A World of Hurt

by David Sherman

  They raced through the forest, disturbing its quiet. But no startled forest fauna was there to add their noise to the Marines' crashing progress--and there was no sound of any pursuit.

  Five hundred meters from where they'd been attacked, Sergeant Steffan checked all his sensors. They showed him nothing.

  "Stealth right." In response to Steffan's order, the Marines stopped running and turned perpendicular to the direction in which they'd been moving, maneuvering slowly, silently. "Down." They stopped and lowered themselves to defensive positions, senses alert, weapons ready. He studied his map; where they'd been attacked, where they'd entered the valley, where their point of egress was. Their you-are-here jittered a bit; the string-of-pearls didn't have an exact fix on their location. He swore silently--if the string-of-pearls didn't know exactly where they were, there was no telling what else it was missing.

  He quickly sketched a route on the map, toward the nearest saddle, added a couple of rally points, ordered, "HUDs up," and transmitted. His men clicked back that they'd received and saved the map.

  "Move out."

  They rose and headed out along their new route. On rear point, Zhon's eyes flicked toward the sound of movement near where they'd just stopped, but he saw nothing and there were no more sounds. He didn't mention it.

  After the patrol was returned to Olympia by the Dragon that picked them up three kilometers outside the valley, the debriefing was both exhaustive and exhausting. Commander Daana debriefed Sergeant Steffan. Corporal Sonj was queried by CWO Ripley, the intelligence platoon's senior analyst. Captain Tamara, the assistant F2, quizzed Lance Corporal Zhon. And Staff Sergeant Wu talked to Lance Corporal Makin. When they finished their individual debriefings, the four compared notes, then brought the four Marines in together.

  Daana ran the joint debriefing.

  "None of your sensors detected anything." It wasn't quite a question, despite its wording. All four had already said so, and the data records downloaded from their comps and the string-of-pearls all failed to show anything. "And none of you saw a Skink or anyone else shooting at you?" This time he looked to them for confirmation.

  "Nossir, I never saw one," Steffan said. The others voiced agreement.

  "You were fired on from multiple directions, and all your motion detectors picked up was the acid streams, not the shooters."

  "That's right, sir."

  Wu looked at Daana for permission, and when he nodded, asked Zhon, "You heard something move when you began your exfiltration run, but couldn't detect anything when you looked for it. Is that right?"

  "Yes."

  "And you didn't mention it to anyone. Why not?"

  Zhon shrugged, the shrug visible now that they'd changed out of their chameleons into garrison utilities. "We were on edge--I was on edge. I didn't want to start shooting at ghosts."

  "So you assumed what you heard was natural, or maybe imaginary? Even though you already knew whoever was in there could get close enough to ambush you in your laager without being detected?" Wu asked, obviously unhappy with Zhon's answer.

  "That's about it. But I kept a sharp watch--rotated through my shields so I wouldn't miss anything, turned my ears all the way up, set my motion detector on shake so I wouldn't have to look at its display. If there'd been another indication, I would have caught it and reported."

  Wu grunted, still not satisfied, but he let it go when he saw the look Steffan shot at Zhon. Yes, better to let the team leader deal with it so it wouldn't become a command problem.

  They asked a few more questions. Each of the patrol members' answers were the same as when they were debriefed individually, and each backed up what the others said. And there was nothing in the data dumps to contradict anything any of them claimed.

  CWO Ripley had a question for all of them. "Even though you didn't see them, you are convinced it was Skinks that attacked you?"

  Sonj, Zhon, and Makin said yes. Steffan hesitated before answering.

  "I'm not sure."

  Everybody looked at him, surprise on all their faces, except those of Daana and Ripley, who thought they already knew what Steffan was going to say.

  "Even though we couldn't see who we were shooting at, I know some of our shots had to be hits--a couple of times I saw an acid spray jerk away in mid-shot right after a plasma bolt was fired at it. There weren't any flares. Skinks always flare into vapor when they're hit by plasma bolts." He shook his head sharply. "Unless they've come up with something that keeps them from flaring when they're hit by plasma, even when they're wounded or killed." He paused to take a deep breath. "We weren't attacked by Skinks."

  "The Skinks are the only ones who use acid guns," Captain Tamara blurted.

  Steffan looked at him levelly. "Before Company L first encountered the Skinks on Society 437, we never heard of acid guns. Maybe they're more common in the galaxy than we think."

  Everybody stared at him. They all knew about the medieval birdlike sentients of Avionia, the paleolithic headless centauroids of Quagmire, and the Skinks. The Skinks were the only known starfaring sentience humanity had encountered--and the only automatically hostile one. None of them wanted to think about the implications of encountering yet another hostile, spacefaring sentience.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hoppers were out of the question. Thirty-fourth FIST had learned the hard way on Kingdom how deadly the Skinks could be to aircraft; not even the Confederation Army had air defense weapons as potent as the rail guns the Skinks had used against Kingdom's forces and then against the Marines. And air was the only way the Marines could get their Dragons into the valley they knew the Skinks were in. That, or burn tunnels right through the forests lining the mountainsides outside the valleys. But burning holes through the forests would tell the Skinks where to aim their rail guns.

  Well, they were Marines, not the army. They might travel between worlds on navy ships especially designed to carry them, and they might travel from a base to a battlefield in Dragons or hoppers, but Marines had always moved about battlefields on foot. The army, those lucky dogs, could move about battlefields in cushy armored vehicles, but the Marines always did it on foot. Hell, the army had more vehicles to move their soldiers around than the Marines had to fight their battles. An army unit the size of a FIST not only had enough vehicles to move all its troops at the same time, it had spares in case some of its vehicles broke! A FIST had barely enough vehicles, Dragons and hoppers combined, to transport its infantry battalion. And if it used them all to move its infantry, its composite squadron, artillery battery, and FIST headquarters company were on their own.

  But they could use the Dragons to get to the valley, and they could use their hoppers as well--so long as the hoppers stayed below the valley's walls. The maps the Grandar Bay had made were good enough for the transportation company and squadron staffs to draw approach routes that kept their Dragons and hoppers out of line-of-sight from the saddles on the valley sides.

  The FIST recon squad went first, along with the infantry battalion's scout-sniper section, which had been reorganized into two recon teams. They infiltrated the valley under cover of night. Company L, transported from Olympia to the west side of the valley by hoppers, slipped through before dawn. So did Mike Company, which reached the valley's south side by Dragon. Kilo Company stayed outside in reserve. Brigadier Sturgeon ordered all UAVs to be readied for use, but held them back; he didn't want to risk losing any more of his UAVs unless he needed them to save his Marines' lives.

  Lance Corporal Schultz rotated through his shields, checking the view from behind a tree on the top of the saddle with his infra, light gatherer, and magnifier. He cranked up his ears all the way for a moment, listening to the sounds of the forest in the valley. He turned off his ears and raised all shields except the chameleon one that kept his face as invisible as the rest of him. He neither saw nor heard anything, and not hearing anything other than the sounds of air moving through leaves and branches bothered him more than not seeing any sign of mobi
le life. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then murmured into the platoon circuit, "Ready."

  "Go," came Ensign Charlie Bass's reply.

  Schultz tossed the coiled rope down the near cliff on the inside of the saddle, tugged on it to make sure it was firmly anchored, then rappelled down to the valley floor. What he did then was up to him; he chose to sprint.

  Why me? Corporal Rock Claypoole wondered for the umpteenth time as he rappelled behind Schultz. Why did he have to have that madman in his fire team? Why couldn't Schultz have stayed with Corporal Kerr when the platoon was reorganized? Or gone to Corporal Dornhofer, or Corporal Pasquin? Both of them were a lot more experienced as fire team leaders than he was and could do a better job of controlling Schultz. For that matter, so was Corporal Chan. But no-o-o, Bass and Staff Sergeant Hyakowa had to give Schultz to him. Sergeant Linsman, his squad leader, even thought it was funny, giving the craziest Marine in the entire FIST to his most junior and least experienced fire team leader.

  And when Company L moved, that crazy Schultz always had to have the point. Which was why Claypoole was the second member of third platoon to enter the valley.

  Schultz hit the slope where the valley wall began to level out, and it looked to Claypoole as though he violated one or more laws of physics, the way he turned to his right and kept going without slowing when he let go of the rope. He went from near free-fall in one direction and just like that--bang--he was running on a ninety-degree tangent. Claypoole's feet almost slid out from under him when he tried the same maneuver. But he managed to keep his balance and kept going, skidding just a meter or so when he released the rope. From the broken thudding he heard behind him, Claypoole could tell that Lance Corporal MacIlargie had as much trouble making the turn on the slick ground cover as he had.

  Somehow, that failed to reassure him.

  Schultz stopped a hundred meters from the saddle and went down, given cover by a ripple in the ground so gentle it was barely noticeable in the night. Claypoole dropped three meters shy of him and aimed his blaster into the forest. He looked to his left and saw MacIlargie take his position three meters away. Good, his men were in position. He saw another form go down beyond MacIlargie, one of the men from Corporal Taylor's gun team. He knew that Sergeant Linsman was next after the gun team. Then Corporal Kerr's first fire team, with Corporal Chan's second fire team closest to the saddle. Using his infra, he saw the splotches of first squad running along the valley side in the other direction. He returned his attention to the forest so close to his front and waited.

  He didn't have to wait long. As soon as the platoon command group was off the cliff and in position between the two squads, Bass gave the order over the all-hands circuit, "Third herd, move out."

  As one, the thirty Marines of third platoon rose to their feet and rapidly advanced on line into the waiting trees.

  "Dress and hold," Bass ordered over the all-hands circuit when the platoon was fifty meters inside the trees.

  Each Marine checked to his left and right, making sure he was in line with the Marines to his sides, then went prone, blaster to shoulder, pointed deeper into the trees. One man in three used his infra, one in three his light gatherer. The squad leaders and most of the fire team leaders rotated between shields and included their magnifiers in the mix.

  Claypoole wasn't completely comfortable using his magnifier screen at night; it distorted distance too much, made things look closer than they were. He used it during the day with no problem, but during the day he used the magnifier to look more closely at something he saw with his bare eyes. The nighttime forest was eerie enough without distance distortion, so after a couple of cycles, he turned the magnifier off. In infra he saw a faint, ground-hugging glow peeking through the trees in the distance. Through the light gatherer he saw all details of the forestscape in a monochrome so monotonous it defied his ability to perceive depth.

  The loss of depth perception, however, was preferable to distance distortion, so he continued to use the light gatherer.

  Nothing moved in his vision except foliage lightly ruffled by minor air currents. He turned his ears all the way up. All he could hear was the minor rustling of the foliage moved by the occasional breeze and the muffled noises from his rear made by first platoon as it entered the valley and got into position to move up to third platoon's left flank. The near total silence was odd. Animals should be fleeing, making noise in their flight. Unless something else had frightened them away.

  But he couldn't see anything other than vegetation.

  Then he let out a silent sigh; he knew what was wrong. There was no buzzing of flying insectoids flitting or bumbling about, looking for skin to light on, flesh to pierce, blood to suck. He didn't recall hearing anything unusual about local insectoids in any of the briefings 34th FIST had on board the Grandar Bay or seeing anything about them in the reports he'd read.

  So where were the flying, buzzing, salt-licking, blood suckers? Their absence only added to the eeriness of the forest.

  "Third platoon, move out," Bass said on the all-hands circuit. "Maintain interval, maintain contact. Don't get too close to the Marines to your sides, don't get ahead of them or fall behind. And don't lose contact with them!"

  Three meters apart in the predawn dark of the forest. Most of the Marines had been in places where even with their vision-enhancing shields they couldn't see that far in a forest at night. Some of them had been in places where they couldn't see that far during the day. But the forest around them was thin enough to allow vision farther than three meters. When Claypoole looked left with his infra, he saw MacIlargie and the gunners beyond him. When he looked to his right, he didn't see anybody beyond Schultz--Schultz was on the extreme right of the company's line.

  Claypoole shuddered. There was only one Marine between him and whoever or whatever might be on his right flank. But if he could have only one Marine there, Schultz was the one he wanted--the big man seemed to have a supernatural sense for where danger lurked.

  And he reminded himself to look to his rear too. He remembered too well what happened to Mike Company in the Swamp of Perdition during 34th FIST's first operation on Kingdom. Mike Company's second platoon, bringing up the company rear, didn't pay enough attention to its own rear. When the Skinks rose from the water behind the platoon and opened fire with acid guns, most of second platoon's Marines were killed or wounded.

  Claypoole walked backward a few paces, watching his rear as he maintained his advance with the company line.

  "Watch your six," he said on the fire team circuit when he faced front again.

  "Roger," MacIlargie responded; he sounded as if he didn't need the reminder.

  Schultz made a small noise that might have been a soft grunt, the kind of response he made when someone else might say, "What, do you think, I'm too stupid to do something that basic?" Yeah, Schultz didn't need to be told to watch his rear. He was probably spending more time looking to his right and his rear than to his front.

  Something moved under Claypoole's foot and he hopped away from it, leveling his blaster toward whatever it was.

  All he saw was a vine, twisting as it slowly rebounded from being trod on.

  Twisting? The vine was slowly writhing. The longer he looked at it, the more it looked like a sluggish snake.

  He backed away from the freakish vine, then looked for Schultz and MacIlargie and quickly made up the couple of meters he needed to put himself back in his place between them.

  "What was that about?" MacIlargie softly asked over the fire team circuit.

  "Weird-ass vine, that's what."

  "How weird?"

  "It moved after I stepped on it."

  "I saw one," Schultz said. Schultz never wasted words but he sometimes didn't use enough to make what he had to say perfectly clear. But Claypoole was used to him and knew that he meant he'd seen a vine that moved, not that he'd seen a Skink--if he'd seen a Skink, he would have let his blaster do his talking.

  Claypoole shivered. He'
d stepped on a vine that moved more than a vine should move, and Schultz had seen a moving vine too. What else did this forest have to surprise them with? If he and Schultz had seen moving vines, other Marines must have seen them as well. And that was a surprise, because if he was correct, everyone had good enough fire discipline that nobody shot at a vine. He looked toward Schultz again before checking his route, then turned to walk backward a few paces.

  Claypoole had been wrong about Schultz spending more time watching his right flank and rear than watching his front--he was watching equally in all directions, including his left.

  There was something very wrong in this forest; Schultz felt danger from everywhere. The danger was diffuse, no more concentrated in one direction than in any other. He put a hand over his lower face and raised his screen far enough to get a good sniff of the air; the chameleoned glove on his hand kept the bottom of his face invisible from the front.

  He didn't know what the forest was supposed to smell like, so he couldn't tell if any of the scents that reached him were out of place--except for the faint smell that reached him from Claypoole's direction. There was fear in that smell. Schultz nodded internally. It was good that Claypoole was frightened--that meant he'd be extra alert. The scent wasn't strong; Claypoole wasn't so afraid that he'd do something stupid. Schultz couldn't have told how he knew how much fear-scent meant "too frightened"; he just did.

  There, off to his right rear, another of those vines moved when it wasn't stepped on. It didn't move much, nothing that seemed deliberate, more like it had been twisted and was unwinding. But even that was strange. What would have wound it in the first place?

  Schultz looked up and saw sunlight in the treetops, even though it was still night on the ground. The line was moving east; the light would reach the Marines shortly. Direct rays from the sun would probably even reach all the way to the ground in some of those strange open spots in the forest.