A World of Hurt

by David Sherman

  Those residents of Ammon who lived close enough to the ocean and happened to look up at the right time were treated to a pyrotechnic display such as they'd never seen before--the descent of Confederation Navy Essays bringing Marines to planetfall. Those citizens had seen other shuttles make planetfall, via as many as three leisurely spiral orbits. But the Marines always made planetfall in combat assault mode--straight down at the highest possible speed. The Essays' heat shields glowed with heat so high it rivaled anything short of the sun, creating a lingering line of brilliant light down from the thermosphere to beyond the horizon. The line ended beyond the horizon because the Marines always made planetfall over the water, beyond the horizon from land.

  After their precipitous plunge from orbit, the Essays settled gently on the ocean surface and dropped their ramps. Three Dragons roared off each Essay, got in formation on line, and sped toward the distant shore.

  President Menno and Minister of the Interior Elbrus led the hastily assembled welcoming delegation of ministers, legislators, judges, city administrators, and other dignitaries who zeroed in on Sturgeon and the other Marines clad in dress reds when they debarked from their Dragons near a gaily colored pavilion that was erected for the occasion over a permanent reception stage. Every planetfall on Maugham's Station was an occasion for formal greeting and celebration because there were so few of them. But the arrival of Confederation Marines was a truly special occasion that called for an extra measure of pomp. The Olympia Symphony Orchestra, minus three violins, a cello, its tenor saxophone, and one Irish harp--those musicians couldn't reach the beach fast enough--struck up the Confederation anthem as soon as the lead Dragons stopped and dropped their ramps.

  Brigadier Sturgeon didn't show it, but he was not pleased at the unexpected open air reception--or any public reception for that matter. There was the potential of severe danger here. The Skinks had made it quite clear on Kingdom that they were willing to do anything, including the slaughter of civilians, to lure Marines to where they were, and they were adept at setting ambushes. If the Skinks were on Maugham's Station, they would be very happy to take advantage of a reception to wipe out the top Marine command, along with the planet's major leadership. But Sturgeon understood the way local authorities would react to the unannounced arrival of the Grandar Bay and his Marines, and that certain formalities would have to be observed. That was why he and some of his people wore their gaudiest uniforms.

  As soon as the main introductions were complete, Sturgeon said, "President Menno, I suggest we retire immediately to a more secure location."

  "But we can't go yet, General! There are many important people waiting to meet you," the President said, gesturing at the dignitaries standing in line. "And the people!" He swung his arm widely. "They all came here to see you and your splendid Marines. They'll be so disappointed if we don't continue the ceremony here! Your visit is such a surprise, we haven't had any time to arrange for you to meet everybody in a more leisurely and seemly fashion."

  "Mr. President, I apologize for our abrupt arrival, but we don't know what we're up against--"

  Menno blinked. "Yes, why are you here? This is so unexpected. We didn't request Confederation Marines, and nobody told us you were coming."

  "Those unexplained deaths in the interdicted areas, Mr. President, that's why we are here."

  Menno blinked. He had no idea why the accidental deaths of a few disobedient adventurers would interest the Marines, and he said so.

  "We don't know that we do have an interest here, but we do have an idea of what killed those people," Sturgeon replied. "If we're right, and I hope we aren't, these people," he indicated the gathered throngs, "could all wind up dead very soon if we don't cut off this open air reception now."

  "But General--"

  "Please, Mr. President." He took Menno by his elbow and firmly turned him toward the stairs on the back of the stage. Later, he'd correct the President about his rank.

  "But--" Menno shook his arm loose. "Let me at least make an announcement." He turned back to face the gathered dignitaries and citizens and spoke into the microphone. "Legislators, judges, other dignitaries, citizens! We are going to adjourn and continue the reception in Congress Hall. All of you, of course, are welcome to attend."

  A susurration of disappointment rushed through the crowd; Congress Hall wasn't large enough to accommodate more than a small portion of the people who had gathered to see the off-worlders. Some of the dignitaries in the reception line shouted objections, insisting they were too important to have to wait until they reached Congress Hall to meet the Marine commander.

  Sturgeon ignored the disappointment and indignant cries. "Mr. President." He took Menno's elbow once more.

  Menno brightened when he saw he was being led to a Dragon rather than his own presidential limousine; he suspected a ride in such a powerful beast would be thrilling.

  There was no help for it, Brigadier Sturgeon had to spend an hour being introduced to everyone who was anybody on Maugham's Station. Well, nearly everyone. If President Menno or Minister Elbrus noticed the absence of Casper Bilisi, Ammon's Deputy Director of Public Safety, and Olympia city's First Assistant Coroner Kara Kum, along with a few other key members of the two departments, neither gave any indication. Those worthies were absent from the reception because they were closeted with Commanders van Winkle and Daana.

  Brigadier Sturgeon may have had to spend his time being greeted by what seemed to be half the population of Olympia, but that didn't mean his intelligence chief and the infantry commander couldn't be on the job. That was why van Winkle and Daana had worn garrison utilities rather than their dress reds--they were able to slip away without undue notice.

  "Commander." Commander van Winkle, 34th FIST's infantry commander, nodded to Commander Daana, indicating that he should ask the first questions.

  "Thank you, sir." Even though they were the same rank, van Winkle was senior, both in time, in grade, and in having a command rather than being a staff officer. Daana looked at the two Ammonites. "Dr. Kum, would you begin by telling us about the bodies?"

  First Assistant Coroner Kum nodded. "Call me Kara, please," she replied, and without waiting for a response, handed each of them a hard copy flimsy of an autopsy report. Her office in Olympia Central Hospital was a small room, and the four of them were almost uncomfortably crowded. Shelves crammed with cases of data crystals and, surprisingly, hard copy books and journals, lined the walls. Bones and jars of unidentified but obvious bits of once-live organisms were scattered about.

  The report was brief and included only a few paragraphs of text and a few diagrams. "What it says--" Kum began, but van Winkle interrupted her.

  "That won't be necessary, Kara, we know enough medical terminology to follow it."

  The report said that the clothed skeleton of a man in his late twenties had been thoroughly cleansed of all flesh and other soft tissue, including all the skeletal marrow and dental pulp. Tentative identification was made through dental records. More positive identification was made by matching the molecular structure of the femur with that of a missing man, Samar Volga, who was known to have traveled alone to the Haltia region. Examination of the surface of the bones indicated the scouring of soft tissue had not been made by toothed animals, but by dissolution. The pitting that appeared on parts of the bones appeared to have been caused by acid--of a type not specified, nor was there any indication of testing to identify the acid. Each bone and tooth had been penetrated at least once by a floral tendril, which seemed to have absorbed the marrow and dental pulp. The calcium in the vicinity of the penetrations was missing, along with a few other trace elements, and the remaining structure was considerably weakened. The implication was that in a short time the entire skeleton would have been dissolved to dust.

  "This happened in a standard month?" van Winkle asked when he finished reading.

  Dr. Kum nodded. "Yes."

  Daana looked at the flimsy front and back. "There are no images," he said. "We'd
like to see how the remains looked, please."

  "Commander--"

  "Call me Shalom, please."

  "Yes, Shalom. Thank you." She cleared her throat. "The images are, well...they're unpleasant. Most people find them too disturbing to look at."

  "Doctor--Kara--my name, 'Shalom,' might translate to 'peace' in an ancient language, but I'm a Marine. I assure you, I have seen more disturbing sights than anything your images could show me."

  She looked at van Winkle, who said, "We can take it," then at Bilisi, who nodded. Dr. Kum morphed a console from her desktop and tapped a brief series of commands.

  A quarter-scale trid appeared off to the side; the office was too small to permit the four to walk around to examine the trid from all sides, so Kum rotated it. The image in the trid was of the patch of ground where Samar Volga's remains had been found. The bones and tatters of clothing were highlighted for easy viewing. A few of the tendrils that penetrated the cloth and anchored the skeleton to the ground were visible. The scene continued until the body bag closed over the remains.

  Van Winkle and Daana exchanged a glance. While neither said anything, both were surprised by the tendrils that anchored the remains. Neither had ever seen anything quite like that before, though between them they'd been on nearly half of the human occupied planets during their Marine careers.

  Dr. Kum touched another button and the trid was replaced with a view of a laboratory. "This is the autopsy room," she explained. The still-clad skeleton lay on an examination table.

  "Can you give us a close-up?" Daana asked.

  "What would you like to see?" she replied.

  "Focus on that large rent on the shoulder."

  She twiddled the controls of the trid and the image shifted until the shoulder was centered, then enlarged to life size. The Marines exchanged another wordless glance--the burn pattern around the edges of the rent was very similar to what they'd seen in the chameleons of Marines who were hit by the Skinks' acid guns before the Marines had received acid-proof uniforms during the Kingdom Campaign.

  "Continue, please," Daana said.

  They watched as two people clad in one-piece hazard suits cut off the garments. "That's me with the cutter," Kum said, identifying the person leading the autopsy. Daana wanted a close-up of where a tendril penetrated bone. Then the trid closely scanned the surfaces of the skeleton, showing clearly that it had been thoroughly cleaned of soft tissue. Shallow pitting was visible where the clothing had been eaten away. The trid went on to show the interior of bones, through cams inserted through holes in the bones, cross sections cut from them, and long bones sliced open. Close-ups showed the bones so thoroughly cleaned of marrow the insides looked as if they'd been scrubbed.

  "Have you ever seen its like before?" van Winkle asked at the end of the presentation.

  "Never," Dr. Kum replied soberly. "Not in nature. Even after a body has been eaten by carnivores and scavengers, there is some soft tissue left. And animals break bones open to get at the marrow. I've seen plants send shoots into bones, but only through breaks something else made in them."

  Deputy Director Bilisi agreed that he'd never seen anything similar.

  Except for the damage clearly caused by acid, neither had the Marines. But they didn't comment on that.

  Kum shook her head. "It appears--don't look back at the reports, I didn't include this in them--as if the soft tissues were devoured by plants." She looked perplexed. Carnivorous plants existed, but she'd never heard of any that consumed large animals so thoroughly. "We need to send an expedition out to investigate these plants," she said softly, as though to herself.

  "Were the other bodies the same?" Daana asked.

  "Almost exactly," Dr. Kum answered. "The only differences are consistent with the length of time between death and recovery."

  The Marines didn't look at each other, but they were thinking the same thing. When they went in, they'd have to be on the alert to hostile plants as well as Skinks--or other enemies. It wasn't a prospect either welcomed.

  "What about the places?" van Winkle asked. "Do we need to go to your office, Director?"

  Bilisi shook his head and withdrew a crystal from his shirt pocket. "I have everything here," he told them, then turned to Dr. Kum. "If I may, Kara."

  "Yes, do," she said, moving from behind her desk.

  Bilisi took her place and popped the crystal into a slot on the side of the console. He briefed them on its contents while he tapped the commands to bring up displays on a 2-D screen. "This crystal has maps of the areas where the bodies were found. Topological, geographic, microclimate, what we know of flora and fauna, geothermic. It's got vids and trids of the flora found near the remains in each of those areas, and the fauna found outside them."

  "Outside?" van Winkle asked. "What about the fauna inside them?"

  Bilisi shrugged. "We never saw any. They must have fled when we were on our way in." He shook his head. "The odd thing was, we didn't see any tracks either." He looked at the Marines as if he was asking them to explain why there didn't seem to be any animals in the interdicted areas where the bodies had been found.

  The Marines studied the topomaps with great interest for several minutes before asking for the geological maps. All three areas, ovals more than ten kilometers along the long axis, formed steep-sided, irregular bowls with walls of uneven height resembling huge volcanic calderas.

  "What causes that topography?" van Winkle finally asked. It vaguely resembled the basin-and-plain formation found in the southwestern quadrant of North America on Earth, except for the bowl-like valleys contained within them.

  "Nobody knows."

  Van Winkle looked at him.

  "There's never been a full geologic study."

  "Why not?" Van Winkle looked briefly at Dr. Kum. "I know why BEHIND never made much of a survey of Maugham's Station, but you don't seem to have done one either. That doesn't leave you well prepared for surprises." He left unsaid, Surprises like what happened to those people, but the question hung between them anyway.

  "We are developing our world methodically, Commander," Bilisi said coldly. "If those people had stayed out of the interdicted areas like they were supposed to, nothing would have happened to them." Clearly he wanted to cut off that line of discussion by shifting blame for whatever happened to the people who had died so horribly.

  Van Winkle reminded himself that it was their world, to do with as they wished so long as they weren't in violation of Confederation laws. Not exploring wasn't a violation, so if they didn't want to...

  They resumed studying the maps and images. The only questions the Marines asked now had to do with details of what they were looking at. Neither commented on it, but both were surprised at how little the planetary Deputy Director of Public Safety knew about his world outside the borders of Ammon.

  Van Winkle's comm signaled about the time they ran out of questions to ask. It was Lieutenant Quaticatl, Brigadier Sturgeon's aide. The reception was over, and the brigadier requested the pleasure of their company at their earliest convenience--which was the military way of politely saying "right now."

  When he told his hosts they had to leave, van Winkle added, "May we have a copy of that crystal?" He didn't care about the maps--the Grandar Bay's string-of-pearls could provide better maps--but the images of the ground and flora inside the "interdicted" areas could be valuable.

  "You can have this one, it's a copy," Bilisi said as he popped the crystal from the console and handed it over.

  The Marines thanked Bilisi and Kum for their assistance and took their leave.

  Commanders van Winkle and Daana found Staff Sergeants Wu and Cunningham, the FIST's recon and UAV squad leaders, with Brigadier Sturgeon, Commander Wolfe, and Captain West in the office suite President Menno offered to FIST to use as its operations center.

  "What did you find out?" Sturgeon asked as soon as the door closed behind them.

  While van Winkle began briefing their commander, Daana popped the data crysta
l into a console so the recon and UAV squad leaders could study the maps and life data during the briefing, then joined in with the infantry commander. It took them a lot less time to bring Sturgeon up to date than the two civilians had taken to impart the information.

  "Three areas," Brigadier Sturgeon mused when the briefing was completed, "three recon teams, three UAV teams." He looked at Daana and the two squad leaders. "Can you do it?" His eyes flicked at van Winkle; the infantry battalion also had a scout/sniper squad and UAV teams that had experience working with the FIST intelligence gatherers.

  "I've been thinking about exactly that, sir," Daana said. "Those areas are large. It will take days for one recon team and one UAV team to thoroughly investigate them. But if Skinks are present in any numbers, it won't take long to find them. And if they are there in numbers, the less intrusive we are, the better chance we have of finding them without being discovered ourselves."

  "I concur, sir," van Winkle said.

  "Good enough. Commander Daana, I want to see your plans inside two hours. Commander van Winkle, I want you to observe the development of the FIST intelligence plan and prepare a plan of your own based on it. Your immediate objectives will be to coordinate additional intelligence assets with FIST intelligence, prepare a ready force to rescue any recon team that gets into trouble, and prepare a ready force to strike at any target of opportunity disclosed by F2.

  "Commander Wolfe, your aircraft are grounded except in emergency situations. When they do fly, they are to remain below the altitude of the valley crests. I want your Raptors armed and prepared to launch Jerichos if needed.

  "Questions?"

  "Nossir!" the three said.

  As soon as Sturgeon and the others were gone, Daana grinned at Wu and Cunningham. They grinned back. Van Winkle and Wolfe recognized the feral expressions of men about to embark on a dangerous mission, men who intended it to be far more dangerous to those they were going up against. If the officers had looked into a mirror, they would have been surprised to see their faces bore the same grin.