"Let's eat it," Labaya whispered, and they fell to the task with their knives. Inside the carcass they found soft white flesh, which they ate raw. It was somewhat slimy, but they felt refreshed by the meal.
"This ain't half bad," Minerva said. During their exile the pirates had eaten a wide variety of the local fauna with no ill effects, but until that morning they always had cooked the meat thoroughly.
Hunger sated, they watched the sun come up.
"This might be a right nice place," Maya said, resting her head against Labaya's chest, "if it wasn't for those...well, you know." She shuddered and nodded vaguely toward the sea, only a few kilometers from where they rested.
"Right now I don't give a damn," Labaya said. He had been a stocky, heavily muscled man before they were stranded, but Dugas Labaya had been reduced by starvation to a scarecrow. The women's hair was long and matted, and all of them were covered with bruises and lacerations. Minerva absently scratched an insect bite on her shin that had bled profusely before clotting but was bleeding again. She hardly noticed. Neither man had cut their hair or beard in weeks.
Cameron laughed. "Look at us," he said. "Don't we really look like pirates now!" The others did look and then started laughing. He stuck his nose under his armpit and sniffed. "Shit! We smell worse than this goddamn swamp!" he added, and they all laughed even harder.
"Shhh! Let's keep it down," Cameron cautioned suddenly, remembering. "Don't let's make any more noise than necessary."
"Well, so far, so good," Labaya said.
"Georgie, why don't we just stay here the rest of the day? Relax?" Minerva suggested.
Cameron thought about that briefly. He was feeling better after the meal, and would have welcomed a rest. But he rejected the idea. "Look, we'll hole up for a few days when we reach Aquarius, but staying here is dangerous. Besides, it'll get hotter than blazes once the sun's really up. We need to get across this damn swamp and into the Aquarius." He gestured up the waterway, deeper into the swamp. Automatically the others glanced in that direction, just in time to see something very big break the surface of the water, then submerge in a swirl of mud and green slime.
"Jesus God!" Minerva whispered. They all froze. The creature did not surface again, but a huge ripple marked its progress under the scum. Fortunately, it was heading away from them.
"Damn thing was fifteen meters long," Labaya whispered in awe, "and that was just the part I could see!"
Cameron swallowed. "Well, whatever it was, it wasn't one of them."
"Hell, George, we don't know what they are, so how do we know this thing ain't just a—a—a variety of some sort?"
"Look," Cameron answered, standing up, "it isn't one of them. We slogged through this soup all day yesterday and nothing came after us. We can't stay here. Let's get going again."
It took four more days to cross the swamp. At dusk on the fifth day Labaya, who had warily climbed a cycad-like tree to get their bearings—if he could see, he could be seen—spotted the large and badly overgrown island that had held the scientific colony known as Aquarius Station.
"It's no more than a klick dead ahead," he reported. He grinned at Cameron. "You guided us dead on, Georgie. How the hell'd you do it?"
"I had some experience, Duggy," he answered shortly. "Did you see any sign of life?" The four of them were crouched in a tight circle under the fronds in the diminishing daylight, heads close together, afraid to talk in a voice above a whisper. It was at Aquarius Station they'd been attacked, and none relished the thought that in a little while they would be walking among the remains of their late friends, if the encroaching vegetation and the swamp's animal life had left anything recognizably human behind after all this time. Cameron hoped the intervening year had given nature ample time to dispose of—what was left.
"We've got to be careful. I'll take the point," Cameron said. "The rest of you follow me at five-meter intervals. Walk slow and careful. Labaya, you take the rear. All of you keep your eyes on the person in front. If I stop, you all stop. I'll give you simple hand signals and you pass them on. We'll be on dry ground soon, no water swishing around, so let's do this in the proper militar-y-uh, cautious manner. No talking until we get in there and establish a defensive perim—er, make sure there's no danger. Okay?" The others nodded. During the preceding days they had come to respect Cameron's judgment and guts. And he'd taken them that far without incident; they were confident they'd make it. They were also sure that nobody else in the band of survivors could have done it.
But they were not so confident Aquarius Station was unoccupied.
Carefully, Cameron parted the fronds in front of him. To his left was the main administration building. Behind that was the bungalow complex where the scientists had lived. Various outbuildings lay scattered randomly about the cleared space. None of the pirates knew what they housed, since their brief visit the year before had been unexpectedly interrupted. During that time plants and vines had reclaimed much of what the scientists had taken from the wild, but the place was not yet so overgrown they couldn't easily get around. Several swamp buggies and airfoils were rusting on a parking stand just beyond the forest fringe. About a hundred meters straight ahead was the landing pad for suborbital vehicles. Long dark shadows stretched across the compound. The sky opposite the setting sun was already aglitter with stars. They would have to move before total dark descended; their only source of light was the sun.
But they required food, clothing, and weapons immediately. If they could satisfy those needs, Cameron felt he could salvage the station's transmitter, maybe contact the rescue party. It'd been almost a year since the attack. The Confederation must have dispatched a rescue mission already! But food first. Then clothing. Then weapons. Those things could be killed with plasma weapons, spectacularly killed. There had to be weapons of some sort locked away in one of the buildings. He'd killed several of those things himself during the attack.
Cameron thought for a moment. He signaled for Minerva. "Bring the others," he whispered. She nodded and beckoned to Maya, who was almost hidden in the shadows; she in turn gestured Labaya to join them.
"I say we spend the night right here," Cameron whispered.
"I don't think I can make it another night," Maya almost sobbed. Cameron shivered. The clammy night dampness of the forest was already beginning to enfold them. It would be more comfortable inside one of the buildings. Cameron looked back across the compound. It was so dark now he could only just make out the administration building's outline. Well...
"Georgie, let's try to make it inside one of the buildings. It'll be a little warmer and drier inside. The place looks dead. At least maybe we can get some rest until morning."
Cameron did not think the things were around, and if they did come, the buildings would give them some protection. "Follow me," he said. "Put your hand, on my shoulder," he told Minerva. "We'll keep contact that way, so nobody gets separated in the dark and makes a lot of noise stumbling around." When Minerva put her hand on Cameron's shoulder he felt that she was shaking.
They had quickly gathered the scientists and technicians together in the largest room in the admin building, those the pirates hadn't killed immediately.
"Why bother getting them together?" Rhys had asked. "We're just going to kill them anyway. What difference does it make if we kill them where we find them or kill them in a group?"
But Scanlon wanted to find out where the things they wanted were. If the pirates went around randomly killing the scientists, he wouldn't get that information and they'd have to spend more time in their pillaging.
"Yi-i-i! " someone screamed from outside. A man stumbled through the door. Cameron couldn't tell who it was because the flesh was bubbling off the bones beneath the right side of the man's face and down across his mouth, leaving his tongue flopping about in a lipless, cheekless maw, the white bones of his skull above the jawbone entirely exposed. As the pirates and scientists watched, transfixed, the flesh continued to dissolve off the man's head. The b
rain still lived, his heart and lungs still worked, but his features simply evaporated before their eyes! As he staggered blindly into the room, his eyeballs liquefied in their sockets. He was screaming, but as his tongue, larynx, and trachea liquefied, he could only emit a wheezing, blubbering gurgle. With each breath a hideous bubble of bright red blood spurted out his windpipe. Finally he crashed to the floor, where he lay wracked with spasms as his lungs and internal organs turned to sickly ooze. Blood spurted from his dissolving jugular as his heart labored to supply his brain, but that organ suddenly ran out of his skull as a putrid yellowish mess that mixed obscenely with the bodily fluids spreading out beneath him. With a final convulsive spasm, he was still.
The pirates stood there as if frozen by a violent arctic blast. But the spell was broken by a fusillade of blaster bolts being fired outside and more horrible screams. Scanlon took a step toward the door just as an inhuman giant rushed through. Scanlon fired automatically and the thing flashed into vapor. The brilliance of the flash blinded Cameron, and the wave of heat that washed over him made him briefly think he was going to be consumed by flames. But the heat passed as suddenly as it hit, and his vision cleared quickly.
"We have to get out of here!" Scanlon screamed, his voice breaking. They bolted for a door on the far side of the room. Cameron was saved because the panicky Scanlon went through without checking what was on the other side.
Cameron awoke with a start. It had been a dream. All was quiet save for the buzzing and hissing of fliers outside beginning the search for food. He blinked, then wiped the perspiration off his forehead. The others lay like heaps of rags, still sound asleep. It was morning, and outside, the black night had turned a dull gray. Silently he cursed himself. He'd been on guard the last hours of the night and had fallen asleep, like a damned boot.
Painfully, he got to his feet and stretched. Suddenly it struck him: they were in the very room where the attack had happened. No wonder he dreamed about it. Yes, the door they came through a year ago was the same one they'd used last night to get into the building and—there—the skeleton of a man. Quietly, not to awaken the others, he stepped over to the body, by then just bones and rags. The bones were brittle and disintegrated at his touch. The man's skull had collapsed into dust and only his teeth remained intact. One glinted amid the whitish powder. It was solid gold. Johnny Lumberman! "Jolly Joking Johnny." It was he who'd come shrieking and stumbling through the door, his face dissolving like melting wax.
Now, as the light outside increased, Cameron could see the heaps and piles scattered about the room. Each had been the body of a scientist or technician who'd been slaughtered. Most of the pirates had gotten out of the building—and run straight into more of those things. That any of them survived was a miracle, and due to the fact that they'd all been armed and ready for a fight, even if the fight was far different from any they could have imagined.
He walked across the room and opened the door. The sun was up and it would be another clear, cloudless, hot day. Yes, right there, at his feet, was Scanlon's body. Minerva came out behind him. "Georgie...?"
"Yeah," Cameron answered. Maya and Labaya came out. "Well," Cameron said, "at least we made it through the night."
The others stared down at Scanlon's remains. They recognized his body by the elaborate buckle that lay among the rotting clothing. Cameron bent down and picked it up. He tore off the fragments of belt that still clung to the device. Someone let out a small gasp.
"Georgie, do you think...?" Labaya ventured.
"Think what, Labaya? Think we'll wind up like him? Think we'll make it?" He shrugged. "One thing for sure. There's no more Red 35 Crew, no more Finnegard Scanlon, but I'm still alive and I don't intend to give up while I got any fight left in me." He rubbed the buckle on his sleeve and stuck it in a pocket. "Now let's get to work."
They discovered two facts about Aquarius Station right away: All the scientific equipment had been removed, and there were no weapons in the place. The former did not quite register on the others, although they were quite disappointed by the latter fact. Cameron kept his fear about the missing equipment to himself. They did find food, plenty of it, precooked and stored in highly transportable sealed packets, and clothing and soap and scissors and razors and mirrors and a reasonably potable water supply, a bit stale after a year in its huge tank, but welcome. They ate until they got sick, and then ate some more. They washed and washed and cut their hair and shaved and then washed all over again.
And they found boats, two of them, ultralight, durable sporting models with tiny but powerful energy packs that could propel them along at thirty kilometers per hour—if they could find a patch of clear water that ran straight long enough to reach that speed. Each could hold two persons with cargo.
"Well," Labaya said, "I'm not walking back through that swamp."
"You won't have to now," Cameron answered. Eagerly, they stowed food and clothing into the boats and then hefted them experimentally. When the loads reached the maximum weight two people, one man and one woman, could lift and carry comfortably, Cameron declared they were ready to head back.
"Shouldn't we leave a message, in case a rescue party comes here?" Maya asked.
"Good thinking," Cameron replied. They hunted about the station for a while until they found a suitable fragment of sheet metal and some paint in a repair shop.
"Georgie," Minerva asked, "if we're rescued and those—those things don't get us again, well, we're pirates, Georgie..."
She left the rest of her sentence unfinished. They all regarded her thoughtfully for a moment.
"I'll take a penal colony any day, to the way we've been living," Labaya muttered.
"That's right," Maya said. "Nothing could be worse than this goddamn place!"
"She's right," Cameron said. "Look at it this way: we didn't kill these people. We only came here to steal, and we never got a chance to do any of that. We must've broke some kind of law by landing here with larceny on our minds. But there's no evidence to link us to any of the real crimes we've pulled off. So we get maybe two to five for trespassing? Come on, let's leave a note. We won't mention anything about what we were doing here."
Carefully, Cameron spray-painted big letters on the metal as the others looked on anxiously. Done, he stood back to check his work.
"Looks good, Georgie. Now let's get going," Labaya said.
"Wait," Maya said. "Shouldn't we put a date?"
Cameron thought about that. "What the hell is the date?" he asked. "Anybody know exactly how long we've been here and when we came here, standard?" He scratched his head. Nobody said anything. "Okay," he said, and added something to the message. He looked at what he'd written and cursed. "How could I have misspelled that word?"
"That's good! That's good! It's been about a year," Maya said.
"Yeah, don't worry about your spelling, Georgie. They'll figure it out," Labaya said. "Let's get going."
They propped the sign up just inside the door to the main administration building, where it would be safe from the elements, and left.
The sign read: 14 SURVIVORS CAVE APPROX. 30 KM SW HERE GRATE DANGER, HURRY, HURRY, WRITTEN ONE YEAR AFTER ATTACK.
Chapter 13
"Nothing," Lieutenant Snodgrass said, thumping the display board with the flat of his hand. "The only transmissions from surface or orbit are automated signals."
Ensign Mulhoorn and Chief Petty Officer Kranston, the Fairfax County communications officer and chief of communications, exchanged a look. The special communications officer had found exactly what they had already reported to Captain Tuit. Neither of them understood Snodgrass's function on the mission, unless he was needed on the planetary surface, and they doubted that.
The CNSS Fairfax County had been in orbit around Society 437 for one standard day. It had deployed its string-of-pearls surveillance satellites on its first orbit and immediately put that necklace of geosynchronous satellites to work gathering all possible information of military interest: communicati
ons, weapons emissions, land traffic, air traffic, human congregations, weather. As far as the string-of-pearls could tell, there were no human beings on the surface of Society 437. No people, no land or air traffic, no large weapons in use or on standby, no kind of electromagnetic spectrum surveillance or tracking directed toward the ship. Most important, the only response to the transmissions from the Fairfax was an automated reply acknowledging communications received and recorded.
"I don't think anybody's there," Snodgrass said.
Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Bass stood in the center of the comm shack looking at all the displays, from time to time leaning forward to read a changing alphanumeric data display.
"What are those?" Bass asked, pointing over Snodgrass's shoulder at a concentration of dim splotches on a high-mag screen that showed the details of the land around the central station. The display was set to show heat signals that were congruent with life-forms. He winked at Mulhoorn and Kranston.
Snodgrass twitched one shoulder in a sort of shrug. "Those are too dim to be warm-blooded animals. The planet has large amphibians. That's a swampy area; those are probably amphibians sunning themselves."
"Probably, but not positively."
Kranston grinned and winked back at Bass. Snodgrass had entirely too high an opinion of himself and his abilities; he needed to have someone point out that he didn't know as much as he thought.
Snodgrass's lips curled as he thought something unkind about the intelligence of Marine sergeants. "There's nothing else they could be. That indicates a body temperature of about 29.5 degrees Celsius. That's close enough to the ambient air temperature to indicate cold-blooded animal forms."
Bass grunted and kept studying the display. "How big are they, can you tell?" he asked after a moment.
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