“Chalmers!” Ked said, emerging from the large building across from the hetman’s home.
The crowd noise changed again, became a series of rousing cheers as Chalmers jogged over.
“Is this it?” Ked asked. He held what looked like a metal-framed bread-box with a dynamo crank protruding from one end.
Chalmers smiled at the younger man. “Sure is! Where was it?”
“Inside. Village grain store. Buried about arm-length.”
Chalmers cursed. Right where it would make it impossible to single someone out as the owner, so long as you didn’t leave fingerprints. For perhaps the third time since wakening in these strange circumstances, Chalmers lamented the fact he had no evidence kit with him.
Another cheer rose from the dueling ground. Chalmers glanced at Ked, wondering how the man could be so cool while his sister was fighting for her life a few hundred yards away.
“Jackson, come on, man,” Chalmers called as loudly as he darted into the doorway of the home belonging to the hetman’s son.
“I’m coming, Chalmers,” Jackson grunted. “Hold your shit.”
“Ked found the radio, man.”
“Right,” Jackson said, walking backward out of the building. Chalmers could hear him dragging something.
“What the shit, Jacks?” Chalmers asked as he saw the trunk his partner was dragging. Except, on second glance, it wasn’t a trunk at all. Covered in whinnie-hide, the thing looked like a treasure chest out of one of his old D&D books, five feet long by three feet high.
“Check this shit out,” Jackson said, flipping the lid up.
Chalmers whistled. “That ain’t right.” And it wasn’t.
Nestled within the chest was a shipping crate full of what looked like anti-tank missiles. Five of them and the single-tube device that, judging from a button-studded box which extruded from one part, had to be the launcher.
“Shit, man, those had to come from—”
Another cheer, this one louder than those previous, erupted from the grounds. It was cut short by a collective gasp that left a silence as troubling as anything that had come before.
“Thinking we should put it back, no?” Chalmers said, wondering what the villagers would make of them looting a dead man’s possessions.
“I don’t think so. I figure we give the hetman a look at what his son was up to,” Jackson said, patting the lid.
“And if they bought them?” Chalmers asked, looking hopefully at Ked.
The warrior scratched at his sparse beard thoughtfully but ultimately shook his head. “Nothing the villagers have in trade is worth so much as these.”
“And then there is the why. These are not so useful against men, but against machines,” Jackson mused.
“But the J’Stull don’t come out to these parts—”
“Not according to our friend Stabilo, anyway,” Chalmers said.
The crowd noise had receded to a lower, steady volume.
Ked sighed, the set of his shoulders easing.
“What is it, Ked?”
“My sister is victorious,” he said, pushing the radio into Chalmers’ hands.
Chalmers blinked. “How do you know?”
“They do not cheer for her as they would for their hetman. I go to see if she needs healing. I will return.”
“Wait! Should we put this back?” Chalmers asked, gesturing toward the chest.
A shrug. “I do not know. The hetman may be dead. We will find out in a few moments. His son is already dead, and so beyond caring if caught with these weapons.”
Chalmers stared after Kedlak. “Jacks,” he mumbled, “we are standing in broad daylight holding two pieces of evidence that prove some local is a traitor.”
“Yeah,” the sergeant agreed sourly, “which means we are the only ones holding the bag that someone’s ready to kill over.”
Chalmers spat. The mission just kept getting better and better.
* * *
“I’m trying to something from your point of view, but I just can’t seem to give a something begroag shit, Ked,” Kenla said, a toss of her head making several of the tiny bones in her dreadlocks click against one another. Kenla’s right arm was in a sling and there was a bandage around her midriff, but the bandage showed surprisingly little blood, especially since the trousers she wore still glistened with the stuff down to her knees. A third wrapping covered the place where her neck joined her shoulder.
“You overcame and survived, did you not?” Ked asked, sounding defensive and, from the flushed reddening of his ears, knowing it.
“No thanks to your medicine! I had to be treated by the village healer, here,” she gestured with her unbound arm at one of the women walking behind her. The hetman was being carried into his home, and the healer’s progress was slowed by the bearers and their charge as they negotiated the entrance. “They showed honor, though, treating me before their own.”
“Is he alive?” Chalmers asked.
More clicking of bones followed as she shrugged. “He was when he fell at my feet, though just barely. I cut him many times, but he is tough as old leather,” Kenla opined.
Deadlier than the male. The quote crossed his mind before Chalmers could remember where he’d heard it.
“He will live,” the village healer said. “I have given him the patheos-pak, and his natural endurance will replenish his blood within a day or two.”
“The what?” Chalmers asked, but the healer ducked into the entrance, and Ked and his sister had their heads together, speaking quietly.
Amazingly, the rest of the villagers seemed uninterested in the chest Jackson had dragged from the dead man’s home. Chalmers had been watching. No one seemed to take any undue notice or care.
He’d hid the radio in his pack, so there remained three possibilities: one, the collaborator responsible for the transmissions was smooth enough to avoid gawking; two, the collaborator who had the radio had not been responsible for the weapons as well; or three, the collaborator and man killed by Kenla were one and the same.
“You see anything?” the warrant officer asked Jackson, in English.
“No. You?”
Chalmers shook his head. He considered a moment, then added, “We’ll have to watch tonight, then. I can’t see this going unreported to whoever provided those missiles.”
Jackson nodded. When the siblings had finished their quiet conference, he repeated the plan in the local dialect. The more of it they heard and spoke, the more they realized it had a lot less Ktoran in it than what the SpinDogs spoke.
Kenla considered the instructions. “It will not be easy to watch unobserved, War Technician Chalmers.”
“I will do it,” her brother said.
Chalmers did not miss the glance she leveled at her brother. Wondering what it meant, he decided to keep an eye on both of them as well as the grain store tonight. He would, as Ronnie RayGun had said, “Trust but confirm.”
* * * * *
Chapter Forty
R’Bak
Chalmers rolled his eyes; the hissing and grunting had resumed.
“For God’s sakes!” he muttered, kicking the grunting little alien lizard-goat off his foot for the tenth time.
The goat—well, begroag—was a tiny, more stupid, and, if this one was a good example, more inbred cousin to the whinnies that the locals used as pack animals. Normally this would not have impacted Chalmers one bit. Normally.
But Murphy’s Law was in effect, and this begroag had decided Chalmers’ boot was a fine source of food or sex; Chalmers wasn’t sure which. Both, maybe? Every few minutes Chalmers was forced to kick it away, and it would get the hint for a little while before coming back at odd intervals to bite, then hump and shimmy against his foot. He was leaning toward the idea it wanted to make babies, simply because it was so utterly persistent. Nothing was that hungry. Horny, yes. Hungry…nah.
It was obvious the creatures had been domesticated for the same reasons humans—well, Terrans—kept goats, for food and kee
ping the weeds down, so it was definitely someone’s property. Which made it out of bounds for a more permanent solution than a boot to the head. He could think of no better way to piss off a farmer or herder than killing their livestock, so shooting the damn thing off his boot was not an option, even if he could do it silently.
The stakeout was one of the least onerous he’d ever been on. Unadjusted to R’Bak’s shorter days, he’d found it easy to stay awake well into the nine-hour night, even without the constant attempted boot-buggery of the begroag and despite the warm earthen berm he was stretched out and hiding on.
Jackson was on the far side of the village, watching the eastern approaches to the grain store. Ked was supposed to be watching the western side of the village, and Chalmers was watching him from what he hoped was a concealed position. Something had been off in the man’s responses after the duel, and Chalmers didn’t trust him. Kenla was still in the healer’s hut, recovering from blood loss, though she seemed awfully chipper for someone who’d been cut so many times. Chalmers had no doubt these people were hard. It remained to be seen if they were trustworthy.
Shaking clear of other concerns, Chalmers focused all his attention on what he could do. A moment later he was grateful he’d decided to pay closer attention. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something was different. Movement? He peered into the twilight, but couldn’t pick out exactly what had triggered the feeling.
He slowed his breathing, straining to hear.
A maddening itch started just above the top of his left boot, distracting him. He reached down to address the issue and found something wet, warm, and sticky left behind by the begroag. He brought his hand up and stared at glistening fingers in the dimness. Fighting the urge to shriek in horror, leap to his feet, fetch the nearest flamethrower, and burn his fingers, leg, and boots clean off, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
Overcoming the urge to incinerate, Chalmers again tried to concentrate on the sound heard just moments before.
Among the shadows and blank darkness where Ked had hidden, there was a flicker of movement, then another, then Ked’s slim figure emerged into the dim light of R’Bak’s distant secondary star. He crouched, peering intently toward the storehouse.
Scrubbing his begroag-scummed hand on the rough soil of the berm, Chalmers slowly, and as quietly as he could, raised himself from the ground. As the begroag started to amble closer for another go, he set out toward the building more quickly than quietly, not wanting another sliming.
Ked, meanwhile, had moved from one shadow to the next, and was nearly at the door to the storehouse. The indig disappeared into shadow again before briefly reappearing alongside the black rectangle that marked the storehouse’s recessed entryway.
Chalmers could see another figure—Jackson—closing on the same spot.
A muffled cry and then a thump sounded from inside as the partners arrived within a few steps of each other.
Jackson drew his sidearm and glanced at Chalmers, who had decided to remain empty-handed in case he had to go hands-on. Timing smaller nods to reach a shared, final ‘go on three’ nod, they entered as quickly yet quietly as they could.
But only one step in, Chalmers’ foot came down on something higher and softer than the floor: a body, he realized as he stumbled, righted himself—and got slammed in the back. He stagger-stepped aside, turning toward the possible threat.
But no, it was just Jackson, who’d been following so closely that he had inadvertently jammed the muzzle of his .45 into his partner’s back.
“Sorry, man,” Jackson said.
“Fuck you,” Chalmers grunted, rubbing his back just above the kidney, knowing he’d have a muzzle-shaped bruise there in the morning. He knelt next to the body just inside the door; it was Ked.
Reaching blindly with his left hand to feel for a pulse at the young warrior’s throat, Chalmers drew his own pistol with his right. Trying to do too many things at once, he failed at all of them. Forcing himself to slow down, he found Ked’s neck and the carotid. A strong pulse pushed against his fingers.
“Lights,” Chalmers hissed, fumbling with his left hand for the newly manufactured Vietnam-era, L-angle, red-lens flashlight they’d been issued for the mission. He slid the switch to on. If the other Lost Soldiers were as troubled as Chalmers was over using a device manufactured on a fucking asteroid some hundred and more years after the original design was considered completely outdated, they hadn’t shown it. Then again, Li-ion batteries and LEDs were not always better than alkaline and incandescents and second chances didn’t always result in improvement. It was another sign that, regardless of whether it was a second chance, it was fucking weird, this life. Then again, the same could be said for Army life, though there had been more people to look at and shrug in silent commiseration back in the Green Machine.
Immune to his thoughts, red light illuminated the short hall to the storeroom. Unlike Clarthu’s homes, the storehouse didn’t have a doglegged entrance. Rather, the hallway was broad, probably to facilitate transportation of the harvest in and out of the place. One of the two rough-hewn wood doors at the end of the passage was ajar, a few inches of blackness showing in the opening.
“Cover,” Chalmers said.
“Covering.” Jackson modified his stance, the pistol steadied with the hand holding the flashlight. He’d been to the range with some of the Vietnam-era boys, it seemed.
Chalmers looked down. Ked’s head was damp, slick with blood that looked black under the red light. There wasn’t a pool under his cheek, so he wasn’t bleeding that much.
“No one got past you, did they?” Chalmers whispered.
Jackson shook his head.
“All right. Let’s clear it.”
“Copy.”
The pair advanced on the doors, each to one side of the hallway, Chalmers on the side with the door ajar.
Ked started snoring, the sudden noise shattering the quiet and nearly startling Chalmers into pulling the trigger. He shook his head and, grinding his teeth in frustration, watched the doors as they advanced.
The doors opened toward them and Chalmers nodded at them as they drew close enough to pull the big wooden handles. Sweat began to prickle his hairline.
Jackson reached across and pushed the one in front of Chalmers all the way open with his flashlight.
Gun up, Chalmers rolled in as swiftly and smoothly as he could. A long, empty aisle stretched about twenty yards, ending on a wall. Every third yard an opening yawned on either side of the aisle, each providing access to a bin-like holding area, fronted by a knee-high pony wall.
Jackson entered and went to the other side, pistol and flashlight up and at the ready.
Sweat began to roll off Chalmers’ brow and threaten his vision as he sliced the pie to take a look inside the first chamber opposite.
There were great big—he did a double-take; no, Indiana Jones-sized—baskets stacked two high across the width of the chamber, tight fitting lids in place to defy any monkey that might give away their quarry. He was tempted to shake his head to get rid of the movie image. “Hope this guy brought a sword to a gunfight, too,” Chalmers muttered.
Jackson’s stifled “What the fuc—?” was interrupted as a figure trailing a fog of grain dust burst from the opening he was covering and ran straight at him.
The sergeant’s .45 didn’t bang, it BOOMED, straining Chalmers’ already-frayed nerves to the breaking point and just beyond. The warrant officer, never a steely-eyed gunfighter, yelped and flinched, yanking the trigger on his own Beretta. It BOOMED, too. Missing both Jackson and the person rushing him, the fat lead round spanged off the bricks beside Jackson and ricocheted down the corridor with an evil wheet-wheet sound that made Chalmers’ sack draw up.
Meanwhile, the silhouette rushing Jackson folded and fell into him, wheezing wetly.
“God damn!” Jackson yelled, shoving the wounded figure back, hard, with the muzzle of his still-smoking gun. The person toppled over onto their back.
>
Ignoring the persistent EEeeeeee in his ears, Chalmers steadied his flashlight on the target, saw it was a woman and blinked, wondering where he knew her from.
“It’s the medic or whatever,” Jackson said, the .45 in his hand rattling loudly as he lowered it. The after-effects of adrenaline were making the weapon—an exact copy of the Vietnam-era .45s carried by some of the older Lost Soldiers—shake.
Chalmers nodded. It was the healer. The one who’d treated both Kenla and the hetman. She coughed, blood touching her lips, a knife gleaming wetly in her left fist.
Jackson fell to his knees, then across the woman’s legs.
“What the hell?” Chalmers grunted, strode toward them, then started running when he realized that the small sergeant wasn’t moving at all.
* * *
When the indigs barged in a few minutes later, Chalmers was still holding Jackson in his arms, tears streaming down his face as he tried to come to grips with the fact that he’d gotten his only friend in the world killed.
Their response to the situation was strange: they did not seem angry. Not in the least. They picked up their healer, causing her to cough up a great gout of blood. He thought sure it was her death rattle, but she was mumbling as they carried her from the storehouse. They left him almost alone and feeling entirely desolate. Almost alone because one of the villagers stayed behind. He was a thin-faced guy with a sparse beard and pockmarked cheeks. Chalmers was pretty sure he could take this local easily, even without the Beretta they hadn’t bothered to confiscate. To his surprise, the man knelt and gently disengaged Chalmers’ arms from around his friend.
The villager surprised the warrant officer once again by grinning at him, eyes laughing.
“What the fuck you smiling at?” Chalmers hissed. He said it in English, forgetting his debased Ktoran in the moment but trusting that, regardless of language, his tone conveyed his meaning.
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