by Chris Bunch
It would be a hike. A week, maybe two weeks, maybe longer.
So what? Riss was used to hikes.
She got to her feet, picked up the dropper, and started out.
The journey of a thousand miles, whatever a mile was, starts with one step.
How goddamned cheerful. Find something else to think about.
Riss tried not to think about those implacable hostile aliens that King had mentioned, who could be lurking around her, behind every bush.
She had enough troubles already.
• • •
Near dusk, she started looking for her RON — Remain Overnight — campsite. She found a near-perfect one, a great tree with a fork about fifteen meters off the ground, not that easily reached by questing beasts. Nearby was a spring. She splashed water about liberally, but didn’t dare take anything off.
She used a small heat tab, odorless and smoke-less, to heat a pouch of emergency rations.
One of Riss’s darkest secrets was she actually liked E-rats, which would have made her an outcast in any military circle if she’d admitted to it. She would be partially redeemed by her fondness for haute cuisine, which she loved eating, if not cooking. Riss had realized early on she was one of those people naturally ungifted in the kitchen.
Her choice was a mystery meat with red pepper sauce, dehydrated greens that, from their texture and bitterness, told her she had to be gaining strength just by smelling them, a stimulating tea she decided to pass on until the morning since she wanted to sleep, and dehydrated berries that had seen better days. But she ate everything, used the salt in the rat pack as a dentifrice, and then clambered up the tree to her nice, flat branch.
Riss bundled up in her waterproof sheet, and tried to think Gentle Thoughts, one hand curled around her heavy Alliance blaster.
Going to sleep was easier than she’d thought it would be — she was a bit off her top physical shape.
She jolted awake sometime in darkness, hearing something snuffling interestedly at the base of the tree. It sounded big and nasty, but could well have been that six-legged “squirrel” with a good voice box.
Riss thought about sending a blaster bolt or two down as a warning, decided not, for fear of pissing the creature off if it were big, and also the sound of the gunshot would surely rouse alarm.
After a time, the creature went away, and Riss went back to sleep.
She didn’t remember dreaming at all when she woke before dawn as her mental alarm went off.
Riss waited, gun ready. But there was no movement around her.
She went down the tree with her gear, washed again, had some sort of dehydrated egg, crackers, a high-protein pack flavored, for some unknown reason, with cinnamon, brushed her teeth, and went on west.
• • •
It was about midday when M’chel heard the screams. They were close, and agonized. Riss might have thought they came from no human throat, but she’d seen too much agony in her years in uniform not to know that any sound can come from a human throat, if the pain’s great enough.
A sensible woman would have gone in the opposite direction, or at least doubled her speed along her course, not needing any more grief than what she already had.
Instead, she drew her gun, and, thumb on the safety, went closer.
She smelt smoke, and seconds later was on the edge of a small clearing.
Four men, wearing coveralls and heavily armed, were gathered around a fire.
Next to the fire a strange being was tied up. He was gray, about a meter tall, and wore no more than a breechclout with suspenders.
His skull was squat, prognathous, with a beetling brow. Coarse hair hung low over what little forehead he had, and down the back of his neck.
Not far from him was the most archaic weapon Riss had ever seen. It looked like something she’d seen in a museum once that shot stone balls, fired by a low-grade explosive rammed down the barrel. Beside it was a short spear, with what looked like a stone point.
There were two sprawled bodies at the edge of the clearing, one about the size of the “man,” the other clearly a “child.” The “child’s” neck sat at an awkward angle.
One of the men had a small iron bar, which he was heating in the fire. The alien was moaning, and Riss saw three brands burnt into the ET’s leg.
The man picked up the bar using gloves, and leaned over the alien. He laughed, and the being screamed in anticipation.
The other three laughed even louder than the first.
Riss knelt, braced her blaster on her cupped hand, and shot the torturer in the back of the head. He contorted, brains spraying, and fell across the alien.
The other three spun, saw Riss.
“Playtime’s over, boys,” M’chel said cheerfully. The first grabbed for a holstered gun, and Riss shot him twice in the chest. She pulled right, and blew the third man’s face away, then put two more rounds into the last man’s stomach.
She listened to the echoes of her blaster fire die away in the jungle, then went forward.
Riss kicked the dead man off the alien, who stared up at her, eyes wide.
M’chel took her survival knife from a pouch, snapped it open, and cut the alien free.
He, if it was a he, didn’t move at first.
Riss stepped back.
He still didn’t move, as if expecting a trick.
“Come on, dummy,” she snapped. “Those assholes’ve got to have friends.”
Still nothing.
She growled, picked up the being’s weapon, handed it to him. He took it reluctantly.
Riss thought for an instant he was thinking about shooting her.
It took effort to turn her back on him, and start going through the corpses’ gear.
She ended with four shoulder-fired blasters, the same number of pistols, enough bolt magazines for a small army, sixteen grenades, and one recoil-less bunker-buster.
Riss was looking for a nice, sturdy tree to smash the weapons on, when the alien touched her arm.
She looked at him.
Using the top pair of his clawlike hands, he picked up one of the pistols, and hugged it close. Then he set it back down, and looked at her.
“Dummy me,” she said. “Sure.” She gave him the pistol, then the other handguns, and the shoulder weapons.
He made a chittering noise, imitated firing one of them at one of the men, pointed off.
“Sure,” Riss said. “Kill lots more of the bastards if you want.”
The alien came to his feet and limped to one of the bodies, that of the “woman.”
He chittered again, slowly, and Riss anthropomorphicized sorrow in his tones.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll give you a hand.”
A few moments later, Riss, carrying the “child’s” body over one shoulder, and the shoulder blasters slung over the other, followed the alien out of the clearing.
She wished she’d had a Star Risk card to pin to the bodies’ chests, but figured their friends would be angry enough when they found the corpses.
• • •
It was a longish trudge, giving Riss time enough to figure out the alien had to be one of those primitive badasses who’d driven the Glacians from their base, which now had to be taken over by Murgatroyd and company.
Aliens didn’t sit well on her tongue, especially since this was their world, so she thought a bit, and decided she’d call them “trolls.”
The name came easily, as the skies clouded over and it began raining. Riss plodded on, hoping her alien lived under a nice, warm, dry bridge like legend dictated.
• • •
The troll turned off the main path, and pushed brush aside.
Riss saw the first guard, with a nocked arrow pointed at her chest.
“Her” troll squeaked severally. The other one shook his head, but didn’t shoot.
Another guard, this one armed with a weapon as primitive as the first troll’s, came from nowhere, then two, then half a dozen.
They
were chittering away, and Riss didn’t think they were making friendly greetings.
She counted thirty, perhaps forty of the trolls, in various sizes, all dressed similarly, all armed. She couldn’t make out any signs of their sexes.
One came close, and fingered her arm. She looked down at him, and the alien spread jaws in what might have been a smile, made a pinchers with his claws, and mimed pulling off a piece of Riss’s flesh and putting it in his mouth.
And I could have kept right on trundlin’, Riss thought sourly. But I wanted an invite to Saturday night’s dinner.
As the main course.
The camp was as primitive as any she’d seen on any world, or in her anthro studies: a tree-covered clearing, with huge boulders around it. The boulders concealed small caves, and a great slab sheltered a cooking fire.
Primitive, but effective, Riss thought. The rocks’d hide any infrared, the caves’d sleep dry and fairly warm, and the trees would block visuals.
She’d seen — hell, she’d made — worse herself in the field.
Her troll indicated a rock for Riss to sit on. She set the child’s body down as reverently as she could, put the rifles on the ground.
It was as if the trolls noticed the weapons for the first time, squeaking away as if it were Crossmass or something.
Riss tried to improve her lot, indicated the weapons, then motioned to the trolls, with a smile.
There was silence.
Her troll came close, and held out his hand for her blaster.
Reluctantly, she gave it to him, thinking that if things didn’t work out, he’d be the first to die.
Two trolls came out of a cave. Both carried short staves.
They rapped them together, and there was silence.
One indicated M’chel’s troll. She decided he had to have a name, couldn’t remember what any of her childhood trolls were called.
She pointed to him, and raised an eyebrow.
As if he’d understand that meant a question.
He pointed to his chest. Riss nodded. He squeaked twice, very shrilly. That might have meant “Who me,” a name, or even, “My chest, dummy.”
She decided Two Twitters would be name enough.
He turned away from her, and began chattering away to the two with clubs, pointed at the two bodies, and there was a moaning.
He motioned walking, then reached up four times, indicating the men who’d caught him and killed his wife and child. Riss was making large assumptions about age and gender, but then, these were her trolls by right of discovery.
He went on with his story, and there were gasps at the torturing, then wide eyes when he was rescued, and Riss heard murmurs that might have been sympathy.
Two Twitters finished, picked up one of the blasters, and pointed. M’chel thought it might have been in the same direction he had before.
Murgatroyd’s base?
The two chiefs, if that was what they were, went to one side, and consulted.
The argument went on for almost an hour, and it was getting dark.
Riss, even though she knew they were debating her fate, yawned.
It had been a very long day.
Then the two of them came back, and squealed to Two Twitters. He swung his head to the side twice, then turned, and picked up her blaster.
Holding it by the grip, he came toward her.
M’chel braced. He’d be the first to die, then she’d be on the two guys with the clubs.
When they went down, she’d try running, hoping the shock would scare the trolls long enough for her to break free.
Two Twitters turned the blaster, extended it butt first to M’chel, then pointed the way they’d come in.
Riss stood up, holstered the weapon.
She bowed to the chiefs, to Two Twitters, started away.
Then she stopped, wondering what the hell was going through her head.
Marines didn’t retreat, goddamnit. Even ex-Marines. At worst, they just advanced in another direction.
Besides, these shorties knew where the goddamned raiders hung their hats. She turned back.
“Guys,” she said slowly, knowing the trolls weren’t understanding a word, “you can welcome your new advisor.
“I’m gonna show you how to get back at those pimps. Hell, I’m gonna show you how to get back for every frigging thing that humans have done to piss you off since First Contact.”
Major M’chel Riss’s smile was not particularly pleasant.
THIRTY-FOUR
“Sit down, Atherton,” the woman said, not introducing herself, and Goodnight understood what Navarro had meant when he said the five or six “real bosses” wouldn’t be hard to recognize.
The woman wore a well-tailored, conservative civilian suit, and her long, dark-blond hair was curled on the back of her head. Goodnight guessed her to be in her mid-fifties.
And she oozed self-control and power.
Goodnight wondered why she’d gone foul of some law on some world or system, instead of being what she looked like — a very high official in the Alliance.
He wondered if that was exactly what she was, working under deep cover, then discarded the notion, even though the Alliance, to his personal knowledge, had done things far more underhanded. This operation didn’t have, for one thing, the top-heavy rank and structure so beloved by the Alliance military, overt and covert.
“You’re a bester,” the woman said.
“I am.”
“We don’t see many of those,” the woman said. “The Alliance doesn’t like to lose people they’ve put as many credits into as you.”
Goodnight shrugged.
“In my case, they weren’t consulted. Things went wrong, and it was their damned fault. I don’t mind getting killed by my own stupidity, but not when it’s gonna be by the people who’re running me.”
“A nice sense of loyalty.”
“A nice sense of self-preservation,” Goodnight corrected.
The woman allowed a wintry smile, looked at a hidden screen.
“When you were first available, on Puchert, we thought you could still be with the Alliance. However, you proved us wrong. Deliberately?”
“Deliberately,” Goodnight said.
“You besters are more than just modified muscle,” the woman said. “Very good. I can tell you that we had immediate plans for you as soon as we realized you weren’t a double. After a very short testing period, we intended to put you in charge of one of our raiding teams, in the asteroid belt.
“However, circumstances here on Glace have changed somewhat.
“When the transport you were aboard was approaching this base, it was somehow spotted by ships belonging to the free-lance security team working for our enemies.
“We destroyed the ship, but evidently there was at least one survivor.”
Goodnight held up a hand.
“I’m confused. What’s this free-lance security team? And how do you know our ship wasn’t seen by whatever military Glace … the Foley System … has got?”
“Transkootenay Mining has retained a small independent company, foolishly trying to save money, but all to our benefit. And we know … you do not need to know how, but it is one hundred percent … that the tracking ship didn’t belong to Foley’s own space force.”
Goodnight filed that for later contemplation.
“Fine,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“These survivors of the crash managed to evade us, and seem to have linked up with the subhumans in the jungle, the ones we call ‘Grays.’
“We lost a four-man patrol the day after we destroyed their scout ship, and six more of our security element outside this base have been killed.
“Killed and stripped.
“The Grays have always been our enemies … humanity’s enemies … attacking our patrols and even listening posts when and where they can. But it was always smash-and-kill, no more than one man at a time, and that man or woman killed with the most primitive weaponry.
�
�These last ten were cleverly stalked and murdered with modern weapons, weapons taken from our dead.
“Somehow these survivors have managed to ally the Grays with their own designs.
“It’s intolerable to have our flanks being nipped at like this, when we are almost ready to begin a final push to drive Transkootenay Mining from the system, and our final goals realized.”
Goodnight wanted to ask, “Which are?”, but knew better. He kept his expression bright, interested.
“There are no more than half a dozen Gray settlements in our immediate area. That’s not a precise estimate, for these savages have a certain ability at hiding from our detectors.
“Be that as it may, we’re putting together a hunter-killer team, which will be led by you and an experienced jungle fighter. Twelve men, and they shall all be experienced in ground combat.
“Your task will be to first find these survivors … we suspect three or four … and kill them.”
“What about the Grays?”
“Obviously any that stand in your way are to be destroyed. We do not wish to encumber ourselves with prisoners. When we have the survivors of that scout ship, the Grays will return to being no more than an annoyance.
“That’s all. Navarro will provide you with whatever equipment you need, maps, and so forth.”
The woman stood.
Goodnight remained seated.
“Is there a problem, Atherton?”
“Well,” Goodnight said thoughtfully, “I joined without too many specifications about my job description. But this assignment sounds not just interesting, but a little on the dangerous side.
“Perhaps we should reconsider some of the terms of my contract?”
The woman started to look angry, then smiled her cold smile once more.
“That can be arranged. And, if I had any doubts of your legitimacy as a mercenary, there are none at all now.”
• • •
The experienced jungle fighter called himself Siegfried. No last … or maybe first … name. But he appeared to know what he was talking about.
The other ten were a little less impressive. They were service experienced, but few of them had much in the way of combat, other than chasing dissidents in the hills on one-day patrols.
