Blood Contact

by David Sherman

  "Now," Bass said, and pressed his blaster's firing lever.

  Two bolts of plasma skittered along the mid-line of the downward tunnel walls. The matting flamed up along the path of the bolts and burned with tiny flames at the scorched edges. At the bottom more matting sparked into tiny flames. The exposed dirt began to steam and more smoke dribbled from the walls.

  "Do it again," Bass ordered. Both of them raised up slightly and burned swathes just above the first. "Again." They dropped and fired bolts along the bottom of the walls. In seconds thick smoke was flowing slowly from the entire length of both walls.

  They heard more coughing. A skink voice rose in demand. Another voice snapped back. More coughing. Many voices shouted. Great coughing. A scream that might have been an order. Then the sound of movement and shadows swiftly grew at the bottom of the tunnel.

  Bass and Schultz each fired one bolt, then scrabbled back up to where first squad waited. Light and heat blasted up the hidden tunnel. More smoke flowed up from below, and soon the overhead was covered with a drifting cloud. The Marines waited.

  Bass knew he'd have to send someone down there to make sure the skinks were all dead, and to find out if they had another exit from whatever space was down there. That was going to be dangerous. Not only because of any skinks that might lay in wait, but because of the dense smoke that had to be filling the lower chamber. He had no idea what effects that smoke could have on a man. The chameleon uniform would provide some protection from it, unless it was acidic enough to eat through the fabric. He'd have to send someone back into the entry tunnel to retrieve a breathing unit because the smoke might damage lungs. Better do that now, he decided.

  "Wang," he said into the command circuit, "send someone back to retrieve a breather from the water."

  "Roger," Hyakowa replied.

  Bass waited with growing apprehension for the breathing unit to arrive. Smoke was filling the tunnels, and the light in the connecting tunnel wavered as the flames ate at the weaving. He wondered whether the man Hyakowa had sent would get back before the smoke filled the tunnels and they had to withdraw.

  His thoughts were yanked away from the breathing unit and the growing smoke by jabbering from below. Live skinks were still down there. He heard the thud of feet, then a giant skink burst out of the hidden tunnel and turned left, crawling very fast toward Hyakowa and second squad. Bass fired at it, but the skink was out of his sight almost before he pressed the lever. But his bolt did hit a second giant skink that was just pulling itself out of the tunnel and turning toward him. The wave of heat from the flaring giant took away his breath and almost knocked him back. More of the matting flamed up. Then there was a chain-reaction of flashes from the tunnel to the lower chamber, and a few screams were sharply cut off. The tunnel must have been filled with skinks, he thought, all of whom flashed. He clearly heard the crackle of fire, then flames leaped out of the lower tunnel followed by a dark plume of acrid smoke.

  "Out!" Bass roared. "Everybody get out!" Instantly, all the Marines turned and raced back the way they'd come. Behind them flames shot along the tunnels, hungrily eating at the walls and giving off billows of smoke.

  "What's happening?" Doc Horner asked when MacIlargie reached the entry chamber.

  "We had them trapped, maybe all killed," MacIlargie gasped. "The Gunny wants the breather." He barely noticed the dead skink laid out next to the entry pool, where it could be easily pulled into the water and out and given to Dr. Bynum.

  "I'll get it," said Quick. He removed his helmet and stepped into the water. He was back in a moment, tossing the jury-rigged breathing unit out of the water, when his eyes popped wide and, still in the water, he shouted a warning.

  The servant huddled in the service room. She had gone demurely when dismissed and waited patiently to be ordered to bring more food or drink. The drip of water soothed her during her wait. Then the Master had shouted and she heard the leaders prepare to fight. She heard a blast that could only come from one of the Earth barbarian's forever guns, and she heard feet running away from her. She cowered with fear as feet thudded into the Master's quarters. Her side receptors told her one of the barbarians looked into the serving room, but she was in a corner and he didn't see her in the darkness. Then the feet thudded away, following the Master and the leaders who had been dining with him. They went in the direction of the leaders' quarters. Forever guns shot and shot again. Soon after, she heard the three fighters in the hidden chamber move into the Master's quarters to follow the barbarians, then the horrid, horrid, sound of a forever gun. She saw the brilliant flash as the three fighters went into oblivion. Then the barbarians thudded farther away and she heard no more.

  What was she to do? She was a servant, not even a watcher. All she knew was to wait patiently and do the bidding of whomever she served. But somewhere deep inside her was an atavistic need to do something. If only she knew what was happening elsewhere.

  After what seemed a long time, it slowly dawned on her that the Earth barbarians must have come in through the entry tunnel. How they might have done that, she did not know, since the barbarians could not breathe underwater. Still, she had heard no digging. She had not heard a forever gun before the Master realized the barbarians were there and shouted orders. The Earth barbarians must have somehow taken the guard prisoner. Oh, the shame of it! She must do something to free him. But what could she do? She was a servant and knew nothing of fighting; she didn't even have a weapon.

  Then her eyes lit on something a leader had forgotten in the serving room: a forever gun taken from the smaller barbarian settlement. Yes, she could take that and use it to free the fighter from his shame.

  She stood, lifted the blaster from the pegs it rested on, and softly padded toward the entry chamber. She ignored the agony in her feet where she stepped in acid; her pain had to be less than that of the captured fighter. She stepped into the chamber. No barbarians were there, but the fighter who guarded the entry lay dead next to the water. Then a face appeared above the water.

  MacIlargie spun toward the tunnel and dodged to the side when Quick shouted. A small skink stood there holding a blaster. He fired and it flared up, but not before firing the blaster it held. Its bolt hit the dead skink guard and its corpse flared up.

  "Anybody hurt?" Doc Horner cried.

  "I'm okay," MacIlargie said.

  "I wasn't anywhere near it," Rowe said.

  "Shit!" Quick swore.

  Doc Horner saw that the side of his face was scorched from the blast that had flared the skink corpse. He pulled Quick out of the water, then grabbed his medkit and began working on the burns.

  MacIlargie ran out with the breathing unit, back to where the rest of the squad waited. A moment later he came stumbling back in with Corporal Linsman behind him.

  "Get out," Linsman shouted. "The whole damn place is on fire."

  Chapter 30

  Gunnery Sergeant Bass called the Fairfax County and asked for digging equipment. Captain Tuit sent down a digger in a combat landing and the Marines had it in less than an hour. While waiting for it, the Marines watched for smoke seeping through the ground. The digger operator immediately set to work on the most promising smoke holes, and in a couple of hours had enough of them fully opened to allow the smoke to rise as quickly as the fire-heated air would lift. After a time no more smoke came out of the underground complex.

  Unwilling to go below so late in the day, and until he was sure the air was clear, Bass set the platoon up in a double security perimeter, some facing the island to watch for any skinks that might still be alive and try to escape, the others watching outward. Tomorrow would be soon enough to go back down.

  "Where's my prisoner, Charlie?" Dr. Bynum demanded as soon as she was able to corner him.

  He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Lidi. We had a corpse for you, but one of them had a blaster and flamed it before we could bring it out." He shook his head again. "I was glad we got the corpse, even if we couldn't capture one alive. It would have given u
s a lot of information—including why they vaporize when they're hit by a blaster bolt."

  She stared at him searchingly and decided he really had wanted to bring one of them out for her.

  After a long silence, Bass asked, "Do you have any idea why they flare up like that when they're hit by a blaster bolt?"

  She shrugged and shook her head.

  "Could their body chemistry be radically different from ours, based on something more volatile than carbon?"

  "Charlie, be serious. Can you think of an element more volatile than oxygen? Oxygen's not the base of our chemistry, but it's so thoroughly integrated into it that we can't live more than a few minutes without it."

  He grunted. After another moment he asked, "Can you think of anything?"

  She considered it, then said, "Their body temperatures are a bit lower than ours, yet they don't seem any more bothered by the tropical heat than we are. They live at least part of the time in water, and water leeches out warmth. Maybe they have a much higher level of body oil than we do. I don't know."

  She lost herself in thought again, then sighed. It was the first time people had met an alien intelligence, and they killed it. Well, the first time that she knew of.

  "Will we see them again?" she asked, knowing the answer.

  "Yes."

  "What will happen then?"

  "They'll try to kill us."

  "What will we do?"

  "We'll kill them."

  "Will we shoot first?"

  "Maybe. I don't know." He paused in thought. "Maybe," he finally continued, "this group had a rogue commander. Maybe the next time they'll try to talk before they start killing."

  "Will you Marines allow them to talk?"

  "Lidi, Marines fight and kill, that's our job. But Marines aren't usually sent in until there is violence, or until violence seems inevitable. They probably won't run into Marines first."

  Dr. Bynum shook her head and slowly walked away. Something told her the skinks hadn't had a rogue commander. She felt that when people met the skinks again, there would be more killing, more unnecessary death.

  In the morning Bass led second squad back down into the complex. This time they rappeled down a rope through a digger hole. They took lights with them.

  The place was hardly recognizable. All of the weaving on the walls had burned, as had the floor matting and most of the spartan furnishings. In the lowest area, the waterproofing had burned away and partially collapsed the walls. Bass didn't dare send anyone down to investigate the chamber where the skinks had briefly secreted themselves before Corporal Goudanis discovered the hidden door. They came upon quite a few small rooms behind concealed doors. Several of them gave evidence that skinks had been there when the fire swept through. Bass wondered in passing if those had been females, and if any of them had been juveniles. He was disturbed at the fanaticism of the skinks, that they all died rather than surrender or try to escape, when staying meant death was inevitable.

  The Marines poked and prodded the ashes in each of the rooms, looking for artifacts. But there was nothing to find; everything had been reduced to ash. Bass wondered why a species that vaporized when burned would build and decorate with materials that burned so thoroughly. Maybe they had used only local materials, and the only available, or easily available, materials were flammable. If that was the case, what did they use on their home world? He suspected he'd never know unless he was sent there to fight and kill them.

  Finally, satisfied they weren't going to learn anything in the underground complex they didn't already know, he ordered second squad to return to the surface. He was the last one to leave. He stood for a long moment in the room where he'd seen the sword-bedecked skinks eating and let his eyes unfocus into nowhere.

  Who were the skinks? Where were they from? What had been their purpose in landing on Society 437, and why had they attacked the scientific mission with no warning? Why hadn't they attempted to open communications? Had they perceived some sort of provocation?

  Or had the skinks tried to communicate, perhaps using some form of transmission of which humanity had no knowledge? Had the lack of response convinced them that human beings were hostile and that they needed to make the first strike? Did they think that would convince human beings to reply to their communications?

  If that was it, there would be fighting every time humanity and the skinks encountered each other, until someone stumbled across a means of common communication. But what could that be?

  The universe is a larger and stranger place than you know, Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Bass, Confederation Marine Corps, he told himself.

  Finally, Bass climbed back up the rope into the air.

  "Skyhawk, this is Lander Six," he said into Dupont's radio. "Beam us up, Scotty."

  Epilogue

  Bass leaned heavily against the bulkhead of the Dragon, his feet propped up on a ration box. He was tired to the bone. He bit the end off a Clinton, his last until he could get to the supply he'd left on the Fairfax, and stuck the unlighted cigar into a corner of his mouth. I really am getting too old for this stuff, he thought. But he always thought that after a mission. Society 437 had been a hard one, but it was over. Did they get all the skinks on Waygone? Would someone run into others again somewhere else in Human Space? He didn't know the answers and, just then, he didn't give a damn.

  Dr. Bynum came over and took a seat next to him. She was tired too. "We should think about retiring, Charlie," she said. "What is it you wanted to see me about?"

  Bass thought for a moment about retirement with Dr. Bynum. "Both of us? Same time, same place?" He smiled.

  Dr. Bynum smiled back but did not answer.

  "Doc, I want you to do me a favor, a big one."

  "You name it, Gunny." He leaned across the aisle and spoke quietly for a full two minutes.

  "Risky, Charlie," she replied. She thought a moment. "But can do. For you I can do it. Sure. Why not?"

  "The Essay that's going to take you back to the Fairfax will be here in ten minutes," Bass told Baccacio and Minnie. "I don't have much time, so listen up. You're both going on a very long trip."

  Baccacio gave a lopsided grin. "I know, Gunny. The only thing I ask is that you put in a good word for us. I—We tried our best to make up—"

  Bass waved the former ensign into silence. "No time for all of that, Mr. Baccacio. Back on Elneal, well, I could've killed you for what you did then. But you aren't the same guy anymore. I don't know what you are, but you aren't a coward. Here's the situation. Both of you were severely wounded—"

  "What...?"

  Bass nodded. "You were both seriously wounded. Dr. Bynum does not expect you to recover, but we're sending you back to the Fairfax, where she can try to stabilize you in the sickbay."

  They stared at Bass with mouths open. Unnoticed by either, HM2 Hardesty stepped up behind them, an injector poised in one hand.

  "We will have to put you both into stasis," Bass announced. Hardesty leaned forward, a huge grin on his face, and with two swift movements injected the pair. "When you awake," Bass continued as they crumpled to the floor, "you will be far away from here, but not in jail." But neither heard the rest of the sentence that had just been passed upon them.

  Bass sighed. If his plan didn't work, his ass would be in a sling for sure. What the hell, he thought, they'd earned the favor.

  "And I'm telling you," HM1 Horner insisted, "that thing of yours there, that woo, can talk, Dean." HM2 Hardesty, standing behind Horner in the troop bay, nodded vigorously in agreement.

  Dean looked at the other Marines gathered around and shrugged. They all nodded. Everyone looked at Owen, which was perched happily on the edge of Dean's bunk. Its huge eyes stared merrily up at the men and he glowed a soft, contented pink. "Doc," Dean replied, "he's never said anything to me in all the time he's been my companion. The people on Diamunde, who've had woos for hundreds of years, they never heard them talk. Now you tell me Owen said something. What?"

  " ‘Danger,’ " Harde
sty replied firmly. "He warned us when a skink tried to come over the ramp of our Dragon, Dean. He hollered ‘Danger!’ and that's the God's honest truth."

  "Owen," Dean said, turning to the woo, "say something. Go on, say something." Owen stared silently back at Dean. The men waited patiently.

  "Say something, Owen," Hardesty begged the woo. "Say what you said on the Dragon, Owen. Come on, c'mon!" Owen swiveled his head and just stared placidly back at the two corpsmen.

  Horner sighed disgustedly. "I give up. But Dean, he did talk, he did."

  "Yeah," Dean replied. "Sure. Next you'll tell me you caught him reading a field manual." The other Marines burst into laughter.

  The pirates who had stayed behind on Society 437 were transported to the Fairfax County in five body bags—and two stasis units. The remains of Rhys Apbac, Labaya, Callendar, Sharpedge, and Lowboy were consigned to the morgue for burial in space, following the usual ritual aboard naval vessels. Baccacio and Minerva went into the far corner of a remote medical storage compartment.

  "Always liked Marines," Captain Tuit was saying as he and Gunnery Sergeant Bass sipped hot, strong galley coffee on the bridge. "Always liked having you aboard my vessels."

  "Always liked navy men myself, sir, especially old salts like you."

  "Gunny, you and your men, you did good back on Waygone. You did damn good. So, as commander of this vessel I am taking it upon my own authority to reward you. I had my navigator plot a somewhat different inbound course for us. We're going to come out of our jump in the vicinity of St. Brendan's. Your men and my crew are going to enjoy seventy-two hours of liberty in New Cobh before we head back to home."

  Bass's jaw dropped. New Cobh, settled by Irish immigrants two and a half centuries before, was an infamous liberty port beloved by the crews of Confederation Navy and commercial vessels. In New Cobh there'd be plenty of beer and plenty of buxom colleens willing to help the Marines drink it. "Sir, I can't tell you how much—well, thank you, Captain! Thank you very much!"