by Dan Cragg
Something clanged off the side of his helmet, and he looked up to see the four forgotten Fuzzies racing toward him and his men. Two of them carried flechette rifles, one had a spear, and the fourth had his arm cocked to throw another stone.
“We all need to be evacuated!” he shouted into his comm.
* * *
Henny spun toward the scream and the strange, loud noises. There were the three Naked Ones! How did they get there? A granalchit was readying itself to strike at one of them. These Naked Ones wouldn’t know how to fight the beast, and it might kill all of them before he and his fighters could capture one of them!
“Let’s go!” he shouted, leaping to his feet to race to the Naked Ones and the granalchit. They had only gone a few paces when fire lanced from the weapons of two of the Naked Ones; Henny and his fighters staggered to a stop, shocked by the flashes. The granalchit gathered itself to strike again, and two more lightning bolts flashed at it, throwing it into death throes.
That was a mighty weapon, that fire rifle. The People needed it!
“Move!” he shouted, and the four raced again, to reach the Naked Ones while they were distracted by the granalchit, and the Naked One who looked like he’d been stung by the venom.
They were still a few paces away when Spot threw a rock at the head of the Naked One bent over the poisoned one. In those few paces, the Naked Ones swung their weapons around and fired. Spot and Big Nose fell, shot through by the fire bolts; they died so fast they couldn’t even scream.
Henny smashed the butt of his needle rifle into the chest of one of the Naked Ones, and Crooked Tail swung the staff of his thrusting spear at the head of the other.
The Naked One that Henny hit surprised him; when the force of the blow knocked the Naked One back, he grabbed the stock of the needle rifle and pulled, bringing Henny with him. The Naked One rolled on his back so his legs kicked into the air, into Henny’s gut, knocking the wind out of him, and threw him in a high arc so that he landed hard on his back past the Naked One’s head. Before Henny could even wheeze a breath, the Naked One had him flipped onto his stomach and bound his hands behind his back.
Henny didn’t see what happened to Crooked Tail, but he was equally quickly dispatched. Instead of taking prisoners, Henny and one of his scouts were taken prisoner!
Henny didn’t know if these Naked Ones were as strong as the People’s fighters, but they certainly knew things about fighting that he didn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Lester looked like he was on the thin edge of collapse when he was escorted into Mercury’s command post in the Safe Nights burrow. Mercury sat the scout on a comfortable ledge and offered him water to gulp down. After a few minutes to catch his breath, Lester told his tale. A small new Naked Ones camp was much closer than they had realized. A large party of Naked Ones was marching to join them. Here, Mercury asked a question, and Lester’s answer told him the large party was of the Naked Ones who had abandoned the People of the Rock Flower Clan, locked in cages.
That abandonment angered him even more than the fact that this new Naked Ones camp was entirely too close to his command burrow, and amplified it. His anger brought about his decision.
There were more than three hundred fighters in the burrow, and almost another two hundred within a hard day’s run. Mercury sent runners to the outlying burrows with instructions to bring back every available fighter for a major battle against the Naked Ones.
“Hang in there, Triple John,” Corporal Dean said to PFC McGinty, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “The hopper’s on its way. I can see it coming.”
McGinty groaned. Through the screen in the PFC’s helmet, Dean could see unseeing eyes staring out of a sweat-drenched face.
“Hang in there; the hopper will be here in a minute.”
The hopper’s whine grew and pitched higher as it came in for a landing. Dean glanced at Lance Corporal Ymenez and saw that he already had the two captured Fuzzies standing out of the way of the landing hopper; he was ready to hustle them aboard the second it touched down. But just before the hopper landed, one of the Fuzzies pitched forward, and blood spurted from its back. A second later, Dean heard several reports of flechette fire. He spun toward the sound of the fire and triggered off a plasma bolt before he even saw where the flechettes came from. Ymenez was also down, returning fire. The remaining Fuzzy still stood, looking aghast up the valley.
“Knock him down before he gets shot!” Dean yelled at Ymenez.
Ymenez twisted to see where the Fuzzy was and saw it standing near his feet. He kicked at the Fuzzy’s ankles and the creature flopped to the ground.
“Stay down!” the Marine yelled, not caring that the Fuzzy probably couldn’t understand his words.
Dean had seen where the fire was coming from and began placing bolts in front of the target area, breaking and skittering the plasma balls along the ground, increasing their chances of hitting a target.
“See where I’m shooting?” he shouted at Ymenez. “Do the same—and move your bolts around.”
“Roger.” Ymenez added his shattering, skittering bolts to Dean’s. Small flames started licking up in the area where the two Marines were firing, but the vegetation was too thin for the fires to spread.
Suddenly, Doc Hough’s voice crackled in Dean’s helmet. “Come on, you two. We’ve got your casualties aboard. Stay low and bring your prisoner. The crew chief will cover you with his gun.”
“Right, Doc,” Dean said as a stream of plasma bolts began sizzling over his head. “Ymenez, grab the Fuzzy and get him into the hopper. I’ll cover you.”
“We’re in,” Ymenez shouted a moment later.
Dean twisted around and rapidly crawled to the hopper. It lifted before he was all the way through the hatch; Ymenez grabbed him and pulled him in the rest of the way as the crew chief kept pouring fire at the enemy position until the hopper’s nose was pointed toward Camp Godenov.
Captain Fassbender ran toward where the fire had come from even before he heard the hopper lift off. On the reverse slope, where he thought the flechette fire had come from, he found five corpses. Three men were running down the valley, firing pointlessly at the withdrawing hopper. He chased them, yelling at them to stop, to cease fire. He finally got through to them and they turned back.
“What the hell happened here?” he yelled as he ran up to the three.
“There was Fuzzies,” one of them gasped. “They were with Marines.”
“So?” Fassbender screamed.
“We got one!” one of them shouted triumphantly.
“We figured the Marines and the Fuzzies were a patrol, looking for us. So we took them out before they spotted us,” said another.
“What ever made you think they were working together against us?” Fassbender shrilled. “Come with me!” He grabbed one of them and shoved him, hard, toward the bodies. He pushed and shoved at all of them, forcing them back to where they’d begun shooting. He forced them to look at the corpses of their companions.
“Back at the mining camp, you said the Marines were fighting us,” the third said. He shrugged, then looked at the bodies, and bent over to throw up.
“Had they seen you?” Fassbender screeched. “Or did you shoot first?”
“Wanted to take ’em out before they saw us,” the first one said. He looked distinctly ill.
“Why didn’t you ask for instructions before you opened fire? You got five men killed, and for what?” Fassbender’s voice rose even higher.
“We thought …,” the second said, and waved a hand uncertainly.
“No, you didn’t!” Fassbender’s voice dropped. “You didn’t think at all. And because you didn’t think, you might have just gotten all of us killed.”
The three looked at him, stricken. They didn’t necessarily understand how they might have gotten them all killed, but they thought that maybe the captain knew what he was talking about.
While Fassbender was yelling at the surviving flankers, the garrison platoons came ov
er the top and gathered behind him. Some of the men looked at the bodies; others looked everywhere but at the bodies.
Fassbender ignored the platoon while he got out his comp and marked their position on his map.
“Bury the men you got killed,” he told the trio. He moved off and got on his radio to call for the rest of the column to join up in this valley. He wanted to see the two lieutenants as soon as they reached him. Sergeant Vodnik set about arranging the platoon in a defensive position without waiting to be told to—he might be a fighter for money now, but he had once been a platoon sergeant in a regular army and knew how to do his job. He called the right flank squad in to set an observation post on the reverse slope of the valley they were now in.
This wasn’t a combined Marine-Fuzzy patrol out looking for the garrison from Mining Camp No. 26. Fassbender knew that perfectly well. If it had been, there wouldn’t have been a hopper so close that it was able to extract them almost as soon as the shooting started. The extraction came too soon, which meant the hopper must have already been on its way when the flankers opened fire. Were they closer to the Marine base than he’d been told? Or did the Marines have an outpost nearby? And why was the hopper already on its way? Had the Marines spotted his company and were on their way back to report?
No, that didn’t make sense. The Marines would have reported by radio and probably have shadowed the Sharp Edge company so they could continue reporting. And what were they doing with the Fuzzies? He shook his head; too many questions. And not a good answer for any of them.
Whatever, now that his men had fired on the Marines—and shot one of them, if the flankers could be believed—surrendering was going to be much more difficult. The Marine commander might issue a shoot-on-sight order. Captain Fassbender needed to come up with a way to approach the Marines that wouldn’t get him and all of his men killed.
“I think I’ve got the Fuzzy patched up all right,” HM3 Hough said to Lieutenant Bass. “I don’t know where his internal organs are, but if they’re arranged anything like ours, nothing vital got hit. But McGinty, I don’t have any idea how to treat that swelling. I’ve cut off circulation in case the venom travels through the blood system, but …” His voice trailed off. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital fast. As it is, he’ll probably lose that hand—if not worse.”
“Get him ready to medevac to FIST HQ,” Bass said.
They were in Bass’s headquarters bunker, which for the moment doubled as sickbay. It wasn’t much of a bunker, merely a meter-and-a-half-deep hole in the ground covered by a tent, because they didn’t have the materials for a proper overhead. Bass’s cot had been commandeered for use as a surgical bed, and the wounded Fuzzy was resting on Staff Sergeant Hyakowa’s cot.
Henny had watched as Hough extracted the flechette from Crooked Tail’s back and bandaged his wound; Hough had been gentle with him. That wasn’t treatment Henny expected from the Naked Ones. The Naked Ones he knew would have left Crooked Tail in the valley to bleed to death. Maybe Mercury was wrong; maybe he had been wrong himself. Maybe these new Naked Ones weren’t like the ones who had enslaved the People.
Bass looked at the Fuzzy, watched it swivel its body, push its bound wrists away from its back and wiggle its fingers. The Fuzzy chittered more, poking its snout at McGinty, closing and opening the fingers of one hand. The Fuzzy looked at his wounded comrade and nodded vigorously, then back at McGinty and nodded just as vigorously, chittering all the while.
“If he was human,” Bass said reflectively, “I’d say he was trying to tell us he’s friendly, and he knows a cure for that.”
Hough nodded. “Could be. Until now, there hasn’t been any fighting between us and them.”
Corporal Dean was keeping out of the way, watching McGinty with concern. Now he spoke up for the first time since telling what had happened out there.
“When they attacked us, they could have killed us. They had two rifles but didn’t shoot. That one”—he nodded at the sitting Fuzzy—“gave me a butt stroke instead of shooting. The other one whapped Ymenez upside the head with the butt of his spear instead of sticking him. I think they were trying to capture us instead of killing us.”
Bass thought about that for a moment, watching the Fuzzy. The Fuzzy carefully rose to his feet and turned his back to Bass, offering its bonds to be cut.
“Cover him, Dean.” Bass drew his knife and sliced through the tie.
The Fuzzy took a few seconds to rub his wrists, then made a curious gesture, hand held below shoulder level and flopping. He ducked out of the tent and looked around. With a glance and a stream of chitter back at Bass, he started trotting toward the surrounding brush, flopping his hand below his shoulder as he went. Bass and Dean followed; Dean kept his blaster aimed at the Fuzzy.
The Fuzzy reached the scrub and slowed down, peering intently at the bushes. He abruptly stood erect and chittered excitedly, pointing at one of the bushes. To the Marines, it didn’t look much different from the other bushes, but the Fuzzy certainly seemed to think it was. He squatted next to the bush and pulled leaves from it. When he had an overflowing handful, he stood and began trotting back to the tent. Bass and Dean followed.
Inside, the Fuzzy gestured for Hough to stop sealing the stasis bag the Corpsman was putting McGinty into. Hough looked to Bass, who nodded.
“I want to see what he’s got planned,” Bass said. “We can knock him away and seal McGinty fast if he tries anything funny.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Hough slid out of the way and let the Fuzzy approach.
The Fuzzy held his hands over McGinty’s swollen red hand and crushed the leaves between his hands. He rolled the crushed leaves and the thin liquid that oozed from them between his palms, and let the liquid drip onto McGinty’s hand. McGinty moaned, and his hand twitched, but he didn’t seem to be in any greater pain. The Fuzzy kept rolling and squeezing, dripping liquid on McGinty’s hand and up onto his wrist. When no more liquid dripped, the Fuzzy flicked the bits of leaf away, and briskly rubbed McGinty’s hand and wrist for a couple of minutes, then settled back on his haunches to wait.
“So what’s supposed to be happening?” Hough asked the Fuzzy.
The Fuzzy looked up at him and chittered, made odd patting motions with its hands.
“It looks like he’s trying to tell you to be patient and let the medicine do its work,” Dean said.
Bass merely grunted.
Hough leaned forward to look through McGinty’s helmet screen. “It’s doing something,” he said reverently. He looked up at Bass. “He’s not sweating as much as before, and he looks like he’s resting quietly.”
“Let me see,” Bass said. He moved close. So did Dean, momentarily leaving the Fuzzy unguarded. They agreed with Hough: McGinty looked better.
The Fuzzy was still squatting when they looked back at him; he calmly returned their gaze. Then the Fuzzy nodded toward McGinty and raised a hand to flash his fingers twice.
“What are you telling me?” Hough asked. “It’s going to take ten days for him to heal and recuperate?”
“Maybe ten hours,” Bass said, looking at the Fuzzy. Among humans, the handshake was an almost universal gesture of friendship; most humans saw the shoulder clasp as a gesture of comradeship. But the Fuzzies weren’t human, and for all the Marine knew an offered hand or a pat on the shoulder was an invitation to a fight. But a nod seemed to be a positive gesture. He motioned at McGinty, and nodded at the Fuzzy. He didn’t smile; to nearly all Earth mammals, bared teeth was a threat and given that the Fuzzies had muzzles rather than faces, it might be the same with them.
The Fuzzy nodded back.
“I still want to put him in stasis and send him to a hospital,” Hough said.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Bass agreed.
Hough finished sealing the stasis bag, then he and Dean carried it to the waiting hopper.
Finally allowed to examine the alien up close, the Grandar Bay’s xeno-zoologist Lieutenant Prang was beside himself with
excitement. He was anxious to attempt to communicate with the Fuzzy. He got out his canteen and went to take a drink. But a glance at the Fuzzy’s face told him the creature probably wouldn’t be able to drink like a man. Instead he poured water into a canteen cup and took a drink, then offered the cup to the Fuzzy.
The Fuzzy took the cup in both hands and looked into it curiously. He sniffed at the water and his face wrinkled, just like a human asking, What is this?
Prang took the cup back and took another drink before returning it to the Fuzzy. The Fuzzy had watched Prang’s face with interest. He took the cup, stuck his face into it, and began lapping at the water.
Henny decided these Naked Ones weren’t at all like the other Naked Ones.
“What’s he chittering about?” Hough asked, looking at the Fuzzy seated on the ground, facing Lieutenant Prang.
* * *
Captain Fassbender sent Sergeant Vodnik in command of a point unit half a kilometer ahead of the company’s main body. The point and flankers were all from his own garrison platoon this time; he wasn’t about to trust the new men or their officers, not after what had just happened. When the main body set out, he positioned himself between the two new platoons. The remaining men from his own platoons, those who weren’t on point or the flanks, brought up the rear, with strict orders to prevent stragglers. That was a job they accepted with relish. They were as unhappy as their captain was about the flankers from the reinforcing platoons opening fire on the Confederation Marines and looked forward to an excuse to beat on the newcomers.
A couple of kilometers farther down the valley, Sergeant Vodnik radioed Fassbender.
“I see a tent and a wall up ahead,” he said. “It looks like there are some bunkers, or other defensive positions, and I can see what I think are a few Confederation Marines moving about.”
“How far ahead?” Fassbender asked.
“About another klick.”
“Have they seen you yet?”
“Negative. I don’t think their infrared sensors can pick people out in this heat. And nobody looks all that alert except for one guy in a sentry tower, and he doesn’t act like he’s seen anybody.”
