Starfist - 14 - Double Jeopardy

by Dan Cragg

  “Don’t point!” Dean snapped. “If you’re right, that’ll tell whoever it is that they’ve been detected. Just tell me what direction.”

  “Oh, good idea, honcho.”

  “That’s why I get paid the big creds. Now what direction?”

  McGinty thought for a moment about how to say it and get the direction right. “Stop,” he said, and stepped in front of Dean and off to the side a bit. “From where you are, the strongest feeling is past me.”

  Dean nodded approvingly. “Not bad. Now start moving again.” Dean followed McGinty’s movement with his head but kept his eyes pointed in the direction the other had indicated.

  Third platoon’s advance position was near the bottom of a sheltered valley in the lower foothills. The sun didn’t beat down in the valley as harshly as many other places, making for slightly cooler temperatures, and thin ribbons of water dribbled down from the highlands. Those things combined to grow lusher vegetation—although lush was a relative term. The valley would have been called a scrub desert on Earth. The trees were thin and crooked, spiky with thorns, and less than seven or eight meters high. Bushes were scraggly and seldom grew even waist high. There were numerous patches of bare, red ground among the growth.

  But it was cooler here than on the flat; not so cool, though, that they weren’t buttoned up using their cooling systems to keep themselves from overheating.

  Dean slid his infra screen into place and tried again. He couldn’t be positive but he thought a few spots showed up warmer than their surroundings. He examined the landscape to the front and on the floor of the valley. The patrol route called for them to go three kilometers up the north side of the valley and cross to the south side on the return. Each of them had a HUD map with the route and rally points marked in case anybody got separated. They kept going until their movement took them perpendicular to the location and they could no longer see it without turning their heads. They continued on their route while Claypoole considered what to do.

  “Change of plans,” Dean said into his helmet comm. “Triple John thinks someone is watching us. I think he’s right. We’re going to find a place where we can cross to the south side without being seen, and double back.” He then notified the platoon of what he had planned.

  “Don’t cross over yet,” Lieutenant Bass told him. “I’ll check with the sky-eyes, see if they can spot anybody. Where are they relative to your current position?”

  “I’d say about three-quarters of a klick, maybe more,” Dean answered. “I don’t want to do something obvious to alert them, so I won’t shoot an azimuth on them. But they’re more than ninety degrees to my left, maybe a hundred, hundred and ten.”

  “That should be close enough,” Bass said. “Keep moving. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Roger.” Dean toggled on the fire team circuit. “Did both of you hear that?” They had. The patrol continued while Dean waited to hear from Bass.

  Lieutenant Bass quickly got the SRA department on the radio. “Chief Nome? Charlie Bass here.”

  “Hi ya, Charlie. How’s it hanging down there?”

  “It’s about the hottest place I’ve ever served,” Bass answered. “How’re things on the high ground? And don’t give me any kwangduk droppings about the comfortable temperature you’re suffering through.”

  Chief Nome laughed. “Nah, I wouldn’t tell you that, Charlie. But it is a nuisance, what with the temperature going back and forth from one degree too warm to one degree too cool, and never hitting that sweet spot right between the two.” Before Bass could say anything about that, Nome went on: “Listen, I’ve got one of my aces on duty, and he needs a workout to keep in trim. You have a job for us? A tricky one, I hope?”

  “Yeah, I do. I’ve got a security patrol out …” As Bass gave Nome directions to the patrol’s position, the chief passed them on to SRA2 Auperson, his “duty ace.”

  “Got ’em,” Nome said. “I thought you said this was a tricky one?”

  “You haven’t heard the rest of it yet. Can your ace see the direction my patrol is heading?” He waited a moment before Nome came back with an affirmative. “All right. Roughly a hundred, hundred and ten degrees to the left of their line of movement, maybe three-quarters of a klick away, maybe more. My patrol leader thinks he saw some spots in infrared that were a tad bit warmer than their surroundings. Could be hot rocks, could be grazing animals. Could be bad guys of some sort watching them.”

  “Couldn’t get anything in the visual?”

  “Negative.”

  “All right, that’s better. Now let’s see young Auperson earn his keep.”

  It took three minutes, but Auperson found them.

  “You got five Fuzzies,” Nome reported. “Four of them are hidden well enough that almost nobody could find them from orbit, but I’ve got two aces who can find them. I’ll download their position to you.”

  “Four of them are hidden? What about the fifth?”

  “He’s hightailing it out of there. And I do mean hightailing. I couldn’t make it out, but Auperson assures me his data show that Fuzzy’s tail is sticking straight up. Hell, I couldn’t even tell positive that the beastie was galloping on all fours!”

  Bass chuckled, then said, “Do me a favor. Can you let me know if those four Fuzzies move? I want my patrol to check them out. Maybe attempt friendly contact.”

  “You don’t sound like you really mean the friendly-contact bit,” Nome said.

  Bass shrugged, even though Nome couldn’t see the movement. “I’m not convinced they want to be friendly. My Marines have already run into three different alien sentiences. Two of them wanted to fight, and the third was willing to ally with us against the Skinks but didn’t seem to want anything to do with us once the fighting was over.”

  “I hear you, Charlie. I’ll have Auperson keep an eye on them. You tell your people to be careful out there. You have that download yet?”

  Bass checked the UPUD. “Got it, thanks. I tell my people to be careful all the time, Chief. Bass ou—”

  “Oh, one more thing. Do you want to know where that fifth Fuzzy is going?”

  “Yeah, that sounds like a damn good idea.”

  “All right, I’ll bring my other ace in and have him track the beastie. Hell, he’s been off duty for three hours now. That’s enough sleep for anybody.”

  Bass laughed. “Are you sure you’ve never been a Marine gunnery sergeant?”

  “Nah, never. I’m a navy chief petty officer. We got gunnies beat, hands down.”

  “Must have been in a past life, then.”

  “Nope. I’m navy through eternity! Nome out.”

  Bass shook his head, chuckling as he put the UPUD down and toggled his radio to the patrol’s circuit.

  “Three Two Two, this is Three Six Actual. Over.”

  “Six Actual, Three Two Two. Go,” Corporal Dean answered immediately.

  “You were right, there’s four Fuzzies over there. Stand by. I’m sending their exact coordinates to you. The sky-eye’s going to keep a watch on them, so you’ll know if they change position.”

  “Thanks, Six.” Dean got out his comp and checked it. The data came in. “Got it,” he said.

  “Let me know when you begin to cross the valley. Three Six Actual out.”

  They weren’t able to cross right away, even though the vegetation was thicker than in most other areas, and more than thick enough if the Marines had been in their chameleons; most of it was still too thin to be good for hidden movement for men wearing dull green garrison utilities.

  “Angle upslope slightly,” Corporal Dean told Lance Corporal Ymenez, who was on point. “See that knot of trees?”

  “I see them,” Ymenez replied.

  “Head for them. I think I see a place beyond there where we can duck out of sight.”

  “Aye aye, honcho.”

  “Triple John, do you still feel like we’re being watched?” Dean asked McGinty.

  “Yeah, but not as strong as before.” He shrugged.
“That could just be because we’re farther from them.” He felt vindicated since the report that the Grandar Bay had spotted four Fuzzies about where he thought observers might be. He was also not afraid, exactly—concerned, say—about the Fuzzies watching them. Brigadier Sturgeon thought the Fuzzies would turn out to be friendly, which was why the Marines weren’t wearing their chameleons, but nobody was sure of that. Those Fuzzies could be an ambush. And just because the Grandar Bay had seen four of them didn’t mean there wasn’t a whole platoon of them, better hidden, in ambush. Really bad odds for a single fire team.

  They reached the knot of trees—too thin to be called a copse—and Dean called a brief break. Even though they were sealed inside their uniforms, there was just enough shade that it felt cooler among the trees, even if the feeling was all in the mind. After a few minutes Dean left his men in place and scouted ahead. He’d been right about what he’d thought he saw: A small gully led down to the valley floor. It looked like a similar gully ran on the opposite side of the valley. He returned to his men.

  Dean radioed in for an update on the Fuzzies and told Bass what he’d found, and that that was where they were going to cross. Bass said the Fuzzies were still in place and to be careful crossing the valley.

  “Got that right, boss,” Dean said. He looked back to where his HUD map showed the Fuzzies were. They were more than a klick and a half distant now.

  “Listen up,” he told his men. “Unless the Fuzzies have much better eyesight than humans, I’m pretty sure they can’t see us through this knot of trees. So when we move, we’re going low and keeping these trees between us and them. Fifty meters up, there’s a shallow gully. We’ll crawl down it to the valley floor and then stay low while we climb to the other side of the west wall. When we get perpendicular to them, we’ll come back over the top and come down from above them. That way they won’t see us coming. Questions?”

  “What do we do if they change position, or move out?” McGinty asked.

  Dean shook his head. “I won’t be able to answer that question until they move or move out. Now, if there’s nothing else, let’s do it.”

  They went fast and low, keeping the knot of scraggly trees between them and the Fuzzies, and dropped into the gully. At first the Marines had to low-crawl on their bellies, very carefully so they didn’t raise a dust cloud that would give them away. After fifty meters the gully was deep enough that they were able to go on hands and knees, which was a lot easier. Near the bottom they had to low-crawl again. The valley floor, thanks to the water that threaded down it, was more thickly vegetated than the slopes, and they were able to walk, though usually in a low crouch.

  Dean called a halt along one of the waterways and checked in. The Fuzzies still hadn’t moved. Now Dean really wondered what they were doing. Had the Fuzzies had third platoon under observation long enough to know that a patrol went out on one side of the valley and back on the other, and were waiting for his fire team to come back? If so, why? Did they plan to make friendly contact? Were they an ambush? Or did they have something else in mind altogether, something unguessable to a human? Dean had no idea, and neither did Bass.

  “Be careful,” Bass said. “I’ve got the rest of the platoon ready to move out if you run into something you can’t handle.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  “Three Six Actual out.”

  “All right, you know where we’re going,” Dean told his men. “Let’s move out. Ymenez, you’ve got the point.”

  They headed toward the other gully Dean had spotted and crawled to the top of the valley wall and over it.

  The climb up the south wall of the valley was easier than the climb down the north wall. The sun didn’t beat as harshly on the south wall as on the north, so more vegetation grew there. The Marines took advantage of that vegetation to crawl on hands and knees, or climb in a crouch; the few times they had to snake on their bellies, the movement was easier because their heads were higher than their feet and they didn’t have to struggle as hard not to raise dust clouds. They reached the top of the wall and went over it to the reverse slope in less than half the time it had taken them to descend the north wall, even though it was a longer climb. No longer concerned with being spotted by the hidden Fuzzies, the Marines went fast on the reverse slope.

  Sporadic reports from the Grandar Bay told them the four Fuzzies still hadn’t moved. But the surface radar analysts in orbit had to keep many areas under observation and were only occasionally able to check on the quartet of Fuzzies, and even less frequently look at the surrounding area.

  The three Marines were descending the south wall of the valley and had the Fuzzies in sight when they got a call from Lieutenant Bass.

  “The sky-eyes see a large group of people coming from the west,” Bass told Corporal Dean.

  “People? You mean human?” Dean asked.

  “That’s what the squids say they look like,” Bass said. “It’s got to be Sharp Edge. They look to be two platoons, maybe a few more They’re two klicks to your west. Current movement indicates they’ll be parallel to you in about twenty-five, thirty minutes.”

  “As long as they stay on the reverse slope, they’ll pass behind us. What do you want us to do?”

  “They’re still a couple of klicks away. Can you head back without alerting the Fuzzies?” Before Dean could answer he heard an excited voice in the background, then Bass said, “Wait one.”

  Dean told his men about the Sharp Edge troops while he waited for Bass to get back to him.

  Bass came back on. “The sky-eye has more information,” he said. “There’s another unit trailing the first one, and it looks just as big as the first one. But more important, there’s a squad-size flanking element on your side of the ridge. You have to get out of there, now! Do not engage.”

  Dean looked at the four Fuzzies. From here, he and his men could take them out easily—they weren’t watching their rear and didn’t seem to have any idea the Marines were less than a hundred meters upslope from them. They could take them out and still have plenty of time to get away, even if the mercenaries heard the firing. But the Marines weren’t fighting the Fuzzies, the Sharp Edge mercenaries were, and Sharp Edge was fighting the Marines. Dean thought he could call to the Fuzzies and signal them to come with him and his men as they withdrew. But contact hadn’t been established yet and he didn’t know how the aliens would respond if he called to them.

  He snorted. Aliens! On Ishtar the humans were the aliens, just as they had been on Avionia and Society 419, both of which worlds had indigenous sentient species.

  Here the indigenes were enslaved by mercenaries, and that was a violation of Confederation law. More than that, Dean found slavery morally repugnant.

  If the Marines simply withdrew, would the Fuzzies see the flankers in time to make their own withdrawal? Or would the mercenaries see them in time to kill them?

  Dean didn’t like any of the choices he had, but his orders were to withdraw now.

  “Lots of bad guys coming,” he told his men. “Lieutenant Bass wants us to pull back to the rest of the platoon.” He looked down-slope.

  “What about them?” Ymenez asked, also looking at the Fuzzies. “We’re supposed to make friends with them. If we just go, the mercs will kill them.”

  “I’ll think of something. Let’s go now, quietly.”

  Again, Ymenez took the point.

  As they crept along the valley wall, Dean decided that once they were another hundred meters away, he’d turn and yell to alert the Fuzzies that they’d been seen. With any luck they’d take off and get away before the mercenaries were close enough to kill them.

  As it turned out, he didn’t have the chance to warn the Fuzzies.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Captain Sepahi Fassbender, commandant of Mining Camp No. 26, heard the racket of landing aircraft and got up from his desk to investigate. Nobody had told him to expect visitors from headquarters, and it wasn’t time for resupply or troop rotation. From his command
center’s veranda he saw a MicMac C46 braking down the runway outside the compound fence, the same kind of aircraft that had brought him and his men to the camp, as well as the reinforcements that brought the camp’s strength up to seventy men after the Fuzzies started to rampage; smaller aircraft were used for resupply and to rotate the men out of this hellhole to the relative coolness of Base Camp. Another C46 was on final approach.

  What the deuce? he wondered.

  Sergeant Vodnik was already there, arms folded across his chest, looking sternly at the aircraft.

  “Do you have any idea what this is about?” Fassbender asked.

  Vodnik shook his head.

  The first aircraft turned off the runway and rolled toward the main gate. The second aircraft was braking on the runway when the first stopped seventy-five meters outside the fence. The Mic-Mac’s hatches opened and soldiers in new-looking uniforms piled out, more than thirty of them. If Fassbender had to guess, he’d guess that their weapons were as new as their uniforms looked. Aircrew busied themselves chucking duffels out of the cargo compartment.

  Fassbender waited patiently. He’d find out soon enough if he and his men were unexpectedly being relieved. The second aircraft taxied behind the first and disgorged its passengers as well as pallets that likely contained supplies for the newcomers.

  Two men, one from each aircraft, got together, exchanged some words, and headed for the gate, leaving the others to get into formations handled by sergeants. The gate admitted the two, who marched straight toward Fassbender.

  “Sir,” one said, saluting, “I’m Lieutenant Crabler. This is Lieutenant Zamenik. We’re here with two platoons to reinforce your garrison.”

  Fassbender cocked an eyebrow at the two officers. “Really? This is the first I’ve heard of more reinforcements.”

  Crabler nodded. “We were told you might not expect us. I have orders.” He got out his comp.

  “Come on inside.”

  Fassbender led the two through the large room with its clerks, comps, and files and into his private office. He waved them to seats. Vodnik came in with them and closed the door behind himself.