Out of the Dark

by David Weber

  It made sense to Dvorak. Well, as much sense as anything could, at any rate. There was no way to tell at this point whether any sort of guerrilla resistance would ultimately be practical or simply suicidal, but without the wherewithal to do the resisting, the question would have been moot, anyway. So he’d agreed to let Mitchell store a couple of dozen M136 antiarmor launchers, a half-dozen M249 squad machine guns, a pair of heavier M240 medium machine guns, two cases of M16 rifles, and a sizable supply of ammunition in the cave.

  That was only a part of Mitchell’s initial haul, however, and once Dvorak and Wilson had vouched for him, he’d been able to establish cautious contact with several of Dennis Vardry’s friends and acquaintances among his fellow rangers and North Carolina law enforcement personnel. All of them had agreed to keep Mitchell’s deliveries “off the books” as far as their own superiors were concerned, and he’d been quietly delivering his original load—plus quite a few other weapons he’d managed to scrounge up—to them for storage and concealment.

  Dvorak and Wilson had agreed to help with deliveries in their area, which accounted for Sharon’s and Ronnie’s current unhappiness. Neither of them was going to argue, but that didn’t mean they liked it.

  “Either way,” Sharon said, “there’s no damn way either one of you is staying home this evening. Ronnie and I already know that much. But don’t either of you take any stupid chances, either!” She looked up at her much taller husband, blue eyes dark, and jabbed him in the chest—hard—with a rigid forefinger. “I’ll go ahead and take care of the toothbrushing and the bedtime prayers tonight, David Malachai Dvorak, but don’t you dare leave me to explain why Daddy won’t be coming home.”

  • • • • •

  The late afternoon was uncomfortably warm—hot, actually, for the North Carolina mountains—despite the approach of evening and the dense shadow of the tree cover which met almost solidly overhead. Probably because the trees providing that self-same shade meant there was no breeze, Dave Dvorak thought grumpily. He’d always had a tendency to sweat heavily, and he blotted irritably at the perspiration coating his forehead and stinging the corners of his eyes.

  At least the repellant was still keeping the gnats at bay . . . for now, anyway.

  At the moment, he, Wilson, and four others—one North Carolina state trooper, a Transylvania County sheriff’s deputy, and two local civilians—were spread out to cover a section of Diamond Creek Road, a half mile up from State Road 215, a mile or so northwest of Rosman, North Carolina. An ex–South Carolina National Guard deuce-and-a-half—more formally, an M35-A3 two-and-a-half-ton medium truck—was parked off the road under the overhanging trees, with its driver sitting on the bumper-mounted winch while he awaited the arrival of the half-dozen other men and three pickup trucks which were supposed to relieve him of his cargo.

  Dvorak’s own Dodge Ram was parked in Rosman, with Alec Wilson (and a twelve-gauge shotgun) making certain it stayed there. Rosman was one of the towns which had done a better job than most of maintaining public order, but it was still possible someone might find a relatively new, powerful, four-wheel drive long-bed pickup with the heavy towing package too attractive to pass up. Or, for that matter, might decide to siphon a little gas out of its tank. He and his brother-in-law had decided to park it in town anyway, on the basis that the exercise of a little hike would do them good . . . and that they didn’t want their wheels to go out from under them if anything happened to go wrong at this evening’s drop-off.

  Not that anything’s gone wrong with any of Sam’s other drops, he reminded himself now. On the other hand, it was pretty clear before the net went out from under us that the puppies had decided to step up their efforts here in the States. If they really are concentrating on putting us down for the count before they deal with the rest of the world, then it’s likely they’re going to be keeping a closer eye out for this sort of thing.

  He grimaced, then snorted silently in amusement as he thought about how much what he was doing at this very moment resembled what must have been going on in the hills and mountains of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan for so long. Except, of course, that the tech-advantage shoe was pretty firmly on the other foot, this time around, and pinching like hell! It wasn’t really funny, he guessed, but it was . . . ironic.

  Of course, there was always—

  His thoughts chopped off abruptly as he felt a strange grating, vibrating sensation. He’d never felt anything like it, and he couldn’t have come up with a good way to describe it to someone else, but he knew instantly what it had to be. Mitchell and some of Vardry’s contacts had tried to describe it to him, and he felt his belly muscles tighten convulsively as his head came up, eyes searching.

  Almost simultaneously, he saw Mitchell standing up and heard the rumble of heavy engines from the south. He looked across at Wilson quickly, and saw his brother-in-law lifting his binoculars. Wilson wasn’t looking in the direction of the road, though; he was looking up, instead, towards a break in the tree cover.

  From his own position, Dvorak couldn’t even see the sky. He darted another look down the road, but there was nothing in sight yet, so he drew a deep breath, gathered up his heavy rifle, rose into a crouch, and dashed across to Wilson’s position.

  He flopped down behind the rocky outcrop Wilson had selected for cover when they first arrived, sweating a lot harder than heat alone could have explained, just as the first alien vehicle came grumbling around the bend.

  It didn’t look like one of the armored personnel carriers Mitchell had described to them. Nobody knew exactly how well armored those APCs were, but they were clearly proof against most small arms fire, and according to the descriptions, all of them carried at least one turreted weapon. This, however, was one of the aliens’ unarmored cargo carriers, which actually looked pretty much like a standard canvas (well, fabric) covered stakebed human truck. They’d been seeing more of those lately, according to reports, which had suggested to Dvorak that this really was more a case of Cortés and Mexico than of Eisenhower and Normandy. He damned well wouldn’t have been using cargo trucks as troop transports instead of the aliens’ equivalent of Bradleys or Strykers if he’d had a choice!

  Unfortunately, even if this particular “truck” wasn’t armored, it did have some sort of machine gun on a ring mount on the roof of its cab. And there were a dozen Shongair infantry in the flat, open bed.

  It was the first time Dvorak had actually seen one of the aliens, and he was struck by how apt the nickname “puppies” really was. They were slender, built very much on the model of his own Merlin and Nimue, with deep but narrow chests, and it looked like they were toe-walkers, with odd, backward-bending knees. Their heads—what he could see of them under the oddly elongated helmets they were wearing—looked more like a coyote’s than a shepherd’s, though, with long muzzles and sharp, obviously carnivore teeth, and they had brushy, foxlike tails. They wore body armor, as well as the helmets, but from the reports he’d heard, their armor wasn’t as good as what was normally issued to the US military. (Or had been, when there’d been a US military, at least, he thought grimly.) The shape of their chests might account for some of that, though, since it forced the armor to assume a sort of flat-sided, prowlike configuration that didn’t look well suited to antiballistic considerations.

  There was a second, identical truck behind the first one, and he watched Mitchell turning to face both vehicles as the first truck’s infantry unloaded. The second truckload stayed where it was, and he sensed Wilson shaking his head beside him.

  “What?” he asked softly, and Wilson snorted.

  “Their field manuals must’ve been written by their version of George Armstrong Custer,” the ex-Marine (who’d clearly been feeling considerably less ex- over the last few weeks) growled under his breath. “Hell—Air Farce pussies’d know not to stand around scratching their asses like that!”

  Dvorak raised an eyebrow, then looked back down at the road. What looked like it was probably an officer or
a noncom was climbing down from the lead truck’s cab and walking towards Mitchell. The alien had a sidearm in what looked like the Shongair equivalent of a shoulder holster, but other than that he seemed unarmed. His troopers carried slender-barreled rifles of some sort. From here, it looked like they had simple iron sights, which struck him as a bit bizarre. Surely interstellar travelers should be able to at least match the optical and electronic sights humans had developed! On the other hand, he reminded himself, humans had been killing one another quite handily for centuries without fancy sights. Those weapons looked fully adequate to perform the same task, especially at this relatively short range.

  The good news, though, was that only the dismounted troops had their rifles ready for use. The ones still in the second truck were too busy craning their necks and gawking to unsling their own weapons. On the other hand, both machine gunners had swung their weapons to cover Mitchell and the deuce-and-a-half, so they presumably thought they had the situation thoroughly under control.

  Which probably is pretty stupid of them, he realized suddenly. They ought to be watching the woods—looking for nasty surprises like the rest of us—instead of concentrating all their attention on the one guy they’ve already located.

  His thought broke off abruptly as Wilson punched him in the shoulder.

  “Up there!” his brother-in-law hissed, and pointed.

  Dvorak followed the pointing finger and saw a peculiar, dark-bronze-colored object. It was roughly ovoid in shape, perhaps three feet in its longer axis and two feet in the shorter one, and the ugly, unpleasant “vibration” he was “hearing” clearly came from it. As he watched, it darted quickly to one side, then stopped and hovered, almost like a hummingbird or a dragonfly. It was trying to find a clear line of sight to the parked human truck, he realized, and it wasn’t having much luck. They hadn’t exactly picked that parking spot at random.

  “Think you can kill that damned thing?” Wilson asked softly, cutting his eyes at Dvorak’s rifle.

  Dvorak glanced at him, then back up at the hovering probe. It was holding rock steady, about two hundred and fifty yards from his present position. Normally, that would have been an easy shot. In fact, he wasn’t worried about whether or not he could hit it right now. The problem was that he didn’t know if he could destroy it.

  If that had been a human-built UAV up there, he wouldn’t have had any doubts. The semiautomatic rifle he’d brought along with him was a heavy damned thing—it weighed almost thirty pounds even unloaded—but that was because it was a Barrett .50 XM500. It had cost him several thousand dollars (as Sharon had rather acidly pointed out at the time). That wasn’t too surprising, given that each round of ammunition cost over five bucks . . . or that he’d paid better than two thousand for the sight equipped with the Barrett Optical Ranging System. He’d brought the weapon along in case really long-range fire was required . . . and also because the big .50-caliber slugs were ideal for disabling light vehicles. Light vehicles like the cargo trucks the Shongairi had arrived in. And, maybe—maybe!—“light vehicles” like the hovering, spying remote.

  “Of course I can hit the damned thing, you idiot,” he whispered out of the side of his mouth now, rolling into position and settling the bipod on one end of Wilson’s outcrop. He dialed the BORS’ adjustment turret to two hundred and fifty yards, wishing he dared to use his laser range finder to confirm his range estimate. He couldn’t be certain his guesstimate of the drone’s dimensions were accurate, either, which meant the Mil-Dot range finder built into the BORS wasn’t necessarily reliable, either.

  Close enough, he thought, nestling the rifle’s customized butt into his shoulder. The BORS had been monitoring temperature and barometric pressure ever since he switched it on, and it was already programmed for his ammunition’s ballistic performance. As the sight settled on the drone, it compensated for the angle to the target, as well. There was no crosswind at all, as far as he could tell looking at the motionless leaves, so even if he was off a bit on the range estimate it wasn’t going to be enough to make a lot of difference.

  “Hitting it’s the easy part,” he growled as he captured the sight picture and settled into complete stillness. “Your guess is as good as mine whether or not I can kill it, though!”

  “Well, I think we’re gonna have to find out,” Wilson replied grimly. He had his own weapon leveled across the other end of the downhill end of the same outcrop. “If I say shoot, kill the fucker. Then get onto those trucks. You worry about the gunners, then the drivers; the rest of us’ll worry about the grunts.”

  • • • • •

  Squad Commander Gunshail was in a foul mood as he approached the single human. He had a great many better things he could be doing with his time than wandering around these Dainthar-forsaken woods! And he was scarcely amused to find out that he’d been sent all the way up here on a wild-malkar hunt only to find a single human at the end of it.

  Still, he reminded himself, don’t get too carried away. There’s only one of it, but that is one of the cargo vehicles their armed forces used. And you can’t see into its cargo bed.

  On the other hand, he had two light auto-cannon covering it at the moment, not to mention two twelves of infantry. Even if there was something in there that shouldn’t be, it wasn’t going to be surprising anyone. Besides, the human he could see wasn’t armed, and it was regarding him with what certainly looked like proper submissiveness.

  Assuming that anything they’ve briefed us on for this entire misbegotten planet is accurate, at any rate, he thought grumpily, and brought his personal computer’s translating software online.

  • • • • •

  Sam Mitchell watched the alien carefully, wondering how the hell he was going to get out of this one.

  The doglike creature paused a few yards from him, and he heard a curious, sibilant snarling sound. Then—

  “What are you doing out here, human?” a mechanical voice asked from a small device on the alien’s belt.

  “Waiting for a friend,” Mitchell replied after a moment, speaking slowly and carefully.

  “Indeed?” It was impossible to read any emphasis or emotion from the translator’s artificial voice, and Mitchell had no idea how to interpret Shongair body language, but he wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if the question had been sarcastic. “And why would you be waiting for a friend up here in the forest, human?”

  “Because we’re going hunting,” Mitchell said. “Food’s been short since you . . . people arrived. We’re hoping to get a couple of deer to feed our families.”

  • • • • •

  Ah! for the first time on this accursed planet, I’m dealing with something I understand for a change, Gunshail thought. Indeed, he felt something almost like a surge of sympathy, possibly even companionship, for the repulsively hairless alien in front of him.

  At least the creatures giving us so much grief aren’t weed-eaters, he told himself. That’s something, I suppose. Of course, the fact that this one says he’s out here to hunt doesn’t mean he really is.

  • • • • •

  “Your vehicle appears somewhat large for only two hunters,” the mechanical voice observed.

  “Rob doesn’t have a truck, only a car—a passenger vehicle without much cargo space, I mean,” Mitchell replied. He shrugged, deliberately overdoing the gesture in hopes the alien would recognize its meaning. “I admit this is a lot of truck to haul around just a couple of deer, but it’s what I could get my hands on. All that was available to me, I mean.”

  • • • • •

  That was possible, Gunshail reflected. He wasn’t exactly certain what a “deer” was, so he had no measuring stick for how large a vehicle would be required to transport the carcasses of two or three of them. And the Shongairi had already observed that these creatures appeared to have a bewildering variety of vehicles. Indeed, here in this “United States” it sometimes seemed they had more vehicles than humans! And they’d already encountered several instan
ces of individual humans or local authorities using ex-military equipment. Still. . . .

  • • • • •

  “I shall have to check the vehicle,” the mechanical voice said. “Do not do anything to alarm my warriors.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Mitchell said with every ounce of sincerity he could summon.

  • • • • •

  Gunshail looked over at his dismounted troops, then flicked his ears in the direction of the human’s vehicle. His troopers had heard his side of the conversation in their own language, so they already knew what he wanted, and Section Commander Brasik lowered his own ears in response to the unspoken order.

  Gunshail knew Brasik was one of those who had come to deeply and sincerely hate all humans for their bloody-minded perversity and lack of civilized morals. For that matter, Gunshail wasn’t all that fond of them himself. Unlike the section commander, however, who would have vastly preferred to simply shoot every human he encountered and let Dainthar and Cainharn sort out who (if anyone) got its soul, Gunshail understood that sooner or later they were going to have to start interacting with these creatures without simply killing them out of hand. That was, after all, the reason for conquering them in the first place.

  His superiors had made that very point rather firmly to him after that unfortunate business with the human female and its offspring. He still thought his battalion commander had been a bit unreasonable about the whole thing. How was Gunshail supposed to know it had half a twelve of cubs in its backseat? Or that it was unarmed? It hadn’t stopped when he’d waved its vehicle to a halt. Instead, it had actually accelerated, so of course his squad had opened fire on it! Anyone would have. In fact, he still wasn’t so sure his superiors’ argument that it had simply panicked and tried to flee to protect its young was accurate. Not that any of them had survived in the end anyway, of course.