The Eternal Enemy (29 page)

“Which way?” Straka asked Wilhelm.

Wilhelm pointed to the south, into the ground fog. “Single file?”

“Yes.”

They started out toward the settlement. They had to get a prisoner. If her group failed, Markos's group would land and try to finish the job. They were up against far too many unknowns for Straka to feel anything but anxious about the whole encounter. Too damned many unknowns. And if they failed, failure would be permanent.

“There,” Markatens whispered. “Look.”

He pointed to a spot east of the settlement, off to the left. A small group of Hydrans were walking away from the settlement. “Let's circle around,” Straka said.

“I don't see why,” Kominski said. “Let's just charge them and get this over with. These belts work, and that alone should be enough of a surprise for us to—”

“No,” Straka ordered. “No direct confrontations unless absolutely necessary. We'll circle around and try to head them off.” She sighted a course down the path the Hydrans were taking. “All right, follow me.”

She set off through the muck.

Nothing in life is ever as simple as it seems, Straka thought. Markos says he wants our help to fight a war, we agree, and look at us now. The Hydrans were bad enough in the crystals, but we had some distance from them then. There's a feeling of safety in the back of your mind when you're reading one of those, no matter how real they may seem. All that's in the back of my mind now is fear.

From their intersecting path Straka couldn't see much detail of the Hydrans' bodies. She could see their three body sections and their black, shiny exoskeleton, if that was what it was, and their strange three-legged gait. She couldn't tell if they were carrying weapons yet. Three legs, she thought. A horror in hand-to-hand combat.

They were making good progress through the swampy ground, leaving the rocky, boulder-strewn terrain behind, moving into a wetter area. This was a place Straka would be glad to leave. There was nothing about the area to make her feel comfortable, and she would have found it hard to ever consider herself at home here. The Habers who had lived here must have done some severe adapting.

They reached the spot where they wanted to be without detection and settled in for the short wait. The Hydrans would be along in a matter of seconds. Straka turned and checked each of her crew, making sure their bodies were hard, that their lasetubes were still in their hands.

If Straka had adrenaline, it would have been pumping. As it was, her mind was tense and uneasy over the upcoming confrontation. Her body was relaxed, ready to go into overdrive as soon as needed.

When she turned back to face the Hydrans, she saw them clearly. The six creatures were practically identical, and none of them had the white markings Straka had been cued to look for. Those with the white markings had mowed down anything in their paths that moved.

They might not be armed, Straka thought.

The Hydrans were fifteen meters away, approaching slowly.

“As soon as they walk past, we'll move,” she whispered.

The Hydrans continued their approach.

When the first two had walked past Kominski, he leaped up from the brush and lased them down. The smell was incredible. All hell broke loose.

The two farthest away started to run at an incredible speed through the wet ground, the three legs working like a horse's at full gallop. They exuded an overpowering stench that Straka recognized from the crystals. Markatens and Wilhelm had thrown themselves at the other two aliens, the ones trapped in the middle.

Straka's laser blast caught one of the fleeing Hydrans in the back, and it crumpled to the ground. The other one kept running, and Straka realized she would have to set off after him or run the risk of the entire encampment being alerted to their presence. She hoped Kominski would help Markatens and Wilhelm if she didn't get back immediately.

The ground pulled at her feet like suction cups. Running was a difficult task, though a necessary one. The alien had a healthy lead. Straka just hoped she could get off a good shot. Overtaking and capturing him was out of the question. The Hydran seemed to be gaining more and more ground—she made a mental note to report their speed to Markos. If she ever saw Markos again.

They were rapidly approaching the Hydran settlement. Straka realized she would have to lase the creature now or run for her life. If the Hydran made it inside those walls, the rest of them would probably pour out of the place armed and angry.

She stopped and aimed the tube, making her entire body as rigid as possible. She activated the tube and swung it in a tight arc. The Hydran's body toppled.

She then did something distinctly human. She breathed a sigh of relief.

She hurried back to the others, to see how they had done. Between the three of them they should have been able to capture both of the creatures.

The smell and cold and murky scenery were no longer noticed as she made her way back. The way her feet made sucking noises, the way her vision was sweeping over the electromagnetic spectrum, the way she felt after killing those two Hydrans—none of it mattered. She would have time to think about those things later in the safety of the mother ship. The important thing now, the
only
important thing, was finding the others and making sure they were alive.

She felt like she'd been walking a long time—too long a time—and realized she might have missed the others. She was afraid of shouting to attract their attention; she might end up attracting the Hydrans too. How far had she run? It couldn't have been this far.

Nothing around her looked familiar. As she stood there, she realized there were no real landmarks, that the swampy vegetation looked pretty much the same, that it was just one, big, overgrown area. Panic started to creep into her mind, and she tried to stop it. If it got the better of her, she'd be finished.

I'll just walk straight ahead, like I was doing, she thought. Maybe it was farther than I thought.

She kept her lasetube in her hand, ready to raise it to the firing position at a moment's notice. She walked, trying not to think about where she was, what she was doing there, while still keeping her mind painfully attuned to her surroundings and the changes in them.

She walked another twenty meters when she saw them, sitting on the trail. She felt a smile emerge as she saw the group, glad to see them alive, glad to find them at all. Her eyes leaked green.

“Did you get them?” Kominski asked.

Straka flashed red. “I had to chase one for a while. I was afraid he was going to get away. These bastards can really move.”

“How fast?” Wilhelm asked.

“About a half again as fast as we can. What happened here while I was gone?”

No one said a word.

“Where are the Hydrans? You didn't let them get away, did you?”

“No,” Wilhelm said.

“Well? Where are they? What happened?”

No one answered.

“I lased one of them,” Kominski said.

That figures, Straka thought. “What about the other?”

“He's back in the swamp,” Wilhelm said, motioning with his hand to an area off the trail.

“Alive?” Straka asked.

“We think so. Through no help of Kominski, though.”

“Can't we kill it? We could stay and find some more of them to fight,” Kominski said.

Straka shook her head. “I'm going to take a look at it. It had better be alive, Kominski.”

“God, 'Minski, I thought you'd killed enough for one day,” Wilhelm said.

“Killing Hydrans isn't really killing,” Kominski said.

Straka took a few steps off the trail in the direction Wilhelm had pointed. When she saw the first corpse, she understood why Wilhelm was upset. Right beside the corpse, lying flat on its back, was the second Hydran. Little hairs around its neck moved as air rushed in and out of its body.

The dead Hydran had been lased four times—once longitudinally, once laterally, and twice on the diagonal. Like slicing a pie, Straka thought. Kominski is sicker than ever.

The Hydran had to have been lying right there, helpless, the two of them side by side, when Kominski sliced up the first. It must have seen and understood what Kominski had done and had remained totally motionless. It was certainly capable of feeling fear, or else it was exercising caution. Either way it recognized the value of remaining motionless. In any case, it was smart enough not to panic.

“Can you understand me?” Straka asked the Hydran.

It didn't move.

It didn't make a sound.

“Don't waste your breath,” Wilhelm said. “We already tried, verbally, with signs, and with our eyes.”

“Well, it seems alive enough to me,” Straka said. “Let's see about getting it on its feet and back to the ship. We got what we came for.”

“Not me,” Kominski said.

“Fine,” Straka said. “Then we'll leave you here. We'll be back to pick you up in a few thousand years objective.”

Wilhelm laughed.

“Let's get it back to the ship,” Straka said.

“Right,” Wilhelm said, rising to his feet. “Give us a hand?” he asked Markatens.

Markatens, Wilhelm, and Straka managed to get the Hydran to its feet. Kominski remained seated.

“He was only kidding, Kominski,” Wilhelm said. “You can't stay here.”

“But I
want
to.”

“Forget it,” Straka said. “I was only joking. Come on. We've got to get moving, and that's an order.”

“Oh, all right. I was getting to like this place. So many Hydrans,” Kominski said.

“Sure you were,” Wilhelm said.

Straka motioned for the Hydran to start walking. The Hydran remained immobile. “Give him a little push, Markatens.”

Markatens pushed, and the Hydran started off.

“He's giving off some odor, some kind of chemical,” Markatens said as they walked. “It's faint but detectable.”

“You figure that's normal?” Straka asked.

“He wasn't doing it while lying by the path,” Wilhelm said.

“It's similar to the smell they give off in combat,” Markatens said.

“Perhaps it's just from physical exertion,” Straka said.

No one said anything.

“Well, it was just an idea.”

Wilhelm took the point position, walking four meters ahead of Kominski, Straka, Markatens, and their Hydran prisoner. When the group approached the end of the vegetated area, Wilhelm stopped and held his hand up for the others to stop. He motioned them down, and they crouched low, waiting for him to motion them forward. Straka figured it was another patrol of Hydrans, like the one they had ambushed.

Wilhelm ran back to the group. “You're not going to believe this, man, but we're surrounded.”

“What?” Straka said. “How the hell can we be surrounded?”

“The ship. They've encircled the ship. I can see it from here.”

“Kominski and Markatens, stay with the Hydran. I'm going up there with Wilhelm to check this out. Don't let the Hydran get away.”

“Right,” Kominski said.

Straka hoped Kominski wouldn't just kill it and say it tried to escape. Without the prisoner they had nothing. Straka followed Wilhelm, slowly and silently making her way through the muck and the mire. They came to the edge of the swampy area; a rocky plain stretched out before them, a large clearing dotted with clumps of boulders and large rocks, dying vegetation. Their ship was about two hundred meters away, surrounded, just as Wilhelm had said, by a ring of Hydrans.

“What are they doing?” Wilhelm asked.

“It looks like they're waiting. Waiting for us to return, or waiting for us to open the bay door and leave the ship.”

“I don't get it.”

“They may not know we've already left the ship. They may think we're still on board.”

“Then what do we do?” Wilhelm asked.

“I'm not sure. They look armed.” She surveyed the scene carefully, trying to take in as much information as possible. “Let's get back to the others.”

They retreated cautiously, unsure if the Hydrans could detect their presence over that distance, but feeling safety and caution were definitely in order. If there had been Habers surrounding the ship, Straka was sure they would have been spotted. Habers could detect visual change easily. They had no idea about the Hydrans' ability to see, though.

When they returned to Kominski and Markatens, the Hydran was the same as he'd been when they left. At least it hadn't detected the large group ahead.

“How many are there?” Markatens asked.

Straka leaked a canary yellow from her eyes. “I'm not really sure, though it may not matter.”

“How's that?” Kominski asked.

“We're not going to be able to do any fighting. Not with him,” Straka said, motioning toward the alien.

“I'd be glad to take care of him,” Kominski said, raising his lasetube so that it pointed squarely at the Hydran's chest.

“Don't!” Straka ordered. “This isn't over yet. We need him alive, Kominski. Not freshly dissected.”

“Then what do we do with him?” Kominski asked.

Straka looked away. It was a question whose answer she knew too well. In a fight to regain their ship, their belts would protect them from the Hydrans' laser fire—but nothing would protect the Hydran if they carried it along with them. Once the Hydrans saw their laser fire being deflected by the crew's belts, they'd be swarming all over Straka and her men in a moment, a horde of ruthless killers, soldiers, destroyers.

I can't afford to leave anyone behind to guard the Hydran, Straka thought. What
do
you do with a prisoner when you go into battle? I mean, what do you do with it besides kill it beforehand?

“I have a suggestion,” Markatens said.

Straka looked over at the young Haber. “What is it?”

“Why don't we immobilize the Hydran, attempt to make our way back to the ship, and return for it if possible.”