by Pam Uphoff
Ebsa snickered. "City kids. Non-cooking parents. They grew up eating nothing but fabbed food, or something from a vendo that was probably also fabbed. Well, they admitted to eating vat meat sometimes. They think all this stuff I make tastes nasty, and can't believe anyone actually prefers it."
"That . . . explains a lot."
"Indeed. Fortunately they both want to be camp managers, so this is a 'learning field kitchen management' assignment, not the beginning of a cooking career. Sort of like mopping. No spell for that?"
She blushed. "Well, I do have a cleaning spell I use."
"Good. I guess the budget couldn't stretch to a janitor . . . how many people are here?"
"You make it a hundred and twenty-five. The Directorate's got twenty researchers on site, with staff, looking for causes and trying to date the cataclysm, and biologists wanting see how the surviving plants and animals have evolved. Three universities have pooled resources, they've got forty people, about half archaeologists and half slave labor—that's a joke, they call themselves that. The University physicists and astronomers have mostly gone home. Just one guy doing a study of sunspots. Then Wxxo's got a clerk, Chief Ocho and his crew, us three in Medical, and Action Leader Iqgu with two full teams and an aide. And now a Mess Chief and two cooks."
"Just two teams? That's a lot of fence to cover."
"Well, Ocho's got eight people as well, plus all the sensors and so forth. It would be overkill if the bugs just didn't get so big."
Ebsa hunched his shoulders. "That anti-chitin spell worked really well. Nobody mentioned that the local spiders got as big as my hand."
Paer bit her lip . . . "Umm, actually they get a whole lot larger."
"A whole lot? Oh, man, that's, umm. Well. It's not like I'm afraid of them or anything."
The corners of her mouth tucked in. "They're only extremely dangerous right after they hatch. After they've had a couple of meals, they settle down and don't attack things our size unless we annoy them."
"Oh . . . " Ebsa hunted for a change of subject. "So . . . to be taken seriously you're going to have to go to medical school, aren't you?"
"Yeah. But I like the field work. And . . . I want children . . . "
She was blushing, meeting his eyes, then glancing down. Smiling. Ebsa suspected he was grinning like a loon and tried to damp it down.
He took a deep breath . . . paused . . . common sense flooded back in, even as he reached across the table to take her hands. "Paer . . . you can do anything. You can do everything. But you can't do it all at once. What order do you want to do things in?"
"I know. And children and field work don't mix, unless I store them away like Nighthawk, and I don't think Oners are ready for that."
"Medical School is supposed to be really tough. Time consuming and exhausting." Ebsa hesitated. "Good training for motherhood? Or . . .more field work after, then motherhood?"
"It's hell being sensible, isn't it? I didn't mean to blurt that out. I mean, we could wait another seven years and then Dad'll be leaving office and I don't have to worry about a scandal . . . But seven years?"
Ebsa swallowed. Brave. Be Brave. "Well, somebody's got to be the first to do the weird time bubble things with their kids." Dry swallow. "Paer . . . "
Her eyes raised . . . widened as they fixed on something behind him. "Ebsa!"
He jumped, dumping his chair, gathering power, reaching for his gun, fixing on the huge spider bounding across the ground, closing fast. That thing must weigh twenty kilos! Safety off. Calculate a bounce . . . squeeze. It jolted with the impact. Leaped again. Toward him.
Two more shots to the body. It finally fell in a twitching heap a meter from his boots. Movement beyond. More spiders. Lots more spiders. Black as hell, bounding like deer . . . spiders.
"Paer, gun safe. The twelve millimeter." Ebsa shot the two nearest spiders. They dropped, scrambled around to reorient themselves, smaller jumps but still heading for the tent.
Ebsa stepped out to keep any spiders away from Paer and the crawler, thankful he was still parked up close and cozy. He felt her spell spill out, over the crawler, under the crawler. He started hearing other gunshots, more distant. He started shooting every damned jumping . . . dropped the empty mag as he reached for the other, slapped it into place. Slice spell and step aside from the spider parts, shoot two more.
Cursing from the side where someone was trying to hold one off with a chair.
Ebsa threw the anti-chitin spell that direction, and smeared it outward toward two others. Two shots into the more distant pair of a foursome. Slice as the first two got close enough. Turn back and throw the anti-chitin. He stepped out to have a clear view. Men were running in from all directions. Action Teams.
Paer ran up and handed him his favorite 12mm Dacca, stepped aside, raised her shotgun and fired. The spider flipped and landed twitching. Enough soft spots in their faces. Good. The rifle took the nasties out with a single shot. Excellent. Ebsa started to circle the mess tent, spotted movement to the side, turned and shot one leaping out from under a table. He knelt and peered.
"Shit! He bolted to his feet and wove through the tables. Threw the anti-chitin spell ahead of himself, and again as he neared the thrashing fight on the floor. The spider on the man sagged, and Ebsa grabbed a chair, swung it around and got a leg under the creature and flipped it away. Its victim screamed as its jaws ripped out of his arm.
"It's got me good, I can feel it. I'm dead."
The blood flooding out of the wound stopped, gelled . . . Ebsa ripped out the injector Paer'd given him. Jabbed the man's upper arm with it. Dropped it. Reached for the little tube he carried, flipped the lid off. Poured a bit in the man's mouth as he panted. He choked.
"Swallow it. Now!" Ebsa poured all the command he was capable of into that.
He scanned under the tables again. Clear. Got up and ran back toward Paer . . . veered and checked the core of the triangle of vendos and fabs . . . clear. No more shots, near or far.
Paer was turning slow circles. "The action teams got the far side of the breakout. I think that's the whole hatch. It's not like they're shy."
"Hatch? How did they get over the wall?"
"The adults lay their eggs deep underground. The hatchlings dig their way up to the surface, then spread out hunting." Paer looked back at the tent. "There've been four fatalities since I've been here."
"Might be five now, that guy . . ." Ebsa hunched his shoulders. "His blood . . . "
"Jelled. I know." She swallowed. "Watch this side. I need to go check him."
"I injected him with the anti-venom, then gave him a dose of the Joy Juice."
Paer paused. "That's illegal . . . and I didn't hear you say that." Then she ran off, eyes scanning, shotgun at ready.
Ebsa stayed on the kitchen side of the tent, checking everything obsessively, throwing the anti-chitin spell everywhere. He kicked a dead spider. "Dammit. For just a second there I think I almost had the nerve to propose."
Chapter Four
22 Emre 1408
Main Camp, World X 22845
The Action Teams had been busy on the other side of the hatch, and finished up with a sweep of the whole enclosure.
Chief Ocho got his people out for cleanup. He eyed Ebsa's rifle and surveyed the battleground.
"Good thing the tent's got a wide clear fire zone around it." Ebsa looked around. "And now I know why."
The chief nodded. "I thought by now all the dens inside the barrier would have hatched. These big ones . . . well, if they were laid just before we finished the wall, they incubated for six months. And if they were laid earlier . . . there could still be more."
"Crumb. And they really stink." An odd smell more like a concentrated snake den, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. "What do you do with them?"
"Burn them. They'll be stinking even worse in a couple of hours if we don't." He waved down a man in a small tractor and walked out to meet him.
Ebsa eyed his relaxed demeanor, nodded.
Crisis over. I can relax too. He hunted down his expended magazine, and took it and his grubby self off to the Junkyard's shower. Cleaned and reloaded both pistol and rifle. He looked over his shoulder as the door opened. Rye and Woofie, big eyed. He holstered the pistol and slotted the second mag in beside it, racked the 12mm.
"I don't ordinarily rack anything loaded. But after those spiders, I'm making an exception." He closed the gun safe, but didn't lock it.
"You were, you were . . . " Woofie ran out of words.
"Awesome. How did you move so fast?" Rye's voice was high and squeaky.
"You were carrying a gun! Loaded! That's . . . that's . . . "
"Illegal." Rye finished for him.
Ebsa snorted. "For a civilian, in most cities. I am a Directorate Agent. I don't carry at home, unless there's a reason, but in the field, damn straight I've got a gun. How'd you get through the Directorate School without weapons training?"
"Well, I had to take two semesters. Knocked that out as a freshman, Rye, too. It's not like we were Team Track or anything."
"And karate. Ick!" Rye hunched her shoulders. "All we needed were the Basic Proficiency Certs."
Ebsa stepped out of the crawler and closed the door. "Hate to have something crawl in there. Sheesh. I was Team Track . . . and, well, I like trying new weird things."
"We noticed." Woofie’s eyes widened suddenly. "Wait, we aren't Directorate Agents, are we?"
"Umm . . . legally . . . actually I'm not sure where the dividing line is. It's not all graduates of the Directorate School . . . just some specialties, positions, or ranks. But I never actually looked into it. I sort of got appointed under weird circumstances, and never thought about it, after."
He looked around the mess tent. "Well. Lunch is definitely over. Grab garbage bags and let's collect all the dropped food and plates. Maybe it can all go in the fire pit with the spiders."
"How can you be so cool?" Rye took a bag and looked across the tent to where a stretcher was being carried off. Paer was holding an IV bag high, so the man hadn't died yet.
Ebsa shrugged. "This assignment as a Mess Chief? It's like a . . . nice easy posting, because the last one was really rough. I've fought before. Killed and thought I was going to die before." He stopped at a table and swept everything into his bag, stooped and grabbed the half sandwich on the floor. "Just . . . get back to work, and get a little tougher. Field agents can't be too soft."
A woman trotted by, aiming a comp at them.
Ebsa raised his eyebrows.
"Headcount. Wxxo doesn't want to find someone's body three days from now." She headed out toward Ocho's work team.
"Makes sense. Now, is there a broom somewhere? Or . . . given the spider gore splashed around, maybe a hose?"
They looked appalled.
"Not by the vendos!"
"Oh, yeah, good point. Well, I'll deal with the edge over there, you two sweep the uncontaminated areas, then I'll hose down the spot over there." Where there's both spider goo and human blood. Gelled . . . toxic?
He looked out at the work crew and headed that way.
Ocho looked around.
"So, spider goo on concrete. Hose it off or burn it then hose it?" Ebsa looked at the wispy smoke from the pit. "Need me to add some combustible garbage?"
"Couldn't burn any worse. I've got a lad fetching more kerosene. The larger they are, the poorer they burn, and these are the biggest yet."
"Don't say yet. I don't want to see anything even larger, and I speak as a man who's been on dinosaur worlds."
Ocho snorted. "Wait till you see the cockroaches. Only good thing you can say about them is that they aren't poisonous. Yes, bring the garbage, yes, burn off the spider goo. Don't burn down the tent."
"Gotcha, chief." He walked back to the tent. "Take all garbage out to the pit. Including the empty crates and containers around the back." He walked over and contemplated the drying goo. Collected power, not the usual fire ball, he just wanted heat. All those lessons from Ajha will finally be put to use. Infrared frequencies . . . He dropped the hot spot and mentally compressed it until it was nearly white hot, and the goo charred to a powder. Then he mentally nudged the ball around, following it all around, adding power steadily to keep it hot, then rolling it quickly across to where the spider had bitten the man and then charred everything there.
Back to the kitchen side. He eyed the packed chalky gravel that constituted the ground around the tent. Shrugged and sent the fireball out to the spots that looked like they'd been recently anointed with spider liquids.
One of the work crew stomped over and watched for a minute. "The sun will kill the odors. Can that burn the mess in the pit?"
"Well . . . let's find out."
Everyone stood back as he dropped his hot spot into the pit, spread it out, and added more power. He stepped back to watch. The pit glowed. Not much flame, just concentrated heat.
Wxxo walked up and grinned at the chief. "Told you he was handy to have around."
A third man stomped around and glared at Ebsa. "Why aren't you on a Team?"
This must be Action Leader Iqgu. "I've been on both Action and Exploration Teams. But . . . somehow a lot of people don't want that Closey Upcomer permanently on their team, so I keep finding myself the odd man out and doing something else until I'm needed."
"I saw about half of what you did. That was experience."
"Yes. Team Thirteen."
The man tilted his head and studied him a moment. "I see." He turned and walked away.
Wxxo was stifling a grin. Ocho gave him an inquiring look.
"Thirteen was Ajha's Helaos hunters team."
Blink. "The Philosopher Ajha? I mean, he wasn't yet, but . . . "
"But he spent a year rescuing women who'd been kidnapped by the Helaos."
Ebsa shrugged. "And men who'd won out over the merge. Being the Third Alternate Philosopher hasn't changed Ajha a bit. You wouldn't believe how much money we won, betting on him, when he started ruffling feathers. 'We' being anyone who's worked with him. So, yeah, basically, killing spiders is easy, when you've had to kill men." They didn't seem to need any more help with the fire, so he walked back to the kitchen. Crisis or not, people had to eat.
Rye actually failed to complain when he sent her off for lots of dough number twelve. Woofie eyed the frozen boneless chicken breasts with trepidation, but ran them through the slicer and bagged them to defrost in the fridge. Cheered up when he was sent off for fabbed veggies.
"Whole cream? Are you sure? There's so much fat in it . . . " Rye sighed and took the two jugs. " . . . entire expedition's going to die of heart attacks . . . "
Ebsa grinned and pretended to not hear. Put the dough in the fridge to rest. Demonstrated making a cilantro poblano cream sauce. Put them to work slicing the fake veggies, frying the chicken, then the veggies. Then the pasta maker came out. Good fun, lots of noodles made, boiled, dished up with veggies, meat, and sauce. He worked to not notice the diners avoiding the side of the tent the spiders had gotten to, not to mention the two armed Teamers around the tent. He ran out of customers, fed the kids, wolfed down his own, then stuck two servings on paper plates and took them down to the aid station. Paer looked up and smiled.
Ebsa eyed the docbox . . . a mix of red, yellow, and green lights. He winced. "Are you allowed to take a meal break, and is there anyone else here?"
"Dr. Atly." She nodded at a closed door. "Is this the incredible dinner Haad popped in to tell me I was missing?"
"It is. I'll leave this one for the Doctor. You going to be here all night?"
"Yes. Poor Itchy—Dr. Ijte, actually—we've no idea yet what permanent damage has been done to his lower arm and hand. He's one of the university archaeologists. His wife's also with the project. The doc gave her a tranq and sent her to bed."
"One damn. Umm, can I get another injector? Suddenly I dislike not having one handy."
She pulled open a drawer and handed him two. "Just because you get into so much trouble. In
fact take three, on account of the tykes."
They stared at each other for a long moment.
Ebsa hesitated, sighed. "Professional." He walked out into the twilight.
Chapter Five
15 Jumada, 1408 yp
Main Camp, World X 22845
The tykes were totally disgusted at the thought of frying donuts.
And ate the results with no protest. Ditto everyone else.
Dr. Itchy survived the night, and a bit to everyone's surprise, so did his left hand. Haad introduced herself, and received a plate of donuts and a thermos of coffee to take back to the aid station.
"Tomorrow, swear to the One, we're making a proper hot breakfast buffet. So you can get back to complaining about the nasty meat. "
Then Ebsa got dragged into the after action analysis.
It was pretty predictable. After six months they'd thought the spider nests inside the compound had all hatched, and shifted their emphasis to watching the perimeter for spiders trying to get in to lay eggs. Especially disturbing was that the teams had had no one near the concentration of people at the mess tent.
"We're very fortunate that only one person was bitten, and he's survived and is recovering." Wxxo nodded toward Ebsa. "Fortunately our mess chief is an experienced teamer, and here to rest after a hairy assignment. And still in the habit of carrying a gun."
A few odd looks from the people who hadn't been there.
"So, Iqgu, looks like you need to start patrolling inside again, and I think I'll—again—poke HQ about a few more people."
A nod. "I've got men walking the inside, and I'll be sure someone's near any grouping of people. Meals will get two." He shrugged. "We're a bit short-handed, with the excursion out to the coastal ruins."
Wxxo sighed. "Indeed. Ocho, make sure your crews are armed. Dr. Objo? Check all your staff. Any of them with weapons training ought to be packing. Dr. Uhse, I doubt many of your people are experienced, but ask. There were nearly fifty people in the mess tent . . . and only one was armed. I think we've gotten complacent. Time to tighten up a bit."