He had heard people speaking many times about the “weight of responsibility.” Max thought it was just a metaphor--a figure of speech describing in physical terms a purely emotional experience. He was certain that there was no such thing as any kind of real “weight of responsibility” that the body had to carry.
He was wrong.
High in a tree in an alien forest on an alien world, the burden of great responsibility found Max Robichaux. It arrived, not as a mere emotional or mental construct, but as an actual, physical weight that Max felt settle about his neck and shoulders, like an already heavy woolen cloak saturated with rainfall from a sudden storm. He felt as though its heaviness would break the branch beneath him or that the weight would snap his bones and crush his shattered body into the forest floor beneath.
He felt too young, too small, too inexperienced, too weak to shoulder the load. Max was certain that he wasn’t ready for so much responsibility at so young an age.
It’s not fair. I didn’t sign up for this.
Something inside him answered, “Yes, you did.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yes, you did. Remember?”
Max remembered. The day before he was first commissioned as an officer in the Union Space Navy, he had had the mandatory one-on-one conference with a command level officer as his last test of fitness to wear the dark blue of a naval officer. Max’s meeting was with one Captain Taylor Hopkins Dickenson whose toughness was legendary and who, on that morning, looked as he could bite off steel rivets, chew them up like popcorn, and spit out cabinet nails. Dickenson had gone over with Max word for word and then had him sign with a real pen and real ink on real paper a document entitled “Fundamentals of Naval Leadership.”
The “Fundamentals” had a long history, extending through the navy’s various incarnations, and--according to long-standing naval legend—to even before the UESF, all the way back to the old American Apollo Program where none other than Gene “General Savage” Kranz drafted the first version.
The part that stood out in Max’s memory was “I will conduct my duties at all times with the awareness that, suddenly and unexpectedly, I may find myself in a role where my performance has the ultimate consequences.”
Yes, I did sign up for this. Literally.
But . . . I’m not qualified. I don’t have the necessary experience. I’m probably the last human being in the galaxy that any sane person would put in this position.
But . . . .
I’m the one who actually is in this position. I may be only LTJG Max Robichaux, but I’m the only player on the field and the bench is empty.
I have to step up to the plate, or all those people die.
I’m all they have.
Suddenly, sitting high in the branches of the alien tree, he spoke aloud, in a whisper, the words from the book he treasured as a boy—words of another inexperienced, insignificant being who suddenly and unexpectedly found that his performance had the ultimate consequences:
“I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.”
He grabbed the padcomp and started paging through the data provided to him by the Vaaach. No Wizard. No Ranger with a legendary sword. No great warrior from the South. No Elf prince. No cousins. No gardener. No Fellowship. All I have is this padcomp.
I think I’d prefer a Wizard.
He reached into the left breast pocket of his uniform to pull out the padcomp stylus that belonged there. As he struggled for a second or two to pull the pocket open against the resistance of the Velcro closure he glanced down and for the first time in months, paid attention to his unit patch sewn there. Or, at least, the patch of the unit he was assigned to until recently: Intelligence, Reconnaissance, and Surveillance Squadron FRS-1885. It bore the Latin motto proudly of the Union Space Navy Reconnaissance Forces: “Inveniam viam aut faciam.”
“I shall find a way or make one.”
Max gritted his teeth and said quietly, “I shall find a way, or make one.” Then, incongruously, he smiled.
That motto needs one more word to make it fit my situation: “cursim.”
Rapidly.
Max got to work, doing one of the things he did best: working his way through a large body of information, finding and assimilating the relevant data and then using that information to formulate a plan of action. There was a lot of information there—the layout of the relay station, how to operate the controls, schematics of alarm and defensive systems, and even the Krag work shift schedules for the next several days. The Vaaach had helpfully provided to Max all the information he needed, except for one thing: how to kill four members of an armed garrison without alerting whichever of the four Krag happened to be at the controls that the installation was under attack prompting him to trigger an alarm.
It was absorbing work and it was only after three hours of study and planning that something suddenly occurred to Max:
Not even for a second had he had even considered summoning his ship and running away to Milunka Savic station.
Perhaps this puny pink clawless fruit eater has some grit in his gizzard after all.
Chapter VI-B
12:14 Zulu Hours, 27 July 2304
Max had drawn heavily on his limited—very limited—supply of patience over the last three days. It had taken everything he had to keep from just charging down to the Krag relay station, shooting off the lock with his sidearm that the Vaaach had so graciously returned to him, and using the same weapon to kill all the Krag therein. Of course, it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that if he shot off the lock—if that were even possible in light of that particular lock’s design--whatever Krag were in the relay station control room would seal themselves off so that Max could never get to them and hit the key that automatically alerted sector command that the station was under attack. The Krag would then follow their SOP by performing a high resolution scan of the system from their side of the battle planes, or by sending in some kind of recon mission, either of which would likely mean the end of Commodore Hornmeyer and his task force.
So, Max had spent all but the last few hours of the time allotted to him studying the Vaaach data and surveilling the Krag. He was focused: planning, and getting ready to execute what he hoped would be a more patiently-executed and ultimately effective plan.
Not only had Max studied the plans for the relay station provided on the padcomp, he had studied the Krag themselves, using what Trainer had taught him to remain unobserved while keeping the site under careful surveillance from several different tree tops giving him views of the station from several different angles. He was even able to creep up to within meters of the station while one or more Krag were outside, stalking them as they went about their business, and learning everything they did when they ventured from inside the building. He was able to follow the enemy silent and nearly invisible, like a moon shadow on a cloudy night.
Here is where the knowledge of the great military philosopher Sun Tzu drilled into Max by Admiral Middleton paid off. Middleton’s favorite Sun Tzu quotation was: “Know the enemy and know yourself, and in a thousand battles you will never be in peril.”
After three days, Max knew his enemies and their routines quite well, and was prepared to exploit that knowledge to the fullest. Fortunately for Max, these Krag were garrison troops, who—as in most military forces—were not the cream of the litter. Not only that, these were garrison troops who had no idea that there was any enemy within five light years.
Vllgrhmrr had helped him in this regard, as well, making sure that the Krag he had killed appeared to have been eaten by green pigs—one of the advantages to killing with tooth and claw.
But, there were four of them, which meant that Max had to whittle down the numbers to even the odds a little. Fortunately for Max, Krag were creatures of habit to such a fanatical degree as to make German efficiency experts with obsessive compulsive personalities look like eight year old frontier planet school boys with attention deficit disorder by comparison.
An
d, now it was time to start whittling.
Max had given each of the Krag names. The one he called “Whippersnapper,” from his habit of whipping his tail back and forth, was emerging from the station, just long enough after his shift to have relieved himself and gotten a few bites to eat. As he did every day, Whippersnapper left through the main door, walked up the trail leading to the woods where the Krag sometimes went for walks, and took a sharp left turn as soon as he was far enough into the trees as to be unobserved.
Walking carefully so as to not leave a trail, the Krag made his way between the trees and through the underbrush for a few hundred meters. Max followed close behind, using the techniques he had learned over the past few days to glide behind his quarry in near-total silence. Even so, twice during his walk, Whippersnapper acted as though he felt that he was being followed or watched, turning around to search the woods behind him, and—on one occasion, darting from his path in an unexpected direction and leaping down where he suspected his pursuer to be. The Krag landed only two meters from Max, but did not see him crouched in the underbrush, holding his body in one of the contorted positions he learned from Trainer.
Finally, Whippersnapper came to a shallow depression in the ground—deep enough that every part was in shadow all day or for all but a few hours, but not so deep that he had difficulty climbing the meter and a half or so between the surrounding ground and the bottom. He had to get down on all fours, though, to keep from sliding.
Max stopped a few meters from the hole, concealing himself behind a short, broad sapling clothed in branches laced with a dense network of vines.
Once at the bottom, the Krag brushed aside some leaves that covered a few rotting logs to reveal various growths, brownish-green semicircles clinging to the decomposing wood. The Krag chose one of these carefully, cut it from the tree with a small knife, and sniffed it with obvious relish. It then proceeded to use its knife to cut slices off the perimeter which it promptly gobbled down. Tossing the rest of the fungus into the woods, Whippersnapper selected a few other of the fungi and did the same. The Krag took its time, spending about half an hour indulging itself.
Hearing a tiny “peep,” presumably a timer tucked somewhere in its equipment belt, the Krag then started to climb out of the hole. Just as when climbing to the bottom, Whippersnapper had to get on all fours to negotiate the slope. This time, however, its movements were a bit unsteady, likely due to some natural drug occurring in the fungus—the whole reason for the daily trip into the woods.
As soon as the Krag dropped its head so that it could climb using both arms and legs, Max slipped from his hiding place to stand just a meter from the rim, his back against a tree, boarding cutlass in hand. The Krag soon reached the lip of the depression, pressed its arms into the forest floor to help lift itself out of the hole, and looked up.
Because Max was standing against a tree while wearing woods camouflage, Whippersnapper’s brain took about half a second longer than it would otherwise have required to determine that a human was almost within arm’s reach. Max took advantage of that time to take a quick step closer to the Krag and put himself in position to use his weapon. There, for the briefest of moments, Whippersnapper saw his doom standing before him in the form of 63.5 centimeters of cold steel guided by the arm of a young Union Space Navy officer. The aforementioned steel and officer promptly separated the Krag’s head from the rest of its body, each of which fell separately into the depression from which they had together so recently emerged.
Max stepped up to the edge of the depression, looked down at the head and still-twitching body, and spat on them. He said with quiet fury:
“That’s for the midshipmen of the USS San Jacinto.”
Max had good reason to spit. The Krag captured the old San Jan on 10 September 2296 and held her for 26 days until she was retaken by Union forces on October 6. During that period, the Krag killed all but 24 of the ship’s compliment. Max was the only midshipman who survived.
Very little of the enormous quantity of blood lost by the Krag actually wound up on Max’s blade. He used a handful of leaves to wipe off what little was there, and tossed the leaves into the hole on top of the Krag. He stared down for a moment at the cold, dead, terrified eyes of the Krag.
“Let that be a lesson to you, ratface,” Max said. “‘A combat cruise is no time to take a trip.’” Max smirked, having never found the Navy anti-drug slogan so amusing before.
He turned his back on the dead Krag, made his way to his next destination, and settled down to wait. Krag (and, for that matter, Union) forces on this kind of duty had a specific drill to implement when one of their number did not report back when expected which, in the case of these Krag, was 57 minutes from when he went out the door.
What was supposed to happen was that the installation was to go to high security alert, notify the nearest headquarters of the possibility of an impending attack, and either to wait for reinforcements or to send at most one noncom out to look for the missing individual.
These Krag, with the complacency that only garrison troops who believe they are at no risk are capable, sent out two of their number, which is exactly what Max was expecting. When Whippersnapper had gotten so stoned that he lost track of time yesterday, that is what they had done. Max supposed that their actions made sense, if you assumed the primary danger your comrade faced was being attacked by a green pig or getting lost in the woods rather than the relay station being under attack by Union forces.
While worried about green pigs, these two (whom Max named “Olaf and Gustaf”—after the famous network TridVid comedy team comprised of the tall, slender “straight man” Olaf and the short, rotund “gag man,” Gustaf) undoubtedly thought that Whippersnapper had over shroomed himself again and so weren’t particularly alert.
Yesterday, they had found their errant comrade when he had almost made it to the edge of the woods, so they had no idea where he had been gathering fungi. Accordingly, this time, they followed the main trail into the woods, as a beginning to their search. Again, using the Vaaach stalking techniques, Max followed them, totally unheard.
Soon, Olaf and Gustaf were chittering and squeaking amiably between themselves. Between their lack of vigilance and the gloom of the forest, neither of them saw the ankle-high dark green double strand of dental floss (or, more precisely, Type 2288 Floss, Dental, Field Pack Issue) strung across the trail between two trees.
The Krag were proceeding down the narrow trail in line ahead formation, with Olaf leading the way. He hit the floss and fell forward, with Gustaf—who was following too closely—tripping over his taller comrade.
While both were in a tangle on the ground, Max decapitated Gustaf with a quick swipe of his boarding cutlass. Olaf, however, managed to grab Gustaf’s sidearm and was trying to bring it to bear, hampered in these efforts by Gustaf’s dead weight on top him. Before the Krag could aim, Max took off its arm at the elbow. When Gustaf fell backward in pain and shock, Max plunged his blade right into the Krag’s solar plexus and up into the heart. But for a few muscle spasms, Gustaf moved no more.
Max spat on these Krag as well. “That’s for the enlisted men of the USS San Jacinto.”
And for hunting me in her air ducts, machinery spaces, and other hidden places in her for 26 nightmarish days. That’s “nightmarish,” literally, as I still have dreams about it from which I wake up screaming and drenched in sweat.
There was only one Krag left, the one Max called Napoleon not just because it was small for a Krag and had a weak or deformed right arm that it kept tucked in its over-shoulder equipment belt, but because it was obviously the leader of the group, not just in rank but in intelligence and strength of will. Napoleon easily and completely dominated the other three. Max was pretty sure that the only reason this particular rat face wasn’t an officer in their regular navy was its small size and physical deformity.
But, small and weak or not, Napoleon was inside the relay station—a facility with an electronically dead bolted steel
door, reinforced concrete walls, a particulate and toxin filtering ventilation system, and thousands of liters of fuel for the generator (not to mention solar panels on the roof), plus a twenty day supply of fresh water and food for its four occupants. A lone Krag could hold out without reinforcements or resupply for nearly three months.
Max didn’t have three months.
He didn’t have three hours.
What he did have was three days of training under the best concealment and infiltration instructor that Max had ever seen or even heard of. What he had learned was amazing and beyond anything he had ever expected.
He figured that it upped his odds of success from one in a million to just about 50%. Fifty-fifty didn’t sound very good in an operation where the consequences of failure were Union casualties in the five figure range.
It would have to do.
Max took his boarding cutlass and chopped off the left hands of both Krag, stuffing them inside his uniform next to his chest. The feel of the warm and still oozing Krag flesh next to his skin was more than disgusting, but he knew of no other way of keeping the amputated appendages at body temperature.
That nauseating task accomplished, Max used his K-Bar to cut the right eye out of each of the two Krag, being careful to extract each eyeball whole and without damage to the retina. Those, he put in one of the small plastic bags tucked away in standard navy field packs very wisely issued to hold small screws and fasteners removed from broken equipment but that can be used for something else later, samples of unknown substances collected on a Krag ship or in a battle zone to be brought back for analysis, or even the carcass of an alien insect that just stung some unfortunate spacer and that he needs to bring back to the casualty station for analysis of any venom it might contain. Max slipped the bag into a pocket and simply walked out of the woods toward the station, which had no windows and no external video surveillance.
The Hunters of Vermin Page 17
