Star Risk - 01 Star Risk, Ltd (19 page)

She looked around for the pilot, saw Dinsmore, obviously riding his dropper hard, five hundred meters above her, almost drifting.

Riss heard a roar, saw an aircraft flash toward her, had time to ID it as an in-atmosphere scout, started pointlessly waving her arms, thinking about rescue and a very long, very cold drink.

Above its engine-scream, the scout's machine-cannon roared. Tracer rounds drew a green streak through the sky, walked across Dinsmore's body. The flier didn't even have time to scream before he was almost cut in half, blood spraying down toward the jungle.

"Son of a dead-eyed bitch!" Riss snarled. Her fingers found the off sensor of the dropper, and she fell, tucking her arms, legs in, head down, dropping like a bullet, falling away from the killing aircraft.

She managed to turn her head, saw the scout diving at her, saw the trees starting to rush up, knew she was too low, and again flashed the dropper, twice, three times, and the scout was past her in a full dive, bullets streaming in front.

The pilot of the scout realized how low he was, reversed his drive, turned his antigrav to full power. The scout wobbled in its dive, started to recover, and then it was too late.

"Auger your dirty ass straight on to hell," Riss growled as the fireball rose above the trees, red and dirty black, no more than two hundred meters away, and the explosion almost tumbled her. "Teach you to be such a murderous bastard."

She promptly forgot about the scout and its crew, holding down the antigrav sensor as leaves, branches, reached up and the jungle swallowed her.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THIRTY-TWO � ^ � Star Risk One, this is Star Risk Control. Do you have anything?"

"Control, this is One. Orbiting the area Three May-dayed from� nothing� wait. Patching through from Ten."

"Control, this is Ten. I'm over a narrow valley, and, at the bottom, I've got smoke coming up. Do you want me to close?"

"Ten, this is Control. Proceed� cautiously. Something out there bites. Switching channels.

"One, this is Control. Were you monitoring?"

"That's affirm."

"One, give Ten an escort down."

"Affirm."

"Control, this is Ten. Orbiting smoke at angels one� something went in hard, and blew. No sign of life."

"Ten, wait."

Baldur turned away from the com.

"Grok, do we have anything?"

"No," the alien said. "The tracking station we planted on Goodnight isn't casting� or is blocked out. Nothing on the Search and Rescue frequency from either Riss or Dinsmore, Three's pilot."

Baldur touched his mike.

"Ten, this is Control. Still negative?"

"Still negative."

"One, this is Control. What about you?"

"Nothing, boss," Redon Spada 'cast.

Baldur thought quickly.

"All Star Risk stations� RTB. I say again, Return to Base."

Again, he looked at Grok.

"Keep the SAR monitor going."

"Your call?" King asked.

"I think we have lost Riss," Baldur said. "And very likely Goodnight as well."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THIRTY-THREE � ^ � M'chel Riss stood on a jutting tree branch under the top tier of the jungle, but still about fifty meters from the ground.

She contemplated descent, so she wouldn't have to think about Dinsmore's bloody death.

Come on, Riss, she thought. Bad guys do things like that. That's why they're bad guys.

She smiled wryly. As if good guys sometimes didn't get carried away and do some unnecessary strafing. Yeah, but they didn't brag about it. At least, not in her hearing.

This was getting most rapidly nowhere. She slung the dropper over one shoulder, opened one of the sidepouches of her combat harness, and took out a can of climbing thread, and clipped it into her harness. She sprayed a blob out, attached it to the limb, and gingerly started down, grateful she didn't have to use a doubled rope.

Ten meters from the ground she stopped, and waited for a few minutes. There were small-animal and flying-thing noises below, but nothing that sounded like a creature big enough to consider Riss cutlets.

She went on to the ground, put her back against a tree, and looked about her.

It was very lovely, in a gloomy sort of way, the overhead cover keeping the ground-level plants stunted. It could have been, if there were little signs, a botanic garden.

Of a very nonterrestrial nature. The green was muted, and frequently mixed with rust-red hues. The ground under her feet was soft, aeons of rotting leaves.

A small animal peered at her over a downed limb. If it weren't blood-red, with six legs ending in clawed paws, it might have been a squirrel.

She moved, and it sprang away, and vanished.

Next M'chel considered what was in her survival pouches. She knew very well what they contained, but that was SOP to keep away panic.

Then she heard the screech of aircraft overhead, recognized the sound of a Pyrrhus-class patrol craft. There was another whine.

Friendly.

She realized she was a little shocky, clawed into a pouch, took out her SAR beacon. She'd turned the switch on before noting the large crack along one side, and the exposed circuit board.

She turned the sensor on, rolled volume up to high.

Nothing.

Riss, ever the optimist, keyed the send sensor.

"Any overhead aircraft, any overhead aircraft, this is downed flier. Be advised there are hostiles in this area. I say again, hostiles in this area."

She didn't give her name, for fear the unfriendlies were monitoring the Search and Rescue band, and could use it later to set a trap.

Nothing came back at her.

Maybe, she thought, the beacon's receiver was just broken.

She repeated her message, and heard the aircraft above go back and forth, then climb away, their drive-sound receding in the distance.

Well, dingbing it and all that good shit, she thought. I guess I'll have to hike this one out.

She thought about leaving the SAR beacon on, decided it might just be making enough of a noise for whoever'd shot her down to be picking it up, and homing.

Riss thought of pitching it into the jungle, then stopped. No one in a survival condition should ever throw anything away, no matter how useless.

Riss found a GPS receiver in one pouch, turned it on. The screen lit, but was blank.

Wonderful, she thought. These bastards here on Glace don't even have positioning satellites planted. I'll bet they hunt with spears, too.

Riss sat down, took out an old-fashioned compass, treated herself to a bit of candy from one pouch while she drew a mental map around herself.

Over there� west, the way they'd come� she remembered there'd been a river that looked big enough to raft down. Somewhere down there� southish� should be that town they'd flown near.

It would be a hike. A week, maybe two weeks, maybe longer.

So what? Riss was used to hikes.

She got to her feet, picked up the dropper, and started out.

The journey of a thousand miles, whatever a mile was, starts with one step.

How goddamned cheerful. Find something else to think about.

Riss tried not to think about those implacable hostile aliens that King had mentioned, who could be lurking around her, behind every bush. She had enough troubles already.

Near dusk, she started looking for her RON�Remain Overnight�campsite. She found a near-perfect one, a great tree with a fork about fifteen meters off the ground, not that easily reached by questing beasts. Nearby was a spring. She splashed water about liberally, but didn't dare take anything off.

She used a small heat tab, odorless and smoke-less, to heat a pouch of emergency rations.

One of Riss's darkest secrets was she actually liked E-rats, which would have made her an outcast in any military circle if she'd admitted to it. She would be partially redeemed by her fondness for haute cuisine, which she loved eating, if not cooking. Riss had realized early on she was one of those people naturally ungifted in the kitchen.

Her choice was a mystery meat with red pepper sauce, dehydrated greens that, from their texture and bitterness, told her she had to be gaining strength just by smelling them, a stimulating tea she decided to pass on until the morning since she wanted to sleep, and dehydrated berries that had seen better days. But she ate everything, used the salt in the rat pack as a dentifrice, and then clambered up the tree to her nice, flat branch.

Riss bundled up in her waterproof sheet, and tried to think Gentle Thoughts, one hand curled around her heavy Alliance blaster.

Going to sleep was easier than she'd thought it would be�she was a bit off her top physical shape.

She jolted awake sometime in darkness, hearing something snuffling interestedly at the base of the tree. It sounded big and nasty, but could well have been that six-legged "squirrel" with a good voice box.

Riss thought about sending a blaster bolt or two down as a warning, decided not, for fear of pissing the creature off if it were big, and also the sound of the gunshot would surely rouse alarm.

After a time, the creature went away, and Riss went back to sleep.

She didn't remember dreaming at all when she woke before dawn as her mental alarm went off.

Riss waited, gun ready. But there was no movement around her.

She went down the tree with her gear, washed again, had some sort of dehydrated egg, crackers, a high-protein pack flavored, for some unknown reason, with cinnamon, brushed her teeth, and went on west.

It was about midday when M'chel heard the screams. They were close, and agonized. Riss might have thought they came from no human throat, but she'd seen too much agony in her years in uniform not to know that any sound can come from a human throat, if the pain's great enough.

A sensible woman would have gone in the opposite direction, or at least doubled her speed along her course, not needing any more grief than what she already had.

Instead, she drew her gun, and, thumb on the safety, went closer.

She smelt smoke, and seconds later was on the edge of a small clearing.

Four men, wearing coveralls and heavily armed, were gathered around a fire.

Next to the fire a strange being was tied up. He was gray, about a meter tall, and wore no more than a breechclout with suspenders.

His skull was squat, prognathous, with a beetling brow. Coarse hair hung low over what little forehead he had, and down the back of his neck.

Not far from him was the most archaic weapon Riss had ever seen. It looked like something she'd seen in a museum once that shot stone balls, fired by a low-grade explosive rammed down the barrel. Beside it was a short spear, with what looked like a stone point.

There were two sprawled bodies at the edge of the clearing, one about the size of the "man," the other clearly a "child." The "child's" neck sat at an awkward angle.

One of the men had a small iron bar, which he was heating in the fire. The alien was moaning, and Riss saw three brands burnt into the ET's leg.

The man picked up the bar using gloves, and leaned over the alien. He laughed, and the being screamed in anticipation.

The other three laughed even louder than the first.

Riss knelt, braced her blaster on her cupped hand, and shot the torturer in the back of the head. He contorted, brains spraying, and fell across the alien.

The other three spun, saw Riss.

"Playtime's over, boys," M'chel said cheerfully. The first grabbed for a holstered gun, and Riss shot him twice in the chest. She pulled right, and blew the third man's face away, then put two more rounds into the last man's stomach.

She listened to the echoes of her blaster fire die away in the jungle, then went forward.

Riss kicked the dead man off the alien, who stared up at her, eyes wide.

M'chel took her survival knife from a pouch, snapped it open, and cut the alien free.

He, if it was a he, didn't move at first.

Riss stepped back.

He still didn't move, as if expecting a trick.

"Come on, dummy," she snapped. "Those ass-holes've got to have friends."

Still nothing.

She growled, picked up the being's weapon, handed it to him.

He took it reluctantly.

Riss thought for an instant he was thinking about shooting her.

It took effort to turn her back on him, and start going through the corpses' gear.

She ended with four shoulder-fired blasters, the same number of pistols, enough bolt magazines for a small army, sixteen grenades, and one recoil-less bunker-buster.

Riss was looking for a nice, sturdy tree to smash the weapons on, when the alien touched her arm.

She looked at him.

Using the top pair of his clawlike hands, he picked up one of the pistols, and hugged it close. Then he set it back down, and looked at her.

"Dummy me," she said. "Sure." She gave him the pistol, then the other handguns, and the shoulder weapons.

He made a chittering noise, imitated firing one of them at one of the men, pointed off.

"Sure," Riss said. "Kill lots more of the bastards if you want."

The alien came to his feet and limped to one of the bodies, that of the "woman."

He chittered again, slowly, and Riss anthropomorphicized sorrow in his tones.

"Come on," she said. "I'll give you a hand." A few moments later, Riss, carrying the "child's" body over one shoulder, and the shoulder blasters slung over the other, followed the alien out of the clearing.

She wished she'd had a Star Risk card to pin to the bodies' chests, but figured their friends would be angry enough when they found the corpses.

It was a longish trudge, giving Riss time enough to figure out the alien had to be one of those primitive badasses who'd driven the Glacians from their base, which now had to be taken over by Murgatroyd and company.

Aliens didn't sit well on her tongue, especially since this was their world, so she thought a bit, and decided she'd call them "trolls."

The name came easily, as the skies clouded over and it began raining. Riss plodded on, hoping her alien lived under a nice, warm, dry bridge like legend dictated.