Duty, Honor or Death the Corps Sticks

by Ronald Wintrick

  "Why? Where you think you're gonna be?" Gris Holter asked. "He ain't coming with us?" He asked Lan.

  "He'll be going ahead." Lan said. "Unless you think you could do a better job."

  "I go now." Gylastak spoke before Gris could answer. "Sister, Senator, trail of twenty, go that way." He pointed an appendage in the indicated direction. "You find?"

  "Yeah, we'll find the trail." Nat said testily. "We're not helpless!"

  Gylastak turned his head to look at Nat with inscrutable eyes. The look seemed menacing, but was not.

  He overreacts because of his fears, Gylastak thought. There was nothing he could not discern from a human's smells. Fearful or not, the human Nat Bergen would be no easy kill; intermingled with the smell of fear was the smell of the desire to live. All of these humans had it in stronger measure than most of their kind. But the man would not attack unprovoked. Antagonism was a natural form of communication among humans, unlike Molog, or at least to a lesser degree in Molog, so sometimes Gylastak had to stop to evaluate the meaning of things, with these humans.

  "Gylastak not think Nat Bergen man helpless." Gylastak said, and without waiting for a further response, leapt into the nearest tree and was gone.

  "Come on." Lan said amused. "Before the Molog brings them back and we're still here looking for the trail."

  "Speak for yourself." Bergen replied. "I can track a fly across a plas-steel landscape."

  "We wouldn't have to track anyone if the landscape was solid plas-steel." Briar said. "Helpless."

  Nat bristled but did not reply. Lan led them in the direction Gylastak had indicated and they soon had the trail.

  Becla couldn't help being amused either. These guys could form their own comedy troupe, except that sooner or later they'd end up killing one another. Which might just end up being the most hilarious part of the whole act! Its grand finale!

  The Senator's trail was easily discerned. Reb's trail not so much. The natives were also quite expert, but it was impossible to entirely hide their trail in the soft, wet soil.

  "Even a helpless tracker could find these." Briar quipped, a malicious grin on his face.

  "I'm gonna help you learn a real valuable lesson!" Nat snarled.

  Ignoring them, Lan led them out on the trail. Becla was at his side. She was learning quickly. Lan said so.

  "I want to live."

  "I believe you." Lan said. He did. And she just might!

  Chapter 40

  "My father came from the Outside." Larita said. "He's aware of all that you say?"

  "The Federation of Worlds is thousands and thousands of years old, and mankind was old when the Federation was formed," Baldwin said, "he knew."

  "I wonder why he never mentioned anything about it?" Larita asked.

  "It's a lot to swallow. Some might not have wanted to be a part of that, if they knew about it. Or he might have been taken as a heretic." Baldwin said. "People can react strangely when issues of religion or politics are discussed. It's a taboo topic."

  "What are politics?" Larita asked.

  "I'm getting myself in deeper and deeper." Baldwin said with a good-natured sigh.

  "I think I can see why he might have wanted to remain silent about some things." Larita said. "He makes no bones about the fact that he is an Outsider, but some of these things could be hard to swallow!"

  "It's probably best if you do not go spreading it around." Baldwin warned. "Whatever else I think about your father, I think what he is attempting to do here is beyond reproach."

  "My father can be hard, but he is no monster."

  "His actions were monstrous enough to get him expelled from the Federation!" Baldwin said, but then relented. "The Federation is nothing like this place. The majority are . . . weak. The weakest reproduce the fastest. They produce nothing in the society. In fact, the society supports them. It's called Social Welfare. The government provides for those who cannot provide for themselves, and in turn, they provide the warm bodies the government needs for it's incessant wars. And it's colonization efforts. The spread of mankind across the Universe."

  "I don't think I understand that!" Larita said. "Why would anyone want the weak to thrive?"

  Why indeed? Left as it was, the human race would continue to stagnate.

  "That's what the Prison Colony Worlds are all about, I suppose." Baldwin said. "The continual re-strengthening of the race."

  "I don't think I like it."

  "I don't think anyone caught within it does." Baldwin admitted. "But the System is old. It's designers long since dead. There are over two hundred thousand Prison Colony Worlds now. Some are as old as the Federation itself, and some of those still have not Reunified. It does create new breeds of strong, vital humans, though. I cannot deny that it does not."

  "It seems a high price to pay."

  "The alternative is execution. Criminals can't be allowed to walk the streets. That would be an even worse crime. Plus you wouldn't be here. None of these people would be here. I'm not saying that the System is perfect, but it does give a kind of second chance. A second chance to people like you."

  "I don't see that we're any different than you!" Larita accused.

  "Maybe not, but I'm not what you would call a representative of the majority. I am Sarvan's Senator. I am roughly the equivalent of your father, except where he rules just one tribe among many on this planet, I was elected to rule over an entire planet."

  Larita was speechless. "You rule an entire planet!"

  "Kind of. Rule isn't exactly the right word either, not in the sense that you are thinking, but yes. My powers are equivalent. Except that I was elected, and I can be impeached, kicked out," Baldwin explained when she looked confused, "and I can lose in the next election. But once having been a Senator, I will always have a certain amount of power."

  "An entire planet!" Larita mused.

  "The differences in the people are immense." Baldwin went on. "Sarvan is full of decadent humans of the lowest sort. Your father was an exception, as well. An intelligent man too full of himself. The people here are so full of vitality, energy and ambition that the difference is as of night and day. Humanity as a whole does not have half the energy your people possess. I've been wondering just recently if the designers of the system realized the full import of what it was they had created!"

  "I can't imagine any such differences." Larita said.

  "The man your father killed. He was a perfect example." Baldwin said, and then even stunning himself; "In any case, you'll see it."

  "How will I see it? I am aware of the rules which govern Reunification! My father has not kept us ignorant of everything!" She sounded angry.

  "I don't know yet." Baldwin admitted. "But I give you my word; you will see the Federation! I promise it!"

  She looked into his eyes a long moment, then said; "I want to believe you. I really do."

  "Then believe." Baldwin said. "And it will happen."

  Chapter 41

  Rebecca had been in similar, and worse, situations. Nago would use her body. That she was prepared for. That she understood. It went without saying. These types only understood dominance or submission, and that only through violence. Through the use of physical violence he would think to subdue her mind.

  But he had no idea with whom he dealt.

  The wives were violent. Especially the girl. Rebecca was sure she was much younger than she appeared. Probably just past puberty. But she was world-wise, her eyes hard and full of animal cunning. Rebecca did not doubt the girl would cut her throat in a heartbeat if given leave to do so.

  Maybe without leave.

  Rebecca was thrown to the floor in a corner and ignored. She was happy enough to be left alone now. Her face was stinging from the violence of the girl's blows, which Rebecca had decided to allow, and which had rained on her in profusion, while the girl vented her frustrations.

  "Nago will be angered." The oldest wife had said. That was when Rebecca had been pushed to the floor in the corner. The girl's
expression had said how inadequate the beating had been compared to what she would have liked to have delivered.

  Rebecca had kept her eyes diverted. There was no sense in further enraging her. Just her presence was sufficient enough for that!

  "She's a murderous whore!" The girl ranted. "How can Nago bring her here, into our home!" But the older wives did not seem sympathetic, and the girl's ranting drained away. The clatter of pots and pans and household items told that she was hardly appeased. The lack of sympathy and even mirth of the others only exacerbated her mood.

  When Nago came in, Rebecca did not look up. He wasn't interested in her, in any case, and he walked through the main room and into one of the rear rooms of the dwelling.

  "Atvar." Nago called. Bare feet slapping on the hardpacked ground which was the floor of the home told of the girl's quick response. The noise level of the lovemaking which followed seemed exaggerated on Atvar's part.

  Atvar was obviously pleased that she had been chosen over Rebecca. Rebecca was surprised, as well. It said things she was not sure she wanted to contemplate. She would've preferred the straightforward rape. Then she would've known where she stood. This change worried her. Nago had depths within depths, obviously.

  Nago was back in the main room and standing over her shortly after the last sounds of lovemaking had died away. She looked him squarely in the eye.

  "My turn?" She taunted, the sneer twisting her lips should have angered him, but it did not. He just looked at her.

  "I think not." Nago said. "I think you're much too dangerous a toy to play with indiscriminately."

  "You're no man!" Rebecca snarled, her face contorting into a false mask of rage and hatred, but Nago was unmoved, unbelieving. Rebecca let it slide away. The man had begun to start thinking.

  "The question that remains is what I am to do with you." Nago said. "Simply putting you to death now seems a most reasonable option."

  "I can be quite valuable to you alive." Rebecca said conversationally, taking up a new tack. "We can help each other."

  "Now we're getting somewhere." Nago said.

  "These bindings are really tight." Rebecca said.

  "We're not going anywhere that fast." Nago said. "Tell me everything you know, and how you can be of service to me. For beginners."

  Chapter 42

  The planet reminded Gylastak of home. Similar mass and gravity. The same forest covered landscape. A similar radioactive bombardment from the system's star, producing the hot and tropical environment Molog loved above all else. There was plenty here to feed a Molog's great hunger, and nothing that could compete with it. Gylastak could prey upon the planet's greatest carnivores as easily as upon its lesser denizens. The Molog race had been slow to evolve, taking a great deal longer to rise to sentience than most races. They had been so finally adapted to survival that further adaptations had not been particularly necessary. The indigenous life of Bali was many millions of years of evolutionary progress behind competing with Gylastak.

  Man was a different story. Man was not indigenous to Bali, and despite man's lack of evolutionary refinement, man could be a cunning adversary. Humans had not been the preeminent predators upon their own home world until the end. They had been prey animals which had clawed their way to the top. Humans were highly adaptable.

  The Molog race believed humanity capable of much further adaptation and refinement, as well. Refinement to a place, millions of years from now, or even much less, so much above the present capabilities of the Molog that the comparison would be as Gods to mortals. The evolution of mind, of course.

  Some humans were already nearly Godlike in their ability, to the Molog, who had no such mental sixth sense, to perceive that which was not visible or obvious to the normal, physical senses.

  Gylastak knew that if he were to sneak up on Lan Carter, a human in which this sixth sense had manifested itself in a significant way, with malevolent intent, that even if he made no physical warning of his presence and intent, that Lan Carter would still know he was there.

  Extrasensory perception, humans called this ability.

  There had been other races with this ability, to more or lesser degrees, but man had exterminated them. Man brooked no such competition. Man was devious and they knew what they were doing. No race which possessed even the minutest trace of this ability were allowed to survive. They were exterminated to the last individual. Genocide on a Universal scale.

  Gylastak believed that the ability that Lan Carter possessed was but the tip of the iceberg, as humans would say, of what humans would eventually be completely capable of.

  The Molog race had quickly capitulated to the rising star that was the human race, for better or for worse. There had been but little option in any case, besides scattering before the human wave. Though Gylastak despised most humans, Lan Carter was his friend. He would give his life gladly for his friend, such was the nature of Molog friendship.

  Lan Carter had nearly done the same for him, in a joint-force attack the Federation had asked the Molog to assist in, upon a ferocious reptilian species that had been successfully resisting humans until then.

  Gylastak would ever remember those beings. A race more fierce than the Molog themselves. The only race who Gylastak had ever seen who were. Lan Carter had come out of nowhere, had waded through irresistible odds to get to Gylastak's side, and together they had smashed those around them.

  Lan Carter had done the impossible in a very surreal way. Gylastak had been awed, and it was not easy to awe a Molog.

  Gylastak owed Lan Carter a life. Molog did not take such debts lightly. Not lightly at all.

  Gylastak did not know Carter's sister, but her scent was still strong in the forest. He could also smell the biological similarities. He would have recognized her as Carter's relation without having to be told.

  His debt to Lan Carter automatically transferred to her. What he owed Carter he also owed her. It was quite simple. Even if she were unaware.

  Carter had owed him no debt when he had risked his own life for Gylastak. That when most of the human Troopers showed no honor at all. No allegiance to their Molog allies. Caring for nothing but their own skins.

  Gylastak wondered if the sister possessed the same traits. He would have to be careful when he approached her, she could be dangerous until he identified himself as a friend.

  Her scent was minute but detectable. Much stronger were the scents of all the others, as if she had some instinctual control over her autonomous nervous system. Enough to minimize her flow of pheromones and other bodily excretions. Humans were not consciously capable of such, as were Molog, that being something they had evolved out of, something they had been capable of earlier in their evolution, but which they had lost as a reliance on their brains increased. But it was something they were relearning in these primordial prison colony settings. This the process which had so intrigued the Molog.

  Gylastak believed that the human policymakers, those men in the highest positions of authority within the Federated Space Corps, knew exactly the means to the ends. Not the Senators or the President, who served elected terms and were then replaced, but those at the very top in the Space Corps itself. Those were the men with the real power, and Gylastak knew it.

  He followed the trail swiftly and easily. He did not appear to be suited to the type of travel he now utilized. He looked uncoordinated and ungainly as he moved through the mid-level branches of the heavily forested jungle, but the speed at which he moved belied the unnaturalness of his appearance. A man running on the ground would have been left immediately behind.

  That afternoon he found where Rebecca had killed many of her adversaries, first at one location, then again at another farther along, and reducing their number to six.

  Where and how she had been tricked and had succumbed to the native man. A very tricky native man. The leader man of this group, Gylastak knew.

  The Senator man's trail had continued ahead. One of the six who survived followed him, while the remai
nder turned away, with Rebecca as their prisoner, and moving in the direction the Cavanagh had earlier detected the blaster fire.

  Then the second group, of hundreds, had come down the trail from up which the Senator had gone, but without the Senator. So where had the Senator gone?

  The second group had arrived, studied the ground, and then left again following the first group. Those who possessed Rebecca.

  Judging by the amount of time which had passed since the blaster fire was monitored by Cavanagh, and the dissipation of the scent of the second group, Gylastak knew that the blaster fire was not the result of the action which had occurred here. So it was possible then, that she had already extricated herself from her predicament.

  But Gylastak did not know that.

  Now Gylastak had a dilemma.

  The mission parameters called for the priority to be placed on the Senator's rescue, first and foremost. But Gylastak's personal priority was the Rebecca. How would Carter see it? He had agreed to abide Carter's command.

  A Molog's word was his honor. A Molog was nothing without his honor. Gylastak keyed the specially adapted communicator he wore and spoke through to Carter;

  "Find trail?" Gylastak asked. He had begun to enjoy this antagonistic human humor.

  "Make your report, bug." Lan said.

  "Sister captured, made prisoner." Gylastak said, and let that settle in a moment before he continued, filling in all the details. "Want know what do?"

  "Find the Senator." Lan said. By the tone of his voice, Gylastak couldn't tell what he was thinking, but he had a fair idea.

  "I go. Where you go?" Gylastak replied.

  "For Rebecca." Lan said. "Unless you can't handle retrieving the Senator alone?"

  "I handle." Gylastak said "You find trail?"

  "Go get the Senator, bug." Lan answered.

  Gylastak was already moving.

  Lan had sensed his hesitancy, even through that little bit of conversation. The Molog would do as he said he would do, however. Molog did not lie to their own kind, and Lan knew that Gylastak considered him to be as close to a Molog as any human was likely ever to get.