hair. Can't say I'd kick her out of bed.
"Maiga," she said. "Captain, Marine Corps. You look like shit, Sergeant."
I saluted as soon as she said "Captain", but she didn't return the salute. I glanced over my shoulder for a second. A couple of the others stood close behind me and I thought they had weapons out.
"My unit was hit two days ago, ma'am, all wiped out. I was assigned with a Lieutenant commanding a platoon of liza… er… Muaan Qacia. Got hit by--"
"I don't care." She waved a hand, cutting me off. "You want something to eat, Jadeth?"
"Very much, ma'am." Her attitude had me baffled, but I didn't care if she was barking mad, as long as she let me have a crack at that stew pot.
"Stop calling me ma'am." She holstered her gun and walked right past me to the rest of the group. I turned to see them all looking at me nervously. "Relax," she told them, "Just a stray. Give him some food." She looked around. "Where is he?"
Another marine, a young man, dark skinned and keen looking pointed at a tent. "Said he was tired."
"Thanks, Rish." She jerked a thumb back at where I stood like some kind of museum exhibit with the others goggling at me. "Look after our guest." She went to the tent he'd pointed out and crawled inside.
Rish came over to me. Another officer, I reckoned, reckoned they all were. Something about the way they looked at me. Scared. The only thing that scares a young officer more than the enemy is a sergeant. And these were young. Aside from Maiga and the bloke in civvies, none of them looked older than thirty,
I returned Rish's nervous smile with one that probably scared him even more. He wrinkled his nose when he got close to me. Well yeah, I'd not had a bath for a week, what the hell was I supposed to smell like? Maybe I could clean up here later, but right now if I didn't get at that food soon someone would pay.
"Sergeant, ah, sit here, won't you?"
I sat, shedding helmet and pack. A woman filled a bowl of stew and passed it to me along with a spoon. I gave her a big smile and she blushed. Cute piece, Middle Eastern looking, star ship crew. Rish handed me some bread. A bit stale, but right now I'd have eaten it even if it had green fur growing on it. I shut out the voices of the weirdo squad and just lost myself in the food, speaking only to ask for seconds. And thirds.
After I ate, I shook out my bedroll and lay on the ground, near the fire. One of the youngsters suggested I could use a tent but I waved that off. I liked the sky over my head. Liked to look at the stars and wonder which of them might be home.
****
I woke to dawn light casting a sickly green glow over the horizon. Looked like rain. I sat up and stretched. Real food and a proper kip definitely made a difference to my outlook. I still didn't know what the weirdo squad's game might be, but if they could help me get back to base then they could do whatever they liked.
It crossed my mind that they might be some sort of black ops unit out here up to mischief, but I dismissed that. Aside from Maiga, who seemed to have some clue, they came across too amateurish for that. I'd run into black ops and intelligence units before. They made you happy just to get away with your skin still on. This lot didn't inspire that kind of fear.
"Good morning, Sergeant."
I looked across the now low fire to see a man standing there watching me. He wore civilian clothes but he wasn't the same fella I'd seen last night. This one was taller, at least six feet. His blonde hair reached right down to his shoulders. Didn't see that very often.
"Coffee?" He offered me.
"You bet." I thought about adding "sir". He had the same officer vibe as the rest of them.
He poured some coffee from a pot that stood on the stones around the fire and handed me a cup. His hands looked soft, but had chipped and dirty nails. He smiled as he handed over the cup. His blue eyes looked amused about something.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome, Jadeth isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"My name's Ilyan. I'm pleased to meet you."
"Sure. You too." I sipped the coffee. No rank? I could believe this one was a full bird colonel, though maybe one who sat behind a desk. I watched him as he sat down across the fire from me. Who the hell are these people? Who the hell is this guy?
"Excuse me not sitting any closer, Jadeth." He smiled. "I hope I don't offend you when I say it's clear that you've been away from base for several days."
