Cluster Command: Crisis of Empire II (12 page)

Back on the forest floor, number four screamed as her jaw disappeared. The screaming stopped when another bead went through her visor and finished exploding between her eyes.

Merikur threw himself to the right. A stream of glass ripped past into the tree, blasting away huge chunks of the soft porous wood and cutting through its digestive system. White sap spurted out to soak the jungle floor. Just below the surface, dormant seeds sensed the presence of food and opened themselves to take it in.

The last two had made it to cover and had plenty of time to get their weapons ready.

Merikur rolled over a plant with a single white blossom and came up running. He screamed. A Cernian fell for it; when she stuck her head up, he blew it off.

Then searing pain ripped across the front of his right thigh. As he fell, the open wound came into contact with his coolant-soaked pant leg and laced his body with agony.

###

He awoke to a sharp pain that verged on agony shooting up his right leg. There was also a deep throbbing background of general pain, but it was the leg which demanded his attention.

So did his AID, which, he now realized, had been maintaining a steady drum beat of “wake up, wake up, wake up . . .” Realizing that Merikur was again awake, it continued, “Well, it’s about time. I suggest you get up before the jungle recycles your ass.”

Startled at the effort required, Merikur opened his eyes. Only the tiniest bit of sunlight filtered down through the array of foliage. Night was coming. He had to get moving, find shelter, and fix food, before the murk was transformed to utter blackness. The necessities of survival spurred him into a sitting position.

Looking down at his major source of pain, he froze in horror. His AID had been speaking literally. A long brown tendril had snaked its way up through the jungle floor to plant its head in the open wound. The vine jerked spasmodically.

It was eating him!

He saw the swaying tips of other tendrils all around, twitching as they pushed their way a little closer to a meal. Reaching down, Merikur found the handle of his combat knife. He slashed through the first tendril and saw the rest quiver in sympathy. A single organism then.

Favoring his right leg, he stood and limped out of the feeding circle. Then he saw the five mounds. The surviving Cernian had scraped out shallow graves for his comrades. All were encased in networks of pulsating vines as their bodies were broken down and consumed by the voracious jungle.

“He buried them and left,” his AID said. “You looked dead, so he assumed that you were. Luckily, you didn’t rate a burial.”

Merikur looked around. “My handgun?”

“Beats me,” the AID replied, “but chances are, he took it with him.”

“Terrific.”

“Things could be worse,” the AID commented cheerfully. “You still have me.”

“Great,” Merikur replied. “If I see a rebel, I’ll throw you at him.”

He knew of course that the AID was worth far more than his weapon. Before he had boarded for the passage from Augustine, the AID had downloaded every recorded datum about Teller, its ecosystems and geography. On top of which its sensors consistently warned him of trouble long before trouble arrived.

Merikur looked around but saw no sign of either his weapon or those carried by the rebels. Well, at least he still had the survival kit on his back and the combat knife in his hand. They’d have to do.

Limping, he set out through the trees to put some distance between himself and the crash site. As soon as the surviving rebel reached camp and reported to someone with a triple-digit I.Q., they’d come looking for him in a big way.

As day faded into night, Merikur limped east away from Port City. With luck, they’d concentrate the search in the wrong direction. Soon he was tripping over tree roots and falling into hollows. The third time it happened, he decided to hell with it. He’d gone as far as he could. It was time to rest and make repairs.

Merikur shrugged out of the survival kit and opened it. It contained a little bit of everything. After some fumbling, he found a small flash and turned it on. Holding it with his teeth, he used his hands to pull his pant leg away from the wound. Where he expected to see an open wound there was a greenish scab. “What the hell?”

“Problems?” the AID asked. While the AID had a variety of sensors, it had nothing equivalent to direct sight and couldn’t see Merikur’s leg.

Merikur described the scab to his mechanical sidekick. “Don’t worry about it,” the AID told him. “The coolant from that particular tree has an astringent effect. The Haiken Maru even harvest some of the stuff and sell it off planet. Not much of a market, but every credit counts. Even though it hurt, it did you a world of good.”

“Easy for you to say,” Merikur replied caustically, “since you never feel pain.” There was silence for a moment as Merikur put a bandage on the wound.

When the AID replied, there was a hint of sadness in his words. “What you say is true . . . but I never experience pleasure either.”

Merikur considered that as he popped a pain pill and returned the first-aid kit to the pack. “That’s only partly true. While you can’t experience physical pleasure, nothing stops you from enjoying the other kinds.”

“What other kinds?”

Merikur rummaged around for something which didn’t require water since there wasn’t any nearby and he wasn’t about to go looking. He found a high-energy ration bar. “The cerebral pleasures.”

“For example?”

Merikur took a bite. The ration bar was chewy and slightly sweet. “For example, the way you feel when I ignore your advice and wind up in trouble as a result.”

“Like taking the aircar and traveling alone?”

Merikur grimaced. “Yes, like taking the aircar and traveling alone.”

“Oh,” the AID said. Then after a moment’s thought it added, “You know, you’re right! That does feel good! Thanks.”

Combat knife in his right hand, Merikur curled up in a ball and awkwardly pulled dead leaves over himself, more for insulation than camouflage. “You’re welcome. Okay, sleepless wonder, you have the perimeter watch. If anything approaches, I want to know about it.”

“No problem. Good night.”

“Good night,” Merikur replied and, in spite of the mysterious noises all around him, fell quickly asleep.

###

Merikur awoke to the sound of distant thunder. For a moment, that was the only sound that disturbed the jungle’s early morning silence; the next, it was filled with the sound of rain against a billion leaves.

Within minutes, it had dripped, gurgled, and sloshed all around him then collected in the bottom of his hollow and drove him out. Small, eellike creatures oozed out of the mud to flop and slither as the rain turned the hollow into a temporary pond. When the rain stopped and the pond was absorbed into the earth, they would go with it, estivating until the next downpour.

“Good thing I’m waterproof,” his AID said.

By now, Merikur was soaked to the skin. “Yes,” he replied dryly. “Thank God for that.” Spotting a huge plant with broad leaves, he squished his way over and stood in front of it. “If I take shelter will it eat me?”

“Nope. Go for it.”

Merikur stepped under the plant’s leaves and out of the rain. He looked around. “Which way is home?”

The quickness of the answer told him the AID had already considered the matter. “You have two choices. You can head west on foot, which will improve your chances of going undetected, or you can head north. If you head north you’ll hit a mining road about thirty miles from here. Both the Haiken Maru and the rebels use the road, so the chances of discovery rise dramatically. On the other hand, the chances of hitching a ride into Port City also rise dramatically, which would cut five or six days off the trip.”

Merikur considered his alternatives. The safer route was a
lot
safer. He’d be damned hard to find in the middle of all that jungle. But there was the time factor to consider. He needed to get back as soon as possible. God knows what might happen in his absence. Someone had arranged for him to die. Who?

The rebels were an obvious choice, but the aircar had been supplied by the Haiken Maru, so they were suspect, too. But why would they want him dead when he was ostensibly there to protect company interests?

There were too many questions and too few answers, but one thing was clear: if someone wanted him out of the way, time was of the essence. He decided to go for the road and rely on his skill and good luck to get him through. And while luck was a problematic factor, his skills were not inconsiderable. Like all officers, Merikur had been through an extensive survival course at the Academy and numerous refreshers since graduation.

One of the things they’d taught him was to improvise.

He used his combat knife to lop some leaves off the plant, piling them at his feet. Cutting some lengths of mono-filament line from the reel in his survival kit, he overlapped the leaves like the shingles on a shake roof, then tied them together to make a crude rain cape. A conical leaf hat completed his new outfit. He stepped out into the rain. His new gear leaked a little, but it was better than nothing.

So far so good. Glancing around, he saw a thicket of eight-foot sticks topped by frothy purplish foliage. Stepping close to the thicket so the AID could use all its sensors, Merikur asked, “How ’bout this one?”

The AID was silent for a moment before replying. “I suggest you throw something at it first.”

Kicking into the forest detritus, Merikur found a rock. He pried it up and saw all sorts of little things go skittering in every direction. But he wasn’t that hungry. Not yet. Checking to make sure none had adhered to the underside of the rock, he chucked it into the thicket.

To his amazement, one of the rigid sticks suddenly collapsed into a seven-foot snake. Coiling in on itself, a deadly looking head emerged from a collar of purplish skin and darted this way and that, seeking either food or foe—or both. Seeing neither through its single, apparently nearsighted eye, it slithered away.

Merikur watched it go and shook his head in amazement. “Good suggestion.”

Stepping up to the thicket, he selected a sturdy-looking shaft and cut it off near the ground. He trimmed the foliage and tied his combat knife to one end with the mono-filament. A spear, as any caveman can tell you, beats the hell out of a knife. Why stick something from up close and intimate when you can do it from six or seven feet away? Not to mention the additional leverage a spear provides.

Deciding to delay breakfast until the rain had stopped, Merikur glanced at his compass and headed north. Within a single rotation of the planet, he’d been reduced from a general with starships at his command to a lonely, leaf-clad spear chucker. He’d had better days.

Chapter 8

As Jomu allowed his gaze to drift down across the computer screen, his mouth turned upwards in disapproval. All the reports agreed. Things weren’t going well. Yes, his forces continued to control the countryside; yes, there was less and less money flowing into Haiken Maru coffers; but there was a long list of reverses as well.

The marines were in control of Port City, their firebase on the outskirts of town was too strong for his forces, and their leader was unusually competent for a human.

Making matters even worse was news of a mysterious Cernian who, if rumor could be believed, served as an advisor to the new governor and who had disappeared into the jungle. Who was he? And more importantly,
where
was he and what was he doing?

If the stranger were part of the Cernian faction favoring a hardline with the Pact—Jomu’s faction—he would have come announced. Was he instead soliciting Pact support among the miners? If so he might just get it.

Some Cernians continued to cling to the foolish hope that humans would change their ways and allow Cernia full membership in the Pact. Jomu coughed a laugh. That would be the day.

Well, time would tell. In spite of the marines, Teller was almost in the rebels’ grasp. In a few more days, a week at most, Jomu’s fingers would close on the planet and never let go.

He heard a floorboard creak as Varek shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He’d been standing at attention in Jomu’s makeshift office for half a zek now and should be quite penitent. Jomu found it useful to keep his subordinates waiting. Especially when they’d performed as poorly as Varek had. The idiot had walked away from a dead—he’d
better
have been dead!—human officer without even searching the body.

A heavily armed patrol was already on its way to the ambush site. Who knew what data or device the human might have had about his person?

Raising his eyes from the computer screen, Jomu looked at Varek as if viewing a guwat. In truth, Varek wasn’t a bad-looking specimen. His homemade combat harness gleamed with polish and his body was broad and muscular. At the moment, his eyes were focused respectfully on Jomu’s right ear. Only equals engaged in mutual eye-to-eye contact.

“So,” Jomu began. “A moron stands before me. Or is it a coward who runs from dead humans?”

“Yes, Father. I mean no, Father,” Varek stammered, his leathery features wrinkled with misery. “I am a fool, but no coward.”

For a moment, Jomu said nothing, allowing the silence to build. Then, “I agree. You are a fool but no coward. Therefore, you may live. But you are hereby stripped of all status. In addition to any other duties you may be judged competent to perform, you will make yourself available for all extra labor details for a period of one year. Return to your unit.”

“Yes, Father. Thank you, Father.” Varek did a smart about-face and marched towards the door. A year of K.P. was a lot less punishment than he had feared.

As Varek left, a com tech entered. She was no escapee from a mining camp, but a Cernian regular smuggled in three months before. She was extremely competent. The fact that she was also quite attractive was an added bonus. She snapped to attention.

Jomu waved a hand. “Save it for the troops, Jund. What have you got?” He expected a smile but didn’t get one. Bad news then.

“The patrol reported in a few bix ago, Father. They found the aircar and the graves. But no sign of a human body.”