David Sherman & Dan Cragg - [Starfist 14]

by Double Jeopardy (lit)

  After that successful raid, Bright Sun and Deep Pool were joined to release the rest of the Brilliant Coalition. Thanks to his success, the Clan Mothers and Clan Fathers agreed that Mercury should have command of all of the fighters of both clans, even though high command was reserved for the senior Clan Father of the coalition. The Clan Mothers said, and the Clan Fathers agreed, that neither of the released Clan Fathers was in good enough condition following their release to go afield on fighting missions. They agreed that Mercury had been so successful as leader of the raiding parties so far that he should continue in command.

  The subsequent missions had been successful, and all of Deep Pool Clan was released, as were some of the burrows from other clans. But the successes didn’t continue.

  These latest reports from the scouts and raiding parties told why.

  The Naked Ones had reinforced their garrisons with more fighters and given them stronger weapons and other devices that enabled them to fight more effectively during the dark hours, which were the times the raiding parties were most likely to attack. Three raiding parties had recently been beaten off with heavy casualties, and no released people to show for their losses. Several of the scouts had told of new Naked Ones, who went to the places of imprisonment and released the People, even if they had to fight and kill the Naked Ones guards and overseers to do so. These new Naked Ones had horrible weapons that used fire to wound and kill.

  Mercury didn’t know what to make of the new Naked Ones. He also wasn’t sure he could believe everything in the scouts’ reports. So he sent out more scouts, to the places where the new Naked Ones had released people. He wanted the scouts to bring people back, if possible a Mother or a Father, to meet with the Clan Mothers and Clan Fathers, to tell them about the new Naked Ones.

  As an afterthought, he added that they should attempt to capture one of the new Naked Ones, or one of their weapons. But only if they could do so without being discovered by the Naked Ones. It was far more important that they bring the released people back, and do so without the Naked Ones, the old or the new, being able to follow them to Rock Haven, the burrow that held the Clan Mothers and Clan Fathers as well as his command post.

  Henny, of the Deep Pool Clan, was one of the scouts. He led a team of four. The other three were also Deep Pool Clan: Crooked Tail, Red Butt, and Big Nose. Not their true names, or even the names they called one another, but what the Naked Ones had called them when they worked in the mines.

  Henny and his teammates were scouts; they weren’t supposed to get into fights, but rather to avoid contact with the Naked Ones. So they were armed only with hand weapons: knives and throwing stones. They had not even a bow among them, although Henny carried a thrusting spear with thikshreep venom daubed on its point. They set out for the place where the scouts had most recently reported seeing People be released by the new Naked Ones. The hard part, then, would be convincing a Mother or a Father to return to Rock Haven burrow with him and his team. If not, he could bring back anybody who was willing to come along, so long as that person had seen the new Naked Ones release the People from the old Naked Ones.

  The journey wouldn’t be long, only three days’ lope. They would rest during the hottest part of the day, and do much of their traveling at night. Their greatest danger would be from the granalchits that could kill a person with one swift bite and swallow an adult whole. Or a sharp-taloned chirchitt, whose mighty wings were powerful enough for one to carry off an adult. They were the main reasons Henny carried a thíkshreep-tipped thrusting spear. One stab with it would throw a granalchit into convulsions so violent they would break its bones, and it would soon die, or send a chirchitt into screaming flight until its breast muscles froze and it crashed to its death.

  Not that Henny or his teammates thought there was any danger of running into a granalchit or a chirchitt. After all, they were in the highlands and staying out of unoccupied burrows. Granalchits mostly stayed on the lowlands, and they loved unoccupied burrows, leaving them mostly to travel from one to another. Chirchitts were smart enough that most of them recognized thrusting spears and almost never attacked a person who carried one, or anyone near a spear carrier.

  A bigger problem would be water. There were no rivers in the area Henny and his team were traversing and few springs and fewer streams. But as long as they could find succulent bulbs and the juicy crawlers that were common just under the surface, they would be fine. None of the area had been extensively foraged recently. Even where the farms had been allowed to go to seed, finding food would not be a problem.

  Henny and his team reached the area where there had been recent reports of people who had been released by the new Naked Ones. None of the People were to be seen, but Henny didn’t expect to just find them wandering about; they’d have either found and occupied a local burrow or wandered off in a probably fruitless search for their home burrow.

  Henny set his team to searching for a trail that would tell them where the people had gone. The four scampered about on their legs, sniffing for the freshest scents of strange people, looking down at the ground for footprints that weren’t trodden over. From time to time one would drop to all fours and snuffle at the trunk of a tree or the base of a bush, smelling for a territory marking. Now and again one of them would stop, stare at the ground, and drop down and scrabble at the soil, frequently digging up a subsurface crawler and popping it into his mouth. Food was where food was found; this much food meant people hadn’t foraged here in a long time, little food meant they had.

  The four began near the center of the area where the scouts had seen the hundreds of lost, released people, it took time to work their way to the outer edges. Red Butt was still many lengths from the edge of the milling area when he suddenly dropped to all fours and took off in an arrow line. He passed the edge and kept going for as many more lengths beyond, then stood erect, looking in the direction he’d run. He looked around for a climbing tree and saw one nearby. After finding a landmark to make sure he’d be looking in the right direction when he climbed the tree, he scampered to it and hunched himself up it as high as he thought it would hold his weight. Four body lengths. That was enough to allow him to see much farther. He looked and peered, shading his eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding on to the tree.

  There! In the distance he saw three people foraging, far enough away that he wouldn’t have been able to see them from ground level. He looked more, farther and closer than the trio, in an arc side to side from them, but didn’t see other people foraging. He looked into the few trees near them, and the tops of rock piles, but couldn’t detect a watcher. Were the three out on their own, somehow lost and by themselves? Had they gotten separated from a larger foraging group? Were they scouts from another army that Red Butt didn’t know about? No, he didn’t see any weapons; they couldn’t be scouts.

  Red Butt turned head down and jumped from the tree, dashing on all fours to where Henny had just noticed him.

  “What?” Henny demanded. “Did you find them?”

  “I don’t know.” Red Butt told Henny what he’d seen, and the things he thought about the three foragers. While he chittered, Crooked Tail and Big Nose noticed the excited talking and scampered to join them, to hear what Red Butt had to tell Henny.

  “Show me,” Henny said when Red Butt was finished.

  Red Butt dropped to all fours and raced back to the tree from which he’d seen the trio of foragers. The others sped behind him. At the tree, Red Butt pointed out a landmark before Henny climbed the tree and looked for himself. He did as much looking fore and aft, side to side, into trees and high rocks as Red Butt had, and saw no one but the three strangers. He dropped back to the ground.

  Henny was a scout team leader because he was experienced and he was smart. A scout team leader had to be both if his scouting missions were to be successful. He had to be able to find what he was looking for, without anybody finding him or his team. He had to watch out for enemy patrols, granalchits, and the other hazards that beset singl
etons or small groups, and be prepared to deal with whatever dangers his team encountered. When he looked at the three foragers, he’d had all the questions Red Butt had about them. He also wondered if they were a decoy, planted by Naked Ones to lure in more people to be captured and put to work in the unnatural places. They could even be decoys from a clan guarding its borders, set to lure in unsuspecting scouts, or other people from unfriendly clans.

  While he was thinking about how to approach the three, he had Crooked Tail and Big Nose climb the tree to see where they were going. When all had seen the foragers, he told them what they were going to do—and how they would avoid walking into a trap, if a trap had been set.

  They split into two pairs: Henny and Crooked Tail, and Red Butt and Big Nose. They split in different directions, angling to give the foragers a wide berth. At first they walked upright, then dropped to all fours for a time before lowering themselves to crawl, knees snug against the sides of their bellies, elbows sticking out wide, tails held low to the ground, necks bent so their snouts pointed straight ahead on the same level as their shoulders.

  Henny and Crooked Tail at last reached the rock outcropping Henny had picked for their way station. A jagged tower of igneous rock jutted out of the ground, higher than a person standing on the shoulders of another. It was a prime location for a sentry, but no sentry was posted there. Henny stood Crooked Tail on the side of the tower from which they’d come, positioned so he could look around its side at the foragers while showing as little as possible of his own silhouette. He then placed himself at the opposite side. Between them, they could see not only their quarry but a large area around them. And by turning his head, Henny could scan to his rear.

  Henny looked hard but could see no sign of Red Butt and Big Nose on the far side. He nodded to himself. Seeing no sign of the other scouts could mean that they weren’t in position yet, but he knew his scouts, and knew they were good enough that he shouldn’t be able to see them from this distance. He continued to look at the foragers, to peer at the surrounding landscape. He even made an occasional sweep of the sky, just in case a chirchitt was lofting on the currents and updrafts.

  He was looking at the foragers when one of them, near a clump of bushes, violently hopped up and back, flipping over in mid-arc. The movement that followed the jumper was almost too fast for him to see—a granalchW!

  Henny shrilled out a warning chitter and burst on all fours from his hiding place, racing as fast as he’d ever run toward the person who had barely managed to jump out of the way of the striking predator. His alarm scream caught everybody’s attention, and the foragers, except for the one whose attention was fixed on the sinuous predator, looked at him—even Red Butt and Big Nose stood from their hiding places.

  Big Nose was the first of Henny’s scouts to spot the granalchit their leader was racing toward. He let out a piercing alarm and sprinted on all fours toward the person, who was now standing as though mesmerized by the giant worm. Red Butt instantly followed. Crooked Tail finally saw the predator as well, and began chasing his leader. The two foragers saw the beast and chittered in terror, though neither of them dared approach it.

  The granalchit ignored the shrill chittering around it, and the thudding vibrations of pounding feet it felt through the ground—its meal was just standing there, trembling, ready to be taken and swallowed. It gathered itself for another strike, one that wouldn’t miss. It didn’t notice until far too late that one chittering voice and the thudding feet that went with it was upon it, and that voice was letting out a killing shriek.

  Henny reached the granalchit’s tail, and plunged his thikshreep-tipped thrusting spear into its barrel-like body. He hopped out of the way of the thrashing tail and bounded to a safe distance to watch the beast’s dying convulsions.

  Red Butt reached the still-frozen person and pulled her out of the way to safety.

  The granalchit coiled and uncoiled at dizzying speed and threw itself about. Its venom-dripping fangs slashed at the spear protruding from its tail. It twisted and turned and rolled and looked as if it were trying to tie its long, limbless body into knots. There was a crack! as loud as a rifle shot, and the granalchit flopped flat to the ground, its spine broken near where the spear still stuck out of it. Then, with its rear portion limply being tossed about, it resumed gyrating with the forward part of its body, the same violent twistings, dizzying coilings and uncoilings as before, until another gunshot-loud crack announced the snapping of its neck.

  The dying beast struggled vainly, its mouth gaping and snapping shut, burying the tips of its fangs in the ground. Its body merely twitched; the beast couldn’t move a muscle beyond a hand’s width behind its massive head.

  Henny stepped in and wrenched his thrusting spear from the beast’s body, being careful to not touch the shaft where it had been scored by the thing’s fangs. He stepped back and examined the spear point; he knew he’d have to replace the shaft. Satisfied that the point had been buried deeply enough in the granalchit’s body that it hadn’t been contaminated by the venom, he walked to the beast’s head, which now lay almost still, although venom still oozed from its fangs. Still not touching the shaft near the scoring, he raised the spear high and plunged it straight down, driving the point through the center of the granalchit’s head, away from the venom sacs, pinning it firmly to the ground.

  He chittered at his team and the three foragers and began cutting the beast’s pinned head from its body. The seven of them took hold of the body, dragged it away from the head, and rolled it out straight on its back. Henny and Red Butt started in the middle and used their knives to slice though the skin from there to the ends. Two of the foragers followed behind them, deftly peeling the skin from the underlying meat. All of them worked together to butcher the granalchit, discarding the portion near the original spear thrust, where venom might have gotten into the meat and contaminated it.

  At length, with the butchered meat wrapped in leaves, and the parts of the skin away from the contaminated section rolled up, the seven people, four Deep Pool scouts and three foragers, squatted in a circle facing one another.

  Henny identified himself and the members of his team. The three foragers were members of the Sunburst Clan of the Starwarmth Union: Gomez, Thing, and Tuesday—the one the granalchit had intended to eat. The Sunburst trio, grateful for the way Henny had saved one of their own, offered to take them in safe passage to the burrow their clan was living in and introduce them to their Mother and their Father, even though the Starwarmth Union and the Brilliant Coalition were long-sworn enemies. They understood that all of the People now had a common enemy.

  The following day, the scout team from the Deep Pool Clan headed for home. The Sunburst Father went with them. Red Butt stayed behind as hostage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The day after the Sharp Edge flotilla in orbit had been taken, Commodore Borland visited Brigadier Sturgeon in his command post. He brought some freshly ground Blue Mountain beans with him for Lieutenant Quaticatl to brew a pot of coffee. Master Chief Petty Officer Mbo Bolivar, the Grandar Bay’s Chief of Ship, accompanied him.

  “Make enough for you to have a cup, too,” Borland told Sturgeon’s aide.

  “Aye aye, sir, thank you, sir,” Quaticatl said with a grin. He wasn’t very fond of the inferior Marine-issue caff, either.

  Sergeant Major Parant joined the flag officers and the Chief of Ship in Sturgeon’s office. Sturgeon sat at the side of his desk, Borland and Parant sat at its front, and Bolivar sat behind them—there wasn’t room for the four of them to sit in a conversational circle. While they waited for the coffee, Sturgeon told Borland what he needed in additional supplies from the Grandar Bay. Parant and Bolivar made notes and exchanged a look that said they’d straighten matters out between themselves after their bosses finished screwing up needed items and quantities.

  After Quaticatl brought in the coffee and took his leave, Borland got down to the business that brought him back planetside.

  “I�
��ve got quite a few prisoners in orbit,” Borland said after taking a sip of coffee. “They’ve filled the brig to overflowing, and I’ve had to berth more than half of them in the troop compartments.” He shook his head thinking about how the Sharp Edge crews might be treating the troop spaces they were billeted in. “Mbo”—he gestured at his senior enlisted man—“agrees with me.”

  “That’s right, Ted,” Bolivar said. With only the four of them in the office, the most senior officers and enlisted in the task force, they were on first-name terms. “I want to airlock them, but Roger won’t let me.”

  “Mbo, we simply can’t dump excess prisoners into the vacuum. Aside from issues of inhumane treatment, we’d get court-martialed once word got out. Crimes against humanity, you know?”

  Bolivar shrugged as though a court-martial for such a minor offense was of no consequence and took a deep swig of the coffee. He made a face; the coffee was a bit weak for his taste, it wasn’t grow-hair-on-your-chest strong like proper navy coffee.

  “I don’t want them down here,” Sturgeon said.

  “I didn’t think so. I have another idea of what to do with them.”

  Sturgeon’s eyebrows raised slightly, and he nodded for Borland to continue.

  “Prime Minister Foxtable and his cabinet all claim they know nothing about what’s happening here. I don’t believe them any more than you do, Ted. And I want to check out those permits Cukayla gave us.”

  Sturgeon nodded. He took a sip of coffee to hide the smile that was beginning to crease his face behind his mug.

  “So I want to take the prisoners to Opal and rub the government’s faces in it.”

  “Roger, I think that’s a great idea.” He held out his mug in a toast. The four clinked mugs.