Beggarman

by Steve Matthew Benner

that people in a house like this would have had more possessions. Obviously, that wasn't the case. He couldn't afford to look through other houses in the village. He was sure that the Kirrian army was on its way to investigate, and he was running out of time. He turned his attention to the dead male with the brick in his face.

  He could tell the Kirrian had been some type of laborer by the worn and dirty condition of his clothes. Cobb was lucky that this individual was tall for a Kirrian–or short for an Earthling. This meant the clothes would be a close fit. He began stripping the body of it clothes. The shirt was a dull red with half-length sleeves, fastened by wrapping the opposing sides across the front and tying in the back. The pants were a dark brown and tied at the waist. He even took the corpse's underwear. Cobb thought he might as well be Kirrian all the way to the skin. Aside from the normal wear and tear from use, the clothes seemed to be in pretty good shape. There were a couple burn holes in the pants and shirt, and there was a bloodstain on the shirt's collar where blood from the smashed face had touched it. Cobb stripped off his uniform and began to put on the dead Kirrian's underwear, pants, and shirt. He noticed that the clothes had a strong smell of perspiration, and, once he had them on, he also realized that they already had small occupants. Cobb couldn't be choosy, and fear was an excellent motivator. He knew that time was running out and that he would have to leave the area very soon or be picked up by the Kirrian army. The shoes were too small. He cut the end of the shoes off, wrapped his feet in rags, and forced them into the now open-toed shoes. This would have to do until he could find or fabricate something better.

  There was still one important thing he had to do. The Kirrians were very similar to Earthlings in build and looks except they were slightly smaller, their eyes slanted downward, and they had a boney ridge on their head that ran from the nape of their neck to the bridge of their nose. Kirrian hair tended to be very thin, so the ridge was very prominent and was unique to each individual. Cobb knew these last two differences would make him easily recognizable as an off-worlder and most likely as an Alliance soldier. But he had thought of a way around this while patching his head wound. He now located a small mirror that was still hanging on one wall. Cobb paused to look at his face in the mirror. Except for the area around the cut above his left eye, his face was covered with soot, dirt, and filth from the garbage pit. But the old features were still there, his deep-set, brown eyes; his large Roman nose; thin, colorless lips; and square jaw, all topped by his thick, light-brown hair. He winced as he ran a finger across the purple scar that stretched from the corner of this right eye to his chin line like a canyon across his smooth cheek. He thought that at least he wouldn't have to look at that for a while. He took a length of rag cut from the elder Kirrian's pants and rolled it into a cylinder. He placed the roll along the top of his head to mimic the Kirrian cranial ridge and began wrapping his head with the bandage from his med kit. He covered all of his face, leaving holes for his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. When he was done, Cobb hoped that to an independent observer he appeared to be a Kirrian with his head wrapped in a bandage.

  He still had to add some finishing touches. The bandage was too white and clean to belong to a destitute Kirrian, so he rubbed it liberally with dirt until it was no longer white. In some bedding in the corner, he found a small blanket. He cut a hole about ten inches in diameter into the center. He passed his bandaged head through the hole, and the material covered most of his torso. It made a covering similar to a poncho. This would help keep him warm at night and allow him to keep his hands out of site. Kirrian skin had a more orangeish tinge to it than Earthling flesh. His hands were already covered with dirt, filth, and soot, so they weren't too exposed anyway.

  Cobb tried to find some food but there was nothing in the room. He did pick up a wooden eating bowl that he knew he would need later. He placed his med kit, knife, and hand laser inside his shirt along with the bowl and collected his uniform and other equipment into a bundle. Exiting the house with the bundle, he circled around to the wall nearest the male whose clothes he'd removed. He placed his shoulder against the wall and pushed hard. It quickly gave way, collapsing inward. He checked to make sure the wall had landed on the Kirrian and that the ruble had completely covered the body. He didn't want the Kirrian authorities to wonder why there was a naked Kirrian in this house. Considering how quickly the bodies would begin to putrefy in this heat, the Kirrian authorities would likely be more concerned with getting them buried than with wondering why one civilian was naked. At least that was what Cobb hoped.

  He began walking out of the hamlet in the general direction of the Alliance lines. As he passed one destroyed house that was burning fiercely, he threw the bundled up uniform and other military equipment directly into the flames. Cobb wanted to make sure none of it was found; it would be a give-away that at least one Alliance soldier had survived the blast. Now he moved at a slow jog to put as much distance between him and the hamlet as he could.

  His plan was pretty simple. With a little luck, he could fade into the background of the homeless beggars and mentally ill that roamed the streets of most Kirrian cities. Cobb had seen them many times on visits to occupied areas. When they approached him, he usually yelled at them to get away and, if they were too slow moving, he kicked them in the backside to speed them along. He considered them filthy parasites and definitely did not want them to get too close. He was counting on the fact that others would feel the same way. This subculture of outcasts could move through a city as if invisible; unseen by people that passed them every day. Cobb had seen their kind on every one of the backward worlds he had visited. By acting like one of them, Cobb would become invisible until he could make it back to his own lines. It was a slim hope at best, but the only one he had.

  Avoiding the numerous brush fires that still burned in the area, he jogged west. After about half an hour he heard the sound of vehicles approaching. Cobb had seen the road about a hundred meters to his left and had tried to keep a parallel course to it without getting too close. He knew there would be military patrols heading toward the blast scene, and he didn't want to get spotted by them. Even if he did look like a Kirrian beggar, he could be picked up and questioned about what he’d seen. Not being able to speak the language, he might not have been able to keep up the charade. The brown, dry grass was up to his knees, so he dropped to a prone position and watched as about a dozen personnel carriers filled with troops passed by his position. He could see some of the green-clad Kirrian soldiers riding on the outside of the carriers. They carried state-of-the art military equipment. Cobb thought that, aside from the difference in uniforms, the Kirrians closely resembled Alliance troops. He laughed at the irony that they probably had the same suppliers.

  When they had gone, he sat up in the grass to rest. He looked back the way he had come and saw a large cloud of smoke rising hundreds of feet into the air. He guessed that the fire was getting worse. The soldiers would have a hard time finding anything at all in the remains; so much the better for him. As he sat there, he heard the sound of an approaching flyer. He spotted a black speck coming from the west, headed for the blast area. He stayed seated. Cobb knew that even if the flyer pilot saw him on the ground, which was very unlikely considering the speed at which they traveled, Cobb knew the pilot wouldn't stop to investigate one Kirrian civilian. The speck grew into a black flyer with missile-launchers. As it passed about two hundred meters to the right of his position and a hundred meters off the deck, it kicked up a large dust cloud in its wake. Cobb could feel its powerful engines vibrate his clothes as it passed. He thought briefly that he should have joined the air corps; then maybe he wouldn't be in this predicament.

  He continued moving west, jogging at times and walking at others. His makeshift shoes hurt his feet, and he was developing a nice variety of blisters. He figured he had covered about twenty kilometers during the six hours since leaving the hamlet. Cobb was extremely
thirsty and probably hungry as well, but the pain of thirst masked the pang of hunger. How ironic it would be to survive a photon blast, only to die of thirst out here somewhere. The pale red sun was getting very low in the east, and the light was going fast, but he decided to keep moving in hopes of finding a source of water.

  Cobb kept moving westward as the darkness closed in around him, reducing his vision to almost zero. He was always amazed at how dark it got on this planet. Kirria had only two moons and both of those were so small that they were hard to pick out in a night sky. And since Kirria was at the very edge of the galactic spiral arm, there were few stars in the sky. With only the barest minimum of starlight to illuminate his way, Cobb’s progress slowed to a cautious walk. He’d managed to stumble through the dark for about a kilometer when he suddenly felt the ground give way beneath his feet. He tumbled down the steep slope of a ravine and came to a sudden stop at the bottom, landing briefly on his feet before his forward momentum caused him to fall forward onto his