The Fleet-Book Four Sworn Allies

by David Drake (ed)

  Creeping from shelter, the quartermaster found there was a head-sized hole in the pirate’s chest. One of his shots must have set off a power unit on the Weasel’s harness. Abe noticed that once dead the alien didn’t look so much like a weasel. The fur around the hole in its chest was charred and black.

  To his surprise, Abe found that he felt nothing, no concern at all about killing his first enemy, not even any satisfaction of revenge for Agberea. There was just a numb sensation where he felt he should be feeling some sort of remorse over taking a sentient life. In a way that lack of regret frightened the quartermaster even more than the actual combat had.

  Then Abe noticed the warehouse had suddenly become almost unnaturally quiet. Over the roar of his racing heart, he could hear only the gliding whirr of the preprogrammed pickers filling orders, oblivious to the drama around them. There was no hint of the location of the two companions of the dead alien at Abe’s feet. It came to him that they could be anywhere. Even about to fire at him from cover, just as he had ambushed one of them. They might be waiting for the most opportune moment to shoot him. The quartermaster turned in a fair imitation of a firing crouch and traced the lines of the aisle with his pistol, realizing as he did that he had used up every erg of energy in it. Until charged, the only use the pistol would have was as a club. Glancing at his victim’s fangs and claws, Abe shuddered and backed away.

  Discarding the useless laser, Abe fought panic. His breath came in short, fast gulps. The need to run, or cower in a dark place, was nearly beyond control. With an effort, the quartermaster forced his breathing to slow. Reviewing the situation Abe could find only one advantage. He was on familiar ground, knowledgeable of the layout of frontier depots like this one. This was his territory, not theirs. The maze of passageways, bins, and shelving should hide him and confuse the Weasels until rescue arrived.

  The Khalian ship had been destroyed along with virtually every weapon on the planet. Beyond the depot, the planet was uninhabited. Both of the pirates knew that they were stranded and that if any of the message torps got through, there would be a squad of Marines from Bethesda here in less than three days. Abe knew that all he had to do was avoid the Khalians until help arrived.

  It could work. Abe tried very hard to convince himself that it would work. Thanks to the careful orderliness of the Corps, there wouldn’t be a single weapon in the general depot. He had been lucky once, but now he was unarmed and simply not trained to defeat two fang-and-claw-armed enemy aliens in hand-to-hand combat, even if he could get that close without being fried.

  There seemed to be no alternative except hiding, trying to stay awake and away from the Weasels. Still, that shouldn’t be too hard. One of the more unpleasant traditions of the Quartermaster Corps was to send cadets off into the shelves of a major depot without a map. Some wander, lost for hours, before they are “rescued.”

  Regaining some confidence, Abe Meier began to move cautiously down the depot’s large central aisle, moving deeper into the shelves and bins. Deciding this left him too exposed, he turned right and plunged into the labyrinth of supplies and shorter aisles somewhere near the F section. Noting its coding as he jogged past, the quartermaster paused long enough to open one of the bins and extract three days’ worth of field rations (fleet serial number F432642876D8, commonly called mystery meat). If this was going to be a long siege, he was going to get hungry.

  Captain Meier was weaving a devious course through the H rows (blankets, uniforms, and personal goods) when he heard a long, mournful howl. It lasted for nearly a minute, ululating higher until the sound was almost beyond his range of hearing, and then ending in a deep-throated growl. The effect of the sound echoing in the massive room was unnerving.

  Abe realized that the Khalians must have found their comrade’s body. For the first time the quartermaster felt regret that he had killed another sentient, and felt better for having done so. This was mixed with relief when he realized that now he knew where the others were.

  Then the anxious yipping began again. They were still dozens of rows distant and Abe waited, trying to judge where his pursuers were. Their location among the rows of bins was tricky to determine by sound alone. It was some time before Abe realized that the Khalians were following the exact route he had taken earlier.

  How?

  Did these aliens have some infrared tracking device? Did they carry ground scanners like those the Perdidan Rangers used to track criminals across their deserts? If so, why hadn’t the other Khalian carried one? And, if so, how were they moving so quickly? Such multi-sensor devices were invariably bulky. They had to be using some more primitive method.

  Abe knew he was leaving some sign, a trail that was visible only to the Weasels, but what? Abe could picture the Khalians loping down the aisles, expert trackers following him by barely visible scuff marks on the floor. Their small black eyes and long snouts pointed down, raising their heads occasionally to sniff the air. He considered trying to move by jumping from shelf to shelf, but discarded the idea as too noisy and slow.

  Running almost without a plan, the young officer dashed randomly through the openings and down aisles, diving between dozens of shelves. The sameness of the gray containers and red lettering he rushed past blurred everything together into a dull wall. Remembering a trick he had seen on an Omni program, twice Abe doubled back upon himself hoping to “confuse the trail.” After making a second loop, he waited trying to suck more of the polluted Arcolan air into his oxygen-starved lungs. Even this far into the room, he could now detect the sulfurous odor as the Arcolan atmosphere mixed with the purified air in the depot’s interior.

  Leaning against a fuel tank module (L84653445R6), Abe could tell from the tone of their cries when the Khalians discovered his first loop. Too winded to continue, he waited until they reached the second circle, hoping it might-discourage them. To his dismay, they hardly seemed to pause. He had lost ground to them, and even if he could outrun the shorter-legged Khalians, they seemed to have no limit to their endurance.

  Abe totally lost track of time as the chase continued. It seemed to go on for hours, but soon the quartermaster was too exhausted to care about time. It was all he could do to keep moving, weaving through the labyrinth of supplies, driven by nothing beyond his instinct for survival and the need to escape. For too long a time Abe became the hunted—too frightened to rest, too driven even to think, wasting his last resources in a hopeless attempt to elude his pursuers.

  Finally Abe tripped. Someone had left a power cable loose on a shield generator (serial number T649387D4 he still remembered through the haze caused by his exhaustion and panic). Abe’s foot got caught in the cable and he was sent sprawling onto the cold concrete floor. Only then did the captain stop to reexamine his plight.

  Lying there, again unable to catch his breath, the last human alive on Arcole could hear the Weasels drawing yet closer. He lost his glimmer of sanity to it renewed wave of fear. Fear then gave way to reckless courage. He would seek them out, jump one from above and use his greater size to break its neck. Then the sheer absurdity of his plan forced him to think. The Weasels had laser rifles, old models, but quite functional. Nor was he sure his greater size was enough to balance the Khalia’s natural weaponry. Suddenly the entire situation seemed ludicrous. Most likely this was all a very bad dream.

  It was almost funny.

  Hell’s polluted heights, it was funny.

  Abe caught himself after a short laugh. He was a quartermaster, not a Marine. He hadn’t been to an unarmed combat drill in years. Even after his recent space battles he simply wasn’t used to the strain of face-to-face combat. Absently he wondered if anyone ever did get used to it. Slowly it occurred to him that if he was going to survive he had to think his way out, as he had done before, and not attack suicidally or lose control of himself.

  Crawling to his feet, the captain tried to visualize the Khalians’ situation. They were stranded like h
imself. Unlike him, they had no hope for rescue. They had to be aware of the hopelessness of their situation. Unfortunately they seemed to be reacting by trying to gain one final revenge on the only remaining enemy, him. Since they didn’t seem to be considering surrender, negotiations were out.

  Being unarmed, and there being no weapons anywhere in the depot, it was safe to also eliminate fighting back. At least any direct attack. This seemed to leave only more running. But so far this had hardly been a successful ploy. He had been the rabbit and they were the hounds. Hounds that never lost his scent.

  Scent!

  Of course . . . those long snouts and large nasal cavities . . . the aliens had their own edge. That was how they were nullifying his superior knowledge of the depot’s layout. They didn’t have a mechanical tracer. They were tracking him by scent. Since all they were concerned with was finding him, they didn’t care what was on the shelves they passed by. Only that he had been there.

  It all made sense now, but then how could he have surprised the first pirate? Why hadn’t that Weasel known where Abe had been hiding? He had stood only meters away. The chemical residue that had stung Abe’s eyes must have also masked his scent. What he needed was to hide, not only from their eyes, but from their noses. Better yet, he had to turn the enemies’ strength to a weakness and then exploit that weakness. But how?

  Looking at the code on a nearby bin, Abe determined he was in the U section, ships hull plating, and was dangerously near to being trapped against the back wall of the warehouse. Nothing of use here. The quartermaster, his brain flushed with adrenaline, ran a fast mental inventory of the fifteen thousand standard items stored in a field depot. At ship’s stores/paint (Q97492847S45), he found what was needed. Paint had made him a hero, even could be said to have indirectly taken him from behind a desk and put him here. Now a very special kind of paint was going to save him again . . . he hoped.

  With over a thousand years of unbroken service the Fleet had developed many traditions. Among these was to paint geometric designs in the color of “your” admiral on the side of all ships he commanded. It had been centuries since ships had fought within visual range but the tradition had persisted. Since admirals most often took over command in either orbit, or deep space, this required using a paint that could be spread in a vacuum. Ordinary paints would neither apply nor adhere in the cold emptiness of space. The solution had been to develop a paint that was so acidic it slightly etched the hull, and to combine this with oils that boiled off slowly enough to allow the pigments to set on the hull.

  Q-slop, or just clop, as the vacuum paint was normally referred to, was an exotic mixture of several ingredients that had only one thing in common. They all stank. In vacuum the caustic brew’s odor was of no concern. But no one who ever opened a can while in an atmosphere ever forgot the smell. Abe had heard Marines liken it to a combination of long-dead body and methane. Anyone accidentally opening a can inside a ship trapped in FTL was likely to find himself in the brig. The accepted procedure when a can was breached during sub-light was to suit up and open the entire ship to vacuum. This invariably caused some minor damage, but was considered preferable to living with the odor. Even an ounce of the mixture was potent enough to contaminate an entire cruiser. Abe had gotten a whiff of the stuff once, during an academy prank; it had been enough.

  Working his way back past the Khalians, Abe found the Q section. Even better he found that not only were there hundreds of cans of clop in neat rows, but also four 1,000-liter vats full of clop in each of the primary colors and white.

  Even inside the sealed and glass-lined vats, the odor of clop was noticeable. For a short time, out of reflex, Abe tried to calculate the minimum quantity required to fill the depot with odor. A quartermaster doesn’t waste material that might be needed later. Then the yips of the approaching, Khalians reminded him of his plight. Reluctantly the quartermaster opened the drains on all four tanks and hurried away.

  People are often described as howling with pain, but Abe never realized what that phrase could mean until he heard the howls of his large-nosed pursuers when the odor of clop reached them. To a human, nearby explosions, blinding lights, and sirens combined with itching powder might have had the same effect.

  In the next five hours Abe opened six more tanks of other noxious chemicals, carefully noting the type and quantity of each so he could later complete a TR-564 Emergency Field Non-Standard Use Requisition. Two of these tanks contained carbon tet (SE632874523) and shuttle fuel (CF83475329-4). Their contents were followed onto the floor by three hundred ten-liter cans of gefilte fish (FY4857958453H2) from the Perdidan ethnic food stores. The quartermaster completed his efforts by using flares to set fire to two adjoining bins full of sulfur and potash (by this time Abe was too miserable to even read the serial numbers, much less remember them). This malodorous mixture filled the entire depot with an oily gray cloud of smoke that was itself augmented by Arcole’s already sulfurous atmosphere that had continued to pour into the depot through the open door. Carefully, encouraged by the idea of comparatively clear air, the quartermaster worked his way for the third time toward the front of the depot.

  It took almost an hour to get to the offices at the front of the building. By the time he reached them, Abe was miserable. He was tempted to court-martial Spellmen when he found no masks in the filter locker, though it was hardly surprising they had used up the disposable masks on Arcole. Then he remembered that Spellmen, Agberea, and the others were dead. With this thought he started yet another fire, filling the front of the warehouse with the odor of burning fertilizer. It was soon hard for him to breathe, even through a makeshift mask he had made from a bolt of uniform cloth (U-342443876S7). Still Abe grinned, knowing what it must be like for the Weasels.

  Near the entrance the air was less foul. For a while Abe hid in the records room, then realized that since it had only one entrance, he would be trapped if the Khalians entered. Venturing back out into the smoke, Abe nearly stumbled on a fist-sized com module. Rounding the corner, he saw an entire bin of these had spilled and remembered having heard them fall hours earlier. The quartermaster examined several of the self-contained communications units. They were tough, designed for use in combat. Over half were broken, but several dozen appeared to be functional.

  Almost smiling under his mask, the Fleet officer grabbed a handful and crept back into the heart of the depot.

  It wasn’t hard to locate the Khalians. Their yipping had stopped after he had opened the clop tanks. Once the howls faded, Abe was able to locate the Khalians by the sound of their gagging and retching. After a while he realized that not only were they no longer following him, but they were wandering in circles, lost. From a safe distance Abe watched; occasionally the Weasels fired at shadows, but never close to where the quartermaster was hiding. Every time he moved, Abe left behind another com unit set to receive at maximum volume on one of their ten standard frequencies.

  Occasionally, just to keep things lively, Abe also activated one of the auto pickers. He was careful to enter fake requisitions that would send the half-ton robots skittering allover the building for hours. Soon ten of the machines were all cheerfully ignoring the chaos around them while gently lifting parts from one bin and placing these same items in piles along the back wall of the depot. Abe noticed one, then another, had a scorched spot where it must have been fired on by one of the Khalians.

  Three hours later, the captain was back near the entrance. Smiling, he began reciting Kipling into the com module he held close to his mouth. As he spoke the quartermaster slowly rotated the dial, causing his voice to skip between the over fifty units he had hidden in bins and behind boxes. Several laser bursts answered the sound, and eventually one of the Weasels actually managed a frustrated howl.

  Abe’s eyes were still watering and occasionally he had to stop talking while a choking cough passed. His mouth felt like it was full of sand and the officer’s brain had long ago b
egun to ignore the frantic messages it was receiving from his olfactory nerve. Abe had tried taking a bite of the field rations, and it had tasted awful. Still, Abraham Meier, Fleet officer, quartermaster, and former Khalian prey found he was enjoying himself. So he began to sing. When this was answered by yet another Khalian howl, all he could think of was “everybody is a critic.” So he sang that song too.

  Ten hours later, crouching behind a pile of communications terminals (A436438746T3), Abe watched as the two clop-stained, half-blind Khalians stumbled out through the depot’s entrance. Only one had retained its weapon, a large laser rifle and that it dragged by the barrel. This same pirate also appeared to be leading the other Weasel, which was moaning and pawing at its eyes.

  The quartermaster couldn’t help emitting a hoarse laugh. Partially he laughed with relief, in part because of the contrast between “his” two Weasels and the dreaded Khalian pirates, and partly out of a bitter revenge for a lost friend. The Weasel with the rifle hesitated, tensing at the sound; it turned and glanced back inside the depot and wiped at its eyes. The alien seemed to be considering going back in. Flipping through the dial of his com unit, Abe laughed again. The sound rattled back from a dozen directions.

  From behind the terminals Abe watched as the Weasel squinted back into the smoke- and odor-filled depot. He chuckled again, more quietly, when the pirate simply let go of its rifle, turned, and walked away. Hurrying to the door, Abe grabbed the rifle. The power-pack was discharged, useless. Letting it drop, he watched them stumble away. They never even looked back.

  Abe then dragged a desk and a file cabinet outside of the entrance to the stinking warehouse. With any luck, Abe hoped to have the paperwork cleared up before the rescue ship landed.

  Rules of Command

  23.677.4Cv12

  Civilian/Irregulars/Personnel