Man-Eater

by Griffin Barber

  “What’s that?” Chalmers asked, working his way up through the gears as the way ahead became clear. They were still heading downhill toward where the valley debouched onto a wide floodplain crisscrossed with canals fed from a huge, shallow lake. The dry land between the waterways was the source of most of the local food production for the region. At least, that food which the nomads didn’t herd through the mountains they were leaving behind. The village itself was visible now: twenty to thirty low edifices, water mill crouching on one edge of the largest, all surrounded by fields of ochre-green crop lands.

  “You want fight, Warrant Officer?” the local repeated more loudly, emphasizing Chalmers’ official title.

  The locals were intensely rank conscious. It was almost as bad as the regular Army had been. Worse, even. Chalmers had no idea how to identify an indig’s status at a glance. Not yet, anyway. He supposed he’d have to learn soon enough.

  “I hope not.” He slowed his speech, careful with his diction. “Not a straight fight, anyway. Want to get there and catch them with their pants down.”

  The male indig spoke equally slowly and carefully, clearly wanting to be understood. “Respectfully, then, may I ask you to slow, Warrant Officer Chalmers?”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you go fast, like raiders, they open fire. If they see me and Kenla, they less likely to shoot first, question later.”

  “Less?” Jackson said, jumping on the word before Chalmers could.

  “Clarthu not friendly. Not all the time. We raid them from time to time. Nothing so bad to make them hate, but they not like a surprise.”

  Chalmers downshifted and let engine braking slow them. “I don’t want to give the people we’re looking for time to bail or hide their comms.”

  “Bail?” the indig war leader asked.

  “Run away,” Chalmers clarified. There were still some errors in translation, but the weird tech they’d been subjected to sure beat shit out of attending Defense Language Institute courses for months on end. Then again, DLI had been close enough to San Francisco to hit the clubs on weekends, so it had that going for it. Had. Very past tense. He hadn’t even thought to ask if either place still existed.

  The thought clawed at his sunny mood, disturbing his carefully cultivated cherub-like disposition. It made him question his level of comfort with the new world—worlds? universe?—that was his new reality.

  “You agree?” the male asked as the buggy slowed.

  “What?” Chalmers asked, memories of uncomfortable times slipping past his guard, carrying him off to revisit places and times he’d rather not have had to.

  * * *

  SPINDOG ROHAB (ROtational HABitat): MISSION DAY 019

  “Rather not have to, Major,” Chalmers said, carefully suppressing a flinch as Major Murphy snapped an angry stare his direction. He wasn’t sure why he felt the urge to shy away. Murphy wasn’t particularly imposing, and Chalmers knew that proper command authority to back Murphy’s orders was, at the very least, way the fuck out of reach. Like, light years out of reach.

  “What’s that, Chief?” The major’s tone was cool.

  Upon learning just how lucky he’d been waking up here and now, Chalmers had taken a sober look at his life and the shit show it had become. In light of the messes he’d made in his life, Chalmers decided to do better. To be better. So, despite a strong natural inclination to tell the major some bullshit about being eager to take on the mission, Chalmers instead stuck to the course he’d charted for himself.

  “With respect, Major, I’d rather not be dropped in the shit again. I mean, ‘hearts and minds?’ You’ve got operators for that. Hell, from what I hear, some of the men were around when the term was coined.”

  Murphy’s tone chilled from unpleasantly cool to icy. “Warrant Officer Chalmers, I’m fairly certain I didn’t ask what you’d rather. In fact, I’m certain I give not one fuck what you’d rather.” The major paused, whether for effect or to prevent giving vent to his temper, Chalmers couldn’t say.

  Despite knowing the man lacked the legal authority to do much at all to him, Chalmers swallowed the disrespectful response that threatened to spill from his lips. His goal of being better was not going to just happen. No one was going to just hand Chalmers the respect he’d always craved. More important in this moment, Chalmers realized he actually gave a shit what this guy—what all the men—thought of him. He didn’t like the mission, but Chalmers liked this man’s contempt even less. And he wasn’t sure what, exactly, he’d done to earn it.

  Unless.

  “Major, I apologize. I misspoke. W—”

  “Did you?” Murphy snapped.

  “My experience is almost exclusively CID,” Chalmers explained. “Criminal investigation is my area of expertise. I’ve got no experience getting people to come around to our si—”

  Murphy’s waved Chalmers’ protest down, his icy demeanor taking on the weight and majesty of a glacier as he leaned forward. “I don’t need you to win their hearts and minds, Warrant Chalmers. I need you to investigate; to identify and root out the equivalent of a local crime ring and locate hidden caches of off-planet tech. You do have a proven track record of rooting out such networks, of properly identifying and seizing their contraband. Your selection for this mission was precisely due to certain moral ambiguities with which you seem perfectly comfortable, given the…activities that led to your presence on the helo that was taking you out of Mogadishu.”

  Chalmers swallowed a protest, knowing it would be a lie. Desperately seeking to ingratiate himself—and not entirely sure why—he ventured, “I’d be careful, Major, about how much you reveal of people’s backgrounds.”

  Murphy’s wintry smile accompanied the confident regard of a man entirely indifferent to any leverage or bluster. “Is that a threat, mister?”

  “Fuck, no, Major! I just meant—Look, I wasn’t on my way home, but being transferred pending the results of their investigation. An already-completed investigation. Sending me out on orders was just a face-saving measure my CO and—” Murphy opened his mouth but Chalmers raised a hand, eyes pleading as he rushed on. “I know what I did. Here and now, I ain’t denying it. But the information of what I did would only be available after we were shot down. You being in possession of that information tells a suspicious person you might be a participant in the program that kidnapped us. If you have similar information on others of us, you’ll want to be careful about what and how you reveal it. I’m telling you, I’ve interviewed enough shitheads to know they’re always looking to lay the blame for getting caught at someone else’s feet. In this case—” he shook his head “—I know the rest of the soldiers aren’t likely to be shits like me. But even for a straight GI-fuckin’-Joe, getting stuck in this whole fucked up situation is gonna feel like they ‘got caught’…by something or someone. So, whatever you can do to keep people from automatically thinking you’re part of that ‘something or someone,’ the better.”

  Murphy’s right eye twitched, the only sign the major wasn’t carved of ice. Then again, it actually looked more like an involuntary tic.

  “I know you weren’t party to it,” Chalmers blurted, hands up in surrender. “I’m just saying, well, those ’Nam-era snakes did coin another term, something about, ‘fragging COs.’”

  Murphy blinked. Both eyes this time. Definitely not a tic. A moment passed. Another. The major’s sharp nod was more the calving of an iceberg than anything resembling an acknowledgement that Chalmers might have a point. Or that he’d managed to thaw Murphy’s disdain in the slightest.

  “Frankly, I don’t have any choice but to plug you in. If ever I discover you’ve jeopardized the mission—a mission intended to secure the survival of every single one of us—I will find a way to make certain you are put out of my misery. Besides, your ability to think around certain corners like that is just the turn of mind this particular mission requires, Chief. If you can stay on mission?”

  Chalmers, noticing the major had resume
d calling him by the honorific warrants were usually given, started breathing again. Not trusting his voice, he nodded mute understanding.

  “Mission-specific briefing materials and your training schedule will be available after lunch. Language training begins tonight. Sergeant Jackson—I presume you’ll want him—will join you once medically cleared. He’ll have to play catch up.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem for him. He’s a lot better at languages than me,” Chalmers said, fighting a wave of relief that Jackson would be on his side again.

  “Very good. Dismissed.”

  Chalmers stood, saluted, and left.

  It was only when he started reading the briefing that Chalmers realized the mission was to take place in only a couple weeks. Despite the short timeframe, Major Murphy had acted as if they could reach a useful level of language competency in that time.

  Instead of whining to command right then and there, Chalmers read the rest of the briefing materials and in due time discovered just how Murphy thought they’d be up to speed.

  Fucking unreal, the things the Doorknobs could do.

  * * *

  CLARTHU: MISSION DAY 052

  The unreal nature of what they were doing slapped Chalmers as they approached the village.

  It wasn’t just the two suns overhead, though what a mindfuck that was! No, it was the whiplash between the familiar and the fucking out-there that was hard for Chalmers to process.

  He’d come to this system on a fucking starship, spent a few weeks on a hab that was still decades ahead of the fevered imaginings of sci-fi writers of his own time, then boarded another spaceship (the SpinDogs had explained the difference between the two) to land on an alien world.

  Then, after puttering around a camp not unlike the one where he’d been based in the Mog, he’d driven through mountains in a dune buggy. Both the buggy and the mountains wouldn’t have been out of place in Baja California, though the flora and fauna were occasionally lobotomy-level reminders Chalmers wasn’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. Then, in the mountains, Chalmers and Jackson had met with a bunch of nomads that resembled nothing so much as an egalitarian version of Kipling’s Afghans.

  Now, this village: straight out of The Eagle Has Landed, less the lush green hillsides of England’s countryside and the uniformed military presence of that film. Then again, here the adults all carried weapons and the buildings were half-dug into the ground, but there was a water mill that reminded Chalmers of that film. Hell, if he tried hard enough, he could even reimagine the buggy as a jeep, and be whatshisname…the young US Army Captain who took down “zee Germans” and Michael Caine.

  It all led to mental whiplash akin to some strange, bloodless version of what the Nam-era guys had gone through coming home.

  “Just need a few years of catching up,” Chalmers mumbled under his breath.

  He dropped the buggy into first gear and slowed even further as they came into range of the big-bore weapons the indigs used. And there were armed men and women manning the earthen berm surrounding the village. Some had no doubt fled to the fields when they heard the buggy’s snarling approach.

  “What?” Jackson asked.

  “Nothing, man. Just a moment of weird.”

  Jackson grunted and turned to look at their guides. The male indig unbuckled and stood up in the seat.

  “The Kedlakis-Ur sends greetings and something,” he shouted through cupped hands. “Something of the Kedlakis-Ur wish to meet with the hetman.”

  One of the guards, a tall, wasp-waisted woman, waved them on.

  Chalmers kept the buggy at a walking pace as they crossed the last few yards to an opening in the berm. There was talk between some of the other villagers and the woman, but she mostly ignored it and waved them through the gap without any further discussion.

  Chalmers, mildly astonished that a brief statement was all the villagers required to give them access to the village, almost caused the buggy to stall.

  “You insisted on driving,” Jackson said. “Least you could do is keep us from looking stupid in front of these people.”

  Chalmers just drove on, his head on a swivel.

  A space Chalmers assumed was the equivalent of a village green lay just beyond the berm. A brief drive between low, adobe-brick buildings followed. They entered a small square with a well in the center and a larger building on the left.

  “Stop there,” the talkative guide said, pointing to the building opposite the large one.

  An older, richly dressed man stood at the entrance, a fruit of some kind surrendering its skin to a wicked-looking knife wielded in capable hands.

  Chalmers stopped the buggy and shut her down. The hot metal of the motor pinged as it cooled. Chalmers immediately felt the sweat, held in check by the wind of their passage, begin to run down his flanks.

  “This is the village something, Larn Clarthu, Warrant Officer,” their guide said, waving at the fruit-peeler.

  Jackson, far better at languages than his partner, handled the niceties of the introduction, providing the SpinDog countersign.

  Chalmers tried to act casual as he took stock of their surroundings. There were a couple of oldsters staring at them from around the well, but on the whole, the villagers seemed a lot less interested in their arrival than the nomads had been. There were some kids watching, sure, but they were chivvied back toward the fields and work abandoned in the excitement.

  “The somethings will come,” the hetman said, turning to enter what appeared to be his home.

  Chalmers swallowed fears they were being set up and nodded at their guides. “Stay here, please?”

  Both guides nodded, though there was something in the woman’s body language Chalmers didn’t like. His tolerance for things he didn’t like had been mightily adjusted by circumstances, so Chalmers ignored the feeling and followed Jackson.

  The half-underground lodge was cool after the growing midday heat, and carpets of some beautifully-dyed material softened sound and lent an air of civilization to what would otherwise be a spartan, cave-like dwelling.

  The village hetman was a hard-looking fifty-ish. Thinking about it, Chalmers couldn’t recall seeing an older indig, which fit the briefing. Namely, that those locals who didn’t collaborate with R’Bak’s elites lived neither well nor long. The SpinDogs had provided fairly good intel, but it wasn’t updated often enough to give more than deep background and a few points of contact for their area of operations. As Chalmers had reliably found reason after reason to doubt the accuracy of every intelligence briefing he’d ever been party to, he was always on the look-out for those moments when reality matched the brief. Of course, just because the SpinDogs had given the straight dope on the lay of the land didn’t mean they hadn’t spun the shit out of the details.

  The hetman likely wasn’t the collaborator they were looking for, since the village seemed too far from any real center of power for it to be worth the cost of buying him.

  Distance didn’t mean they were safe, though.

  “A lot like Mogadishu,” Chalmers muttered.

  Jackson shot him a look, but Chalmers waved him off.

  The hetman asked something too quickly for Chalmers to understand.

  “No, not yet,” Jackson’s answer was slow, and far easier to understand than the local’s.

  “Not yet what?” Chalmers asked.

  “Not here to overthrow the satrap,” Jackson clarified.

  Chalmers smiled at the hetman, nodding slowly. “Not yet, anyway. We want to catch”—he sought the word a moment—“spies.”

  “No spies here,” the hetman said. His tone was level, but his gaze hardened.

  “I’m sure everyone in this village is super happy with leadership,” Chalmers said, in English.

  “What does he say, Leader-Of-Ten?” the hetman asked.

  Jackson shrugged and lied easily. “He quotes a general.”

  The hetman’s suspicious gaze eased.

  Chalmers noted the reaction and stored it under useful conf
irmation of information the SpinDogs provided. Specifically, that the indigs were militant in a way that most of Earth circa 1990 AD had gladly forgotten.

  “Did anyone leave town as we came in?” Chalmers asked.

  “No one, War Technician,” the hetman said.

  Chalmers liked the man’s translation of Warrant Officer into the local lingo and decided not to correct him.

  “Did anyone ask to leave, Larn Clarthu?” Jackson asked, glancing at Chalmers.

  Smiling and nodding encouragement, Chalmers watched the villager, decided that, even more than before, he was glad Jackson was so much better with languages.

  Larn Clarthu didn’t answer directly, but picked up an ancient-looking rifle that had been hiding among the cushions at his knee and stood with a fast, fluid grace. Chalmers dimly recalled that, in R’Bak’s outback, place-names were often taken from the clan that held dominion over them, and a hetman’s title wasn’t hereditary but earned in battle.

  “Come,” he said, when he noticed the visitors had not followed suit.

  Jackson got up with similar ease and gave a hand to help Chalmers to his feet. As much as the body armor they’d been issued in the Mog made getting up and down a pain in the ass, Chalmers wasn’t about to give up the additional protection it offered.

  The hetman gestured with a scarred hand for the off-worlders to follow.

  “He look like Ked to you, too?” Jackson asked quietly, pointing with a stubbled chin at the retreating back of the hetman.

  “Who?” Chalmers blurted before realizing his partner meant the male half of their indig guides. He shrugged. “I guess so, yeah. But then they’re all bound to be cousins or some shit.”

  “No wonder you’re so cool with them. I forget how you rednecks are all related,” Jackson shot at him. The sergeant pushed his way through the heavy leather curtain covering the first dogleg of the entrance to the hetman’s home.

  Remembering his promise, Chalmers swallowed a shitty remark and followed past the tight corners. Initially he’d thought the construction was intended to restrict airflow and keep the interior cool, and it probably helped with that, but now Chalmers suspected the primary intent was as a choke point in the event of an attack.