Starfist: A World of Hurt (7 page)

That wasn't completely fair--Marines more often than not fought in heavily wooded or watery terrain, and the Skinks seemed to prefer swamps and bogs, so there was a high degree of validity in keeping those wetland skills sharp.

"That is all. COMP-ney, A-ten-HUT!"

The Marines snapped to attention.

"Comp-NEY...dis-MISSED!"

The Marines broke from their positions of attention and began moving in controlled chaos, commenting to each other on the announcements, the previous night's liberty, and any of the myriad other things Marines talk about when released from formation. Above the hubbub, the platoon sergeants' voices rang out with last minute orders, followed by the squad leaders' orders and fire team leaders' commands. They filed back into the barracks in semiorderly manner and headed to their platoons' assembly areas.

There was something Ensign Charlie Bass had to do before the FIST headed for Nidhogge. He didn't say anything to anyone before he left the company area, but First Sergeant Myer saw him go and guessed from his direction where he was headed. Myer gave him a few minutes, then headed out himself.

He found Bass right where he expected to--at the Stones.

Five large, igneous boulders, each standing three meters high and two wide, stood in line along a flagstone walkway. Hillsides covered by a dense grove of firlike trees wrapped behind the Stones from side to side, protecting them from the elements. The front face of each Stone was cut flat, slightly off vertical, and polished until it gleamed like a gem. The faces of the first three, and the top three quarters of the fourth, were engraved with the names of Marines who had died in combat while serving with 34th FIST. Bass squatted in front of the fourth stone, gently brushing his fingertips over the bottom rows of names; the Marines who had given their last on the Kingdom campaign. His fingers paused over one name and a chill ran up his spine.

The name was his.

"But I'm not dead," he whispered.

Padding softly, Myer came up behind him unheard and heard what Bass whispered.

"Damn straight you're not," the Top said gruffly. "I told them not to put your name up there, I
told
them you were too ornery and ugly to get killed by any damn Skink rail gun. But would they listen to me?
Nooo!
Now they have to take it off and mess up the whole Stone."

Bass turned his head and looked up at Myer; his eyes seemed to gleam like the face of the Stones. The Top looked away from him, back at the Stone. There must be something in the air at the Stones, he thought, something that got into his eyes to make them water like that. The same thing had happened to him when he last visited there, and watched as the stonemasons carved the names.

"Can they do that?" Bass asked. "Remove a name, I mean."

Myer pointed at a spot just over head high. There was a gap between names, wide enough for another name. It rippled slightly in the smoothness of the Stone's face, and was sunk a bit below the surrounding surface. Bass stood to look at the gap and nodded.

"They'll do the same thing on your name, Charlie."

"Until it goes back for real."

"Maybe. But they'll be carving on the fifth Stone before that happens."

Bass dropped back to a squat and brushed his fingertips over the newest names once more.

"Marines don't die, we go to hell and regroup. I'll see you again, then," he promised the Marines whose names he touched. He stood and in a thick voice said to Myer, "Let's head back to the company and do what we can to make it a long, long time before any names go onto that fifth Stone."

Anatoly Sibir called his boss and told him he was too sick to come into work. In fact he wasn't sick, except perhaps from love. Or maybe it was just infatuation, one could never quite tell with people so young. He was in love with Sonja Koryak. Or maybe it was simple lust. Sonja was a year and a half younger than Anatoly and still a university student, though she was going to graduate in the spring. It was not at all happenstance that she skipped classes on the same day Anatoly called out sick. The two lived in the city of Neu-Kiev, near the southern border of Ammon, and planned to meet and spend the day together in the wilderness without any of their elders--those stuffy original Frères Jacques--lecturing them on how dangerous it was outside the borders of Ammon.

When you're young and in love, there is no risk too great to take to be alone with your love.

Their rendezvous was at the southern edge of town. Anatoly added Sonja's basket to the blanket and wine bottle he'd already stored in his scoot's trunk, then she mounted behind him; the scoot was just the right size for two, if they were friendly enough. The road ended abruptly five kilometers south, where the foresting operation had recently been terminated until the tree farm within its boundaries became mature enough to harvest. But the land was level and recently cleared, so they continued another ten kilometers, to the edge of the forest, then turned along it toward the cliffs of the Salainen Mountains, a short distance farther to the west, where Anatoly had recently found a secluded glade. It was just a brief walk up the slope of the mountainside, and he thought it was exactly right as a trysting spot for two young lovers such as Sonja and himself.

When they got there they discovered he wasn't the only one who'd found the glade and thought it was ideal--it was already occupied by another young couple, who were so engrossed with each other they didn't notice they had company.

Anatoly and Sonja discreetly withdrew and decided to climb higher. Surely that would place them far enough from the possibility of interruption.

Right at the foot of a slope the trees bent away to form a cozy cul-de-sac, and they set out their picnic. After they ate, they excused themselves to go politely behind bushes for relief.

Anatoly came back excited, and insisted Sonja come see what he'd found.

He'd gone uphill a short way and found a saddle from which he could see into the valley beyond. She was reluctant, but he was insistent. He took the blanket when they went to explore.

On the saddle's other side was virgin territory. It truly looked as though the foot of man had never trod there. The foliage of the trees and other growth was scarlet, pink, amber, blue, and all of the ten billion greens. The trees were spaced as if in an orchard, and the undergrowth was almost polite in the open spaces between them. The ground cover was spongy underfoot.

Sonja's eyes glowed as she took in the natural beauty that surrounded them. Anatoly's eyes gleamed as he took in the natural beauty of his love.

It wasn't long before they had the blanket laid on the ground, themselves laid on it, and their clothing disheveled and then some.

They broke from a blissful clench and Sonja opened her eyes to drink in more of the beauty of their surroundings. Instead, her eyes opened wider in horror and her mouth opened in a soundless scream. Anatoly's eyes were too busy drinking in the beauty of her breasts to notice, so he was unaware of their danger until a stream of greenish fluid splashed across both of them and he arched his back in agony. It may have been a kindness that he was in too much pain to see the acid that splashed across Sonja's face and breasts and ate them away.

CHAPTER FIVE

Three months after the discovery of the remains of Samar Volga in the Haltia region of Maugham's Station, Tarah Shiskanova, an analyst third class in the Development Control Division of the Department of Colonial Development, Population Control, and Xenobiological Studies, was surfing through routine reports from recently colonized planets--those that could reasonably be called "frontier worlds" even though many of them were well within the outer boundaries of Human Space--to determine where to file them when she stopped to read an Unexplained Expiration report all the way through. The report detailed the curious and somewhat gruesome death of two young colonists on the colony world called Maugham's Station.

There wasn't anything all that unusual about the report; colonists did occasionally meet death in unexpected and sometimes spectacular manner. But something about that one niggled at her. She read through it again, wracking her brain in search of what it was. Oh,
yes!
It was the second Unexplained Expiration report from Maugham's Station that had crossed her desk in recent weeks. But, no, three unexplained deaths on a colony world over a period of several weeks was hardly far enough out of routine to catch her attention, so what was it about this one?

She went into the files to retrieve the earlier report. The first report gave details of the demise of one Samar Volga, a botanist on a solo study of the flora of an unexplored area of Maugham's Station. She paused at that, wondering if it was routine for biologists to venture alone into unexplored areas, decided it didn't matter, then compared the two reports.

This time she noted a detail that had seemed insignificant when she'd seen it in isolation.

The remains of the young couple and the earlier biologist showed signs of having been eaten by acid. The type of acid wasn't noted.

Odd, she thought. What was it that seemed significant about that? She read through the two reports again. Another mental synapse clicked and she remembered something else that, at the time, had seemed to have no bearing whatsoever on her job.

A year or so earlier she had been engaged in a passionate affair with an army colonel who worked in the Heptagon. One night, after a particularly enthusiastic bout of lovemaking, he'd said something about a mysterious danger that had struck a couple of frontier worlds--human worlds, but on the fringes of Human Space. Invaders who used acid weapons.

At least that's what it sounded like he said; he was rather vague about it, and she wasn't listening all that closely. When she'd asked for clarification, he quickly backed off and told her to forget he'd said anything, it was classified Ultra Secret, Need to Know, and he wasn't supposed to know anything about it himself. She was so filled with an excess of afterglow from the sex, she'd readily forgotten about it.

Until now.

What
had
he been talking about? A rebellion? No, he said a couple of worlds. A war between human worlds? No, she would have heard about a war between human worlds if there'd been one, no matter how obscure were the worlds involved. An alien invasion?

She snorted a laugh. Everybody knew there was no other sentience anywhere humanity was likely to make contact, maybe not even in the entire galaxy. Well, maybe somewhere in the other spiral arm, but humanity wouldn't encounter
them
for many millennia to come. If they even existed. In reality, alien invasions only happened in some of the more lurid trids and books.

Still, the colonel had said the business of acid weapons was classified Ultra Secret, Need to Know, so it must be somehow significant. He
had
said something about acid weapons, hadn't he?

Tarah Shiskanova decided that her reports were, possibly, something the military should know about.

So instead of uploading the new file into the Open Directory of Unexplained Expirations, where reports of odd fatalities normally went, she annotated it as of possible military interest, attached a copy of the earlier report to it, and queued it up the line for review.

It was a slow month, and Fourth Assistant Director for Control Himan Birkenstock was seriously bored. It was three more weeks until his scheduled holiday--he was taking his wife and children to the dizzney on the moon's far side--and he wasn't sure he could last three more weeks without going completely vacuum-crazy. He desperately needed something to do, something to get him out of the office for an hour or three. Thus it happened that, without reading beyond her annotation recommending referral to the Heptagon for disposition, he jumped on the report Tarah Shiskanova had forwarded.

A distant cousin of Birkenstock's was a lieutenant commander in the Confederation Navy who had been posted to the Heptagon six months earlier. Ever since, the two had been promising each other they'd get together for lunch some day "soon." Some day soon hadn't come yet.

Birkenstock immediately punched up the Heptagon directory and did a search for Lieutenant Commander Stewart "Soupy" Gullkarl, CN. In less than a second a listing appeared in the Directorate for Orbital Weaponry Assessment and Evaluation. He touched the comm link in the listing, and in only a few more seconds got a response.

"Lieutenant Commander Gullkarl. How can I help you, sir?" The gray in the neatly trimmed beard shown in the projection belied the youthful features of the barely remembered oval face.

Birkenstock blinked in surprise; he hadn't realized his cousin was old-fashioned enough to wear spectacles instead of having his eyes corrected.

"Soupy? It's Himan," he said.

"Himan?" Birkenstock distinctly heard an unspoken
Who?
after his name before Gullkarl's face lit up in recognition. "Himan Birkenstock! Good to hear from you, cousin. You know, we really do need to get together for lunch sometime."

"Well, cousin, that's why I'm calling. How about today?"

"Don't know." Light reflected off the lenses of Gullkarl's spectacles as he shook his head.

"I've got quite a bit of work here." That was their usual excuse for not meeting; one or the other always seemed to have a lot of work to do, though that was hardly Birkenstock's problem just now.

"And I want to add to it."

"You do?" Gullkarl looked at him with a mix of interest and curiosity. He wasn't really busy with work, he had a tentative "discreet" luncheon meeting planned with a lieutenant commander--female--in the Directorate of Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention and Control. He was hoping that the "meeting" would actually happen and turn into a
very
long and intimate luncheon.

"Yes. One of my analysts flagged a"--he looked at the report to see what it was and where it was from--"an Unexplained Expiration report from Maugham's Station as being of possible military interest. I don't know who to route it to, and I was hoping you could give me some direction."