by Unknown
"A-ma," the younger woman squeaked back.
"Moe hop," Amy pointed south. "Moe hop."
A-ma looked at the two dead men and at the weapon still in Amy's hand. She backed away, and turned to run.
Part Three – The Barbas
Chapter Eight
Stardate 3527.9.18 – One Hour Past Noon
Amy stared down at the two dead Barbas men. She did not regret having killed them. As soon as they discovered that she was a human from Eden, they would have killed her. They might have used her first, but they would have killed her in the end.
Barbas on Corvus-3!
They were clearly the reason why she had not been rescued. The Barbas ship must have appeared shortly after her shuttle had launched and the Carpenter had left as unobtrusively as possible. The captain had probably not known about the crash of her shuttle.
Or he did know about it and assumed that everyone aboard the shuttle had perished.
That could be why the Carpenter had not returned—there was no one to rescue.
Not true, there were the six engineers in the two invisibility huts.
The reason had to be the Barbas. Perhaps the Carpenter was waiting close by, watching. The captain was waiting for the Barbas to depart, or to present an opportunity for the Carpenter to attack them. All this would mean that the Barbas had been on the planet for the past two months.
The lanthanum!
The smaller deposit of lanthanum was very close by, no more than two miles to the north. Amy reflexively glanced in that direction, half expecting to see a horde of Barbas bearing down on her. Seeing nothing, her gaze returned to the two bodies.
They must be miners.
The Barbas could have been on Corvus-3 before the Carpenter arrived. Since the captain had ordered that they use only passive sensors to survey the planet, the Barbas could have remained hidden. Their infrared heat signatures would have made them appear to be a large herbivore, or one of the alien people.
All the more reason for the Carpenter to exit in haste.
The captain would have seen his mission had changed. He would have to report the enormous lanthanum deposit on Corvus-3, and the fact that the Barbas were mining it.
The Space Service must be assembling a fleet to attack. How long will that take?
Surely not two months.
There is something here that I'm missing.
Reasoning that the two dead men would have locator beacons like her own, Amy concluded that more Barbas would soon be searching for them. She wiped her fingerprints from the blaster and put it in its owner's hand. She put the other man's blaster in his hand, and used his dead finger to fire a bolt into the ground. She staged the scene to present the appearance that the two men had fought—perhaps about something sexual, since the one man's pants were at half-mast—and shot each other. She scanned the ground for evidence that A-ma and herself had been there. Finding nothing, she prepared to head back to the cave.
Fortunately, A-ma would not have the vocabulary to explain what had happened. It would remain their secret.
"Miss Toller, are you there?" A voice came from down the hill. Amy crouched low in the rocks.
Too late, they are already here.
She eyed the blaster and considered retrieving it. No, the voice spoke English, but it was not accented.
How could the Barbas know my name?
Gingerly, Amy raised her head. She peered over the rock and down the hill. There were two men standing in the trees; two naked Corvus-3 alien men. One was rather tall, and layered with thick muscles. The other was a few inches shorter and more conventionally proportioned.
NO!
The men were not aliens, they were human. Their hair was too short. The color of one's hair and beard was a lighter shade of brown, the other had thick, wavy black hair. The natives all had long, stringy, dark brown hair. Additionally, these two wore animal skin capes over their backs; Amy had never seen an alien man wear anything. And they had wrapped their feet in animal skins.
However, they are naked!
Wary of them, Amy raised her head a bit more. They did not see her. The man on the left studied some sort of electronic device in his hand. Looking up, he shouted, "Miss Toller, it's Sergeant Karallas from the Carpenter."
Her heart pounded and her blood surged; Amy stood up. The second man pivoted to look at her.
"Amy?"
"MARIO!" She bound over the rocks and ran to him. After she'd leapt the final few feet, Mario caught her. Wrapping his arms around her, they kissed. Amy kissed him hard and tried to melt her body into his.
"So, I guess you are Miss Amy Toller," the sergeant said, after a polite pause.
Amy, still in Mario's arms, turned to him. "Yes, I am. Oh, am I glad to see you guys. When can we get out of here?"
"Humph," he grunted. "I am very glad to finally find you, but that is the end of the good news. We are all still stranded here."
Amy deflated in Mario's arms and he lowered her to the ground. Suddenly aware of her nudity, she stepped back. She resisted the urge to cover herself. The two men did not attempt to cover themselves, either. Looking closer, she saw the reason for the capes. Each man carried a backpack, and the animal skin capes were to conceal them.
"What do you mean—stranded?"
"We two," he then gestured toward her, "that is, the three of us, are the only survivors of the Carpenter."
"What exactly do you mean?"
"The Barbas destroyed the Carpenter. Our shipmates—they are all dead."
Amy sank to her knees. "WHAT? How?"
Mario lifted her and wrapped her in his arms. "Everyone else is dead?" Her thoughts drifted to Professor Wilhelm. Oh, that poor man.
"Yes." Sergeant Karallas glanced over his shoulder. "Perhaps we should hole up somewhere better protected. There are some rather nasty beasts in these woods."
"Yes, I know." Soon the carnivores would pick up the scent of death and converge on them.
"You saw them?" Mario asked. "The animals? Did you kill the one down there?" He pointed into the trees in the general direction of the dead predator.
"I saw them, but I didn't kill it." Amy suddenly realized what had actually happened. The animal must have been chasing A-ma, and the Barbas killed it with his blaster. But wait until you see what I did kill, she thought to herself.
"We have been trying to follow your signal for a month." The sergeant held up the electronic device in his hand.
"We knew we were close, and then we heard all the racket. Was that you? We followed the noise, and ran into that." Mario looked over his shoulder to indicate the dead beast.
"Yes, there were two of the animals, and I was the one making the noise. But the Barbas killed it." Amy waited for the astonishment to fill their faces, but they remained stony.
"Where are they now, the Barbas?" the sergeant nonchalantly asked.
They already know about them!
"Over there." She casually looked over her shoulder, up the hill. Now the two men reacted. They crouched down into a fighting stance, with their spears held high. "Don't worry, I already killed them." Amy followed as the two men raced up the hill and looked over the ridge of rocks.
"You killed two men armed with blasters?" The sergeant was astonished.
Amy pointed to man with his pants around his knees. "They weren't exactly armed with blasters when I killed them." Sergeant Karallas studied Amy, and she tried not to be self-conscious about her nudity. "Sergeant, as you were saying, we need to get out of here before more show up."
"Yes, ma'am, but shouldn't we take their weapons?" He pointed at the blasters.
"You don't have any?" She again eyed the spears that they carried.
"Sergeant Karallas is with the marine detachment aboard the Carpenter. But no, we don't have any weapons," Mario answered.
"I tried to make the scene look as though they killed each other." Amy pointed at the two dead bodies. "If we take the weapons, the others will know that is not true and come lo
oking for us."
"Ma'am, that may not really be a salient point. Sooner or later, we will have to defend ourselves against them. It would be better if we had blasters."
What does all this mean? What is happening here?
"What is the plan? And where have you been for the past two months?" She turned to Mario. "How did you get down to the surface?"
"I think we need to have a long conversation." Mario moved away from the bodies and sat on a rock. Sergeant Karallas sat down nearby, looking down the hill. Amy sat between them. "Rewinding back to the beginning, the Barbas were already here when we arrived. However, they must have been afraid of us at that time. They hid their ship on the smaller moon. Somehow, they managed to conceal their entire ship with an invisibility hut, or something like that." Amy nodded to encourage Mario to continue. "So, they were watching us as we surveyed the planet. When we began our landing preparations, they decided to attack. They shot down your shuttle and—"
"What? We were shot down? I thought we hit the mountain."
"Well, you did," Sergeant Karallas inserted. "But that was after you were fired upon by the Barbas ship. We, on the Carpenter, observed the attack and tried to retaliate. The captain ordered another shuttle to recover the survivors. That was my shuttle—"
"And," Mario resumed, "I knew you had been on the first one, so I insisted on joining the rescue team on the second shuttle."
"Yes, he was quite insistent," the sergeant emphasized. "The Barbas ship attacked the Carpenter as we were launching. We were hit, but the Carpenter was completely destroyed. It crashed into the ocean. This all happened on the other side of the planet, which is why you saw none of it."
"We crashed too," Mario took up the narrative. "On the western side of these mountains." He needlessly pointed. "However, everyone in our ship survived, at least for a while. David," he nodded toward Sergeant Karallas, "and I set off to find a passage through the mountains. We ran out of food and came back a week later to find that everyone else had been murdered by the Barbas."
Amy was glad she had killed the two men.
"So we set off again to find your shuttle," Sergeant Karallas resumed. "It was very tough going. Ensign Alvarez," he nodded toward Mario, "had no experience with mountains, and we had no equipment. So it took a month from the date of your crash to finally find the wreckage. We found the symbols in the snow—the square, circle, and arrow—so we knew someone had survived."
"I always knew it was you, baby!" Mario added. "We followed in the direction of the arrow, toward the mineralogy hut."
"Yeah, that was my plan, but it didn't work out." Amy paused, trying to decide how much of her experience with Buk and Kar to tell Mario.
"It was for the best," Sergeant Karallas filled the brief silence. "You would have been captured and killed. They found the engineers in the hut, and killed them. They also killed the ones in your anthropology hut, but I'm getting ahead of the story."
"We found the Barbas encampment," Mario continued. "Evading it, we proceeded to the mineralogy hut. As David said, it had been destroyed by the Barbas. During all this time, we had not received a signal from your locator beacon. However, we knew someone had survived. We simply were not close enough to receive your signal."
"So we adopted the dress and manner of the natives, and headed east across the grassland, and then south to the anthropology hut," Sergeant Karallas said. "All the way, searching for your—or anyone's—signal."
"When we found the second hut, it had been attacked like the first one. Everyone was dead. On the way back west, we detected your signal. You can't imagine how overjoyed I was to see that it was indeed you who had survived." With tears in his eyes, Mario put his arm around Amy. He held her close and kissed her.
"All the same, we still couldn't find you. The signal was weak and kept coming and going. We followed it westward."
Yes, on the way back from the Grap.
Amy nodded but said nothing, and Sergeant Karallas continued. "It was only yesterday that we were able to get a strong enough signal to track. And so, here we are, ma'am."
"I am so overjoyed to see you! But what are we going to do now?" Amy couldn't imagine taking them to Kar and her family in the caves.
"Well, ma'am, that is for you to decide," the sergeant said.
"What do you mean? What have I got to say about it?"
"Ma'am, you are in-charge of our little expedition."
"That's completely ridiculous! You're a marine sergeant and Mario is an ensign in the Space Service. I'm a mere doctoral student."
"Be that as it may, ma'am, you are a ground team leader and we are on the ground. You have," his eyes rolled back as he searched his memory, "autonomy without the need to confer with shipboard personnel, should surface conditions warrant deviations from established protocols." He focused on Amy. "The captain put you in charge. I was there. I heard his orders. And, ma'am, I follow orders."
Amy stared at him for a moment.
He's serious!
She looked to Mario for his guidance, but he merely shrugged.
"Besides, ma'am, you know the terrain and the people here far better than we do. We have spent the past two months striving to avoid contact."
Amy had said nothing about her contact with the aliens, but somehow they seemed to know the gist of it. Mario avoided her eyes. "That may be true, but I hate to disappoint you, Sergeant, I have no plan. I suggest we get away from here, hunker down, and wait for rescue." With the shortage of females, Buk had welcomed her into his tribe. Amy had no expectation that Kar would welcome these two men.
And even if he did welcome them, what would I do when the after-dinner orgy begins?
"Ma'am, that may not be an option. I don't expect that there will be any rescue soon. And the Barbas are mining the lanthanum now. It appears that their ship left after it destroyed the Carpenter. I expect it will return to collect more ore soon. They will eventually enslave the natives to collect the lanthanum. Within months, they will have enough to build a fleet of ships and attack Eden."
"Why do you say that we can't expect a rescue? Surely the Space Service knows by now that the Carpenter has been lost."
"Yes, ma'am, but they don't know the circumstances. They have no reason to believe that there are survivors. They know nothing of the mother lode of lanthanum. I am certain that they will send out another ship to complete our mission, and to look for us, but we have no expectation that this will happen anytime soon. It will happen too late."
"Amy, if I might add something here," Mario interrupted, and she turned to him. "We got a brief look at the Barbas encampment. They have a super-light transmitter."
Mario was a communications engineer and Amy had listened to some of his explanations of his work. She knew that faster than the speed-of-light radio communications were possible. With the lanthanum antennas, bubbles of hyperspace were created with the signals inside. However, these were rarely used as they consumed so much power.
"So?"
"If we can get into their compound, I can use their transmitter to send a message to Eden. We can tell the Space Service what has happened, and about the huge lanthanum deposit. Then they would know to rush a fleet here to take control of the planet."
"It doesn't appear," the sergeant added, "that the Barbas know about the large deposit to the north. This team does not appear to have the sensitive, ground-penetrating gamma emitters. However, it won't be long before they do find it."
Amy nodded, and tried to think—think of what she was supposed to do.
"You say," she looked at Mario, "that we can break into their encampment and use their radio?"
"Yes, but I didn't mean to imply that it was all that easy."
She turned to Sergeant Karallas. "Can we do this?"
"Before now," he glanced at the two dead men, "we had no weapons. As you have demonstrated, with a distraction and the element of surprise, they can be killed. These men appear to be miners, not soldiers. They are armed to defend against wild anima
ls and primitive aliens with spears. I think the three of us, with two blasters, have a fighting chance to succeed. And it looks to be the only thing we can do toward completing our mission here."
"How many of them are there?" she asked.
"Maybe a dozen." He glanced again at the two dead men. "Maybe only ten, now."
"Amy, to make this work, we have to use the transmitter while this side of the planet is facing toward Eden. The super-light transmissions are only line-of-sight." Mario swallowed. "That means that we can only use it during the late afternoon hours."
"You mean, like now?"
"Well, between now and sunset."
"Should we regroup, plan, and attack tomorrow?"
"Ma'am, as you said earlier, they will soon come looking for these guys." Sergeant Karallas's foot indicated the bodies. "If we take the blasters, they will know that we are here, and possibly planning an attack. We will lose the element of surprise."
"And if we don't take the blasters…" Amy's voice trailed off for a moment. "All right, we have no choice," she commanded. "We attack."
Chapter Nine
Stardate 3527.9.18 – Two Hours Past Noon
The three citizens of Eden sat in silence for a long moment. The surreal nature of their predicament overwhelmed Amy. Stranded on the alien world, they would have to engage and kill men who were actually of their own kind. Amy's thoughts turned to Kar, Buk, and the others. If the three of them failed to complete the transmission, the alien people would be enslaved. She considered running back to the cave and soliciting Kar's assistance. However, she could not introduce the notion of men killing men to this population of peace-loving people.
Besides, I've no vocabulary to describe the situation.
"Well," Amy sighed, "being in charge is easy when there is no choice. We get the blasters and attack the Barbas today."
Sergeant Karallas jumped at the chance to gather the blasters. "What distraction should we use? Mario, how much time will you need?"