The white/purple beam speared out and struck the lizard on its hindquarters, right where I had aimed, just as it tried to leap, but its rear legs failed to act as the electrical signal the lizard’s brain had sent was short circuited by the terrible force of my de-atomizer. The purple wave washed up the beast’s body, erasing it but for a fine debris as it went. The lizard had time only to snap its head around and stare in horror as the energy rushed up its body, as I had planned and hoped it would recognize its onrushing death, then the light from its death illuminated another reptile behind it which had decided to eat its meal right there, as if we were of no consequence at all. The Alartaw under its dripping maw was still alive and struggling and as I now swung my left weapon over, switching from right weapon to left as I changed targets, the crewman got a feeble arm in the way of the reptile’s mouth and there was a hideous crunch as it clamped on the arm. Then I fired.
I tracked around the camp in the feeble light cast by my vaporizing victim, and the light of others doing the same, but we were suddenly alone again, except for the squirming, severed lizards which had been caught by laser or blaster fire. Agonized moans and still screaming crewmen accentuated the darkness as it fell in upon us again, testifying to the ferocious ability of the predatory reptiles.
“We need light,” Meerla said behind me, allaying the worry for her safety I had not had time to think (but of course she was fine, in the end she’ll be the last one standing), “and in case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t going well.” I turned to look at her. She had her back to mine, de-atomizers in her hands, and a determined look to her stance that I recognized as a prelude to violence. We had fought our way out of many scrapes together, standing back to back, more times than I could count and there was no one I trusted more than I trusted her. It gave me a warm feeling of camaraderie to see her there, to know she felt similarly of me, that she would slaughter her own mother if that was what it would take to preserve her life, only warmed me further. Who better to have at your back?
“O.K.” I admitted. “Granted. We’re doing poorly. What do we do about it?” At this point I was willing to try anything. For once she didn’t have to make a point of having made a point.
“We need to plan for an extended stay.” Meerla said. “All we did today was march into fresh lizard territory. We need a base of operations where we know we’ll be safe, then we can work on everything else.”
“We must have killed most of the local herd.” Houdar said.
“So stay right here, this close to Vengeance?” I asked, astonished.
“No . . . “ Meerla said, but she was cut off by a thrumming sound that seemed to be coming from the direction of Vengeance. I looked over my shoulder into Meerla’s eyes looking over her shoulder into mine. The expression on her face was more snarl than anything else. She didn’t look happy. I couldn’t have been wearing much of a better look myself; we both knew what it meant.
“It’s mechanical.” Houdar said, looking off in the direction from which the sound was coming. It seemed to be advancing rapidly. “Not of Alartaw manufacture.”
“We hadn’t guessed that.” I snarled, but was sorry I had snapped at him. A mechanical noise meant locals. Without locals to steal, connive or take power from, we were screwed, and we knew it, but my nerves were already frayed to their limits. I would much rather have been able to announce our presence on terms of my choosing, like a surprise attack on their space port.
“Prepare to skirmish.” Naagrotod ordered without my permission, but lights had become visible over the tops of distant trees and were advancing rapidly. In multiples.
“Air displacement transport.” Houdar said instructively, obviously not chastised by my sarcasm. “Very primitive, but they could be dangerous.”
“Helicopters.” I told Meerla quietly in Galacta. Humans still used them and we weren’t exactly what I would call primitive.
Those who could prepared to meet the air displacement transports. We had no idea if they would be armed or if it were possibly only a scientific emissary of a peaceful race, but any race that had evolved, or had even only simply colonized, this world, would have had to have had weapons and the temperament to use them.
I put away my de-atomizers and picked up my blast rifle where I had set it on the ground before taking my short, eventful nap. I clicked over the power switch and it whined to life as it charged a round, about two seconds to readiness. The lights above the trees were rushing towards us quickly, now having spread out, a battle formation if ever I had seen one.
“Orders?” Naagrotod asked, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife.
“Take ‘em out.” I said tersely. If they came shooting we might never get the opportunity to retaliate, and I wasn’t quite ready to quit living, I had some questions I wanted the Kievors to answer before all was said and done, answers I would cut right out of their black, treacherous hearts if that was what it took, or hacked out of their hard drives after I had sent every one of them to bloody graves. It didn’t matter which to me, but I had to survive the here and now to get to then. I put my blast rifle to my shoulder and took aim. I didn’t have long to wait.
They came fast and they definitely came shooting. I guess they figured they could dig the data they wanted out of Vengeance’s hard drives just as easily over our dead bodies as live. They let loose a whole flurry of missiles before they actually came into view, flying low over the tree tops so they were hidden until the last moment, and while the missiles thundered on down at us, a whole flight of them, the alien gunships opened up on us with their projectile cannons.
The alien choppers were aerodynamically shaped, round nosed, with swept back wings carrying racks of yet unused ordinance. Twin cannons under the birds fired explosive rounds. The birds looked convertible, they had large jet pods on either side of their swept back tails, possibly even able to attain low orbit, but those were the impressions I received in just the flash of time it took for the white-yellow ball of flame to leap away from my weapon, race across the intervening distance, and smash through the target I had chosen. Every attacking gunship took numerous strikes, there were maybe a dozen of them, but I didn’t get a chance to count.
The ship I killed exploded backwards, coming to an instantaneous halt in mid-air as if it had hit a brick wall (in a sense it had), and then, as if unsure what it was supposed to do, slowly tumbled out of the air, a ball of burning wreckage that smashed down into the jungle below it.
What happened next happened simultaneously and was even more of a blur than the events already described. The missiles, those that remained because a few had died in our fusillade, went crazy, spinning insanely out of control, twisting around in every possible direction, hands grabbed me and then the world exploded around me. I don’t know if it was the rock my head hit when I was thrown to the ground, or if it was the explosion itself, or the combination of the two, but stars erupted in my head, nausea washed throughout my body, and that was the last I remembered.
CHAPTER 17
My first thought, as I was reborn into reality, again, was to wonder if all the damage I was doing to my body was going to produce some lasting disability, like certain types of mental illness which were exacerbated by rejuvenation.
My second thought was about how much pain I was in. It was a whole lot! Nor was it localized, it seemed to be coming from every part of my body. Stiffly, painfully, I opened my eyes and sat up.
At some point the star had risen and the light stabbed into my eyes and made my head throb violently. My skin felt sunburned and scorched. From the blast. My hand went to my head and found another large, sticky lump. I was losing skin faster than I was growing it back!
“About time you woke up.” Meerla said from somewhere behind me, somehow sounding cheerful, but I didn’t immediately turn my head to look at her, partially because I simply wasn’t sure I was capable of the action and partially because I was examining the carnage that lay spread out before me. It was devastating.
; “What happened?” I asked, but then it all came back to me; the missiles going out of control, spinning off to the sides, twisting away into the night, some diving straight into the ground short of us, but some had come down close.
“Guided missiles.” Houdar explained. I turned to look at him. He was raw meat on the right side of his head and arm. If he survived he would have proud scarring to showcase. He went on; “They went haywire when we killed their guidance systems. Only thing that saved us.”
It hadn’t saved all of us. Body parts were strewn about haphazardly. Everybody still alive was soaked in blood. Their own, their comrades and lizard. I climbed painfully to my feet and made account of the living among us. Twenty-two, and of those half looked to be seriously wounded. Meerla, unaccountably, was completely uninjured. Should I have expected otherwise!
“Sorry about your head.” She said, walking up to me. When she reached me she gently turned my chin with her fingers so she could see my newest wound better.
“That was you?” I asked. Of course it was! Now I clearly remembered her grabbing and throwing me to the ground, then only pain, stars, nausea and unconsciousness. I looked down and saw the bloody rock I had tried to crack open with my head; I’d failed! “With friends like you who needs enemies.”
Meerla gave me an ugly look and pointed in front of me. Naagrotod lay shredded in a heap where the blast from a missile had thrown him, and I now remembered that he been standing off in front of me when I’d been thrown to the ground. How had Meerla been able to judge where the missile was going to strike and act so confidently and proficiently? I didn’t know how she did many of the things she did, nor did I really care at that moment. I had come to rely on Naagrotod and was genuinely sorry to see that he was one of the dead. Yet, better him than me. I gave Meerla a feeble smile which she acknowledged reluctantly with a scowl.
“We lost ninety-five percent of our force in one day.” I told the remaining members of my crew as they came to stand around me, their yes flickering from me as I spoke, to the surrounding tree lines and air above it, expectantly. “We can expect a renewed attack soon. We surprised them this time, they won’t be surprised again, they’ll come full bore, and we can’t afford the damage.”
“Just what other options do we have?” Asked a Trooper I did not know. I glared at him and he looked away.
“Our only option is to struggle on until we are all dead.” I said savagely. “That is our only option.”
Guermata appeared to be going to survive, as well, I was pleased to note. His survival gave the plan I had just designed the slimmest chance of success, because now we knew we could eat.
“We take to the jungle.” I told the Trooper I had just verbally bashed. “We cut no paths, leave no trails, build no fires, and we disappear.”
“I think you’ve forgotten the lizards.” Houdar said reflectively. He was standing square shouldered now, his head held high, confidence and self-possession now a growing part of him, the death and destruction and his ability to deal with it strengthening him rather than weakening him. In fact, all of us that remained appeared ready and willing and angry. I was pleased.
“I hardly think I’ve forgotten them.” I told Houdar. There were shattered lizard bodies strewn all about our encampment. I could hardly have forgotten them. “Maybe we should just give up? Surrender to the locals?” I added sarcastically.
No Alartaw present found that amusing, judging by their expressions. In any case, the locals weren’t interested in capturing us alive. It was possible we weren’t the first aliens the locals had met and maybe, just maybe, their first experience hadn’t been a good one and now they were grumpy. There was nothing like having a grumpy local population and a jungle full of hungry, carnivorous, monster reptiles, to sour an Alartaw.
“We’ll sleep in the trees.” Meerla said, reading my mind. “We’ll be safer there than anywhere else. It’s worth a try.”
The remaining crew turned startled eyes to the surrounding jungle (maybe the Alartaw hadn’t evolved in the trees as man had) and all saw what I had seen. The exposed branches of the jungle around us (stripped of foliage in the fighting) showed that these trees possessed branches plenty sturdy enough to hold us, and besides not looking all that comfortable, did look exactly like what we needed.
“No one could have known it was going to be this bad.” I said simply, in case Meerla was chastising herself for failing to think of it earlier.
“It’s definitely a rough place.” She replied.
“We’re Alartaw.” Guermata said.
“I don’t think either of the two local populations was aware of that fact.” I said.
“They are now.” Guermata said. He had a point.
“Gather as many weapons and battery packs as you can carry.” I said, slinging my own blast rifle over my shoulder and then picking up Naagrotod’s from where he had dropped it. He wouldn’t need it anymore. I gathered up as many belted weapons as would fit around my waist. There were many more weapons than we would be able to carry, but we would have to leave them if we wanted the natives to think they had gotten all of us. The dead didn’t carry off their weapons.
I picked a smaller lizard (I figured the meat would be better in a younger animal) and began carving chunks from its meatiest sections. The keen blade of my knife sliced into the meat cleanly and effortlessly. Within moments I had butchered enough so that everyone had a large chunk in hand, and re-sheathing my knife, I sank teeth designed for tearing into my own piece. The meat was strong and salty and immediately infused me with a heady energy.
Why had man given up eating their meat raw? Maybe the intense pleasure was a reflection of how hungry I had been, but I didn’t think so. Raw meat is plainly and simply delicious. I ripped free another mouthful and chewed in ecstasy, not minding the blood that ran down my chin, adding itself to my already soaked clothing.
I pulled out a de-atomizer and vaporized the lizard I had butchered. The dead didn’t eat nor carry meat with them. I hoped it would appear as if our two forces had killed one another in the battle. We needed to appear dead if we wanted any chance at survival at all. We had to.
“Let’s go.” I ordered resignedly, and led out once again ‘East’, leaving our dead unburied, desecrated, food for the scavengers.
Meerla fell in behind me and together, the two most important members of the entire Alartaw Empire, we led our little party into the undergrowth and on to an unknown future.
We became one with our surroundings, moving ever so carefully, so as not to break even a single leaf's stem and thus leave evidence of our passing. We walked where we wouldn’t leave footprints and did all we could to leave no trail.
“They may have tracking animals.” Meerla suggested, but there was nothing I could do about it if they did.
“They may be able to follow our scent themselves, as far as that goes.” Houdar added. I hoped he wasn’t going to push his luck too far with Meerla and have her crush the little spirit he had built up.
Time passed as we moved quietly through the jungle. Now a part of the jungle and not the interlopers we had been yesterday, we began to move faster, beginning to become sure of ourselves. Sweat ran from my body, into my wounds and over my seared flesh, stinging like all the fires of Hell, but it also felt good. I began to believe we could survive, and when we began to see some of the native animals, sneaking up on them in our silent progress, I knew we could.
After we had traveled about ten clicks, and it was late afternoon, I halted our little column for a break. We’d lost three during the day who couldn’t keep up, their injuries too severe. They’d catch up or they wouldn’t
Houdar was in excruciating pain but all he’d lost was skin. Others were in worse condition and still struggling along. Broken bones, deep punctures and shrapnel wounds were common, and that in a group now numbering only nineteen.
“You’ll have scarring to compete with old Krazdop.” I told Houdar cheerfully when we were halted. He acted unamused but I knew
differently. It would be a mark of courage he would carry proudly for the rest of his days, no matter how many those turned out to be.
“I wonder if any but those here will ever get to see them.” He wondered aloud.
“Well I’m impressed.” Meerla said coyly, chuckling, embarrassing him.
Houdar stood up as straight as he could and puffed out his chest. It took all my will power not to laugh and deflate his ego, he had come far as I considered it, I didn’t want him to regress. Chances were good we would all be dead in short order (despite my optimism) so at least he would die with some pride. It was the least I could offer him, or any of the others. To die with pride, the way we had lived.
I opened my mouth to make some comment, but whatever I was going to say went unsaid and forgotten as a sonic boom crashed over us like a wall of sound. Already damaged ear drums hummed in the aftermath as we all looked up, trying to see what type of craft it was that was ripping through the atmosphere so quickly above us, but we could barely see the stars light through the green canopy, much less catch a view of such a fast moving vehicle.
The sonic booms moved away, marching across the ground in what I was sure was a path leading directly towards last night’s camp or Vengeance, then the ground shook beneath us, like we weren’t standing on solid rock and soil or planet altogether, like a massive earthquake.
“Hit the deck!” I screamed, and this time I grabbed Meerla and threw her down, but making sure her head didn’t hit anything, and I dove to the ground on top of her. Diving bodies flickered through my peripheral vision as my crew hit the dirt around me. Amusement crossed her face as I covered her body with my own, a point won for me.
Chronicles of a Space Mercenary Page 29
