The village was ecstatic to have the young women back. Three of its men were killed in the raid and two huts burned. Despite the losses, they threw a party for Vat’s and Roberts’ soldiers. It turned out to be quite the shindig. There was music, dancing, and a fair amount of alcohol. As more of the latter came out, more clothes came off.
Vat wasn’t interested in joining in. He buried Taiki on the hill where the raid took place. He would rest forever on a lonely hill, under an alien sun, trillions of miles from Earth. He guessed when the Searing came, his body would be burned to ash. He didn’t know the Japanese man’s beliefs, so Vat, alone, simply asked God to care for him.
Once he’d returned, Salsaliin tried to get him to dance and succeeded once. She was very energetic. The local dancing involved lots of body contact, grinding actually, and she was eager to teach him. He was eager for the dance to be over. An hour past sundown, once he was sure he’d shown enough respect for their hospitality, he retreated to where they had set up their tents.
Firelight from the celebration made exotic patterns against the shelter as he undressed and slid into the slightly musty sleeping bag. The planet was warm, even at night, so the bag was mostly to keep the bugs off and avoid the late-night chill that spiked just before dawn. He lay awake, staring at the peak of the tent for hours before his eyes slowly closed.
Something touched his foot and made his eyes snap open. He saw the outline of someone at his tent entrance, and his hand came away from the 1911 under the pillow of his bundled clothes. “Hello?”
“Greetings.” It was Salsaliin. Her voice sounded odd.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“You saved my life.”
“Corporal Potts did that. He was the one who fired the shot.”
“Makes no difference.” She turned slightly and closed the flap. The fire outside was still going, though it had dimmed, as had the festivities. When she turned back around, a naked breast was in perfect profile.
He sat up a little. “What are you doing?”
“Closing the tent,” she said and pulled back the sleeping roll. He wasn’t fast enough to stop her. There was little light, but enough for her to see he was naked. “Ahh, good,” she said, and slid down next to him.
“This is a bad idea,” he said, making more room for her without making it obvious he was pulling back.
“Why?”
“B-because I am an officer and—” her hand wrapped around him and made him jerk in surprise at the intimate contact. “Please, stop.”
“You are nervous?” she purred into his ear. “Am I your first? You do not look that young.”
Oh, if you only knew. “Yes,” he said too quickly. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”
“You are not my first. This is good for a man, I think.”
His mind froze as he tried to find a way out of the situation. Her mouth went to work, and he groaned, which she took to mean something else. Telling her the truth was too dangerous without knowing the social and cultural implications it had among their people. In short, he was trapped, and there was only one thing he could do.
* * * * *
Chapter Sixty-Three
R’Bak
They left the village early the next morning after Roberts sent a report to Murphy by relaying it to Camp Stark which then sent it to one of the Dornaani satellites. Included in the report were casualty counts as well as Roberts’ intention to proceed. The satellite went below the horizon before Starkpatch got a reply.
The patrol climbed back out of the low valley and descended onto the plains again. The grasslands were broken up by rocky outcroppings that extended as far as the eye could see.
Sam and Lech both had the typical morning-after look you see on young people returning from leave; equal parts sexual gratification and hangover. It takes effort to look pleased with yourself and like your brain is about to explode at the same time.
Artyom just looked surly, as usual. This was despite a report of how he’d done his best to sleep with every female in the village and empty every container of alcohol available. The longer Vat spent around him, the more he doubted his first impression of the Russian.
“I thought you didn’t like to fight?” Vat asked as the big man sat astride his whinnie in the early dawn.
“I don’t,” he replied. “That does not mean I am not good at it. I kill many Germans because I need to. So now I kill many Ka-whore allies because I need to.” He shrugged and laughed. “I not get laid as much killing Germans; I think I like this place.” Sam chuckled nearby from his new whinnie, provided by the villagers. They rode on for a few minutes before Artyom spoke again. “You do some laying yourself last night, nyet?.”
Vat’s felt his expression harden, and he nodded glumly. At the front of the column, Salsaliin was talking with her friend Miizhaam. The two laughed, then looked back at Vat who felt his face growing hot. Salsaliin looked slightly confused, but she smiled at him, and he gave the barest smile in return. He’d never had to work harder to have fun in his life than he had the previous night.
The women of the tribe had been extremely grateful for the Lost Soldiers’ arrival. They’d expressed that gratitude to all the men with Roberts and Vat, some of them several times. He tried not to dwell on the mixed message of showing appreciation for being saved from a bunch of sexual predators by then giving the rescuers sex in return. My species has issues. Then he remembered how Salsaliin had felt under him, how different it was, yet somewhat the same, and sighed. You’re a fine one to talk.
He’d spoken with the village hetman. He didn’t know what a Daaj was. He thought he’d heard the word once from an old woman in another village, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was a hiding place. The word also didn’t have the same dialect feel as their version of Ktor. Nor of any other, for that matter.
It was like an itch Vat couldn’t scratch.
By morning, he was sure there was no more to learn from the village, so they moved on. But as the kilometers slowly crept by, he found himself continually seeing Private Taiki Komatsu’s spartan, unmarked grave on the ridgeline where he’d died.
Unable to shake the image, Vat took out the small data recorder Murphy had given him, the only high-tech item he had. Vat had recorded some of the hetman’s speech, as well as others in the tribe. He passed the hours listening to them, comparing them. He overlaid recordings of Ktorans from the Dornaani archives. While he had no formal linguistics training, he had his own shorthand for the elements of language. He made notes, slowly isolating elements of Ktoran and how it compared to the version spoken on R’Bak.
Before they stopped for their midday meal, Sam moved his whinnie next to Vat’s and got his attention. “Whatcha doing, Lieutenant? I see you’ve been wearing your headphones all day.”
Vat didn’t want to tell the young man he was trying to forget their dead comrade, so he said, “Going over some of the Ktoran language and comparing it to what we’re hearing from the R’Bakuun villagers.”
“Sounds the same to me,” Sam said. “Maybe a funny accent sometimes, like someone from Louisiana.”
“That’s an interesting analogy,” Vat said.
“But they’re an isolated society, right?” Vat nodded. Or so we’ve assumed. “So, where would differences come from?”
“Good question. I don’t have an answer. I’m just listening and trying to isolate the differences. Maybe something will click.”
“You like languages, don’t you?”
Vat shrugged. “I’m good with them, but never went to school for them. It’s something I can do rather than something I love.”
“What do you love?”
Vat grinned. “Figuring things out.”
Near the end of the day, they spied a dust cloud coming toward them, indicating others were on the trail. What they were following now were merely trails through the scattered ground cover, not like the road through the hills behind them. Ruts had been ground into the rock, which meant it had seen a lot of people pa
ssing that way
“There’s nowhere to hide,” Vat said, drawing his whinnie up next to Lieutenant Roberts’. He was getting better at riding the lizard, though he wondered if it was the whinnie getting better at carrying him.
“No,” Roberts agreed, holding a hand above his eyes to shield them from the afternoon glare. “There are some rocks over there. They’re almost a kilometer away, though. Might as well just spread out and prepare.”
After a few minutes, it was apparent the oncoming dust cloud was not caused by another group from the satraps, but by a caravan of locals. As they got closer, Vat could see they were in bad shape. Roberts and the soldiers approached them to render what aid they could.
“The J’Stull attacked us,” the oldest in the group said; he was maybe fifteen years old. All the adults were gone, including any females over the age of twelve. It was pretty clear the same sort of raid they’d prevented at the previous village had also targeted theirs, only this time, the satrap forces took the men, too.
“These are mostly kids,” Vat pointed out to Roberts.
“I know that.” He was looking at the map of their route and rubbing his mouth.
“We can’t just leave them.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“That we abort and escort them to basecamp.” Vat didn’t like it. They were still a long way from the village where Salsaliin’s and Miizhaam’s grandmother lived. They had spent days on the damned lizards, and one of his team was dead. He hated the idea of giving up the whole thing, but they couldn’t leave this group of kids by themselves. It was, however, a decidedly suboptimal outcome.
“My mission was to take you to these villages,” Roberts said.
“Yes, and the satrap must have found out. They’re ahead of us and have trucks. The whinnies are good, but they don’t have the endurance of a fueled vehicle.” Don’t make me pull rank, damnit, Vat thought.
Roberts looked up from his map at the wounded survivors his troops were tending. Two were trained medics, applying bandages and rendering whatever first aid they could. Normally, there wouldn’t have been much for them to do: R’Bak’s medicines were amazing—almost magical, really—which was why the Kulsians came to steal them. The problem was that all the healers—along with any stores of the medicines—had been taken by the satrap forces.
“Fuck,” Roberts said. “Let’s head back. I’ll update Murphy as soon as I can raise Camp Stark through the atmospheric garbage from the storms to the west. They’ll relay to Murphy, and maybe Moorehouse can send a helo.”
There were no helicopters available, so after tending to the wounded, they headed back.
* * * * *
Chapter Sixty-Four
R’Bak
It was three days back to Camp Stark. Midway through the second day, a helicopter was able to meet up with them to take the worst of the casualties. They had lost a nine-year-old girl during the night from sepsis; she’d been stabbed in the stomach by one of the satrap bastards because she’d objected when they took her mother away. Vat was beginning to feel Artyom’s opinion of their adversary was apt.
As fate would have it, the bird was a Huey with “Bruce” painted on the pilot door in blue letters.
“Hey, Vat!” she yelled over the idling turbine. “I thought it was your op when I got the orders.”
“Yeah, things went to shit.”
She nodded, looking over the stretchers of the wounded who couldn’t move, and the ones who could still walk. She saw the body covered with a sheet and her face darkened. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner. We were evaccing our resident SEAL after he shot the shit out of another satrap patrol.”
“Good; I hope he fucked them over good,” Vat said.
Bruce looked at the face of a young boy being helped onto the helicopter by her crew chief and nodded. “How are you doing?”
“Well enough,” Vat said. “I lost one of my men in a fight a couple days ago.”
“Sorry to hear that,” she said, then looked at his face. “This was your first, wasn’t it? You’ve never lost someone under your command.”
“Yes,” Vat growled. “And it was just a fucking stray shot. Pure bad luck.”
“Doesn’t matter how it happens,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Vat looked down and she cupped his chin, pulling his face up. He felt tears form and hated himself for it. “What you are feeling is normal,” she said, locking eyes with him. “You wouldn’t be worth a mouthful of lukewarm spit if you didn’t feel what you’re feeling.”
“How do I function, feeling like this?” he demanded.
“That’s the other half of being a commander: finding the strength to go forward.” She looked over her shoulder. The helicopter was almost ready. El, her crew chief, was belting down the casualties while her copilot made sure the walking wounded had their seat belts in place. She moved in quickly and gave him a brief hug. “It’s bad decorum, but this isn’t exactly a typical deployment.”
“You can say that again.”
“Hang in there, Vat. You brought the rest of them through.”
He watched the Spindog-manufactured Huey take off, spin around, and fly off. He stood by his whinnie for five minutes until the horizon ate the helicopter, and they were alone.
The last two days of the return were uneventful. They saw a small pack of wild whinnies several kilometers away—actually, their whinnies spotted them first—and the mounted lizards’ neck furls stood up at attention. A few warning hisses were exchanged, and the other lizards moved off. For the rest of the day, the humans’ whinnies seemed quite pleased with themselves, almost prancing down the dirt ruts.
The nights were challenging for Vat because Salsaliin kept trying to invite herself into his tent. So far, he’d avoided it by staying up as late as possible, driving Roberts nuts in the process. He was short as hell on sleep, but at least she was too tired to try and jump him.
About half the refugees had to stay with the patrol. Hueys were great birds but couldn’t hold more than the injured, and there were always more calls going out than there were slicks to respond.
Vat spent a lot of time talking with the kids. He didn’t pump them for intel; he already knew that would be a wasted effort. Instead, he listened to their speech patterns. Most of the key elements he was looking for were missing, which told him what he needed to know. The outlying speech pattern was something the adults passed to each other; it wasn’t used with the kids.
When they got back to the FOB, he wrote a report and began searching out older natives. The older, the better. Unfortunately, the combat operations they were running didn’t call for many old timers. Strong young backs were needed to carry gear, strong young legs to run up hills, and strong young fingers to pull triggers.
Two days after returning, he had his first chance to talk with Murphy in weeks.
“So, how’s it going?” the major asked via satellite link.
“I’ve made some progress in understanding their language. I feel confident there is definitely something we aren’t seeing.”
“I thought I sent you down to help scope out hidden caches?”
“I am. You saw my report on the ‘Daaj?’ I believe these are linked; that word is one of the non-matching types.”
“Fine. As long as you’re not going off on a tangent. I need you to find us some pearls.”
“What?”
“You know, the old saying: blah and etcetera blah, a pearl of great value? That’s what I need you to find: that invaluable, game-changing pearl.”
Vat’s mouth became a thin line. He didn’t like Murphy. Period. The man was, in many ways, the epitome of the sort of officers which made his time in the service a living hell. They always played their little games, testing, checking, and pushing you along. Assholes.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry about Private Komatsu. He seemed to be a good soldier.”
“He was,” Vat agreed. “I can’t even write his family a letter.”
�
�No, they got one from the Emperor two hundred years ago. It comes with combat, and the first is the worst. Except for every other one that comes after. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Vat lied. “I wish it hadn’t happened, but it wasn’t because anyone screwed up. Artyom kind of went off the deep end, but I’ve talked to him.”
“I saw that in your report, too. Based on Lieutenant Roberts’ AAR, I’d say Sergeant Volkov’s actions, while inadvisable and brash, probably helped you carry the day. It would have been nice to have the second truck, but your team’s survival is more important.”
Vat nodded. He agreed with the major’s assessment. Even though he was an asshole, Murphy was at least giving Vat enough room and material to operate. Vat really did think he was onto something big. It was just going to take some time.
Murphy cleared his throat. “We’re going to have to put a hold on another recon in that direction.”
“But we never got to the village where Salsaliin’s grandmother lives.”
“I understand,” Murphy replied. “Resources are needed for other operations right now. We’re running out of time to talk, here and in general. We are starting to get behind our timetable…way behind. So we need results. I’m inclined to let you continue pursuing your leads. I don’t need you for conventional ops. Frankly, I’m not a fan.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“Let me save you the trouble: ‘the feeling is mutual.’”
“Correct. Sir,” Vat growled.
Murphy paused for a second then said, “So, as General Patton once said, we have an understanding, one son of a bitch to another. Keep looking for those pearls. Murphy out.”
“Pearls? Right. Fucker,” Vat said to the dead air and left the comms tent.
* * * * *
Chapter Sixty-Five
R’Bak
“Why have you avoided me?”
Murphy's Lawless: A Terran Republic Novel Page 60
