“All the more reason we need to get to him first,” Chirac said.
Nemetsov grinned, though it was clear he found nothing funny about it. “I’ll put together a team. I’ve had experience with . . .”
“No,” said Charlie. “I will.” Chirac hesitated, his eyes wide, then nodded his agreement.
The screen washed the room with light the colour of ash. Fierce Marion flicked the screen off in annoyance. The patch on her arm read empty, and she replaced it without thinking, uncertain as to why she was being medicated. Unconcerned.
Despite everything, they had made it. Jingo and Frank and Darwin and. . . . No, not Darwin. Darwin had died in the dark, his long lean body impaled on a G’rat’ch hunting javelin.
Accept your losses. Move on. The time for grief will come—when this war is over.
The mission, she thought, nothing matters but the mission. Deal with the now. Seek clarity. Fierce rolled upright, balancing lightly on the balls of her feet. She was tired and her muscles ached. She tapped the patch again.
Clarity. The G’rat’ch had infiltrated headquarters. How didn’t matter. She had discovered him, driven him out. His agents—subverted humans—were following. She had to stop them.
The doctor had said . . . three days before she was ready for active duty. But she didn’t have three days. It didn’t matter how beat up she was from the last operation. She wasn’t young—thirty-nine hardly qualified—but she was strong. She could do this thing.
Things had changed; more than seemed possible in the ten years she had languished in the camp: shifted walls and empty rooms where corridors and armouries should be. Guard posts were few and undermanned as if the war were a distant memory and not a constant threat. Those few soldiers she couldn’t avoid waved her past with a sketch of a salute and a grin. She made a note to speak to the fortress’s commanding officer about the laxness of his security.
Nothing was where it should be, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be found. Logistics had their own logic; figuring out where things were was merely a matter of thinking like a quartermaster. She’d outwitted a fair number of those over the . . . years? Decades? The drugs were buzzing in her head; distorted voices whispering secrets she had no business knowing. Had her communicator malfunctioned again? She reached behind her ear but found only scar tissue.
The armoury was understocked, though it held plenty for an army of one. Marion slung a bandolier of grenades over one shoulder and a slug thrower over the other, grunting as the weight settled on her spine. The brace on her knee flashed a series of amber and red lights, and she adjusted tolerances until it showed mostly green.
The Gr’at’ch’s human allies—the one called Chirac, and the others—had left the fortress, no doubt planning a rendezvous in the hills above the village; an attack was imminent. The Gr’at’ch was on foot, but even unaugmented Gr’at’ch moved like a flood in springtime. With the lead it had, she would have little chance of catching him even if she didn’t have a bum knee.
At least the flier pad was where she remembered. To one side hulked a heavily armoured personnel carrier. On the other, two flitters stood in a row; the nearest, only a few dozen steps away. It might have been a few dozen kilometres for all the good it was. Each flitter had two heavily armed guards; another two crouched by the carrier. The conspiracy ran deep if they were so anxious that nobody follow.
You don’t like flying anyway, she thought with a shudder. Her vision blurred in a swirl of snapping blades; burning fuel licked heat across her shoulders. Focus on the mission, snarled Fierce. The mantra was all she had.
She had the element of surprise. She could probably terminate two or three before the rest could react. But . . . she had no proof they were in on it. Just following orders. Corruption at the top didn’t mean it ran all the way down.
Fierce unhooked two grenades and rolled them down the hall away from the launch area. Moments later she burst from the door, limping toward the guards as her brace began to flash amber again.
“Back there,” she gestured behind her. “We’re under attack.”
One of the closest soldiers started; her partner laughed then frowned when he saw the slug thrower in her hands. A roar shook the ground, and a gout of flame and smoke shot across the tarmac. The officer in charge gestured for two of the guards to remain while he led the other three into the building.
“Get behind me, Marion,” said one soldier, who had assumed a kneeling position, his weapon trained on the entrance. She knew him, though she couldn’t recall the circumstances. As she passed, she slammed the butt of her slug thrower into the back of his helmet. The blow sent him to the ground; a second to the side of his head sent him under.
Fierce ran at the second soldier, covering the five metres in three long bounds. Her leap failed to produce any height so her blow landed on a hip rather than the woman’s head. Still, the momentum took them both to the ground. Fierce jammed stiffened fingers into her opponent’s throat and followed with a hard uppercut.
Marion rolled to her feet, slapping at the brace in a futile attempt to get it working. She pried it off and tested the knee. Painful but functioning. The pass from the unconscious woman opened the door of the second flitter she tried. She disabled the other craft; the armoured carrier was beyond her capabilities so she set a three minute timer on a grenade and dropped it under its belly. It would slow them down if nothing else.
The flitter rose unsteadily—it had been a while since she certified as a pilot. By the time she reached the level of the surrounding rooftops, two of the squad had returned. The rattle of heavy slugs off the underbelly of the craft chased her south towards the forested hills.
There was no pursuit. Perhaps the grenade had damaged the carrier or maybe they think a single warrior is no match for a Gr’at’ch squadron, she thought. Some people have short memories. Or maybe they misplaced the keys.
Her luck didn’t last. The fuel gauge was dropping steadily. A punctured fuel tank or a nicked line. The forest was patchy on the higher hilltops, and Fierce aimed the flitter at a clearing as the red empty light began flashing. The engines cut out seconds before the wheels touched down, and the aircraft landed hard, bounced twice and tilted on one side before coming to a rest. The flitter lurched one more time as the still spinning blades caught the ground and dug into the soft soil.
Fierce Marion popped the hatch and lowered herself to the ground. The pain in her knee was worse, and she doubted it would take the impact of a two metre drop. She was right; the leg almost buckled and she searched the ground for anything that might serve as a crutch. She needed to move fast before they came for her.
“Who?” she asked the air, surprised at the tremor in her voice. “Who is coming for you?” She slumped against the side of the flitter, overwhelmed with exhaustion and the pain in her leg. And her back. And her wrist. She fumbled for analgesic patches. She hated the drugs, but the mission was more important than her preferences.
She unzipped the seam in her combat pants and pulled the metal web up over her leg, the patch peeled and ready. The muscle of her calf was taut, but the skin was lined in blue. Her hand—her hand!—was gnarled.
Think about this later. Marion knew she shouldn’t listen. The voices sometimes lied, and sometimes they simply couldn’t acknowledge the truth. She pressed the patch against the mottled skin and felt the immediate flush of relief up through her knee and into the hip.
I’m too old for this, she thought. But, it wasn’t the joke she intended it to be. “My God,” she whispered, though she hadn’t worshiped one since her second year in the G’rat’ch camp. “I really am old.”
A flood of memories washed over her. Darwin had died in the jungle, but the others had died, too, in the months and years that followed, their bodies and minds too wounded to carry on. Until she was the last of the Creebolt seven left alive to avenge their memories. Too wounded to live, too stubborn to die.
Move! Marion lurched to her feet, almost against her will. You
can’t be out in the open when night falls. Fergus held more dangers than an aging G’rat’ch ambassador. She needed shelter. She needed time.
Three hours and another patch later, she spotted an old bunker—one of a dozen laid out in an arc facing the old G’rat’ch line—against the side of a low mound. Age had cracked its shell, so it no longer merged with the native stone; but she didn’t need to be invisible, she needed to be inside. The sun threw long dappled shadows across the lower canopy. Soon, the hunters would come.
Something moved to her left, something big. She gathered her legs under her for a desperate dash. Then, she saw it.
Or them. Three G’rat’ch—smaller and younger than the one she was after. They moved purposefully through the forest, talking in chitters too low to hear, stopping every dozen paces, to check readings on the device one was holding.
Marion slipped the slug thrower from its holster and readied a grenade. If they all went inside the bunker, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. The one holding the scanner pulled open the door and went inside; the other two took up positions on opposite sides of the bunker, particle weapons loose by their sides. Their posture displayed both relaxation and disappointment. They didn’t expect to be interrupted but wished they would be.
The leader emerged and placed something on the top of the bunker. His clan tattoo displayed the simple patterns and garish colours of the War Party. What they lacked in subtlety, they made up for in numbers and ferocity. The G’rat’ch finished and moved away, making the sounds G’rat’ch made when they were happy or ready to kill. Their gait was purposeful; they would not return soon.
The War Party was banned from Fergus under the terms of the cease fire. Marion had no doubt the memory was true even as her eyes proved the lie of it.
The low growls and high, child-like hooting of the predators in the dark finally pushed her forward. Before she slid inside the bunker, she pulled herself high on the side of the dome. Barely visible, a thin wire antenna stretched up into the dark foliage. A listening post.
Debris had drifted into the corners of the low structure. Inside the bunker, wires dangled where equipment had been torn from sockets. The G’rat’ch scanner stood on a lone chair with torn upholstery. A stream of lights flickered on its front panel, but whatever it was doing, it was doing it silently. Marion shifted it to the floor; she needed the chair more than it did.
She wedged the bunker’s door shut. Her leg throbbed, and she wondered if she could remember a time when she didn’t ache. No more patches, she thought, I need to think.
She stared at her hands until she saw past the delusion of youth. I’m old, she thought. Memories flooded back—recent ones, not the ancient bitter memories of the camp and the escape that Young Marion clutched to her breast as if only they were real. Thirty years of treatment—half her life—in and out of psych wards or under the dulling cloud of medication hardly counted as real, did they? Better to live in the past than face the present.
No! The voice that spoke was the one most often silent. True Marion. The warrior youth and the crazy old crone—tangled together like wrestlers on a mat.
If the G’rat’ch had sent that ambassador—then the Peace Faction had the upper hand. But if the War Party was also here, freely spying on human defences, the Peace Faction’s grip was weak. She knew how the G’rat’ch worked; she had learned to think like one, hadn’t she? Honour and humiliation, victory or death, these were the currency of their politics, the basis of everything they did.
The pain in her leg was almost unbearable. She clung to it the way a drowning woman might cling to a broken tree. She had to remember.
The moment the G’rat’ch ambassador had fled, it had ceased to be a player and become a pawn. If Chirac—no, if Colonel Nemetsov found the ambassador, he would use its capture to humiliate it, to end the negotiations before they had truly begun and force an agreement the home world could not support. The War Party would gain the upper hand.
If the War Party found the ambassador before Nemetsov, they would kill it. Earth would be blamed. The only possible result was war.
She saw them now—the young soldiers, laid out in rows, pale and cold, gaping wounds on their flesh like hungry mouths calling for vengeance. She saw G’rat’ch bodies, too, but she felt no joy at their deaths. She was too old to think death was a victory.
Her hands curled into gnarled fists. I did this, she thought. Why did you think you could make a difference, you stupid woman? You were doing what was right, whispered Fierce. You had done it before, sighed Young Marion. Others grunted and sighed in agreement or derision. Marion rubbed her knuckles into her eyes, but the tears wouldn’t stop.
The scanner’s lights flickered and went out. The G’rat’ch had found what they wanted. The Ambassador’s life now hung in the balance. I did this, she thought, I have to fix it. I will fix this. But not yet. G’rat’ch honour demanded: executions required the light of day.
The pain was less in the morning. Until she moved. She tore a patch in quarters and slapped it on her knee. She chewed a field ration. After, she squatted over the scanner and relieved herself; let the G’rat’ch deal with that humiliation.
Marion had to reach the Ambassador before either the other G’rat’ch or Chirac. Fortunately, she knew exactly where to look. There was something she wasn’t remembering. Or was remembering wrong. She knew who the G’rat’ch ambassador was, knew it would take all her will not to kill him. But there was someone else she needed to remember. Someone she had been programmed to forget.
I’ve done all this before, she thought. What had her mission been all those years ago? What had they wanted her to do when they sent her on patrol with Darwin? Something someone had said. It was . . . gone. Marion pulled the door open. It was past dawn, and she needed to move.
This line of bunkers was a fallback from the shifting battle lines; the place where the line was drawn, the one the G’rat’ch never broke. She hauled herself up a tree, until could see the faint arc formed by the other. Algebra pointed to the centre of the circle: G’rat’ch headquarters. Three kilometres to the northwest of that lay the camp where she had been held.
Nemetsov had set up a dozen metres from the remains of the G’rat’ch base—a few gutted buildings and a broad patch of dead earth where the Terrans had scorched away every remnant of imported vegetation. All the prisoners dead and gone long ago. Marion watched through her scope from the safety of the last thick clump of trees. The perimeter was soft; her old self could have run right up to the Colonel and tapped him on the shoulder. She wasn’t sure her new self could run at all.
Why was he still here? If the ambassador wasn’t here, it had to be somewhere else. And where else but the concentration camp it had ruled for more than a decade? Where it had tortured and taunted her until her humanity lay in tatters and she learned to think like a G’rat’ch.
Surely Captain Nemetsov could . . . Colonel. He was a Colonel. Now. Marion shuddered, a deep uncontrollable shaking that started in the middle of her back and spread in every direction. She dropped her scope.
Nemetsov. She knew. . . . A cold black band clamped down on her thoughts, blinding her, deafening her. When it stopped, everything was crystal clear.
She had her mission. Nothing mattered but that. Find the G’rat’ch. Carry out the mission.
If only she weren’t so tired. The blackness took her again.
When Fierce opened her eyes, Chirac and the rest of the collaborators were gone. The pain in her leg had spread into her back and shoulder. She slapped one patch onto her lower back and the remains of another onto her thigh. She rummaged in her pack for the crumpled tin foil that held three blue gelcaps. One now, two for later.
She trotted along the trail to the northwest, aware, but uncaring of the steady tearing at the ligaments and muscles of her legs.
Six of them occupied the old camp, seven counting the G’rat’ch. Chirac and Charlie, Nemetsov and three troopers, tension evident beneath their armour. The ambassad
or—commandant—was taller, broader, with more ridges across his brow and chest. That much change . . .
Two pictures laid on top of each other: Nemetsov and the G’rat’ch, old and young at the same time. Chirac and the rest ghost-like, as if they barely existed.
Captain/Colonel Nemetsov was holding out a knife—her knife—one of his incarnations threatening, the other cajoling. The G’rat’ch twitched its shoulder crest indicating denial/defiance. Chirac stepped forward and put his hand on Nemetsov’s forearm. Nemetsov frowned/scowled and jerked forward/stepped back.
The G’rat’ch slumped, its legs giving out as if the whole matter had exhausted him. Marion upped the gain on the scope. The G’rat’ch’s colour was bad, his skin pale and waxy. The rank marks stood out black on his arms and face.
The slug thrower was too rough a tool, but a pistol shot was uncertain at such distance. Marion dumped her pack and bandolier behind a rock and slithered closer, finding cover in the patchy vegetation. She had been sent to kill the commandant. What happened after didn’t matter. Everyone else was dead; why not her, too?
Hold on, baby, hold on. Darwin’s head lolled against her shoulder, his eyes fixing on her face. Blood bubbled on his lips. “Leave me, I’m done.” His hands pawed futilely at the haft of the G’rat’ch spear. “The mission matters more.” Marion nodded. HQ needed to know the names of the traitors. Darwin drew a long breath, let it out and was silent. She let his body slump to the forest floor. She touched his face. Then she ran.
The ambassador/commandant had its back to her, skin bare to the afternoon sun. Her hands shook as she took aim. She fished another of the gel caps out of her pocket. The surge stiffened her body, but her aim kept drifting from the G’rat’ch to Nemetsov.
Then the G’rat’ch War Party arrived. And Fierce vanished into the chaos of voices rolling in her head.
Strangers Among Us Page 34
