Starfist - 14 - Double Jeopardy

by Dan Cragg

  By David Sherman and Dan Cragg

  Starfist

  FIRST TO FIGHT

  SCHOOL OF FIRE

  STEEL GAUNTLET

  BLOOD CONTACT

  TECHNOKILL

  HANGFIRE

  KINGDOM’S SWORDS

  KINGDOM’S FURY

  LAZARUS RISING

  A WORLD OF HURT

  FLASHFIRE

  FIRESTORM

  WINGS OF HELL

  DOUBLE JEOPARDY

  Starfist: Force Recon

  BACKSHOT

  POINTBLANK

  RECOIL

  STAR WARS: JEDI TRIAL

  By David Sherman

  The Night Fighters

  KNIVES IN THE NIGHT

  MAIN FORCE ASSAULT

  OUT OF THE FIRE

  A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

  A NGHU NIGHT FALLS

  CHARLIE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

  THERE I WAS: THE WAR OF CORPORAL HENRY J. MORRIS, USMC THE SQUAD

  Demontech

  ONSLAUGHT

  RALLY POINT

  GULF RUN

  By Dan Cragg

  Fiction

  THE SOLDIER’S PRIZE

  Nonfiction

  A DICTIONARY OF SOLDIER TALK (with John R. Elting and Ernest L. Deal)

  GENERALS IN MUDDY BOOTS

  INSIDE THE VC AND THE NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning)

  TOP SERGEANT (with William G. Bainbridge)

  For:

  Tam Cragg

  First Sergeant, USMCR

  Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, 1991–1992

  Bosnia, 1996–1997

  Iraq, 2002–2003

  PROLOGUE

  “Does the Mother bless this?” Hind Claw asked.

  Mercury flicked a hand at Hind Claw’s face, barely nicking the side of his snout. “You know the Naked Ones keep the men and women in separate camps,” he snarled. “The Mother doesn’t know about it.”

  “Then what does the Father say?” Hind Claw asked, not to be dissuaded in his search for proper authorization.

  This time Bobtail smacked Hind Claw on the back of his head. “You know the Father is kept caged and guarded by the Naked Ones, so none can approach him.”

  Hind Claw slowly bobbed his head up and down on its long neck. “So,” he said, “there is no authority for what you propose doing.”

  Mercury leaned forward with his knuckles on the ground and his head stretched out, his whiskers close enough to tickle the side of Hind Claw’s face where he’d nicked it: the classic intimidation stance. “Proper authority or not,” he said softly but threateningly, “it needs to be done.”

  “If we fail?” Hind Claw asked, unfazed by the threat.

  “Then we are dead.”

  “And if we succeed?”

  “Then we have freed the people of our clan,” Ares said.

  Hind Claw nodded again. “And we gain status in our clan.” He looked into Mercury’s eyes. “And you could challenge for the Father. I would like to be allied to the Father.” He drew back far enough that Mercury’s whiskers no longer tickled the side of his snout. He raised his head high, baring his neck in submission. Hind Claw had been the last of the six to be persuaded. They were ready now.

  They took turns napping until the early moon set, then squeezed through the bars of the aboveground cage where they were kept at night.

  “Where are you going?” a sleep-slurred voice asked, someone awakened by the sounds of their squeezing between bars that were more symbolic of imprisonment than intended to keep them in.

  “We’ll be back,” Dewclaw whispered. “Go back to sleep.” He heard a faint rustle as the questioner resettled himself next to his mates.

  Hunched over, their narrow shoulders blending into long necks, the six slipped through the prison camp until they reached its edge. Mercury had scouted the way on several nights and he knew where the perimeter sentries were stationed. He also knew that the sentries would not be alert, that they weren’t afraid of other, still-free clans launching a night attack. Besides, the sentries were positioned to watch out, not in.

  They found the hidden armory that Mercury remembered preparing during the war against the Moon Flower Clan, a war that was interrupted by the arrival of the Naked Ones and their rapid subjugation of both the Moon Flowers and Mercury’s own Bright Sun Clan.

  The armory was well camouflaged; the Naked Ones had not found it, even though tracks on the ground made it clear that their vehicles had come by many times during the year they’d held the Bright Sun and Moon Flower clans in slavery and increased their sphere of control to include all the clans of Bright Sun’s Brilliant Coalition and Moon Flower’s Starwarmth Union. For all Mercury knew, the Naked Ones had conquered part or even all of the world beyond those two nations.

  The Naked Ones had come from the sky, roaring down in flaming sky vehicles such as none of the people had ever seen and only the most imaginative had ever conceived of. Their weapons were terrible, advanced far beyond the rifles and artillery of the people, and that, combined with the surprise and speed of their attack, had allowed them to conquer all the clans of two nations quickly and decisively. No one had been able to resist them for long, and none had been able yet to rise against the Naked Ones. At least not so far as Mercury had heard.

  But the Naked Ones had become complacent, and Mercury believed it was time to strike at them, to begin to free his people. But to do that they needed weapons.

  Getting into the hidden armory was harder than finding it. But get into it they did. They loaded themselves; each took two rifles and four hundred rounds. One carried a mortar tube and another a baseplate. The other four each took two of the canisters displaying the red skull, the mark of weapons that dispensed a lingering death. Each also carried four rounds for the mortar. They also each took four grenades. By the time they were finished, each was carrying his own weight in weapons and ammunition.

  They would have liked to rest before the long run back to the prison camp, but there was too great a chance that the Naked Ones would notice they were missing in the morning. So, heavily laden, they ran until they were within half a kilometer of the camp, where they hid the weapons and ammunition in a place Mercury and Hind Claw had prepared over the previous several nights.

  They only had an hour’s sleep before the Naked Ones roused the camp for the day’s labor in the mines.

  After the night’s exertions, the day was difficult for Mercury and his small team. But they took every opportunity they could to dig into the roof of the tunnel for grubs, worms, tubers, and anything else they could eat to give themselves energy; tonight would be just as difficult as last, even if they wouldn’t have to run for hours carrying their own weight in weapons and ammunition. Last night they would have died if they had been caught; tonight they might die regardless.

  Mercury already knew who the other eight he wanted to recruit were. Over the previous several weeks he’d listened carefully to the guarded grumblings of his fellow prisoners and sounded out those who seemed most realistic about what they’d do if the opportunity arose. The eight were also males alongside whom he’d fought the Moon Flowers or other clans with whom the Bright Sun Clan had been in conflict. During the day he and Hind Claw approached each of the eight and told them to slip from their cages after moon fall and meet at a specific location.

  The two did not tell the eight why.

  It was half an hour after the moon set before all fourteen were assembled. Even then, Mercury didn’t tell them why—although their restrained excitement showed that they were sure of what was up.

  “Follow me,” Mercury whispered to his squad. “Keep your tails low until you see mine go up, then run as fast a
s you can to keep up with me.” Mercury was well named; he was a very speedy runner.

  Without another word, they followed their leader at a safe distance past a drowsy guard post, dropped to all fours to lope through the scrub, then galloped tails high when Mercury began his sprint.

  It wasn’t a long sprint; the weapons cache was only a half kilometer from the ill-guarded camp. Mercury whispered orders while he distributed the weapons and ammunition. The eight newcomers who joined Mercury’s original half dozen grinned while they armed themselves and listened, memorizing their parts in the upcoming action.

  Fourteen males. Not many to free an entire clan. But they would strike with speed and surprise, as had the Naked Ones when they first attacked. And the Naked Ones had become overly confident; they’d recently reduced the size of the force guarding the twin camps, one for the males and one for the females, in which they’d imprisoned the Bright Sun Clan.

  The Naked Ones would pay dearly for that complacency.

  Armed and with their instructions committed to memory, the fourteen spread out, going in pairs to their assigned attack positions, six of the positions within two hundred meters of a guard post. The mortar team remained farther out; its weapon had greater range and was to take out the camp office and the guard barracks.

  None of them had a timepiece; those were among the personal items confiscated when they were interned in the camps. But everyone in the squad had put in his army time, and they were familiar with the heavens. The planet the Naked Ones called Opal was high in the night sky. When it entered the constellation of the Two-step Asp they were to listen for the mortar team to fire the shot that would launch the attack. Then they would fire on the guards in their stations and charge to kill them or drive them from their posts into the trenches the Naked Ones forced the People to dig as protection for the garrison. That was when the canisters marked with the red skull of the weapons of lingering death would come into play.

  Mercury wasn’t his real name. That was what he was called by the Naked Ones—at least by the Naked Ones who could tell the People apart. And Naked Ones was an ironic name, since they were not naked: They wore garments that covered all of their bodies except their heads and forearms. They were called the Naked Ones because they had no fur other than a short, thick thatch on the top of the head. Some of the Naked Ones had hair too thin to be called fur elsewhere on their bodies, as Mercury had discovered once when he saw some of them bathing. They also had a thick patch of fur at the groin, an area where the People had little or no fur. While the People wore swatches of animal skin or plant-fiber fabric for decoration or as symbols of rank, their languages and philosophies lacked the concept of modesty, so their hairy bodies had no need for clothing in the hot, arid climate in which they lived.

  All the members of the squad watched the wandering star Opal as it moved through the sky nearer and nearer to the sinuous line of stars that formed the image of the deadly Two-step Asp. Mercury bared his teeth in a smile, thinking of how that night the constellation did augur death—the death of the Naked Ones who’d imprisoned his people.

  Opal never moved rapidly against the starry background, and not nearly as fast as the moon. But on that night, with tension high, it seemed to move even more slowly than usual. Still, Opal did move, and eventually entered the constellation.

  Karumph came the muffled sound of the distant mortar bomb being launched.

  Mercury tensed and tried to imagine what the Naked Ones in their guard posts might make of the unexpected sound. Did they know it was the opening shot of an attack? Did they think it was distant thunder? Were they even awake and aware enough to recognize the sound as the launching of a mortar bomb?

  Seconds later, there could no longer be any question that it was the beginning of an attack; the mortar impacted in the middle of the camp, near the Naked Ones’ barracks. By the time it hit, a second mortar bomb was on its way, and then a third and a fourth and a fifth. The mortar team shifted aim slightly between rounds; a millimeter change in the angle of the mortar tube could make a change of meters in the striking point of the bomb.

  Under and between the explosions in the middle of the camp, Mercury could make out the faint screams of wounded or frightened guards. A fire suddenly blazed where the mortars were striking; one had hit a fuel dump.

  Now, with light to see by, Mercury made out an officer who was shouting orders and hastening the guards out of the area under bombardment, organizing them to go out of the camp in search of the mortar. Closer to him he saw, silhouetted against the flames, the two Naked Ones in the guard post directly in front of him. Instead of facing out, watching for an attack on their position, they were standing erect and looking into the camp at the bursting bombs and burning fuel.

  Mercury reached out to touch the neck of Furball, with whom he was partnered, and told him what he wanted to do. Furball answered with a grin that was all teeth. The two took aim and shot at the standing guards. They were already loading fresh rounds into their rifles by the time the bullets they’d fired had hit their targets, and the standing guards dropped out of sight. The guards didn’t rise again or return fire.

  Mercury heard two more pairs of shots at other places around the perimeter and laughed to himself, certain that more guards had met the Two-step Asp, paying for taking the Bright Sun Clan into captivity.

  By then the Naked Ones officer had his males organized and led them at a run toward the nearest gate through the fence. Mercury aimed at the officer, unsteadily seen through the flickering light of the burning fuel, led him, and fired. He rapidly reloaded and fired again. In the increasing darkness as the officer raced from the fire, Mercury couldn’t judge his aim well enough; both shots missed. He stopped firing to preserve his ammunition. Besides, he had given away his position. He touched the back of Furball’s neck, and the two left their position for another, from which they could better intercept the guards who were exiting the camp. Mercury had no way to be sure, but he was confident that at least two other pairs from his squad were also moving to intercept the guard force.

  Mercury had been right about the wisdom of changing position; he saw half a dozen of the guards peel off and head, crouched, toward where he and Furball had been. But by the time those Naked Ones reached his former position, he and Furball would be on the other side of the guards who were heading for the mortar’s position.

  And they were. Mercury sniffed the air and picked up the scent of Ajax and Midnight moving in some fifty meters to his left as he faced the path of the approaching Naked Ones.

  Good! Hind Claw and Junior were probably also approaching. Listening, watching, and sniffing, Mercury observed the Naked Ones as they neared his front. He hoped the other pairs would wait for him to fire first, but even if one of the others fired the first shot, his rifle would bark almost immediately. He did his best to aim at one of the guards and waited until the Naked One was almost directly to his front. He fired.

  The others had obviously been waiting for him, as five more shots rang out almost simultaneously. The Naked Ones weren’t far away, only seventy-five meters or so. From the cries and thuds, Mercury thought that at least three of them had been killed or wounded by the opening shots. As he reloaded he heard shots ring out in the distance as the other three pairs attacked their assigned guard posts.

  Before him the Naked Ones had dropped to the ground and were manically returning fire. But they made little attempt to aim, and the shots that didn’t strike the ground between Mercury and his males flew harmlessly overhead. Flechettes, Mercury had heard the Naked Ones’ bullets called. He knew the flechettes were slender, needlelike, and that a flechette rifle seldom needed to be reloaded, unlike the rifles of the People, which had to be reloaded after every shot. Perhaps, Mercury thought, that was why the Naked Ones didn’t aim as carefully as the People; if they put out enough fire, they believed that something had to hit. But only being able to fire one time before having to reload, the soldiers of the clans had to aim carefully. Besides, sp
ending much of their lives in tunnels as the People did, they had excellent night vision, far better than the Naked Ones did. And the Naked Ones had almost no sense of smell at all.

  So Mercury was confident that he and his five males could take on three times their own number in this night fight and win. Especially after the mortar team stopped firing at the middle of the camp and began dropping its bombs near the Naked Ones. Not long after that, the fire from the guards stopped.

  Mercury called out for his own fighters to cease fire. He spent a long moment looking, listening, and sniffing. When the mortar stopped firing, Mercury called out instructions, and he and Furball slung their rifles across their bodies and loped, tails down, toward the end of the line of Naked Ones.

  The Naked Ones were all dead or badly wounded. Mercury and Furball collected the Naked Ones’ weapons and ammunition and moved them far enough away that the wounded couldn’t easily reach them. He called for the rest of his men to come forward. Then he looked, listened, and sniffed for sign of the six guards who had peeled away from the main group and headed for the position he and Furball had originally held.

  He smelled blood and fear. Moments later, he and Furball found two Naked Ones, one dead and the other critically wounded. They disarmed the two and returned to the other fighters.

  There was still sporadic gunfire from inside the camp, but the boom of the clan’s rifles outnumbered the sharper crack of flechette rifles. With all the Naked Ones’ weapons and ammunition gathered, Mercury led his fighters into the camp. The fighting was over by the time they got inside. The six who had entered the camp earlier had already collected the enemy’s weapons and ammunition and were opening the cages in which the People were held during the night.

  The Father had been one of the first to be freed. Mercury hurried to him to report and was shocked by the condition of the clan’s dominant male.

  The Father didn’t want all of the details, not now. He was too weak and in too much pain from the maltreatment he had suffered at the hands of the Naked Ones. After learning that all of the guards were dead or wounded, and satisfied that the wounded guards had not been executed—it was good that there were survivors to tell what had happened—the Father told Mercury to remain in command until he had freed the Mother and the rest of the females and then do as the Mother instructed as though Mercury were the Father.