Sudden movement on his HUD made him jerk his head to the left. What he saw was too brief a glance for everything to register immediately, but it was enough to make him take cover. He was able to recall nearly all of what he’d seen in that brief flash as he reported to Sergeant Williams: a smallish, nearly naked man with saffron skin, and a tank arrangement on his back. A hose led from the tanks to a device held in one hand. When the man went underwater, slits seemed to open on his sides, and gouts of air boiled out of them. He had barely shown in infrared.
Belinski looked along the stream, in the direction the man-creature had swum. He saw at least five more of them. All completely submerged. All nearly naked. All wearing tanks with hoses leading to handheld devices. All with slits pulsing on their sides. All nearly invisible in infrared.
CHAPTER
* * *
TWENTY-SEVEN
Along the Raiders’ Back Trail, at the Streamside near the Rebetadika Homestead, Three Hundred Kilometers Southeast of Sky City, Haulover
The Skinks
The Leader swam against the current as rapidly as he could. As he passed each Fighter, he gripped the Fighter’s arm and twisted him toward where he’d sensed the Earthmen; he turned half to the near bank, the others toward the far bank. Finally, he reached the Master and told him what he’d sensed but not seen.
The Master ordered the Leader to continue passing the word along the line of Fighters then headed downstream and began organizing the Fighters there to attack, or counterattack, the Earthman Marines. He wouldn’t have had to reorganize his Fighters had the Marines only come along one side of the stream as he’d expected them to. Did that mean there were many more than the four or five Earthmen he’d expected? The Master and four Fighters were soon joined by three more Fighters and one Leader. The Master placed them.
The Master lay on the streambed and looked to the banks on both sides. But the ripples on the water’s surface broke up the refracted image too much and he wasn’t able to make out the Earthman Marines he knew must be there. Not that he had expected to see them with his eyes.
The Leader who had sensed the approaching Earthman Marines, and the remaining two Fighters, left the stream on its left bank and crept forward to determine if there was an enemy force on that side, or only one enemy. If there was only one Marine, they were to capture him while the Master and the rest of the squad dealt with the Earthmen along the right bank.
The Marines
“Down!” Sergeant Williams ordered when Corporal Belinski reported the strange people in the stream.
Lance Corporal Skripska faced out from the stream; his area of responsibility was the squad’s left flank and rear. Lance Corporal Rudd, with the squad’s sole blaster, watched the entire front, though he paid particular attention to the stream. Williams rolled to his right when he went down, almost to the lip of the bank; he wanted to see what Corporal Belinski had spotted but he was at too acute an angle to see through the reflections on the water’s surface.
“Tell me again, Harv,” Williams said when he was unable to see anything.
Belinski had only gone to a knee when Williams gave the “Down!” order; he knew he wouldn’t be able to see into the water if he went prone. His vision was somewhat broken anyway because of the acute angle from which he was now observing.
“They moved,” he reported. “I see five, make that six—no, seven—of them. They’re lying across the bottom of the stream now, facing in our direction. None are looking directly at any of us.” Belinski couldn’t see the other members of the squad from where he was, but he had them on his HUD.
“They’re completely submerged?” Williams asked.
“That’s an affirmative, honcho. I don’t see anything that looks like a breathing apparatus. I’d say those are gill slits on their sides, and they’re breathing water.”
“And they aren’t doing anything, just lying there?”
“That and holding those nozzle things like they’re weapons.”
“Buddha’s Blue Balls,” Williams swore to himself. These had to be the raiders, but this was strange, them being underwater like that. What should he do next? He wasn’t bothered by the fact that his Marines were outnumbered—and probably out-gunned, if those tank-fed nozzles were weapons. The enemy didn’t have infra goggles or screens to see them by, so they wouldn’t know exactly where the Marines were to fire at them, while the Marines could see their opponents. No, the problem he faced was, the raiders—and he was sure now that that must be who these people in the water were—hadn’t taken any overt action yet. Damn, but he needed the string-of-pearls, or some sort of secure satellite comm support. Without it, he couldn’t communicate privately with third squad or Ensign Daly—the Haulover commsat only allowed for open communications.
Well, he was a Force Recon squad leader; he was supposed to be able to think on his feet and make decisions that could change the course of a war, or even decide the fate of an entire world.
Now, how could he communicate with someone who was underwater, and was probably armed, and was likely to shoot him if he exposed himself to open communications?
“Harv,” he said, “maintain and let me know if anybody moves.”
“Aye aye,” Belinski answered.
The Skinks
The Leader and the two Fighters assigned to go with him used the cover of a recently broken branch that trailed into the stream to haul themselves out of the water and clear and close their gill slits. A few abdominal pumps, combined with sharp shoulder shrugs, reinflated their lungs, and they resumed breathing air. They set out at a trot.
The Leader was well trained, and skilled at his job. He led his two Fighters two hundred meters into the thin woods before turning in the downstream direction. Along the way, he utilized every bit of cover and concealment available so that any Earthman Marines in his path wouldn’t see him before he could sense them. He led the way as a Leader should and frequently looked back at his Fighters to make sure they were also utilizing every bit of cover and concealment available to them. Even doing everything they did to avoid detection, the three made good time. That didn’t stop the Leader from wishing they were wearing their uniforms; the dun-colored uniforms blended better with the ground between the trees and bushes than their saffron skin did and would have allowed them greater speed. But he didn’t wish it too hard; he had to go with what he had. Besides, naked sides gave his electric field sensors greater sensitivity than they’d have under his uniform shirt.
Two hundred meters from the stream, they’d sensed no Earthmen, nor any animate life larger than a medium-size dog. When they didn’t encounter any Earthmen after going downstream a hundred meters, the Leader turned toward the stream where he’d sensed the Earthman Marine on the stream bank.
The Marines
Corporal Belinski was getting very edgy. He knew those people lying on the bottom of the streambed had to be breathing somehow. They couldn’t be breathing water; those opening and closing slits along their sides had to be an optical illusion caused by the distortion of refraction and movement in the water. But how were they breathing? The tanks on their backs didn’t seem to have any connection to the face masks the men weren’t wearing to begin with. Nor were there bubbles rising from them; surely rebreathers would be visible. Were they lying on their breathing apparatuses? The first one Belinski had seen, the one lying half above the water on the opposite bank, had rolled over, exposing his front before he completely submerged. Belinski hadn’t seen anything on the strange man’s chest.
All right, all right, Belinski told himself, his apparatus was waiting for him in the water. Had they somehow managed to get their hands on Confederation Marine chameleon material?
he wondered. It wasn’t common for unauthorized people to get hold of chameleons. Rare, but not unheard of. Yeah, that must be it, their breathing apparatuses must be chameleoned. Nonetheless, it was unnerving to look at those odd people in the water, completely submerged, without any evident way to breathe.
> Belinski was so intent on the strange men in the water that he briefly let his attention stray from his surroundings. A sudden shriek from his motion detector sent him diving forward and to his right—the shriek meant that a largish body was moving within five meters of his position. The only largish bodies in the vicinity of the Rebetadika homestead were people.
Belinski hit the ground, rolled away into a sitting position, and turned to face his rear; the muzzle of his hand blaster tracked with his eyes.
The Skinks
The Leader came up short. He’d detected the electrical emanations little more than twenty meters earlier, but movement, the movement of things growing on the ground, movement that looked like the body of a large man impacting grasses, weeds, twigs, bare ground, hitting and rolling away, and accompanied by the sounds of a man jumping to the ground and rolling away, told him that he’d already reached the Earthman Marine whose position he sought. He didn’t waste time wondering how he had had gotten so close to the Earthman before detecting him. He shrilled an order, and his two Fighters sped with him to the place where he thought the Earthman was.
There was a sudden blaze of fire from the Earthman’s position, and the Leader joined his ancestors.
The Marines
Corporal Belinski would later be able to reconstruct with a high degree of accuracy what he saw when he turned around, but little of it immediately registered on his conscious mind. What did immediately register was three smallish men, clad only in loincloths, carrying nozzles in their hands that were attached by a hose to tanks on their backs. The nozzles were pointed in his direction, but not directly at him—they shouldn’t have been pointed directly at him since he was effectively invisible in his chameleons. The one in the middle screamed something, and the three charged. Belinski didn’t hesitate, but fired his hand blaster at the one who had shouted the order to charge.
He blinked, momentarily stunned, when the man he’d shot flared up with a whoosh of flame.
He shook off the shock at seeing the man flame up quickly, but the other two were so close that they were on him before he could shift his aim to one of them. One landed clumsily across Belinski’s legs then clambered up to grope for and find his left arm. The other hit hard on the right side of the Marine’s chest, knocking him back. That one’s left hand grappled with Belinski’s right. He opened his mouth wide, exposing sharply pointed teeth, and bit down hard on Belinski’s arm.
Belinski screamed, as much in surprise as from pain. He struggled. He was much bigger than his assailants; if they’d been standing, the two nearly naked men would have barely reached his shoulder. But they were strong for their size. The Marine tried to fling off the one pinning his left arm, but the man had his arm bent at an angle where he had little leverage, and Belinski couldn’t shake him. Belinski tried to turn the hand holding his hand blaster to shoot at the one biting him, but that man shook his head violently, tearing the muscles and nerves in Belinski’s arm and scraping the bones, forcing his hand to open and drop his weapon. With his free hand the man found Belinski’s abdomen and slammed his fist into the Marine’s solar plexus.
Reflexively trying to cover his middle, Belinski lifted his shoulders off the ground and raised his arms almost to the vertical before another blow to his solar plexus almost blacked him out. The two attackers let go and, moving with almost incredible speed, flipped him over, bound his hands and feet, and wrenched off his helmet. They looked around for their Leader, and saw the scorch mark on the ground where he had flared up. Uncertain what to do next without someone telling them what to do, they looked at each other. Then one remembered the overriding orders for the raiders and growled them at the other, who nodded.
Crouching low, they picked Belinski up and raced away, carrying him away from the stream.
The Skinks
The Master saw the sudden movement when the Leader and his two Fighters attacked the Earthman Marine above the left bank of the stream. He gargled an order, and the seven Fighters arrayed to his front sprang up from their ready positions on the streambed and brought their weapons to bear on the right bank. They began firing without waiting for further orders, or taking the time to reinflate their lungs. Greenish streamers of a thick fluid arched out of their nozzles, spattering everywhere they struck. At first their shots were random, as they hadn’t yet detected the locations of the Marines above the stream. Then they began to sense the electrical emanations, and aimed their shots. But the shots all went long. By then, two of the seven were gone, flared into their constituent molecules and elements when they were hit by plasma bolts.
The Master hadn’t risen from the water with his Fighters; he was confident that they would quickly panic the Earthman Marines so he could then lead them to capture more than the one on the left bank. But by the time he saw that the Earthmen weren’t where his Fighters were shooting, the enemies’ plasma bolts were coming much closer. He darted to the cover of the right bank and rose up as he cleared his gills and inflated his lungs. He barked out orders to the Fighters to adjust their aim. But his orders came only in time to reach his sole remaining Fighter, who didn’t live long enough to make the adjustment before a plasma bolt flashed him.
Realizing that he was alone except for the remaining Leader, and confident that the other Leader and the two Fighters with him had captured the Earthman Marine on the left bank, the Master dove back underwater and began swiming upstream as rapidly as he could, trailing the remaining Leader.
But the water was shallow, and an Earthman Marine saw him and sent him to join his dead Fighters.
The Marines
Sergeant Williams saw the flash on the opposite bank, but before he could turn around to see what was happening with Corporal Belinski, he heard the whoosh-sizzle of Lance Corporal Rudd’s blaster, and another whoosh from the stream ahead of him. He looked in time to see a dying flare above the water and six smallish, nearly naked men standing chest deep in the water, pointing nozzles in the direction of the Marines. Williams snapped off a bolt from his hand blaster, and his eyes popped when his target flared up. When the flare died down, he saw no one there, nor in the water below, where the flames had licked. He rolled to dodge a streamer of greenish fluid coming from one of the nozzles, needlessly, as it turned out, since the streamer sailed above him to splatter on the ground about twenty meters to his rear. He didn’t know what the fluid was, except that it had to be a weapon. He fired again just after Rudd took a second shot and saw two more brief pillars of fire leap from the surface of the water. Lance Corporal Skripska moved when the firing started, and now flared another of the enemy. A harshly shouted order came from out of sight under the bank an instant before Rudd took out the final standing man.
Williams heard a splash from where the shout had come, then waited a few seconds to see if anybody else jumped out of the water before leaping to his feet and running to where he’d heard the splash. From his feet, he saw into the water better than he had lying down, and spotted another one of the small men swiming rapidly away. He fired at it, but the refraction caused him to miss. Rudd and Skripska also saw the fleeing swimmer, and both fired repeatedly, until one of their bolts connected and fire briefly boiled underwater.
Williams was stunned by the brief firefight, but now wasn’t the time to analyze it. “Skripska,” he ordered, “secure the left flank and rear. Rudd, watch the front. Keep sharp watch for more of them. Belinski, sound off. . . . Harv, sound off!”
But Corporal Belinski didn’t reply.
“Listen up,” Williams said to his two remaining Marines, “something happened to Harv. Both of you get to the bank. On my order, we get across as fast as we can. If nobody shoots at us we’ll go to Harv. Sound off when you’re in position.”
In less than half a minute the three Marines were ready to cross the stream. In not much longer they were on its other side, heading toward where Belinski had been. They saw signs of the struggle, including a spray of blood, and a scorch mark on the ground a few meters away. They fou
nd Belinski’s helmet and hand blaster. But Belinski himself wasn’t there. And he was too far away for Williams’s site map to pick him up.
Williams swore. That was another reason they needed the string-of-pearls; the string-of-pearls could pick up Belinski’s ID bracelet and tell them exactly where the missing Marine was.
But a trail of blood drops pointed the way from the stream. They could follow it and they did, at a fast trot.
The footprints told the Marines they were chasing two small men. And unless those men were very dense, they were carrying a heavy burden. Burdened or not, the footprints of the two small men were set far enough apart to show that they were running.
Fifty meters from the water, the trail turned upstream.
“Step it out,” Williams ordered, and picked up the pace. He didn’t think the small men could maintain their current speed for long, not carrying ninety-five kilos or more of Marine and gear. But if they were going that fast they must be meeting someone—maybe a whole bunch of someones. Williams wanted to catch them before they did.
Recoil Page 25
