by Ivan Cat
"I want to live too! It's not my fault the pills don't work on me!"
"Shut up, both of you!"
Karr didn't mind the gutbombs. He was used to fugueship rations. A Pilot's first fuguetime meal might be fresh, but the second meal of a tour was already six realtime months old and the third a full year stale. A few fuguetime days—realtime years—later and only the blandest meals remained. Karr had vivid memories of dipping reconstituted crackers into bland pap. The gutbombs weren't that bad, really. Besides, they kept him warm and flying well into the twelfth hour after setting out from the Enclave.
Off to the southwest, sunset pressed a reddish smear against the brooding horizon. Karr tried not to look at it, staring instead at the ocean, but the ocean was alive with color, too—and not from the sunset. Waves of light were radiating from the net of Ferals below, each of them pulsing communication patterns like a giant telegraph web. The patterns carried out to a point behind the sunset.
"What are they saying?" Karr asked.
Jenette puzzled. "It's hard to read. Arrou?"
Arrou's head was already hanging over the side, enraptured by the Feral light patterns.
Jenette rapped his back. "Hello?"
"Words funny," Arrou rumbled. "Not normal Feral speak. Fussy."
"Fussy?" Karr asked.
Jenette shrugged. "It seems to be an older, more elaborate dialect of the Khafra tongue used around the Enclave. I can only make out the slower word-strings."
That lined up with Karr's assumption that the Ferals near the Enclave could not possibly have gotten this far south ahead of the lifter, but it didn't answer the question of who they were, or where they were going. Karr observed the single pattern of light pulses coursing off into the sunset, again and again. "So what are they saying?"
Arrou lifted his head. "Asking question."
Jenette set her mind to translating the repetitive pattern. "Question/ answer: why—"
"When," Arrou corrected.
"When," Jenette repeated, "does the Burning Heart blossom/ birth/escape? Is that right?"
"Maybe. Funny, funny words."
"When does the Burning Heart blossom/birth/escape?" Karr repeated, baffled.
Jenette shrugged. "Don't ask me."
"Not know Burning Heart could blossom/birth/escape," Arrou admitted.
The ocean sparkled, Ferals twinkling like so many swimming stars. The patterns were hypnotizing. Karr felt a headache building, tension spreading over his head. Fortunately, a blanket of fog formed over the ocean. Karr gladly pulled up on the throttle. The engines torqued up, climbing one hundred yards and muffling the Ferals under the fog.
Karr set the autopilot as darkness enfolded them. The lifter cruised between cotton-candy hills below and marbled heavens above. Time passed. Guards and scientists retired from the unaccustomed chill in the high air. Arrou curled up on deck. Karr turned up the thermostat on his uniform, which warmed his limbs, but also made him sleepy. He tensed the muscles in his neck to shake off a fit of yawns. Jenette, who was never far away, disappeared into the tents and returned with a steaming mug of reddish-yellow liquid.
"Ghll?" she offered, standing quite close.
Pilots might prefer solitude to crowds, but Karr was still a mortal man and could not help but notice Jenette's proximity. She smelled good. Part of Karr was inclined to enjoy the interaction. Another part, however, that part which was mainly preoccupied with worry and vexation, protested. She's not twenty-three. No way. Not a day over fifteen. And fifteen will get you twenty—on a prison planet. But the pleasant sensation of Jenette's proximity did not relent easily ... after all; except for the very pregnant Panya Hedren, every other New Ascension woman looked twelve. Jenette's every tiny, apparently fifteen-year-old curve was magnified by comparison. When she brushed against Karr, while handing him the mug, it felt nice.
She's just a little girl! Remember the ship. Pilots don't need entanglements!
Unsettled, Karr complained at the sour-smelling drink. "This is not Ghll."
"Of course it's not Ghll," Jenette chided. "Where do you think we'd get real Ghll? Nothing from off-planet grows here. This is New Ascension substitute."
"It sure doesn't taste like Ghll."
"Don't be difficult. And don't swallow the floaty bits."
The floaty bits resembled tiny insect legs, either that or large intestinal cilia. Karr didn't ask which was the more accurate description. The bitter drink was entirely unpleasant in aroma, unlike true Solaran Ghll, but it did keep him awake longer.
Misty hours elapsed.
Faint starlight chilled the fog. The sealed bubble tents seemed far away. Even the hum of thruster engines was lost in the rush of breeze across the lifter. Jenette hung around, so Karr continued to be conflicted by his reaction to her presence, but at least she did not chatter, so he didn't feel pressured to manufacture small talk.
Just about the time Karr decided to search for a spot to set down for the night, the clouds cleared to Karr's right. There on the horizon, almost blotted out by patches of fog and distance, was a faint red glow. Karr wondered what it was for a few seconds before another, closer, phenomena drew his attention.
Silent lightning erupted in the fog below.
It reminded Karr of electrical storms as seen from orbit, the kind that blot out small continents. Countless pinpoints of light diffused into sheets of iridescence, linking and brightly ringing around dark, lurking masses which Karr assumed were ring-islands. It resembled an aurora, only below and not above, and no solar wind or magnetic field was behind the luminescence.
It was Ferals.
The sheer number daunted Karr. The aliens were far thicker than those seen before the fog rolled in, more tightly packed at the edges of islands, more dispersed over the ocean. There wasn't a clear patch of water as far as the eye cold see. If he had been foolish enough to set down, the lifter would have been swarmed.
The Feral radiance continued to build. There seemed to Karr a disturbing tinge to the colors that night. Karr felt as though a tendril of the moldy green light would reach out and swat the lifter out of the sky.
Arrou uncurled, attracted by the display, and looked below.
"Islands moving," he announced as the light battled on, consuming itself. "Fog flows around."
"He's right," Karr whispered. The backlit mist billowed up and over dark ring shapes, like slow motion water over rapids, as the islands left eddies of lazy turbulence in their wakes. "They're still moving west." Karr wondered where all those Ferals were going. The Enclave was north, behind the lifter. Coffin Island lay south, dead ahead.
Karr looked west.
There, far off in the direction the Ferals were heading, shining from beyond the curve of New Ascension's horizon, was the faint red glow he had noticed moments before—the same glow which Karr now identified as being caused by the distant, but thousands of yards high, pillar of flame blazing over his beloved Long Reach.
XXV
The next day.
Three military skimmers closed on Feral Island 538. They maintained tight formation. Their fuselages were mottled with silver and gray camouflage to match the mirrored surface of the ocean. Their open cabins bristled with pulse-rifles and Guardsmen. And each skimmer mounted a heavy weapon. The two flanking vehicles bore triple-barrel pulse cannons. The vehicle on point was armed with a pressure-focused flamethrower. Patton rode in that skimmer. Ahead of him, in the bow, were two imposing human figures.
"That's it, sir," said Colonel Halifax, his battered skin twisting into a grimace, "the last reported position of Deep Recon 8, before the transponder went dead." Halifax wore dappled green-and-black battle dress, like all the Guards.
Olin Tesla, a full head taller than his barrel-chested companion, shaded his eyes as the skimmers spiraled in. Tesla made an effort to stand proud as usual, but Patton thought Tesla looked a little slump-shouldered. Patton had noticed that ever since the night of the vote.
"Miserable excuse for a ring-island," Te
sla observed.
Patton didn't like to agree with the Prime Consul, but he did. FI-538 was on the very edge of the Enclave's zone of control. It was small, less than a kiloyard across, its mop-top of green ragged and overgrown. Fissures spider-webbed a shoreline starved of fresh water. Large chunks of island clung together only by strings of vine and root, looking like they would break free and float away at any instant.
"No self-respecting Feral would be caught dead here," Tesla said pointedly.
Halifax flinched. Patton flinched. Tesla was asking why a recon team had been lost on an island with no Ferals, which was a good question, but it was Tesla's fault that the recon team was out there in the first place. Tesla needed more and more Feral kits for Sacrament. That meant missions farther and farther from the Enclave. And more and more risk. Now that potential for risk had turned into real trouble.
"I take full responsibility," Halifax said stiffly, "for whatever happened."
"Don't fall on your sword, Taureg," Tesla said. "Just explain."
Halifax obliged. "Orders were issued allowing squads to use their own initiative. Feral stocks are too depleted for missions targeted at specific islands. Without the ability to hunt as they see fit, we risk men and vehicles and come up empty-handed. Recon 8 must have seen Ferals."
Tesla grunted. "Did you also give permission for the skimmer teams to split up?"
Halifax shook his head. "No sir. Standard orders: teams of three. They must've taken a chance."
Patton had been present when Halifax ordered three teams out on the previous evening. Recon 8 promptly disappeared. No transponder signal. No response to com signals. No SOS. Recons 7 and 9 had returned, but 8 was now half a day overdue, six valuable men and an irreplaceable skimmer missing. Of course Halifax was going to investigate personally. Halifax always worried about his fellow humans, especially if they were under his command. Patton had seen Halifax risk his life many times to save them. Patton was proud of that. He hoped Halifax would save the humans in Recon 8. And he wished Tesla had not come. Halifax did not need to be worrying about the Prime Consul at a time like this.
"See anything?" Halifax quietly asked Patton.
"See nothing."
Patton had good senses, even compared with other Khafra. Halifax often said Patton could see the wart on a gnat's butt a kiloyard away, and hear it fart at ten, but those heightened senses detected nothing on the shore of FI-538, no signs of life, human, Feral, or otherwise.
The skimmers circled the island at Halifax's signal, engines winding down to a low thrum. An inlet appeared along the ragged coastline. It widened as they neared, revealing itself to be a fissure right through one arc of the ring-island. The jagged passage showed foreboding glimpses of a small lagoon at the island's heart.
More than ever Patton agreed that no Ferals inhabited FI-538. The ring was breached. It would break up during the next big storm. Why had the recon team come here? It made no sense. Patton sniffed the air.
"Smell anything?" Halifax asked.
"Trouble," Patton replied. There was a funny smell. Every flashbud on his body prickled.
Patton was not afraid. Halifax had trained him to know what to expect from trouble and how to react to it. Patton always did what Halifax ordered and never panicked. That was why he was the only domestic allowed on Guard missions. Halifax was proud of that and Patton tried to keep Halifax proud. In a way, trouble was Pat-ton's natural element, but that did not mean Patton always liked what trouble brought.
The skimmers neared the jagged inlet.
"Over there!" a Guard behind Patton cried, pointing. "Smoke!"
An oily tendril smeared skyward from behind shooting-star palms. It was a sure sign of human activity. Ferals used organic chemical reactions for heat and their glowbuds for light. They did not need fire.
The smoke explained the funny smell.
"Look like come from center of island," Patton decided.
Halifax nodded and turned to the skimmer's driver, who was seated at the controls just behind Patton. "Take us in." Then, switching his comset to the open battle channel, Halifax called orders to the skimmers and squads. "All teams prep. Danger close."
The water clattered with full-auto pulse-rifles loading and locking. Quiver-shiv bayonets snapped into place. Halifax drew the arming pin on a nasty looking mauler pistol. Tesla armed his personal, single-shot pulse-rifle. Patton flexed his claws.
The skimmers formed a single line, the command skimmer leading the way into the inlet. There was no room to turn around in the constricted waterway, no retreat. Drivers used one hand to steer and kept the other on the throttles, ready to accelerate rapidly if they had to.
"Don't shoot without visual recognition," Halifax warned the squads. "There may be friendlies down, probably in need of assistance."
The humans swept their weapons across overhanging branches and the attached heavy foliage. The greenery loomed like the walls of a canyon. Lianas, squirming from constant, accelerated growth while in contact with the water, trailed across the surface like questing fingers; one groped onto the command skimmer; Halifax idly scrubbed it free with a bootheel. The inlet narrowed as the skimmers penetrated deeper into the island, but just as the waterway threatened to choke off completely, the jungle fell away and the skimmers glided out into a circle of open water, barely one hundred yards across and surrounded by a thin strip of sinkhole muskeg.
All heads locked onto the source of the oily smoke.
A smoldering hulk lay beached on the far shore. As the skimmers slid across the glassy water, Patton recognized the wreck of a military skimmer, its fuselage charred, slashed open in a hundred places. Frayed layers of composite material showed where one stubby wing had been torn completely off. The capture cage, where Feral kits were held for transport back to the Enclave, lay to one side, a mangled heap.
Patton saw no sign of the recon team and told Halifax so.
The colonel motioned with his pistol, calling on comset. "Second Team, in. Everyone else, cover them." As the orders rattled down the chain of command, Halifax spoke in a low voice to Patton. "You go too."
"Go too. Urrr."
"And take a headset."
"Urrr."
Patton pulled on a comset specially rigged for his earpits and muzzle. He hopped onto the command skimmer's right wing and made an easy leap over a ten-foot gap and landed on Second Team's skimmer, which then turned and jetted in to the shore, its prow nosing onto spongy sinkhole muskeg while the other skimmers took up protective positions.
Patton jumped out along with six Guards in skirmish armor. The humans assumed attack formation with Patton on point as they advanced on the hulk. This was definitely the time to be cautious. Patton remembered the battle at the ancient Terran city of Troy. Ferals could be hiding in the wrecked skimmer. Patton edged closer, trying to sniff the air, but stinging smoke overpowered the possible odor of Ferals and made his eyes water. When no ambush materialized, Patton closed to examine the wreckage. He checked the mangled capture cage first. It contained no live Feral kits and, mercifully, no dead ones either.
The squad followed Patton.
Jott, Second Team's corporal, rubbed his stinging eyes. "No bad-guy activity, Colonel," he reported by comset. "Lots of burned stuff, but no friendlies."
Hagan, a round-featured private, poked a bayonet through one of many slashes in the skimmer fuselage. "Skimmer's fucked up good."
"Teeth marks in hull," Patton clarified for Halifax. Moving around to the side of the wreck hidden from the shore, his own teeth clattered.
"What is it?" Halifax asked.
"Turbine problems."
Patton picked up a few shards of curved composite material. The shattered edges were torn outward from the inside. "Funny marks on turbine cowling."
Corporal Jott joined Patton. "He's right, Colonel. The turbine blew off from the inside out. The whole nacelle's gone."
Halifax's voice buzzed in their ears. "Assessment. What took them down?"
; Corporal Jott looked around. "Looks like the flashers hit them on the water."
"Urrr," Patton concurred, nosing along a furrow that ran from the water's edge up the soft ground to the wreckage. "Crashes onto island. Then mêlée ensues." There were thousands of tiny, almost invisible claw rips in the surrounding muskeg. "Then skimmer catches fire."
Hagan pulled a badly burned transponder box from the hulk and held it up for those in the other skimmers could see. "At least we know why the transponder cut out."
Patton heard the distinct clicks of two comsets cutting out of the circuit. The taller of the two standing figures in the command skimmer tilted its head at the other. Patton aimed his overly sensitive ear pits at them.
The Prime Consul's voice carried faintly over the water. "How the devil did they bring down a skimmer? They're animals for God's sake."
Patton watched Halifax tilt his head, as if not in agreement with his commander in chief.
"Simple thoughts," Tesla lectured in a louder voice. "Not like us. They parrot our words, but that's it. They are incapable of independent thought."
Halifax crossed his arms. "As I reported in the Chamber, Ferals have taken to throwing things at skimmers." He jerked his blocky head at the rear of the command skimmer, and the raised turbine mounted there. "We modified the cowlings with protective gratings, but it looks like they defeated them."
Patton turned from eavesdropping, searched, and picked up a charred screen from near the hulk's exploded turbine cowl. "Blocked with goo," he observed, rubbing the clogged mesh with the opposed pairs of thumbs on his paw.
The comsets clicked back onto open channel.
"Corporal Jott, you're sure there are no bodies?" Tesla demanded.
Jott poked inside the hulk with a boot toe. "Yes, Prime Consul. The wreck's pretty much gutted."
"Then strip it," Tesla ordered. "Salvage everything you can. Even a few spare parts are worth recovering."
"As soon—" Halifax's voice interjected, "—as you secure the area."
The squad spread out around the wreck.
"Smells like a Kdathic whorehouse in summer," commented Jott.