“I think I'll almost miss the place,” Lissy whispered as she climbed down from the tree behind Bain.
“Yeah, me too.” He grinned wider. “When we're in a worse place."
“Horrid thought.” She saluted and headed off down the trail. Her assigned teammates followed after her as they climbed down the tree.
Bain's people gathered behind him. Trinia led the third team, and she came across the bridge last. Bain did a quick visual check to see all his people were accounted for, then headed down the trail in the opposite direction. Trinia squatted at the base of the tree and her people with her. No one said a word from this point out. Silence was the key to survival.
The darkness thickened once Bain led his team into the forest. He thought he couldn't see more than a meter in front of his own nose. He consciously stopped straining to see, and soon he could discern different levels of darkness and shadow. His team moved slowly, silently behind him. Bain sensed them, rather than heard. He trusted to their training to stay with him, otherwise he would have turned around every few steps to make sure they were there. He grinned, silently scolding himself for the paradox that they were so well trained, he couldn't tell they were there, and yet that made him as nervous as when they couldn't take two steps without sounding like junk scows crashing into space dock.
Ten minutes of hiking took them to the little ‘cup’ in the forest floor where they had established the false camp three days ago. Bain commended his enemy's caution for waiting so long to attack. His opposing commander had spent three days spying and investigating. That meant Bain's people were very good at setting up false clues to make the spies believe there was a camp there.
The false camp was little more than a barrier of bushes and fallen trees placed around a series of deep crevices in a rock formation in the middle of the forest. It rose up above the forest floor because the mineral was so much harder than the rest of the rock around it, which had worn away over the centuries. Bain's people had placed the bushes and tree limbs around the lump of rock and rubble to look like a protective screen around a camp. The plan was to lure the enemy inside, where they would be trapped in the crevices.
At that moment, it looked like the plan might actually be working.
All in all, despite the problems and discomfort and aggravation, this conflict had been a good learning experience. Bain just hoped his people would get out of it in one piece. It hadn't taken long to learn that was the most important thing. Winning didn't mean anything if people died or were irreparably injured.
The plan for this ambush included a maneuver Bain wouldn't have minded in free-fall, but on this planet, with a five percent increase over normal gravity, it bothered him. Twenty meters back from the clearing around the rock formation, Bain's team took to the trees. Following markers placed by the advance team—white strips of cloth soaked in the juice of a phosphorescent plant, which couldn't be seen from the ground—the Scouts followed the natural pathway among the branches, from one tree to another. Even halfway up the forest giants, the smallest of which was over one hundred meters, the tree limbs were wide enough to walk on without the soldiers’ weight shaking the branches. They surrounded the trap of the false camp and kept out of the way of the enemy moving in to attack it.
Bain saw the first enemy warriors just moments after the Scouts behind him diverged to spread out around the trap. He paused to watch the progress of the other ‘arm’ of the attack, and caught a flicker of movement almost directly below his feet. Then he caught a whiff of smoke. Holding up his hand to signal an all-stop, Bain went to his knees on the branch that was wider than his shoulders and leaned precariously over the edge.
An enemy soldier struggled to his feet. A few flickers of red showed the dying fire at the base of the tree where he had made temporary camp and attempted to cook dinner. A few pitiful shreds of meat on a pointed stick gave evidence to his hunting skills. Bain smiled when he saw that. A hungry enemy was a distracted enemy, preoccupied with his stomach and not his safety.
From around a bend in the trail came two more soldiers, and the enemy commander.
“Are you crazy?” the leader hissed at the lone soldier. “All we need is one shift in the wind and they know we're here.” His pale crown of hair gleamed in the twilight beneath the trees, shifting from side to side as he stared into the eyes of the offending soldier.
Silence from all three soldiers. Bain tried to decide if it was resentment or fear, or if they agreed totally with their leader's anger. If he knew, he could predict their reactions when his people attacked. He preferred a divided enemy force.
“That's the last of our supplies,” the shorter soldier said. The voice was so rough, Bain couldn't tell if the speaker was male or female. From this distance above them, he couldn't make out any distinguishing features.
“We'll get hot food and real beds as soon as we wipe out that camp. For the life of me, I can't figure out why he'd give in and let his people camp...” The enemy commander's voice trailed off.
Bain felt a core of ice settle into his stomach. The ‘he’ being discussed was himself. What if, at the last moment, his opposite decided it really was a trap?
“We're all tired,” another soldier offered. “When people get tired, they make mistakes."
“Not him.” That pale head of hair shook again. “He probably figures I won't believe he's made camp, and I'll stay away."
Bain held onto the branch a little harder and glanced up at his followers. A few people grinned at him. Others looked slightly dizzy as they tried to follow the reasoning. He felt a little dizzy himself, trying to decide how this would all end.
“The only way to be sure is to go in,” someone else offered.
“Exactly.” Their leader kicked at the stick of skewered meat, knocking it into the dying bits of fire. A few sparks shot up into the air, dying in seconds. “Let's go. Spread the word—we're moving out.” He chuckled as he moved back down the path, heading for the hidden camp. “Moving in."
Bain nodded to his people and stood. He gestured off to the right and left through the trees. The line behind him continued to divide, spreading to the right and left to cover the territory on either side.
Ten minutes later, a night bird called. Bain nearly choked with his mouth full of water and the valve of the canteen still at his lips. He swallowed, twisted the valve shut and let the canteen fall to hang from his waist again.
That was an awful night bird cry; off by two steps on the scale. The warbles were too short and fast and there was no answering call from the bird's mate. There was always an answering call with real birds, because mateless birds didn't call after dark had fallen. Anyone who took the time to really study the animals in this forest would have known that. Bain almost felt sorry for the enemy commander with such a bad mimic working for him.
Almost.
He nodded to his team and headed toward the main trunk of the tree, to start climbing down.
From their resting place, Bain and his team could see the outlying edges of their false camp. More importantly, they could see the enemy soldiers creeping up on the strategically placed bushes and deadfall. After so many days out in the open, learning to hide every footprint and muffle every sound, it had been a conscious effort to make mistakes in setting up this camp and deliberately leave signs of Human habitation. Not much; just a few footprints in the dust, a few raw edges where bushes had been chopped instead of pulled up by the roots, a few strategically placed threads from a torn sleeve. Other than that, there was no indication anyone was hiding within the natural-seeming barricade of tumbled rocks and overgrown bushes. If he could have, Bain would have delegated someone to keep a smudge fire going; not enough for light, but for the smell of smoke to give the stamp of authenticity to the camp. The risk to the person tending the fire was more than Bain could afford, and he also feared that added touch might be too much. A cold camp had all the signs of desperation.
Below, the enemy soldiers moved in. Bain smiled, just enough to
feel the movement of muscles under his sunburned skin. It was all happening as he had envisioned it nearly a week ago. The enemy soldiers moved toward the entrances his people had spent nearly two days fashioning in the darkness. Not the obvious entrances—Bain knew his enemy was too smart to go through those—but the ones that were nearly hidden, given away by a footprint or a single thread artistically draped across a branch. Those entrances led through tunnels in the brush, dark, muffling all sound, until they opened into deep crevices in the rock. While he had formulated the plan for the trap and helped his team put it together, Bain had entertained thoughts that this spot had been specifically fashioned just for him to find and use as a trap. Each time that thought came, he had laughed aloud at his own vanity.
Bain counted nine enemy bodies that went into the hidden entrance only a few meters away.
A chorus of nightclickers filtered across the clearing in the forest. Sopranos chirped three times, then altos three times, then sopranos three times again.
“All,” he muttered. Bain glanced over his shoulder to the Scout behind him. The young woman grinned and nodded.
Their enemy was vain and overly confident, then, splitting up his forces for the attack and leaving no one outside to guard his back. Bain had made sure his people kept track of how many enemy soldiers they had eliminated in the last two weeks, and there should have been eighteen against his own twenty-one remaining.
He had no time to wonder if there had been some mistakes. Any second now, the enemy would discover the trap.
“Go,” he said, daring to raise his voice to normal volume.
From the trees ringing the clearing, Scouts swung down silently on ropes and ran for the entrance to block it.
The Scout behind him tilted back her head and let out a moonhowler's call, rising up to almost sonic levels before warbling back down to a near-growl. Before she joined the Scouts, she had been a street performer and had made quite a comfortable living with her deft impersonations and mimicry.
From the other side of the clearing, an answering howl rose to the four moons in the sky. Bain envisioned the same descent, and the remaining Scouts blocking the other entrance. He grabbed his own rope and slid down to the ground. There was no attempt now to move silently. He ran, stretching his legs and thundering across the clearing, up the fallen tree limb to the top of the wall of brush that hid the natural maze of crevices. Balancing on the hidden ridge of rock, Bain ran around the curve to the first crevice where his counterpart had led his team. He readied his multi-dart as he ran.
Angry shouts split the moonlit night. Bain grinned and leaped over a boulder. His left foot slipped as he came down and his heart skipped a beat before he caught his balance. Three more steps brought him to the lip of the trench.
“Break it down!” the enemy commander shouted.
They had just discovered the way out blocked. Bain hadn't dared hope it would take this long. His enemy was more tired and slow than he had estimated.
There he was, pushing his way to the wider part of the trench, just about to vanish into the darkness of the arch and the blocked tunnel out. His nearly white hair gleamed in the moonlight, distinct amid the dirty blond and brunette and red hair.
“Up here!” Bain shouted. He gave himself five seconds, tops, to hit his target before the enemy soldiers below recovered from their surprise and fired at him.
Like in a dream, the enemy commander turned and looked up. His mouth fell open. Bain extended his arm and squeezed the trigger. His multi-dart fired three times.
A strangled cry of rage and shock and defeat escaped the enemy commander's mouth as all three shots hit him. His back arched. Red blossomed across his chest and forehead and shoulder. He went down amid shrieks and angry shouts and the sounds of startled soldiers scrambling to find or raise their guns.
Bain threw himself to the rocky ground and rolled. He gasped as he knocked his ribs hard. He would have an ugly bruise down to the bone, maybe broken skin. Darts whistled over his head and one nearly clipped his ear. He grinned up at the moons and didn't try to get up as he slid to a stop.
Mission accomplished.
Then his people were there, firing down into the two crevices filled with trapped enemy soldiers, immediately jerking back to avoid the return fire. A low, ululating cry rose from the trench. It grew louder, higher in pitch, changing from banshee to hurricane scream.
One by one, soldiers on either side stopped firing. Bain watched his people draw back, grinning in triumph, and holster their weapons. A few stayed standing, but most slid down to sit wherever they happened to be.
A bright light split the remains of the patchy cloud cover. Then the familiar rumble of a descending shuttle reached Bain's ears. Bits of rock and twigs around him started to tremble and then dance as the shuttle came down for a landing, right on top of the flat table of rock only ten meters away from where he lay. He had envisioned the shuttle landing there when he planned the trap. It was especially gratifying to see even that last detail fall into place.
The hatch slid open before the last of the repulsor jets had finished firing. Ranger Major Gilmore jumped out, stumbling for a second on the uneven ground, then catching himself.
“Bain?” he called.
“Over here!” Bain shouted back, and dragged himself to his feet again. His side protested the sudden movement. He would have a major, ugly bruise for certain.
“Where's Gorgi?"
Bain pointed into the trench, full of sullen, exhausted, quiet enemy soldiers. Major Gilmore picked his way through the rubble and branches and rocks to the edge of the crevice and looked down. He grinned and glanced at Bain, then back down into the trench.
Gorgi Cole finished wiping red paint off his face, looked at his red hands, and wiped them on his grimy coverall. Red smears in his platinum blond hair looked pink in the moonlight. He sputtered, spitting out a few drops of paint from the marker pellets that got into his mouth.
“I can't believe I fell for that,” Gorgi growled. “Major, can you turn off that blasted siren?"
Gil slapped the power pack hanging from his belt. The screaming filling the air abruptly switched off.
“I can't believe you fell for it, either,” Bain said. He gestured toward the narrow end of the crevice and walked down to it. Gorgi and Gil followed. Squatting, Bain tugged back a thatch of bushes and dried grasses that covered some crooked, natural steps in the rocky sides.
“Does the signal have to be so loud?” Gorgi complained as he climbed up. He avoided the hand Bain held out to help him climb, and instead grasped his friend's sleeve and wiped red paint on it.
A single shriek erupted from the electro-optical fibers in Bain's coverall, reacting to the chemicals in the marker paint. Major Gil slapped the power pack, cutting off a repeat of the signal for the end of this particular training exercise.
“From the looks of things,” the Ranger said, glancing around at the victorious Scouts helping their defeated friends climb out of the crevices, “this is going to be one interesting debriefing."
* * *
Chapter Three
“But did you have to make it such a complete slaughter?” Gorgi complained. “My people are going to be washing paint out of their hair and hides for a week.” He winced and rubbed at his bruised forehead where one of Bain's missiles had struck. “Those pellets sting pretty bad, too."
“We couldn't take the chance on your people slaughtering us,” Bain said with a shrug.
“Did you give them a chance to surrender?” Gil asked. He waited, meeting the eyes of both young men, and smiled slightly as Bain thought.
“No.” He shrugged and gave a sheepish look to his best friend and co-commander. “Didn't even consider it."
“I wouldn't either, if it had been real,” Gorgi conceded. “After that long slogging through all the muck and eating raw food most of the time, I'd be desperate and angry enough, I probably wouldn't have surrendered."
“Consider that option at all times,” Gil sai
d. He settled back in his chair and reached for his cup of coffee.
They were in the office of his suite on the training planet Drasti, where the Rangers had been created and where they kept their headquarters. The planet was more than large enough for two mobile forces, and the Scouts had been invited to share the planet and facilities with the Rangers. Major Gilmore and his squadron were in charge of training Bain and Gorgi and this first generation of Scouts. When they were ready, they would recruit and train everyone who came after them.
“It was hard sometimes knowing who was the bigger enemy,” Bain said. He settled back in his chair and relaxed now. Gil never drank his coffee until the debriefing was finished. “The elements, or Gorgi."
“The hard part for me was trying to figure out what you would do, and what you would guess about my own strategy, and how much you would rely on my knowing what you would do, and then going against it.” Gorgi paused, frowning. “Does that make sense?"
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said with a chuckle. “What are the chances we'll know our real enemies that thoroughly?"
“Hopefully not as well as you two know each other,” Gil said. “The Rangers have had a few instances in the last hundred years where some have gone through the training and indoctrination and then ... gone bad. It's hard working against your own, knowing all their training and what they're capable of doing,” he mused. “Situations like that usually call for drastic measures. Usually slaughter, as Gorgi so aptly put it."
“Wonderful,” Gorgi mumbled. That earned grins from the other two.
“Go on and enjoy a well-earned break. There's a rumor of spican roast and fresh nut bread in the kitchen—for winners and losers.” He made a shooing gesture toward his office door.
Scouts [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 10] Page 2
