by Alan Black
Stone wanted to shriek in pain when she moved him. It didn’t feel like anything was broken. Whatever had burrowed into his buttocks had taken up residence and burned a hole to make a home. His arm had a gash from wrist to elbow, covered in blood and goo. He wanted to shriek, he even tried, but nothing came out. The best he could do was gulp in more relatively fresh air.
Then it occurred to him. Corporal Tuttle hadn’t reached under him with her right hand, just an arm ending at the wrist. “Barb? Are you okay?”
Tuttle flashed him a gap-toothed grin. “No, sir. Appreciate the thought, though. Sure gotta love a boss who’s worried about me, even though he looks like five pounds of fresh ground goat meat in a four-pound bucket.” She held up the stump of her right hand. “I got too close to an exploding grenade. Damn shame though. This will upset some of the boys for a while, this was my best hand for giving—well, you know. The suit sealed it up right nice and automatically administered meds.” She grinned wider. “The morphine is kicked in quite nicely, thank you for asking.”
She popped open a small compartment on her suit’s thigh. Pulling out a can of liquid bandage, she sprayed his arm, across his chest, thighs, and face. “Sorry, sir. You seem to be leaking all over. We’ll get you a medic as soon as we can.”
“My right butt cheek. Something—”
He didn’t get any farther before she flipped him over none-too-gently. Her faceplate slammed into place. Not being able to see what she was doing, he did feel liquid bandage ooze over the hole. He wanted to shout at her to dig out whatever took up residence, but the bandage’s anesthetic properties eased the burning.
Tuttle chuckled as her faceplate popped open. “Looks like we both did ourselves.”
“What?”
“That hole in your ass, the new one, is a bullet from a TDO-960A. You must have caught a ricochet. Shot yourself, sir.” She tapped her faceplate. “X-Ray vision says there’s a small chunk of metal, my onboard diagnostics identifies it as one of your bullets.”
“You said we.”
Tuttle nodded. “It was getting hot out here until you did your stupid dive under the claws of that rampaging drasco. I don’t know what you were thinking. That was some heroic shit for a lame ass navy ensign, sir. But, I guess you knew what you were doing.”
“But, I—”
Tuttle interrupted. “Killed the beast, sir. Nothing we had got through its hide.” She slapped the bulk of the drasco and pointed with her stump at the blood oozing from a dozen holes made by bullets that had found the little tender spot his girls liked to have rubbed. “You killed it just as I tried to stuff a grenade down its throat. It would have bit my arm clean off, but it didn’t bite down, just convulsed around a bit, death throes, I guess. Anyway, I couldn’t get my hand out before the grenade went off.”
“Get me up.”
“No, sir.” You’re chewed up some. Major Numos will get us secured. You should rest until we can get a medic.”
“Get me up, Corporal. Or get out of my way.” He didn’t think he had the strength to get up, or even walk if Tuttle got him to his feet, but he had to check on Allie. He was worried about Jay and Peebee, yet Allie was first. Then the other humans and after people, he would check on his drascos.
Tuttle grabbed his utility uniform collar with her left hand, lifting him to his feet. He wobbled, surprised at the ordered chaos swirling around him. Numos stood a few feet away, snapping orders in a calm quiet voice. Men and women rushed about following his commands. Suited marines were circling the meadow, each one facing outward, weapons ready to shoot even the slightest twitch of a leaf. The marines on guard shimmered and disappeared as they went gilley.
Tarps were being reset on makeshift poles and wounded were being moved as medics could get to them, a few badly injured had camouflage tarps erected over them. They shimmered and disappeared as the camouflage blocked his view. More than one body bag was used, compacted, and set aside. The group appeared much smaller than when Stone had first stumbled into the camp.
He spotted Ryte. She stood away from the rush of activity, scanning the sky with a variety of instruments. She didn’t look concerned, so he imagined the Hyrocanians hadn’t started to look for them yet. They were most likely still dealing with the loss of however many of their kind they lost in the self-destruct of the human base.
Stone felt light headed and fell back against the male drasco. It’s huge body was warm and pliable, but it supported him until he could get his feet under him.
“Allie?” he asked Tuttle.
She shrugged. “You stay here, sir. I’ll find someone to go check.”
“I’m okay. Don’t you have something else you should be doing?”
“You are my something else, remember? Lieutenant Vedrian assigned me and Private Tzickle to keep you safe.”
“Yeah. How’s that going?”
Tuttle laughed, “You ain’t dead yet.”
“Where is Private Tzickle, then?”
Tuttle shrugged again. “Betty ain’t as lucky as you and me.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know her.” Stone said. He pointed in what he thought was the last direction he had seen Allie. “You can keep me safe over there, Corporal.”
Pushing away from the dead drasco’s body, he plodded toward where he thought Allie’s body might be. He got to a small tarped over area and stepped under its cover. He really wasn’t sure whether he was seeking protection from the sky or just tired from the ten-foot walk.
LCDR Butcher lay on a pallet. He was unconscious but alive. Dr. Menendez was working with a medic, her hands wrist deep in a marine’s chest. MCPO Thomas slipped into the area helping S3C Dollish, their pots and pans washer, find a spot to sit in the rapidly crowding tarp. The young man sat with his knees pulled up, head buried in his hands.
Stone looked up at Tuttle, her face feet above his. “Corporal, see if you can get someone to help you get more camouflage connected to this one before it gets too crowded. Move some tents if you have to.” At her look, he shook his head. “I’m on my feet again. Some of these folks aren’t.”
He hadn’t seen her pick up his rifle, but one handed she stripped the empty clip. Pulling a second clip from the stock clamps, she reloaded his weapon, charged it, pumped a fresh shell into the chamber, and flicked the safety on. She handed it back to him, turned gilley, and disappeared.
Thomas noticed him. “Sir! I thought you were dead.” The man bolted to his feet and rushed over to help Stone stay upright.
Stone shook his head, not without pain. “I don’t think so.” He brushed the man’s hands away and held onto a makeshift tent pole. The pole was made of native wood and covered in a furry coat of cactus-like needles. He recognized the type as the ones with little, hinged barbs on the ends that slid into your skin easily, but became hooks when you tried to pull them out. He ignored the stinging as just a minor irritation compared to his other pains.
“Ensign Stone, I saw you grab your rifle and dive under that animal. You rolled between its claws. I don’t know how it missed you with its teeth. You just disappeared under there. You are in command, what were you thinking?”
He started to answer that he didn’t do it on purpose, but Thomas wasn’t done talking.
“Maybe you better sit down before you fall down.”
Stone shook his head. He wanted to go check on Allie, but he knew he was only stalling for time while he gathered his strength to move another few feet closer to her. “How is Butcher?”
“Lieutenant Commander Butcher caught the edge of the table in the initial bomb blast. A broken rib collapsed a lung. Doctor Menendez is keeping him unconscious until she can get in, fix the rib, and re-inflate the lung.”
Stone gestured at the marine Menendez was operating on when he entered the makeshift tent.
Thomas shook his head.
Menendez leaned back. “Waste of time. He’s long gone. Bag and tag him, Gary.” She looked up at Stone. “Goodness! What the—”
“Leave me
for now,” he interrupted. “I’ve gotten some first aid, so I will wait.” He didn’t know if getting sprayed with liquid bandage counted as first aid. In spite of that, he figured if he was on his feet he couldn’t be as bad off as the others. “Have you seen Lieutenant Vedrian?” Both Thomas and Menendez shook their heads. “What about Dollish? How is he doing?”
Menendez started to step over to the man, but Thomas grabbed her arm. He said, “Just got a little rattled in his brain pan.”
The doctor nodded in understanding. Grabbing a roll of medical tape, she pinched closed the wound on Stone’s arm and wrapped it tight. Over his protests, she poked and prodded a few of his other more obvious scrapes. He was beyond protesting when she ran a scanner over his butt, cut a patch out of his utility uniform with a micro-scalpel and slapped a piece of tape over the fresh bullet wound. By way of a bedside manner, she said, “Good thing the bullet spent most of its force before it hit you or it would have ripped a much bigger hole coming out than it did going in.” Without waiting for a response, she raced to the other side of the rapidly expanding tent to assist a medic dragging a wounded civilian into its shade.
Stone mustered his best command voice and said, “Spacer Dollish, I need your help, please. Come with me.” He didn’t know if it would work, but his instructors had insisted they all learn how to speak, what to command and even when a bellow was appropriate. “Master Chief Thomas, let’s you, Spacer Dollish, and me see if we can get a survey of the camp and help get the injured in here for care.” He turned and wobbled out of the relative safety of the tarp covering. He didn’t look to see if Thomas or Dollish followed him.
The sky was still there. It glared at him: heavy, evil, and oppressive. He tried to ignore it and focused on moving his feet. He found what he thought was the place where Allie had been thrown. She wasn’t there. Major Numos stood under a camouflage tarp, next to a small pile of black cubes, the remains of a few compacted body bags. He appeared to be talking to himself.
“Major?” Stone asked as he stepped under the tarp.
Numos stopped talking and turned. Stone realized the marine major had been talking to a small group of suited marines in full gilley mode.
Stone said, “I’m sorry for the interruption, Major.” He wanted to ask about Allie, suddenly afraid to speak. There were too many cubes in the stack and more were being gathered all of the time. He didn’t want to know about Allie if she was in the pile. “I’m ….” His voice faded away. He really didn’t know what to ask.
Numos said, “Its bad, Ensign. It’d be worse without what you did. I’m not sure we had anything big enough with us to take out the beast until you took it down.”
Stone shook his head. “It wasn’t like that.”
Numos said, “I know. It never is. Can we borrow your men?” He gestured with his chin.
Stone looked behind him. Thomas, Dollish and two other navy enlisted stood behind him. “What do we need to do, Major?”
“We are as secure as we can be right now. That’s crap, but it’s the best we’ve got. We have everything in a ring around us. We’re putting mortars and heavy-caliber guns along our south border. I don’t think anything else will come out of the jungle from that direction. Nevertheless, we can’t stay here too long. The Hyrocanians will come looking for us soon enough.”
Stone nodded, “Doctor Menendez is working in a tent back there.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “We need to get the wounded back to her and the medical staff right away and we need to get everyone under cover. If the Hyrocanians overfly this meadow, they will spot us easy enough. What can Master Chief Thomas help you with?”
“We have some wounded—”
Stone interrupted. “Master Chief, please make sure the doctor and her staff have as much camouflage protection as we can give them and begin moving all wounded to her for triage and aid. Oh, and Chief, tell our people not to touch any native plants without gloves on, including any makeshift tent poles.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Thomas replied.
Numos added, “My men can handle the body bags, most are ours anyway, but if you let me know where you find anyone, I would appreciate it.”
Dollish whined, “I work in the kitchen, not in graves registration.”
Stone spun on the man. “Then go cook something, dammit.”
Dollish looked surprised, “But—”
Thomas interrupted, “But nothing spacer. You have your orders.”
Stone said, “Build a fire. That shouldn’t be hard. Half of the forest around us is still smoking. And cook that.” He jabbed a finger at the dead male drasco. “I’ve eaten one and they don’t taste as bad as they look. Almost, but not quite.” He still wanted to ask about Allie, but he didn’t want to hear the bad news. Instead, he turned to Thomas. “Master Chief, please get anybody who is fit, working at doing something. I don’t care what, but helping with the wounded is priority one. As soon as you can, get me a roster of survivors and an inventory of what we have.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Major Numos, we have got to get under cover soon. I know we are hurting here, but—”
Numos nodded. “It won’t take the Hyrocanians long to figure out they didn’t get all of us. They’ll be back. I have Lieutenant Vedrian scanning through our geographical maps looking for some sort of defensible position.”
“Allie is okay?”
Numos smiled. “No. She’ll be better once she finds out you’re all right. You are all right?”
Stone shrugged. “I’ll take my turn with the doctor, but I’m on my feet until then.”
“Allie is over that way. Why don’t you go check on her progress with the maps?” He waved a hand in the general direction Stone had just come from.
Stone grinned, “Yes, sir. I should check on that.”
Numos asked, “Where are Tuttle and Tzickle?”
“Tuttle lost a hand. She’s mobile though and I have her helping the medical staff set up a temporary hospital. She said Tzickle didn’t … um, she’s—” He let it go, seeing understanding in Numos’s eyes. “Sorry to interrupt, sir.”
He turned, noting he no longer had an entourage and backtracked looking for Allie. He felt he was being completely selfish. If she was working, then she would be all right and he should be working with Thomas to help the more seriously wounded. However, he managed to justify to himself that he should check on Allie’s maps to see if they could locate a more defensible position. An open meadow at night on Allie’s World was nothing less than a buffet for the local fauna.
Stone found Allie sitting on a blanket under a tarp. She was leaning against her backpack with a display from her dataport hovering over her lap. She didn’t see him slip under the tarp at first as there were a dozen unsuited marines scurrying about doing whatever unsuited marines did. Allie was alternately scanning maps and shouting for something or other to get done.
The bandage across her head had slipped down and he could see fluid oozing from where her eye had been. There were tear tracks streaked down her cheek from her good eye. A split lip still oozed blood. Her hair was partly plastered across her head and partly sticking out at odd angles, held up by strange bits of goo, blood and what looked like drasco snot. A fresh bandage wrapped across her chest from her right shoulder down to the bottom of her ribcage on the left. She only had one boot on. Her feet were propped up on an inflated pillow.
A discarded half-used first aid kit lay on the ground near her. Stone wobbled to it, rummaged around until he found a can of liquid bandage with a little still left in it. He also found a bandage for her head. It had already been opened and probably wasn’t sterile anymore, but it hadn’t been used before so he reasoned the bandage was better than what Allie was already using.
He knelt down on her blind side and started easing the old bandage off her head. She swatted at him without looking, as if brushing away a gnat. She dialed up the magnification on a map, studying it, pushing the map around and rolled it back out, her desperation to fi
nd them a hidey-hole evident. Stone slipped a knife from her boot and cut the bloody old bandage away from her head.
She spat out, “I told you to leave me alone. Go take care of someone else.”
Stone replied, “Shut up Lieutenant, and take your medicine like a marine.”
She slapped the screen out of the way and grabbed Stone in a bear hug to her chest. The crushing squeeze nearly knocked the air out of his lungs. Feeling woozy to begin with, his head started to spin. She released him, but wrapped her hands around his face and kissed him long and hard. She smelled like sweat, copper, dark chocolate, and the strange mint he smelled earlier. He assumed the copper was the odor of blood, whether his or hers, he didn’t know. He assumed the chocolate was a holdover from some energy bar or something she must have eaten. The mint was—well, everywhere.
With a sigh, she released him. Their faces were so close the tips of their noses still touched. “They told me you dove under the male drasco and disappeared. I thought—”
He nodded. “I saw him throw you. I thought the same.”
She chuckled. “I thought he would chew me in half. I guess the bastard didn’t like the way I tasted.”
“I do.” To prove his point, he kissed her gently on the lips, the tip of her nose and her remaining eyelid. He pushed back from her, aimed the can of liquid bandage at the ooze coming from her damaged eye and sprayed. It only took a second longer to slide the relatively fresh bandage over the gouge and press the button. The new bandage cinched tight.
Since she wasn’t kissing or squeezing the breath out of him, he hoped his woozy feeling would go away. Instead, it kept getting worse. He shook his head trying to clear it but had to squeeze his eyes shut to ward off the pain.
Allie said, “Are you all right? Don’t lie to me, Stone. You look like shit.”
Stone grinned, “You look wonderful. Yeah, I’m okay—I think. Mostly I got a few scrapes and scratches.” He held up his arm. “I got a pretty bad gash. Doctor Menendez already taped it shut. And well, I shot myself in the ass.”
