by Tanya Huff
The grin broadened. “Yeah. That’s what I meant. You like him.”
Torin rolled her eyes. “I have an idea. Instead of making crude innuendoes…”
“You have a dirty mind, Staff.”
“…find us some stretcher bearers and four grunts to hump those emmies.” Continuing toward the sleepers, she added, “I don’t want to hear any complaints about who’s had to carry what the whole way.”
* * *
“Lieutenant, while my people are not in the habit of violence, we are more capable of defending ourselves than the wounded. If you hold the march to our speed, you delay getting them to safety. Four Marines, one Marine for each of us, will certainly be sufficient protection.”
“I appreciate your offer, Ambassador, but it’s just too dangerous.”
The Dornagain ambassador stroked the back of one hand over his whiskers. “Come now, Lieutenant, it’s only three kilometers to the buildings. Even we can cover that much ground in the time it will take our young Silsviss friends to travel over twice that, pause to examine the VTA, and then come after us.”
Jarret frowned. “What do you think, Staff?”
“The ambassador makes a good point, sir. It is only three kilometers.”
“True. But I don’t like dividing our march.”
“We will fall behind regardless, Lieutenant. Would it not be best to work with the inevitable?” The ambassador smiled down at the Marines, showing an impressive double ridge of teeth. “There is no need for everyone else to be made uncomfortable by the pace we set and no need for my people to be made guilty realizing that.”
The lieutenant still looked unconvinced, and they were running out of time to convince him. From where Torin stood, the Dornagain were realists. She appreciated that in a species.
Dr. Leor, who’d been listening to the discussion, arms crossed and feathers flat, suddenly stepped forward. “This one would like the wounded under cover as soon as possible,” he announced, “so that this one will be able to perform therapies impossible to attempt while on the move.”
All eyes turned to the stretchers and quickly slid away again.
“All right.” One hand raised, palm out, the lieutenant surrendered. “The Dornagain can set their own pace, but I’m sending Marines back to deepen your escort as soon they’ve dropped packs.”
“I find that an acceptable compromise.”
The doctor fixed the lieutenant with a gleaming black stare. “Then if the decision has been made, this one wonders why there is no forward movement.”
“A good question, Doctor. Staff, assign a fireteam to the Dornagain and let’s get this…”
Torin thought of several less than diplomatic descriptions.
“…show on the road.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
With the stretcher bearers setting the pace, the column pulled rapidly away from the Dornagain and their escort. The ground was dry and firm and the vegetation short enough to make walking easy—especially compared to the mess they’d spent the morning in.
Walking near the front of the column, Jarret leaned down and plucked a stalk of Silsvah grass. “There’s a lot of silicate in this,” he said, nibbing it between thumb and forefinger.
Given the way it crunched, Torin acknowledged that seemed like a reasonable observation.
“But that doesn’t explain why it’s so short.”
“Grazing, sir.”
“Grazing?” he repeated, flicking the pulp away.
“Yes, sir. Pasture fields all over look pretty much like this. It’s a dead giveaway when the only plants over a certain height are woody and too tough to chew.”
“Too tough for what to chew, Staff?” His mouth opened to check the scent on a breeze and closed again significantly faster. “What the sanLit is that?”
Torin grinned as her less efficient sense of smell picked up the only possible odor bad enough to make a di’Taykan who’d just crawled through a swamp blaspheme. “I suspect your second question is about to answer your first.”
As di’Taykan profanity moved down the line, she scanned the area upwind and finally pointed. “There. Under the cloud of insects.”
Jarret’s eyes darkened, but he shook his head. “I don’t see…”
“It’s a pile of shit, sir. If I can have a closer look, I’ll be able to tell for certain if it’s out of our grazer.”
“How can you tell that from shit?”
“Herbivores are fairly distinctive. And if there’s something walking around here big enough to drop that, I’d like to find out what I can about it.”
“What about Cri Sawyes?”
They could hear the Silsviss behind them, arguing points of the Confederation treaty with the Charge d’Affaires.
“He’s not from around here, sir. And he’s a city boy, besides.”
“Fine. Go.” He waved her on, looking so appalled that she couldn’t stop herself from snickering as she double-timed over to the pile, pack bouncing against the small of her back. As expected, the insects ignored her. Across the planet, Silsvah insects had ignored every species in the party except the Mictok. The non-Mictok carefully refused to speculate on a reason.
Almost two meters in diameter, the pile was half that high and had definitely come out of the back end of a single herbivore. In spite of the heat it had barely crusted, leaving Torin to believe said herbivore either hadn’t gone far or had moved one hell of a lot faster than the cows back home.
Returning to the column, she filled in the lieutenant, adding, “It’s heading off due west, about forty-five degrees to our line of march. I think we can safely ignore it for now.”
“Well, I’m convinced; staff sergeants do know everything.”
“You should never have doubted it, sir.”
They walked in silence for a few moments.
“Staff…”
“I grew up on a farm, and farming and shit are pretty much synonymous.”
“A farm?”
She nodded. His voice and expression suggested he’d never even seen a farm. Hardly surprising given his family’s rank.
“So why did you leave?”
Torin grinned. “I just told you, sir.”
It took him a moment to make the connection. He smiled when he did but refused to drop the subject. “All right, then, why did you join the Marines?”
Their shared past granted him an honest response. Torin wasn’t sure why; it had, after all, lasted only one night and was never to be referred to again, but somehow it kept her from throwing out any number of the slick answers she kept ready. “I had a fight with my father, about crop rotations if you can believe it. I was sick of the farm, but it defined his whole life. Next thing I knew, I was standing in a recruiting office having a blood test, and twenty-four hours after that I shipped out. Crop rotations.” She sighed. “A truly stupid reason to kill and be killed for.”
“Then why do you stay? Why make it a career?”
Again, that shared past kept her from a glib response. And if it didn’t entitle him to the part of the truth that involved love and honor, duty and sacrifice, it at least ensured that the truth be present. Because it sounded like he really wanted to know, she thought about it a moment. “Well, sir, it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”
When he nodded, she knew he’d understood the emphasis. Unfortunately, understanding didn’t stop the questions. “But why you?”
“Why me?” She considered saying, Why not me? and being done with it but found herself saying instead, “I’m good at it. In fact, I’m better at it than most. Parts of it I enjoy. All of it, I feel fulfilled by.” This was getting perilously close to the line a single night’s sex didn’t get to cross. “There’s a whole lot of people in this universe who wish they could say the same.”
“And no one’s shooting at them.”
“Maybe that’s their problem, sir,” Torin said dryly.
“My whole family was career military,” he told her after
a dozen paces when it became clear she wasn’t going to ask. “Every single di’Ka since contact has served the Confederation, and we served at home before that. It was a di’Ka who kept the military from shooting down the First Contact ship and the first di’Taykans to swear into both the Confederation Marine Corps and Navy were di’Ka. One of my progenitors even remained on the Admiralty staff in an advisory role after she shifted to qui’.”
“So you’re a professional soldier, sir.”
“I suppose.” He kicked at a purple bloom, beheading the flower and infuriating a large, yellow bug, who spat or possibly excreted something on his boot, and flew off. “All I know is that every time I give an order I can feel them all lined up behind me passing judgment.”
“I wouldn’t worry about them, sir.”
Squinting slightly in the sunlight, the shadow of his hair not quite deep enough to block the glare, he snorted. “You don’t have to worry about them. They’re not your family.”
“Very true, sir,” she admitted so seriously he jerked around to face her. “But I don’t think you should worry about them either.”
“And why not, Staff?”
She smiled broadly at him. “Because they’re not here.”
Two paces later, he returned the smile. “And you are?”
“I certainly seem to be, sir.”
* * *
“Why us? That’s what I fukking want to know.”
“Why not us?” Hollice shrugged. “Ours is not to question why.”
Juan turned to stare at him, lip curled. “Why the fuk not?” He turned a little farther, just far enough to watch the Dornagain lumbering slowly toward them, and sighed. “How’s this for an idea—you bet your next pay packet that I can run around them three times before they make it to this spot.”
“How’s this for a better idea—you stay here and I’ll move on to the next corner.”
“Fukking corporals,” Juan muttered as Hollice moved away. He shoved his helmet to the back of his head and scratched at the damp line of exposed hair. “Rest of the platoon’s probably nearly to the buildings by now.” Squinting along the line of crushed vegetation they were following, he raised his voice as he added. “Probably sitting in the fukking shade.”
Although he heard, Hollice didn’t bother responding to the heavy gunner’s observation. He didn’t see the point; it wouldn’t get them moving any faster and it would only encourage more complaints. Given the difficulty of maintaining the same pace as the Dornagain, he kept his team rotating around the four corners of the march. After twenty paces, number one corner moved up to number two, two moved to three, three to four, four to one, and twenty paces later they did it all again. It not only gave them a chance to stretch their legs, but it helped stop terminal boredom from setting in.
“Binti.”
She covered a yawn with the back of her fist as he fell into step beside her. “Is it that time again?”
“It is.”
“You know Ressk’s got his boots off.”
Hollice flipped down his helmet scanner and glanced back at the Krai’s position. “Can’t hurt.”
Binti snorted, turned around, and began walking backward. “The Dornagain aren’t talking much today.”
They both glanced over at their four charges, sunlit highlights rippling from shoulder to haunch as the huge bodies moved slowly forward.
“Maybe they’re saving their breath to maintain this speed.”
White teeth flashed in a sarcastic smile. “Oh, yeah, baby, this is speed.”
* * *
“Staff Sergeant Kerr, we were wondering if we might ask you a question.”
Torin thanked the training that had kept her from shrieking at the sudden, totally silent appearance of the Mictok and turned a polite smile toward the closest eyestalk. “Of course, Ambassador.”
“We were wondering about the stretchers.”
“The stretchers?”
“Yes. We cannot help but notice that they seem to be nothing more than a pair of lightweight poles with a piece of fabric stretched between.”
“Essentially, ma’am, although there are legs snapped down against the underside of the poles and a certain amount of monitoring equipment built into both poles and fabric.” More familiar than she wanted to be with the Corps stretchers, she glanced over at the four carried in the center of the column. Although she hadn’t done it deliberately—or at least, consciously—she’d been flanking Haysole for most of the march. They had his environmental controls up as high as possible, but he still looked hot and uncomfortable. Shadows encircled his closed eyes, and his lips were so dark they were almost purple. If the ends of his hair hadn’t been moving slowly, Torin would have feared the worst.
“We were wondering why.”
A little confused, Torin brought her attention back to the ambassador. “Why what, ma’am.”
“Why use such simple equipment? Hospitals throughout the Confederation use stretchers that operate by pushing against the planetary gravity. Granted, the Ghazix Generators making that possible would have to be calibrated for each planet you land on, but we’re certain you would find them much more efficient than this.” One foreleg gestured disdainfully toward the equipment under discussion. Had Mictok the features for it, Torin was certain the ambassador would have been frowning. “A modern stretcher would put none of your people at risk. Once up and running, it could be tethered, leaving all hands free.”
“Unfortunately, ma’am, unless they’re very large—VTA large—Ghazix Generators can be easily knocked out with a simple electromagnetic pulse, leaving us with an extremely heavy and completely useless piece of scrap.”
“The Others would attack the wounded?” Her mandibles snapped together so hard heads up and down the line turned at the sound.
Torin decided not to get into that. Had the elder races been able to understand war, they wouldn’t have needed the Humans, the di’Taykan, and the Krai. And now the Silsviss. “They disable our equipment, ma’am. Just like we disable theirs. The more damage we can do from a distance, the less risk when we get up close and personal.”
“So our forces also attack the wounded?”
Not for the first time, Torin realized she probably had more in common with the people she was fighting than the people she was fighting for. Dissembling seemed the order of the day. “The Others use something similar to a Ghazix Generator, ma’am, similar enough that they know how to disable one. We know they know that, so we use stretchers they can’t affect because Marines don’t leave Marines behind. We use primitive projectile weapons that have to be physically smashed to stop working for the same reason. So do they. Our helmets may contain complicated communication and surveillance equipment, but they’re still fully functional as helmets should either or both be knocked out.”
“We noticed that you did not answer our question, Staff Sergeant Kerr.” She raised a foreleg to prevent an answer. “But we suspect we would be happier not knowing. We are diplomats and we spend much time dealing with the results of the war, but we have never spent so much time speaking to one actually within it.” She paused. “Usually, we speak with officers.”
“Lieutenant Jarret…”
“Is not near the rank we usually associate with.”
Under those circumstances, Torin granted her the point.
“We must consider this conversation, but we would like to speak with you again, Staff Sergeant Kerr.”
As the Mictok ambassador scuttled back to her companions, Mike moved up into the place she’d vacated, muttering, “Get it off me.” And then a little louder. “What were you two talking about?”
Torin snorted. “Reality.”
“Yours or hers?”
“Bit of both. Looks like we’ve arrived safely.”
He squinted alone the line of her finger and shook his head. “I can barely see a roof. We’ve still got lots of time to be descended on and slaughtered.”
“If you know something I don’t, now would be the
time to tell me.”
“I don’t like this shoot us down and ignore us crap. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
* * *
“Did you hear something?”
“No, sir.”
The Dornagain’s ears swiveled, moving in progressively smaller arcs and, after a moment, he pointed almost due north. “That way. I suggest you use your scanner, Corporal.”
Hollice screwed the cap on his water bottle, sighed, and crammed his helmet back on. Intellectually, he knew that the environmental controls would keep his head a lot cooler than any breeze, but emotionally, if he was wearing a hat, he felt hot. Flicking down the scanner, he swung around toward the north and froze. “Shit on a stick.”
“May I assume from your colloquial expression that there is something there?”
“Something?” He thumbed the controls, trying to bring in a more precise reading. “I bloody well wish it was just something! Unfriendlies! Thirty of them!”
“How far?” Ressk demanded, as the unwelcome information prodded the Marines up onto their feet.
“Between one and one and a half kilometers. Make that point eight and one point three of a kilometer.”
Shoving one of the exoskeleton’s pins in deeper, Juan muttered, “Fuk, they’re fast.”
“And we aren’t.” Raising his scanner, Hollice swept a practiced gaze over their surroundings. “There! Those rocks!” The planet’s bones jutted up dark purple to pink, out of the green, offering the only protection in the immediate area. Swinging his pack up on his back, he turned to the Dornagain ambassador. “Sir, can your people run?”
“For short distances only.”
“To those rocks?”
“I am not certain…”
“Well, I’m certain we can’t protect you against thirty unfriendlies on open ground.”
“You make a convincing argument, Corporal. We will run.”
To the Marine’s surprise, he flung himself forward, body stretching in the air, long, muscular arms extending, knuckles hitting the ground, claws curled under. Then, with a shimmer of golden fur, his body seemed to fold in on itself until his feet dug in just behind his knuckles and he leaped forward again, heavy pack swinging and banging but somehow staying on.
