The Vixen War Bride

by Thomas Doscher

  The others looked from her to Ben; Ramirez and Burgers, both aware of Ben’s domestic situation, weren’t sure what their commander would say to that.

  The Ranger officer took a deep breath and followed up the sentiment with a more practical thought. “Colonel McDowell up at Jamieson said he never wanted to fight the Va’Shen again.” He looked at Ramirez and Burgers. “I know you guys don’t either. Who the hell would? But if it were someone else, if we thought these people were Chinese or Mexican or Canadians or whoever, we would be expected to help. It can’t hurt.”

  Warren looked down at the ground and nodded. The other Rangers followed suit.

  “Sun will be down soon,” Patricia noted. “Talk to Kasshas first thing tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” Ben told her. He turned to Warren. “We’ll get your maps while we’re at it. This time we go like we mean business. Three LTVs.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be friends?” Ramirez asked.

  “We’re very concerned friends,” Ben told him.

  It was a rifle shot that made his eyes open. For a brief second he saw the roof of his tent flap up and down in the wind before turning his gaze to the tent’s entrance. The shadowy figure standing in the open flaps was made obvious only by the shape of its ears backlit by the glow of the bluish moon outside, the same glow that glinted off the knife in its hands.

  The tod must have realized he had been seen because it rushed toward him even as several more rifle shots broke the silence of night outside.

  Ben rolled to his left and reached down to the ground where he had left his holstered sidearm. Realizing there wasn’t enough time to pull the weapon before the Va’Shen reached him, he grabbed the web belt the gun was attached to and swung it like a flail at the alien’s head.

  It gave an alarmed yip as the polymer and steel weapon struck the right side of its head, knocking it off balance. Cries of alarm outside and the undulating tone of the base alarm threatened to drown out the continuing sound of rifle fire. Ben flung himself at the enemy soldier as it turned back to him, stabbing outward with its knife as the Ranger crashed headlong into him.

  The edge of the knife scraped along his left side beneath his armpit, and the two rolled on the ground inside the tent, smashing into the plastic wall and bringing down a portion of the tent on top of them. Ben rained blows down on the creature with his fist and his make-shift flail as he climbed on top of him. The sounds of complete pandemonium continued to pour in from outside: Gunfire, screaming, the persistent alarm alerting his Rangers to what they already knew.

  Tod fought quickly and fiercely, not necessarily stronger than Ben, but faster and more agile. He gave the human no opportunity to pull the gun from its holster. Ben knew he had to finish the fight quickly or risk a second Va’Shen entering the tent to turn the tables on him. He reached down and wrapped the web belt around the alien’s throat and pulled with both hands.

  The alien gave a gurgle and fought harder, hitting Ben with its hands, its knife now forgotten as it struggled instinctively just to breathe.

  “JUST DIE ALREADY!” Ben screamed at it, pulling harder until the creature rolled backwards on top of him. Ben jammed his knee into the alien’s back and pulled harder. The alarm continued to blare in his ear, but he could somehow hear popping noises in Tod’s neck.

  “DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!” he screamed.

  And then he opened his eyes again.

  Ben bolted straight upright in his cot, his eyes frantically searching the darkness. The ceiling and walls that surrounded him weren’t that of a canvas and plastic tent, but the polymer walls of his hooch. He rolled out of his cot and stumbled out the door, one hand over his eyes while the other stretched out in front of him to protect him from anything he might run into.

  Outside there was more light, some from the omnidirectional lights that lit up the perimeter and some from Va’Sh’s two moons. The green and purple aurora waved at him from above as if to say hello.

  Ben stalked back and forth in front of his quarters like a caged tiger, looking around as he bit his lip. His t-shirt was soaked with sweat, and he had to check his boxers to make sure he hadn’t pissed himself.

  It took five minutes before his breathing came back down to normal, but he continued to pace back and forth.

  Screw these people! He thought. Screw them all! Who cares if they starve to death in the woods?! Screw them! They asked for this! THEY ASKED FOR THIS!

  That’s not really fair, another part of his mind answered evenly. They’re not soldiers. They’re not the Va’Shen that attacked you on Epsilon.

  Who cares?! He yelled back at the voice. True, they may not be the same soldiers, but there was no way to really know if the Va’Shen soldiers who killed 24 Coalition troops, seven of them his Rangers, that night on Epsilon Eridani came from Pelle or not. For all he knew, that Tod he strangled to death in his tent was Kasshas’s kid.

  He walked around the corner of his hooch so that he wasn’t directly in the light and sat down, resting his head on his knees. You weren’t supposed to hate the Va’Shen. The Army went through great lengths to teach its soldiers that.

  “We are not the enemy of the Va’Shen people,” the old Public Affairs message echoed hollowly in his head. “But we are fiercely opposed to their government’s actions against our colonists.”

  What garbage. You weren’t supposed to hate the enemy, but you were supposed to kill them in large numbers, some of them with your bare hands. How the Hell were you supposed to be expected to kill people you don’t hate? Wasn’t it worse if you didn’t hate them? Didn’t that make you mentally ill? A cold-blooded killer? Wouldn’t hating them make it easier?

  But… if that were true…

  Then why is that Tod the only one I ever dream about? he wondered.

  Screw ‘em, he thought again. We don’t need to help them.

  Isn’t that why you’re here? the voice asked.

  I’m here because I have nowhere to go home to, he thought back bitterly.

  The voice seemed to sigh in response.

  Okay, look, he argued. We’ll go see Kasshas tomorrow, get the maps, ask about the people, and let him know they don’t need to hide. At that point, it’s up to him, right? They’re his people. He can be responsible for them.

  The voice didn’t seem to have a response to that, and Ben took it as concurrence.

  Okay, he thought. He wiped the tears from his eyes and stood up. Walking around the corner again and into his hooch.

  He didn’t fall asleep again that night. He left the light on, and his sidearm in reach.

  Ben’s fingers tapped the grip of his holstered pistol as the lead vehicle rumbled down the street toward the mayor’s resplendent office. He stifled a yawn and wished he could nap in the passenger-side “commander’s” seat of the vehicle.

  Sitting behind him, Patricia was looking over documents and flipping through the small “Va’Shen Host Planet Language Guide,” the Department of Defense had issued to their interpreters, for whatever good they did. The two of them had gone over a rough plan of how they intended for this visit to go. First, they would ask Kasshas about the maps so that if the new conversation about his people scared him off there was at least a chance they could walk out with those. Then, they’d bring up the people, asking where everyone was, were they safe, did they need medical care. Hopefully, they could convince Kasshas that they didn’t mean the people any harm and they could return.

  The three-vehicle convoy rolled up to the front of the mayor’s office and stopped. A familiar Va’Shen face peered out from behind the curtain of one of the shops as the Rangers dismounted. The gunners in the first and third turrets remained where they were and the rest instinctively took up cautious, but casual, positions around the vehicles that let them see what was happening.

  Ben started for the front door. “Ramirez, Baird, on us,” he ordered. The two Rangers fell in behind Ben and Patricia and followed them through the door. Just like every other time beforehand, Ka
sshas stood in the center of the room as if he had been expecting to meet them for hours.

  The Ranger captain stopped a few paces from him and bowed.

  “Good morning, Kasshas,” he said. “It is very good to see you again.” He smiled but briefly wondered if it would do any good. Was Kasshas aware of human facial expressions? If Warren hadn’t warned him about the ears and tail, he wouldn’t even know what to look for.

  Patricia bowed to Kasshas and translated for Ben.

  Kasshas bowed to Ben.

  The interpreter turned to Ben. “He says ‘Back at’cha.’”

  “Ask him about the maps,” he ordered.

  Patricia turned to Kasshas and steeled herself. It was game time. she said in halting Va’Shen, trying to remember to correctly include the new words she had studied over the last twenty-four hours.

  Kasshas responded.

  “No maps?” Ben asked her.

  “No maps,” she confirmed.

  “Give him the safety line,” he told Patricia.

  The interpreter turned to Kasshas again.

  Kasshas bowed to them again.

  “He says ‘my bad.’”

  “Ask him about tomorrow.”

 

 

  “He said…”

  Ben cut her off. “I think I picked up the gist. Hit him with the air support.”

  She turned back to him. The tip of Kasshas’s tail dipped, just a millimeter, and Ben smiled. Patricia went on.

  It was a bluff. The reconnaissance drones the Army and Air Force used for such things couldn’t fly in Pelle’s EM-saturated atmosphere, and a request to the Neil Armstrong to take such pictures from orbit would take weeks or months to get accomplished.

  But Kasshas didn’t need to know that. All he needed to know was that if Ben didn’t get what he wanted he’d be willing to put eyes in the sky over Kasshas’s head where he would never know if he was being watched.

  Kasshas replied in measured tones. The chieftain bowed to them.

  Patricia said.

  Kasshas promised dryly.

  “We can pick them up tomorrow,” she told Ben.

  Ben breathed a sigh of relief. That was one down. Now for the other matter.

  “Ask about the people, just like we talked about,” he told her.

  She turned to Kasshas. she said, trying to sound conversational as she tripped over the words.

  Kasshas bowed, not sure where this new conversation was going.

  she said.

  Kasshas looked back and forth to them both, and then an amazing thing happened. The old Va’Shen’s tail went limp and hit the ground. His shoulders drooped, and his ears folded down. His eyes fell forlornly to the tiled floor in front of him.

  he began quietly.

  So shocked at the sudden change in Kasshas’s demeanor, Patricia almost missed his words, but caught enough to be able to translate for Ben.

  “He says he apologizes for not telling the truth,” she said.

  “Truth about what?” Ben asked.

  Before she could ask, Kasshas was speaking again.

 

  He looked up at them and spoke again to make sure they understood his message.

 

  Chapter 3

  The long and tragic history of war was filled with episodes where horrible things happened to innocent people for stupid reasons. Ben, a man who had spent many a night reading war histories, knew many of them by heart. One of them was the fate of Japanese civilians on the island of Saipan in 1944. The Japanese, fed a steady diet of hyperbolic propaganda about American cruelty to civilians, flung themselves by the hundreds off cliffs rather than surrender to U.S. soldiers.

  It was this knowledge that prompted a cold sweat to break out down Ben’s back at Kasshas’s words.

  “Dead how?” he asked Patricia. When she didn’t immediately translate his words, he turned to Kasshas himself. “Dead how?!”

  Patricia asked him.

  Kasshas knelt, taking a seat on his knees in front of them. He patted the ground, inviting them to sit, and Ben and Patricia did so. Ramirez and Hamburgers remained standing, not technically part of the conversation and unwilling to give up their ready posture.

  The old Va’Shen’s tail waved back and forth in sudden, upset jerks as he took a breath and began his explanation, Ben and Patricia hanging on every word.

  he said.

  “They heard about the bombings up north,” Patricia translated, “And how we’d be coming.”

  At Patricia’s gesture to continue, Kasshas did so with a sigh.

  “A lot of their men died in the fighting, and the families thought they’d never come back,” Patricia translated quickly, relying on context to fill in the gaps of her vocabulary. Things she didn’t understand, she just didn’t translate and hoped they weren’t important.

 

  Patricia stared at him wide-eyed. She shook her head and turned to Ben. “They… um…” She licked her lips, unsure of how to translate such a heavy event. “They… drowned themselves in the river,” she finally finished.

  Ben turned to Kasshas, who stared forlornly at the ground. His eyes narrowed at the alien’s story. He knew such a thing was possible, that some cultures had taught the value of an honorable death over a dishonorable one as slaves.

  “And the bodies were swept away by the current,” he finished sadly.

  Patricia translated,

  Kasshas confirmed.

  Patricia nodded to Ben.

&
nbsp; “All of them?” Ben asked.

 

 

  Ben took a deep breath and looked at Kasshas, this time in a renewed light. Like him, he was a man who had lost his people, and the Ranger couldn’t help but feel pity for him. It was an odd way to make a connection with someone, but he felt like reaching out to the Va’Shen man and…

  Before he could finish the thought, the door behind them slammed open without the barest hint of a warning. No shout from the sentries outside, no sound of footsteps, nothing.

  And because of that, Ben knew immediately it had to be a Va’Shen.

 

  They turned, Ramirez and Burgers raising their rifles in alarm a split second before Ben cried, “HOLD YOUR FIRE!”

  Standing before them was a Va’Shen woman like none he had ever seen before. Unlike the old vixens they had seen so far, this woman stood tall and straight, her chest heaving under ornate magenta and turquoise robes like a cross between a Japanese kimono and Korean hanbok as she clawed for breath. Long violet hair fell down over her right shoulder to her stomach, the color matching the furry fox-like ears on her head and the long, bushy tail waving angrily behind her. She looked at them with furious green eyes. No, not them… Kasshas.

  The elderly fox man’s tail puffed up behind him in alarm.

  the woman cried, practically panting in exhaustion. She growled in a profoundly animalistic way.

  Thrown off balance for a moment, Ben quickly recovered and a second look at the woman revealed details her beauty had originally eclipsed. Her robes were splotched with dirt and mud, sticks and leaves stuck out from her hair, and thorns and barbs could be seen stuck in her tail. A quick look down revealed one of her shoes covered in mud and the other completely missing.