Hunting Party

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Got one,” he said, this time loud enough for Bubbles to hear; she assumed he was talking into his comunit. “By the tattoo, it’s one of the preeves.” The comunit crackled and muttered back to him. “Right,” he said. “I’ll bring the IDs. No sign of the others.” Bubbles heard the click as he shut the comunit cover, and then a grunt and thump as if he bent to set down his weapon and lean over the body.

  Then—“Got one too,” said the other man, in a harsh voice thick with pain. The hunter squealed, then gasped, and Bubbles heard the fall of another heavy body, the thrashing of limbs, the rattle and clatter of equipment banging on the rocks. The light went out. Then silence, but for a final few noisy gasps.

  For the first time in her life, Bubbles envied those of her friends who had a religion: they would have had some deity to swear to, or at, or on. “We can’t stay here,” she said quietly. Her voice surprised her; it sounded as calm as if she were in her mother’s drawing room discussing the weather.

  “He touched me,” Raffa said. Her voice, too, was quiet. “With a stick or something, when he prodded the briar.”

  “We have to go,” Bubbles said. “They’ll send someone.” Through the gap in the stones, the smell of blood and something worse rolled as if on a stream of water. Her stomach churned.

  “How can we? We can’t see anything. . . .”

  “We have to. It won’t be so dark out from under this briar. Turn around and let me get past.”

  “You’re not going that way?” The calm seeped out of Raffa’s voice, leaving honest fear behind.

  “I want his weapons,” Bubbles said. “And his comunit, and his night goggles.”

  “But then they’ll know someone came after,” Raffla said. Bubbles paused. She hadn’t thought of that. As it was, they might assume that what it looked like was indeed what happened—a victim not quite dead who killed his careless killer. If she took anything, they’d know someone else had been there. But it didn’t matter.

  “They know we’re here,” she said. “They’re going to hunt until they find us. His things will give us a better chance. You stay here—we’ll go downhill afterwards.”

  Out from under the briar, starlight gave a faint glow to the standing stones; in the distance, the sea glittered. Bubbles paused in the gap between the stones, listening. She could hear nothing. When she peeked out, she could see the tangle of dark forms that must be the two men’s bodies. Quickly, before fear could overwhelm her again, she forced herself to move out onto the path. Her foot slipped, and when she put her hand down it was into warm, wet, stinking slime. She choked down her nausea, and wiped her hand on the nearest body. They were dead; it didn’t matter now. She fumbled at the bodies, expecting every moment the shot that would kill her, the hiss of gas that would paralyze her.

  The bodies were still warm; she hated the feel of the skin, the stiffening texture of it, as she felt around for the hunter’s night gear. Goggles around his neck, on a thong—he would have dropped them before lighting his torch. They felt wet—blood? She cut the thong with her knife, and felt around for the torch. She risked a quick flash of it. The goggles were covered with blood, which she cleaned off with the dead hunter’s shirt-tail. There was the comunit which she scooped up, and there the man’s rifle with its targeting beam. Her own hands were covered with blood, and one foot would leave bloody footprints until it dried. She flicked off the torch, and called softly to Raffa.

  “Come on out—if I go back through, I’ll leave a trail. . . . We’ll leave the main trail farther down, and have this hidey-hole again later if we need it. Bring my box.” She put the comunit in her shirt pocket.

  A cautious rustle, and Raffa came out with both knapsacks. Bubbles handed her the rifle, and put on the night goggles. Now she could see well enough without the torch to finish rummaging in the dead hunter’s pack. He had carried a backup weapon with a removable stock in his pack; she took that and his needler, and the dead preeve’s knife. Unfortunately the hunter had not carried an extra set of night goggles. Finally, she did her best to clean her bloodiest hand and foot, so they’d leave no more traces than necessary.

  Then she led Raffa southward down the trail. Neither of them questioned who should lead; it was her island, and her duty to protect Raffa if she could. There had been a series of parallel trails down the west side of the ridge, long ago; as she recalled, you could go down almost anywhere. She ducked between another pair of standing stones, and fought through a tangle of vines, and then found the next gap downhill. To her enhanced vision, the broken slope below was empty of anything but crumbling rock and low scrub; Raffa, behind her, said, “How is it?”

  For answer, Bubbles passed her the goggles; she felt suddenly blind when she took them off. “See for yourself. Pick a route, stay low, and don’t hurry. We’ve got to be quiet.”

  “You need these.” Raffa passed the goggles back; Bubbles pushed them away.

  “It’s your turn, and I’m supposed to know this place. I’ll go first; then you can find me. Not too close.” Her eyes were adjusting; she squeezed them tightly a moment or two, and when she opened them found she could just make out the larger rocks. Slowly, carefully, she edged downward, placing each foot with precision so that she could test the ground before putting her weight on it. She remembered reading her brother’s service manual on this sort of thing; she had found it funny. She had imagined the dapper George crawling about in the dark counting his steps on zigzags and getting dust on his impeccable trousers, or slithering on his stomach. And here she was . . . wishing she knew if crouching was enough, if she should be down flat, crawling, if the zigging and zagging from one rock to another was actually doing any good, or only taking longer. A pebble rolled out from under her foot with a faint clatter. She froze. She could hear nothing now but her own pulse beating. She took another step down, and another. The black line of trees rose toward her, welcoming.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Well, well . . . hello, darlin’.” It was not a voice she wanted to hear, that confident male purr. “A gal could get hurt, wanderin’ around in the dark like you are. . . . You better let me give you a hand.” A blot of nearer darkness rose from the trees and moved toward her, boots scraping on the rock; she could see a narrow gleam that might be starlight on the barrel of his weapon.

  “No . . .” She hadn’t meant to say anything, but fear left no room for the breath in her lungs.

  “C’mon, hon,” he said. She couldn’t tell quite how far away he was—two meters? Three? “Wasn’t that your flitter crashed on the other side of the island? Your dad sent us out to find you. . . .” For a moment relief washed over her, but she couldn’t believe in it. Still, if he thought she didn’t know, he might not kill her right away. And if he thought she was alone, if he hadn’t seen Raffa, perhaps Raffa could still get away.

  “You’re . . . one of the outrange patrols?” she asked. A confident chuckle came from him.

  “That’s right, hon. And you’re gonna be fine, now. Just come along with me. . . .”

  For the third time that night, Bubbles heard death close by. This time she heard the bullet smack into him an instant before the loud crack from upslope, where Raffa was. The impact threw him back, to land with a crash in the low vegetation of the slope. A few loose rocks clattered on downhill. Bubbles doubled up, retching. It was too much. She had little in her stomach to lose, but wanted none of it. She could hear Raffa coming down, much faster than she had, with the aid of the goggles.

  “Are you all right?” Raffa’s voice, from near the fallen hunter.

  “Y-yes.” Her body gave a final convulsive heave, then allowed her to lift her head. “I . . . didn’t know you knew how to shoot.”

  “My Aunt Katy. She made us learn. Gave prizes.” From the sound of it, Raffa was fighting her own nausea. Bubbles felt shaky and ashamed of herself. She was supposed to be the leader here, and she’d fallen apart. She forced herself to stand, to stumble the few strides in the dark to where Raffa bent over the d
ying man.

  “I thought they died quicker,” she said, trying for the calm tone of earlier. “They do on the action cubes.” The man’s breathing sounded horrible, bubbly and uneven. She was glad she couldn’t see his face.

  “Here.” Raffa pushed a set of goggles into her hands. “Now we can both see. And we’ll take his weapons and comunit.” She spoke hurriedly and roughly, her voice slightly shaky. “I saw him, after you started down. I didn’t dare call. . . .”

  “Right,” Bubbles said.

  “I kept wanting you to go more to the right. Give me space. I was so scared—” For a moment they clung to each other, shaking, wanting to cry but knowing they had no time. “Got to go,” Raffa said finally, pushing away. “They’ll be coming.”

  Bubbles stood, staggering a little from the weight added to her original pack. They each had two rifles now, and a needler, and a comunit, and more knives than they could possibly use. If they could get some of this back to Petris . . . but they couldn’t. Quickly, careless for the moment of the noise, they got themselves into the forest below.

  Once or twice, in childhood, they had tried skulking around in the woods at night. With torches, of course. They’d given it up, except for raids along the beach, after someone—she couldn’t remember who—had broken an ankle while trying to climb the ridge in a cross-island overnight race. They’d had to call for help, and the adults had been scathing about children who didn’t have enough sense to stay off slippery rocks in the dark. Buttons, the acknowledged boss of the campsites, had forbidden night wandering, and they’d mostly obeyed. Bubbles hadn’t minded, because she preferred to sleep at night rather than nap in the daytime.

  Now, with the night goggles on, she was glad of the covering darkness. She could see well enough to avoid hanging creepers, thornbushes, and other hazards; she knew from her time on the open slope that no one without night goggles could see her. Of course the others had them . . . but so did she.

  Soon she slowed, and began listening again. She stopped completely for a moment. Her stomach growled loudly, reminding her it was empty. She heard Raffa scrabbling in her knapsack, then a faint metallic rasp and a gurgle. Water. She realized how thirsty she herself was, and took off her own knapsack, trying for silence. Where was the noisy wind when you needed it? The water eased her throat and washed away the foul taste of her nausea. Now she was hungry. She tapped Raffa’s arm, and when she leaned closer murmured to her. “Eat now—while walking.” She could see Raffa’s nod as clearly as if it were daylight.

  They had the survival rations from the flitter, tubes of thick goo that tasted of fat, sugar, and salt. Bubbles swallowed half of hers at once, and tucked the rest into her pocket. She started off again more slowly, trying to remember how the land went on this side of the island. How far south were they, and how near was the swamp? Should they start back north, and hope to work into the more rugged terrain along the north shore?

  Nothing moved in the woods around them. She remembered, from those childhood visits, flocks of birds and many small animals—lizards, some nonvenomous snakes, land crabs. Once she’d been frightened by a tortoise big enough to sit on; she’d thought it was a shiny brown rock. There was less undergrowth than she remembered, and she found it easy to walk between the trees. The slope flattened beneath her feet; the forest rose higher overhead, and even with night goggles she couldn’t see that much. Whenever she stopped to listen, her legs trembled; she knew they needed to rest.

  Raffa tapped her shoulder. Bubbles leaned close to her, and Raffa said, “I think I hear water.”

  Bubbles tried to filter out the sigh of the breeze in the leaves . . . yes. A rhythmic rush and silence . . . waves breaking, but gently, in this little wind. “You’re right,” she said quietly. “And they might have someone on the beach—it’s narrow here.” Now which way, south or north? Her mind was clogged by exhaustion and fear. She had started out hoping to find her old hiding place, and then thought of Kell’s cave, wherever that was . . . but now . . . she wished she knew just where they were, and how far it was to someplace else.

  “I’d vote north,” Raffa said, as if she’d asked. “Away from their camp.” For a moment Bubbles wanted to protest; they had weapons themselves, now, and night gear. They were as dangerous as the hunters. But they weren’t, really: they were untrained girls, and very tired. Staying as far from the hunters’ camp as possible made sense.

  “Good idea,” Bubbles said, and turned right, away from the beach. They walked slowly, as quietly as they could manage, stopping every few minutes to look around them. The walk took on a dreamlike character—the eerie landscape in the night goggles, that looked like something meant to be scary but done on a low budget, the silence, their exhaustion that forced concentration on the simplest movements. When a great tree loomed up that Bubbles remembered from her childhood trips, she moved into the dense shadow of its massive bole and stopped.

  “We’ve got to rest,” she said, “while one of us can stay awake to watch. You sleep first.”

  “Right.” Raffa’s vague shape folded up to sit against the tree. Bubbles leaned, but did not sit. If she sat, she would sleep. She could not be scared enough to stay awake, not now. She fished the rest of the ration stick out of her pocket and ate it, and drank more water. Her legs ached; the pack straps seemed to burn along her shoulders, but she was afraid to take the pack off. What if they had to run for it?

  She realized then that she hadn’t even checked to see if the rifle she carried was loaded. She fumbled at it. It wasn’t exactly like the one she’d been taught to use, and she couldn’t find the little doohickey—it had a name, but she’d never learned it—to release the clip. She found something sticking out of the stock, and pushed it, and a line of red sprang across the space under the tree to another tree trunk. The rifle hummed; desperately she pushed the knob this way and that until it moved and the light disappeared and the hum ceased. She stared around, sure that someone must have seen that red light, but nothing moved and no sound disturbed her. After awhile, her heart quit trying to climb out her mouth, and she tried to think what that had been. Firearms were not her hobby; she had learned to shoot only because of the elphoose hunts. Her father had insisted she must learn.

  Red light. A hum. Red light made her think of the vidcams in the drama department . . . range finders . . . so it might be a range finder. And the hum . . . like the hum of the automatic focus adjustments. She felt carefully along the entire stock. A tiny flap covered a socket—pins inside—a connection for some computer attachment? She found three more buttons or knobs, and left them alone. The scope . . . she lifted the rifle to her shoulder and tried to peer through it, but the goggles interfered. After a quick look around, she slipped them off and looked through the scope. It gave a brighter image than the goggles, in crisp grays rather than smudged greenish yellow. Her finger found knobs on the scope, too. . . . She left them alone, and put her goggles back on.

  Something flared in her pocket, a small blinking light that the goggles made into a white beacon. Without goggles—through her pocket—it was hardly visible. The comunit she’d taken from the first hunter . . . blinking a two-three sequence. When she looked at Raffa, asleep against the tree, her pocket too winked, this one in a two-two sequence. She had not thought they might be locators, but now it seemed obvious. If she didn’t reply, with some code she could not know, the hunters would know where to look. . . . They might know anyway.

  “Raffa!” She kept her voice low, but Raffa woke instantly.

  “What?” she asked.

  “We have to get rid of them—if we leave them here, that’s too close—we don’t know how long it will take—” She felt like crying . . . she was so tired, she hadn’t had any sleep, and it was too much. Raffa hugged her.

  “We’ll throw them in the water. Let ’em think we tried to swim for it.”

  “But they might be on the beach!” She could hear the incipient hysteria in her own voice. Raffa’s hand tightened on her arm. />
  “We’re alive and two of them are dead. Two unarmed, untrained society girls, against trained hunters with night gear, and who has the weapons now? We’re going to stay alive, and they’re ALL going to be dead, and no you’re not going to have hysterics now. Take a deep breath.”

  Bubbles took a deep breath; her ribs ached. “Right. Sorry.”

  “No problem—I got some sleep, and you didn’t. Now . . . let’s get to the shore, and if someone’s there we’ll blow him away.”

  “I can’t even tell if this thing is loaded,” Bubbles said softly. “I tried to find out and got something that made a red light and hummed at me.”

  “Really? Sounds like a Maseter range finder to me. Here—let me check your status.” Raffa took the rifle, did something Bubbles couldn’t follow in the dimness, and handed it back. “Full clip, round in the chamber. When you pull that trigger, you’ll shoot something.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Bubbles angled left, toward the shore. As she remembered, the big tree had been only a couple of hundred meters from the water. She noticed, after a few minutes, that the blinking lights on the comunits had died. It gave her no comfort. . . . A missed signal would rouse them to search, she was sure. At least they had thick cover to the very edge of the beach.

  As they neared the water, the night goggles had more light to work with, and brightened once more. At the same time, the undergrowth increased, as it always had near the forest edge, though it was not so thick that they needed to go out of their way. By the time Bubbles peered through the last screen of bushes and vines, she could see up and down the narrow beach at least a hundred meters in each direction. She saw no one . . . although someone could have been hidden in the undergrowth, as they were. A gentle swell out to sea produced small lapping waves that slipped up and back like the strokes of a massage, rolling the little pebbles that made up the beach here so that they clicked and whispered.