Starfist: Blood Contact (25 page)

After twenty-five meters the trees abruptly ended at the edge of a small clearing in a flat spot on the mountainside. The game trail led into the clearing. Another led away from the opposite side. A pool filled most of the clearing, probably runoff from a recent rainfall. Many animals were in the pool or gathered around it. Several of them, with tails as thick as their torsos, were nearly a meter long, with shiny, redspeckled bodies that slinked from side to side as they slithered about on legs so short they didn't quite hold the bodies above the ground. A few others were bulkier, perhaps weighing twenty kilos, pale green bodies spotted with brown or blue. Those had massive hind legs folded alongside their abdomens, and neckless heads that seemed to be nearly all mouth. Most of the animals were smaller and skittered about between the larger few. Some of the animals were tussling, perhaps mating or in mating competition.

Most of them carried their heads pointed up into the air as though they were looking for something above them.

As the Marines watched, a half-meter-long, tube-bodied insect ventured into the air of the clearing.

The legs of one of the large, pale green animals straightened like coiled springs suddenly released and it flew into the air. An impossibly long tongue shot out of its mouth almost faster than it could be seen and snagged the large insectoid. The green animal plopped when it landed. As large as the flying animal was, only the tip of its tail and a few outer edges of its many wings were visible outside the amphibian's mouth.

The amphibian swallowed and all of the creature disappeared.

Kerr sagged, the tension suddenly drained out of his body. An animal that captured prey with its tongue probably didn't spit acid to eat away a human body.

"All clear," he said into the command frequency. "It's local fauna."

"You sure there's nobody else around?" Bass asked.

Kerr rotated through his screens. "Nothing visible in visual or infra," he replied.

"Rabbit, verify," Bass ordered.

"Roger," Sergeant Ratliff acknowledged. Bass listened as Ratliff ordered his point fire team to move at an angle downhill to approach Kerr's fire team from the side, and his second fire team to move forward to a position directly uphill from it. He told Dornhofer he'd be right behind first fire team.

In less than two minutes Ratliff and his point fire team reached the side of the clearing to the left of Kerr and his men.

"Kerr, by the numbers, make a move so I can verify who I see in infra," Ratliff said. He saw a pseudopod of red lift from the central of the three human-sized heat signals his infra screen showed and wave in a circle.

"Rock, make a move," Kerr ordered.

Ratliff saw Claypoole's movement.

"Mac, do it."

Ratliff watched MacIlargie's verifying arm wave.

"Confirmed," Ratliff said. "I don't see anything else that looks like a warm-body heat signal. Pasquin, do you see anything?"

"Negative," came the reply.

"There's a clearing downhill from you. Approach with caution."

"Roger."

In another moment the second fire team reached the uphill side of the clearing.

"Great Buddha's balls," someone murmured.

Ratliff checked his motion detector. It didn't show any movement beyond the pool clearing and the Marines who ringed it. "All clear," he reported.

One of the massive amphibians sprang into the air to catch a broad-winged insect.

"Hey, that's Leslie!" Dobervich exclaimed.

"What?"

"Yeah," Dobervich said. "When I was a kid my family had a dog about that size. She was off-white and loved to eat, always hopping up to catch treats, just like that."

"Your dog caught insects with her tongue?"

"Your dog had a mouth that big?"

"No, she didn't have a mouth that big, and she didn't catch her food with her tongue. But she should have had a mouth that big the way she was always begging for food." Dobervich stood and stepped into the clearing.

The amphibians stopped what they were doing and looked around for danger. They hadn't heard any of the radio transmissions the Marines made, and the Marines had moved quietly enough that the animals hadn't heard their approach. But they did hear the sound of Dobervich stepping into the clearing.

"Freeze," Ratliff ordered. None of the Marines moved; they barely breathed.

After a moment without seeing or hearing anything else threatening, the amphibians began to return to their mating and feeding. One of the big hoppers saw Dobervich's unscreened face hovering in midair and read it as some sort of insect. It hopped up and shot out its tongue.

Dobervich yelped and swatted at the tongue, but as fast as he moved, the tongue was faster. It hit and withdrew before he made contact. The amphibians scattered out of the clearing at Dobervich's yelp.

"Yep, just like a dog," Schultz said. "Licked your face." He hawked onto the ground.

"Quite a display there," Bass said dryly. "Your Leslie is gone. Let's get back on the move; we've got some survivors to find."

In less than a minute third platoon and the medical team were back on the move.

Again Schultz led the platoon uphill and to the right. He didn't attempt to travel in a beeline, but constantly looked at the lay of the mountainside, picking a route that even the medical team members could negotiate without undue difficulty. At the same time, Schultz led them past as few potential ambush sites as possible, while always moving in the general direction of the sighting.

His senses registered the sounds and sights of normal activity among the animals that lived in the mountain's forest, and filtered them out. He'd notice any unusual behavior, which would alert him to danger. He couldn't write a paper on the activities of the indigenous life-forms of Waygone, but he'd studied the scientists' reports on those life-forms during the voyage from Thorsfinni's World and made his own observations during the time he'd been planetside. He strongly suspected he'd notice anything out of the ordinary. He was generally very good at that kind of observation. Nobody survived as pointman on as many different worlds as he had without being very good at observing native fauna.

It wasn't anything in particular that caught his attention.

The leslies and other amphibians Schultz saw or heard were going about their usual hopping, slithering, plopping, splashing movements. The insectoids buzzed and flitted about without a seeming care until some were snagged by flicking tongues and swallowed whole by an amphibian—and those that weren't snagged and swallowed ignored the fates of their late cousins.

Nothing that met Schultz's senses changed. But he felt something. Men in combat, maybe not all of them but certainly some, develop a sixth sense that tells them when they aren't alone. Sometimes it can even tell them in what direction the danger is in, even when they can't identify anything in particular that alerted them.

Schultz stopped and eased down to one knee, his head swiveling slowly, eyes burning into every shadow. "Hold up," he murmured into his helmet radio.

"What do you have?" Ratliff asked.

"Nothing." But he kept looking. The feeling he had wasn't distinct, it didn't tell him which side the danger he felt came from or whether it was ahead of him or behind. "Someone's watching us," he murmured. "Don't know where."

"Are you sure?"

Schultz didn't bother to answer. He put out his motion detector and started alternating between his infra and light-gatherer screens. He heard Ratliff order the rest of the squad to do the same. He waited and watched. Nothing showed up on any of his sensors.

"Who's watching us, Hammer?" Gunny Bass asked over the radio.

"Don't know. I feel them." The other Marines thought Schultz had no nerves, that he was always calm.

But just then he was almost jittering. It was unnatural to him that he could feel someone watching without knowing in what direction to look for the watcher.

"They can't see us, Hammer," Bass said. "We don't have any evidence they can see in infrared."

"If they know how to look they can."

"Not many people know how to look."

"Are they people?"

It was Bass's turn to not answer.

After ten minutes with none of the Marines seeing or hearing anything that seemed out of the ordinary, and none of their sensors picking up sign of anything that wasn't native fauna, Bass ordered Schultz to move out.

He didn't move; not even his eyes swiveled. He repressed a shiver. The shiver was a combination of blood lust and uncertainty. He was primed to fight and kill and die. He wasn't a watcher, he was a fighter.

The Earth barbarians were his prey, it was his duty to close with them and kill as many of them as possible before they killed him. Every fiber of his being ached to do that. He couldn't close and kill now, though. His orders were clear: find them, track them, find out how many there were, report back when they joined with the others. The watchers were females, quiet unaggressive creatures, who could sit quiescent for long periods of time and observe. He was male, a fighter, an aggressive creature bred and trained to fight and kill. But this time the Master decided a female sitting quietly wasn't the right one to watch. They didn't know where the Earth barbarians were, how they moved, what formations they used.

To gain that information, the Master decided to use a fighter. He was chosen. It pained him almost to death to know the enemy was nearby and yet not attack. But he must do as the Master said; obedience was as much a part of his makeup as aggressiveness and the need to kill the enemy. To make sure he obeyed, he was sent naked and unarmed.

He felt uncertainty because he couldn't see them. Only the electric receptors that ran from his gill slits to his hips had told him that he neared them. And almost as soon as he realized they were only ten large one's lengths away and he had settled into a hiding place to watch, they stopped as though they knew he was there. Now they were on the move again. Why did they stop? Why did they resume climbing the mountain? He did not know, he could see only a few, far back in their column, and could hear nothing that they said.

The invisible ones, those he sensed were most dangerous, moved silently as well as invisibly. The few he could see, near the end of the column, made noise as they moved through the forest. He waited until they passed him, then rose and followed the sounds of the visible ones.

They were close, only a few hundred more meters to the spot where the
Fairfax
had detected what appeared to be a man. Schultz, still the first man in the column, was rounding an upthrusting of rock when he stopped. His nose crinkled as he sniffed the air. The pungent aroma of an unbathed body wafted to him. He slid his infra screen into place and carefully examined the mountainside to his front. All that showed in infra were tiny, fleeting specks that were probably small amphibians going about their business.

"Someone's near."

"Can you tell where?" Dornhofer asked.

Schultz raised his infra and sniffed again. The light breeze was coming from his front. The way the air seemed to eddy, he guessed the smell came from somewhere on the other side of the upcropping, where he couldn't see. "Wait, I'll check." He carefully picked his way downhill until the woodier trees that grew that high on the mountain blocked his view of the rocks. He sidled along until he was sure he was well beyond the end of the outcrop, then began climbing. Soon he smelled the pungent aroma again, mixed in with another, more fetid odor. He guessed whoever it was must be facing uphill and began circling to approach him from the side. In his right hand he carefully kept his blaster aimed where he looked. He used his left to flip his infra screen up and down as he examined the area in the visual and the infrared.

There! He saw the signature in infrared. He flipped his infra up and saw an emaciated man rising from a squat and adjusting trousers that were almost too ragged to bother with. A long knife hung from a scabbard on his belt. A mass of brown slopped down the mountainside behind him, soiled leaves scattered in and around the brown mass. Clearly he'd just found a survivor. He dropped the infra back into place and carefully looked around. No other signatures. The man picked up a hand weapon, looked around nervously, then began to climb the mountainside.

"Freeze right there," Schultz ordered.

The man froze, his weather-beaten face blanched at the words.

"Wh-Who, where are you?" He didn't move except for his head and panicky eyes as he searched for the source of Schultz's voice. The pistol dangled from his limp hand.

"I've got you in my blaster sights. Anyone else nearby?"

"N-No. I-I'm alone." The man was visibly quivering.

A wet stain that spread suddenly on the seat of his pants convinced Schultz the man was telling the truth.

"Put your weapon down by your feet, then lay on your face."

While the man complied, Schultz reported his discovery on the command net.

"Rabbit, join him," Bass ordered. "I'll be right there."

Ratliff left Schultz guarding the man as soon as he arrived and set his other men in positions uphill from him.

"Wh-Who are you?" the man asked in a quaking voice. "What's going on here? Why can't I see anybody?"

"Confederation Marines," Bass said [as] he arrived in time to hear the man's question. "Nobody sees us until we want them to. Who're you?"

"Th-They call me Sharpedge."

"Are you one of the scientists from Aquarius?"

"No—y-yes! I'm from Aquarius! I'm one of the scientists. Yes!"

"A scientist called ‘Sharpedge’? Why don't I believe that?" Bass said, eyeing the scabbard on the man's belt. He softly padded to Sharpedge, swiftly drew the knife, and stepped back out of reach before the man could move. "Nice blade, Sharpedge. What's a scientist doing with a knife like this? You don't look like a field biologist. Or a geologist." He tested the edge of the blade with his thumb; it was very sharp.

"Th-There are things out here, a man needs to defend himself." Sharpedge raised his head and looked about maniacally. Bass grunted.