The Vixen War Bride
Page 12
Patricia nearly jumped again when she heard Ramirez at her other ear. “Ask her if you can eat it,” he urged.
“What?!” she shot back, turning to him in disgust.
Ramirez shrugged. “There’s gotta be something tasty on this planet, right? For all you know they’re like Vegan blue squirrel. Now that is a tasty animal!”
“Ugh!” Patricia replied before starting down the trail again.
Ramirez grinned and followed the two women, who sped up to catch Ben further along the trail in a small clearing. The Ranger captain had stopped not far from them and was checking his map. Best he could tell, they were making decent time.
“Let’s stop for thirty,” he ordered. He turned and caught Burgers’ attention, giving him the signal to stop. Burgers nodded and knelt, securing the way ahead. The rest of them gathered in the clearing and took a seat in the bluish-purple grass.
Ben sucked on the plastic tube that led to the water bladder in his assault pack. “Everyone doing good?” he asked, his eyes specifically resting on Patricia and Alacea.
“Good to go,” Patricia assured him with a smile.
He looked into the sky and found the sun at its highest point. If his map was right, they’d start hitting steeper terrain soon. Sitting down, he pulled a Meal Ready to Eat from his assault pack and opened it. Patricia and Ramirez did the same as Burgers joined them, having been relieved up front by another Ranger.
Alacea sat not far from the group, within earshot in case Ben wanted her, but far enough away to be out of notice. She watched them open the gray plastic containers in rapt curiosity, having never seen food like that before.
Ben gave her a quick backwards glance and saw the fox woman reach into her own pack for lunch. Content, for the moment, he went back to eating the preserved piece of flatbread and jalapeno cheese spread.
On his right, Patricia munched on her crackers and jelly, her mind going back to the nazu creature she saw earlier. She had never actually seen a wild animal from another planet before. She really wished she had been able to get a picture.
“So, I guess you guys have done this a lot, huh?” Patricia spoke up. At their questioning looks she elaborated. “I mean tromping through the woods on different planets, scaring strange animals, stuff like that.”
“Three worlds, if you don’t count home station,” Ben told her. “It’s weird when you come across some animal you’ve never seen before and think, ‘I just saw an alien.’” He paused and thought for a moment. “Then again, in a lot of ways I guess it’s like visiting Australia.”
Patricia smiled. “Did one ever attack you?”
Ben shook his head. “Nah. But it does happen. That’s why they make sure your broad-spectrum immunizations are updated. You never know what a bite from something will do to you.”
Burgers suddenly interjected by snapping his fingers in Ramirez’s direction as he chewed. As soon as he swallowed, he started talking. “Dude! You remember that guy from Third Platoon? On Epsilon?”
Ramirez thought for a moment, and then his eyes went wide. He started to choke with laughter. “Popeye! That guy who got bit by those weird green bees!”
“Poleski,” Ben supplied with a smile and a nod.
“POLESKI!” the other two Rangers cried with a laugh. Sitting nearby, Alacea looked up and tried to figure out what was going on with the group.
“Who’s Poleski?” Patricia asked.
Ramirez was still eating, so Burgers answered her. “Poleski was a Two-Seventy gunner in Third Platoon. He had this really sensitive skin, he said, so when we got to Epsilon, he didn’t put on his insect repellant. Well, Epsilon has these big green bumblebee-looking things, and they homed right in on him.”
The other Ranger NCO nodded and added to the story. “Bit him on both biceps and one under the chin.”
“Dude swelled up like a balloon,” Burgers said. “His arms looked jacked, but the bottom of his face was all swollen!” He laughed, ending with a snort. “So, the guys started calling him ‘Popeye!’ Like the old cartoon!”
“Chow hall guys kept giving him spinach,” Ramirez threw in. “’Come on, guys! Real funny! Ha ha,’” he imitated.
The soldiers laughed for a good minute before the sound started to trail off. Ben smiled at the memory, his eyes on the ground.
He was home on emergency leave, he thought sadly. For his dad’s funeral. I remember I had to sign the paperwork.
No one said anything for several moments. Ramirez took another bite of his meat patty. Burgers looked down at the ground and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, Poleski was a good guy.”
Ben cleared his throat, suddenly aware that the mood had started to crash. He turned and found Alacea staring at them. He motioned for her to come over. Seeing that she had been caught, the Va’Shen stood up and walked over, sitting just behind and to Ben’s left.
“What are your people like?” he asked her.
Alacea put a fat grain of lemess into her mouth and chewed as she thought about how to answer.
“They’re nice folks,” Patricia translated.
Ben paused, wondering how he was supposed to make small talk with an alien girl who probably wanted to stab him in the throat if given the chance.
“What do they like to do for fun?” he asked, putting the empty MRE wrapper back in his bag.
Alacea cleared her throat. She really wished the Dark One woman could speak better. She would have to make it a point to educate her Tesho on her language personally. She could not rely on the human woman to accurately translate one way or the other.
“They like to have parties,” Patricia told him. “They sing and dance and play.”
“Well, we have that in common,” Ramirez chimed in. “We like to party too!”
“Something tells me their parties are a little different,” Patricia told him with a side-eye.
Ben opened his mouth to ask a question but closed it just as quickly. He had almost asked her about her family. Given the lack of Va’Shen men he had seen so far, he couldn’t be sure that the question wasn’t a sensitive one. He didn’t know much about this girl, but given the war and how things turned out, it was very possible that Alacea was a widow.
That Va’Shen on Epsilon could have been her husband or a brother or a friend, he thought.
Yeah, and her husband, brother or friend could have been the guy who dropped that rock on Jessie, his mind bit back.
“They sound nice,” he said stupidly before quickly standing up. “Last chance to use the latrine. Let’s go.”
Cognizant to the change in mood, the others stood up without a word. Patricia gave him a look that seemed to ask Are you okay? He ignored it and picked up his rifle.
“We still have a lot of ground to cover,” he called to the others. “Let’s move.”
They travelled further into the hills, steadily upward. At some point their path merged with that of a fast-moving river that rushed down past them on their left at the bottom of a good fifty-foot drop. The path was wide enough for six to walk abreast but was hemmed in with the cliff and the river on their left and a steep, ten-foot rise on their right that led into the trees.
Ramirez leaned over the side of the cliff and took a look down at the rapids below. Coming up behind him, Jenkins gave him a gentle nudge. The NCO spun on her. “Dude! Not cool!” Jenkins grinned.
Burgers looked down and shook his head. “Nuh uh,” he said. “You fall in there, they’ll never find you.”
“We got enough people to look for without you adding to the total,” Ben told them pointedly as he walked past. “Watch your footing.”
The three Rangers stepped away from the cliff-side and continued walking up the path. Ben found his breath coming a little faster. Pressed between the cliff and the river like this, it made for a perfect ambush point. All it would take would be for the Va’Shen to pop up on top of the rise and throw a few glassers down on top of them and that would be it.
It was with this heightened state of caution that he threw his left fist up, signaling the others to freeze. The Rangers, just as trained, raised their weapons in every direction and waited. Ben stepped forward and to get a better look at what he had seen.
There was a cut in the ridge on their right, the ground covered in smooth rocks, fifty feet across. It looked like a wash-out, where flood waters might collect and flow into the river below them. The walls on either side were a white, clumping dirt. He ran his hand over a section of the near wall and found several small holes in it.
“Alacea,” he called. Dutifully, the fox woman came forward, Patricia in tow. “Which way?”
Patricia translated, and Alacea pointed straight ahead, past the cut.
Patricia did the math in her head. One eben was about one-point-three miles. “Just under three miles ahead,” she said.
Ben continued to stare down the cut. It ran for about a hundred meters and then turned to the left out of sight. “Okay,” he said distractedly. “Keep moving.”
The group started walking again, but Ben stayed put, examining the wall. His foot bumped into something, and he looked down to find the bleached bones of an animal about the size of a dog lying in the rocks at his feet.
Ramirez started past him and stopped. “Something, Sir?” he asked.
“What’s this look like to you?” Ben asked him, running his fingers along the holes in the dirt wall.
The other Ranger took a close look. He sniffed in thought. “Hits from small arms fire, maybe?” he answered. “Maybe some of our SOCOM guys were out here before the surrender?”
Ben shook his head. “Not this far,” he said. “British SAS and some air strikes in the next valley, but not over here. As far as I know, anyway.”
Ramirez looked around at the ground around them. “No brass. No blood. No bodies. Maybe it’s just a natural phenomenon.”
By now the rest of the group had left them behind. Ben raised his M-31 and turned. “Forget it,” he said. “Let’s get the civilians.” He trotted after the group to retake his spot, and Ramirez followed him. He was probably just jumpy. Spend enough time getting ambushed and every spot looks like a trap.
Once back in the middle of the group, he put it out of his mind. They were only a few miles from their objective. Now wasn’t the time to start chasing ghosts.
It seemed like he wasn’t the only one getting twitchy. He turned and found Alacea walking to his right, her head down and her ears twitching anxiously. Her tail swept the ground behind her as she walked.
He nudged Patricia and addressed the fox girl. “Is something wrong?” he asked her.
“Yeah, we are,” Ben agreed. “Are you worried?”
Patricia translated, and Alacea didn’t respond for several moments. Finally, she looked up at him, her eyes blazing with green intensity.
“She wants you to promise not to hurt anyone,” Patricia told him.
“I already promised that,” he said. “What makes her think promising a second time would make any difference? If I lied to her once, wouldn’t I be cool with lying to her again?”
Patricia paused. “Do you want me to translate that?” she asked.
“You’re my Two,” he said with a shrug. “Advise me. What can I do to make her believe I’m not going to just slaughter all her friends as soon as I see them?”
Alacea watched the byplay, her cheeks puffed up in annoyance at being left out of an obviously important conversation. Her tail swished angrily as Patricia thought up an answer.
“It’s a primitive, high-context society,” Patricia told him. “You may not be able to convince her ever.”
Ben thought for a moment and turned to her. “Tell her, ‘I promise.’”
The Ranger captain watched as the priestess stopped and turned to him. He stopped walking and faced her, meeting her intensity with his own and refusing to break contact.
Patricia cleared her throat nervously. “She said if you hurt her people, she’ll… um… kill you.”
Ben didn’t react. He looked at Alacea’s face, studied her. He could tell this woman had never hurt a living thing in her life. But that wouldn’t stop her. She was the kind of person who loved others intensely, and if the marauding alien in front of her betrayed her trust and harmed one of her people, she would find a way to kill him. It would be clumsy and probably not done successfully, but she would make it her mission. Because uttering that threat… and meaning it… was the only thing she could think of that might perhaps deter him if betraying her really was his intent.
He stared at her a moment more and reached up to his combat vest. Taking the handle of his mini-Kabar combat knife in his right hand, he pulled it from its scabbard and held it in front of him. Alacea gasped and took a step back, her wide green eyes now fixated on the blade he held. It was a good knife. Smaller than a regular Kabar, a Marine officer had shown him one during a joint operation, and Ben had fallen in love with it, buying one at the first post exchange store he could find. He had used it to open cans, look for mines, cut wires… everything… except kill a Va’Shen with it.
“Sir,” Patricia interjected quickly, her eyes now on the knife as well. “What…”
Ben turned the knife around and offered the hilt to Alacea. The fox woman stared at it and then looked up at his face, searching for signs of a trap.
“Tell her…” Ben said evenly, “… that if it comes to that… she can use this.”
Patricia licked her lips and turned to Alacea.
Alacea continued to stare, rooted to the spot. Ben didn’t move, his hand and the knife’s handle still outstretched to her. Tentatively, she reached out and gently took the knife with both hands. He released the blade, and her hands dipped for a moment as she took the entirety of the weapon’s weight. It was a small knife, but solid black steel. She looked up into his eyes, straightened regally and bowed to him in acceptance.
As if to signal that he considered the matter settled, Ben turned and started up the path again. Patricia fell into step with him, leaving the stunned Alacea there for a moment before she too followed.
“Nicely played, Sir,” Patricia remarked quietly as they walked.
Ben grunted. Patricia had said it herself. The Va’Shen, although it wasn’t politically correct to say, were a more primitive culture. The more cynical, self-absorbed culture that he came from would have laughed at such a gesture, but the Va’Shen’s, a culture that revolved around honor and loyalty, could see the gesture for the promise that it meant to convey.
At least, that was what he had hoped.
Patricia looked back and saw Alacea clutching the Kabar to her chest before gently, almost reverently, placing it in her bag. A promise backed up with a threat and guaranteed with the means of following through on that threat. It was better than empty words. At least, that’s what Alacea thought.
“She says it’s over the next hill,” Patricia translated, pointing ahead of them. The group had walked another three miles, and the vegetation had become sparser while
steep hills and ridges had multiplied. Coming over the hill, Ben looked down and saw a grassy plain that ended at a solid cliff-face that reached up fifty meters with no obvious way up.
“Is she sure?” Ben asked skeptically as the two women cleared the hill themselves.
Before Patricia could ask the question, Alacea’s eyes went wide. She made to rush forward, but Ben’s hand on her arm jerked her to a stop.
“What the…”
“She says this is the spot,” Patricia told him as the fox girl continued to pull at his arm. Ben looked at where she was pointing and found that one section of the cliff was a different shade of brown than the rest.
He jerked her arm down until they were both in a kneeling position. “Knock that off!” he ordered curtly. “You don’t know what’s changed since you left!”
“Ramirez,” Ben signaled, raising his free hand over his shoulder. Alacea had stopped pulling, and Ben was able to take the other Ranger’s sniper rifle in both hands, looking through the scope at the cliff facing them. With the scope’s magnification, his hunch was proved correct. He handed the weapon back and rose to his feet.
“Cave in,” he said. “But it looks like there’s a small opening about ten meters up the cliff face.” He heard Patricia jabbering in Va’Shen, trying to keep Alacea up to date with the conversation.
“You think they blew the mountain down on top of them?” Ramirez asked.
“Makes sense,” Burgers added. “If we weren’t actually looking and didn’t have the girl with us, we would have walked right by it.”
Ben made a noncommittal noise as he studied the cliff. “Pretty big risk. More likely the rain storm a few days ago brought some of the earth around it down, and they just decided to leave it.”
Alacea continued to stare at the cliff in obvious fright, only half listening to what Patricia was telling her. Her behavior more than anything was enough to convince Ben it wasn’t some kind of elaborate trap.