by Jean Kilczer
put a heavy arm around my shoulders. “You are concerned of your friends.”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“All is in the hands of Great Mind, Julesh.”
“I intend to give him a hand, Trum.”
“You Trerrans.” He shook his head. “You thrink you can direct your frate.”
“Our…oh, fate. I think we have some say in the matter.”
“Prehaps we do.”
I sat down near the inner hatch with the fire extinguisher behind me. Trumbil and Grothe leaned against the broken hovjeep trunk. If one of the crew came in, we didn't want him to see our handiwork.
Zik paced on six of his eight jointed tentacles. The other two were wrapped tightly around his ungroomed sable mantle. His huge disc eyes went amber and he began to leak a slime trail, sure signs of stress.
Luckily, the journey wasn't long with the star drive, and no one entered the hold.
“Planetfall,” I said and got up as I felt the ship rumble down to a grav well. I looked around at my companions. “We're on.” I told the butterflies in my stomach to land as we prepared for battle, handed out beam rifles, strapped on a stingler, and slung a rifle over my shoulder. “Good luck, tags.”
“We're on what?” Trumbil asked me.
“Just a crazy Terran expression,” I told him and picked up the fire extinguisher.
He nodded. “You are exprecting a fire, Julesh?”
“I expect to start one.”
He shook his head.
I thought they'd open the inner hatch, but I heard them unlock the big bay door.
“C'mon!” I said. “Remember our plan.” Such as it was. We gathered on either side of the door as it cranked down to form a ramp. I heard Terran voices on the other side.
Suddenly I felt quiet inside, and focused, prepared for the job I had to do. The butterflies settled down and went to sleep.
Four Terrans, dressed in ragged military uniforms and armed with laser rifles, started up the ramp. I aimed the fire extinguisher at them and blasted a cloud of CO2 in their faces. “Let's go!” I shouted and sprayed the men and the metal ramp as I ran by. Three of them slipped and slid down the ramp. The fourth reached for his holstered gun.
“Here, catch!” I threw the extinguisher to him. He caught it in both hands, fell back, and slid down the ramp, piling into the others.
“You stupid slimetroll!” I heard one shout.
I sprayed them all with a continuous beam set on stun. Their complaints sank to whimpers. One mumbled “Mommy,” and then silence.
We were in a small airfield with a tower, low wooden structures, hangars, and a variety of air and ground vehicles. A second starship sat on a pad.
“This way,” I told my companions and trotted toward the ship's main hatch. If we could gain entrance to the cabin, we could launch and escape.
“Dammit!” I muttered. The hatch was locked. The pilot was probably still in there. “Rip it open, Trum! Grothe, help him.”
The two Kubraens put their muscles into trying to tear open the hatch. It didn't budge.
“Never mind!” I said. “Stand clear.” I spun my rifle's ring to hot and raked the hatch, then I realized that it had a mirror finish. The laser beam just bounced off.
Terrans were piling into a jeep near a hangar.
“Threy are croming,” Trumbil said.
“Take cover!” I ran toward a long low building. The others followed.
I twisted the doorknob and heard clicks, but it remained locked.
“It's a thumbprint goddamn lock,” I said. “Grothe!”
He gave the door a powerful kick and it crashed inward. We leaped over smashed wood. I tripped on a shattered panel that caught my pants cuff, and rolled into the room.
I got to my feet and faced perhaps forty mercenaries who sat at long tables, eating. “Shit, the mess hall.”
The cook behind the counter froze with a ladle raised over one man's extended soup bowl. His mouth opened into a silent circle and he spilled soup on the man's arm.
The man howled and dropped his bowl. “You dumb scudsucker!” he told the cook.
“Sorry, tags,” I said, and backed toward the doorway, “we're, uh, running from an Alpha Alliance Star Scout.” I glanced back at the door. “Little problem with the law, you know?” I shrugged. “We, uh, want to join your military force but…” I brushed myself off to gain a moment to think. “We hear the pay's good.” I glanced back through the doorway again as though I were searching for pursuers. Which I was. The jeep sprayed dirt as it raced toward the building. “They're pretty close on our tail. We don't want to get you tags into trouble with the Alliance, so we'll just–”
I heard the ring on a beam weapon spin behind me. I stiffened and turned slowly.
“Hello, Jules,” Big Mack said and grinned. “Long time.” He leaned his broad frame against the doorway. An older man, with a speckled beard, a low brow, and a mass of tangled black hair, we had crossed paths on New Lithnia where he and his mercenaries once worked for Boss Slade.
“Not long enough.” I watched the jeep screech to a stop in a blanket of raised dust. Five Terrans, wearing ragged military uniforms, with bandannas around their necks and heads, and assorted medals they had never earned, jumped out of the jeep and strode toward the doorway. Big Mack waved them off and they came to a stop.
My companions remained silent, except Zik the BEM. He extended a tentacle toward Mack. “I am a warrior, Lieutenant Mack. I have many martial skills. I could serve you well.”
Mack ignored him and slid me a look. “Commander Tryst almost kept you for herself.” He grinned. “I paid top dollar for your ass on the block.”
“I don't remember a block,” I said.
He shrugged. “It's a virtual block. The rifle?”
I unslung it reluctantly and slapped it into his extended hand.
“The stingler?”
I unholstered that too and gave it to him.
The five men from the jeep came in and disarmed my companions. “What do you want with us?” I asked Mack.
“Us? No.” He shifted his weight. “You. We're fighting an enemy that is sneaky as sand scrabblers.”
“Sneaky as in they're winning?” I raised my brows. “Maybe you and your tags should just give it up and go home. You can't win them all, you know.”
He patted my cheek. “I think I just tipped the scales a bit in our favor.”
I lowered my head. I knew all too well what was coming next. “Did Tryst tell you that I had an accident and I seem to have lost my tel abilities? I'll bet she didn't tell you.”
He chuckled. “You can do better than that. Last time we met, you had learned to kill with your power. Nice trick, that. Have you added any more skills to your bag?”
I straightened. “If I did, you'd be the last to know.”
He turned to the five men and motioned toward my companions. “Take these scuds to the cells, and don't feed them or give them water until I say so.”
I looked at Trumbil and bit my lip.
“If we must accomprany Briertrush into geth,” he raised his chin, “it wrill be fror the good. Do not barter your kwaii on our behalf, Julesh.”
I nodded. He meant my soul.
Zik's tentacles hung, with only two supporting his weight. Slime trickled down one of them. “My death will be your loss, Lieutenant.”
“By the way, BEM,” Mack said, “That's Lieutenant Colonel.”
“Whatever,” Zik responded as he was prodded toward the jeep by a Terran.
“Have some lunch,” Big Mack told me. “C'mon.”
Spirit, I sent as he led me to a private table set for two, Spirit! Are you there?
Where else would I be but at your peck and ball?
That's beck and– Never mind. Are my friends on this planet?
What?
Are my friends on New Terra? The team, Spirit!
Yes…but I don't know exactly where. I have an egg–
Can you do a search?
>
Later, Jules. Later! I have an egg I've been nurturing for decades and now the entity within is breaking through her shell. If you're in another mess, use your skills to get out of it.
What is it?
Your skills, Terran!
What's in the shell?
I cannot be certain, but it may very well be a female of my own species. I believe I have combined the correct mix of DNA and–Oh. She is breaking through!
Spirit…
He'd cut the link.
I sat back and took a deep breath. It occurred to me, in this small interlude, that the air seemed very Earthlike, besides the smells of cooking, with none of the tainted odors of other planets I'd been on. The gravity, too, seemed just right. I had run to this building and now I realized I hadn't been out of breath.
I gazed out a window. Beyond the dirt field and the wire fence, a thick forest laced rolling hills. The trees were also Earth-like, green, lush, and towering, with needles like Earth's conifers. A thick carpet of grass stretched uphill until it was lost in the darkness of woods. I looked up at silver-rimmed cumuli clouds, creamy puffs that seemed to be lit from within as they drifted lazily in an emerald sky. If I didn't know better, I'd think I was in my home state of Colorado.
Big Mack tapped the table to get my attention. “That's why we call it New Terra,” he said, “Goldilocks for short. It's just right, isn't it? Always within the life zone for its entire orbit.”
And why, I thought, the islands that made up this sea world were so coveted by Terran colonists that they could find excuses to annihilate the civilized natives of the planet.
The cook brought a tray to our table and set dishes before Mack and me.
Mack nodded at my meal. Steak, mashed potatoes, a green salad, a slice of mud pie and coffee.
“Yum,” he said. “Your favorite, and it's mock. There are no cattle-like animals on New Terra. I suspect the colonists will bring them along once we announce the Day of Land Grab.”
“When the last of the natives are gone?” I asked.
“That's right! When the last Orang is dead and buried. Is that what you wanted to hear? We offered them relocation on one of the Northern islands, but they refused to go.”
“Imagine that,” I said. “Stubborn bastards.”
“You're a wise ass, Rammis.”
I was hungry and the smells made me drool. “I'll eat when my friends are fed,” I said.
Mack leaned forward and folded his arms on the table. “Give me your word that you'll cooperate and aid us in our mission, and your friends will feast on foods to suit their alien palettes.”
“You should know I can't do that.” I glanced around. Many of the men had stopped eating and were watching us.
“How would you like to be fed intravenously?” Mack asked.
“I guess I couldn't stop you,” though the thought of a needle made me shiver, “but that doesn't mean I'd cooperate.”
His eye twitched. I'd seen it before in him, a sign of stress. “Then what will it take?”
“Nothing you can offer. I think you wasted good creds buying me on the block. Suppose you sell me to some other planet that can use a tel's abilities for a purpose other than exterminating a race of people?”
He sat back and stroked his scruffy beard. “They're not people. They're Orangs, nothin' but a bunch o' tree-swinging monkeys!”
“Is that why you can't beat them? Maybe they're more guerrillas than monkeys?”
He grabbed my shirt in a swift motion and pulled me closer. The room grew quiet. I smelled tobacco on his breath. His clamped teeth were yellow. “I can fill your days with so much pain you'll beg me to let you cooperate. You'd turn over your own mother and pray for death.”
I gripped his hands, but he held on tight. “What you said about the tel death blow…”
His eyes narrowed.
“I can use it on myself, too.” As I thought about it, I realized that I probably could do just that.
He let go and pushed me back in the chair. “Salo!” he called. “C'mere.”
The cook stopped slicing a brisket and came around the counter, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. “Yeah, boss?” His pale eyes were wide. His soft jowls shook as he talked. His hands trembled on the towel.
“Bring the prisoners some food. Two Denebs. Two Kubs, and a BEM. Can you suit them with the sous chef?”
Salo nodded. “Right away, boss.” He hurried back around the counter as though it were a protective barrier, hit his broad hip on the jutting corner, yelped, and turned on the sous chef.
Big Mack folded his arms across his chest and nodded at my dishes.
I cut a piece of steak and ate it. “Yum. My compliments to the chef. He wouldn't happen to have cannoli?”
“What the hell's cannoli?”
“Never mind.”
I couldn't help a slight smile as I ate. I had turned this meal from defeat into a small success and my companions would be taken care of.
Chapter Six
It was night. I was asleep on a bunk, alone in a locked cell, when four guards came to the barred door. I got up quickly as one unlocked it and turned on the light. I squinted at them. Big Mack was being careful not to leave me alone with fewer than four. I was ready to try my tel power on three minds at once, though that was always a stretch. Four was beyond me.
“C'mon,” a lanky guard said as the door creaked open.
I hesitated. “Where are we going?”
“You'll find out when we get there.”
“Take your jacket,” another guard said softly. “The nights are cold.”
I put it on and let them escort me into the hall. I paused by the next cell, where my five alien companions were being held. They came to the bars.
“Have they fed you tags?” I asked.
They nodded, all but Zik, who made a circle with a clawed tentacle. I took it for a “yes.”
Furro, one of the two Denebs, tall, light-boned and flat-chested, with a high, plated forehead, grasped the bars with reedy, brown-skinned hands. “Are they caring for you, cousin?” he asked me in a lilting tone.
“So far, cous',” I said.
“Let's go,” a stocky guard told me.
I heard the whine and growl of engines before they opened the outer door. Frosty air struck my face. I zipped my jacket.
In the blackness of night, I watched vague shapes of military vehicles that moved across the grounds. Their headlights raked dirt as they formed a column. The familiar smell of electrical equipment whirring within the engines drifted on winds generated by attack hovairs that circled above us.
I was led to a large jeep where two stiff, glowing flags sporting the pirates' Jolly Roger jutting from front fenders.
“The flag jeep?” I asked.
“Just get in the back,” the stocky guard ordered.
“What?” I said. “No gun?”
“Just get in!” He slapped my shoulder.
I swung into the rear seat.
The driver, his face hidden by night, with two tags seated beside him, turned his head. “Strap in,” he said. "It's going to be a rough ride.
I did.
Would they trust me with just three tags? I could only hope so.
I formed a tel coil as the driver headed for a tall building, and threw the probe in a wide radius as I searched for my team. My limit was about fifteen miles, but all I picked up were the minds of animals as they stirred and trotted off into deep woods for the night's hunt.
Once we were past the outer gate, I would try for a tel-link on the three tags and direct them to stop the jeep, leave their weapons behind and get out.
It was a nice plan, until the jeep pulled up at the entrance of the tall building and Big Mack emerged and slid into the jeep beside me.
He was silent and grim as the driver took us to the head of the column and drove through the open gate and onto a dirt road between trees. The column followed.
“Do your job tonight,” Mack told me, “and you'll be rewar
ded for it.”
“What might the job be?” I asked.
He put on leather gloves, unholstered his stingler and checked it. The charge light was green. “You'll find out on a need to know basis.”
“Is this a night foray or will we meet up with other companies?” I fingered the seat belt.
“Going someplace?” he asked, strapped himself in, leaned back, and closed his eyes. “You're a real pain in the ass, Rammis.”
I sat back. “I didn't ask for this gig.”
* * *
“Where the hell's the village?” Mack said as we topped a hill about an hour later.
Glowing ashes of dying campfires, perhaps cook fires, dotted a flat plain below.
We drove down, past stacks of wood and a few smashed earthen pots. Red nutshells, larger than any I'd seen on Terra, lay cracked open and empty in small heaps beside bare branches with a few leaves still attached. I got out of the jeep and studied a stack of animal bones. A strange skull, about the size of an elk's, bore a single horn protruding between the eye sockets. The whitened bone was smashed on both sides of the brain cavity. I looked around in the dark campsite. A powerful weapon had done this work. I caught my breath at the shake of a high branch. Leaves fluttered down. Something large had leaped from that sturdy tree. A lookout?
I closed my eyes and formed a tel coil, then threw it toward the tree and probed.
My mind dipped into a black well of fear and anger. Glowick, I caught, they are right below us! Many of them.
I see them, Sonrai, like a horde of festers spreading into our home with murder in their vile minds! Are our people in position around the camp with their weapons, Sonrai?
They are, Glowick, and prepared to attack the festers from all sides.
“Uh, oh.” I backed toward the jeep, my heart drumming. “Uh oh.”
“What?” Big Mack asked. “What are you catching?”
“We're surrounded,” I said, suddenly out of breath. “They're going to attack! Let's get back to the trees.” I ran for the jeep, took the driver's seat and turned on the engine. “This is a trap to catch us out in the open.”
