Blood Contact

by David Sherman

  A hundred meters short of the klick and a half Bass had given for the climb up the slide, Schultz started looking for sign of a route through the forest. He made a face, but didn't comment, when somebody else spotted a way first.

  "Hey," Claypoole's voice crackled over the platoon net, "I see something." His position on the right flank had him closer to the forest than anybody else.

  "Everybody, hold your places," Bass ordered over the platoon net. "Three-two, check it out."

  "What do you have, Rock?" Corporal Kerr asked. He angled his own climb to his right to join Claypoole.

  Claypoole raised an arm to let his sleeve slide up and expose it, then pointed under the fern trees. "Looks like a game trail."

  Kerr looked where Claypoole pointed and saw it—a line, maybe half a meter wide, where the moist dirt was packed down and slick-looking. "Could be," he said, and wondered what kind of animal made a slick trail. Nearly every game trail he'd ever seen looked trodden or scraped. The one before him was smoothly rippled, as if something heavy and uneven had rolled it out.

  "What do we have?" Sergeant Bladon asked.

  Kerr pointed.

  "Cover me." Bladon slipped between the nearest tree ferns and squatted next to the slick. After studying it for a moment, he touched it and rubbed his fingers together. Standing, he wiped his fingers and returned to Kerr and Claypoole.

  "Three-six, three-two," he said into his comm unit. "Those local amphibians—do they live this high on the mountain? The slick is damp with water. It's wet, but not slimy. I get the impression soft-bodied things use that trail."

  "Is it clear enough for us to follow?" Bass asked.

  "That's an affirmative. As far as I can see it's going in the right direction, and once we get in from the edge, there isn't very much in the way of underbrush. Not like down below."

  "All right, we'll follow it. Hammer, get to it. See if you can parallel it without walking on it." Walking on a trail is seldom a good idea in a hostile situation—people tend to set ambushes and booby traps along trails. "Flankers out fifty meters."

  Bladon heard MacIlargie groan over the squad net. "Don't worry, Mac," he said. "It's clear enough in there you won't be struggling through too much crap." Chuckling, he added, "And Corporal Kerr and I will both be able to keep an eye on you. You won't get into any trouble." Then he had to step aside to let Schultz pass under the trees. "Second fire team, take your flank. Stay clear of the trail," he ordered as soon as Corporal Dornhofer followed Schultz. He glanced toward MacIlargie in time to see the PFC glare at him before sliding his light-amplifier screen into place. He held off a grin until his own light screen was in place.

  The fernlike trees towered to ten meters and more. Their fanned fronds blocked most of the direct sunlight. The light that penetrated to the ground mostly filtered through the nearly translucent foliage. Under them it was dim, almost like early dusk except for the greenish tinge to the light. Schultz led the way thirty meters uphill from the glistening trail. Kerr and his men flanked the platoon an equal distance downhill from it. The platoon's main body was probably far enough off the trail to be outside the killing zone of an ambush, yet close enough for the right-side flankers to keep it in view. Any farther and the density of the fern trees would completely block the view of the game trail—it wasn't really as clear as Bladon had told MacIlargie.

  Kerr shivered when he lost sight of the rest of the platoon. His universe suddenly closed down to himself and the two Marines with him. The silence amid the fern trees was broken only by the quiet squelch of their footsteps on the damp ground, the occasional scrunch as one of them stepped on a treelet and broke its stem. Even those few sounds were muted by the proliferation of fronds, making the sounds seem eerily distant. The silence stood in sharp contrast to the din of the battle at Turlak Yar where he'd nearly been killed. The dim, greenish light was nothing like the desert brilliance that had drenched the village on Elneal. There, he'd been in a fighting position with one other Marine as the battle raged around them; here, he was in close contact with just two Marines. The mountainside forest was not a place where horsemen could mount a charge. And there was no detected threat. Still, being out of sight of the rest of the platoon in a potentially hostile situation brought back the memories of his last firefight, a tsunami that threatened to overwhelm him and curl him into a fetal ball from which he might never emerge—something had horribly killed the members of the scientific mission here, and that something might still be present. The surge of confidence Kerr had felt on the initial recon at Central Station abandoned him and he struggled to keep himself under control, to maintain vigilance, to prevent his men or anyone else from seeing the terror welling up in him. The recon at Central had been dangerous only in his mind; no enemy was there, no one had shot at him.

  Something made a plop up ahead and he almost lost it. Almost, but not quite—the reflexes that had been drilled into him during his time in the Marines, and honed on many operations, took over. He dove to the ground and rolled, pointing his blaster in the direction of the sound. "Down!" he ordered on his fire team net, then immediately switched to the command circuit and reported, "Right flank has something up ahead." He dropped his infra screen into place. If there were warm bodies up ahead, he might be able to spot their heat signatures through the foliage.

  "What is it?" Bass's voice came back.

  "Don't know. I heard something." He flipped back to the fire team circuit. "Rock, Mac, do you see anything?"

  "I can't see anything," Claypoole replied.

  "I heard it," MacIlargie answered.

  "We all heard it, but none of us see anything," Kerr reported.

  "Where was it relative to you?"

  "Sounded almost dead ahead."

  "All right, I'm deploying the platoon on line, angled to your front. Go downhill, then swing back up, try to get behind it to check it out. Stay low in case we have to fire."

  "Roger." Yes, stay low, stay very low. It wouldn't do at all to get fried by Marine fire. Kerr raised one arm at the elbow to expose his forearm and signaled Claypoole and MacIlargie to follow him, then slithered downhill on his belly. Turning up the amplifiers on his earpieces, he was able to hear them slithering behind him. He hesitated at the game trail, afraid to expose himself for the second or two it would take to slide across. Then he remembered his chameleons rendered him effectively invisible in the visual; he let his training and reflexes take over and slithered across. Fifty meters downhill he stopped and waited for the other two to reach him.

  "How far ahead do you think it was?" he asked when they reached him.

  Claypoole had his shields up, and Kerr saw him shake his head. MacIlargie simply said, "Dunno."

  Kerr thought sound wouldn't travel far through the fern trees, the noise couldn't have been even fifty meters away, possibly half that or less. He rose to a crouch. "We'll go forty meters, then back up," he whispered. If there was an ambush waiting along the trail, they'd come at it from behind. He hoped they would. They had been uphill from the game trail. The ambush would be facing it unless the ambushers had heard the Marines behind them and turned around.

  After going thirty-five meters Kerr stopped. "Mac, wait here for my signal," he said.

  MacIlargie murmured "Will do," and lowered his infra screen so he could see Kerr's hand signal.

  Five meters farther Kerr stopped again and ordered Claypoole, "Go five more meters, wait for my command."

  "Right." Claypoole dropped his infra screen and went five more meters, stopped and looked back. He could just make Kerr out through the fern trees.

  Kerr looked to his left and right, saw both of his men waiting for his command. He heard another plop and inwardly shivered. He still hadn't had his test of fire, still didn't know if he could fight again or if he'd panic. When they arrived at Central and his fire team scouted, they didn't meet anyone. This time he knew someone or something was up ahead. He took a deep breath to control a shudder. It was time for him to find out whether he st
ill had it in him to be a Marine corporal or any kind of fighting Marine. He raised his left hand to shoulder level, then thrust it forward. The three Marines began moving uphill.

  Fifteen meters up, before the game trail came back into sight, scattered hints of red began to appear on Kerr's infra screen, and his anal sphincter clenched. The hints of red didn't resemble human heat signatures. But whatever had killed those people at Central or in Aquarius Station didn't have to be human, or even warm blooded. It didn't even have to be intelligent.

  After twenty-five meters the trees abruptly ended at the edge of a small clearing in a flat spot on the mountainside. The game trail led into the clearing. Another led away from the opposite side. A pool filled most of the clearing, probably runoff from a recent rainfall. Many animals were in the pool or gathered around it. Several of them, with tails as thick as their torsos, were nearly a meter long, with shiny, redspeckled bodies that slinked from side to side as they slithered about on legs so short they didn't quite hold the bodies above the ground. A few others were bulkier, perhaps weighing twenty kilos, pale green bodies spotted with brown or blue. Those had massive hind legs folded alongside their abdomens, and neckless heads that seemed to be nearly all mouth. Most of the animals were smaller and skittered about between the larger few. Some of the animals were tussling, perhaps mating or in mating competition. Most of them carried their heads pointed up into the air as though they were looking for something above them.

  As the Marines watched, a half-meter-long, tube-bodied insect ventured into the air of the clearing. The legs of one of the large, pale green animals straightened like coiled springs suddenly released and it flew into the air. An impossibly long tongue shot out of its mouth almost faster than it could be seen and snagged the large insectoid. The green animal plopped when it landed. As large as the flying animal was, only the tip of its tail and a few outer edges of its many wings were visible outside the amphibian's mouth. The amphibian swallowed and all of the creature disappeared.

  Kerr sagged, the tension suddenly drained out of his body. An animal that captured prey with its tongue probably didn't spit acid to eat away a human body.

  "All clear," he said into the command frequency. "It's local fauna."

  "You sure there's nobody else around?" Bass asked.

  Kerr rotated through his screens. "Nothing visible in visual or infra," he replied.

  "Rabbit, verify," Bass ordered.

  "Roger," Sergeant Ratliff acknowledged. Bass listened as Ratliff ordered his point fire team to move at an angle downhill to approach Kerr's fire team from the side, and his second fire team to move forward to a position directly uphill from it. He told Dornhofer he'd be right behind first fire team.

  In less than two minutes Ratliff and his point fire team reached the side of the clearing to the left of Kerr and his men.

  "Kerr, by the numbers, make a move so I can verify who I see in infra," Ratliff said. He saw a pseudopod of red lift from the central of the three human-sized heat signals his infra screen showed and wave in a circle.

  "Rock, make a move," Kerr ordered.

  Ratliff saw Claypoole's movement.

  "Mac, do it."

  Ratliff watched MacIlargie's verifying arm wave.

  "Confirmed," Ratliff said. "I don't see anything else that looks like a warm-body heat signal. Pasquin, do you see anything?"

  "Negative," came the reply.

  "There's a clearing downhill from you. Approach with caution."

  "Roger."

  In another moment the second fire team reached the uphill side of the clearing.

  "Great Buddha's balls," someone murmured.

  Ratliff checked his motion detector. It didn't show any movement beyond the pool clearing and the Marines who ringed it. "All clear," he reported.

  One of the massive amphibians sprang into the air to catch a broad-winged insect.

  "Hey, that's Leslie!" Dobervich exclaimed.

  "What?"

  "Yeah," Dobervich said. "When I was a kid my family had a dog about that size. She was off-white and loved to eat, always hopping up to catch treats, just like that."

  "Your dog caught insects with her tongue?"

  "Your dog had a mouth that big?"

  "No, she didn't have a mouth that big, and she didn't catch her food with her tongue. But she should have had a mouth that big the way she was always begging for food." Dobervich stood and stepped into the clearing.

  The amphibians stopped what they were doing and looked around for danger. They hadn't heard any of the radio transmissions the Marines made, and the Marines had moved quietly enough that the animals hadn't heard their approach. But they did hear the sound of Dobervich stepping into the clearing.

  "Freeze," Ratliff ordered. None of the Marines moved; they barely breathed.

  After a moment without seeing or hearing anything else threatening, the amphibians began to return to their mating and feeding. One of the big hoppers saw Dobervich's unscreened face hovering in midair and read it as some sort of insect. It hopped up and shot out its tongue.

  Dobervich yelped and swatted at the tongue, but as fast as he moved, the tongue was faster. It hit and withdrew before he made contact. The amphibians scattered out of the clearing at Dobervich's yelp.

  "Yep, just like a dog," Schultz said. "Licked your face." He hawked onto the ground.

  "Quite a display there," Bass said dryly. "Your Leslie is gone. Let's get back on the move; we've got some survivors to find."

  In less than a minute third platoon and the medical team were back on the move.

  Again Schultz led the platoon uphill and to the right. He didn't attempt to travel in a beeline, but constantly looked at the lay of the mountainside, picking a route that even the medical team members could negotiate without undue difficulty. At the same time, Schultz led them past as few potential ambush sites as possible, while always moving in the general direction of the sighting.

  His senses registered the sounds and sights of normal activity among the animals that lived in the mountain's forest, and filtered them out. He'd notice any unusual behavior, which would alert him to danger. He couldn't write a paper on the activities of the indigenous life-forms of Waygone, but he'd studied the scientists' reports on those life-forms during the voyage from Thorsfinni's World and made his own observations during the time he'd been planetside. He strongly suspected he'd notice anything out of the ordinary. He was generally very good at that kind of observation. Nobody survived as pointman on as many different worlds as he had without being very good at observing native fauna.

  It wasn't anything in particular that caught his attention.

  The leslies and other amphibians Schultz saw or heard were going about their usual hopping, slithering, plopping, splashing movements. The insectoids buzzed and flitted about without a seeming care until some were snagged by flicking tongues and swallowed whole by an amphibian—and those that weren't snagged and swallowed ignored the fates of their late cousins.

  Nothing that met Schultz's senses changed. But he felt something. Men in combat, maybe not all of them but certainly some, develop a sixth sense that tells them when they aren't alone. Sometimes it can even tell them in what direction the danger is in, even when they can't identify anything in particular that alerted them.

  Schultz stopped and eased down to one knee, his head swiveling slowly, eyes burning into every shadow. "Hold up," he murmured into his helmet radio.

  "What do you have?" Ratliff asked.

  "Nothing." But he kept looking. The feeling he had wasn't distinct, it didn't tell him which side the danger he felt came from or whether it was ahead of him or behind. "Someone's watching us," he murmured. "Don't know where."

  "Are you sure?"

  Schultz didn't bother to answer. He put out his motion detector and started alternating between his infra and light-gatherer screens. He heard Ratliff order the rest of the squad to do the same. He waited and watched. Nothing showed up on any of his sensors.

&nb
sp; "Who's watching us, Hammer?" Gunny Bass asked over the radio.

  "Don't know. I feel them." The other Marines thought Schultz had no nerves, that he was always calm. But just then he was almost jittering. It was unnatural to him that he could feel someone watching without knowing in what direction to look for the watcher.

  "They can't see us, Hammer," Bass said. "We don't have any evidence they can see in infrared."

  "If they know how to look they can."

  "Not many people know how to look."

  "Are they people?"

  It was Bass's turn to not answer.

  After ten minutes with none of the Marines seeing or hearing anything that seemed out of the ordinary, and none of their sensors picking up sign of anything that wasn't native fauna, Bass ordered Schultz to move out.

  He didn't move; not even his eyes swiveled. He repressed a shiver. The shiver was a combination of blood lust and uncertainty. He was primed to fight and kill and die. He wasn't a watcher, he was a fighter. The Earth barbarians were his prey, it was his duty to close with them and kill as many of them as possible before they killed him. Every fiber of his being ached to do that. He couldn't close and kill now, though. His orders were clear: find them, track them, find out how many there were, report back when they joined with the others. The watchers were females, quiet unaggressive creatures, who could sit quiescent for long periods of time and observe. He was male, a fighter, an aggressive creature bred and trained to fight and kill. But this time the Master decided a female sitting quietly wasn't the right one to watch. They didn't know where the Earth barbarians were, how they moved, what formations they used. To gain that information, the Master decided to use a fighter. He was chosen. It pained him almost to death to know the enemy was nearby and yet not attack. But he must do as the Master said; obedience was as much a part of his makeup as aggressiveness and the need to kill the enemy. To make sure he obeyed, he was sent naked and unarmed.