by Dan Cragg
Williams nodded. “I’ve always believed the same thing. But as sure as”—he was about to say “as sure as Muhammad has pointy teeth,” but remembered the prisoner’s pointed teeth, and changed it to—“as sure as Buddha has hairy blue balls, that’s exactly what they did today. At least ten of them vaporized in huge gouts of flame when they were shot. And two of them left scorch marks on the ground.”
“Why only two if you flamed ten of them?” Ellis asked.
Williams snorted. “Because eight of them were in the water when we shot them, that’s why,” he said. Ellis had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Speaking of people doing strange things, what’s the prisoner doing?” Daly asked. Kindy glanced at his minnie feed, as he’d done occasionally since leaving the secure room. “Struggling against his bonds. The same as he’s been doing ever since we left him alone. Doesn’t look like he’s managed to loosen anything, though.”
“Let’s go take a look at him,” Daly said. The prisoner stopped struggling when the Marines crowded into the small room; he twisted his head around and glared at them. Kindy went directly to him to check the bindings. The prisoner hadn’t managed to budge any of them.
“Remove his gag,” Daly said. “I want to talk to him.”
“Careful, he bites,” Williams added. Kindy looked curiously at Williams; he hadn’t seen the deep gouges on Belinski’s arm. Still, he stood behind the prisoner to remove the gag, and stepped back as soon as he had. Even at that, the prisoner didn’t miss by much when he twisted his head around to bite.
“Damn!” Jaschke exclaimed. “Did you catch the teeth on him?”
“Yeah, I did,” Belinski said drily.
“Oh, right.”
“On premodern Earth, some warlike, primitive peoples filed their teeth,” Daly explained. “Maybe he’s from a world where people wanted to revert to that kind of culture.”
When he heard that, Kindy got busy with his comp. After a moment he said, “Sorry, boss. According to my database, none of the couple hundred human worlds were settled by people who wanted to file their teeth.”
“Where are you from?” Daly asked the prisoner, moving to where the small man wouldn’t have to twist around to see him. The prisoner growled something unintelligible and punctuated whatever it was he said by spitting at the Marine officer. Daly calmly looked at the spittle that marked the chest of his shirt, then quickly stepped forward and slapped the prisoner across the face. He pulled back just in time to keep from getting bitten. Daly shook his head. “That’s a no-no, mister. Don’t bite the hand that decides when you get fed. I’m Ensign Jak Daly, Fourth Force Recon Company, Confederation Marine Corps. What’s your name?”
The prisoner growled again but didn’t spit this time; maybe he had learned not to bite the hand that . . .
“This interrogation will go a lot easier if you speak Standard English,” Daly continued. “I certainly don’t understand the language you’re using.” He looked at the other Marines. “Do any of you recognize his language?” They all shook their heads. “Interesting. In this group, I imagine we’d recognize almost every language in common use in the Confederation.” He gave the prisoner a hard look. “And I believe everybody in the Confederation speaks at least some Standard English. So stop playing language games and switch to a language we can all understand.”
The prisoner looked at him blankly for a moment, then growled a few syllables that none of the Marines could recognize. Skripska felt a rumbling in his midsection. “I’m beginning to feel a bit hungry,” he said. “Do you think he is too?”
Daly stared at the prisoner for a moment. “Could be,” he said. “Did you secure him so he can have a hand free to feed himself without being able to undo his bonds?”
“Affirmative,” Kindy said.
“Well, it’s about that time. Whose turn is it in the kitchen?”
Daly didn’t need to ask, he knew the rotation; he was looking for a reaction from the prisoner, but didn’t get one.
“Let’s go,” Jaschke said to Ellis. Then to Williams: “What do you think he likes to eat?”
Williams shrugged. “Those guys spent a lot of time in the water. Maybe he likes fish.”
“Fish it is, then,” Daly ordered. “Make everything something that can be eaten with fingers; I don’t want to give him a knife or a fork.” When Jaschke and Ellis left to prepare their dinner, he said, “I want to take a look at that weapon.”
“I’ll get it,” Skripska said, and left the room. He poked his head back in a moment later. “You don’t want to look at it in front of him, do you?”
“No. Take it to the front room. I’ll join you in a minute.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Daly stood looking at the loinclothed man for a moment then tapped his own chest and said, “Daly.” He tapped a finger on Kindy’s chest and said, “Kindy.” Pointed at Williams and said,
“Williams.” And so on with the other Marines still in the room, then finished by pointing at the prisoner. The small man had followed the introductions with slowly growing understanding. When Daly pointed at him, he growled two syllables.
“Say it again? Daly,” he said, pointing at himself, then at the prisoner.
The same two syllables, but slower this time. They sounded like “Buben.”
“Buben? Your name is Buben?”
The prisoner nodded. “Buben, Buben,” he growled.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Daly said, but he wondered just how far they could get if the prisoner really didn’t understand Standard English.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Pistol Range, Fort Keystone, Arsenault The day of the match between the teams of the Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion and First Battalion, Third Regiment, dawned bright and hot. At zero-seven hours it was already 33.8 degrees Celsius in the shade. Most of the personnel of both battalions were present, as well as guests from other units in Task Force Aguinaldo. All in all, it was a huge crowd.
“Let’s get this over before noon or we’ll all be down with heatstroke,” General Aguinaldo quipped as he took a seat in the stands erected for the occasion. Sitting immediately to his right was Major General Chester Miles, the commanding general of the infantry division from Hancock’s World, and on General Miles’s right was Lieutenant Colonel Pommie Myers, the challenger; on Aguinaldo’s left sat Colonel Raggel, the challenged. From the beginning Myers found it difficult to keep his mouth shut, so anxious was he to impress the two general officers. At one point he leaned forward and shouted across the two generals, “Hey, Raggel! I like my steaks medium rare, hahaha.”
Looking over the broad expanse of the thousand-meter range visible from the bleachers, General Aguinaldo shook his head; the heat waves were shimmering in the near distance, presaging a grueling, hot day. He could look down on the fifty-meter course where sidearm training took place. The range control and safety officers were in place; the two teams were set up on the firing
line; the judges under General Cumberland had checked and rechecked the scoring system; range personnel had checked and double-checked the operation of the target system. All the ammunition the shooters planned to use had been carefully inspected to make sure it was regulation and serviceable. Inspectors had also verified by the batch numbers that each round contained a standard military load and there were no “hot”
rounds on the range. The trigger pull on each weapon had been carefully tested to ensure it fell within the standard deviation for military sidearms, between 1.7 and 2 kilos. The preparations had been under way since six hours. All was in readiness.
Colonel Myers babbled on about how good his team was. But it was obvious from the sweat rings under his armpits that he was beginning to wilt in the heat. “Pommie,” Aguinaldo said, “better save your breath and drink some water or we’ll be carrying you off this range before the match is over.”
Mid-Morning, Several Days Earlier, Commander’s Office, Seventh Independent Militar
y Police Battalion Both teams had had ten days to prepare for the match. The MPs, as the challenged unit, had the right to establish the rules.
“Let’s keep it simple,” Colonel Raggel had told his team,
“standard fifteen-hundred-point course of fire, a hundred and fifty rounds per shooter, solid shot only, barricades, weak hand, strong hand, standing, kneeling, prone positions, all that. You set it up, Sergeant Oakley.”
“Very good, sir. Sir, we need to know more about our opponents, find out who we’re up against. Can we get MPI to do some snooping?” The battalion’s Military Police Investigation Unit had been rather idle since the battalion had deployed to Arsenault because there was not much police investigation involved in preparing for battle with the Skinks. Raggel turned to Sergeant Major Steiner. “Who’s the best guy down there?”
“Warrant Officer Jimmy Santos, sir.”
“I’ll have him released to do some snooping. It’d be illegal for us to use MPI agent funds so I’ll furnish him the money out of my own pocket to lay bets on the outcome of the match. You know the betting’ll be heavy. If we win, give me back what I put in, and I’ll give the winners what’s left over as a special commendation. If we lose . . .” He shrugged. “Anyway, he can use the money to get the ground pounders to talk about their shooters. You tell him what you need to know. All right, guys, get to it. Give me periodic progress reports.”
WO Santos was a short, compact young man exuding an air of quiet competence. “The lieutenant said the colonel said you needed help, Billy. The old man gave me all this cash,” he said, waving a wad of credits, “so I figured you need a fourth hand for poker.” Santos was known as an inveterate gambler. “Hi, Puella,” Santos greeted Sergeant Queege as he took a seat with the three marksmen. “Haven’t seen you around recently. Where’d you get that tan?”
“On the range.” Puella grinned, nodding at Sergeant Oakley. Oakley returned her grin, then said to Santos, “Jimmy, we need to know who we’re up against. Can you drift over to Mainside, hang out at the beer garden, find out what the infantry has to say about the guys on their team? The money is to lay bets. Colonel Raggel figures that way you can get the gravel pushers to brag about their guys.”
“Right. If we know who they are we can find out a lot about them,” Santos answered. “I’ll be the battalion’s bookie and tell
’em I’m layin’ the bets for all the guys back here. It’ll be a snap. You let ol’ Jimmy the Sherlock loose and I’ll get what you need.”
Three days later Santos made his report. “Good news and bad news, guys. The bad news is you’re dead. The good news is it’ll be fast.”
“Aw, what the fuck?” Sergeant Maricle blurted out, exchanging a nervous glance with Puella.
“I mean it. Their top guy is a Sergeant Darryl Kries. I met him the other night. Tall, slim, mean-looking rascal, walks like
a gunfighter, silent as a statue and serious as death. And I found out he’s a protégé of a guy called Tam Le.”
“Oh, holy shit!” Oakley exclaimed, burying his face in his hands. “You guys know who Tam Le was?”
“Never heard of him.” Maricle shrugged.
“Tam Le was only the finest pistoleer in the history of firearms. He won six times straight in the Interplanetary Matches on N’ra. He won all six with possibles. That’s six perfect scores, all hits in the X-ring. Nobody’s ever done it before or after.”
“Is he still around?” Puella asked.
“No. The story I heard is he was killed hang gliding off Honolatu Mountain on Carhart’s World.”
“That’s a pretty damned stupid way to go,” Maricle commented.
“Especially if you do it at the age of 116. And this guy, Darryl Whatshisname, trained under Tam Le?” Oakley turned back to Santos.
“That’s the word. The others are Corporal Rick Totaro, another silent type, but he and Kries train together all the time, and Sergeant Andrew Grills. Now, Grills is the comedian, always joking around but said to be another crack shot. Boys, I think you ought to call this whole thing off before you get yourselves massacred.” Santos grinned. “Naw, just joking.”
“Very funny, Jimmy.” Oakley gathered his thoughts. “Okay, Darryl trained under Tam Le—but that doesn’t mean he is Tam Le. The other two might be good but we’re better. We have to go into this match convinced we’re going to win. You both know that even the best shooters have bad days. Well, these guys are going to have a bad day, and we’re going to give it to them. If you think you’re going to lose when you step out on the firing line, you will lose. It’s that simple. Jimmy, can you go back up to Mainside, lay some more bets? This time you let it be known that their Darryl Whatshisname—”
“Kries.—”
“—Kries, is a nobody, a poor student, a lucky shot, overrated. You tell those guys we’ve got Annie Oakley on our side,”
he said, grinning at Puella, “and she’s gonna wax their M26s for ’em. But Jimmy, just who are these guys, infantrymen who’re so damned good with sidearms? That’s unheard of.”
“Medics. Their principal weapon is the M26, and I guess they figured if that was the only thing between them and the enemy they’d better be pretty good with it. Can’t say they’re stupid in that regard, can we? And old Kries? Word is he’s just a gun nut from long before he joined his army. Word is he paid out of his own pocket for instruction from Tam Le, and Tam Le, he didn’t come cheap.”
“We’ve got to respect this guy, but we can beat him. Jimmy, go back to Mainside and lay some more bets.”
“You got it. Say,” he said, “if we win all the bets I’ve been making we’ll not only eat like kings, we’ll come out ten thousand credits to the good!”
Pistol Range, Fort Keystone
“Shooters, move to the firing line!” the range control officer ordered. Both teams moved to the firing points. “Lock and load and holster your weapons!” On this order they would fire two magazines containing six rounds each. The range safety officer walked down the line, checking each weapon. The M26 was a hammerless, double-action-only pistol. Its firing pin was spring-loaded, and when the weapon was in battery, a stud on the rear of the slide protruded. The safety officer touched each weapon to be sure it was loaded. Puella stood at the firing line, her arms by her sides waiting for the order to commence firing. It would come when the targets popped up. Her stomach churned. She glanced over at Maricle just to her right. He smiled and winked at her. She wondered how he could be so calm. She just knew that she was so nervous that she’d screw this order up and embarrass everyone. She glanced to her left. The three challengers stood loose and easy. The short one called Andy looked at Puella, smiled, and said, “Oh, sugar snaps!” She couldn’t help smil-
ing back, and that one simple act caused the tension to drain out of her.
The target was the standard silhouette, 60.96 cm by 114.30
cm. At a mere seven meters she knew she couldn’t fail to get each round into the X-ring. At fifty meters, that might be more difficult.
“Ready on the firing line!” A few seconds of silence and then the targets popped up. “Commence firing!”
Puella got all twelve rounds, including a reload, in 8.5 seconds. She could see her hits clearly, all dead center. The weapon’s slide locked open on the last round. She dropped the magazine and held it up for the safety officer to see. He checked each shooter’s weapon before allowing them to be holstered. “Alibis?” the range control officer asked. There had been no malfunctions. “Step back from the firing line. Do not handle your weapons! Reload your magazines while the targets are scored,”
the RCO announced.
After each order the targets were changed for fresh ones. The old targets were scored electronically and then doublechecked visually by the judges, who only then entered the official scores on each shooter’s scorecard. The shooters were allowed to see their targets and the scoring, and if they did not protest, the scores became official. Each shooter had scored 120 points on the seven-meter c
ourse, perfect scores. Puella glanced at Kries’s target and almost let out a gasp. His hits had cut a hole in the target precisely 2.5 by 2.5 centimeters! Truly remarkable. Puella’s hits had all counted for ten points each, but her spread was much larger than Kries’s.
“That boy is good,” Bill whispered from behind Puella, “but his groupings will spread out as the ranges increase. Remember, it isn’t the size of your group that counts, it’s the point spread. This stuff is showmanship, nothing more. And remember, it’s the team’s score, not the individual’s that counts. Grills’s and Totaro’s groups are no better than yours. And watch your trigger squeeze. At two kilos it can really screw you up if you jerk that trigger.” Puella smiled to herself. This made her feel a little better. She wasn’t the only nervous one; she could see that Bill was nervous, otherwise why repeat what every shooter knew by heart? Bill’s own group measured 3 by 3 centimeters. He looked out over the range toward the fifty-meter target line, wavering in the heat. “Now the going gets rough,” he said. By the time the first match was over the aggregate team scores stood at 1447-90X points for the challengers and 148180X for the Seventh Independent MPs. While the infantry scored higher in the X-ring than the MPs, the challengees made up for that with more hits and no misses in the other rings; the infantrymen counted three misses on their targets, that is, rounds that had hit outside the seven ring. Corporal Totaro called out good-naturedly to his teammate Grills, “Those twenty misses were all yours, Andy!” Grills only grinned and hollered back, “Oh, sugar snaps!”
Puella had the highest individual score of her team, as did Kries for his. Kries caught her eye and saluted in her direction. Puella had never felt prouder of herself in that moment. She grinned and waved back at him. The infantrymen were taking their loss very well, she thought, but their commander wasn’t. The MPs were ecstatic when the judges announced the aggregate scores. “You lucky bastards!” Myers screamed, standing and shaking a fist.
