by B. V. Larson
“Exactly! Starships. They need metal to build them, to escape a world they’ve overgrown and move on to the next. No one can reach escape velocity from a world with cellulose, acids and organic gasses alone. They need more powerful chemical reactions. Things that can only be contained in the best of metals.”
“Trading with such beings—that’s a treasonous offense all by itself,” Drusus pointed out.
“Hold on, hold on. Remember, they weren’t inside the boundaries of Frontier 921. They were in the squid kingdom. They were beyond the frontier, outside the Empire. So…I made some perfectly legal deals. I ran metals to their secret worlds, the ones the squids had yet to stomp out. It’s been giving the squids fits, by the way. In a manner of speaking, I’m a misunderstood hero, sir, and that’s the God’s-honest truth.”
Drusus seemed amused. “Could you explain your thinking on that point?”
“Well, I’ve been supplying our worst enemy’s enemy with critical supplies. Why do you think they haven’t flown to Earth and wiped us out yet? Fear of the Empire? Hardly. They have problems of their own. Their ships are busy. I’ve been helping to keep them busy.”
“Everything you’re saying makes a strange kind of sense,” Drusus admitted. “But I fail to see why these beings chased you to Earth and tried to destroy you if you were their benefactor.”
“Yeah, that part. Well, like I said, I was doing business with them inside squid territory. But then they wanted me to make a secret delivery inside the borders of Frontier 921. At first, I thought they wanted to meet out here where squid patrol boats wouldn’t pick us up. Imagine my shock when I saw they’d colonized a world right here, in the midst of Imperial space!”
Drusus nodded. “So, you refused to do the deal?”
“Essentially…” Claver said, eyeing both of us. He shrugged. “I turned my ship around, went into warp and pulled out. They chased me to Earth. You know the rest.”
The whole scenario was clear in my mind now. Claver had been scared to find a colonized world near Earth. He’d run out on his trading partners. Enraged—probably because they’d already made payment—the Wur had chased him to Earth and destroyed his freighter.
Drusus’ hand fell on Claver’s shoulder. Claver flinched in response, but Drusus didn’t strike him.
“Claver,” he said, “I’m going to accept this version of events. I’m sure you’ve edited the story heavily in your favor. But a deal gone bad—I can buy that story. I can also buy that you’d deal with an alien menace so dangerous it’s seriously damaging an interstellar neighbor of ours.”
“Why, thank you kindly, sir—” Claver began.
“—but,” Drusus continued, “I want you to understand that your actions still border on treason. None of these dealings have been sanctioned by Earth or the Galactics. You’re operating outside the law. You’re aiding and abetting a threat to this entire region of space. These beings will never be content with a few forgotten worlds among the stars, will they? They have clear ambitions to take this region of space for themselves.”
Claver shifted uncomfortably, and Drusus removed his hand from the man’s shoulder.
“That said,” Drusus went on, “a deal is a deal. You’re free to go.”
“A deal is a deal!” Claver agreed happily. “I’d prefer to be dropped off on Machine World, where I have associates waiting, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“You misunderstand me,” Drusus said, his eyes dark and unblinking. “You’re free to exit this lifter. To walk among your megaflora friends.”
“What? You’re kicking me off this ship? They’ll—they may not be very understanding, Tribune, sir.”
Drusus nodded. “That’s possible. But that’s not my fault now, is it? In the future, should we meet again, I would suggest you keep local Earth officials apprised of discoveries of this magnitude. Are we clear?”
Claver sputtered and complained, but in the end, he was kicked off the lifter and out into the forest. We gave him supplies, a vac-suit and a snap-rifle—in my opinion, that was more than he deserved.
I watched as Claver wandered off into the forest, casting dark glances over his shoulder toward the curious troops who watched him leave.
“Banishment,” Drusus said to me. “An ancient, traditional punishment. If anyone might survive such a fate, it’s a man like Claver.”
“I think it was a good call, sir,” I said.
Drusus looked at me appraisingly. “I’m glad you feel that way. I’ve studied your case as well, McGill. While I know that Legion Varus has a tradition of accepting off-script behavior from their troops, we can’t allow anarchy to prevail. Your actions regarding Winslade and disobeying orders—they’re too great to be ignored.”
My heart sank. I felt certain I was about to learn my fate today as well.
“I understand, sir,” I said standing tall. Whatever he was going to say, I’d accept it. I had a level of respect for Drusus that was greater than any officer in the legion—with the possible exception of Centurion Graves.
“Good,” he said. “Here’s your mission—or punishment, if you prefer to think of it that way. You’ll gather your squad. Together, you’ll follow Claver discreetly. Use buzzers to track him in the forest. Find out where he’s going and what he’s up to. There are so many things we don’t understand about this planet and Claver’s interactions, such as how he talks to giant trees in the first place. Your job, from now on, is to learn those details.”
My mouth hung open. “Uh…but what about the Wur, sir?”
“You’ll deal with them. You have my utter confidence. Report in daily, and try to stay out of sight.”
“Right…uh, sir? When do we return?”
Drusus gave me a thoughtful glance. “I’ll review your reports. Possibly, I’ll make the decision that your reconnaissance team is worthy of a rescue effort. In the meantime, I’m taking this lifter out of this region. It stands to reason the Wur pod-walkers will attack this camp again, and I don’t want to be here when they do.”
I nodded numbly. Then I had a thought.
“But sir…why punish my whole squad? They didn’t do anything wrong.”
“That’s another lesson. As a commander of troops, you must always be thinking of the people who are following you. They will pay for every mistake you make. It’s called responsibility. You might want to look that one up on your tapper.”
“I’ll do that, Tribune.”
“Good luck, McGill,” he said.
Then Tribune Drusus turned around and mounted the ramp into the dark hold of the lifter. I watched him go, feeling like a man who’d been exiled.
Because that’s exactly what had happened.
-24-
In distant Roman times, banishment had been a common form of punishment for society’s rejects. Sometimes it was suffered by a family member who no one could stand, or an entire household cast out of their homes by their fellow villagers. Nations sometimes rejected whole tribes, exiling them and commanding them to leave for the wilds. It was a fate that had been suffered by many in history.
I stood at the edge of the encampment. My grim-faced band of soldiers was arrayed behind me. The officers were watching from behind the safety of the lifter’s blast-glass. Winslade had called our mission a “deep patrol” for the benefit of the squad, but I knew the score. We were being sent on a suicide mission. Even if we did make it back, there wouldn’t be anyone here because the lifter was leaving without us.
We stepped over the still smoking bodies of the Wur. I entered the forest with no illusions. This was “Death World.”
At the rear of our procession was a revving drone, a pig loaded with everything we’d need for several weeks. That fact had my team in a bad mood. They weren’t dumb. They could count, and a large amount of supplies meant a lot of marching around in these deadly woods.
“What the hell is this all about?” Carlos demanded when we’d left the main camp behind. He craned his neck this way and that, peering int
o the undergrowth for other squads. “Deep patrol? I don’t see anyone else marching off to their deaths in these ferns. What makes us so special?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Kivi asked. “McGill went ape and shot Winslade. The bio people in the revival room are all whispering about it.”
I glanced at the two of them in irritation. “I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“Then why did you take two trips through our revival machine today, Vet?” Kivi demanded.
“Bad luck, I guess.”
Refusing to explain any further, I led them deeper into the quiet forest. This planet was probably the quietest place I’d ever visited. Normally, there was wildlife peeping and howling in a landscape like this. But we heard very few sounds of that nature. No insects buzzed. No animals screeched or growled. The forest was dead, in a way. Only the profusion of gigantic plants, an alien species that had invaded the planet fairly recently, showed we were on a living world at all.
My squad grumbled and engaged in wild speculations. I figured it was a good diversion for them. They didn’t know that we’d been sent off to die out here while the lifter took off for greener pastures. I was a little worried about a breakdown in discipline when they figured out that part.
“Vet?” Kivi asked after a half-hour had passed.
“Yes, Specialist?”
“I recommend that we remove our helmets, or at least open our faceplates.”
“Why’s that?”
“You hear that hiss in your suit? That’s the air-conditioning, and it’s wasting power. If we want to be able to fight a prolonged engagement, we should reduce consumption. The oxygen levels in this atmosphere are nearly double that of Earth. There won’t be any problem with breathing.”
I looked at her for a moment. Kivi was my tech specialist. I would have traded both her and Carlos for Natasha, but Natasha had moved up to support Graves and wasn’t part of my squad directly. She hadn’t come with us on this trip. I’d felt both good and bad about that. We could sure have used her, but I was glad to spare her from my punishment.
My eyes shifted to Carlos. “Bio? Do you agree with Kivi on this?”
He nodded. “We’ll save power with the faceplates open, except during peak heat. As to toxins, we’ve yet to identify any in the air. The plants are dangerous, even the ones that don’t march around. But we can breathe.”
I gave the order. Soon, we were all more comfortable, walking with heads bared.
Our helmets were new, and in my opinion, superior in design to the previous models. They were no longer solid titanium casings. Instead, they resembled a series of concentric shells. They could be folded up into what looked like a crescent moon when not in use and stowed in our rucks. We stashed them away and breathed clean air.
“Feels good, doesn’t it, Vet?” asked Lau. The rookie had come up to the front of the line to march with me.
Feeling a sour frown growing on my face, I struggled to stop that response. I fought an urge to smack the boy down. That’s what Harris would have done, but I felt that while many of Harris’ behavioral habits represented wisdom on his part, others were born of plain orneriness. I forced a half-smile and nodded to the kid instead.
“Sure does, Lau. Night’s coming, and the temperature is dropping. I’m drying off sweat that I thought was permanent. It’s enough to make you look forward to darkness.”
“Vet?” Kivi called. “My buzzers have made contact with someone ahead of us.”
I rushed to her position and looked at a tiny screen.
“That’s got to be Claver,” I said. “Squad halt! Everyone shut up.”
Crouching, a few curious heads crowded around. I didn’t push them back. They were going to find out what was going on sooner or later.
“Claver?” Kivi asked in a hushed voice as she recognized the hiker that her buzzer was tracking. She looked at me. “Is that what we’re doing out here? Following Claver?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why didn’t you just tell us that, Vet?” Carlos demanded.
I glanced at him. “Because I didn’t want anyone tipping him off.”
That statement was partly true, but mostly, it was bullshit. Telling them we were following Claver wasn’t going to stop their questions. They were going to pile them on now.
Sure enough, Carlos and Kivi were already frowning. I wondered if I’d somehow spawned two more James McGills: underlings that questioned everything you did.
“McGill?” Carlos asked in a whisper. “Why are we following Claver? Why not just arrest him, or better yet, shoot his ass?”
“The brass thinks he might lead us to something. We’ll follow him and keep out of sight. Just have one buzzer on his tail at a time, Kivi, at a safe distance.”
“Got it. He’s moving again, about two kilometers ahead of our position. We should veer about twenty degrees west.”
We followed Kivi’s directions, and eventually the sun went down. Claver kept on walking, so we did the same.
Along about midnight, when my soldiers were beginning to complain about the long march, Claver finally stopped and made camp.
I noted with interest that he didn’t light a fire or pitch a tent. He didn’t even cut down a fern to make a bed. Instead, he crawled into the ferns and wove the leaves together making a sort of nest around himself.
“That’s weird,” Kivi said, watching on her tapper while chewing her rations. “Why do you think he’s doing that?”
“Hmm,” I said. “I think he’s going to great pains not to tear up the ferns. Maybe he knows something we don’t know.”
“Yeah?” Carlos said, laughing. “I think he’s some kind of eco-freak. I hate these ferns. They never stop lashing me in the face.”
So saying, he unleashed a force-blade, extending it from the forearm of his suit. With a single deft motion, he slashed down a big branch from the nearest fern. The smell of burnt plant material tingled in our noses.
“Dammit, Carlos,” I said. “Don’t mess with the plants unless I give you an order to do so! Got that?”
“Sure, Vet,” he said, organizing his kill into a bed of sorts. “But do you mind telling me why not?”
I walked over and hauled him to his feet. “Because,” I said angrily into his surprised face. “They might not like it.”
He gave a nervous laugh, which I ignored. I released him and walked away.
“You mean they might grow pods or something?” he asked. “I doubt that. The pods came from the big trees, not these ferns.”
I sat on a root the size of a truck and looked at him. Kivi began to explain before I could.
“Look,” Kivi said. “McGill’s right. We don’t know this world. What we do know is that these plants have complex defense mechanisms. They might do anything—grow a pod, whatever.”
“But this is just a fern, right?”
“Yes, but remember that according to Galactic records, nothing lived here a few centuries ago. The ferns and the trees—they don’t belong here. They’ve been transplanted, seeded here. I don’t trust anything that grows here.”
Carlos studied the fern branch he’d bedded down on with concern. Finally, he got up and dragged it away. Then he came back and lay on the dirt.
“This is bullshit,” he complained. “I bet Claver knows about the buzzer. I bet he’s just screwing with us on purpose.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Why don’t you test your theory? Chop up a few plants and make a log cabin out of them. If you’re fine in the morning, we’ll all know it’s safe.”
“Just like the rockfish back on Dust World, huh? No thanks, Vet.”
I chuckled, set up a watch order, and fell asleep.
* * *
When I was awakened, it was by a panicked Kivi.
She was shaking me, talking rapidly. Behind her head, the sun filtered through the thick canopy of green growths. The light was gloomy, but it was clearly morning.
“McGill! Wake up!”
“What’s wrong, girl?” I asked,
heaving myself up and clawing at my rifle.
She put a hand on my arm. “No, you can’t shoot your way out of this one.”
Frowning, I turned back to her. She looked at me suspiciously, worriedly.
Glancing around the camp, I noticed I was the only person she’d awakened. It was dawn, and most of my troops were still sleeping. It was her watch, the last one of the night. The nights were short here on Death World as were the days. The planet’s rotational period was only about twenty hours long.
“What’s wrong?” I repeated.
She brought her tapper up to my face. I looked, and then I knew.
On screen, the lifter was departing. The feed was live. The ship was taking off right now, leaving us behind.
“I didn’t order you to leave a buzzer back at camp,” I said.
“You didn’t order me not to, either.”
She had me there. I looked into her brown eyes. They were angry, scared and little bewildered. I felt a bit bad.
“Sorry,” I said.
She punched me then. I didn’t have a helmet on, and although I twisted my head to one side, she caught me with the knuckles of her gauntlet. Blood dribbled down from my ear, but I didn’t strike her back. I didn’t have the heart.
“I knew it,” she said. Then she proceeded to go into a marching, kicking fury. Curses and leaves floated around the glade until the others woke up.
“What the hell—” Carlos demanded, then he looked at me. “Hey, you two didn’t sleep together last night, did you?”
Kivi threw him an angry snarl. “No, we didn’t. And that’s never happening again. McGill didn’t screw me this time—he screwed all of us!”
To understand my squad’s behavior, you have to understand our culture and lifestyle. As a team of interstellar troops, we weren’t quite like the professional armies of the past. Oh yeah, we were good soldiers, don’t get me wrong. We could fight better than most humans ever could since we kept dying and coming back young and strong. We had more combat experience than our counterparts in days gone by—but we had a different flavor to our social interactions, too.