Except for Lance Corporal Schultz. While he recognized that the thought might be nothing more than paranoid delusion, he harbored the suspicion that the Skinks could swim through the marsh faster than the Marines could wade through it.
The Master was becoming concerned. He only had one Fighter left to send back as a guide for the reaction force. It was a kilometer and a half since he last sent a Fighter back, and he hadn’t yet detected the reaction force he was sure was behind him. He was certain a reaction force was on its way; one had to be.
He thought about the route the Earthmen Marines were following. It didn’t go straight: it zigged and zagged at odd times and for varying distances. But when he straightened the route out in his mind and compared it to what he remembered of the map, which was a great deal—Masters were bred to remember such things—it was clear to him that the Earthmen Marines were headed toward a specific area at the edge of the marsh. There were many directions they could go from there, but the marks they left in their path would be clearer on dry land than in the water.
He instructed his remaining Fighter on what to tell the commander of the reaction force, then sent him back. Once the Fighter was gone, the Master stopped trailing the Earthmen Marines and headed straight for the section of marsh edge he thought his quarry was headed for. He found a hiding place and waited.
Most of the Marines of third platoon were relieved to step back onto dry ground. Even though they still had almost twice as far to go as they’d already traveled, their footing would be more secure—and the Skinks couldn’t hide as effectively on land as they did in the water.
Lance Corporal Schultz wasn’t relieved at leaving the marsh. He was acutely aware of the fact that he’d been afraid ever since the day on the Grandar Bay, en route to Kingdom, when he realized the Skinks were waiting here. He’d been feeling more and more paranoid since operations began on the benighted world. So at first he wanted to attribute the unease he felt on reaching the end of the marsh to that paranoia, and he hesitated to say anything. But his combat sense finally overcame his uncertainty.
“Somebody’s watching,” he said on the squad circuit.
“Where?” Sergeant Linsman asked.
“Don’t know. Close.”
“Is it an ambush?”
“Don’t think so. Scout, maybe.”
Linsman relayed Schultz’s suspicion to Lieutenant Rokmonov. Though Rokmonov had been with Company L for long enough to know Schultz’s reputation and to trust his observations in the field, he hadn’t worked with him enough to consider him nearly infallible when he said the platoon was under observation.
“Keep alert,” Rokmonov ordered. “Third platoon, step it out.” The Marines increased their speed.
Schultz walked backward, turning his head to the front only often enough to maintain contact with Corporal Kerr and to make sure he wasn’t backing into a major obstacle. Kerr spent half of his time walking backward as well. Schultz was glad Kerr was with him. Kerr was a sound Marine—and he had a motion detector.
The Master watched as water slid down from nowhere along the edge of the marsh. His skin crawled at the eerie sight, and his genitals wanted to crawl inside his body, but he knew what it had to be—water running off the legs of the invisible Earthmen Marines. His heart jumped when he saw something in his peripheral vision—it looked like a leg. But when he looked straight at it, all he saw was water slowly dripping through the air. Puzzled, he let his eyes go out of focus and flicked them from side to side.
There! The invisible Earthmen Marines could be seen! Don’t look directly at them, but to the side; don’t try to focus. They were indistinct, but their shapes could be discerned. No matter what else happened, this information had to get back to the Great Master. He almost left right then, but he remembered, this Earthmen Marine platoon and the rest of the company it was joining had to be destroyed. He watched as they melted into the forest.
Before he climbed onto the shore, the Master waited only until he was sure they had actually moved on and didn’t simply move into an ambush position. He went along it for a distance and placed a series of markers, then trailed after the Earthmen Marines. That many were easy to follow; a footprint here, a snapped twig there, a random noise up ahead. He left deliberate markers of his own for the reaction force to follow. It was nearly inconceivable that the Fighters he’d sent back had failed to intercept a reaction force and lead it to him.
Schultz faced front and in a few rapid steps reached Kerr. He touched helmets with his fire team leader.
“We’re being followed,” he said. Conduction carried the words from his helmet to Kerr’s. No one else could hear them.
“How many?” Kerr asked. He kept walking. Schultz faced backward and kept pace with him.
“Don’t know. One. Maybe two.”
“Scouts.”
“Yes,” Schultz agreed.
Kerr looked to Corporal Doyle. He didn’t believe Doyle ever looked back to make sure he, Kerr, was still in contact. That was an infantry skill he’d probably never developed. He grimaced. He was going to have to teach Doyle how to function in a rear point under the worst possible conditions—on a live operation. But not at that moment.
“Let’s get him,” Kerr said.
Schultz grunted. That’s what he wanted to do. Kerr looked for a place they could safely lay in wait. Schultz spotted one first, a screen of bushes that grew along the side of a ripple in the ground. In the ripple, behind the bushes, even if the Skinks had infrared vision, the follower or followers probably wouldn’t spot them. Careful to leave no sign that they broke off from the body of the platoon, Kerr and Schultz made their way behind the brush in the ripple.
Little more than a minute later the Skink crossed their front about forty meters away. He rushed from tree to tree, cautiously using every bit of cover and concealment available. His skill and furtive movement hid him from the front, which was why they hadn’t seen him earlier, but not from the side. The Skink wasn’t carrying the tanks of an acid gun on his back. Kerr and Schultz glanced toward each other, their eyes glittering unseen behind their chameleon shields. Did that mean he was an officer? He wasn’t carrying a sword, so maybe he was the Skink equivalent of Marine recon. If so, where there was one, there were more. They waited and watched. After two more minutes, they didn’t see any other Skinks, nor did Kerr’s motion detector pick up anyone else.
Kerr touched helmets with Schultz. “Let’s get him,” he said again.
They got to their feet and chased after the Skink. The Marines’ use of cover and concealment was every bit as good as the Skink’s, maybe better. The sensors on his sides didn’t detect them until they were twenty meters away.
The Skink spun around. They weren’t as close as they wanted to be, but Kerr and Schultz put on an extra burst of speed. Had he been human, the expression on the Skink’s face would have shown shock mingled with fear. He groped at the pouch on his belt, but Schultz crashed into him before he could bring the weapon to bear and it spun out of his hand. The Skink thudded to the ground, and Schultz landed on him heavily and knocked out all his breath. With his lungs half collapsed, the Skink’s gill slits opened and his gills fluttered in a vain attempt to extract oxygen from the air. By the time he was able to gasp air, his arms were firmly trussed behind his back and a line ran from his wrists to a loop around his neck. If he attempted to reach out with his head to bite, the loop would tighten and cut off his air.
Schultz retrieved the weapon the Skink dropped when he hit him, examined it, and handed it to Kerr. “Projectile,” he said.
Kerr looked at it and blinked. The weapon looked exactly like images he’d seen of centuries-old slug-throwing automatic pistols. “I guess if you’ve got a five-fingered hand with an opposable thumb, there are only so many ways you can design a handgun,” he said.
Schultz made no reply, not even a grunt. That was obvious to him.
Kerr toggled the command circuit on his helmet comm. “This is Two-one. We’ve got a p
risoner,” he reported.
“What?” Linsman asked, astonished.
“Hammer said we were being followed. We dropped back and got a prisoner.”
“Third platoon, hold up, defense to the rear,” Rokmonov ordered into the all-hands circuit. “Two-one, how many are there?”
“Only the one, Six.”
“Get the prisoner to my location.”
Rokmonov was standing under a tree when Kerr and Schultz arrived with the Skink. He had his shields up and an arm exposed to make it easier for them to locate him. The two raised their shields as well.
Rokmonov stared at the Skink for a long moment. The Skink stood with its eyes cast down. As far as the lieutenant knew, this was the first time anyone had seen a Skink so close without being in hand-to-hand combat with it. This had to be an astonishing example of convergent evolution. The Skink’s face was sharply convex, but he’d seen a human or two with faces just as curved. There was something odd about the shape of the outer corner of the Skink’s eyes, but otherwise its eyes looked uncannily human. Aside from the legs being bowed, the rest of its body was so close to the human norm that it didn’t matter. Given its small stature, from a modest distance, dressed right, it could easily have passed for a half-grown human adolescent. Rokmonov shivered. A bunch of these things disguised as children could penetrate deeply into defenses and cause a lot of damage, kill a lot of Marines and civilians.
“Do you understand English?” Rokmonov asked, then corrected himself. “Do you speak a human tongue?”
The Skink made no reply.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
The Skink kept its gaze down.
“The xenobiology boys are going to have a ball when we get back with this. What do you think he was doing?”
“Probably scouting for a reaction force,” Kerr said.
Schultz nodded.
“But they aren’t right behind us?”
Schultz shook his head.
“Then let’s stay ahead of them.” He signaled to the assault gun section leader. “Sergeant N’ton, take the prisoner.” Into the all-hands circuit: “Third platoon, move out.”
Third platoon resumed its movement; only five kilometers to go.
“The next time you two birds pull a stunt like that without telling me,” Linsman snarled when he reached them, “the Top gets whatever’s left of your asses when I’m through with you. You did good, but if you’d been wrong about there only being one scout, you probably would have been killed, and you would have put the rest of the platoon in jeopardy. Close it up,” he added to Corporal Claypoole. “I’m changing position so I can keep an eye on these two.”
“Aye aye.” Claypoole and MacIlargie hurried to close the gap between them and second fire team. Linsman fell in behind them. He walked backward to make sure Kerr and Schultz resumed their positions in the formation.
Less than a kilometer behind, a reaction force two hundred strong was closing the gap. Normally, the Leader commanding the reaction force would not move so rapidly through enemy territory, but he had scouts well out to the front and both flanks, so he was sure he would not blunder into an ambush. The Fighters and the Leaders who were junior to him in the force were the largest command he’d ever had—and he wouldn’t have it if the Master who had commanded hadn’t tripped and torn up a knee when he decided to cross an islet instead of swimming around it. He intended to make the most of the opportunity. He would, of course, have to give up command to the Master he was trailing when they reached him, but simply bringing the force up so expeditiously would gain him recognition, perhaps sufficient recognition to gain the promotion to Master that he so eagerly wanted.
In a low growl, he urged his Fighters, “Faster.”
Several hundred paces later a forward scout came to him with a report that was both ominous and exhilarating: the scouts had found signs that the Master had been captured. Yes, they were sure he was captured and not killed. There was no sign of the scorching, which would have been evident if the Master had been shot by one of the forever guns. More than that, they found a footprint that had to be his a little farther along.
The report was ominous in that none of the True People had previously been captured by the Earthmen Marines. Being captured was a most terrible disgrace; it was ominous because it meant the Earthmen were very, very alert; they would not be caught completely unaware. But the report was exhilarating in that with the Master taken, the Leader wouldn’t have to give up command. Surely, he would be promoted to Master now!
“Faster!” he commanded.
Third platoon was still nearly a kilometer short of the river where they were to rendezvous with the boats when Schultz said on the squad circuit, “Someone’s behind us.”
“How many?” Linsman asked.
“Can’t tell.”
“Is there just one? A battalion? Give me an idea.”
“Maybe one, two. More behind.”
“Are you sure about more behind?”
“No.”
“You’re guessing?”
“Educated guess.”
Linsman relayed Schultz’s report to Rokmonov. This time Rokmonov was more willing to accept Schultz’s word that someone was following them as something to be acted on.
“Pick it up,” he ordered.
The Marines sped up.
The point fire teams could just glimpse the river through gaps in the trees when a crack-sizzle and a flaring Skink announced that Schultz finally had a target worth shooting at.
Rokmonov and the squad leaders began shouting orders. First and second squads fell into line in a shallow curve with its concave face toward the river. The two guns of the gun squad were set in the middle of the blaster squads. The assault guns were set up with one behind each squad.
“Does anybody have a target?” Rokmonov demanded on the all-hands circuit when he didn’t see the flashes of flaring Skinks answering the crack-sizzles of the Marine fire. “Cease fire, cease fire!” he ordered when nobody reported targets. “Squad leaders, detector report.”
All four motion detectors reported movement. The scent detectors also picked up fishy smells that didn’t come from the nearby river. Schultz’s terse statement that the Skinks in front of first squad outnumbered the whole platoon was given equal weight.
“Give me range,” Rokmonov ordered.
The motion detectors showed Skinks moving in depth fifty to a hundred meters out, just beyond sight lines, spreading into assault formation. Schultz said they were closer, behind cover.
Rokmonov considered the reports. The motion detectors put the Skinks at the extreme range of their acid shooters. According to Schultz, others were within their range. If they had buzz saws, the range of their acid shooters didn’t matter. He decided and gave orders.
On command, the blaster squads began putting out volley fire, aimed to graze the ground until it glanced off about thirty meters distant. On impact, the plasma bolts might fragment and throw a shower of fire in a spreading arc forward; otherwise they’d ricochet, some high, some low in the direction of whatever targets might lay beyond. The guns began firing bursts in a wide arc, also aimed at the ground thirty meters away. The assault guns fired in sweeping arcs deeper into the forest, on a trajectory no higher than a meter above the ground.
The fire was met by flashes from flaring Skinks. The disciplined shouts of officers and sergeants giving orders came from the forest. The assault guns fired bursts toward the voices. There was a flare, and sudden silence in that quadrant.
Voices shouted again and greenish streams of acid arced toward the Marines. Most missed, but some spattered on chameleons. The assault guns were out of range of the acid shooters.
Another command rang through the forest, and a hundred or more Skinks leaped to their feet and charged the Marine line, spraying acid as they ran.
The Marines fired as fast as they could at the running forms, and the forest shade glared like bright sunlight with the flashes of hit Skinks. But t
here were too many of them, and they were too close for the Marines to get them all before they closed.
Momentarily dazzled by the flash from a Skink he flamed at close range, Corporal Claypoole didn’t see the other Skink racing straight at him. That Skink gripped the hose of his acid shooter and swung the nozzle like a mace at the place his side sensors told him the Marine’s head was. The blow glanced off the side of Claypoole’s helmet and the point of his left shoulder. Instinctively, he rolled to his right—into the path of the charging Skink. One foot slammed into the top of his helmet and the other clipped his already bruised left shoulder as the Skink flipped over him. Claypoole spun about, ignored the pain of his shoulder, and lunged at the Skink, which was already pushing back to his feet and drawing a large knife. The two collided and Claypoole landed on top. He used his superior weight to pin the Skink to the ground and hammered a fist into his face. The Skink shrieked and bucked, but Claypoole was too heavy for him to throw off. The Skink thrust the knife at Claypoole just as Claypoole’s hand found a death grip on the Skink’s throat and squeezed. Something crunched inside the Skink’s neck and he dropped the knife. His hands clutched at his mortally injured throat but couldn’t force it to open to allow air to reach his starving lungs. The Skink’s gill slits opened and tried to extract oxygen from the air.
Claypoole rolled off, shook the remaining stars from his vision, and looked for the blaster he lost when the Skink’s running feet hit him.
Starfist: Kingdom's Fury Page 21
