Orphan's Journey

by Robert Buettner

I nodded. “This was the weakest Slug force I’ve ever seen. Something’s screwy.”

  An hour later, neither Jeeb nor Casus had returned. When the Slugs had attacked, Casus’s troops had cut the hobbles off all the duckbills they couldn’t ride. The animals smart enough or lucky enough to run away from the battle had been rounded up by Casus’s men later.

  So I was reunited with Rosy, who actually honked when she sniffed me, and the other three Earthlings got mounts to ride as well.

  Headed uphill this time, we returned to the base of the ten-foot escarpment that divided the barren Casuni steppes and the Tassini deserts, from the green, watered meadows of the Marini. Casus’s appointed bodyguards led us to a narrow gap in the long cliff, through which refugees from the Slug blitz still climbed, funneling up and crossing into Casus’s wind-scoured kingdom.

  I stopped and swept my hand left and right at the north-south barrier, and said to Ord, “Casus should make a stand here. Now we know the Slugs can bridge rivers, but we’ve never seen ’em fly. This gap’s the only way up for miles. A platoon could hold it against a division. Then Casus could cover the rest of the escarpment with a few dug-in troops per mile.”

  Ord frowned. “Casus and his cavalry aren’t built to dig in, physically or mentally, Sir.”

  I nodded back. “Let’s stop at the top of the gap for lunch. If Casus comes back here, I’ll talk to him again.”

  The bodyguards Casus assigned to us did double duty, setting up an aid station for any Casuni stragglers who staggered back. Their first-aid business was lousy. Slug rounds hit hard. Human casualties were mostly dead, few wounded.

  The bodyguards also made a fire, and boiled a soup made with what looked like dried peppers.

  I walked over to the pot, sniffed, and the odor watered my eyes. I coughed, and shook my head. “Smells great.” I patted my abdomen plate and grimaced. “But I’m coming off stomach surgery.” Which was not a lie.

  He nodded. “Once a man’s eaten the janga, he never wants it again.”

  Evidently, every man within sniffing distance had already eaten the Janga. The pot just sat there and boiled.

  The foodstuffs MAT(D)4 carried were finite, but we had plenty of MUDs left. After weeks of eating nothing but groundfruit patties, I had Ord crack open a provisions Plasteel.

  The four of us sat cross-legged in a circle, while our bodyguards grazed Rosy and the other duckbills.

  I squirted water from a hide bag into the nipple on a MUD that Quartermaster’s comedians labeled “Spicy Chicken with Savory Chipati,” then waited while bagged glop swelled and warmed itself.

  Howard gazed back across the smoke-shrouded valley of the River Marin, and shook his head. “Well, we no longer have to wonder whether the Pseudocephalopod maintains a presence on this planet. But these people seemed astonished to see those warriors, and more astonished to be attacked.”

  I swallowed a MUD mouthful, tasty after weeks of groundfruit hardtack. “Especially during the ’Peace of the Fair.’ Something must’ve changed recently.”

  Howard said, “The biggest thing that changed recently on this planet is we four arrived from outer space.”

  I paused with the packet halfway to my lips, and shook my head. “We’re just four more humans. Why assume the Slugs even noticed the crash?”

  Even as I said it, I didn’t believe it. If Bassin the one-eyed prospector—or whatever he was—noticed the crash, the Slugs certainly noticed when one of their ships went down.

  Jude squeezed “Homestyle Beef Stew” into his mouth, then he stared down at the smoke in the valley.

  He could only imagine the human carnage it hid, and Munchkin would want me to keep it that way. If it were only Ord and me, and even Howard, I would cowboy up and join the fight on our new neighbors’ side. But I had Jude to protect.

  I said, “All Casus wants from us are automatic rifles, so he can grease his neighbors. Once he figures out we can’t manufacture more M-40s, he won’t want us at all. We have our gear. We can hole up anywhere on this continent for months. Our mission here is to survive. Period.”

  The three of them frowned at me.

  Jude whispered, “But it’s our fault!”

  I stiffened. “No. We didn’t expect this. We didn’t wish evil on these people.”

  The three of them kept staring.

  I said to Jude, “I promised your mother when I left her on New Moon that I’d keep you safe. Nobody promised we’d save this world. My mission is keeping us alive. That means getting us all away from this mess, and keeping us away. You all want me to take charge? Fine. We aren’t getting involved.”

  Jude said, “You say you’re keeping a promise to Mom. Mom said that if a person makes a mess, he should clean it up. Even if it was an accident. We made this mess.”

  I couldn’t have said it better myself. But I wasn’t going to admit that if doing so would risk Jude’s life.

  I stood, crossed my arms, and glared at Jude. “I don’t have to decide this now.”

  The ground shook.

  Howard’s eyes widened as he stared at the prairie behind me. “Yes, you do.”

  Thirty

  I turned and stared. A miles-wide dust cloud sizzled on the horizon as Casus’s army thundered toward us. I chinned my optics and spotted Casus, on his white beast, out ahead of his army. He twirled his sword above his head, shouting. Scarlet, gold, and purple banners, borne by other riders, boiled in the dust that churned behind him.

  I bit down on my threat-count tab, and my optics began counting individual riders. I turned off the tab when the counter on my display whirred past four thousand, and kept spinning.

  Casus, now there was a commander. Literally larger than life, skilled in the arts of war as he knew them, courageous, charismatic. Me, I couldn’t even persuade a sixteen-year-old, a geek, and a Sergeant Major who reported to me to save their own skins.

  Three minutes later, Casus’s great army slowed to a canter, then halted, a thousand yards before they reached the Escarpment lip. His commanders rode from their units to confer alongside him. Casus seemed content to let the Slugs bring the fight to him.

  As the four of us remounted, Ord said, “This is bad, Sir.”

  I nodded. “Casus wants to fight the Slugs out on the plains, where his cavalry can maneuver. But the Slugs’ll overwhelm them. Those single-shot Casuni hand cannons shoot dinosaurs out from under opponents fine. But when the rider shoots the first four Slugs out of a hundred, what does he do about the ninety-six left?”

  Ord said, “Digging in at the Escarpment is their best option.”

  I sighed, and shook my head. “I’ve been talking to Casus. Like that heckler at the auction said, ‘You can always tell a Casuni. But you can’t tell him much.’”

  Howard said, “Show him, don’t tell him.” He had unfolded a holomap generator, and balanced it across his saddle. The generator popped as its display crackled on. Howard voiced up a direct feed from Jeeb, who hovered high enough above the Fair’s flames to show the whole area.

  In the river shallows, the smudges of sunken ships showed beneath the surface, or jutted bow or stern up, above the water. Dead Slugs littered the meadow between the river and the tents like spilled caraway seed. Smoke and flame still obscured most of the tent city’s wreckage, but too many charred human silhouettes lay sprawled in the ashes. There had to be tens of thousands dead.

  Jude gulped, then turned his face away.

  The Slugs were visible, too, of course. They maneuvered in a black mass, surging toward the Escarpment. The threat counter identified ten thousand individual warriors.

  I said to Howard, “Only ten thousand left? We only killed a few hundred.”

  He said, “I’ll want to review Jeeb’s broader survey to see the big picture. But this is a smaller force than It normally deploys.”

  Ord pointed to a tree line off the Slug right flank. “What’s that?”

  Visible from Jeeb’s overhead vantage, but screened from the Slugs at ground level
by the trees, scores of foot troops and vehicles drawn by animals lay behind rough earthworks. The berms were being improved as we watched, faster than ants could empty a sugar bowl.

  I said, “They’re not Casuni. Casus says earthworks are for snakes. I’d guess they’re Marini.”

  I overrode Howard’s generator and tasked Jeeb. “Oblique close up.”

  Unnoticed by the combatants, Jeeb dove, flattened his flight line, and hovered a hundred feet from the force hidden behind the trees.

  The animals dominated the image Jeeb transmitted. They walked on hind legs, like Casuni duckbills, but fifty feet long, where a big duckbill stallion might go twenty-eight. And these monsters had tumorous, blood-red heads, set with ranks of teeth as large and scabrous as overripe bananas. Their hides were elephant-gray, and their forelimbs like clawed twigs.

  They snorted, so loud that Jeeb’s audio picked up the sound, and they pawed the ground as they swayed their great heads side-to-side.

  Howard whistled. “Theropod carnosaurs.”

  Jude asked, “T. rex?”

  “Same niche. But I can’t imagine a tyrannosaur could look that mean.”

  Iron muzzles clamped the beasts’ jaws, the muzzle halves joined by a pin from which hung a chain. The chain, and two more chains that hung from rings that were pinned into each monster’s head just behind the earholes, hung in arcs that gathered and ran beneath the beasts’ centerlines. Reins.

  A rigid harness attached each carnosaur to a two-wheeled cart behind it. A chariot. In each chariot stood two men, one who held the massive reins, and the other whose armor bristled with pistol holsters and a short sword. They wore the same black-lacquered helmets and armor as the Marini whose scent had spooked Rosy yesterday at the Fair.

  I muttered, “No wonder she was scared.” Those jaws could bite a duckbill in half at the neck.

  The Marini infantry wore the same round helmets and armor, but dull blue. They carried rifles so slim that they were as obviously single-shot as the Casunis’ pistols. They crouched in ranks, waiting.

  The scurrying Marini troops wore brown tunics and helmets, and armor hung with scabbards that held short-handled axes. Squad-sized groups hefted phone-pole-sized logs, ran them forward as precisely as ballet troupers, then fitted them together to form causeways that bridged a creek bed that separated the Marini from the Slugs. Once the causeways were in place, the carnosaur chariots could roll to battle in seconds.

  Ord said, “Sappers.”

  Jude cocked his head. “Sappers?”

  “Combat engineers. And good ones.”

  Their officer stood hands on hips, directing his men. A man stumbled, his group dropped a log, and the officer ducked in and lent a hand. There was something awkward, yet familiar, in his gait.

  I tasked Jeeb. “Right five.” The image we saw centered on the officer. “Closer.”

  The back of the officer’s helmet filled our image.

  He turned, shouted to his men, and I saw that he wore a black patch over one eye. The other eye looked familiar.

  Thirty-One

  I whispered, “Bassin, you mendacious, one-legged son of a bitch!”

  But my former hut-mate’s duplicity was the least of my immediate concerns.

  I motioned Howard to bring the holo generator, and to ride with me to Casus. Ord and Jude rode behind us.

  Jude said, “Casus won’t trust you. He thinks we’re Marini.”

  “No. He thinks we’re Marini half-breed crooks. He knows we won’t cross him, because we want to run guns to him.”

  When Casus looked up and saw me, he frowned. Then he shooed his commanders back so we could parlay. “You’ve reconsidered my proposal?”

  I shook my head. “I’m here to make you a better one. Free combat intelligence.”

  Howard had been hidden behind Rosy. He walked his mount out where Casus could see the translucent, holo-generated image.

  Casus’s eyes bugged, and he paled beneath his beard.

  Casus had been surprised at our rifles, our armor, even our ’Bots. They were next-year’s models of things familiar to him. But moving pictures that hung in the air were beyond any Bren human’s imagination.

  Casus extended his hand until his fingers touched the image, then he thrust them into it, wiggled them, and whispered, “You’re not half-breeds! You’re warlocks!”

  “No. We’re your best friends,” I said.

  I voiced Jeeb to pull back to panoramic. Once he did, I pointed at the tree line visible in the image, and the Slugs massed a thousand yards beyond.

  I asked Casus, “You and these Marini aren’t planning this together, are you?”

  “Make common cause with Marini?” He pointed at the red head of one of the muzzled monsters, as it flickered in the air, and Casus snorted. “I’d sooner bed that wronk.”

  “I didn’t think so. But even if you aren’t working together, you have a chance to destroy the devil whole, if you’ll take it.” I pointed at the floating image. “If—”

  Casus nodded, and pointed his finger at the Escarpment, where it appeared on the holo. “Yes! If my army attacks frontally now, we’ll draw the black worms in upon us. Once they engage with us, the black worms will be stuck to us like tar. They won’t be able to wheel, and defend their flank. Then, if the wronkers attack the flank, they’ll roll the black worms up like a bed mat.”

  I said. “Otherwise—”

  He nodded his huge head, and narrowed his eyes. “Otherwise, the black worms will concentrate against two weaker forces in succession, and defeat each of us in detail.”

  TOT-link overhead holography might have seemed like witchcraft to Casus, but he saw a battlefield as clearly as Lee had seen Chancellorsville.

  Then he frowned. “But what if we cross the Escarpment, and the Fisheaters don’t attack? The worms would drive us back against the cliffs and crush us.”

  “You can see that the Fisheaters are about to attack the black worms anyway. Why would they hold back?”

  “The Marini are in league with the devil. These black worms are the devil reincarnate after three times ten thousand years. This may be a charade to lure my army into a killing box.”

  “No. Trust me. Us warlocks know who’s in league with the devil.”

  He cocked his head at me, and nodded. “I suppose so, if anyone does.”

  “So I say attack. Together, your Clans will sweep the black worms from the field.”

  He pointed at the holo generator. “Your glass foretells victory?”

  I took a deep breath, and tried not to blink. “Guaranteed. But you need to move fast, or—”

  Casus spun away from me, and remounted his stallion.

  He reared the huge white duckbill, and shouted to his army, “Today!”

  Four thousand men fell silent. The only sound was banners snapping in the wind. Casus pointed his sword toward the Escarpment’s edge. “Today, we send the devils back to hell! Forward!”

  Four thousand warriors roared. Trumpets echoed through the ranks. Then the ground trembled under massive footfalls, and the vast army rolled toward us like a living tsunami.

  Jude, an eyeblink before the rest of us, turned his mount toward the Escarpment, kicked it to a gallop and yelled, “They’re gonna run us over!”

  The remaining three of us, and the ’Bots, followed Jude. But the vast cavalry charge swallowed us up as it cascaded over the Escarpment into the impending battle and bore us along like leaves on a roaring wind that smelled of dust and overheated animal.

  Howard bounced side-to-side, clutching his saddle. As his duckbill leaped over the Escarpment for the second time in days, Howard shouted to me, “You said we weren’t getting involved!”

  Thirty-Two

  The slugs bunched into an armor-touching-armor phalanx, as the Casuni bore down on them.

  Galloping two-ton animals occupy lanes wider than Electrovans on a Guidepike. Therefore, Casus’s charge couldn’t overrun the Slugs in a single, broad wave. The cavalry had to funnel
itself into lines, one behind the other, and attack in successive, weaker pulses. And as the rear ranks waited to move up, they milled around, exposed to Slug artillery. Slugs were alien, but they weren’t dumb.

  Zzzzeee. Zzzzeee.

  Slug Heavys tore into the Casunis all around us. Animals and men screamed, as soil, blood, and flesh whizzed through the air around us.

  I swung Rosy around until I spotted Jude. This was his first sight of men, not alien blobs, torn into arms and legs and meat by battle.

  He raised his visor, leaned off his mount, and puked.

  Ahead of us, the leading ranks of cavalry and Slug infantry came within range of one another’s direct-fire weapons. Casuni pistols rumbled, and Slug mag rail rifles howled in a collective moan.

  Duckbills stumbled, then cartwheeled, tails thrashing, spraying blood. Riders somersaulted ahead of their mounts, until the reins in their hands snapped them to the ground.

  Casus’s stallion reached the Slug front rank, hurdled the black picket fence of Slug-warrior helmet crests, and Casus slashed left and right with his sword.

  Casus’s second wave slowed, as cavalrymen jerked left and right around fallen duckbills and riders. At slow speed the cavalry made better targets.

  I peered to our left, through milling riders, at the distant trees that had hidden the Marini. If their commanders were all as smart as Bassin seemed to be, they should recognize the opportunity presented by the Casuni attack, and exploit it.

  But nothing stirred.

  I chinned up my magnification, scanned the tree line, saw nothing but leaves, and muttered, “Come on! Now!”

  The Casuni third wave surged forward into massed volleys of mag rail rounds. In sixty seconds, the momentum of the charge would carry Howard, Jude, Ord, and me into the front rank.

  “Ahh!”

  Alongside me, a helmeted Casuni clutched the stump of his leg, the foot and calf torn away by a Slug Heavy.

  Even as he fell, Rosy carried me past him.

  I tapped my M-40’s magazine to be sure it was seated in the well, thumbed off the safety, and stared one last time at the vacant tree line.