The Fleet-Book Four Sworn Allies

by David Drake (ed)

  Viedre whacked the third across the lower back with the stock of his rifle. The Khalian dropped its weapon, which fell from the window. There was a cry of triumph below. Some other Weasel must have grabbed it.

  The ceiling in this room was almost six feet high, obviously built for humans. Viedre straightened up as the Khalian he had disarmed jumped for him, claws and teeth bared. He tried to train the gun on it, but it whisked out of his sights before he could thumb the trigger stud. It darted under the gun and grabbed him around the chest, tearing at his uniform and reaching for his throat with its teeth.

  Its claws scored through his uniform and arms but caught in the fabric of the flak vest. Blood poured out of the lacerations. Viedre tried to shake the Weasel loose, but it hung on, digging its back legs into the flesh of his thighs and bearing him over backward to the stone floor. Blows to its head and back with the stock didn’t seem to hurt the Khalian, so Viedre threw the rifle aside. With his teeth gritted, he forced his hands up, and under the Khalian’s jaw, pushing the teeth away from his neck. The Weasel seemed to be as tough and limber as a snake, and it was angry. It kept hissing something at him in its own language. Viedre changed his grip to throw the Khalian off, and it snapped at his wrists.

  Ignoring the pain in his legs, Viedre gathered his strength, and with a wrench turned himself over with the Khalian still clinging to his chest, and flung himself on the ground. The Khalian wheezed as the air was knocked out of it, and let go its grip. Panting, Viedre seized it by the neck and belly fur and slammed it against the wall. Weasels weighed little for their size. A human could defeat one easily in a contest of strength. The Khalian squealed and raked at him with a back foot. Viedre slammed it against the other wall and back again until it stopped moving. Blood welled out of its mouth as Viedre threw its body to the floor.

  Marks appeared in the doorway. His uniform hat was gone, and his red hair hung around his sweaty face. “You okay?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Krim, but you’re a mess.”

  “Forget it. Help me downstairs.” Viedre picked up his rifle and limped out.

  At the bottom of the ramp, they burned the steel door closed behind them so no more Weasels could use it as a vantage point, and then joined Tarzan and most of the other Apes in driving a herd of Khalians over the perimeter.

  “Hey, help me here!”

  Sokada found himself standing alone in the middle of a solid crowd of Weasels. Yelling for backup, he sprayed laser bolts around him. That killed about ten of them, but the rest saw what was happening to the others, and ducked under his field of fire whenever he faced their way. Two of his fellows had been torn to pieces by the mob after they were shot by snipers out of the administration-building window. Tammer had been shot in the hand and then holed through the back before he fell. He was still screaming when they tore him apart. Colwyde had taken two shots square in the face, and had a line burned across his chest. He had been dead before the mob reached him.

  Sokada realized that no one could hear his shouts over the war cries of the Khalia. The gun was pulled out of his hands, and a set of teeth attached themselves to his fingers, chewing into the flesh. Gasping with pain, Sokada drew his sword with his free hand and cut off the head of the Weasel biting him. With the laser fire no longer keeping the mob at a distance, the Marine was surrounded by furry bodies stabbing at him with spears. They understood his disadvantage without his laser rifle against their natural armament of teeth, claws, and thick, hairy hide.

  Mechanically, he slashed, parried, and turned, around and around, until the Weasels’ faces blended together in a toothy, furry mass. As long as his arms were moving, he was able to avoid taking much more damage there, but his right leg hurt from a deep stab wound in the thigh where a parry had failed to turn a thrust from a halberd blade, and his bruised left knee felt as if it was going to give out.

  A badly aimed slash with a polearm missed taking his ear off, but the flat of the blade hit him solidly in the side of the head. Sokada roared with pain and redoubled the speed of his attack. He was walking backward, slipping and stumbling over the bodies of wounded or dead Khalians, as he tried to get near enough to the stone wall to put his back to it.

  He risked wiping the sweat off his face with a bleeding hand. Another Weasel jumped for him, and he spitted the creature on the dripping sword blade. The others took advantage of his blade’s entanglement to rush in and claw at him. Sokada lifted a foot and thrust the body off the sword and in to their faces.

  They no longer had any individuality. When they moved, he attacked them; when they stopped moving, he ignored them.

  At last the granite wall was against his back. Sokada kicked out and stabbed, trying to stay upright. To his relief, the throng seemed to be thinning out, moving off to his left toward the ruined hangar. Tarzan and half the company were moving the crowd away from him.

  He called out as they passed. “Sarge! Colwyde and Tammer . . .”

  “I saw ‘em. Watch out!”

  A white and brown Khalian had seen Sokada glance away from the fighting, and launched itself at him. It grabbed his wounded hand and began to chew it off at the wrist. Sokada’s eyes filled with tears, and he ground his teeth in pain and fury.

  “Damn you, you stupid little rodent-toothed monster!” He battered the Weasel over the skull with the hilt of his sword until its legs went limp. He kept pounding until he felt the bone give, and the bloody jaws parted to release his hand. The tendons were showing through the ripped flesh.

  “You miserable piece of vermin. I’ll take your skin back as a souvenir. I’ll use it to wipe my ass!”

  Dropping his sword, he drew his dagger. He grabbed the Weasel corpse by the muzzle and flipped it over. Starting with a cut across the throat, Sokada started to skin the dead Khalian.

  A very small Khalian squirmed under the fighting line of Marines and ran toward him. Dashing its spear to the ground in front of Sokada, it threw itself on the body between it and screamed defiance. It made a grab for the knife, which Sokada whisked out of reach, and dropped down protectively across the body.

  “Krim take it, what’s it saying?” the Marine demanded, trying to get its prize back.

  “You killed its mother,” Mack shouted from the corner of the building. “It doesn’t want you to cut her skin off.”

  “This is its mother?” Sokada asked, drawing back. “I . . . shit, I’m sorry.” He let go of the body and backed away, but not before the child clawed a furrow down his leg with a lightning slash of its claws. Stunned, Sokada didn’t seem to notice. He limped quickly away, out of Mack’s line of sight, around the corner of the outbuilding. In a moment, Mack could hear him throwing up.

  The child alternately howled and whimpered over the torn body, whispering endearments that Mack could just barely understand. He, too, was sick about the vicious turn that their mission had taken. Both sides seemed to have forgotten that their enemies were living beings, with families and emotions. Mack studied the child, wishing there was something he could do to comfort it.

  He noticed then that there was blood seeping through the black fur on its shoulder and pooling on the ground. The child paid no attention to its wounds as it moaned and cradled its mother’s body. Its grief was too deep. Mack’s instincts as a healer refused to let him ignore an injury, even if it was one of the enemy. He stopped and berated himself. This child wasn’t the enemy. The Marines were the invaders here. None of these civilians had ever seen a human world. Even as he reached for bandages Mack realized why the Khalia had been so vicious to human civilians, if this was how their own reacted.

  Mack moved out of the shelter, an antiseptic-anesthetic pad already unwrapped. Keeping his voice low and soothing, he addressed the child in its own language.

  “Easy, little soft-fur. Be calm. You’re a brave warrior, yes, you are. You’re wounded. This will make it stop hurting, and then you can
rest. I mean you no harm.’”

  It paid no attention to him as he crouched over and walked slowly toward it. But as soon as he was within arm’s length, the child tried to shred Mack’s face, but missed. The injury made its reactions slow. It let out a cry of pain. Mack easily avoided the flashing claw, grabbed the wrist, and clapped the pad onto the open wound.

  Like the closing of a switch, the child’s expression changed abruptly from an openmouthed snarl to a blank wariness. Mack held up a synth-skin plaster. “This will cover the wound and make your shoulder feel better until it heals.”

  “I will bleed and die, like a warrior, and they will sing of my death,” the young Khalian snapped proudly.

  Mack smiled at his bravado. “You should think of growing up, so you can die in a more worthy battle. There are so few of us you don’t have a kill of your own.”

  “I can kill you.”

  Amused, Mack sniffed and curled his lower lip, the Khalian equivalent of a shrug. The youngster recoiled, eyeing him. Evidently Mack had done the gesture correctly. “For how much honor? I’m unarmed. I am only a healer.”

  The child squinted and bristled his whiskers suspiciously. He was still not letting Mack get too close. A quick glance around showed that all the armed Fleet personnel were still engaged in battle with many of his fellow villagers. Mack knew what the Khalian was thinking: there wasn’t any way to accomplish a heroic death without getting in the way of a senior warrior. He’d be more likely to earn a bite on the ear than a kill.

  “If you’re a healer, do you swear on your honor as a (non-translatable insult) not to poison me?”

  “I do,” Mack promised. Carefully putting his knee down on the child’s discarded spear so it couldn’t be snatched away and used on him, Mack cleaned and sealed the wound. There were other scratches, none serious. Mack swabbed them out and left them alone. Khalians set great store by their battle scars. By the, look on his young patient’s face, shock was beginning to set in now. Mack led him back to his sheltered position and sat him against the wall with a rations bar and a container of water.

  The doctor hurried back to see that all Khalians still on their feet had been driven back behind the bounds of the circle. Tarzan and the others were merely keeping them outside.

  “Don’t shoot at ‘em unless they stick a toe over the line,” he shouted in Alliance Basic, his voice carrying easily to all positions. “Our orders are only to hold this landing strip, not depopulate the planet. Sound off. I want to hear your acknowledgments.”

  “Jordan, aye.”

  “Utun, aye.”

  “Dockerty, aye.”

  “Viedre, aye.”

  “Marks, aye. “

  The voices came from around the circle, shouted from behind the building and from its upper floors, and echoed weakly by Sokada, still behind the outbuilding. Only twenty-two, Mack added his “aye” when his turn came, and looked for the missing three. Two were dead, lying not far from where he had seen the young Khalian. There was no hope that they might be alive. He treated Utun and four others for minor wounds. Utun sat perimeter watch with the plasma-cannon tripod braced against her chest, snarling back at the Khalians she was guarding. It was then that Mack saw the missing Ape and hurried over to him. The other Apes saw him, but were too busy holding back the mob to react.

  Pirelli, bleeding from a dozen slashes and bites, was on his back just on the other side of the wall in the destroyed hangar next to the administration building. Mack checked his tracer several times to make sure it was showing life, not a blue light for death. It was hard to believe that the man could have sustained so much trauma and yet live. The new medical packs seemed to be a real improvement. He would need substantial reconstructive surgery when they were lifted off-planet.

  Shillitoe loomed hugely over a cluster of growling Khalians who stood just outside the perimeter between the building and the ruin. The circle behind him was dotted with the bodies of Khalians. In the center, Dockerty stood guard over the beacon unit, now flashing its steady rhythm to the skies. The villagers watched it with growing alarm. Mack suspected they thought it was a bomb.

  Suddenly, two adult Khalians dashed over the line toward the beacon. Accurately, dispassionately, Dockerty gunned them both down. There were gasps and growls from the others. A couple more started forward, urged by three elders wearing the office of bard, but they glanced at the gun sights trained on them and remained where they were.

  “You stay on your side, and no one will get hurt,” Shillitoe announced, fanning the muzzle of his rifle at the crowd. The villagers backed away, but surged forward to the line again. “Yeah, crowd it all you want. I’m not turnin’ my back on you.”

  Mack translated his order into Khalian and repeated it several times so the whole circle could hear him. He paused near the ruins where he heard a faint groaning.

  “Hello?” he called. The noise stopped. Mack switched to Khalian. “Answer?”

  “Here,” came a low murmur. Mack followed the voice into the rubble. Behind a heap of broken rock and mortar lay an aged Khalian female. When she saw Mack coming toward her, she growled fiercely.

  “Kill me,” she dared him.

  “I don’t kill.”

  “Coward.”

  He smiled. “I’m a healer. Let me help you.”

  “What kind of (non translatable insult) are you?” It was the same term the child had used.

  “One who tries to prevent unnecessary death,” Mack said, assessing her injuries. “A wise warrior learns to fight another day.”

  “What are you doing?” demanded Sanborn, the Marine patrolling that arc of the circle.

  “I’m doing triage on this old female,” Mack explained patiently. “She’s been holed through the belly, and her right forelimb is crushed. I think the bone is broken.”

  “If she’s hurt, put her out of her misery. She’s only a Khalian.”

  “Hold your water,” grunted Sokada, limping from around the side of the administration, building. “Sergeant!” he shouted. “Request permission to render assistance to injured local!”

  “What?” demanded, Shillitoe from across the compound.

  “Yeah, sure,” he answered, not sure he had heard correctly.

  Sokada himself was heavily bandaged and his one arm was nearly useless.

  “How’s the light here for you, Doc?” Sokada asked.

  Mack, pleased at Sokada’s show of humanity, glanced at the rough ground, and then up at the sun. “I think it would be easier for me if I could examine her in the full sunlight. How about up there, near the end of the runway?”

  Sokada slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Sure, Doc. C’mon, Sanborn, give me a hand.”

  “Awww, what the hell.” The new blood eyed the mob as he edged toward them.

  With great care, the three humans lifted the old female and carried her to a flat, open sunny space between the two destroyed hangars. She struggled and cried out, causing another stir at the perimeter. Ellis and two of the others had to fire a few bursts in front of the villagers before they subsided.

  “I am a sacrifice, for my people. Kill me and let the children alone,” the old female demanded as Mack bent over her.”

  “We’re not going to kill anyone else,” he assured her, dabbing antiseptic on her arm before injecting a painkiller. The stomach wound had damaged no vital organs. Certainly her lungs were in good shape. His medical scanner showed only entrance and exit wounds through the belly wall, the muscles, and the layers of skin. “See? No one is shooting.” She was fortunate he had one of the few med scanners ever programmed for Khalian anatomy.

  “You are kinder than the others were. They said you would kill us all.”

  “Not at all. By the way, what does (non-translatable insult) mean?” Mack tried to match her pronunciation.

  “Ones with as little honor as hair. But you
must have more hair than what shows. I will not call you that again.”

  “Uh.” Mack wasn’t ready to explain human hair growth patterns to her. “Let me know if this hurts.” Mack felt down the forelimb until he found the break. It was a clean snap, needing only to be realigned and splinted. He twisted, and the ends of the bone were once more in line. Using a ventilated plastic bandage that stiffened quickly when exposed to air, he splinted her limb.

  “A warrior never complains of pain.” The old female struggled to sit up as soon as Mack moved his hands. She had some sort of medallion around her neck.

  There was a gasp from the host of Khalians at the circle’s edge. Many moved from where they had been herded to the point closest to the old female. A younger Khalian started to move toward her, but saw a Marine stating at him, and changed his mind. Mack gestured to Sokada.

  “Can you get Pirelli over here? Careful. He’s in bad shape.”

  The two Marines took their wounded mate by his arms and legs and lifted him. With an anguished cry of pain that nearly made them drop him, Pirelli regained consciousness and started to struggle in their grasp.

  “Hey, Doc, he’s delirious! We can’t hold on to him.” Mack gave his Khalian patient a final glance and ran to help. He wrapped his arms around Pirelli’s legs, but that only made the injured Marine more frantic. Mack decided the big man must be having a reaction to the new drugs in his suit’s medi-pack. He changed his grip, and got a knee in the chin.

  A squeal from the perimeter attracted attention from the other Marines. Four Weasels were making their way quietly into the circle, over the protests of the others, who were trying to keep them back over the line. All four wore the trappings of bards.

  “It’s death! It’s death!” the other Khalians cried.

  Tarzan spun at the commotion and pointed his rifle. “Positions!” he barked.

  “No, wait,” Mack shouted over the command frequency, turning with his arms out to stop the company from opening fire. The other two men lowered Pirelli to the ground and readied their own weapons. “Wait. I think they’re helping.” Mack tried to assure them.