by Steve Perry
Too bad the wick-away-moisture clothes didn’t work as well. Fungal infections were always lurking on hot and wet battlefields, even with the chems circulating.
There’s a fungus among us, and he noshes on our crotches . . .
Crickets sawed away in the darkness, and Gunny remembered that there was some kind of formula connected to the speed of their noise and the temperature. Hotter it was, the quicker the chirps, but she couldn’t remember the numbers. Didn’t matter. She knew hot when she felt it.
“Anything new?” Gunny asked.
“Nope. We’re up here, the enemy is down there. We have the hill, they want it, and each of us has enough troops to make the swap unlikely. They’ll probably bring up reinforcements, we’ll bring up ours. Maybe somebody starts shooting, then we see how it goes. Simple. We’ve had a lot worse duty.”
“Maybe we should build a campfire and roast something, tell old war stories,” Gunny said.
“Right, give them a focus for a heat-seeker if they want to try one. Not to mention warming up the night more than it already is.”
“Our part of the glorious war.”
“I talked to Gramps,” Jo said. “He’s still poking around the whole thing with the Bax.”
Gunny shook her head. “Why is it lately that no matter where we go, there is some kinda fucking intrigue we have to deal with? Can’t we have just a plain old shooting battle where all we have to do is drill holes and take names? All this wheels-within-wheels shit gets old.”
“Man proposes, God disposes,” Singh said.
Both fems looked at him. He shrugged. “Whenever you run into a situation that you cannot control, we on Ananda often find it convenient to blame it on God.”
Both fems grinned. Jo said, “You don’t sound like much of a believer, Singh.”
“Sah, I was, when I was young. One only needs spend a short time looking around to find examples of ugliness that no benevolent god would reasonably allow. Faith falters in the living of life.”
“But the gods don’t work by the same rules as people,” Gunny said, “so we can’t understand their bigger picture.”
“An old argument, sah. If we are but insects in the sight of a god, then there is no point in our worshipping or trying to understand them. If they exist, I cannot see them as anything remotely like us. The priests might believe they can translate to the rest of us, but I cannot believe it. Not to offend any beliefs you might have.”
Jo chuckled. “Contrary to the old saying, there are plenty of atheists in foxholes. Gunny and I haven’t spent a lot of time in temple or church.”
“You look thoughtful, Singh. Somethin’ else?”
He looked at her. “I was wondering if you were going to eat the rest of that?”
Gunny laughed. She handed him the FR. “Have at it, my young philosopher.”
– – – – – –
Once her support troops arrived, there was no need for Kay to remain at the stream. Her side’s troops could patrol the area, and until the opposition decided to send more of their soldiers, if they did, crossing the little waterway would be a losing proposition.
Kay faded back into the trees and began a steady trot away from the site.
Much of war consisted of holding strategic territory, and sometimes, an hour or two was sufficient to tip the balance your way. An entire battle could turn on a single action, a second faster, a bullet dodged, a claw deflected.
There was a different smell in the air. Distant rain? That would go with the forecast Demonde Captain had tendered earlier. A storm. It had been too long since she had defied a storm . . .
She had accomplished her mission and could return to base and rest if she wished. She didn’t need rest; there had been no great output of energy required. She would instead find another action to attend. If Jo Captain was involved in such, she would join her.
As she worked her way back toward her chosen exit from the forest, she suddenly caught a scent she recognized.
The male Vastalimi. Not far.
She slowed. This was not a sector controlled by the enemy. What was he doing here?
Curiosity was not as strong a trait among her kind as it was humans, but still. One of her kind, perhaps the only other of her kind on this world?
She had to go and look.
– – – – – –
Kay stepped into the clearing carefully though she knew that the male knew she was there.
He waited until she was twenty meters away before he turned around. He did it slowly and made no move toward his holstered pistol, his hands wide of his body, claws retracted, to show his lack of killing intent.
Her own rifle was slung, her pistol holstered.
He was tall, well muscled, his fur lustrous and thick, and his body set balanced.
“Ah,” he said. “At last. I scented you earlier.” He spoke in Govor, which was her own first language. It was not the most common tongue among The People.
They were from the same region? Interesting.
“And I you,” she said. “I am Kluthfem. My humans call me ‘Kay.’”
“Greymasc,” he said. “You want family history?”
“Not necessary, given the circumstances.”
“Agreed.”
He paused, then said, “There was another fem. I understand she died.”
“As did the one who killed her.”
He nodded. “That one has not been found.”
“Good luck with that.”
They regarded each other. She caught a hint of his musk, and it indicated . . . interest . . .
Kay was a long way from Vast, and outside of a brief, if enjoyable liaison with Wink Doctor, she’d had no sexual contact with another for quite some time. Her last lover on the homeworld, Jak, had been satisfactory in that regard, but that had ended badly for other reasons.
She felt her own hormones rise. Too bad this male was with the enemy. Good that she was downwind, so he didn’t catch her own interest . . .
“You have been with your humans long?” he asked.
“Some years.”
“I have been with mine but a few months. They respect my abilities, but that is overlaid with fear and suspicion.”
“Sad for you.”
He shrugged. “We are hired claws. Outlanders among aliens. It is the way of such.”
“I regard my humans as family.”
“Really? How delightful for you.”
For some reason, that statement resonated well. She felt compelled to tell him a personal truth: “When I left Vast, it was because I was considered a troublemaker. I made political waves. I did not expect to be with family again. It has been an unexpected reward.”
“Then we have something else in common. Few were unhappy to see me depart the homeworld. Well-adjusted People don’t leave Vast, do they?”
“Mostly not, no,” she said.
He smiled. “So here we are, two malcontents working as warriors for a species not our own, and on opposite sides of a conflict. Sad for both of us, given the rarity of our kind out here. It precludes more . . . pleasant activity.”
She matched his smile. “My mother warned me about smooth-tongued males like you.”
“I should hope so. Tell me, how do you see this conflict?”
“Brief, bloody, and our side victorious.”
He laughed. “A fem after my own heart! I can agree with the first two, but I wonder why you offer the third, save for a general optimism?”
Sharp, this one. She said, “I have been in many engagements with my humans. They are more adept than most. There have been times when outright victory escaped us, but we have not lost outright, either.”
“Ah. I cannot say the same. Mine are not particularly inept, but they have sometimes performed less than optimally. Still, win or lose, I get paid.�
�
“No victory bonus?”
“Yes, but the rate without that is sufficient. Why would I need more?”
She nodded. A sensible attitude. She liked that.
“I take their pay, I serve to my ability,” he said. “Yet I confess that, even having just met you, I find in this moment that I would feel somewhat . . . bereft if I had to kill you.”
“I would strive to keep you from such misery, so far away from home.”
He laughed. “Oh, a fem with a sense of humor is a jewel beyond measure!” He regarded her for another moment. “Will you offer prigovor?”
She considered it. She didn’t want to kill him, either, even though it would be to the Cutters benefit. “Not at this time,” she said.
“Good. Nor shall I. Perhaps if we both survive this conflict, we might speak again, when we are not paid enemies?”
“I would like that,” she said. And she found that notion to be a happy one. Something about him . . .
“As would I. Survive, Kluthfem.”
“Survive, Greymasc.”
He turned and padded away from the clearing. He definitely moved well.
– – – – – –
Jo felt as much as she heard or smelled Kay when she arrived. That the Vastalimi could wend her way past enemy sentries outfitted with spookeyes or EV augs was no surprise.
That she got past their sentries unnoticed pissed her off.
“Don’t we have anybody on fucking guard duty?”
Kay said, “I did not think it necessary to disturb them.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll disturb them later.”
The hunters on Vast were considerably more adept than humans. Ghosts in the night.
“Well, it’s still good to see you.”
“And I you, Jo Captain.”
Dawn was still a couple of hours away. “You came from the other end of the area?”
Kay shrugged. “No more than a dozen kilometers. Not much of a run.”
Jo imaged making that trip at a jog in a fur coat. She shook her head.
“I have news,” Kay said.
Jo caught the quick flash of a smile.
“Yes?”
“It concerns the male Vastalimi. We met, he and I, in the forest.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“And . . . ?”
“And . . . what?”
“Come on, fem. He’s probably the only male of your species for a dozen parsecs. What did he look like? How did he carry himself? How was his musk?”
“He looked like a male. He walked on two legs as we all do. His musk . . . well, it was sufficiently masculine.”
Jo shook her head. “I know you aren’t that dense!”
Kay grinned. “His name is Greymasc. We spoke for only a short time. He was . . . not unattractive. He laughed at my joke. He allowed that he would feel bad if he had to kill me. He moved well.”
“All that?” Jo paused. “When is the wedding?”
Kay regarded Jo as if her skin had shifted to flaming purple. “Wedding?”
“‘Not unattractive,’ you said. With a sense of humor? And he moves well? Sex, at the very least? Tell me the thought never crossed your mind.”
Kay grinned again. “I cannot tell you it did not. And it was . . . not an unattractive notion.”
Jo laughed. “Life is short, fem. You need to make hay while the sun shines.”
“I don’t understand the metaphor.”
“Claw while the prey is in reach.”
“Ah.” Kay laughed. “Perhaps if he survives. It would not do for us to . . . do anything while we are on opposite sides of a conflict.”
“Okay. I won’t kill him if you won’t.”
They smiled.
ELEVEN
It was late, just past midnight. Cutter was crossing the quad when he felt the pressure—somebody was watching him.
It was a public space, lots of troops went back and forth between the camp’s buildings at all hours, so somebody noticing him wasn’t a big deal, but this was different.
Somebody was watching him. With intent.
There were plenty of people who didn’t believe you could do that, sense somebody watching you, but he had learned to trust that feeling over the years. It wasn’t always right, but it was right more often than not.
He kept walking. He raised his left arm and pretended to look at his ring chronometer, but instead did a quick and surreptitious scan ahead and to his left. He stopped, as if he had suddenly remembered something. Shook his head, as if in irritation at himself, turned around, to the right, and took in what he could see that way.
Nothing amiss. He headed back toward the HQ module. Nobody else in sight, and he had done a 270-degree scan. Either they were hidden, too far away to see, or in that last quadrant, now to his right front.
He flicked a glance that way . . .
There. Was that a hint of movement, in the shadow of the cantina?
The pub closed at 2330, and the building was dark; no light spilled from the windows.
The camp lamps on eight-meter-tall poles bathed the compound in a functional, if not all that bright, yellowish glow, save for a brown corona around the LEDs themselves. A few moths or other night insects who didn’t realize they weren’t supposed to see and be attracted to the glow flitted around them, casting fuzzy, pale shadows of themselves here and there.
It was more that he felt a presence than saw it.
In another five meters, he would be as close to where he thought somebody was as he was going to get; after that, his back would be toward the spot, and of a moment, he knew if that happened, somebody was going to try for him.
Knew it, absolutely sure.
Who was it? An enemy infiltrator? Somebody come to take the head off the opposition’s leader?
Should he wait and see? Was his ability to track and shoot enough to beat somebody firing first from less than ten meters away, if that was what they intended?
Was anybody even there? Was he seeing ghosts in the night?
Something changed, something in the air, what he couldn’t have said. He didn’t see anything, he didn’t hear anything, but he didn’t wait—he snatched his pistol from its hip holster, thrust it toward the darkness under the cantina’s overhang, and fired three rounds—pop-pop-pop! moving his wrist a hair between the shots, left to right, drawing a line. At this range, it would be a spread just under half a meter where the missiles would impact.
“Fuck!” somebody screamed.
Muzzle blasts sparked in the darkness, but even as he dived and rolled to his right, he knew those shots went high and to his left—
—Cutter landed prone, the Willis 4.4 lined up on the place where the shooter’s muzzle had been. He fired five more times, tracking from chest height at a slight angle to the left and downward, in case the shooter had ducked—
Somebody started yelling “Who goes there!” and “Show yourself!” behind him.
Their guards.
Cutter lay quietly, waiting.
Somebody punched in the crisis lighting, and the compound lit up like it was daytime.
There was a body on the ground under the cantina’s overhang.
Cutter voxaxed his command com onto the night’s opchan. “This is Colonel Cutter. I’m prone on the ground eight meters from the cantina’s front window, don’t spike me. There’s a shooter down next to the building. He’s probably out of it, but approach with caution. Shooter might not be alone.”
He waited, and pretty quickly, a quad moved toward the cantina, carbines leveled.
They bracketed the downed shooter. One of the guards moved in carefully, bent to examine the shooter.
“DOA,” the guard’s voice came, both over the com and through the warm night air.
/> Cutter stood, pistol still in hand.
He felt somebody come up behind him.
“An assassin?” Gramps.
“So it would seem.”
“Guards are doing a perimeter check.”
“I hope they do a better job than last time. Find anybody, try to bring them in alive.”
Cutter moved over to look at the dead man.
Nobody he recognized. The man lay on his right side, blood from multiple wounds on his torso and neck pooling on the ground, a silenced pistol near his outstretched hand.
Wink arrived, half-dressed, carrying a medical bag. “Somebody need a doctor?”
“Not unless you have a miracle in your sack of tricks,” Cutter said.
Wink bent and looked at the corpse. He did something with a small reader. “Three . . . four . . . five, maybe a keyhole . . . I count six hits. How many times did you shoot?”
“Eight.”
“Getting old, Rags.”
“Bracketing, you miss some. Better safe than sorry.”
“Do we know who this is?”
“Never saw him before, I know of.”
Gramps said, “I-team says the perimeter is clear. Who’s the dead guy?”
“Don’t know.”
“He aiming at you in particular?”
“I think so. I think he meant to backshoot me. I spotted him before he could.”
“Got any enemies?” Wink said. He smiled.
Cutter smiled back.
Gramps came round. “You get a DNA?”
“Already logged into the system,” Wink replied. “No immediate comeback, so he’s not one of the opposition’s registered.”
“And yet, who would want to see our commander dead more than they?”
“The list is probably fairly long,” Cutter said.
“Piss off anybody lately?” Wink asked.
Cutter and Gramps exchanged looks. Gramps picked it up: “Junior.”
Wink looked up. “Junior?”
Cutter said, “I’ll fill you in later.”
The I-team leader joined conversation oncom: “We got a shielded fuel-cell trike outside the fence. Probably what our visitor rode here on. I will check local records.”
