Analog SFF, October 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Wayfield decided not to try to take any tools or cooking utensils, which could be improvised later, or seeds or greens. It would unnecessarily spread out the small force and give too much time for the natives to react.

  The drivers spent several days being lectured by French on how to move cattle and cutting switches such as the natives used. “Always, always, give them a way out,” French emphasized. “Especially bulls. Their route of escape should be the way you want them to go."

  They'd move the herd across the fords and into a bight of the river downstream that would act as a natural corral, where they could be surrounded and defended by the crew.

  Wayfield wouldn't lead the raid himself, of course. Carde would be in tactical command. But, over his officers’ strenuous objections, Wayfield wanted to be close enough behind the raiding party to step in if he was needed. Unlike a landing or boarding party, this raid would involve almost all of his crew. His place was with them.

  * * * *

  Just before dawn on the day of the raid, Wayfield was filled with foreboding. Even the few crewmembers who were veterans of a gun battle or two weren't trained ground troops. The best of them only knew how to secure a port or clear a ship compartment by compartment. The most junior crew, if they had any inkling at all, knew about combat operations strictly from reading the manuals in their advancement courses.

  His real misgivings weren't tactical, though. Wayfield had joined the Guard to be in the rescue service, and had spent his career in the so-called whitehull fleet—the medium and short-range ships—rather than in the more prestigious, and long-legged, research vessels.

  Even after almost three decades of chasing emergency beacons, Wayfield got a little thrill every time he read the phrase “proceed at best speed and render assistance,” the boilerplate that closed all rescue messages from Search Group.

  You took the good with the bad in the service, and Wayfield had seen his share of unpleasant duty, including interdicting illegal ports and enforcing cordon sanitaire during epidemics. You made up for those times when you were under heavy boost and just working a nav terminal took all your strength, on the way to some long-leg ship with a holed hull or an inboard fire. Or a crashed reactor.

  He never lost the excitement he felt when they sent the message, “This is Guard Cutter Malagasy. We have you on our radar,” the signal to stranded crews that their ordeal was almost over.

  Taking the cattle by force was a bad business. The only thing that would be worse would be burying more of his crew. Of course crewmembers could get injured, maybe fatally, during the raid, too.

  But they had to act now, before desperation set in. So far the crew had responded to the short rations with the usual sailor bitching, but no one had seriously tried to get more than their share of food. Even if that state of affairs persisted until the food ran out altogether—and that was asking too much of human nature—Wayfield wanted to insure that none of his people were tempted on their own to start stealing the natives’ food or cattle.

  If he gave the orders to take the cattle, it provided a certain amount of moral and professional insulation to the crew, and preserved the command structure, which was more important to their survival in the long term.

  Carde and French approached in the dim light to say that the raiding party was ready to move out. A few crew-members would be left to guard the camp. To avoid alerting the villagers, the rest of the party would work its way south along the river until they reached another ford below the pastures, then cross over. With luck the natives’ first inkling that something was afoot would be when the cattle were driven through the village. Wayfield would have liked to take the cattle out along the same route they were using to reach the pastures and avoid the village altogether, but the banks were too high and steep at that stretch of the river for cattle to cross.

  "All right, Lieutenant,” Wayfield said, “let's get them moving. XO and I will follow up behind."

  "Aye aye, Skipper,” French said. He and Carde went back to where the party was massed. A few moments later they heard the soft clatter of rifle actions being worked to chamber rounds.

  Once the raiding party moved past, he and Nylund fell in behind. There was enough light to see the column of crewmembers in front of them, but it was still dim under the trees, and there were occasional stumbles and muttered curses.

  Wayfield tried to ease the tension in his gut by running over contingency plans in his head, but there were too many unknowns, and the plans themselves fed new anxieties. He hoped Nylund and the others couldn't read his misgivings.

  The sun was just above the horizon when they arrived at the southern crossing point. The scramble down one bank, the thigh-deep ford in the icy current, and the hand-over-hand climb up the far bank, was an exhausting, muddy business that left them all short of breath. French had been right about not taking the cattle this way.

  There were few trees on this side of the river, and the raiding party was completely exposed in the calf-high grasses. The terrain dipped slightly here, so they were still out of sight of any natives astir this early in the village, but once they crossed the slight ridge that bounded the lower end of the pasture, they'd be visible to anyone that happened to look their way.

  Carde halted the party just below the ridge and crept to its rounded top to see if there were any natives in eyeshot. If there were none, the column would continue on in a quiet stalk; if natives were up and about they would have to close the distance from the ridge to the pasture's edge at a run and risk spooking the cattle.

  The ridge sloped very gradually down to the pasture below, where about a third of the cattle were still bedded down; the rest grazed quietly, seemingly unaware of their presence. In the village, nearly a kilometer away, Wayfield could see no one stirred, though a few cooking fires sent thin lines of smoke up from some of the houses. It was a peaceful scene, and Wayfield had a depressing sense that they were about to kick over the anthill.

  "Let's go,” was all he said.

  They filed over the ridge and down toward the pasture with the shooters on the wings and the cattle drivers in the center. Wayfield and his XO hung back until all the raiders had passed, then followed them down into the grazing fields.

  When the raiders appeared en masse on the ridgeline, the cattle began to mill around nervously, heads turned to keep the party in sight. Those that had been down on their bellies resting struggled to their feet.

  The shooters gave a wide berth to the portion of the herd Carde had designated, acting as a sort of moving funnel with the drivers at its base and the open end pointed at the village.

  As they got closer, the herd began to drift away from them toward the north. French ordered his drivers to advance a little faster on the herd's left flank, which bent the stream of animals toward the village.

  None of the natives had stirred yet, and Wayfield began to think that the operation might work, after all. Some animals spilled out of the mouth of the funnel as they advanced, hurrying a little to get past the drivers and back to the main body of the herd, but many more than they needed were moving slowly and with minimal alarm toward the path that led through the village and down to the fords.

  Now that they were close to the animals and moving across their pasture, the smell of cattle and cattle dung was strong. The moving animals raised some dust, and Wayfield thought it was a lucky thing that it had rained in the past few days, or they might have been enveloped in a cloud by now.

  Problems surfaced when the leading edge of the herd reached the first houses and the animals balked at being hemmed between the structures. The stopped cattle stood in fearful knots, heads turning between the oncoming drivers and the buildings, forcing the rest of the herd to move closer to the drivers along the sides. The cattle closest to the drivers began to speed up, some breaking into an ungainly trot.

  As they advanced, the crew fell into a ragged, U-shaped formation that drove the cattle toward its open end. About half of Carde's shooters—the leading edge
s of the U—had outpaced the bulk of the herd, and were now in the village, advancing on either side of its central dirt path.

  When French saw that the cattle were fearful of moving into the relative confinement of the lane, he tried to call back Carde and his men, but the sound of moving cattle drowned out his voice and he only managed to spook the animals closest to him.

  The whole mass of men and animals was slowed to a huge, milling plug when the first natives appeared from their houses.

  Wayfield cursed as he saw the natives’ frantic gestures over the backs of the agitated herd. The natives had yet to see his crewmembers, apparently. They probably didn't realize what was happening, and were just alarmed and confused by the herd's appearance at their collective doorstep.

  It didn't matter. Waving their arms and yelling, the natives arrested the herd's last bit of forward motion, and nervous cattle began to double back toward the drivers.

  French waved his arms and bawled, trying with his drivers to get the cattle moving in the right direction again, but there were more and more natives pouring into the lane in front of the animals.

  Though the cattle were more afraid of the unfamiliar crewmembers, the raiders were outnumbered, and were trying to hold a moving cordon across a much wider space. The herd began to break.

  Wayfield and Nylund had gradually closed the distance to French's drivers, and they were now among the sailors trying to keep the herd moving into the village. Though their faces were taut with suppressed fear, the sailors advanced on the cattle, whacking their flanks with driving sticks to keep them moving.

  More and more cattle broke back toward the sailors. Seeing that some of his crew was about to be run down, Wayfield drew his weapon.

  "XO, fire over their heads,” he shouted, discharging his own sidearm into the air.

  The effect was electric: the herd went into headlong flight in every direction. Though the fearful cattle tried to shy away from the crew, they were pressed in too narrow a space.

  Wayfield saw one driver, a large petty officer in the electronics department, get bumped by a steer's shoulder and go flying backwards into the grass. Wayfield lunged past an animal and dragged the petty officer to his feet, but as he did so he saw another crewmember go down in front of a mass of animals.

  Over the incredible noise of running, bellowing animals he could faintly hear firing from the front of the herd, and hoped no other sailors had been trampled.

  The operation had become a complete balls-up. Cattle and crew were scattered over a wide area. Carde and French had lost control of their respective detachments, and Wayfield had lost control of them all.

  At least one sailor was certainly dead—he'd seen her go under the mass of panicked animals—and there were going to be casualties among the natives.

  As the last of the cattle trotted past in ones and twos, French came over, limping. “Captain, we've got to get the crew back to the company area,” he said. “I don't know if any head made it to the ford, but..."

  "You're right, Frenchie,” Wayfield said. “The cattle are secondary now. Form the crew up. I saw Street go down—make sure a detail brings her back."

  About half the crew remained west of the village. French formed them up and assigned a detail to collect the dead sailor's remains: boots and a gore-soaked coverall that served as a crude body bag for the crushed flesh and bone. Two sailors carried what was left of Street's body on a litter improvised from driving switches and jackets.

  Another sailor, unconscious with a head injury, was carried across the shoulders of shipmates.

  As they passed through the village they saw that at least a few natives had been trampled, one beyond recognition. The cattle had apparently exploded out of the lane when the firing started, demolishing or damaging a number of the smaller huts.

  Most of the villagers appeared to be in shock, and they stood aside as the sad little procession passed. But near the fords they were met by Boget and several other natives, one of whom was carrying a spear.

  "What did you do?” Boget demanded. The native was wild-eyed, and had bits of grass in his beard.

  "My crew is running out of food,” Wayfield said, suddenly feeling very fatigued. “You know this. We tried to bargain, to trade for cattle."

  "You tried to take them?” Boget said. “Like children?"

  "My crew will starve without cattle, Boget,” he said. “I had no choice."

  One of the other natives pointed with a spear, causing the armed escorts to raise their weapons nervously.

  "You are ... the bad people,” he said haltingly, taking no heed of the rifles pointed at him. “Bad! You do a bad thing,” he said, and flung his spear to the ground in anger.

  The gesture was misinterpreted by a sailor with taut nerves, and a rifle cracked, sending the native down in a spray of blood and tissue from a hypersonic round in the chest.

  The sailor who fired looked shocked and abashed.

  "No, no!” Boget grabbed his hair with both hands. “No!” he screamed at the sailor.

  French prevented further tragedy by grabbing the muzzle of another sailor's weapon and pushing it toward the ground.

  "Hold your fire!” Wayfield barked. “All of you!"

  Another person dead, for no good reason. “Lieutenant, get the party across the river,” he said to French.

  The natives made no move to stop them; they were bent over the stricken native, talking to him, though he was almost certainly dead before his body had hit the ground.

  "Boget,” Wayfield said. “I am sorry. That ... That was an accident."

  A native looked up from the fallen man in anguish. “Just go,” he said. “Go back where you came from, bad people!"

  * * * *

  They'd captured three head of cattle. For that slight accomplishment they'd lost four crewmembers and had three others who were badly injured, including Soyombo, who had a compound leg fracture.

  The cattle grazed placidly in the company area, near the fresh graves of Lieutenant Carde and Petty Officers Street, Vang, and Glende.

  There would be no rifle salutes today. They couldn't spare the ammunition, and the last thing they needed was to spook the few cattle they had into flight.

  The natives hadn't caused a single casualty; all the dead crewmembers were killed by panicked cattle. Carde, true to form, died with Glende, trying to drag him to safety. Like Street, Vang had been in the middle of the herd when the shooting started, and couldn't get out of its way.

  He knew Jan best, of course. Carde had been his ops officer for several years; he would have soon moved up to be XO of a big ship, or command of a smaller vessel. Now he would never see space again.

  Glende and Vang he didn't know very well—both had come aboard recently and hadn't made their mark on the crew yet.

  Of them all, it was Street's death that affected him the most. He'd seen her go under the cattle's hooves, and she was the youngest of the four—probably his daughter's age, barely an adult.

  He wondered anew whether his family knew if Malagasy was missing. It was overdue at its port call by now, but the Guard wouldn't have necessarily notified them yet. He hoped, for Luba and Lydia's sakes, that they only found out about the ship after he and the crew were rescued. It seemed like a selfish wish, standing over four new graves.

  * * * *

  Carde's death left a void in the wardroom. French, taciturn to begin with, was even more silent and morose after the disastrous raid. The XO, feeling the pressure of their situation and the absence of Carde's easy touch with the crew, was increasingly bad-tempered. She had even snapped once at Wayfield—a lapse that left her obviously mortified and apologetic, but no less brittle.

  Three days passed since the raid and neither Boget nor any of the other natives had crossed the river. Wayfield, French, and the XO stood in the company area, discussing their three head of cattle, all steers. They hadn't managed to get one breeding cow or bull, but since they were so few, there was grazing enough in the camp for the an
imals. Keeping them close meant that the crew didn't have to mount an extra guard detail downstream where they'd planned to corral the stolen herd.

  Nylund wanted to slaughter one of the cattle to supplement their ever-thinning ship's rations—on its face, a good idea. The raid and the death of four sailors had plunged morale through the deck, and fresh meat might help restore them physically and psychologically. Something, though, held Wayfield back.

  "We have enough frames to smoke the meat,” Nylund was saying. “We should probably get on with it while the weather's dry so it doesn't rot."

  "Frenchie, how much meat do you think is on one of those animals?” Wayfield asked.

  The engineering officer looked at the cattle thoughtfully. “The big one is maybe 500 kilos,” he said. “Less than half that is meat ... Say 175 to 225 kilograms per head, Skipper, all dressed out."

  Wayfield did the math in his head. If each crewmember got half a kilo per day of meat, one animal would last them two weeks, at best. He had caused the deaths of four of his crew and several natives for less than six weeks’ worth of food.

  Two of his injured would likely recover, but Soyombo was still touch and go, despite the profligate use of their precious antibiotics and plasmites. They'd reduced his fracture as best they could, but he was in for a longish stint at fleet hospitals to repair the bones and restore destroyed muscle tissue. If he lived.

  In his career Wayfield had made some decisions that were worse than others—that came with the territory when you made dozens of choices every day—but this was the first time in his professional life that he'd made a wrong decision. He hadn't just been mistaken, he'd been too willing to accept a morally repugnant solution. That it had turned out badly was worse for the crew.

  "Captain, I'll tell the crew to slaughter one of the cows?” Nylund said, breaking into his thoughts.

  "No, don't do that."

  "I thought you said...” Nylund began, but he cut her off.

  "No, we're not going to slaughter any of the animals,” he said, a decision crystallizing in him. “Frenchie, round up a detail of drivers—take as many as you need to make sure the cattle don't get out of control—and return them to the natives’ pasture."