Balance Point

by Robert Buettner

  Otman peered through the windscreen as he swayed alongside his driver, aboard the second vehicle in a convoy of three. The locally rented, six-wheeled bush cats snaked around tree boles so thick that the biggest arterial uptube in the biggest stack city on Yavet could have easily fit inside one.

  Otman drew a breath of local air that went down as thick and hot as breakfast syrup, and smiled. Heat. Humidity. Allergies provoked by a billion billion trees’ pollen. Otman loved it all.

  Yavi grew up in stacked cities with ceilings for sky. Diagnosed agoraphiles like Otman, who enjoyed open spaces, were aberrant outcasts among Yavi. Fit to fight their society’s battles, but ill-suited to more genteel intel assignments.

  The feeling was mutual. Otman had despised every moment of his last assignment, a desk job back home on Yavet, combing files to root out deep-cover Trueborn spies within Intelligence Branch. Otman had come to hate the mole hunts, hate the distrust in comrades that they bespoke. In fact, the one and only Trueborn thing that he had uncovered during his year of mole hunting was the expression’s origin. Moles were Earth rodents, probably mythical, that burrowed undetected through darkness and eroded structures from within.

  The Bush cat bounced, and he grimaced and smiled simultaneously. Here in the fetid jungle, intangible moles were replaced by palpable discomfort and danger, and men he trusted to share those dangers equally. And here his quarry, although also Trueborn, was real.

  Otman gazed up through the Bush cat’s open roof hatch. Silhouetted against low clouds, man-sized, fork-tailed dragons glided, wheeled and screeched.

  Otman shrugged mentally. The wrangler had advised them not to worry, at least not about the gorts. The flying monsters nested and hunted among the treetops, never venturing lower than fifty feet above the ground. Gorts kept their distance because Dead End’s top predators, the grezzen, could bound fifty feet into the sky, swat a flying dragon dead with one paw, then swallow the gort whole before touching the ground again. So the suicidally voracious gorts didn’t threaten ground-bound humans.

  But, in the early colonial days, strikes by attacking gorts had routinely downed human aircraft. For decades now, nothing mechanical had flown above Dead End. Except the impregnably huge chemical-fuel orbital shuttles, like the one that had shuttled Otman’s team, posing as a “film crew,” down from the interstellar Trueborn cruiser that had borne them out here.

  Otman smiled and silently thanked the flying dragons. The Trueborns’ inability to fly Dead End’s skies, or rather the Trueborns’ smug attempt to prove that they could, had created the opportunity that had brought Otman’s team here, to the jagged edge of the known universe.

  Otman’s handtalk crackled with a transmission from Desmond, who was operating the magnetometer in the lead Bush cat. “Captain, I got metal. Big metal.”

  The film-crew pretense had been dropped as soon as the team passed out beyond Trueborn listening range. The men now wore jungle fatigues and had broken out the team’s normal tactical weapons from “photographic equipment” crates, supplementing the “film crew’s” Trueborn gunpowder weapons. Recon Scout Team Eight was again full-on field tactical. Bogerd’s chest swelled, even as another headache pricked behind his sinuses. Everything out here, even the pollen, was their enemy, but that was the challenge they lived for.

  Big metal. Desmond’s words raised hair, even on Otman’s recently shaved neck. The only metal out here would be a manmade object, and a manmade object was the prize they sought.

  “Range?” Otman leaned forward.

  “I make it forty-six hundred yards, Captain.”

  “How big?”

  “Sir, the supply weenies disguised this mag as a photo image previewer. But they porked the mass calibration doin’ it. Five tons, wild-ass guess.”

  It would be a dead-on guess. Senior Tech Sergeant Desmond had served with Otman longer even than First Sergeant Rodric had. Desmond’s courage and loyalty had saved Otman’s missions, and his life, often. Desmond, as the team’s sensor wizzo, wasn’t cleared to know what their quarry was, much less what it should weigh.

  But Otman knew, and the guess worried him. Few Yavi had ever touched a Trueborn Scorpion’s hull, much less put one on a scale, but the briefers had predicted thirty-five tons.

  Desmond asked, “Sir, should we make for the anomaly?”

  Had the crash broken up the Trueborn ship? One bit of debris could lead to another.

  Otman thumbed his handtalk. “Is the anomaly moving?”

  “Like a rock, Skipper.”

  Otman rubbed his forehead as the allergy headache spiked, then receded. “Make for it, Sergeant. But maintain present speed.” Racing to catch something that wasn’t trying to get away was reckless. And if this object was, or led to, their quarry, they were early.

  Desmond’s voice rasped, “Skipper, that heading’s gonna take us past a flat-topped hill a thousand yards short of the anomaly. The hilltop’s bald granite, so it should be clear of local bugs.”

  Desmond, like every soldier in the teams, wore multiple hats. He had just changed hats from sensor specialist to senior non-commissioned officer. Therefore, he was commenting on the enemy situation. Though on Dead End, the enemy was no army, it was the world itself.

  Otman traced a finger across his vehicle’s flat-screen map display, tapped an oval of enclosed contour lines. “Top elevation six twenty-six?”

  “That’s it, Sir.”

  Otman eyed the flat-screen map again, then peered at the darkening sky. Why blunder up onto this unknown object at dark? Desmond, like any good senior non-commissioned officer, was suggesting to his commissioned commanding officer, without suggesting, that they halt short of the anomaly. That would place them on a defensible terrain feature, with daylight left to emplace perimeter sensors and point-defense weapons. It would create a night defensive position impenetrable by Dead End’s predators.

  Otman nodded and thumbed his handtalk. “Nice catch, Sarge. We’ll laager up there for the night.”

  Four hours later, Otman stood behind his team while they sat, backs to him, in a semicircle on the bald granite summit. The laager position they occupied provided unobstructed fields of observation and fire. Better, three of its sides were hundred-foot cliffs that Otman doubted even the local monsters could scale. The summit was clean of vegetation and the dangerous local pests that sheltered in it. A nice catch by Desmond, indeed.

  The team sat cross-legged, eating chow and cleaning weapons. Desmond stood at the semicircle’s center point, facing Otman and the men, displaying images on a flatscreen. For this hastily assembled mission, the ‘puter to which the screen was hardwired carried virtually all the mission-specific information about this world. Desmond was now transferring the dope to the team on the fly.

  Otman himself had known so little about DE 476 that he had purchased a paper local guide when they arrived at the landing strip that passed for a spaceport. He had yet to open the book.

  Desmond scratched his gray-fuzzed temple as a bright yellow, fanged spider filled the screen. “The locals call this here a lemon bug. Twelve inches across. Habitat you-bick-wit-us. They look mean, but for this ecosystem, they’re pussies.”

  Cassel, the Medic and Grenadier, raised a hand. “Poisonous?”

  Desmond shook his head. “This thing’s bite’ll kill a six-ton local grazing animal in thirty seconds. But our biochemistry’s different. Humans just swell up and puke for two days.”

  Cassel, who was also the team newbie, cocked his head at Desmond, half smiled. “All the bugs here that friendly, Sarge?”

  “Nope.” Desmond popped a new image. This showed a black bug the length and diameter of a flaccid penis. “Local name, dick bug. These aren’t passive.”

  “Neither’s mine.” An anonymous comedian.

  Laughter.

  Desmond waited, stone-faced, for quiet. After Rodric, he had been the team’s most senior, and avuncular, noncom. Now he was the acting top kick. “This is the only bug on Dead End that’ll kil
l a human. The sting feels like injected fire, and you die screamin’ in ninety seconds. There’s no known antidote.”

  Somebody’s boot scraped granite as he squirmed. “Great. Those ubiquitous too, Sarge?”

  Desmond swung his hand at the barren plateau. “That’s one reason the Captain picked this laager. Dick bugs don’t like high ground, rock and open space.”

  Otman smiled. Desmond had picked this position. But loyal, self-effacing Desmond wouldn’t accept credit in front of the men, even if Otman tried to acknowledge him.

  Cassel scowled. “What about the grezzen, Sarge?”

  Several grumbles of agreement.

  Desmond scowled the school master’s stone face, again. “Keep your diapers on. There’s, like, eleven animals in the food chain before this briefing gets to the top predator. The little one gets chased by the big one what gets chased by the bigger one. Like from you maggots up to me.”

  Otman smiled in the darkness. He felt like he could hear nine pairs of young eyes roll. Despite the kids’ reaction, the human glue that held a merc team—held any tactical-sized infantry unit—together was that every man in the team knew every other man completely, down to the way each rolled his eyes. And every one would lay down his life for the other. Not for flags or against tyrants, but because each man absolutely trusted that his buddy would do the same for him.

  Only when the last man had finished chow did Otman crack his own ration. Simultaneously, Desmond’s brief got to Dead End’s top predators, the grezzen.

  Each previous species that Desmond had profiled had been bigger, stronger, faster and meaner than the last. The grezzen, however, were in a figurative and literal class by themselves.

  Mature male grezzen resembled, and had been named by the first Trueborn colonists for, a hirsute Earth carnivore called a grizzly. But while Trueborns had occasionally trained grizzlies, no one had ever “trained” a grezzen. At least, no one had survived and told about it. Absent empirical data, it was assumed that grezzen were roughly as intelligent as grizzlies, capable of rolling a large ball or walking on hind legs if stimulated by an appropriate reward. Which was more intelligence than they needed, given their physical gifts.

  When Desmond finally put up a grezzen image, someone puckered a low whistle. Grezzen were ten times larger than grizzlies, eleven tons of six-legged muscle. Their carbon-12-based skeleton and integument allowed them to be disproportionately stronger, faster and more durable than species indigenous to normal Earthlikes’ ecosystems. And they looked the part of top predator in hell, with three red eyes arrayed across a flat face, and tusks that curved down from their upper jaws like ebony scimitars.

  According to Dead End’s fossil record, the grezzen hadn’t changed in thirty million years. Why would they? They perfectly dominated this world. And dominated the only offworld species who had challenged them for it. Dumb brutes that they were, grezzen had somehow, nevertheless, exterminated the first two Trueborn colonial expeditions. The grezzen had also slaughtered the reinforced Legion battalion that was sent along to protect the colonists of the second expedition. If the third expedition had failed, the Trueborns had planned to carpet bomb the place from orbit. But the current tiny colony had survived the subsequent decades, albeit by cowering behind minefields that discouraged the brutes, as well as the rest of Dead End’s unfriendly population.

  Desmond finished his brief, repacked the background data ‘puter and simultaneously assigned the night watch schedule. Then he stomped the hilltop’s crevassed granite with a boot. “Long as the watch stays awake, the sensors and rover mines will keep all the big predators out. You can sleep outside instead of in the vehicles ‘cause the dick bugs don’t like it up here.”

  Desmond’s offer brought smiles. Most Yavi preferred enclosed spaces, but the vehicle interiors were ovens, especially when left idling as they would be to power the sensor and weapon arrays.

  Otman laid out his own bedsack on the smooth-worn rock, trusted the watch to do its job, and fell into exhausted sleep after counting back just six digits.

  Screams woke him in the darkness. He sat up, still inside his bedsack, and saw a running silhouette, arms flailing as though on fire. The man leapt into the third vehicle. The Bush cat rocked as the man thrashed inside.

  Graunch.

  Otman heard the emergency brake release, then the vehicle rolled slowly forward, away from him.

  Otman tore free of his bedsack, groped for his night snoops, couldn’t find them. He stumbled half-blind toward the vehicle, buckling on his sidearm.

  In the darkness, others ran, some also flailing like the man in the vehicle.

  The Bush cat lurched along the plateau, then toppled off its edge.

  By the time Otman reached and peered over the cliff, the ‘Cat rocked, inverted, on the scree below. Metal groaned and echoed, then the wreck burst into flame.

  Otman staggered back, crushed something with his bare heel, and looked down.

  A dead dick bug. He shuddered. A second bug was already squirming out of an inch-wide joint in the weathered granite. Otman drew his sidearm, reversed it and hammered the bug with the pistol’s butt. Then another, and another. He looked around. The black nightmares covered the pale granite like writhing pepper.

  Twenty minutes later, someone had thought to douse the rock with spare vehicle fuel, light it and sear a safe zone around the remaining two vehicles.

  Otman sat with his seven men on the hoods of the two Bush cats, breathing in the mixed stench of burned kerosene and immolated bugs.

  A soldier stared at Desmond. “You said this place had no bugs.”

  Desmond, hollow-eyed, shook his head. “The ‘puter said it.”

  “The cracks were full of ’em.”

  Otman knit his brows, said to Desmond, “Let’s take another look at that ‘puter.”

  Desmond nodded at the black smoke that still drifted up from the wreck. “It was in that ‘Cat.”

  The eight survivors spent the next hours huddled atop the ‘Cats like castaways aboard flotsam. Most dozed. Otman couldn’t. All told, four dead. Over the years his units had taken casualties, and every one still pained him. But nothing compared to this debacle. How? Why?

  Otman stared at Desmond, who lay on his back on the other ‘Cat’s rear cargo rack, staring up at the darkness. Otman had never known Desmond to misread a map coordinate, a warning order paragraph, or even a soldier’s name when distributing bonus vouchers. If Desmond hadn’t erred, then what had happened?

  Perhaps local predators had driven the bugs into this non-normal habitat. As Desmond had said, the little ones get chased by the bigger ones, and so on. But that would have been a coincidence, and Otman still didn’t believe in coincidence.

  So what else could have happened? Otman’s year of mole hunting had taught him how easily a ‘puter entry could be overwritten. It would’ve been simple. Reverse the habitat preferences of dick bugs.

  Cold grew in the pit of Otman’s stomach. Something on this carnivorous planet was eating his team. Was that something eating from the inside out? Had the Trueborns planted a mole in his team? Plenty of Trueborn zealots would sacrifice their own lives to sabotage an elite Yavi covert team.

  Otman frowned at the two bodies that lay bagged alongside the opposite Bush cat. If there was a mole among them, who was it? Cassel was the newbie. The man Otman knew least. And as the medic, Cassel had accessed the tech ‘puter day in and day out, studying the medical idiosyncracies of this hellhole.

  Otman turned onto his side, gazed at Cassel. The kid slept, his face hairless and placid. What better disguise than youthful innocence?

  By dawn, the dick bugs had vanished, though they were not supposed to be nocturnal. Nor did the crevasses display any evidence that bugs, or anything else, made a home on this rocky tombstone of a hilltop.

  Otman had been too exhausted, too stunned, too pressed by yet another fleeting headache to think of the casualties until Desmond reminded him.

  Two soldiers rapp
elled down to the wreck and roped up their comrades’ remains. The team cremated the three bodies, consecrated the ash, and were off the knob’s sloping back side and on track again before the gray sky was fully light.

  The two remaining vehicles made good time, because the six-legged, six-ton grazers who rumbled across the planet in herds of twenty thousand had recently denuded the area. The grazing herd, which the team’s route skirted, was barely visible in the distance, a vast, serene brown line on the horizon.

  That morning Otman had placed himself in the lead vehicle, along with only the magnetometer itself and the Bush cat’s driver. One way to thwart a mole, if there was one, was to deny him information about the team’s next move.

  So Otman himself first spotted the objective. The grazers had so recently passed through that the normally green, overgrown landscape was brown stubble.

  The “object” proved to be many objects. The largest mass was an unremarkable cargo-truck-sized habitat box, a “sleeper,” surrounded by empty food and fuel containers and vehicle spares. The durable effluvia of a long-abandoned campsite.

  The trailing Bush cat stopped fifty yards short of the anticlimactic objective to repair a damaged road wheel before it stalled the vehicle altogether.

  Otman dismounted the lead vehicle into thick midmorning heat heavy with insect drone, and Desmond walked forward from the following vehicle.

  Otman kicked a rusted, empty cartridge box, looked around, hands on hips.

  Desmond swore. “Captain, this crap’s been here for years. Some Trueborn’s idea of a safari. Gone wrong.”

  Not, Otman thought, as wrong as his own safari had gone already. He stared down at his hands. Normally steady, they twitched, and as he stared he realized that his right eye had begun to twitch. He pressed his eyelid with a fingertip to still it.

  “Skipper?”

  Otman snapped his head up. Desmond was staring at him.

  “Captain? You okay?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Desmond drew back. “Nothin’, Sir. You just seem a little, I dunno . . .”