"Emile my brother. This is Hischteeel. It, oh, it wishes, with all its heart and soul, oh, it wishes to join our associational-group-of-those-who-care-together."
First Contact with an alien species always tends to bring out the orator in me:
"Huh?" I said.
"Listen to it." Norfeldt snorted. "The Service, Emmy—it's talking about the fucking Contact Service. The critter wants to join the CS."
N'Damo broke into a series of harsh whispers, answered by the gray monster. "Oh, it wishes to be part of us, and with us, and of us."
This was getting seriously weird.
"That's what's going on? This old lizard wants to join the Service?"
"No, no, no, my friend. No." Donny turned to me, reaching out to grip my forearms. I pushed him away; an esper in contact is always suspect.
"No," he said, "no, it is not old. It is a youngling, just into kchtt-t-t—just into the change. It is time for it to join a schtann, and when I touched its mind it found that it wishes to join the Contact Service, oh the Contact Service schtann."
The creature rose slowly from the log and stalked toward me, exchanging words with Donny.
"Tell the lizard to keep its distance, Donny," I said, bringing up my wiregun.
Donny croaked at it; it croaked back.
"Not a lizard, Emile. It's a schrift, a schrift it is." He turned to me. Inside his bubble, his eyes were wide. "Hischteeel says we have to get back to the shuttle. The . . . Surveyors, the schtann-of-observation must have it under surveillance, and the Artificers and Communicators will want the shuttle. There is much in it that the Artificers would want to learn about. That, that, that is why I-we had to hurry. That is all it tries to do: to warn us and join us, its brothers-and-more-than-brothers-to-be."
I didn't like the sound of that. "Major?"
"Yeah, I think you're right." the Dutchman said. "Bar-El, you'd better go make pickup, fast—"
I heard the Dutchman gasp for breath.
"Holy motherfucking—Condition Blue, Emmy. You and N'Damo get your asses back here. Two thousand of these lizards just stepped out of the treeline, and if those aren't rifles they're carrying—fuck the Blue, we're in Red. Condition Red. Bar-El, get that skimmer up now—"
Bringing up my wiregun, I started to turn back toward the lizard, but it was already lunging at me. Its massive hands batted it away, knocking it out of my hands.
The schrift reached for me. I hopped back on one leg and kicked the creature in the chest, then lunged for the lost wiregun, but found my hands full of writhing schrift, as Bar-El and the Dutchman kept talking on the all-hands freak.
"Cancel that, Major—they will not make it."
Over the whirr of the skimmer's engines, I could hear the chuffaka-chuffaka-chuffaka of his floating recoilless firing. Idly, it occurred to me that Akiva's microphone wasn't quite tight against the skin of his throat, or I wouldn't be hearing the background so clearly.
"I am going for them," Akiva said, his voice level, a touch flatter, more expressionless than usual.
Chuffaka-chuffaka-chuffaka.
"No—"
"I won't leave live comrades behind," Akiva said evenly, as though he was reporting on an unchangeable fact of the universe.
"It won't fucking work," the Dutchman snapped. "Got zero chances—get the skimmer back in the bay, and then you and I are getting the fuck out of here. Sorry, Emile, N'Damo, but the train's pulling out of the station. Now."
It was interesting, the sound of the Dutchman's voice as he pronounced our death sentence; there wasn't a trace of emotion in it.
Chuffaka-chuff.
The sound stopped.
And in the distance I could hear the roar of the shuttle's belly jets.
And then:
Whoom.
III
I wasn't there for it, and the Dutchman and I never talked about it, but later on I saw the tape of the rest of the fight, captured for posterity by the shuttle's turret camera.
I may as well put it in here.
The schrift got to Bar-El just as he was bringing the skimmer around the stern of the shuttle. I guess he'd decided to break through into the forest from a different angle, away from the mass of gray flesh that was working its way through the fire of the shuttle's turret gun.
I don't know what he thought he'd accomplish. Even if he'd made pickup, there wouldn't have been anywhere to go. The Dutchman was inside the shuttle, and was getting ready to take off and leave us behind.
Take this for whatever it's worth: I don't hold that against the fat man.
You have to understand: that's part of the job. You can even say that that is the job. Getting the information back—that the locals were both organized and hostile, and had projectile weapons that could do at least minimal damage to a Service shuttle—all that was more important than the lives of any two Team members.
In fact, on a personal level, I should be grateful to the Dutchman; he erred—if he erred—on the side of trying to save our lives. He hadn't just punched the panic button.
Instead, he'd fired up the engines for a normal liftoff, without taking the time to adjust the belts on my pilot's couch for his greater bulk. Norfeldt lit the belly jets and started to lift the shuttle a few meters into the air, riding on ground effect to save fuel. I guess he intended to follow Bar-El to wherever the big man planned the rendezvous.
But it didn't work out that way. As Bar-El brought the skimmer around, three gray forms leaped out of the tall grasses to the floor of the skimmer itself.
The schrift I was battling with at that moment was a youngling, just into adulthood, and only barely my size. The three on the skimmer were fully adult schrift of the Artificers schtann, each half again my size, each half again Bar-El's strength.
He didn't have a chance. The tape shows him reaching for his pistol, then letting his hand drop, as though he realized that it wasn't going to work.
I never found out what he'd done to the recoilless. The mounting is supposed to have safety chocks to prevent the muzzle from pointing at the surface of the skimmer, but I guess that sometime before, Akiva had decided to remove them, to prepare for the moment when they might be in the way of what he wanted to do.
As the three schrift tried to wrestle him out of his control seat, he lurched the skimmer into a whole crowd of hundreds of the creatures.
I've gone over the next seconds of film a thousand times—at regular speed, slow-motion, frame-by-frame, computer-enhanced. But it doesn't do any good. While Akiva Bar-El was wearing a membrane helmet—he was breathing off the skimmer's air system—and I can see his face through much of the tape, at that moment there was just too much smoke in the way.
So I can't swear to it, even though I think Akiva was smiling as he raised his clenched right fist over his head in a last gesture of defiance as he used his left hand to spin the recoilless around and drop the barrel, pointing it down toward the floor of the skimmer, down toward its own ammo box.
He pulled the trigger. I think he was smiling. . . .
The skimmer shattered into fire.
The picture jerks after that. A piece of hot metal caught itself in the throat of the port main engine, just as the Dutchman had lifted the ship up on its belly jets, riding on the transitional lift caused by the cushion of hot gases between the ship and the ground.
The impact was like that old physics demonstration of a dry-ice puck on a smooth table; it sent the shuttle skittering, spinning across the flat ground, supported by the belly jets in transitional lift. It also knocked the Dutchman out of my couch; apparently he'd locked his leg somehow or other, and his knee snapped like a dry twig.
The autopilot kept it under control while he got himself under control and into his couch.
"Norfeldt . . . to von du Mark," he said. "Don't say anything; just listen. After I say this, I'm going off the air; I don't want to give these fuckers any chance to trace me. If they can.
"According to the panel here, one of the main engines is b
locked. If I fire it, I'll blow the shuttle up.
"Not much I can do. My leg's broke; I can't get out and clear it myself. What I am doing is firing off a probe to distract their attention, then I'm taking the shuttle up the slope of the mountain, and landing it just above the cloud line. If you can, join me.
"Maybe we can clear the engine, and maybe there'll be enough fuel left to get us back topside. Maybe.
"Good luck. Captain. Good luck to us all. Norfeldt out."
I can't tell you a lot about the fight between Hischteeel and me; I was a bit too busy to take notes. It felt like it took forever, but it lasted for only a couple of seconds It wouldn't have lasted that long, but Hischteeel was handicapped by being unwilling to risk breaking my mask or hurting me seriously.
But I didn't know that; as we were rolling around on the ground, I was doing my damnedest to get at my wiregun or get my Fairbairn knife out of its sheath, and stick either the barrel or blade up Hischteeel's nose.
It didn't work; I didn't come close. Batting the wiregun away, Hischteeel handled me almost embarrassingly easily as it wrested my weapons away and hoisted me to its broad shoulder, one powerful six-fingered hand wrapped about my wrists, the other steadying me as it broke into a fast lope.
Donny could barely keep up.
Hischteeel's bony shoulder dug into my belly as it bounced along. I tried to work my hands free, but it was too strong.
"Emile, don't struggle with Hischteeel. It's trying to get us out of here," he said.
Flailing my body from side to side, I managed to shake myself loose, and tumbled head over heels to the ground flat on my back.
I came up with my Fairbairn knife in my right hand and my left hand on my belt. I thumbed away the plastic dome covering the ignition button of my jetpack.
"Come on, lizard," I said. My wiregun was lost somewhere behind us in the forest, but maybe a bit of juice could do the same thing. I'd throw the knife, and as the critter ducked, I'd hit the ignition button and fry the bastard as I took to the air.
I reversed my grip on the blade and pulled back my hand for the throw.
Donny leaped in front of me. "No, Captain. He's on our side." He turned back to the schrift and reached out a hand.
Hischteeel took a step toward me and knelt on its bony knees, its arms folded behind its back. It tilted its head up and back, presenting its throat for the cut of my blade.
"Please, please listen, Emile," Donny said. "It says: i will join your grouping, not attack it, brother-to-be'—that last isn't really close, Captain. You have to get a feel for this language. It's got kkakjjer—" He swallowed twice, hard. "'We must hide, at least until dark. I know a place; accept me now, or kill me now.'"
I rested the slender point of the knife against its neck. Beneath the slick gray flesh, alien blood pulsed slowly. Once, twice, three times.
Maybe it was dangerous. But one of the first things they teach you at the Contact Service Academy is that the universe is full of dangers; the second is that you can't kill all of it.
"Shit." I sheathed the knife. "Let's get the hell out of here."
I walked to the mouth of the cave and stepped out into the night, Hischteeel following me to take up a watchful position partway up a nearby tree.
Not that it could see very well in the dark; it had stumbled around the cave almost blindly. Its ancestors were night sleepers, apparently, not night hunters. Which would have made it a good idea for the three of us to try getting out of here in the dark, except that I didn't like the idea of climbing until we got some light.
I took another yellowjacket from my beltpouch, slipped it under my mask, and tongued it. It was bitter, of course. I wonder why they don't put some sort of sweet covering on them. Be too easy that way, I guess.
Easy or not, I needed the pill. Sleep was out for now, although with my wiregun gone, I was watching for the searchers on the plain below without a clear plan as to what I'd do if one of them found us.
Two jetpacks could get Donny and me out of here. But not far, not nearly far enough—and if there's a better way to announce your presence to someone nearby than by lighting off a jetpack, I'd like to know what it is.
The night was bright with the stars overhead, and threatening with the clouds rolling in from the west. And brighter and more threatening with the flickering of lamps on the plain below.
The searchers were moving away from us, though. Most of them.
I turned up the gain on my comset, and listened once again to the repeating message. ". . . up the slope, at hex 390719—get your fucking map out of your pouch, asshole. If you can hear me, krauthead, I'll say again: ignore the direction of this; I'm relaying via the comm laser through the message balloon.
"And for God's sake don't broadcast. I've got a hunch they're going to figure out soon enough that the apparent direction this is coming from is phony, but let's not give them a real direction too soon, eh?
"I can sort of crawl around inside here, but there's no way I'm going to be able to get out to the back to clear the engine. Two possibilities. If you get up here quick enough, maybe you can clear it. If not, before I—engh—shit, shit, how the hell did I ever—"
That sounded bad. With everything else I'd seen Norfeldt do, I'd never heard him complain like that, not about personal discomfort. He must have been in heavy pain, and not able to reach the rear of the cabin and either get into the autodoc or take the full medikit down from high on the wall to get at the neural blocks.
No, cancel that first—he couldn't allow himself to get into the autodoc; the autodoc might decide he was better off unconscious. The only major painkillers he'd have in his personal kit were the alkaloids, and if he used those, he might fall asleep.
I heard a gurgling. It seemed that the Dutchman was using a more primitive version of anesthesia. Fair enough, under the circumstances.
"Never mind that," the voice said, now sounding a bit stronger. "I know that you learned in school about how hard duplicating alien technology is, but I'm not going to take the chance that the locals went to a different school. Which is why I've rigged a deadman switch to the panic button. I think the clog in the rear engine will blow the ship to hell and gone, but that's not good enough, Emile. . . ."
I turned the sound down. There wasn't anything else to hear, and I had to work out what my next move was—what our next move was. I didn't have a lot of hope for my command surviving much longer, but I was going to do my damnedest.
The mission first, Serviceman. The mission first. Then the command.
The schrift dropped from the tree and stood in front of me, muttering something quietly in its own language.
Donny tapped me on the shoulder. "Hischteeel has to go do something."
"Do what?"
N'Damo shook his head. "It won't tell me."
"What do you mean it won't tell you?"
A ghost of a smile flickered across Donny's face "I mean that when I ask it why, it says, 'I will not tell you.'"
Fucking helpful. Donny. Still, given our situation, I thought a little smartass showed a bit of spine.
"So?"
"So, it is asking your permission."
"Enough bullshit. Tell him to geek. Now."
A quick rasping conversation, then:
"I don't understand it, Emile. But he won't tell, and I can't read him when he's trying to keep a secret."
Well, if the lizard really wanted to go, there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it, not without my wiregun; Hischteeel had already proved that within a few moments of our first meeting. And since it was asking permission, I might as well grant it.
Of course, it could be going for help. Local help.
I shrugged. It didn't much matter. In for a penny, in for a pound; if Hischteeel's real intention was to betray us to the Artificers or another schtann, then we were already as good as dead.
No. Not quite as good. I held my Fairbaim knife in my hand, eyeing its gleaming blade, wondering if I had the guts to do the necessary. T
here was too much knowledge locked up in two heads. . . .
"Emile?"
"Wrong. Try again, Mister."
"Excuse me?"
I spun on him. "I said: 'No. Try again, Mister.' The pilot and second-in-command of our Team is good old informal Emile. The commander of this ragtag party of two humans and one amphibian is Captain von du Mark, and you can put a sir after that. You catching my meaning, Lieutenant N'Damo?"
That caught him by surprise. "Yes, sir," he managed to get out.
I was more surprised than he was—not at him, at me. Granted, Captain Patel had taught us in Command & the Nature of Authority that when you take command, the very first thing you have to do is make it clear that you are in command—if you don't, you're being unfair to your subordinates more than to yourself. Making it clear without making a jerk of yourself is considered to be high art, he'd said.
I wasn't surprised because I wasn't up to the high art—it was just that I hadn't known that any of what he'd taught me had taken.
"Tell him he can go," I said. "But until he gets back, I don't want you more than two meters away from me. I'll entertain no questions."
"Aye, Em—Captain. Sir." Donny turned to the schrift and answered in its own language. I guess that's the only thing I really envy about espers: the gift of tongues. The rest of it, the peeping into filthy little minds, that has to be like going through garbage, nose first.
Hischteeel vanished into the forest.
Gradually, the fan of my purifier had taken up a higher pitch; I opened the case and held both my breath and the hold button while I slipped out the micropore filter and slipped the spare into its slot.
I took out my Fairbairn knife and scraped at the bone-white ceramic surface of the dirty filter. Most of the real clogging was in the pores themselves, of course, but some of it was on the surface.
And, besides, it gave me an excuse to have the knife in my hands.
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