Otman didn’t know, either. He knew that he disrespected officers who failed to focus on the mission. Who blundered. Who failed to protect their men. Now, for the first time in his career, he was such an officer. Guilt. Shame. These were emotions unfamiliar to him.
Otman breathed deeply, refocused on the reality in front of him. The “sleeper’s” corroded shell lay flattened, and scars in the soil revealed how it had been tossed and dragged first in one direction, then another, like a paper scrap, as the herds had grazed, then regrazed the spot over the years.
Desmond pointed at the scars. “This thing was prob’ly whole when the Trueborns abandoned it. Woog herds only regraze an area after it regrows. Two-year intervals.”
Otman ground his teeth. This junk heap had nothing to do with a recently missing C-drive starship. A dead end on Dead End. So far he had accomplished nothing except to get four good men killed. Now what?
The Bush cat’s driver lowered his window. “Captain? Sarge? You feel that?”
Otman’s boot soles vibrated.
The vibration grew until the thatch on the ground twitched.
The driver wrinkled his forehead. “Could it be those woogs we passed?”
“Maybe.” Desmond shook his head. “But they won’t come this way.” He pointed at the barren ground. “No chow left.”
Thunder rumbled. The driver frowned. “Well, something’s gainin’ on us.”
Now a thin brown line showed in the distance. A dust cloud boiled, like a tank division at full gas. If the woogs were, for some reason, inbound, they would be lumbering no faster than a soldier could route march.
Otman blinked, and in that instant the brown cloud seemed closer.
He remounted the lead ‘Cat while he called to Desmond. “I don’t like this. Get back to your vehicle, Sergeant.”
Desmond was already on his way at a dead run, shouting to the crew, who remained clustered around the damaged wheel.
Otman tugged optical binoculars from the Bush cat’s utility bin and cursed the cover story that denied them the body armor and optics of contemporary battle dress.
He focused on the herd. Even at this distance, the animals loomed as big as Earth elephants, but with corkscrew antlers and six legs.
They weren’t grazing. They galloped, crashing into one another in panic and disarray. Leading animals at the front stumbled, fell, then disappeared in the dust as those behind overran them.
Otman turned to his driver. “It’s a stampede. Get us out of here!”
Gears ground, and the Bush cat lurched forward.
Thirty seconds later, the vehicle slowed so violently that Otman’s head struck the dash. “What the hell?”
The driver was staring at his rear view.
Otman frowned. “Floor it!”
“Sir? The others can’t keep up.”
Otman twisted in his seat and peered out across the rear rack. A six-wheel could easily move on five, but the trail vehicle limped along, now a hundred yards behind them. It tilted on five wheels, its detached sixth lashed to its roof.
Already the stampede, its front now stretched across their left and right rear as far as could be seen in the dust, had closed to within one hundred yards of the trailing ‘Cat.
Within seconds, the stampede would swallow the crippled ‘Cat and flatten it beneath a hundred thousand hooves.
Otman shouted to his driver, “Stop! When they catch up, we’ll take ’em aboard.”
Otman snatched a Trueborn big-game rifle from the ‘Cat’s dashboard rack. He had seen a Trueborn cowboy holo once where a stampede was split by killing a lead animal.
He stood, head and shoulders out the roof hatch, turned and faced the stampede. Vibration shook the three-ton Bush cat on its suspension, now, and made aim impossible. But the vast target made aim unnecessary. Otman emptied the rifle into the herd, then groped for another magazine.
He reloaded, fired again. His shots no more slowed the stampede than thrown pebbles slowed a tidal wave.
The herd was fifty yards behind the trailing Bush cat when the ‘Cat stopped dead, belching black smoke. Men spilled from the vehicle’s doors and ran, hopelessly slowly, toward the lead vehicle’s dubious sanctuary.
A lone figure scrambled out through the crippled machine’s roof hatch, a stubby grenade launcher in hand.
Cassel, the newbie kid, the putative mole, and the team’s grenadier, straddled the road wheel lashed to the ‘Cat’s roof, planted his feet, and fired into the stampede’s center.
A heartbeat later, the herd surged across the motionless ‘Cat like a wave across a stone. Cassel and the ‘Cat cartwheeled through the air in opposite directions, then vanished into the dust.
The lead animals, wild-eyed, mouths agape, overtook and trampled the men running from the demolished Bush cat.
In two heartbeats, the wave would crush the lead ‘Cat, too.
Otman aimed his sidearm at the herd, then braced his free hand on the roof against the final impact.
Boom.
The delayed detonation of the grenade that Cassel had fired was muffled by the bulk of the bull woog that he had shot. The bull belched blood, stumbled, and fell a yard short of the lead ‘Cat, so close that an antler tip exploded through the Bush cat’s rear window, and skewered the driver’s chest.
The herd divided, infinitesimally, around the fallen bull. Passing animals pummeled the ‘Cat’s flanks as they passed, so close that the smell and heat engulfed Otman, and woog hide scraped his shoulder.
Then the animals were gone. The thunder receded.
Someone moaned, then stopped.
Otman lowered himself back down into the ‘Cat’s passenger compartment, arms aquiver. The dead driver’s blood spattered the compartment’s floor. Nothing to be done there. Otman staggered out, then limped toward the wrecked ‘Cat. Between the two vehicles he found the others, trampled, twisted, dead to a man.
When he reached the crumple that had been the other Bush cat, bleeding fuel, five wheels to the sky, he whispered a curse.
“Captain? Izzat you?” It was Desmond, pinned, but protected, beneath the twisted wreck.
Otman didn’t even answer, just nodded.
As the ranking man in the trailing Bush cat, Desmond had waited for the last man, Cassel, to exit the disabled vehicle before he fled himself. Ironically, Desmond’s selflessness in going down with the ship had saved his life.
Otman knelt and asked, “How you doing, Sarge?”
Desmond coughed blood. “Been better, Sir.”
Otman flattened himself belly down and peered beneath the wreck. Desmond wasn’t impaled. Otman had seen enough casualties to triage this as broken ribs, one of which had likely punctured a lung. “Better still if I can get this thing off you.”
Otman retrieved the intact ‘Cat’s meds kit and sedated Desmond, then set a canteen where the man could reach it and returned to the operable Bush cat.
It took Otman twenty minutes to remove the driver’s body from behind the lead Bush cat’s wheel. First he had to cut the woog’s antler with a hand saw, then rend the antler’s tip from the driver’s back. The dead man’s blood had spilled out of the vast wound, coursed down the antler tip, and covered Otman’s hands.
At last Otman turned the ‘Cat around, rigged its winch cable and shifted the wreck. Once Otman had dragged half-conscious Desmond out from beneath the wreck he inspected him for other injuries. Then he turned Desmond on his side to drain the oral bleeding and covered the injured man with a blanket to mitigate shock.
Then Otman, dazed by the enormity of the calamity, leaned against the intact Bush cat’s fender. He stared down at his hands and tried to scrub the blood from them. Blood that his leadership, or lack thereof, had spilled.
Cassel the newbie a mole? Hardly. The kid had sacrificed himself to save his buddies, in the best tradition of the teams. So why, how, had this latest and most total disaster been visited on them?
Otman felt himself all over, and shame rushed hot to his
cheeks. He wasn’t even scratched.
His fingers touched something hard, rectangular, in his fatigues’ breast pocket. Otman tugged out the forgotten tourist guide he had bought at the spaceport a million years ago.
Otman thumbed to the wildlife section. He skipped past the supposedly omnipotent grezzen, of which species not a hair had been seen, to the woogs. Woogs stampeded at the scent of predators. Stripers, the six-legged tyrannosaurs that preyed on woogs, were attracted to, naturally enough, woogs. But they were also attracted to fire, kindled on this planet by lightning strikes, because animals slain by the resultant blaze often provided an easy meal.
Otman narrowed his eyes. A mole bent on sabotaging this mission couldn’t imitate a striper’s scent to force a stampede. But a mole could create a fire, and attract a striper, and achieve the same result.
Otman stared at Desmond, who lay with his eyes closed amid the dust-painted stubble the woogs left behind. Atop the granite hill, it had been Desmond who had reminded Otman about the dead. Which had led to the fire. Which had attracted a striper. Which had caused the stampede.
More than that, Rodric’s death had conveniently breveted Desmond to the team’s top kick, a promotion that had positioned him to recommend the night in the poison bug nest. And Desmond had no need to tamper with the ‘puter. He simply had to lie about what the ‘puter said.
Of all the men on this team, Desmond, decorated, plain-spoken, loyal old Desmond was the least likely candidate for a mole. And so who better?
Enough of this! Otman still had a mission. Indeed, now the mission was all he had, all that kept him from sliding away from sanity. He set his suspicions aside, leaned in to the Bush cat’s cab, and thumbed on the magnetometer.
His heart leapt. From this new vantage, a new magnetic anomaly had become visible. It glowed onscreen, seven miles away, nestled in a steep-sided valley. The Trueborns’ lousier sensors would have missed it. More importantly, the mag computed the anomaly’s mass at thirty-five tons. But hadn’t Desmond said that the mag’s mass function had been porked?
“Captain?” Desmond whispered through bloody lips.
Otman thumbed the magnetometer screen black.
Desmond coughed. “Sir, I’m afraid I can’t be much help with the men.”
Otman stiffened. “You’re suggesting another fire, Sergeant?”
Desmond gathered a shallow breath. “Can’t just leave ’em, sir.” The sergeant stared up at Otman. “Sir, it wasn’t your fault. None of it.”
Otman smiled. “Oh, I know that, sergeant. I know that quite well.”
“Sir? I mean, you been acting, well . . .”
“First I’ll police up the bodies, Sergeant Desmond. Then we’ll discuss it.”
Desmond tried to straighten to acknowledge the order, grimaced. “Yes, sir. As you say, sir.”
Even using the winch, it took two hours to gather the bodies.
Otman, sweat soaking his fatigues, stood panting alongside the rank of corpses.
Desmond inclined his head toward the canteen Otman had left him. “Drink, sir?”
Otman cocked his head. “A toast, Desmond?”
“Sir?”
“To the success of your mission.” Otman knelt alongside the open meds kit and tugged out a field dressing.
Desmond squinted. “Sir, I—”
Otman peeled open the dressing pack. “What did they offer you, Desmond? When did you go over? Or were you Trueborn from the beginning, and planted?”
Desmond shook his head, slowly. “Captain, I don’t know what you’re thinking. Sir, I seen stress casualties before. You’re just, uh, troubled by the losses. And you blame yourself.”
Otman knelt beside the wounded man. “I blame you, Desmond. I don’t know how you got Rodric to drop his guard when he was reconning our route. But I know how you whittled us down, one ‘coincidence,’ one bit of ‘bad luck,’ at a time.”
Desmond kept shaking his head. “Sir, those things just happened. What you got’s called traumatic combat paranoia. It’s temporary. Let’s get you calmed down. Then we’ll continue the mission. The two of us.”
“The two of us? You think I’ll give you another chance to turn this world against me?”
Desmond pointed a quivering finger at the open meds kit. “There’s sedatives in there, sir.”
“Ah. Yes.”
Otman reached down, turned Desmond onto his back, then pressed the field dressing over Desmond’s face, covering his nose and mouth. The older man stiffened, screamed behind the wadded gauze.
Desmond’s eyes bulged, he kicked both legs and he tore at Otman’s forearms with both hands.
Otman shifted his weight, bore down and forced the dressing against the wounded man’s nose and lips.
Desmond’s struggles weakened.
Otman stared into the traitor’s eyes. “Staff Sergeant Terrelle Desmond, as the ranking officer of this duly licensed contractor to the armed forces of Yavet, I have, upon due and diligent investigation, found you guilty of espionage and high treason. Wherefore I have sentenced you to summary field execution.”
Desmond stared up at Otman, eyes bulging, and shook his head, mute.
Otman glared down, kept the pressure on, until, finally, the mole choked on his own blood, and his body relaxed.
Otman didn’t cremate Desmond, or the rest of the team. Fool me once . . . He left the dead where they lay, to keep the predators busy, and so off his ass.
Then Otman drove the remaining Bush cat off in search of thirty-five tons of metal.
By the time the ‘Cat lurched around the tight valley’s last bend, twilight shrouded it. But Otman’s heart skipped when he saw the object. Sleek as an ebony teardrop, half obscured beneath a ledge, the crashed star fighter lay on its side like a beached fish.
Otman stopped alongside the wreck, then paused with his hands on the wheel.
The self-righteous Trueborns fancied themselves guardians of peace, but fought one another so frequently that they gave wars numbers as well as names. So far, they had dominated Cold War II. Not because they were actually righteous, nor peaceful, but because they alone possessed C-drive, the key to interstellar travel. But it was a key they hadn’t earned. They had just stolen C-drive from an alien race, then exterminated them.
Otman smiled. He was about to break the Trueborn monopoly.
He clambered up onto the Scorpion, then ran his hands along the fuselage until he found the latch to the C-drive unit’s access panel. The unit inside, just as the tech briefers had predicted, was a stripped, shrunken version of a cruiser’s drive. It was so compact that the Bush cat’s winch could pull it like a bad tooth. Then Otman would drive it back to the colony, conceal it in a crate that had contained camera equipment and smuggle it off planet under the Trueborns’ upthrust noses.
He returned to the Bush cat, bent and grasped the front winch cable in both hands. They were still bloodstained. But the stain was really on the Trueborns’ mole. Otman had defeated him, had defeated them, though at a terrible price.
And then Otman felt the allergy headache again, more intensely. He realized this time that it was not a headache. It was a probing. An inquiry. Otman had felt it first before he had sent Rodric out to recon the route, and again and again since.
He turned and stared back down the valley, in the direction he had come. Nothing. The valley’s head was also empty.
Otman lifted his gaze, and recoiled.
Twenty feet away, across the star ship’s hull, a great beast glared at him. Three red eyes glinted with more intelligence than a simple predator’s. The grezzen didn’t growl, didn’t move. But Otman felt it, he realized now, time and again.
And then it all became clear.
Grezzen so dominated this ecosystem and its lesser prey because they, for want of a better term, read minds.
That was why they had so easily exterminated trained and well-equipped human troops. But when their probing revealed that the vaster human species had both the will and the m
eans to exterminate them, they had feigned simplicity. They had tolerated and contained on their world a tiny human presence.
The grezzen cared less about Cold Wars or about intrahuman affairs of any sort. But Otman had contemplated invading, however slightly, their world, and the grezzen cared about that a great deal. And so they had set out to destroy him, without revealing or exposing their true nature.
The grezzen knew where and when to flush a predator that would kill Rodric because Otman himself had revealed both Rodric’s location and his vulnerability. Similarly, they had forced an unexpected army of deadly insects into a place where Otman would not expect them, because he had revealed his plans to them. They had stampeded woogs to a place where, again, Otman would not expect to find them, because he told them. The mole in Otman’s team was Otman himself. That was bad enough.
But Desmond’s death? That had not been the grezzen’s work. It had been the work of Otman himself, of his suspicion, paranoia and hubris. Or his madness. By any name, it could not excuse the monstrous horror that Otman had committed.
Across from him, the grezzen gathered itself like a tusked cat and rumbled a growl. Otman drew his revolver and cocked the hammer. But victory was impossible. And living with himself after what he had done unimaginable.
Otman sentenced himself, pressed the revolver’s muzzle to his temple and squeezed the trigger.
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