Starfist - 14 - Double Jeopardy

by Dan Cragg

  “Listen up,” he said into his all-hands after the company commander signed off. “We’re going in. We’re staying out of the mine shaft, but watch for booby traps anyway. First squad first, on a staggered line. Second squad follows fifty meters behind. Guns, provide cover, and watch our rear. I’m with first squad. Staff Sergeant Hyakowa stays with guns. Move out.”

  “All right, first squad,” Sergeant Ratliff said. “You heard the man. Up and at ’em. On line, fifteen-meter intervals—and stagger that line!” Ratliff rose to his feet and began advancing toward the camp. He looked to his sides to make sure his men were with him and that the line was staggered. “Spread it out, first squad!” he ordered when he didn’t like their intervals.

  The ten Marines of first squad advanced at a walk, but they slowed when they crossed the areas filled with trailings; the footing was treacherous on the loose rock and dirt. When they’d gone fifty meters, Sergeant Kerr had second squad follow. Sergeant Kelly set his guns where they could give covering fire to the advancing Marines and fire to the flanks and rear if danger came from those directions.

  “Looks like they used some kind of explosives here,” Corporal Dean said as he and his men entered the compound over a downed section of fence to the right of the gate. He stretched to step across a small crater; whatever had made the crater had also torn the fence apart for several meters to either side.

  “Same thing here,” Corporal Dornhofer said. “The gate’s been knocked off its hinges. What’s this? I see fragments of metal embedded in the wood of the gatehouse.” He paused to look inside. “Got a body.”

  “Are you sure it’s dead?”

  “Affirmative. Half the head’s been blown away by something with a hell of a punch.”

  “Leave it and keep moving,” Ratliff said. “What do you see, Quick?”

  Lance Corporal Quick, acting as fire team leader since Corporal Pasquin had been evacuated, said, “The fence here was just knocked down. I don’t see any signs of explosives. Got a lot of blood, though. Looks like the trails are going out, not coming in.”

  “Explain that.”

  “More than one casualty, walking or being carried out of the camp, not into it.”

  “All right. Keep moving,” Ratliff said. He went through the fence to the left of the gatehouse. “Anybody else see bodies or blood?”

  “Not on the right,” Dean answered.

  “There’s something up ahead,” Dornhofer said, “but I can’t tell what it is yet. Could be a couple of bodies.”

  “I’ve got a lot of blood on the ground,” Quick reported. “The ground’s scuffed up, like there was some heavy hand-to-hand here.”

  “Dorny, Dean, keep moving. Quick, stay where you are, I’m joining you.”

  Ratliff trotted to where Quick and his men waited. Quick and PFC Sturges, filling in from Whiskey Company, were examining the scuffed, blood-soaked ground while Lance Corporal Longfellow watched their surroundings.

  The red dirt was hard packed, baked by the sun and heat. It didn’t take marks easily but it held any marks that it did take. An area more than twenty meters by ten was scuffed with boot prints and other marks that the Marines guessed were Fuzzy footprints, and the shallowest of indentations that looked like bodies that had been slammed hard to the ground. There were lines that could only be drag marks. Scorch marks suggested weapons had been fired next to the ground; small gouges had to be bullet impacts; smaller gouges were likely from flechettes. And there was blood. Spatters here, splashes there. Ratliff had neither the time nor inclination to sort out the details just then, but he guessed more than a score of entities, human and Fuzzy, had collided there. He couldn’t guess at which side won—except that they’d seen the Fuzzies leaving, and the only Sharp Edge mercenaries they’d seen so far were dead. Blood trails led toward the fence and toward a nearby building.

  Ratliff looked at the building the blood trails led to. “Check it out,” he told Quick. “And check for booby traps.”

  “Right,” Quick said, then said to his men, “Let’s take a look.”

  On the other side of the compound, third fire team approached another building. There was a sign next to its door:

  SHARP EDGE, Ltd.

  Ishtar Mining Camp No. 57

  Administration

  The door had been battered in and the windows were broken. There was blood on the ground outside the door. A length of tree trunk nearby must have been used as a ram. Corporal Dean cautiously approached the entrance and peered in over the sights of his blaster. There was a room with doors on both sides and a railing separating most of the room from the entrance. Two bodies lay sprawled in the middle of the room behind the railing; blood pooled around them. Motionless legs jutted from behind a desk. Just inside the door was a large smear of blood, as though someone—or something—had lain there and been carried away after bleeding out. Insectoids buzzed about in the room, lighting on the pools of blood, and on the bodies’ wounds. There was no other movement.

  Dean looked to his right. “Triple John, look through the windows on the right. Tell me what you see.” To his left. “Ymenez, take a look inside the window on your side.”

  “I’ve got bodies,” PFC John Three McGinty said. “Four of them. Looks like they put up quite a fight. I don’t believe all the blood in here came from them.”

  Lance Corporal Ymenez reported, “This is the head. Looks like one man was taking a shower when the fighting started.” He stopped and swallowed. “It looks like he was unarmed.”

  Dean sighed. “I don’t see any weapons here, either. How about you, Triple John?”

  “No weapons. But I’ll bet they had them.”

  “Keep moving,” Ratliff ordered his men on the squad circuit. First squad’s second and third fire teams moved out to keep pace with first fire team. “Did any of you see weapons?” he asked. Dornhofer and Quick both said they hadn’t. He shook his head. It looked like the Fuzzies were taking all the firearms and knives from the mercenaries.

  First fire team reached the area of cages and spread out to prowl through them. The gates of several were open. All were empty. Second and third fire teams came to more buildings. Their doors had been battered open and their windows were broken. The Marines looked into them without entering. There were bodies and blood inside each building, but no visible weapons.

  First squad eventually reached the far end of the enclosure without finding anybody alive, just dead bodies—and no weapons.

  When second squad reached the fence, the Marines went around the perimeter, checking the trenches and bunkers. They found more bodies and a lot of blood. Despite the lack of weapons, it looked like there had been fierce fighting on the perimeter; there was a lot of blood that wasn’t near any of the bodies, with no blood trails leading to the bodies.

  “It looks like the Fuzzies took their dead and wounded with them,” Sergeant Kerr observed.

  Lieutenant Bass was listening. “That’s another sign of sentience,” he said. “As if we needed more proof.”

  Second squad’s second fire team had almost reached the rear of the compound when Corporal Claypoole heard a groan.

  “I think I found a live one,” he shouted.

  “Where?” Sergeant Kerr asked as he trotted toward Claypoole. Bass also headed over.

  A short stretch of narrow trench was dug twenty meters behind the perimeter trench, with a zigzag trench leading to but not joining it. A ten-centimeter-square beam with rounded edges was fixed across uprights almost forty centimeters high over the trench. An unpleasant smell wafted from the narrow stretch of trench. Claypoole circled to the end of what was obviously a slit trench for the use of sentries on the perimeter. The bar aboveground indicated it wasn’t meant to be used during a firefight.

  “Who’s there?” Claypoole asked. He held his blaster on the short trench, ready to fire if someone—or something—popped up with a weapon.

  “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” came a weak voice from the trench. “Are you people? R
eal people?”

  “I’m human, if that’s what you mean.” Claypoole stopped three meters from the slit trench. From there he could see into the far end; it had obviously been used for its intended purpose. “Raise your hands to where I can see them.”

  “Okay, here they are.” There were some scraping and squishing noises, as of a body moving about in muck, and a pair of filthy hands appeared above the edge.

  “Stand up.”

  “I—I’m not sure I can. Hit in the hip.” There were more noises, and a grunt, followed by a cry of pain. “I—I don’t think I can stand without help.”

  By this time, Lance Corporal MacIlargie had circled around to the rear of the trench and stepped close enough to look into the end where the man was.

  “There’s one man in there,” MacIlargie said. “He’s not holding a weapon.”

  “Cover me, Wolfman.” Claypoole slung his blaster and stepped to the end of the trench. This close, it stank. He looked in and saw a man struggling to stand. Claypoole dropped to a knee and reached down. “Give me your hand,” he said. The man reached up and grabbed Claypoole’s outstretched hand with both of his. Claypoole tugged and stood, pulling the man out of the slit trench. “Hell of a place to take cover,” he said.

  The man lay on his back, gasping. “I, I was relieving myself when they attacked,” he said. “I got hit right away and f-fell in.”

  MacIlargie kept his weapon on the man as he walked around to stand by Claypoole. “Damn, honcho, but we got to sluice you down, you smell like shit!” he said.

  “Very funny, Wolfman.”

  The injured man groaned. Blood was still oozing from his hip. He feebly put a hand on it to stop the slow flow.

  “Corpsman up,” Claypoole said into his comm.

  His call wasn’t necessary. Doc Hough arrived with Lieutenant Bass and immediately saw what needed to be done. “Get water,” he said.

  “Wolfman, you and—I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” Claypoole asked the Whiskey Company replacement for Lance Corporal Schultz.

  “Me? PFC Berry.”

  “Berry. Right. Go with Wolfman and get water for the doc.” Claypoole shook his head. He’d always been edgy around Lance Corporal Schultz and didn’t really want him in his fire team. But now that the big man was gone, he missed him badly. He knew it was wrong, but he took it out on the temporary replacement from Whiskey Company by not remembering his name.

  Hough pulled on disposable gloves and pulled the man’s hand away from his wound. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “W-Wasman,” the wounded man said through clenched teeth. “Soda Wasman.”

  “Well, Soda Wasman, you did a pretty good job of packing your wound,” Hough said as he cut away the man’s trousers and began probing the wound. “But you picked a real shitty packing agent.” He looked up. “Where’s that water?”

  Bass knelt next to Wasman, opposite Hough. “How many of you were there?” he asked.

  Wasman looked at him blankly.

  “Your garrison, how many?”

  “I—I don’t know.” He was gasping for air, and his eyes wandered.

  MacIlargie and Berry arrived with buckets of water. Hough took one and began pouring it around the wound to clean off the worst of the offal smeared on and in it. He looked up and snapped, “Couldn’t you get hot?”

  MacIlargie looked offended. “You didn’t say you wanted hot water.”

  Hough bent back to his work, muttering “Dumbass.”

  “How many were in the attacking party?” Bass asked.

  “I—I don’t know.” Wasman’s voice was weaker than before and his eyelids slid over his eyes.

  “Hold your questions for later, sir,” Hough said, then slapped Wasman’s cheek. “Don’t go to sleep, man. Stay with me.” With the worst sluiced away from the wound, he began gently daubing muck out of the hole. “Where are you from, Wasman. Wasman? Answer me, dammit!” But Wasman had faded into unconsciousness. Hough swore and pulled a stasis bag out of his med kit. “Give me a hand getting him in here,” he said as an order, and swore. “He’s probably suffering from heat as well as blood loss.”

  Bass stood and stepped back while Claypoole and MacIlargie helped the corpsman seal the wounded mercenary in the stasis bag that would hold him until he reached the hospital aboard the Grandar Bay when it returned from Opal.

  Bass called Company to ask for an explosive ordnance disposal team and medical evacuation for the wounded man. The same hopper that brought in the EOD team took the wounded man in his stasis bag.

  Third platoon didn’t find any more survivors among the approximately seventy bodies they retrieved. Bass wasn’t concerned with a more exact count. He thought Brigadier Sturgeon would agree with him that Sharp Edge should be made to deal with their own dead. He was, however, concerned that they didn’t find any weapons or ammunition. He wasn’t as sure as the Brigadier that the Fuzzies would see the Marines as liberators; he thought they might see the Marines as being rivals of Sharp Edge, mostly interested in taking over the operation once they’d gotten rid of the competition.

  The EOD team found and disarmed three booby traps: one in the administration building attached to one of the corpses, and two more inside the mine shaft. They obtained samples of the liquid the booby traps would have sprayed had they gone off, and took it back for shipment to the Grandar Bay for analysis. They also took back a basket of freshly mined gems.

  “When the Grandar Bay gets back, I’ll check to make sure they reach her safe,” Bass told the EOD team after he counted the gems.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mercury wasn’t happy. He’d lost too many fighters in the last attack on a Naked Ones mine. Yes, his fighters had killed all of the Naked Ones. Yes, they’d freed all of the people held in the mine. But his force of two hundred fighters had lost more than a third of its strength, killed or badly wounded, and that was too many. The Naked Ones had reinforced the garrison and had almost managed to drive off the attackers. The only reason the attack succeeded in the end was that the People being held in that camp were High Trees Clan, and a few of the fighters were High Trees who had been away when the Naked Ones raided their village to take them away. Those High Trees fighters weren’t going to stop fighting until they freed their clan mates—or died in the attempt.

  Mercury now knew that his scouts needed to learn more about the strength of the garrisons before he made his attack plans. And he had to come up with new tactics to defeat the reinforcements if he expected to win without losing so many fighters. If he continued to lose fighters at that rate, his force would stop growing, and many fighters would desert. At least many of his fighters were now better armed, with the Naked Ones weapons that didn’t have to be reloaded after each shot and didn’t get fouled as quickly as those of the People.

  Then there was the question of the other Naked Ones. Had they been on their way to that camp to reinforce or assist it? Or had they been going there to attack? His scouts had reported seeing the two different groups of Naked Ones fighting each other. There weren’t enough of the new Naked Ones to defeat the garrison that had caused such severe casualties among Mercury’s fighters, even though his scouts had seen the new ones defeat garrisons larger than themselves. The new Naked Ones must have been going to assist those Naked Ones. He didn’t understand why they had made no attempt to harry Mercury’s fighters and the freed people on their withdrawal. But how had they responded to the attack so quickly? Surely they must have been on their way to further reinforce the garrison. It was good that they didn’t arrive earlier, for they would have tipped the battle the other way.

  Mercury sent scouts to reconnoiter the base of the new Naked Ones. It would take them two hands or more of days to get there and back, but their base was much closer than that of the Naked Ones who had first enslaved the People.

  “I’ve got this real funny feeling, honcho,” PFC McGinty said.

  “Yeah, Triple John? What kind of funny feeling?” Corporal Dean asked
his junior man.

  “Like somebody’s eyeballing me real hard,” McGinty said. He rotated through his screens as he nervously looked around.

  The fire team was on a security patrol around the advance position third platoon had established after returning from Mining Camp No. 57. This new camp, which they named Camp Godenov in honor of the Marine they’d lost on Haulover, was less than half the distance from the mines to Thirty-fourth FIST’s base of operations. From there they could head quickly toward any mining camp they were sent to. Camp Godenov was closer in a straight line to where the Grandar Bay’s Surveillance and Radar section had seen the Fuzzies from Mining Camp No. 57 go to ground. There was also, so the command thinking went, a greater possibility for a small unit to make contact with the Fuzzies and establish some form of communication with them. That was why Brigadier Sturgeon had sent Lieutenant Prang, the Grandar Bay’s xeno-zoologist, along with third platoon.

  “Yes, I know, the Fuzzies are obviously sentient, and Prang isn’t a linguist or anthropologist,” Brigadier Sturgeon had said in explaining his selection. “But the Grandar Bay only has one officer in each of those disciplines, and I want them at my headquarters for when one of my units brings a Fuzzy in. Prang is, however, a zoologist, so he can surely figure out something about how to deal with the Fuzzies, so he’s going.”

  For his part, Prang was both frightened and delighted at the prospect of being the first human being to establish communications with an alien sentience.

  And for his part, Lieutenant Bass wasn’t in the least bit cowed by having an officer attached to his unit who technically outranked him. As far as Bass was concerned, Prang was just another squid underfoot who needed to be kept out of trouble.

  “Where?” Dean asked McGinty. He looked around himself, using his magnifier screen. He also checked in all directions with his motion detector.

  “I’m not sure,” McGinty said hesitantly. “But the feeling’s stronger in—”