by GARY DARBY
Dason ran a hand through his hair and asked, “Did he say what the markings read?”
“SSLC Luna,” TJ responded. “That’s all he saw before they hit the ground.”
“SSLC Luna,” Dason murmured in return. “Star Scout Landing Craft Luna?”
Perplexed, he shook his head. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Neither had he or have I,” TJ admitted.
“Still,” Dason replied, “if what you’re saying is true, then Alena is—”
“Telling one big whopper of a lie,” TJ growled and then said through tight lips, “What I don’t understand is why Nase didn’t bring it up last night to Captain Ruz or challenge Alena when she was spinning her tale.”
Dason ran a hand across his mouth several times before saying slowly, “It could be that he didn’t want to challenge Alena outright and was waiting to speak to Bianca privately and never got a chance.”
He peered intently at TJ. “This gets stranger all the time. I’m beginning to feel like some OutLand private detective trying to solve a mystery on an alien world and the clues aren’t adding up.”
TJ gave a mirthless laugh. “I know how you feel.” She let out a breath saying, “Now that we’re alone with Alena, I wanted you to know. Watch her Dason, I don’t trust her and neither should you.”
Dason gazed at the morning mist that gathered in wispy entrails above the nearby stream and muttered, “Enigmas, extraterrestrials, and escapades. What next?”
He thought about TJ’s extraordinary claim a bit before saying, “Let’s not confront her just yet. We’ve got more than enough to deal with right now. Later, we’ll sort it out.”
TJ nodded. “Agreed. But we need to keep an eye on her. Call it female instinct or whatever, but she’s trouble!”
“I agree,” Dason replied, “now go get something to eat.”
TJ spun on her heel and went into the cave while Dason found a concealed spot near the cave entrance to keep watch. He had just settled in when Alena stormed out of the cave. “Thorne!” she demanded.
In a quiet but firm voice, Dason replied, “To your right about three meters and keep your voice down.”
Alena planted herself in front of Dason, hands on hips. “Why wasn’t I included in this decision to split up?”
Standing and facing Alena squarely, Dason said, “When you see her, ask Captain Ruz. It’s obvious that she didn’t feel she needed your input. Now, get back in the cave, stay there, and be quiet. As far as we know, the Jakuta are still out there searching for us.”
Dason could see daggers coming from her eyes and something more, almost like pure hate. He had the distinct feeling that her fury wasn’t pointed at Bianca but, for some reason, directly at him.
The angry young woman hesitated for an instant, then spun away and stomped off into the dark green brush that stretched along the cliff base. Dason was about to follow her to order her back into the cave when he realized what her visit to the bushes implied.
As the morning drew on, the three scouts alternated between doing sentry duty and resting in the cavern.
The small extraterrestrials roused once, chittered among themselves for several moments before they returned to their almost coma like state, oblivious to the comings and goings of their human companions.
Dason was inclined to leave them alone; it made watching over them so much easier. Alena had retreated to a corner and with a sour expression eyed the scouts, the three aliens, and the cave walls.
Just as Dason stepped from the cave to relieve Sami of the watch, he heard over his comms, “Doctor Stinneli, this is Bianca. We should be close. We’re in a wide ravine that leads toward the hill’s base. Describe your location.”
Long seconds went by without an answer. Bianca said again, “Stinneli, we’re in the ravine. Guide us in.”
Again, there was no response. TJ joined Dason and Sami and gave them both a questioning look. Dason could only shrug his shoulders in response.
TJ muttered, “I don’t like it. Something’s wrong.”
Dason nodded. “I know, I feel it too, but Bianca is a pro at this, she’s not going to take any chances.”
Anxious minutes later, Dason heard, “Stinneli, we’re a hundred meters up the ravine. Respond.”
Still no reply.
Dason knelt and picked up dirt and grass to squeeze between fingers. He leaned forward on one knee, staring straight ahead, wishing that he could penetrate the dense forest vegetation to see clear across to the valley’s far side.
In his mind’s eye, he could picture the three distant scouts in crouched positions moving up the ravine, placing every foot with calculated precision so as to not make a sound. Watching for even the slightest movement that might—
Shanon’s voice exploded in his earpiece. “Incoming!”
Dason bolted straight up and without thinking, grasped his L-gun. Bianca yelled, “Get down! Get down! Laz-gun fire!”
Someone had the presence of mind to turn on the surround sound because the abrupt prriing-prriing-prriing reverberations of discharging L-guns came over the communicator.
Dason could hear footsteps crunching on small stones from someone who ran over a gravel-laced surface. Bianca shouted orders for Shanon and Nase to fall back, but only Shanon responded. For several more seconds, she shouted orders and then there was nothing but silence.
TJ gripped Dason’s arm; her fingers hard and stabbing. Dason could only stand rock-still, his whole body rigid while he waited for one of the remote team to speak. TJ released his arm and moved her hand to switch on her transmitter.
With blurring speed, Dason grabbed her wrist and motioned for her not to say anything. He gestured for her to turn her comms unit to receive only and did the same with his set. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this, he only knew that he should.
Glancing around, he found Sami standing a few meters away. He indicated to him not to transmit either. Bianca’s last transmission had chilled him to the bone.
It was obvious what happened—Bianca, Shanon, and Nase had walked into a trap. Ambushed while they moved up the very gully that “Stinneli” had described as leading to his location.
Dason whirled to TJ. “Looks like you were right,” he growled
Holding his anger in check, he ordered TJ and Sami, “Get Alena out here now.”
Boots firmly planted in the soil, hands on hips, Dason watched Sami half-push a sullen Alena out of the cave to stand before him.
Without hesitating, Dason placed his face mere centimeters from Alena’s. In a threat, angry voice he said, “We just listened over the comms while our team got ambushed, and probably by the same people who jumped us before.”
He locked eyes with Alena. “You told Bianca that your craft was a modified scouter design. Nase told TJ that he saw Star Scout markings on your ship. In fact, he thought you were lying and made up the whole story about being shanghaied.”
His face was like stone and his voice matched. “I want answers, and I want them now,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
“Just who are you and who are those animals who’ve attacked us twice. And this time it had better be the straight story because I’m in no mood for any more lies.”
Alena cast a furtive glance at the scouts, noting their furious anger. TJ and Sami had drawn their knives. She raised her hands to show empty palms. “Tell your playmates to put away their toothpicks and maybe I give you answers. But not while I’m being threatened.”
Dason could hear TJ’s heavy breathing beside him. Tight-lipped he gestured to his teammates who made it a point to slam their knives into their hip scabbards.
Her eyes darting from one to the other, Alena spoke in sullen tones, “Have it your way. First off, I am who I said I was and those ‘animals’ as you called them, jumped me and commandeered my ship.
“And Nase was wrong about seeing Star Scout markings on my ship. Those were fake company insignia to throw off anybody who saw them as to what company was actually Out Her
e doing surveys.”
She shrugged. “Common practice among the corporates so that anyone else sniffing around doesn’t know who’s their competition.”
Peering at the vengeful young scouts, she muttered, “As to who just bushwhacked your companions,” she stopped and gave a little shrug. “From the way you described them and how they’ve been acting, well, you’re not going to like my answer.”
She lifted a corner of her mouth up and stared straight into Dason’s eyes. “You, scout man, are up against a Gadion Faction killer team.”
Dason heard a scraping sound behind him. He turned to see Sami, his back to the cave’s stone entrance, slide down to the ground.
Coming to a sitting position, he put his head in his hands and muttered, “Not again—please, not again.”
Chapter Twelve
Star Date: 2443.062
Unnamed planet in the Helix Nebula
Dason’s mind was a blur of churning, swirling thoughts. Gadion Faction!
He knew with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that this time these were no Star Scouts pretending to be members of the nefarious terrorist group. The attack on the scouts in the forest, and now the ambush of Bianca and her team was all the proof he needed.
TJ stormed up to stand next to Dason. “And how do we know you’re not Faction,” she challenged in a blistering tone.
Alena gathered herself to her full height, her eyes blazing. “I am not a Gadion. I told you. They jumped my ship and took me prisoner. Why, I don’t know. As it is, I got lucky in that I didn’t end up breathing vacuum.”
TJ bored in on the young woman. “I don’t believe you for one nanosecond. This business about being on a corporate mineral survey is hogwash.”
“Get off my case!” Alena snapped. “I’ve answered your questions and for the last time, I’m not one of them. I’m not Faction,” she finished with apparent disgust.
Sami grunted from his sitting position. “And why should we believe you? Seems that you’re one lie after another, missy whoever and whatever you are. By the way, is Alena your real name or is that made up too?”
Alena glared but didn’t reply. She crossed her arms and told Dason, “The next move is yours and before you ask, no, I don’t have any leverage with those who ambushed your teammates.
“As I told you, they held me hostage. Even your teammate admitted that I was unconscious when they brought me out of my ship. What, you think I’d stun myself just to make it look like I wasn’t Faction?”
Breathing hard, she went on, “I’m quite confident that if we hadn’t gone down there was an excellent chance that they were going to kill me.”
She met Dason’s glare. “And that’s all I’m going to say.”
Dason returned Alena’s frank stare. From her expression, he knew she wasn’t going to divulge anything more, that she was sticking to her tale. What part of Alena’s story was true or false he couldn’t say, but of one thing he was sure—he couldn’t trust her.
That meant a constant guard or he could send her on her way. Though tempting, he couldn’t bring himself to turn her loose unarmed and alone against the Jakuta and the dangers of the planet.
He hooked a thumb toward the cave. “Inside.”
Alena turned and entered the darkened cave while Sami and TJ gathered around Dason. “Ideas?” Dason asked.
“Yeah,” Sami replied, “I say we ditch Alena and the XTs and head across the valley. Faction or no Faction, we owe it to the others to make a rescue attempt.”
Dason stared at the ground for a long moment before saying in a small voice, “You’re assuming they’re still alive, Sami.”
“They better be alive!” Sami spat back, “Or so help me somebody’s gonna pay big-time.”
“Dason,” TJ interjected, “I agree with Sami. Cross the valley, find the others, get them away from the Faction, and head for the scouters.”
Dason stared at his two teammates. Their determined anger was easy to see and he knew exactly how they felt. It matched his own emotions which seemed to wash over him in wave after wave of fury and rage.
He too wrestled with his own fierce desire to rush across the valley in hot pursuit of whoever had attacked their comrades.
However, to charge across the valley to seek revenge and rescue their teammates, was that the right course of action? For some reason it didn’t feel right and so he hesitated as another thought crept into his mind.
He wondered what Sami and TJ would do if he directed a different course instead. Would they honor that part of the Scout Oath that said, To obey all lawful orders of the Terran Imperium and Star Scout Command?
Captain Ruz represented Star Scout Command, and when she left Dason in charge, he had become the de facto designated representative of Star Scout Command and the team’s leader.
A heady assignment for a new scout such as he, but one he couldn't and wouldn’t shirk.
Would his teammates recognize his authority and as important, obey his orders in light of their raging emotions? Standing there, he recalled a vivid lesson from his scoutmaster.
It was right after their Ultra-Dive test in the Salkin Trench off the Philippine Islands. At first, the test had seemed simple enough.
Don UD suits and free-fall through several thousand meters of pitch-black ocean to the unseen bottom, pull the lever that shed the ballast, and float back up through the lightless depths.
Simple, but frightening.
In a few seconds, after the novice scouts released their surface flotation devices they went from sunlight to sheer darkness. Only the glow from their helmet rim lights, and the digital display on their faceplates gave any semblance of illumination in the deep.
Down they plunged, surrounded by the ocean’s crushing depths, the only sounds those of their own quick breaths and the powered suit’s occasional raspy mechanical reverberations.
Once during that descent, in the total blackness that enveloped him, Dason had felt his nerve cracking and reached for the control lever that would shoot him skyward.
Even as his fingers wrapped tightly around the handle, he knew that to pull the lever would be seen as a failure and a down check in the program.
Dason fought the impulse to release the weights that dragged him downward into the inky depths but moment by moment, he was losing his resolve, his will.
Terror was beginning to consume him and his only focus was on the lever and the rush to light, air, and life that it represented.
Then, from the gloom appeared an enormous shape that swam just below him. The behemoth’s giant tail fin had flipped up at him as it dove further downward.
For several seconds, Dason whirled about in the vortex caused by the backwash from the creature’s watery descent.
Dason marveled at the sight, wondering how many people had seen a blue whale diving at this depth. Not many, he thought. For some reason that he didn’t understand, the whale’s passing calmed him, and he shakily moved his hand away from the handle.
Only after his feet touched bottom at eight-thousand meters and the instructor scouts hovering nearby in a deep sea dive vehicle confirmed his touchdown that he pulled the lever.
Hours later Dason stood on the deck of their support ship with his classmates. All but one had passed. Tarracas had sent that one to the medico, her psyche so undone that they had had to sedate her on the spot and carry her away on a stretcher.
“The intent of today’s training?” Tarracas asked the somber and relieved group of novices.
No one answered until a girl on Dason’s left spoke up, “Familiarization with UD suits and how to operate in an overpressure environment.”
Tarracas nodded. “Yes, a tiny portion of the training was devoted to that.” He waited, but no one else had anything to add.
He then said, “Mastering a mechanical suit that practically does everything for you is not much of a test, don’t you think? However, an exercise that dictates that you must overcome yourself, that is much more valuable than measu
ring one’s mechanical aptitude.
“Physical courage coupled with the rare trait of self-mastery provides an impenetrable breastwork against selfishness, self-gratification, and self-absorbed impulses.
“Down there, alone in the darkness, you had a choice to continue or not. No instructor scout, no scoutmaster to order you to pull the release device. Only you and you alone could make the decision to pull the lever.”
He held up a suit’s release handle. “a simple act, pulling a lever; stops your descent, alters your path, sends you upward. In the physical sense, you were descending, but, in actuality, by not pulling this, you were mentally, emotionally, spiritually—moving forward and upward.”
Sighing, he said, “In life, the same. The simplest of choices and your life is forever changed, for good or for bad.”
He peered at the lever, studying its details. “By not pulling this, you overcame the overwhelming temptation to give in to your craving, your desire, and refused to accept the awful and crippling idea that a choice, any choice, is of no consequence.”
Setting the bar down, he spoke in a satisfied tone. “Instead, you chose self-control and self-denial. However, this is but one instant in your life.
“Consider that the whole of one’s life is a compilation of individual moments, individual choices, strung together like the sparkling stars in Orion’s belt on a crisp, clear winter’s night.”
His firm voice resonated above the sea wave’s soft swishing. “Never give in to the darkness of the moment, always walk in the light. Whether as a Star Scout or not—this is the pathway to a true and honorable life.”
Never give in to the darkness of the moment. Dason came back to the present. “I want to go after them too,” he avowed. “With every fiber of my being I want to find them and make them pay in the worst possible way for what they’ve done.”
“Right decision, TL,” Sami returned, his eyes hot and eager to Dason’s response. “Give the word and I guarantee that I’ll lead us right to them.”
