"We're going to have every predator in the area down on us!" Baldwin said, looking around nervously into the dark, which was even darker now that much of the firelight was obscured by the smoke coming from the cook fire. Eerily dark.
"We can start some more fires. There's plenty of wood." She offered. She didn't look like it mattered to her one way or another. She eyed him coolly.
"What are we going to do with all this meat? Even cooked, it will go bad before we can eat even a fraction of it." Baldwin said to change the subject, because though he thought it a superb idea, he wasn't about to be shown up by a woman, even if she was a Class A Security Tech.
"We’re going to eat it."
"Oh! I could eat my half of that in a week. How long will it take you?"
"Tomorrow night." She said, matter-of-factly.
"You got a black hole in your stomach?"
"Watch if I don't!"
As it was all cooked, they took turns shaving the outermost, cooked layers, and gobbling them down, burning hot and greasy good, though strongly flavored. Baldwin mentioned this.
"It's a carnivore." Rebecca said. "It eats meat. This is actually quite good for a predator."
"Probably because it started out as a hamster, and just kept growing." Baldwin said, and they both laughed. A full stomach had a way of lightening the spirit.
Rebecca kept right on eating, giving him a meaningful look when he finally quit, entirely gorged, and he had not been putting it down half as fast as she had. He watched her continue with more than just a bit of unease. It was uncanny the way she just kept putting it in her mouth. Where was it all going, he wondered?
Hunger had been more of an adversary than had been any Warlord. Rebecca knew that she was genetically different than mainstream mankind, and in many ways. Her elongated, pottle stomach was but one facet of many. Enhancements necessitated by evolution. These enhancements had evolved over many generations of deprivation and struggle. Then as now, man had created those conditions.
Man was his own worst enemy, in many cases.
"I've eaten all I'll be able to." Baldwin said. "There's no point in denying it."
"A girl's gotta eat." Rebecca said.
"I see." Baldwin admitted. And he did see. She just kept right on eating.
When the remainder of the butchered out meat had been thoroughly cooked, they were both utterly exhausted. Baldwin climbed the tree. When he was settled on a sturdy branch, Rebecca tossed up the meat, and he found places to stash it, higher up in the branches.
With help, she got into the tree, and they found places to wedge themselves, and both fell immediately asleep.
No new predators dared approach. The fire and smoke was sufficient deterrent. The animals knew of men.
Chapter 16
With the dawn came a renewed search of the Outsider artifact. It was even larger than Nago had supposed. Much larger!
Nago now found himself in a cavernous chamber or room, if such a word could be used to describe it, which was literally strewn with the dead. There was blood everywhere. There was hardly a spot left that was not covered with it.
Nago had seen a good many things in his bloody life, many of them by his own hand or done at his beckoning, but this was something entirely different. Something very powerful had come here and torn these people apart, shredding them in wanton ferocity, and reveling in the blood afterward, throwing it about like Thanalberry wine at a wedding ceremony. It defied logic. At least his logic.
Yet there was nothing to indicate what had done it. Then he saw the tracks in the blood. Someone had walked through here before the thick layer of blood on the floor had entirely dried, breaking through the dried outer skin to where it had yet been damp underneath, and then tracking it out. The tracks went out through one of the rips in the walls.
"Jorg." Nago said, pointing it out.
"The murderer returns to the scene of the crime." Jorg said after only a moment. It was one of the possibilities Nago saw.
"It could be that he's a survivor." Nago offered.
"Different animal." Jorg said, and Nago saw what he meant. The tread pattern of this one differed from the tread patterns of those who had all been slain here, who all wore identical boots with identical tread patterns on their soles.
"One man alone? What kind of man could be capable of this?" Nago asked. There were murmurings of awe from the men waiting outside the chamber, where he had left them, so as not to contaminate the sign, before they were able to read what the marks had to tell them of what had happened here. Or what of it they could. The blood covered nearly everything.
"Demon's work." Said one who was out of sight. A group fear seemed to seize them upon the comment. An immediate, electric tension filled the chamber, as if they expected the air to split asunder and spill monsters into their midst!
"Ridiculous!" Nago snarled, letting scorn twist the word. "Are you then such cowards?"
There was no answer.
"He attacked while they were unarmed." Jorg said. "It is not difficult to comprehend. They had no chance."
"He may not have a attacked them at all." Nago said. "Whatever destroyed the ship may also have killed these people. The man may simply have been a survivor."
"What could've destroyed it?" Another asked.
"People of course." Nago said. "We war upon one another. Why should it be any different anywhere else. He dared not mention what his mother had told him about the wars with the aliens! His men would not understand, but the thought was there in his own mind. It could've been them. These aliens his mother had spoken of at such length.
The chamber was strewn with scraps of debris of all sizes and shapes. Littered with the scraps. Nago found a piece not covered with blood. It was about the size of his palm, and crumpled like a dry leaf. He bent to pick it up.
The very moment his fingers closed on the scrap, it sliced his finger to the bone. He dropped it with an exclamation of pain. It fell back to the floor with a clink as blood began to pour from his finger.
Now he saw the connection. How could he have missed it! A closer examination showed that the corpses were still carrying many of these pieces. He explained it to Jorg, and the men listening at the opening.
"These are pieces of the ship. There is no mystery here. Except how anyone survived at all." Nago said.
"And I want this survivor." Nago added. "Alive. He has much to tell us." Nago's sword led the way as he followed the tracks out through the wall.
The trail led around aimlessly until it vanished altogether, as the blood wore away from the bottom of the man's shoes.
"He was searching for other survivors. He was one of them." Nago said.
"He's an Outsider." Nago decided when, after a short search outside the wreck, they easily located the man's trail. "I think we can safely rule out Demons!" He said sarcastically. "No Demon leaves a trail like this!"
"A child wouldn't leave a trail like this." One of the men said. The trail was as obvious as the nose on his face.
"Twenty-five will come with me." Nago said. "The rest will gather everything movable from this ship and transport it back to the village."
"And I . . ?" Jorg asked.
"To come with me, of course."
“Huerta, Lian, Marte . . . ” Jorg immediately began calling names, the men who would come with them, while Nago studied the trail. Much could be learned by the trail a man left.
This one told of ineptitude and ignorance immediately, but more. The man was weak, the way he dragged his feet when he stepped. Fear. Many other things, but all of them suspect. He could not be judged as might the men of Bali, the depth the weight, the stride the height, because the man did not carry himself as they did, though following him would be easy enough. Nago could follow this one over windswept rock on the run.
"We must hurry," Nago told Jorg when Jorg finished picking the twenty-five, "before he succumbs to his own ignorance."
"Let's move." Jorg told the now eager men, who broke into a run as
they filed past, following the so obvious trail. His men loved a hunt, but Nago surmised that much of their eagerness was the result of wanting to put distance between themselves and this Outsider ship. The superstitions of a lifetime were not so easily shed, like clothing at the end of the day.
But Nago would give them their hunt, even if it wasn't likely to turn out to be much of one. Nago followed behind Jorg. They made less of a trail combined than the one they followed.
Despite the pressure he was holding on his cut finger by balling his fist, it still bled profusely. A blood trail would bring predators, but Nago doubted the little blood he left would be more of an attraction then the bloodbath they had left behind in the Outsider ship. In any case, predators could be dealt with.
The trail was so obvious Nago did not even notice the second trail until late morning, and then his mind nearly refused to accept its existence, so unexpected was it. A low whistle, an imitation of a local variety of bird species, halted the column, and Nago spun around to return to what he had seen.
On one knee, Nago examined the slight indentation in the forest floor. When Jorg joined him, Jorg had to move around and look at the sign from several angles before he spotted it himself.
Jorg's head snapped up and around when he realized the implications of the sign he was seeing, but there was nothing to be seen.
Nago was instinctively aware of his surroundings without the need of such obvious observations. The entire group was now on alert.
"Here."
"And here." Different men called as they found fresh traces of the woman. Her gender was clear. It was a woman who knew how to move without leaving a trail. Like a man. She moved like a man.
An Outsider?
"A woman as skilled as a man!" Jorg said. "Unless it be a boy."
"It's a woman." Nago said. "And quite a mystery!" No women of the Dunaj were trained thus. Their women were nearly slaves, for all intents and purposes. "This is an Outsider woman."
"They travel together. He has bid her hide her trail. He wishes no one to know of the woman." Jorg mused.
"No. She follows." Nago said. "She hunts him." There was no evidence upon the ground to corroborate this yet he was sure of his analysis. The ability to see these things was one of the reasons for his leadership. He couldn't say how he knew this, he just did.
"A warrior woman! Hunting a man!" Jorg said. His tone was now close to insolence, but Nago did not seem to notice. He was lost in his study of the sign on the ground.
"Yes. A warrior woman. An Outsider warrior woman." Nago said after a moment. He stood up. "Let's move."
Nago had gone too far this time. It was obvious to Jorg that Nago had really gone insane! A woman might give a feeble resistance when captured, but a warrior woman! A woman who was trained to fight! Rubbish! Now Jorg knew for sure that Nago had lost his mind completely.
As they moved out again, Jorg wondered if he could beat Nago. Just the thought sent a rush of adrenaline through his system. Though Nago was losing his mind, that did not mean his fighting ability would join it. And yet, Jorg could not put the thought aside. Jorg was expert himself, still as strong and quick as ever, and had killed many men in battle.
He did not think that the odds were so heavily against him. It was possible they were even in his favor!
Nago was behind him. Jorg felt his presence there like a dread weight. Funny that he had never felt that before!
Chapter 17
The ship was unlike anything any other of the sentient races employed, and though man was hell-bent on destroying every race that showed the slightest bit of resistance, that still left tens of thousands of surviving subservient races of every imaginable description, but none quite like the Molog.
The Molog were in class entirely of their own, a fact which allowed mankind to breathe just that little bit easier. If all were as the Molog, man would have long since been crushed in his incessant warring. The Molog were dangerous.
The ship approached the nearly stationary Maximus at a velocity that spoke of insanity or a complete lack of control. Or of an ability of its passengers to withstand tremendous inertia. Or of Internal Environmental Gravity Controls well beyond man's technological achievements.
This was not the case, however. The Molog ship's Internal Gravitational System was actually based on a human design. That system, incidentally, was the only system on board that ship which was of mechanical manufacture. Everything else was organic. Even the propulsion. Organic and highly effective.
The Molog ship looked like a spiny crustacean. A space crustacean, if such a thing existed. Like the crustacean which it resembled, any part of it could be cut away and the remainder would go on living, as long as its Molog crew weren't all cut away at the same time.
Like any organic body, its processors were all cellular in nature, and could perform any function any mechanical system, besides producing gravitational waves, could produce, and many functions that mechanical systems could not.
Molog controlled their ships by pheromone discharge, a system or process that might seem inadequate or slow or inept, but was not. It was quite exact and efficient.
Maximus had slowed for the rendezvous with the Molog ship. Though the Molog had traveled farther than any of the rest of the Team members Lan had requested, the Molog was the first to arrive.
Lan was sitting in what had basically become his observation lounge, gazing out the viewport, when the Molog ship ripped past on its way to the dock. It was moving so fast that if Lan had blinked he would certainly have missed its passage.
"Oh my God! The Molog!" Becla said with a shudder as the ship hurtled past. She was leaning against him as they sat together and Lan felt a shiver run through her upon this pronouncement. Goosebumps actually rose on her flesh.
"You know the Molog can smell fear!" Lan commented teasingly, though it was certainly true. They could. If you thought a bloodhound could track, set a Molog on the trail once!
"That's not a bit funny!"
"Well, hopefully he's eaten recently." Lan said. "Did you know that their saliva is acidic?"
"You're talking yourself right out of a Team member. I can tell you that much!" The look on her face said that she meant it. Lan did not believe her.
"You're bluffing." Lan said. "Little liar."
"I'm scared shitless of Molog and I'm not afraid to admit it. You're not helping matters. Just see where your teasing doesn't get you. Just keep at it!" She was actually mad, Lan noticed!
It was good though. It showed what she would do when confronted by her fears. She would lash out. To let your fears cower you meant death. Lan relented.
"Molog scare me too." Lan admitted. "And don't worry about his smelling your fear. They get the same reaction from all humans. They know our fear doesn't impede our ability to fight. In many cases it enhances it.
"And we are the dominant species." Lan added.
"Only because we outnumber them." Becla said.
"Trillions to one." Lan agreed. "They're a good friend, though. They aren't treacherous like humans. They don't think like that. They don't comprehend deceit. They have a social or hive mentality. For that reason they make the best of friends. When they give their word that is the last word. They don't take it back unless you give them a reason to take it back. I trust Gylastak with my life, and there are few who I can say that of."
"I hate you, Lan Carter."
"No you don't."
"Ask your Molog friend, whatever it's name is, when it gets here, if it isn't true!" Becla declared.
"His name," Lan said, "is Gylastak."
"His, hers, it's, whatever. Ask him to use his sense of smell and say whether I really do hate you or not, since he can smell so damn well!"
"Love-hate. Same thing." Lan smirked.
"There ain't any love right now!"
"It's your story. Tell it how you want." Lan said. But he wasn't going to ask Gylastak to smell her. Gylastak might just confirm it!
"Shouldn't you go meet you
r friend?" Becla asked. "They're not going to just give him free run of the ship to come and find you. Are they?" She seemed uncertain.
"I'd like to see them try to stop him." Lan joked. "Of course they'll give him free run of the ship. Molog are our allies. They've proven themselves a million times since they joined the Federation. I think I can say with all honesty that the Molog are the most trusted of any of our allies, despite their ferocious predatory natures."
"I find that hard to believe!"
"They've earned our trust." Lan protested.
"I don't want to be eaten by a Molog." Becla said. Lan wasn't sure now if she was joking or not. He hoped so, but she seemed quite serious. The Molog really did affect some people that way. They could be, well, disconcerting, to understate it. To understate it by a significant margin.
"If he gets hungry, offer him a leg or something." Lan said. "Maybe he'll be full after a leg, or two."
Becla snapped her head around and glared at Lan angrily. She did not appear amused!
"What?" He protested innocently.
She answered by getting up and leaving, without so much as a goodbye kiss. Lan felt a momentary twinge of guilt, but pushed it away with wry humor. The reality of a Molog was so extremely severe that the only way some humans could force themselves to be near them was through self-directed anger; anger at themselves for their own fear. There was actually a motive behind his teasing. Plus he found that he enjoyed antagonizing her. No doubt she would find a way to repay him, and he looked forward to it. That was the direction their relationship seemed to be turning.
Just then the ship's intercom announced, right from the thin air around him, startling him, Lan hated ship's com, imperatively;
"Lan Carter report to Docking Bay Twelve. Lan Carter report to . . .”
"Yeah-yeah." Carter said, and the message died away. The computer would repeat the message until it was acknowledged, he had found by trying to sleep through one, once. It was futile.
So the dumbasses were afraid to let Gylastak move unescorted through the ship. "Fucking idiots!" Lan swore as he arose.
The news that a Molog was aboard ship had already made the rounds of the ship, it seemed. Everyone seemed to be paralyzed by stupidity. Standing around in knots, whispering as if Gylastak could hear them all away from the dock if they spoke too loudly, or turning to stare at Lan as he passed, either in awe or hatred, as if Lan had invited the very Devil himself aboard the ship and they were all doomed! Well, a Molog could play the part, he supposed.
Duty, Honor or Death the Corps Sticks Page 11