by Dan Cragg
were stranger than could be conceived of by the headquarters pogues.
The Wee Hours, Approaching Sky City A Senior Master led a Master, two Leaders, and six Fighters on the road to the capital of Haulover. The Master drove the landcar they’d captured from an Earthman outpost. The Leaders had grumbled between themselves about stealing a landcar without killing the Earthmen in the outpost, or destroying the buildings, but not loudly enough for the Master or the Senior Master to overhear. Had they been overheard, they would have been disciplined, and discipline in the Emperor’s army was severe; and if they survived the discipline they would be reduced to mere Fighters with no chance of being returned to the position of Leader. The two Leaders didn’t know, but they suspected the Master was likewise displeased. If he was, he didn’t complain within their earshot. Both Leaders had served under the Senior Master leading them that night, and knew him to be an exceptionally harsh disciplinarian. They suspected that if the Master complained about doing nothing more than stealing the landcar, the Senior Master might well have executed him on the spot for protesting the Grand Master’s orders. The six Fighters had no opinion on the matter. The Master drove the Earthman landcar. It was a very quiet vehicle. Which was fortunate, since the Master had little experience of Earthman landcars and had difficulty starting it and then confining it solely to the road. Had the vehicle not been so quiet, the theft would have awakened the Earthmen at the outpost, and the real People would have had to kill them—as the Leaders, and probably the Master as well, desired to do. As it was, the Master did drive the landcar off the road a few times, and even collided with a tree once. But by the time they reached the plateau on which Sky City perched, the Master was driving the landcar as though he’d been doing it since his youth.
The ten were garbed in Earthman clothes, since they were going into the Earthman city and might be seen by someone who questioned their presence. They could kill such a person, of course, but would do so only if letting the person live jeopardized their mission. They were required to kill any of the Earthman Marines who might be in their house—and the captured Fighter if he was there. But killing a questioner might draw unwanted attention to the group and thereby alert the Earthman Marines so that the mission to kill them and the captured Fighter could fail. That was why the Over Master who planned the mission assigned a Senior Master who spoke the Earthmen’s primary language to command it. The Senior Master should be able to deflect any potential challenges simply by talking. Once they killed the Earthman Marines and their prisoner, they could kill as many of the Earthmen of Sky City as they desired. But most important was killing the Earthman Marines and the captured Fighter. The killing of their enemies would surely bring out any other Earthman Marines who might be hiding on the planet to where they could be killed by the Emperor’s Third Composite Corps. Or bring large numbers of Earthman Marines there if none were present. It did not matter if the ten members of the raiding party lived to return to headquarters. If the mission was not successful, they would not return. The landcar strained climbing the road to the top of the plateau; it wasn’t meant to carry as many passengers as it held. Still, it reached the top of the plateau three hours before dawn. The map drawn by the Masters and Leaders who had earlier scouted the location of the Earthman Marines’ quarters was true and easy to follow. The raiders saw few other people or vehicles along the way. When they reached their objective, the driving Master drove a hundred meters farther before stopping. The ten got out and hid their weapons, projectile throwers taken on raids against the outposts—weapons better suited for fighting inside the house than the acid shooters they normally used—under their Earthman garments then headed for their
strike positions along the sides and rear of the building. The Master and two Fighters took position along one side, next to windows; the two Leaders and two Fighters by windows on the other side; the Senior Master and the remaining two Fighters went to the rear entrance to the building. While the strike team arrayed itself around its objective, a pair of observer Masters took positions more than half a kilometer away. Regardless of developments, they were not to engage in the fighting at the Earthman headquarters. If none from the strike team survived their mission, the mission of these two was to report what had happened. Marine House
Corporal Nomonon yawned and checked the time for what felt like the two hundredth time, but it was only a couple of minutes after his last time check. Normally he’d be much less restive during guard duty. But his normal watches were in the field, and there he could patiently maintain watch for twentyfour hours without moving. Twice that long if necessary. But one lousy hour inside Marine House, that was driving him nuts. It was the first time they’d had an overnight watch since they arrived on Haulover; it was also the first time they’d had a prisoner to watch over. Nomonon’s eyelids drooped and his head lowered. His chin fell to his chest and bounced right back up. “Damn!” he swore softly. “Can’t fall asleep.” He wasn’t thinking of being disciplined for falling asleep on guard duty, he was more concerned with the ragging he’d get from the other Marines if he fell asleep during a lousy one-hour fire watch. He decided to stand and take a look through the house. Not that there was anything to look at or for, but walking around would keep him awake. He was in the kitchen getting a drink of water when he heard a whistle from behind the house, followed immediately by the tinkling of glass from the back door.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
Marine House, Sky City, Haulover The Skinks
The raiding party didn’t have any communications devices; they didn’t want to risk alerting the Earthman Marines by having their transmissions intercepted. The Senior Master commanding the mission looked along both sides of the building to verify that his raiders were in position and had withdrawn their weapons from under their clothing, then took his own place next to the door on the back of the building and blew a short blast on his whistle. On that signal, one of the Fighters with him poked the muzzle of his weapon through a pane of glass in the door and reached in to fumble for the securing mechanism and fling the door open. The scouts who drew the map that led the raiders to the quarters of the Earthman Marines had not been able to enter the building, so the raiders didn’t have an accurate layout, but the scouts had been able to see enough from the outside to know that a hallway led from the back door to a large front room, and that several smaller rooms opened off the hallway. The Senior Master ushered the two Fighters through the door ahead of him. They raced to a door on the left and opened it, filling the hallway with thunder by firing their weapons into the room beyond. The Senior Master himself threw open the first door on the right and dashed inside without firing. No light came
into the room from outside, but he turned on the light globe hanging around his neck. He had to blink against the sudden brilliance, but then he lowered nictitating membranes over his eyes and was immediately able to see reasonably clearly. The room was unoccupied—except for the captured Fighter. With a cry of triumph, the Senior Master ran to the narrow bed where the Fighter was secured. As he pulled a bottle from one pocket in his pants, and a spark maker from another, he ignored the Fighter’s shouted words: “The Earthman Marines, they treated me well! They are not evil!” The Senior Master opened the bottle and doused the Fighter with the accelerant it contained, then lit the spark maker and jumped back far enough that the resulting flames wouldn’t ignite him. It was necessary to vaporize the Fighter in cleansing fire; if he was merely killed, his body would remain behind to possibly tell the Earthmen who they were, and where Home was. Only after the body of the captured Fighter was returned to its component elements did the Senior Master become aware that he had heard a sizzle-whoosh from the hallway, and saw the bright light that flashed there. The Marines
At the sound of the whistle and breaking glass at the rear of the house, Corporal Nomonon roared out, “INTRUDERS!” and spun to race from the kitchen to the front end of the hall; in one movement, he dropped the glass from which he’d been dr
inking and went for his sidearm. He was so intent on what was happening at the rear of the house that he almost missed the sound of breaking glass behind him. Reflexively, he dove to his left and rolled to face the kitchen windows, completing his draw and pointing his hand blaster toward where he’d heard the noise. His reflex movement was fast enough; two projectiles, accompanied by BOOMS! magnified by the confines of the room, slammed through the space he’d just occupied. Two smallish men holding projectile rifles were clambering through the windows. He squeezed the trigger of his hand blaster and blinked in shock when one of the small men immediately flared into flame. The other twisted and flowed, moving as fast as Nomonon had moved diving from the initial projectile fire, to escape the fireball. He moved far enough, fast enough that Nomonon’s first shot at him missed. But the invader flashed into vapor at the Marine’s second shot. Nomonon hadn’t seen the third intruder, who had been behind the others. But in his last seconds of consciousness he felt the impacts as the man fired his rifle through the window and put three rapid projectiles into the Marine’s chest. The Skinks
With the first part of his mission accomplished, the Senior Master turned his attention to the sounds and lights from the hallway, the sizzle-whoosh and flashes of brilliant light. He also heard the guttural shouts of his own troops mingled with the harsh, confused cries of the Earthman Marines. In the hall, he saw the scorch marks where one of the Fighters had been immolated by the terror weapons wielded by the Earthmen—weapons terrible because they didn’t merely kill but ignited the oilpermeated cells of the bodies of the People and vaporized them. He also saw the scars burned into the walls and floor of the hall by plasma bolts that had failed to strike the other Fighter who had entered the room across the way. That Fighter stood just inside the opposite door, patiently, even placidly, awaiting orders. A plasma bolt struck the doorjamb near the Senior Master’s head. He flinched and belatedly realized that his light globe was still on, that its glow must have drawn the fire. He flicked the light off and waited for more fire to come his way. When none did, he signaled the Fighter across the way to get ready to poke his Earthman projectile thrower around the corner of the door and blaze away down the length of the hall. The Fighter mimed what he would do when he received the order, and the Senior Master was satisfied.
The Senior Master wished he’d thought to bring a periscope, or, failing that, that he had a mirror that he could use to look down the hallway without exposing himself. But he had neither. Not that it would necessarily matter, not if the Earthman Marines were wearing their invisibility uniforms. The Senior Master stripped off his shirt and turned to face the front of the house, to better sense the locations of the Earthmen. He signaled the Fighter to do the same. What he felt made him jump to the side and draw his projectile sidearm, then empty the weapon through the corner of the walls toward the front of the house. The electric emanations he felt along his sides didn’t change, and he nodded to himself. He hadn’t been present during the debriefing of the Leader who was the sole survivor of the previous day’s encounter with the Earthman Marines, but he’d listened to the recordings, so he knew the Earthman Marines could be much closer than their electrical emanations would indicate. That was why he was surprised and had emptied his sidearm through the wall. But since his projectiles had no discernible effect on the enemy, he deduced that there was something in the invisibility uniforms that damped the electric signals, making the Earthmen seem farther away than they actually were. He inserted another magazine into his sidearm while he analyzed anew the signals he was receiving. He didn’t know the layout of the house, or how the electric conduits snaking through it or other sources of electric signals might be masking the locations and numbers of the Marines. But he had not risen to Senior Master and would not have been in line for promotion to Over Master had he not been able to locate the electric field of a life-form in a jumble of other signals. Closer to the front of the house, inside rooms near the far end of the hallway, were three or four Earthmen; two on this side of the hall, one or two on the other. Two or three more were beyond that, to the left side, a single one and either one or two more, he couldn’t tell for sure. Of his own troops, he sensed one on the right side of the front part of the house and two on the left. With the one across the hallway, that meant he had four remaining, to face at least five and possibly seven of the enemy. Against those odds, it was likely that he and his troops would die. But they had accomplished their primary mission, and would take at least half of the Earthman Marines with them when they died. That would be a satisfactory conclusion to the mission. The Marines
Corporal Jaschke was a sound sleeper, but not so sound a sleeper that certain noises couldn’t penetrate his consciousness and bring him to instant wakefulness. High among the short list of Get-Up-Right-Now! sounds was an alarm cry from another Marine. So when Corporal Nomonon shouted, “INTRUDERS!”, Jaschke was rolling out of bed and reaching for his weapons before his eyes were even open. In that second, he had achieved enough situational awareness to recognize the thump and gasp from the other side of the room as Lance Corporal Ellis doing the same things he’d just done. Confused sounds came from other parts of the house. A hand blaster went off in the kitchen, along with the sharp crack of projectile-throwing rifles. There was the tinkling of breaking glass from the side wall of the living room. And gunfire at the end of the hallway near the back door—along with a whoosh, as though something had gone up in sudden flame. As he grabbed his helmet and pulled it on, Jaschke scrabbled to the door and eased it open. He slid his light-gatherer screen into place and eased his head into the hall at floor level, his sidearm in his hand poking in front of his face. He was in time to see a smallish man, who looked very much like the prisoner except that he was dressed and armed, step out of the room opposite the secure room. Without hesitation, Jaschke snapped a plasma bolt at the intruder. The man blazed into all-consuming flame—just like Williams
and his men had said. Thinking it wasn’t likely that the intruder was alone, Jaschke fired several more bolts down the hall, skittering them along the walls and floor, hoping bits of plasma would break off and splash into the room the intruder had come out of. He felt Ellis moving into the doorway, facing toward the front of the house.
The Skinks
On the left, two Leaders and two Fighters waited at two windows for the signal. One window led into a large open space, the other into a room that looked like sleeping quarters. When they heard the Senior Master’s whistle from behind the house, they burst through the windows, one Leader and one Fighter through each.
The Fighter who was first through the sleeping room’s window landed in a shower of glass on a sleeping body. He rolled over the bed to the floor and sprang onto the next bed, knife in hand. But the Earthman Marine he expected to land on and quickly dispatch had been jarred to instant movement by the shattering of the window glass, and was already rising—the Fighter’s knife stroke scored the Earthman’s side instead of being the death blow it should have been. Somehow, the Earthman simultaneously grabbed and twisted the Fighter, and turned his twist into a full half-circle swing, slamming the Fighter headfirst into the wall, momentarily stunning him. The Earthman Marine who had been landed on by the Fighter followed him off the bed; he wasn’t on the bed when the Leader leaned through the window and fired several shots from his projectile thrower into it—the Leader didn’t realize his target had moved. He raised his eyes to look across the dark room and saw a darker shadow that was upright and larger than the Fighter who had gone through the window. He shifted his aim to pump several projectiles into the dark shadow that had to be one of the enemy and pulled the trigger. But before the Leader could get off more than one shot, the Earthman who hadn’t been in the bed where he had fired rolled to his knees and fired a bolt of plasma into the Leader. The two Earthmen were momentarily shocked by the fire that bloomed from the Leader, and recoiled from the flames . . .
. . . just as the stunned Fighter regained awareness, and realization that his ini
tial attack on the Earthman he was supposed to kill had failed. He located the Earthman Marine and screamed as he lunged off balance to stab him. But the lone projectile that the Leader had gotten off before he flashed into fire struck the Earthman and knocked him back, making the knife thrust miss and the Fighter tumbled to the floor. The first Earthman saw him in the brief light from the Leader’s blaze and snapped a shot at him, vaporizing him instantly. The Marines
Sounds of gunfire from multiple directions snapped Ensign Daly from his sleep. Like the other Marines, before he went to sleep he placed his weapon where his hand would automatically fall on it if he woke suddenly. He grabbed his hand blaster as he rolled out of bed and faced the door of his room. He squatted in the darkness, listening to the sounds of blasters and rifles. He heard firefights in the sergeants’ room, either the living room or the kitchen, and in the back hall. It wasn’t Marines in one place fighting off aggressors in one place; both kinds of fire sounded from all three locations. Whoever was attacking must have used multiple points of entry and engaged the Marines in every place that they were in Marine House—
except for Daly’s room, the only one that wasn’t immediately accessible through doors or windows. Daly reached for his helmet and slipped it on with the lightgatherer screen in place, then duck-walked to the door and listened for sounds in the hallway outside it. When he didn’t hear any noises right outside, he slid the door open and eased his head out. He didn’t see anyone, not even when he turned on the infra screen. The sounds of combat had stopped.