Cutting straight south through the forest where the muddy road made a wide bend, Frey and her team raced ahead and were just sliding into position when the truck approached. It was driving at reckless speed, bouncing from ruts to potholes, sliding and skidding in the mud. The unpredictable motion of the vehicle would have made getting an accurate shot difficult, except Grudzien had used a cutting torch and the power of his mech suit to fell a tree across the road. The tree was less than half a meter in diameter, they had needed to avoid it looking like an obvious roadblock, and the truck possibly could have shoved it aside or rolled over it. But that would have risked damaging the vehicle, so they hoped the driver would be sensible.
He was. The truck slid to a halt well back from the felled tree, the driver’s head poking out the right side of the bubble-shaped cab.
“Not yet,” Frey whispered. The cab’s windows were filthy, splattered with mud and fogged on the inside. Another figure was seated in the cab, she could not see more than an outline in the infrared image. “Hold fire.” From her team’s position, it was a bad angle for taking an accurate shot at the cab. “Come on, hoser,” she urged in a whisper. “Get out of the truck and move that tree.”
Her wish was granted. Some of her wish. From the right side of the cab emerged a Kristang male, in the local equivalent of jean overalls and a blue rain slicker. He jammed a bowl-shaped hat on his head, looked up unhappily at the rain, and shouted at the truck’s other occupant. When the other occupant did not move, he slapped the windshield and shook a fist.
“Oh, damn it,” Frey gasped.
“I have a shot,” Grudzien advised.
“Hold fire. Do not fire,” Frey ordered.
“Ma’am?” Grudzien was surprised.
“That other one is a female.”
The truck’s passenger was a female Kristang. Smaller in stature and build, she stepped out into the rain, cringing away from the male’s shaking fist. She wore a simple and much-patched robe, without a coat to keep away the rain. The female was shivering slightly, from fear of her mate, or the chill of the rainy day or both.
“We are letting the truck go?” Durand whispered from behind a fallen log. She, too, had a shot at both of the lizards.
Katie Frey debated, agonized. The Kristang were the enemy, but the warrior caste were the combatants. The two lizards getting soaked in the rain were civilians, and the female was not an enemy of anyone. They could let the truck pass, and follow it. That would slow their arrival at the hospital, and-
Her decision was made easy, when the enraged male slapped the female and she fell to the ground in a puddle. Frey pulled the trigger before she knew it, sending two rounds to splatter into the male. Both rounds hit center-mass and continued on through into the forest, their explosive tips disabled. “Whoa!” Frey stood up, slinging her rifle. “Hey!” She called to the shocked female as that being cowered in the muddy road.
“Ma’am?” Grudzien rose to his feet, covering the team leader. “What are you doing?”
“Being a decent human being, that’s what.” Frey explained. Holding up her hands, she walked toward the female, who was crawling backward crablike on her hands and backside. The robe she wore was now caked with mud. The female backed up until she bumped into the truck and couldn’t go farther. Frey toggled her external speakers on and confirmed the translator was set to the most common local dialect of Kristang language. “Hey, it’s all right,” she said, trusting the translator to make her sound properly lizard-like. Reaching into the truck’s cab, she pulled out a pile of warn blankets the male had wrapped around him while driving. “Here, take these.” Realizing that kindness to strangers was not a characteristic of the Kristang warrior caste, she flung the blankets at the pathetic figure and pointed back down the road, in the direction the truck had come from. “Go! Get out of here!”
“Ma’am,” Grudzien prompted. “She has seen us.”
“She sees three warriors in mech suits.”
“None of us are tall enough to be warrior caste lizards,” Durand cautioned.
“Look at her. She’s terrified. No way is she thinking about our height. If she tells anyone, they won’t believe a simple-minded female,” Frey explained. “Damn it, sometimes this job requires us to be callous, but not today.” Despite her words, she knew they were burning daylight and already behind schedule. Perhaps more gently than a true Kristang warrior would have, she kicked the cowering female and shouted at her. “GO!”
The kick might have been necessary, it spurred the lizard woman into action. Scrambling to her feet, she clutched at the blankets and ran, stumbling and slipping. Frey waited until she was back around the bend in the road before ordering the other two out from the surrounding forest, while she contemplated the ramshackle alien truck. While riding a truck was not part of the plan, and not essential, it would conserve vital mech suit power. If everything went according to plan, they would accomplish the mission with plenty of reserve power. Based on her experience, nothing ever went quite according to plan. “Grudzien, move that tree out of the way. Durand,” she nudged the dead lizard with a boot. “Toss this trash in the bushes, while I see if I can drive this thing.”
It looked like the vehicle was guided by simple hand controls, levers on a steering bar. The left side was the throttle with the brake on the right. Squeezing the throttle gently, the truck whined and lurched forward. “Get in.”
“Ma’am,” Grudzien peered in the cramped bubble cab. “There is only room in there for two of us.”
“Ah. Can you get in the back?”
Grudzien examined the bed of the truck, which was making a low, cooing noise. He went to the back and pulled the flap aside. “Oh, damn,” he groaned. “They were hauling the Kristang equivalent of chickens.” The bird-like animals began loudly squawking as they saw daylight coming into the darkened enclosure. “There must be two dozen of them, in wood crates.” Now that he had a better look, they were more the size of turkeys, and covered in rough fur rather than feathers.
“Well,” Frey called from the cab. “Toss them out to make room for yourself.”
He looked in dismay at the truck bed, which was covered in a slurry of white droppings several inches thick. Stepping up to balance precariously on the end, he knew he couldn’t ride without removing the animals.
“Grudzien?” Frey demanded. “What is the problem back there?”
“Oh, hell,” Grudzien looked at the stinky white muck covering his boots, and picked up a crate of squawking animals. “This really is a chickenshit outfit.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
While Smythe’s team was setting up at the seaside resort, Fabron was planning his own surprise party. Their stealthed dropship touched its skids down barely long enough for the Commandos to rush out the back ramp, then the Dragon dusted off, which was both a problem and a solution. The barren island where Fabron first stepped onto that planet was literally a desert, nothing but sand, flat expanses of crumbling shale and a few low-growing, hardy shrubs. The sand was the issue. Though the Dragon set down on a tilted slab of shale, its jets had scoured grit out of all the crevices, and blasted four distinctive patterns of jetwash into the soft sand beyond. Any pilot coming in to set down would be suspicious of the clean slab of rock, and would recognize the signs of jetwash. The other problem was the deep footprints that Fabron’s had team dug into the sand.
So, the Dragon loitered overhead while the ground team hid themselves, then the dropship roared over the island in the same direction as the prevailing winds. Once, twice, three times the Dragon flew over at thirty meters, until the footprints were buried, the jetwash erased, and every crevice and pocket of the shale was filled in with sand. “Scorpion Lead,” the pilot called to Fabron on the secure circuit, “concealment successful. We are going up to the balcony to watch the show.”
“Ah, you will be in the cheap seats,” Fabron replied. “Do not get a nosebleed, Dragon.”
We overheard the confirmation that Fabron’s team was
in position, and I told Skippy to do his thing. The second set of Storks was over the ocean to the west-northwest of Fabron, they would pass by north of him by about forty kilometers. Unless we gave them a very good reason to change course.
“Ok, Joe, the ‘Check Engine’ light of the lead Stork just lit up. Those pilots will be looking for a place to land, soon.”
“I hope so.”
“You hope so? Why would they not land immediately?”
“Listen, Skippy, not everyone pays attention to warning lights. My Uncle Edgar’s truck had a Check Engine light on for, like, forty thousand miles. He stuck a piece of black tape over the light, and only brought it in for service when he needed new tires.”
“Your Uncle Edgar is a true knucklehead.”
“Yeah, that’s what my father says. The other issue is, those pilots know what a piece of crap they are flying. They might think the sensor is the thing that’s busted, and it’s giving them a false warning.”
“Argh!” Skippy was frustrated. “Well, damn it, we have to hope there is a smart lizard flying that thing.”
Unfortunately, the two lizards flying that Stork were not smart. They did not even signal the other aircraft that they had a potential problem. “Ugh!” Skippy was exasperated. “Shouldn’t they even tell someone they might have an issue? Don’t any of these lizards follow procedure?”
“Maybe they are following procedure. The rules are Aviate, Navigate, then Communicate. Keep the thing in the air with the greasy side down, then watch where you are flying. Only after you’ve got that under control do you start worry about talking to the outside.”
“Greasy side? What?”
“The bottom. The bottom of the aircraft is where all the hydraulic fluids and lubricants and fuel drip out and make it greasy,” I explained. “That’s the side you want pointed toward the ground, you know?”
“Oh, got it. Hey, you actually did learn something from taking flying lessons. What are we going to do about these idiots? They are not turning toward the island. Damn it! Instead of an idiot light, they need a big fist that comes out of the console and pops them in the face with an alarm that blares ‘Hey stupid you have a problem’.”
“Like I said, warning lights are easy to ignore. Can you glitch their fuel flow, to get their attention?”
He did that.
It got their attention.
“Whoa!” Skippy chuckled. “That did it. They have declared an emergency and are diverting to the island.”
“Showtime,” I muttered to myself as I called up sensor feeds from the Commando team, and from the Dragon that was circling the island at twenty-five thousand meters. Commandant Fabron was also getting a feed from the Dragon, from the Skippytel network, and from each one of his team. To provide a grunt’s-eye view, the Commandos had scattered a half-dozen insect-sized cameras around the likely landing zone.
The plan we had thrown together was solid, with only a few potential wrinkles. The slab of shale that Fabron’s Dragon had used to set down was the most likely place for the pair of Storks to land, but it was not the only possible place to land. Most of the island was covered in sand that blew and drifted with the trade winds. No pilot would choose to set down in sand, the fine grit would obscure visibility during landing and takeoff, and the sand particles could actually get melted inside the hot engine turbines and stick to the fan blades. We were confident the Storks would set down on an area relatively free of sand, and there was only one part of the island large enough to accommodate two Storks.
The problem was, the northwest part of the island had a peninsula sticking out, with a rock ledge just wide enough for a Stork, if the pilots were careful where they placed their skids. My hope was the two aircraft would set down side by side, so the two crew could cooperate in repairs. Since having the Storks neatly parked side by side would wrap things up neatly for us, I feared the Universe would see this part of the operation as a grand opportunity to screw with Joe Bishop again.
And, of course, that is exactly what happened. What we did not know before was that the pilots of the two ships did not like each other, and that the officer in charge of the flight was in the Stork with the false Check Engine light. He did not want the knuckleheads in the other ship to blast his craft with sand while landing, so he directed the other pilots to land away from him.
“Crap. Fabron, we are going to Plan ‘B’ for Bravo, you copy?”
“I see it. Timing could be tricky.”
“You have boots on the ground, it is your call,” I assured him.
The first Stork came straight in, swinging around into the wind only at the last moment, and set down in the center of the rock slab. With that Stork occupying the middle of the exposed rock, there was no space for a second ship to land without setting one skid into the soft sand, and no pilot wanted to risk their aircraft tilting over. The second aircraft was then committed to landing on the peninsula, where the rock might or might not be stable enough to hold the weight of a fully-loaded Stork. To test whether the rock might crumble under their ship, the two pilots touched down gingerly, turbines blasting the rock with hot exhaust and whipping up the waves on either side of the narrow spit of land. Gradually, they reduced thrust until the engines were idling, only cutting power completely after a few minutes without the rock slab shifting gave them confidence.
From the cameras and the overhead view provided by the stealthy Dragon, I watched the side door of the first ship open, and the two pilots step out, donning sun goggles and shading their eyes with their four-fingered hands. They wasted no time in ducking under their ship and popping open access hatches, but they couldn’t get to the problem component until the turbine on that side cooled down. That was part of our plan, the reason I asked Skippy to glitch the fuel flow was that valve was difficult to access, and impossible to service when the turbine was hot. Making the lizards wait, gave us time to look for the perfect opportunity to strike.
After a minute, the pilots called a guard to help them set up a portable cooling fan, to bring the turbine temperature down faster. We heard the two guards protesting, before the lead pilot snapped at them to stop their nonsense and follow orders. With one guard being assigned to grunt work, the other guard stood in the open doorway to take advantage of the breeze, while he covered the humans in the cabin with his shotgun-like weapon.
That was the moment we had been waiting for, all four lizards were exposed. Except the three on the ground kept ducking around landing struts and walking under the Stork’s belly, and generally unintentionally obscuring the sightlines of the Commandos. The asshole in the doorway wasn’t standing still either, the sun on his back apparently was baking his skin, so he alternated between standing in the open door and ducking inside.
It was very frustrating.
What made it worse was that the lizards in the second Stork were staying inside the aircraft, where the auxiliary power unit was keeping the cabin nice and cool. That aircraft was flightworthy, or as ready to fly as any poorly-maintained old piece of junk flown by the Kristang could be. After the engines were shut down, the side door opened, and we hoped the lizards would step outside to get fresh air, or inspect the aircraft, or swim in the freakin’ ocean or just stare at the water. They didn’t do any of that. Instead, they forced their human passengers out into the hot tropical sun.
The first view we had of the kidnapped people was a man and a woman, staring out the doorway, blinking from the sunlight reflecting off the water. The ground-level camera angle was less than optimal, all I could see was brownish skin, dark wavy hair and a beard that was running to salt and pepper. The woman had her head wrapped in a sort of scarf, at a glance I guessed she was Asian, it was hard to tell and didn’t matter anyway. The man hesitated a moment, one hand on the woman’s shoulder, then he stumbled down to steps like he had been shoved from behind.
No, he had been kicked. We got a glimpse of a lizard boot hitting the back of the woman’s knee, her legs buckled and she fell awkwardly into the man�
�s arms, except he wasn’t able to hold onto her and they both fell hard onto the rock. Rolling to their knees, they both had blood running from cuts on their hands, and the man was bleeding from his forehead.
“Stay frosty,” I whispered over the Commando channel, though the words were intended for myself.
More people stumbled or tumbled out the door, adults at first and then children. They were all skinny and sunburned, and their clothing was dirty rags, patched together from previous items. One woman wore a shirt made from what looked like pants legs roughly sewn together with twine or maybe it was spun from some native plant.
Skippy interrupted my thoughts. “Joe, I’m listening to the crew of that Stork. They are throwing all the humans out because the smell in the cabin is awful. The crew intends to lock them outside, until they are ready to take off again.”
“There is no fresh water on that island,” I gritted my teeth. As I said that, children began to file out the doorway. The first was a girl about ten years old, she might have been older. It was hard to tell, because hunger could have stunted her growth. That girl didn’t fall out the door, she was kicked, and not gently. The boot must have struck her in the small of her back, she suddenly jerked forward and spilled out onto the rock, her fall only partly broken by an adult catching one arm.
For one brief moment, the girl unknowingly stared directly into a camera. Limp hair hung down over her face, obscuring one eye. The other eye stared, unblinking.
I know that stare.
In the Army, we call that the Thousand-Yard Stare. The phrase originated in World War Two, I think. People get it when they have seen so much horror, they are emotionally detached from life. It is a coping mechanism, dissociating from trauma.
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