Blood Contact

by David Sherman

  Not being able to see the Earth barbarians meant he didn't know how many there were, but that didn't really matter. The barbarians from Earth were weak when his kind last saw them. The ease with which their small force had killed the thousand in the scientific stations proved that they had grown weaker during the intervening centuries. Even the ones that had stood and fought were easily defeated before their survivors fled high onto the mountain.

  The leader flicked his nictitating membranes across his eyes again to moisten them, and glanced to his sides. His fighters were disciplined and ready. Even the large ones were keeping good order rather than rushing ahead. He saw that they were closing toward the middle of the formation. That meant there were very few of the Earth barbarians, just as he thought. Either few, or they were very tightly bunched up. Either way they would be easy to kill. His fighters would close on them and pour death on them. It was good that the leader had ordered the platoon to go naked; by the time they were close enough for the Earth barbarians to see their weapons in this dim light, they would be well within range. Until then the stupid Earth barbarians would think they were simply larger amphibians. He and his fighters were amphibian, but they weren't amphibians. He doubted the Earth barbarians could appreciate the subtlety; they'd never been subtle.

  He looked to his sides again. His fighters were beginning to cast glances in his direction. They knew they were almost within range, and were waiting for his instructions to commence washing the Earth barbarians with their weapons. Just a few more paces and he would give the signal.

  "Their faces, do their faces protrude forward?" Bass demanded.

  "Yes," Stevenson answered. "Like a snake's."

  Bass looked at Baccacio, who had listened to the brief radio report. Baccacio shivered as he said, "That's the things. They're coming." His hands clenched; he wished they held a blaster.

  It wasn't something Bass had to think about. He had three Marines facing twenty or more aliens who he knew murdered without warning, mercy, or provocation. If his entire platoon was there, maybe he could try to communicate with the aliens—but three men..."Flame them," he ordered.

  "You can't do that!" Snodgrass yelped. "They're an alien intelligence. You can't just order the destruction of the greatest scientific discovery of all time! We have to talk to them."

  Ignoring him, Bass looked around to see who was available. Second squad and the other gun team were already in defensive positions. "First squad, on me," he ordered. He heard the staccato of a gun firing on the knob, punctuated by the cracks of a single blaster. "Hyakowa's in command here."

  Snodgrass grabbed Bass's arm. "You can't do this!"

  Bass didn't even look at him. His eyes were fixed on the knob. He saw brilliant flashes of light from beyond it. "Platoon Sergeant, this man is under arrest. Put him with the other prisoners."

  "Aye aye, Gunny," Hyakowa replied as he grabbed Lieutenant Snodgrass and flung him toward the knot of pirates. "Let's go, first squad."

  Bass and the ten Marines of first squad sprinted toward the observation post, where the sound of firing was already ebbing. At a signal from Dr. Bynum, a corpsman grabbed a medkit and raced after the Marines.

  The firefight was over by the time Bass and first squad reached the knob. Corporal Stevenson was prone behind his blaster, shaking his head and repeating again and again, "I saw it but I don't believe it." Kindrachuck still had his shoulder to his gun, sighting downslope as though looking for more targets. Clarke stared slack jawed down the slope in the direction the things had come from, so shocked by what he'd seen he didn't seem to be aware of the steam that rose from a gaping wound that bubbled on his hip. The corpsman saw the wound and immediately knelt next to him and cut away his trousers to examine it.

  "What happened?" Bass demanded as he scanned the landscape. There weren't any of the skink-things in evidence. "Where'd they go?" He was aware of Ratliff positioning his squad to defend the position.

  "They flashed," Stevenson said, not looking away from where the skinks had been. "I saw it but I don't believe it."

  "What did you see, damnit?" A ragged swath of ground about sixty meters away was seared, most of the springy growth burned away. It looked like more damage than could be accounted for by the firing he'd heard.

  Stevenson rolled onto his side and looked up at Bass. "Every time we hit one, it flared up—I mean, it totally went up in flames. Any kind of hit. We could feel the heat of them burning from here." He slowly shook his head.

  Kindrachuck started talking softly. "If you hit a man with a short burst from a gun, you'll flame him. He'll burn. When he's done burning, you're left with a crispy critter; those things just flared up even with one hit. And they didn't leave any corpse behind. They just vaporized."

  Bass looked at Stevenson and Kindrachuck. In his experience, bodies didn't simply vaporize, not even when they were hit by a short burst from a gun: Then he remembered what Baccacio had said, that he shot two with his blaster and they vaporized. Bass hadn't believed him. He looked downslope and still didn't see anything other than the scorched area. He glanced at the corpsman, who was using a scalpel to dig something out of Clarke's hip. "How is he?"

  "I sedated him," the corpsman replied without looking up from his work. "This is an acid burn. I think there's some still active acid in there. He should heal all right after I get the rest of it out."

  Bass grunted. It was another point on which the pirates seemed to have told a garbled truth, and a confirmation of the security camera vid tapes at Central. He'd never heard of acid weapons. "Cover me," he ordered, and trotted to take a closer look at the scorched area.

  "Watch where you step," Stevenson called after him. "Some of their weapons blew up, some of that acid might be laying around."

  Bass stopped at the edge of the scorched area. What he saw defied belief. He hadn't counted, not on a conscious level, but he was sure there hadn't been many more than a dozen blaster shots and the gun had shot less than a quarter load. Sure, concentrated fire could slag solid rock. Concentrate enough fire and it could melt armor plate. But the small amount of fire the gun team put out couldn't account for the condition of the ground. A swath about fifty meters wide was scorched, more thoroughly in some places than in others. Where it was more scorched, the dirt had melted and now glistened, mirrorlike. Great heat still radiated from the patches of burned ground, sending Bass back from it. Small bits of ground cover remained between the melts. He ignored the heat long enough to approach the edge of the scorched area, where he squatted and picked at one piece of vegetation. It was brittle and dissolved into powder between his fingers. Sweat pouring off him forced him back again. He stood and looked beyond the scorched area. Stevenson had said some of the weapons blew up; maybe he could find some fragments that could be analyzed and tell them something about these things.

  He spotted a curved piece of metal about the size of his hand and that looked like a chunk from the wall of a cylinder. Bass dropped to one knee to look at it, but didn't touch it right away. A strip of something flexible lay alongside the chunk of metal, partly drooping over it. A patch of ground cover on its other side was eaten away, and thin smoke drifted up from the hole. Bass leaned over the hole and peered into it. The smoke came from glistening spots of a milky green liquid on the dirt at its bottom. He had to pull his head away because the fumes stung his eyes. He drew his knife and thought of using it to get some of the liquid out of the hole, but didn't have anything to put it in. He looked back uphill, but the corpsman was still working on Clarke. Well, maybe the corpsman had put the acid in a specimen jar. He used his knife to pick up the piece of metal. The flexible strip came with it. He started back toward the observation post, holding his knife off to the side so nothing corrosive on the artifact could drip onto him.

  Blaster fire suddenly erupted from the platoon position.

  "We're under attack!" Hyakowa shouted over the radio.

  "Details," Bass said coolly into the command circuit. He dropped the artifact.
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  "Unknown numbers," Hyakowa replied more calmly. "They came from the north, we're inside a horseshoe."

  "There're some between us?"

  "I believe so. I can't spot anyone in my infras. I hear their voices."

  Stevenson was listening and broke in, "Use light amplifiers, they don't show on infras."

  "Roger." Hyakowa broke off long enough to pass the word to the platoon, "Raise your infras, use light gatherers." Then back to Bass, "There's at least fifty, maybe more."

  "Casualties?"

  "None that I know of."

  "We'll maneuver," Bass told the platoon sergeant, "and try to hit the ones on your right flank from the rear. Get reports from all teams. Don't forget the navy and the prisoners."

  "Roger." Hyakowa turned his attention to checking on the half platoon he was with and fighting off the unexpected attackers.

  "Third fire team, stay here," Bass ordered. "Everybody else, come with me."

  Chapter 23

  Rhys Apbac's eyes lit up when he saw Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, hand firmly on Lieutenant Snodgrass's arm, bringing the navy officer to join them.

  "Well, well, Sarge, what's this? You invisible boys think we need ourselves a real officer now that we know our fearless leader is a disgraced coward?"

  Hyakowa ignored him and pressed down on Snodgrass's shoulder until the lieutenant sat on the ground. Infuriated and humiliated, Snodgrass didn't hear the pirate. He glared up at Hyakowa. "I'll have your stripes for this, Sergeant," he said through gritted teeth.

  "Maybe we can combine our court-martials, sir," Hyakowa retorted. "In the meantime, stay here where you won't get into any more trouble." He turned abruptly and went to check the defensive positions. He had more important things to do than deal with a communications officer who thought he was the second coming of Admiral Nimitz.

  Lowboy reached over and nudged Snodgrass. "Hey, sailorboy. That Marine thinks he's hot shit, don't he?"

  Snodgrass glared at the pirate. Lowboy laughed in his face.

  A hundred meters to the east of the landing zone and not far below the highest point of the island, second squad's second fire team was in another outpost where the ground dimpled behind a slight ripple of earth when the skinks hit the gun team to the west.

  Corporal Kerr's guts fluxed when he heard the first shots.

  This is it, he thought. This is real, there's fighting for sure now. He struggled to keep tremors from shaking him apart, fought to hold in the terror-beast trying to break out of the place where he'd locked it. Then MacIlargie jumped to his feet to run toward the firefight, and Kerr grabbed him and pulled him back down with a thump.

  "What do you think you're doing?" he rasped, the terror-beast held at bay.

  "There's a firefight, we've gotta go help them."

  "This is our position, we stay here until ordered to move."

  "But—"

  Claypoole slapped the back of MacIlargie's helmet. "But nothing," Claypoole snapped. "You've been in combat before. You know that they can come from more than one direction."

  Kerr nodded at Claypoole approvingly. "Rock is right," he said to MacIlargie. "Never run toward fire until you know something, or have orders to head toward it. That's a good way to get yourself flamed by the wrong people."

  "But..." MacIlargie shut up when he saw the look Kerr was giving him. He turned to Claypoole for support but Claypoole was looking at him the same way.

  "Whoever it is, if they've got any smarts, they're coming this way too." Kerr looked to the swamp a short distance east of the observation post. The sun was low, but it hadn't yet dropped below the top of the knob, and their shadows were stretching long below them, pinpointing their positions for anyone in the wetness. "Get as low as you can." Their shadows shortened dramatically as they got flat behind the ground ripple. Kerr lowered his infra screen. So did Claypoole and MacIlargie. They began to hear things below them, but nothing showed up in the infrared.

  Kerr still quivered, but fear allowed a truce within him.

  Lance Corporal Chan looked nervously to his right. From his fire team's position he'd have to stand up to see the knob where the gun team had its observation post. He'd been on combat operations; he knew better than to stand up during a firefight just to satisfy his curiosity. The fight sounded onesided; he only heard the gun and one blaster firing. That didn't mean the gun team was firing at shadows, though. He knew Corporal Stevenson was too level-headed to open up when there weren't real targets. Besides, there were brilliant flashes of light that didn't come from plasma bolts. Was somebody using silent energy weapons of some sort? His infra showed him Gunny Bass was leading first squad, heading for the observation post. Then the firing stopped. What happened? He turned his attention to his men. PFC Nolet was all right, he'd been on operations with the platoon before—more than Chan had. The only question was PFC Rowe, but even he had a couple of operations under his belt before joining 34th FIST. They should be all right.

  Chan scanned the slope through his infra. Then he raised the screen to use his naked eyes. Sometimes normal vision showed things infra couldn't pick out—especially if a warm body was in front of or next to something that had been heated up by the sun. And there were other ways to disguise a heat signature.

  Sergeant Kelly called Hyakowa to him. "I already checked the positions," he said. "Everybody's on edge, but all approaches are covered. Anyone coming at us is going to meet a wall of flame."

  Hyakowa grunted. Nervously, he glanced toward the west. He wished Gunny Bass would tell him what happened down there, but knew that as soon as the platoon commander had enough information to pass on, he would. The firefight was over and nobody had called for the doctor, so maybe there weren't any casualties, at least none the corpsman with first squad couldn't handle.

  "The Dragons are in position to give covering fire to everyone but the west OP," Kelly continued. "My gun team can go wherever it's needed most." He looked at Hyakowa and saw the concern in the platoon sergeant's face. "We're ready, we'll be okay."

  "What if there's too many of them?" Hyakowa asked in a voice almost too soft for Kelly to hear.

  "There isn't any such thing as too many."

  Corporal "Rat" Linsman was growling low in his throat. The firefight at the west OP had been over for a few minutes, but he didn't believe the action was done with. He couldn't tell what it was, but something was making noise in the swamp at the water's edge. Nothing showed up in his infra, and he couldn't see anything but water, mud, and vegetation with his bare eyes or even his light amplifier. That didn't make any difference, something was down there. And if that something was the same thing that wiped out the scientific stations, fought the pirates, and killed the navy security at Aquarius, it was very nasty. He wanted to have his fire team light it up, burn whoever—or whatever—was there. He'd seen that locket and its images. The one that looked like its lips hid sharp teeth, he didn't want to wait for it to come to him, he wanted to fry it before it had a chance to get those teeth anywhere near him.

  "Watson," he ordered, "use your infra. I want to know the instant any red shows up on them."

  PFC Watson already had his infra screen in place. "Roger."

  "Hruska, use your light gatherer." He thought for a second. "And your magnifier." This was Hruska's first action, and he needed every edge he could get.

  "Okay, Corporal," Hruska said, nervousness making his voice quiver.

  Linsman clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll be all right, you'll see." Linsman kept switching among infra, light gatherer, and naked eye. They were going to see who—what—was coming as soon as they made a move.

  The Masters snickered about the slight resemblance they had to the indigenous life-forms of Society 437. The foolish barbarians they faced had no experience of intelligence that didn't live on their own worlds, and would fix on those superficial similarities and see them as just another kind of local amphibian. They wouldn't make that mistake for long, but it would prove fatal. The leaders ordered their f
ighters to strip naked, then stripped naked themselves. The leaders ordered their fighters to cover themselves with mud, and slavered mud over themselves. They paid particular attention to the shoulder straps, so they wouldn't be detected by a casual glance. The barbarians from Earth had devices that allowed them to see in the infrared; the leaders knew that and laughed among themselves. Their body temperatures were lower than the barbarians', so they wouldn't register on infrared scanners the same way an Earth barbarian would. And the mud they smeared on themselves would further reduce their infrared signatures. Their bodies were the color of mud. They were smeared with mud. They would be crossing mud until they reached the springy ground cover, but by then their weapons would almost be within range. It was dusk, light was dimming and shadows lengthening. The barbarians' attention was fixed to the west, to the diversion. The Earth barbarians would not see the leaders and their fighters approaching until it was too late. The barbarians were stupid that way—they had never had any subtlety.

  The leaders signaled and the advance up the slope began.

  "A skink is coming," PFC Hruska said. He wiggled, trying to get lower behind his blaster, and sighted in on the body he saw through his light amplifier.

  "Where?" Linsman looked where Hruska's blaster was pointing. He lifted his infra screen and dimly saw a form advancing up from the swamp bank. He dropped the light gatherer and magnifier shields into place and saw several bipeds that could have been skinks. None of them appeared to be carrying a weapon, but each seemed to have a hand tucked behind its body. Did they have hands? They must have hands if they made that locket.

  "Flame it," he ordered. That was the problem with boots—new Marines—they didn't know when to fire without waiting for orders. "Use your light gatherer and magnifier," he told Watson, and picked a target of his own. He pressed the firing lever and saw the plasma bolt hit the skink he aimed at. Then his jaw dropped. The skink flared up in an almost blinding flash of light, leaving behind just a blackened spot of steaming mud.