by Tanya Huff
*Credit where credit is due, Boss.*
“Bruising. Minor lacerations across the back of your head. A piece of helmet went into your throat, just missed major blood vessels, and probably hit a few minor ones. Concussion. The helmet broke, but your head didn’t. If you weren’t Krai, you’d be dead.”
Werst watched Ganes finish inputting the data from his cuff into the anchor’s medical unit. Nothing much had hurt upon regaining consciousness this last time, so he assumed he’d been shot full of the painkillers in his pack.
“The piece of helmet is still in your throat. When Zang sprayed the wound, she sealed it in. My last field first aid course was a long time ago, but I believe that if I pull it out, the sealant will close behind it. Any chance you’ve got field experience to support that belief?”
He did. He mimicked a Human thumbs-up.
“Good. If I ignore species parameters and concentrate on repairing the blood vessels, make it structural rather than medical, there’s an outside chance I can use the autodoc to repair the damage to your throat.”
How far outside? Outside the room? Outside the anchor? Lieutenant Commander Ganes had been an engineer in Naval R&D. Dr. Ganes had gotten himself attached to an archaeological expedition as tech support—Werst was sure Ganes had a reason for the lateral move, he just didn’t care what it was. Neither career suggested extensive medical experience.
“The theory’s sound, and it should give you your voice back.”
Werst made a sound somewhere between a growl and a gurgle. His bonded’s name might be the last word he ever said. Well, fuk that.
“As long as you weren’t hoping for a second career in di’Taykan opera, I can get you operational. I can’t, however, replace the blood volume. You’ll have to be careful.”
Vague memories, recent memories of making a run for it, of throwing himself off the stretcher into a spinning room followed by the slow collapse of consciousness, supported the commander’s concern. But he gave himself bonus points for the attempt.
“I put Trembley on saline, but there’s nothing labeled Krai compatible and without Krai specs in the autodoc, I don’t know enough to adjust the content. We’ll have to replace blood volume the old-fashioned way with supplements and liquids taken orally.” Picking up another tube of sealant, Ganes leaned forward until his breath lapped against Werst’s ear. “You want my advice? When you can talk again, when Martin starts pumping you for information, keep pretending to be Ressk.”
Werst’s nostril ridges slammed shut.
Ganes lightly touched Werst’s bare shoulder. “It’s the name you gave Zhang. It’s not the name in the medical information I pulled off your cuff, but it is the name of your first contact. Martin seems to think he knows what Ressk can do. Werst will take him by surprise.”
Fuk taking him by surprise, Werst would take him by the throat. Cut off his air. Leave him barely alive enough to arrest.
“All right.” The commander took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s do this.”
When she stepped off the soft/hard flat/buckled bottom that had, back in the day, been pavement along the river bank, the water rose up above Torin’s waist. She held her KC in her right hand, finger flat against the trigger guard, bent arm at shoulder height, well aware that should anything attack, she’d have to depend on Freenim, Merinim, and Ressk on one side of the four meters of open water and Binti on the other. In other words, she was in no great danger.
Her uniform seals were holding and she could cover four meters of waist-deep water in . . .
“Sorry, Gunny.”
She’d lifted her weapon above her head before the chest-high wave of Bertecnic’s entry hit and decided not to waste her breath telling him not to do it again.
Her boot sank through silt and onto . . . The new surface had give. It had bounce. Rubber?
Natural rubber wasn’t high tech. It was possible the builders of the ruins had also built the water course, laying rubber to keep it confined where they . . .
The rubber moved. Rose. Twisted.
“Something touched my leg!” Water sloshed higher as Bertecnic reared.
Big enough to be under her foot and by his leg. Or there was more than one. “Prepare to fire!”
“I can’t see it!” Binti called.
Torin’s scanner continued to read everything and nothing.
The rubber jerked left. Torin shifted her weight to her other leg and stayed standing.
Twisted. Looked back . . .
. . . as a loop of something wrapped around Bertecnic’s lower body and dragged him down.
Bertecnic’s reddish brown fur was a little darker than the color of the water. The thing wrapped around him—thrashing body parts surfaced and disappeared again—matched exactly.
Feet swept out from under her, Torin curled her legs up, reaching for the knife in her boot sheath.
The Corps had underwater weapons; they shot a 120-millimeter-long, 5.65-millimeter-caliber steel bolt out of an unrifled barrel, had shit aim on dry land, and Torin wasn’t carrying one. Her KC could handle the dunking, but it wouldn’t fire, and an edge would do more against rubbery flesh than blunt force. She let her KC hang. When they got back to the station, she’d revisit the bayonet argument.
Her scanner pinged a proximity alert. No shit.
Arm around an undulating oval tube as wide as her torso, she drove her knife in, took a breath as they broke the surface, felt the tube jerk as a shot hit, and went under again, losing her grip on the knife.
Currents put Bertecnic’s fight to her left. She reached out, touched fur, touched a strap, touched the end of his machete—filled in Alamber’s response—drove her hand under the rubbery whatever-the-fuk was wrapped around his withers, felt something scrape against her arm, and grabbed the machete’s hilt.
Something rubbery and detached bounced off her chest. Bertecnic had taken a piece out with his claws.
She clamped her thighs tight enough to dimple the sides and used both hands to drive the machete through center mass. Jerked the blade to the right.
The thrashing turned her upside down. Sideways. Dragged her through the mud on the bottom. She grabbed for her dropped knife as the familiar hilt bounced off her cheek.
Slammed into solid muscle.
A big hand shoved her away.
She kept cutting.
When the heavy blade reached the edge, she hacked back through the other way.
The pieces separated.
The top piece jerked away. The piece her legs were around thrashed harder.
Sliding backward, her legs were gripped in turn by solid pincers.
She broke the surface again, sucked air through her teeth, twisted around as she went under, and thrust the machete through the segment behind her.
It stiffened. Either she’d hit something vital or it had finally realized it was in pieces. She kicked free as it sank. Her boots found the bottom and she straightened, blinking the water away from her eyes in time to see Bertecnic surge up into the air, swinging a clawed hand at a red-brown loop already missing triangular pieces.
He spat out a mouthful of water and gasped, “Did I hit it?”
“You did.” Her scanner continued to read nothing or everything. “Mashona, Bertecnic, Dutavar, Vertic—other side, single file, top speed!”
Blood, or whatever, in the water was never good.
“Ressk, Freenim, Merinim, lay down covering fire along both sides of them!”
She let the Polint’s bow wave help push her to shore, machete in one hand, knife in the other, her legs fighting the water with every step, the familiar sound of weapons fire a comfort.
She kept them moving until the ground only squelched.
Dragging her helmet off, Torin could hear Bertecnic still hacking up water and the rumble of Vertic’s voice. “Injuries?” she asked.
; “Nicks in his legs—already sealed,” Vertic reported. “A strap cut nearly all the way through . . .”
“Guts,” he coughed, “under claws.” More coughing. “Hate it.”
“. . . and he’ll be taking an antibiotic as soon as he can swallow. You?”
Her vision was blurry, but clearing. Her mouth tasted like she’d been chewing raw liver, but she’d managed to keep from drawing any liquid into her lungs. Torin took a drink from her canteen, and spat as she checked her cuff, fully aware adrenaline could hide any number of injuries. “I’m good.”
She heard a sound that might’ve been Craig exhaling. He had access to the medical feeds, but never entirely believed them.
“Uh, Gunny?” Binti pointed at the backs of her legs. “What about them?”
*Them?*
Definitely Craig that time.
The pincers attached to her calves, one set on her right leg, two on her left, had curved arms approximately five centimeters long, were a paler red brown than the body of the beast, and looked like horn more than bone or teeth. Over the course of her career in the Corps, Torin had been both gored and bitten and seen more bone than she’d ever needed to. The triangle of rubbery tissue that held the curved arms together had pulled free of flesh with edges so intact, its separation had to be part of the design. Fine serrations along the inner edge of the curves made it impossible to pull them off without damage.
Polint hide was tough if Bertecnic had nicks.
*Torin?*
“Pincers. They’re clamped to my calves, they haven’t penetrated the uniform.”
*They look like mouth parts.*
She had no idea which helmet feed he was using, but he was right. Her legs hadn’t been clamped near either end of the creature—the places where mouths usually ended up—but Torin had been around enough to know how variable life could be. She rose up on her toes and dropped down again. “They’re barely affecting my movement.” More bruising, but that was all.
*Take a minute and get rid of them anyway.*
“Planned to.” Had Craig been with them, he’d have ripped the pincers away by now, and not only because he was their field medic. She tossed Bertecnic his machete and passed her KC to Ressk.
“Field strip it, Gunny?”
Hands on her weapon that weren’t hers weighed against Ressk’s need for distraction while they paused the run to Werst. She trusted Ressk. The water had been foul. “Do it.” She slid the point of her knife into the small triangle under the pincer’s hinge. Unable to lever it off, she worked the flat of the blade up tight against her uniform and cut through the serrations moving the blade around toward her shin. Horn, or bone, or teeth—none of them up to Marine Corps steel.
Merinim dropped to a squat beside her, held up her own knife for Torin’s approval, then mirrored Torin’s cut under the pincer’s other arm.
Torin took a moment to consider an ex-enemy combatant wielding a sharp object against her body and said, “It’s trying to reestablish contact behind the blade.”
“I find it slightly concerning how a detached pincer with an agenda no longer surprises me.”
“Likewise. Cut quickly.”
When they’d cut all the way to the ends of the arms, they pressed new bruises into Torin’s leg prying the pincers off.
The first triangular piece of flesh hit the damp ground, the pincers snapped shut, and a clear liquid oozed from the severed serrated surfaces.
“Tox screen on Bertecnic, now!”
Freenim had the kit out before Torin finished speaking and an instant later jabbed the prongs into the heavy muscle of the Polint’s front leg.
“Insects snack on both of us,” she snapped, cutting off Bertecnic’s profane protest. “That raises the odds Humans and Polint are more susceptible to this world’s poisons.”
The tox screen finished before they’d pried the other two pincers off.
“Slight irregularities,” Freenim announced.
“Could just be Bertecnic,” Merinim muttered, forehead against Torin’s thigh as she worked her knife around.
“Administer a general antitoxin,” Vertic ordered. “Unless you had another plan, Gunny?”
“No, sir.” Torin recognized an adrenaline-fueled need to be in control—if only minimally—when she heard one. “Mashona; anything?”
Binti had remained a few meters behind, weapon pointed toward the watercourse. “Nothing, Gunny. No visible friends, no visible dinner companions. Don’t know what’s happening under the surface, but that’s not our problem.”
“Come in, then.”
“On my way. You know,” she continued, jogging toward them, the impact of her boots marked by small fountains of dark water, “I hit that thing half a dozen times during the fight. I put at least one round into every part that surfaced.”
“Segmented nervous system.” Torin swallowed both antibiotic and antitoxin. “Wouldn’t be the strangest thing we’ve seen.”
*I are once having seen a threesome that involved erotic cannibalism.*
*Pictures, or it didn’t happen.*
“Alamber . . .”
*What?*
After scanning her hair for life signs, Torin resettled her helmet, took back her KC, and ran a quick, involuntary check knowing Ressk would understand. “Dutavar, take point. Vertic, if you would, remain on our six. Bertecnic, thank you for the use of your blade. Middle of the line until we’re sure you’re not going to turn blue and fall over.”
“Your concern touches me, Gunny.”
“As it should.” She rolled her shoulders, settling her pack. “Let’s move; we’re racing the heat death of the universe here. Ressk, find us a path. Everyone else, watch out for those pincers as you pass.”
“Fukking snakes,” Binti muttered, falling in behind Torin’s left shoulder.
The creature had been more like a flatworm, if anything, but Torin let Binti have the last word. The profanity, at least, was accurate.
Werst curled his toes and rolled his shoulders, nostril ridges closing as his shoulder blades shifted and sent jagged lines of pain down his back. Then he swallowed. Took a deep breath. Let it out slowly . . .
Commander Ganes had expressive eyebrows.
He felt he should say something profound. Or not, if that’s how it went.
Then his stomach growled.
“Fuk, I’m hungry.”
The commander laughed—high-pitched and nervous, but Werst figured he couldn’t blame him for nerves all things considered—and crossed the infirmary, returning with a protein drink in each hand. “Now we know your voice works, we might as well find out if you leak.”
He didn’t. “Kill them to give these things a flavor?”
“I once watched a Krai eat the centerpiece at a diplomatic dinner. She was making a point, but . . .” The commander spread his hands.
“Doesn’t change the fact these taste like H’san sweat.”
“Fair enough. Any pain.”
“Not in my throat.” His voice sounded like he’d been chewing mortar rounds. The immediate area of the wound ached slightly. Nothing more. “Back hurts. So does my left heel. And left elbow.” His left side had probably hit bottom just before his right. “My right thigh keeps twitching.”
“You’ve got a bruise there as big as my palm.” Ganes flipped up the pale gray thermal blanket. “Another one overlapping your abdomen and the bottom of your right ribs. I expect it’s where Gayun made initial contact. You’re lucky you were close enough together the impact didn’t do more damage and that di’Taykan are light enough you weren’t crushed beneath him.”
Both bruises were an ugly purple against the mottled green skin. His back had to look worse. “Did Gayun . . . ?”
“He’s in stasis.”
Werst lifted his head far enough to stare between his feet at the pods. Two
were occupied. “The other?”
“Dzar. Harveer Arniz’s ancillary. She’s dead. Martin shot her to make a point.”
“Asshole.”
“Yurrisk won’t allow us to return her to the sun.”
“Commander Yurrisk is . . .” Werst discarded a few descriptions and returned to the vague, but accurate, “. . . broken.”
“That’s not an excuse to . . .”
Werst cut him off. “It’s a reason.”
“Not a good one.” Ganes leaned forward, his hand braced against the edge of the stretcher. Snatched it back when the padding adjusted for his weight and Werst hissed. “I don’t know how much contact Martin will allow between us once you’re mobile. You saw combat, I didn’t; I’ll back your play.”
“My play, sir?”
“None of that, I’m a civilian now.” He sounded defensive. “The mercenaries are inside the anchor with the hostages,” he continued, speaking quickly, quietly. “Your Strike Team needs to get inside. You’re their ace in the hole.”
Fuk him; he was right. That was the plan. Scratching the tight skin at the edge of a bruise, Werst checked his implant. “Is your implant working . . . ?” He bit off the sir, matched volume and speed to the commander. “I have power, but no signal, and I guarantee the VTA’s scanning for me.”
“Before the mercenaries landed, there was no one else dirtside with an implant, and I haven’t . . .” Ganes ducked his head.
Embarrassed, if Werst had to guess. “Hey, you’ve been busy. Try a two seven three.” Two seven three was a distress call; too tight to be stopped by an anchor and eight klicks of foliage and designed to be picked up by any Confederation CP. They’d change it at mission end; no way Parliament would give the Primacy a free pass to their communication system.
“It’s on. I have power.” Ganes tipped his head as he pushed his tongue against the inside of his jaw, visible movement a tell that he hadn’t used his implant much. “No signal and I should, at least, be able to pick up the carrier wave from the Ministry satellite.”
Not a lot of reasons Martin would disable tech potentially useful to him. Easier to disable Commander Ganes if he didn’t want the other man listening in. Werst rolled his shoulders, the pain enough to sharpen his focus. Ressk was so much better at figuring out this kind of shit. “They’ve put a block on the anchor.” Yeah, that sounded right. “Can’t block the whole planet, so they blocked where you are. Explains why Martin locked you in.”
