Starfist - 14 - Double Jeopardy

by Dan Cragg

  Ratliff grinned. “Are they still living in sin?”

  Kerr laughed and grinned in turn. “That’s what they said before Haulover. So I guess so.”

  “Joe!” a shriek pierced the noise. Dean turned toward it and saw his lady, Carlala, working her way through the crowd.

  Ratliff looked around for another face he hadn’t seen, sighed when he didn’t spot it, and pulled an unoccupied chair from a nearby table to sit on. He grabbed an unused mug from the center of the table and filled it with Reindeer Ale from a half-empty pitcher. He almost choked on his second swallow when a voice husked into his ear, “Buy a girl a drink, sailor?”

  Corporal Pasquin, sitting next to Ratliff, pounded him on the back to help clear his airway. “Gotta stop choking up like that, boss,” Pasquin yelled. He grinned at the woman who had spoken.

  Ratliff plunked his mug onto the table and twisted around. “Damn it, woman,” he groused, “I keep telling you, I ain’t no squid!”

  She smiled beatifically at him and leaned in to give him a kiss. Ratliff smiled and wrapped an arm around her to pull her onto his lap. She giggled, then threw her head back with a hearty laugh when he nuzzled his face between her breasts.

  She quickly recovered, clamped her hands on the sides of his face, and pulled his head away from her chest, saying, “Not in front of the children, dear.”

  “Kona Statimmer, who are you calling a child?” Kerr demanded.

  “No children here,” Pasquin said—he and Kerr were the only Marines close enough to hear what she’d said. Then he looked at her belly and added, “Unless there’s something you haven’t told us about.”

  “My Timmy’s not a child,” Frida, who was between Kerr and Ratliff, said. “I can guarantee that!”

  On Ratliff’s other side, Erika rubbed Pasquin’s chest. “Raul’s all man. So there.”

  Kona laughed delightedly and flashed a kiss at each of the women who had insisted their men weren’t children. “Even so,” she told them, “there are things grown-ups don’t do in public.”

  Erika and Frida looked at her, at each other, and around at third platoon’s tables. “Are you sure of that?” Frida asked, because there was indeed a good deal of nuzzling going on in public.

  “All right then. There are things this grown-up doesn’t do in public. I’m a respectable widow! My neighbors in Hryggurandlit wouldn’t understand.” She lowered her face so her forehead was against Ratliff’s. “Since you won’t buy me a drink, how about if I buy you a drink—someplace not so public.”

  “You’ve got it,” Ratliff said eagerly. Kona hopped off his lap and he stood, bending over to retrieve and drain his mug. As Kona began tugging him away, he leaned over to say to Kerr, “I told Dean to get drunk and get laid. See to it that he does?”

  “I’ll get him drunk,” Kerr said, “but it looks like someone else is taking care of the getting-laid part.”

  Ratliff looked to where Dean was sitting at the next table; Carlala was straddling him and raining kisses on his face.

  “Looks like you’re right.” Kona gave his arm a jerk. “Gotta go. See you at morning formation.”

  As it turned out, Sergeant Ratliff was right. After getting drunk, getting laid, and sleeping on what his squad leader had said, Corporal Joe Dean stopped worrying about how they were all going to get killed. He still thought about how it was possible, but he lost the all-pervasive, soul-eating conviction that it was definitely going to happen.

  But the concern was still there. Concern about something he hadn’t told to his squad leader. He had a son. A son! A son he’d never seen, a son who’d never met him. And if he got killed, he and his son would never come together; he’d never be able to help raise his son, to see him grow and become a man. Even if he didn’t get killed or crippled in combat against the Skinks, his son might be all grown up by the time he was released from the Marines and able to return to Wanderjahr to meet him. And return to Hway Kuetgens, the woman he’d loved all those years ago, the mother of his son.

  That ate at Corporal Joe Dean more than the loss of any Marine he led, more than the mere chance of getting killed in combat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mining Camp No. 331 was smallish, as Sharp Edge’s Ishtar operations went. Lieutenant Chumway Teeter only had twenty men to guard and oversee the Fuzzies that worked the mine. But then, there weren’t quite a hundred Fuzzies in the camp, so he didn’t need any more than the twenty guards and overseers he had. And the one clerk allotted to him was sufficient for the mine’s needs.

  Or had been enough until the past several weeks. At first Teeter had dismissed the rumors of a Fuzzy uprising as wildly exaggerated retellings of minor incidents. Until he’d been relieved for a few days’ rest at Base Camp. There he learned that the rumors were true and only somewhat exaggerated. He immediately asked for more men for his command.

  “No can do, Chumway,” Louis Cukayla, president and CEO of Sharp Edge, LLC, had said around a plug of tobacco when Teeter barged into his office with the request. “I only have so many troops, and they’re needed to reinforce the mines in the danger area.”

  “What’s the danger area?” Teeter demanded in a low, hard voice.

  “So far,” Cukayla said, “the few mines that have been attacked are concentrated in one area.” He waved an arm at a large digital map on the wall. “They’re the red ones. As you can see, the closest one to you is nearly two hundred klicks to your northwest.” He shook his head. “I can’t see the Fuzzies who’re running wild going that far. Not for as small a group as you’ve got working.” He hawked and spat tobacco juice into a can sitting on the floor at the corner of his desk.

  Teeter looked at the map and saw that there were only a few red marks, and they were indeed in a small area less than a hundred kilometers on its long axis.

  “How many of them have been wiped out?” he asked.

  Cukayla studied his face for a moment, deciding how to answer. “You’ll find out anyway. Three,” he finally said.

  Teeter studied the map again. Eight of the mining camps were marked in red. That meant that three out of eight had been wiped out. A pretty severe rate for trained soldiers with modern weapons being attacked by animals.

  “Anyway,” Cukayla said, leaning forward on his elbows and peering earnestly at Teeter to interrupt his thoughts about the severity of the situation, “there’s a lot of mines between that area and Three Thirty-one. Saying, just for the sake of argument mind you, that these stampedes keep up, and the crews we’ve got on hand in that area aren’t enough to put a stop to them, well, then, Lieutenant, it’ll be months, maybe even a year or more, before the problem spreads out to where you are. By then, the reinforcements I called for will be here.”

  “Reinforcements?” Teeter asked.

  Cukayla nodded briskly. “Reinforcements. These animals are just a bit more intelligent and a tad more rambunctious than I thought at first. So having more people here is a good idea. Even if we don’t need the extra troops to bring the herds back into line, I expect to be opening more mines, so we’ll be needing more bodies anyhow.”

  Lieutenant Chumway Teeter cut his rest short and headed back to Mining Camp No. 331 early. There he found truth in the old adage “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Instead of overseeing the Fuzzies in the mine, the overseers were joining the guards in an extended party—except for one overseer watching the Fuzzies who were dredging through the alluvial deposits, and one very drunk guard on the main gate.

  Teeter glared at the drunk guard, who gave a sloppy grin and tossed him an even sloppier salute, and went in search of his sergeant, whom he’d left in command three days earlier.

  “Sergeant Moringa!” Teeter roared when he found the sergeant plopped in his chair, with his feet on his desk in the camp commander’s office. A three-quarters-empty bottle of contraband booze sat on the desk next to a half-empty Old-Fashioned glass. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Moringa peered bleary-eyed at Teeter and his mo
uth fell open. “Oops,” he said. He struggled to pull his feet off the desk and sit up. Then realized that he shouldn’t be sitting at the lieutenant’s desk, not with the lieutenant standing right there, and pulled himself up to a wobbling stance.

  “’come back, sir,” he slurred. “Yer back early?”

  “Yes, I’m back early, Private Moringa,” Teeter snarled. “And it’s a good—”

  “Ah, ‘private’? I’m a sergeant, sir.”

  “You were a sergeant, Private Moringa! I’ve just reduced you in rank for gross dereliction of duty. Now get out of my office and assemble the men for inspection—and an ass chewing!”

  “As-assemble, sir? Bu-but I’m a private, sir.”

  “Somebody’s got to do it,” Teeter spat, “and you know how. So do it!”

  “Y-yes, sir.” Moringa staggered around the desk and headed for the outer office but stuttered to a stop when Teeter snapped, “And take your garbage with you.”

  Moringa looked at the desk and picked up the bottle and glass. He started to raise the bottle to his mouth, thought better of it, and offered it to Teeter. “You want a snort, sir?” He flinched at the look Teeter shot him. “Or maybe I should pour it out, or something?”

  “Get out,” Teeter said harshly.

  “Out. Right.” Moringa looked at the bottle and stumbled away, carrying it and the glass.

  Teeter waited until he heard Moringa close the outer door, then blew out the breath he’d been holding in and let his shoulders slump. He turned around and sat heavily on the edge of his desk. Fuzzies were in full revolt just a couple of hundred kilometers away. He wasn’t as convinced as Louis Cukayla that the local beasts were just that; he suspected that they were much more intelligent than the Sharp Edge boss gave them credit for. It was just a matter of time before the revolt reached Mining Camp No. 331, and maybe not much time. He looked out the window at the camp. A mere five-strand fence of razor wire encircled the section of alluvial plain being worked, and not much more protected the main camp. It would be easy for a man to get over those fences, and Teeter didn’t think they had a chance of holding a determined Fuzzy, either in or out. He thought for a minute about some of the details he’d picked up at Base Camp.

  Where the hell had the Fuzzies come up with projectile weapons and explosives? And what was that gas they used?

  He saw Moringa assembling the platoon, all except the overseer watching the Fuzzies working the mine. He wondered how many Fuzzies had taken advantage of the lone guard to get over or through the wire. He shook his head. Moringa was far from the best but was a good enough sergeant—or had been—and Teeter didn’t think any of his other men were ready to take his place. But dammit, there was no way he could not discipline the man for his dereliction. He’d give him his stripes back in a couple of days, but he needed to make a point before he did.

  Everybody drunk when they should be on duty—and at a mining camp where there wasn’t supposed to be an intoxicant of any sort available. If he had someone else he could promote, Teeter would send Moringa back to Base Camp on the next supply run. But he didn’t, so he’d have to do something else. The first thing would be to sweat the alcohol out of his men.

  Outside, Moringa had everybody in formation. Teeter pushed himself erect, squared his shoulders, drew a harsh mask over his face, closed up his climate-controlled uniform, and stalked through the outer office to the portico, where he stood, feet at more than shoulder width, elbows cocked, left fist on his hip, right on the butt of his holstered sidearm. He raised his helmet’s faceplate so his men could see his glare. He let them sweat inside their uniforms for a few moments while he looked from man to man. Not that he could look into their eyes; the faceplates of their whole-head helmets were darkened to shield their eyes from the bright glare of the day. Some of them swayed unsteadily; a few jittered or twitched with evident nervousness.

  They needed a lesson, but how to start?

  Suddenly, Teeter knew.

  “Unseal!” he barked. “Take off your helmets!”

  Hesitantly, the men obeyed, opening the closures at their necks and removing their helmets. Now Teeter could see their faces, look into their eyes. He didn’t show the satisfaction he felt seeing their faces flush in the fifty-degree centigrade heat then glisten with perspiration that gushed and flowed in attempt to keep them from overheating.

  “Assume the position!” Teeter ordered. The men dropped down, arms extended, hands below their shoulders, backs more or less straight. “On my count. One! Two! One! Two!” On each one the men lowered their bodies; on each two they pushed themselves back up. Teeter kept shouting through fifty ones and twos, even though most of the men had collapsed before the twenty-fifth, and none of them made it to forty.

  “On your feet!” Teeter looked them over again, searching their faces to see if any had stopped sweating—a sign of impending heat exhaustion or heatstroke. All faces were still drenched.

  “Right face! Forward, march! Double-time, ho!” Teeter closed his faceplate, jumped off the portico, and ran alongside the formation. He kept his climate controls on while he ran the men around the inner compound, a kilometer-and-a-half circuit, constantly looking for signs of heatstroke. He made sure nobody fell out; he had the men in better condition help those who couldn’t finish the run on their own. By the time the platoon was back in front of the administration building, several of the men had stopped sweating and were turning very pale. Nobody had fallen out but they were all hurting badly by the end of the run.

  “Hit the showers,” he ordered harshly. “Cold water, the coldest you can stand! And replenish your fluids. I don’t want anybody collapsing from heatstroke.”

  “Sir,” Moringa croaked, “can we have some hangover pills, sir?”

  Teeter looked disgusted for a few seconds before saying, “There aren’t supposed to be any intoxicants in this camp, so hangover pills aren’t part of our medical supplies.” He shook his head. “Even if we had hangover pills, I wouldn’t give them to you. You screwed up, you suffer the consequences. Now get into the barracks and cool off, replenish your fluids. I want you back here in one hour. Go!”

  Teeter stood silently, watching, as the men staggered to the barracks. As soon as the barracks door closed behind the last of them, he headed for the mining activity.

  The sole overseer didn’t come to attention or salute when his commanding officer arrived. He was busy trying to keep tabs on a hundred or so Fuzzies sieving gems out of the hard-packed dirt.

  “Are you drunk?” Teeter asked as soon as he reached the man.

  The overseer spared him a glance. “No, sir. All I’ve drunk today was juice at morning chow, and water since then.”

  “So why didn’t you get shitfaced with everybody else?”

  “Sergeant Moringa said somebody had to keep the Fuzzies working, that you’d notice if we were way below quota. He asked for volunteers.” The man jerked his head in the same manner that he would have if he’d spat on the ground, but if he spat, it was inside his helmet. “I was the only volunteer.”

  “You mean you’ve been out here all day, watching the Fuzzies by yourself?”

  He shook his head. “Not quite. The party didn’t start until after we put them to work.” He made the spitting motion again.

  Teeter looked at the man’s shirt-front name tag. “All right, Corporal Sinvant, let’s get the Fuzzies back in their cages.”

  “It’s Private Sinvant, sir.”

  “Not anymore. You were the only man jack in the platoon with enough sense to do his duty when I was away so I just promoted you.”

  “Thank you! Thank you, sir!” Sinvant said, snapping to attention and lifting his hand in salute.

  They counted the Fuzzies as they herded them back and locked them up. They were short eight. Sinvant stammered an apology, but Teeter waved it off.

  “Not your fault, Corporal. One man can’t effectively oversee a hundred Fuzzies by himself, not with the flimsy perimeter we’ve got.”

&nbs
p; When the rest of the platoon straggled out of the barracks in their climate-controlled uniforms, Lieutenant Teeter put them to work combing the work area for the lost Fuzzies. They only found one body. A cursory search of the landscape outside the fence showed where the missing Fuzzies had gone through or over it, but their tracks quickly disappeared on the hard ground.

  It had been mid-afternoon when Lieutenant Teeter returned to Mining Camp No. 331. The shadows were lengthening now, and the sun was nearing the distant mountaintops. But the camp’s defenses were thin, and Teeter wanted them strengthened as quickly as possible. Louis Cukayla might think it would be a year or more before the “stampedes” reached Mining Camp No. 331, but Teeter wasn’t about to bet his life and his men’s on it.

  He had his men rush the Fuzzies through a small meal, their first since they’d been put to work that morning, while he made plans to reinforce the fence around the main compound. Then he arranged everybody into teams, one human and four or five Fuzzies, and put them to work. They went outside the main gate and began cutting thornbushes, and branches off thorn trees, and piling them against the fence around the main compound, making the razor-wire fence harder to penetrate. Teeter had the men in the teams direct the Fuzzies, but he also made them work alongside the Fuzzies. Corporal Sinvant helped supervise the teams. Teeter and Sinvant were the only men who carried firearms; the other men had overseer’s truncheons. The Fuzzies were manacled together in teams so that no one of them could run or attack the human with them, so they’d have to work in concert. He kept everyone working until after dark. Then he had everybody return behind the fence, and the men unshackled the Fuzzies so they could be locked into their cages.

  Corporal Sinvant managed to get the men into platoon formation in front of the administration building; the Fuzzies milled about listlessly between the formation and the cages they were kept in overnight. Less than half the fence had been reinforced, and that not too well. Teeter realized that he was going to have to suspend mining operations for a couple of days to get the job done properly. But it was a start.