"Let's see how bad it is." Lan said.
There was no response. Hard eyed men, a Molog, and a woman were busy, watching the perimeter of their makeshift spaceport, for signs of movement, life, and most importantly, ambush. They were rather exposed here.
Captain Reed would've informed them if there had been any suspect thermal readings, and he had not, so Lan felt relatively secure.
Benefactor lay visible down the swath she had cut in the jungle when she crashed. Their spaceport was situated at the beginning of the swath. Not too far, but not too close to ruin any sign they would find on the ground around the ship.
They moved as a group down the swath. Slowly, in a circular formation. Those in the rear walked backwards. On the sides, sideways. In this manner could they react instantaneously to any threat, from any direction. Still they were highly exposed.
They were not the same group who had so recently been bantering and bickering among themselves like children. Here was life-and-death! This was the seriousness Lan had known he would get from these. It had not been on a whim that he had chosen these men.
Lan's feet found their way of their own accord, over the torn, rough and tangled roots of the trees which had been swept aside like so much flotsam on a storm tossed sea. His eyes roved the tree line around them. He moved with confidence and assurance, as if he had walked this stretch of ground a thousand times before. No one watching could have said otherwise.
The rest moved with varying degrees of competence, though they were all experts. Yet none could compare to the Molog. Gylastak was symmetry in motion. Lan looked like a bumbling incompetent beside the Molog. No human could match that grace. It simply was not possible.
"Go to ground." Lan told Gylastak.
"I go." Gylastak said, and bounded away to disappear into the foliage of the jungle. He ran with long, leaping strides they would've put a Gazelle to shame. Exploded into motion would be a better way to describe how he reacted. The forest swallowed him instantly, as if he had never been.
"Fucking bugs!" Nat Bergen said, loud enough for them all to hear.
"We get into a mix, you're going to be happy he's here!" Lan said sharply.
"There's nothing this planet can dish up I can't handle!"
"Commander Carter?" Captain Reed said.
"Yeah?"
"Registered a blaster discharge South-East of your position. About four and a half clicks."
"Acknowledged." Lan said.
"Orders?" Reed asked.
"Continue monitoring. Out."
"The natives have some new toys, sounds like." Briar said. Then he added to Nat; "Might be Bali can dish up more'n you expected."
"Run hide under that bug's skirts if you're scared." Nat sneered.
"The boy grows up in a roach infested slum," Briar said, "and now he can't stand bugs!"
Nat grew livid at the laughter that followed. It was true, he had grown up in a roach infested slum. Wherever men went, cockroaches followed. They were as much a scourge as mankind itself. Nat was sensitive about anything that had to do with his meager beginnings.
Nat turned to confront Briar, but Lan spun and leveled his blast rifle right on Bergen.
"I'm not going to put up with this." Lan said. "If you can't take it, don't dish it out. Only warning." Lan really meant it, and Bergen saw it in his eyes.
"We'll settle up afterward." Nat told Briar pleasantly.
"It's a date." Briar said.
Lan lifted his weapon and began moving again. Likely they would come together in the coming conflict and end up best friends. But it wasn't his problem and he did not give a shit. People had been killing each other all throughout his life, and it was nothing new. If they wanted to kill one another, they were welcome to it.
When they were finished here! Not before.
"Looks like something a Corps victory might produce." Lamar Johnson said, referring to the ship they were now finally approaching.
"I don't see the mountains of dead Infantry anywhere." Gris Holter said.
"Can't have a victory without a few thousand dead Troopers." Tad Blenkish joined in chuckling.
"Or a few hundred thousand." Tiny said.
"Quit hating." Mekel said. "The Corps is very efficient."
At this they all broke out in laughter.
"Depends on who you think they are trying to eliminate!" Lan said. He couldn't help himself.
"It's a dirty job . . . " Mekel began.
"But someone's gotta do it. Yeah yeah, I know." Lan said. "I don't really hate the Corps. I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. I made my bed, now I'll lay in it."
There were snickers from the men, but no more comments as they all now directed their attention to the monolithic ship before them.
Benefactor no longer even looked like a ship. A fairly decently sized office building which had been stepped on by a giant and was now partially accordion-ed and crumpled maybe, but not a spaceship. No, never that.
"How in the hell did it hold together this long?" Mario Lopez asked. He seemed genuinely awed.
"The Corps does not build . . . ” Mekel began again.
"Shut the fuck up!" Several said at once. Mekel subsided with a rue grin.
The exterior was blackened and melted. There were great jagged openings where the energies of the Satellite Defensive System had ripped away the heavy carbon armor and pierced the skin beneath. The collision with the planet is what had buckled her, tearing her skin like aluminum foil, and not the carbon nano-composite, the hardest, strongest substance known to man, of which it was really made.
"Don't guess she'll ever fly again boys." Briar said. No one paid him the slightest heed.
"It should have been smeared across ten clicks." Kelly said. "Wonder why not?"
"Divine intervention!" Becla said.
Lan could believe it. He said so. The fact was, Benefactor had acted out of character. Spacecraft were not aircraft. They did not make controlled crash landings. Either they could fly, or they could not, and in which case they fell like bricks.
"We won't find your sister standing here gawking!" Becla said.
"As God wills." Lan said, and led them into a great, gaping rip in the hull, and into the ship proper.
"Rebecca was stationed aboard this!" Mekel said once they were inside, in an interior corridor.
"Secret Service Security Tech." Lan admitted, and though it was top-secret, finished; "Special Detachment." The secret was out, after all.
"Sorry." Mekel said.
"Don't be. She was a big girl." He noticed he had unwittingly used the past tense. "Is a big girl." He corrected himself.
"Little crash like this would only make the Colonel mad, you ask me." Rebecca was known far and wide.
"She's probably already conquered half the planet, you ask me." Briar said. "We're just the cleanup crew."
"They don't call her Rebel for nothing." Dobrune said.
"They call her Reb." Kelly said. "You call her Rebel because she was the only girl you couldn't get your wick in."
"Girls like her eat you when they are finished with you." Dobrune said with a laugh. "I didn't try too hard."
"It is my sister you are talking about." Lan said, but he knew what they were trying to do . . . well, they were trying to cushion the blow that was about to come, is what they were trying to do.
"Let him talk. Reb'll set him straight." Nat said.
"Does everyone know her?" Becla asked, feeling like she was left out.
"Let's just say she's well-known." Tiny said.
"And just leave it at that." Briar said with a grin.
"Level by level." Lan said, and the bantering was over. Cuff lights were activated. They moved out, separating as they went. Tiny and Briar were still at his side when they found the first corpse. It had been a woman. They could tell by the uniform. Everything else had been devoured. All but her skull and the feet, which whatever had eaten her had not been able to get out of the nearly indestructible footwear, though
by the teeth marks, it had most certainly tried.
"Voracious." Briar said, for once sounding serious.
"How we gonna know if this was . . ?" Tiny said, faltering for a way to finish the question.
"Rebecca!" Lan said. "Genetic analyzer." He took the pen like device in question from an outside pocket of his pack and flashed it into one of the boots. A thin green light flickered and then vanished. Then Lan turned it around and repeated the same procedure, except onto the face of the communicator on his wrist, which would relay the reading to the computer's aboard Cavanaugh. Which would in turn analyze it. Which would tell him if this was all that remained of Rebecca.
Human life was so God damned fragile.
"Ensign Deanna Katawbwa." A computerized voice responded through his communicator. Lan sighed audibly. One down, but this procedure would have to be repeated many times. Benefactor had crewed sixty-two.
Lan did not want to think about how he would react if and when the little computer voice informed him that the body it had just analyzed had once been Rebecca. He pushed that thought from his mind. He would know soon enough, after all.
When a thorough search of Benefactor accounted for all who were supposed to be there, all but Rebecca and the Senator, Lan sighed even more audibly.
It was almost too much to believe, and it should not have happened, but it had. They had survived the crash! Some fucking how! He could not imagine.
"Exactly as I expected." Mekel said. "Reb's a duty oriented girl. Knew she'd pull her weight."
"Always wondered what the story was." Lamar said to Lan. "Now I know; your sister got all the good genes, and you got . . . "
"None!" Tiny said.
"She got something." Lan admitted, still hardly able to believe it, but he had to. The mood of the group had considerably lightened. Lan was breathing easier, as well. "Looks like we got a job to do, boys. Looks like we got a job to do, after all."
Chapter 36
Larita Accor was incredibly desirable, and Baldwin was immediately aroused. He almost allowed it to happen, maybe it was his exhaustion, but he could not. Gently he disengaged from her.
Despite what he thought there was between Rebecca and himself, which he felt reason enough in itself (even if it had not been tacitly spelled out) this was but a girl, and a girl who was following orders, not her heart.
Undoubtedly they mated earlier here, probably right after puberty, but on Sarvan the legal age of consent was sixteen, and Larita was still younger than that. She had the mental and physical maturity of an older woman, but that could not change her actual age nor entirely conceal her youthful innocence.
"I have a woman." Baldwin lied.
"She's not here." Larita said. "While I am."
"In my culture we call it cheating. We make a commitment and we honor it. It's a matter of trust and honesty." Baldwin said, then added; "For most of us anyway." Even that wasn't true, of course. Mainstream society was decadent and honesty a rare commodity. It was one of the reasons Prison Planets were such an absolute necessity; they would otherwise collapse under the weight of their own criminal element. The Prison Planet Colony World System was preferable to execution, because it furthered the Federation's ambitions; that of Universal expansion and the propagation of the species.
"A man may have as many women as he wishes!" Larita said hotly. "There are two or three women for every man. What you say would not be fair for the women who would end up with no man. I think you lie!"
Obviously this was not the way she envisioned her first encounter with a man, that he would not want her. Baldwin could only shake his head, he did not know how to respond without making the situation worse.
"Do you want a man? We have men of that type" Larita spat. "I'll arrange for it."
"No!" Baldwin said emphatically, suddenly feeling utterly exhausted. "I want nothing but to be left alone. To rest. That's all I want."
Larita looked from Baldwin to the closed front door. She looked like she wanted to bolt, but her fierce willpower held her rooted in place.
Baldwin guessed what it was. If she left now, so quickly, it would be known that something had gone wrong, that their union had not been consummated, and it would reflect on her, as her failure.
She would be humiliated, Baldwin realized. He couldn't judge her or these people by the morals of his own people. These people lived short, brutal lives, which they started earlier because they did not last as long. A girl became a mother at puberty because that is what nature dictated, because to wait longer meant to risk not reproducing at all.
"You're a beautiful woman." Baldwin said. "And a man would be honored to have you. Where I am from, we only have one woman, and we stay loyal to her. It's a matter of honor."
"Honor?"
"Yes, honor." Baldwin said. "You're desirable. My body responds to you, but the mind is what sets man above the rest of the animal kingdom. I must be honorable to the woman I love."
Had he just said he loved Rebecca? He had, hadn't he. Did he mean it? Could he mean it? He barely knew her.
"At least I think I love her." He admitted.
Larita had softened perceptibly, but she looked torn between conflicting emotions. "This was not how I imagined it would be. I've had so many offers that it never occurred to me that a man would not . . . "
"It's not that you are not desirable. . . "
"You don't have to explain. I understand." Larita said. "What's she like?"
Baldwin was immediately on edge. Did he dare tell her it was Rebecca? A woman who might even now be dead, or an avowed enemy of the Tarovan? Possibly she had killed Tarovan. What then? How would he react if they killed Rebecca? What excuse would he give Larita then?
"Much like you." Baldwin answered.
This pleased her immensely, and she brightened, like a beautiful flower opening its petals to the new day's dawn. Her chin held high, noticeably higher, she began bustling around, arranging the place. Her movements were lithe and full of grace, youthful vigor and vitality. Baldwin's resolve was sorely tested, at least physically. Her raw sexuality was like a magnet which pulled strongly at his iron heart.
Would he hate even Larita if they killed Rebecca? He honestly couldn't say. The prospect of Rebecca's loss was too horrible to contemplate, so he pushed it from his mind.
"Tell me about the Outside?" Larita asked shyly. All of a sudden she seemed a little girl, the young woman that she was, full of youthful curiosity and precocious innocence. Baldwin moved to a cushion bedecked sofa and relaxed among them before he answered;
"How much do you know about the alien wars?"
"What's that?" She asked, as she came and sat among the cushions next to him, but there was nothing sexual in it. She smelled of female musk, a mix of sweat and female odors that would have been noticeable immediately amongst polite, civilized company on Sarvan, but that did not now perceptibly offend him. He couldn't be smelling too sweet, himself. Her odor was not unpleasant. It was good in a way he would never have recognized before.
"Well let me tell you about them, then." Baldwin said. "You see, man is a savage beast. He thinks the Universe belongs to him and him alone. That's why we're here, man, trying to wipe out almost all of the rest of the sentient lifeforms."
"What is sentient?" Larita interrupted him.
"Sentient means intelligent. You know, as in able to talk, live in cities, make tools and weapons, and fly into space."
"What are these life forms?"
"Well, different kinds of animals, like man is an animal, except all the different kinds." Baldwin said.
"Animals? Animals that can talk?" Larita was stunned.
“Hundreds of thousands of individual races of aliens who can do so!” Baldwin explained. “And man is wiping out nearly all of them.”
Her shock was evident. And really, it was shocking. Man's cruelty was extremely shocking!
Chapter 37
Nago's village was pretty much what Rebecca had been expecting, but she had seen far worse o
n Calafga in her youth. Here there was at least an order, or direction, obviously present in these people's lives, that was not always so in these circumstances.
The people were brutal, barbaric and primordial, Rebecca saw as they entered the village and its citizenry ran to surround them, but they were not savages. They were merely normal humans living under less than ideal circumstances.
Certainly there would be much worse on Bali than these.
Rebecca had seen plenty of the other kind. Humanity at the very base of existence. Cannibalism. Anarchy. Human sacrificial rites. Depredations and degradations of every manner. These were far from that, though not what you would call civilized exactly, either.
The men who did not make it home were soon missed and mournful wailing rose from those women who had been left bereft. There were a lot of them, Rebecca noticed. Screaming and hysterics erupted when they found out that the perpetrator was right there among them.
The women pressed in upon Rebecca, clawing and pummeling her. Rebecca almost went down under their weight. Their faces were vengeful masks of hatred. Sharpened fingernails clawed her. Her entire world was suddenly clawed hands, fists, feet and rage twisted screaming faces.
Rebecca had the time to wonder if this was the end.
She felt no remorse. They had made the rules. She had but played the game they had begun, and overwhelmingly, they had lost.
Suddenly the men were among them. Clearing them away with vicious blows of fists and elbows. They did not fall back as quickly as Rebecca might have thought, they had to be beaten back, and more than a few were streaming blood before the area around Rebecca was entirely clear.
They seemed quite savage then.
Beaten back but not defeated, their hatred filled eyes bored into her, but Rebecca stared back unflinching. They were waiting to hear her fate.
She was more than a bit curious herself.
"I claim this slave." Nago said loudly. "Anyone who harms her answers to me. I captured her, it's my right to claim her."
Noise of protest arose around her, but they did not try to press forward again. Several were openly crying and children who now had no fathers were among them, looking lost, confused, and forlorn.
Duty, Honor or Death the Corps Sticks Page 21