The Prize: Book One (13 page)

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"Major?”  The Sergeant's voice interrupted her thoughts as they followed the ridge line behind Penn.  "Whatever you, or I might think about that man.  I know for a fact that he ran our troops ragged for ten years in a jungle like this.  We had some good jungle troops, or we thought we did, but nothing like him.  He's as much at home in here as any animal.  If anyone can get us to the objective, he can.”

"Sorry I snapped, Sergeant Jaxx, but he aggravates the hell out of me.”

"Me too, Major, me too.”  Sergeant Jaxx gave her a quick saluted and followed the troopers, keeping whatever else he thought to himself.  A little later, Captain Carras asked, panting for breath.

"Have you ever run into this man, before, ma'am?  I mean, when you were on Earth?”  The Captain asked as he struggled to catch up with her.

Plodding through the rotting humus, and scummy mud puddles, his combat OD's felt ten times heavier than normal with all the water, sweat and mud.  The inside of his boots felt squelchy as if they were full of water.

"No, can't say that I have.  But I heard about him, and knew men like him.”  Scenes of the devastation, death, and starvation flashed through her mind.

“I left soon after the so-called armistice, when the Empire graciously opened its recruitment to off-worlders.”  She hid her bitterness, but it wasn't hard for Captain Carras to detect the cynical tone in her voice as she said it.  For a young, orphan girl with no friends or family, hiding from the marauders, rape gangs and slavers the Empire's offer seemed like a gift from heaven at the time.

"So you don't know much of his history.”

"Can't say that I do, other than what I read in his file, and that doesn't endear him to me either.”  She sucked more water from her camel pack, thankful for the integrated cooling unit.  She had no way of knowing how much of Penn's record was amended.

"Can you tell me, if I'm not being disrespectful, why your people keep fighting when it's was obvious you couldn't win?”  Hearing that, Ellis let out a snorting laugh, thinking of how many times someone had told her, she couldn't win.

"Stupidity and stubbornness mostly, Captain, and our history.”  She grunted, pulling her foot out of another sucking mud puddle, stinging sweat dripping into her eyes.                "Unlike other members of this wonderful Empire we are now members of, few have had the wars we had on Earth.”

"My planet had wars.”  The Captain answered, sounding almost proud.

"Did they include exterminating millions of innocent people just because they were of a different religion, or because of the color of their skin?"

"By the Holy Mother, no.  Mainly intertribal, you would call it.”

“So you never dropped a nuclear weapon on another country?"

"Good God, no!  Who would be crazy enough to do something that stupid…”  His words spluttered to a halt as he realized the Major was serious.  Ellis had to laugh at the expression on his face.

"We did.  We dealt in the wholesale destruction of our fellow man, all in the name of a flag or a principal.”  Her laugh was anything but humorous.  “If a planet could be said to have a national sport, then Earth's was war.  However, to answer your question, you first have to understand that we as species are highly territorial.”  She stopped speaking for a moment as they negotiated their way through, and around a tangle of fallen trees, then continued.

“Once we have taken something away from someone else, usually at great cost in lives, theirs and ours, we are loathe to give it back, also at great cost in lives.”

“I believe I understand that, Major.”  The Captain panted as he pulled his left foot out of a knee-deep mud puddle.  By now, everyone except Penn was covered in the slick black mud from the waist down.  How Penn managed to avoid getting covered in the stuff, no one could figure out.

“Good.  In addition, don't forget from our point of view, we were fighting an invading alien army.  The gloves came off, and we turned Earth into a free fire zone.  Do you know what open season is?”

“Um, I'm not sure what that is.”

“Open season means permission to kill a particular number of animal within a given area at certain times of the year.  Like hunting season.”

“Oh, I understand now.”

“Well, we declared open season on any alien running around with no bag limit.”

“But… but… you must have known you couldn't win?”  The thought suddenly occurred to Captain Carras, that from the Major's point of view, he was one of those alien's, she was referring to.

“Go tell it to the Marines.”  Ellis muttered, remembering something her Dad told her a few months before he died.

“The Marines?”

“Yes, a unit in Earth's military that we affectionately called 'jarheads'.  They were so dumb no one could teach them the meaning of surrender or retreat.”

“But, in any war, you have to retreat sometimes, and even surrender.”

“Not to the Marines.  They simply adapt, improvise, overcome and attack in a different direction.”

“Don't retreat.  Attack in a different direction.”  Something about the phrase connected with the Captain, and he vowed to remember it.

CHAPTER - NINE:   

Three days later, Ellis had to admit, had she been leading the mission, they'd most likely be hopelessly lost.  Every time she checked her compass, they seemed to be going in every direction instead of the one she thought they should be going.  For the first few hour after they started walking, the jungle didn’t seem that bad, a little hot and humid, as expected, some mud puddles or small pools of standing water covered with scum and insects.  All in all not too bad and nothing more than any one of them had handled before.   Now, every mile they slogged, the temperature and humidity went up a notch, the underbrush became more tangled until it felt as if this green hell, with its never-ending vista of trees and tangled underbrush felt as if it was sucking the very life out of them.  Now you couldn't see more than ten feet in any direction, and walking in a straight line was out of the question.   On the morning of the fourth day, someone suggested simply cutting, or chopping, a straight-line path through the jungle in the direction of the pyramid, much to Penn’s disagreement.  That lasted all of two hours, until everyone was completely exhausted from swinging an ax or machete.  Even Trooper Class with his enormous strength finally admitted defeat and slumped to the wet ground against a giant tree root, panting for breath.   Penn on the other hand squatted on a tree root intently watching a line of leaf cutter ants coming and going up the huge tree next to him.  One line marched in line up the tree, while the other marched in line down the tree carrying large bits of leaf in their mandibles.  Every so often a larger ant with massive mandibles protected the line of workers from would be thieves of other colonies.  Ellis sucked more water from her camel pack as sweat dripped from her face onto the soaking wet shirt she wore.

Like salt in an open wound, the fact that Penn wasn’t even winded, and barely working up a sweat.  Penn didn’t hack and chop his way through the dense undergrowth, but swayed between the branches, ferns and broad leaf plants like a dancer, barely touching a plant here and there to move it out of his way.  Rarely did he have to slash at the vines or plants, unless it was strictly necessary to make a path.  No matter which way they went, they were constantly negotiating their way around a minefield of giant tree roots, sucking mud puddles, and fallen trees trunks.  The bushes seemed to reach out and snag on buckles and equipment, or sharp hooks snagged their clothing and skin, while a vast array of biting and bloodsucking insects tried to devour them a bite at the time.

They lost their first man on the fourth day while following an almost invisible game trail through an oppressively thick stretch of jungle.  The incessant pounding rain that came in as regularly as clockwork added to their misery as they slowly negotiated their way through the deep mud holes and intervening vegetation.  Half the troopers had already passed through the particular mud hole with no problems, but senior squad leader Sartac stepped in, and started sinking fast.  A couple of men managed to get hold of him, but they couldn't pull him out, and they watched in horror as he slowly sank.  It was as if something down there was pulling him in.  They saw the look of terror in his panic stricken eyes as the black, stinking mud reached his chest.  That's when he started to scream in pain.  There was obviously something beneath the mud dragging him down.  He begged for help, his face contorted in agony, but that was impossible without losing more men.  The helpless troopers stood around as Sartac sank to his chin, looking at one another as if hoping someone would tell them what to do.  Hearing the screams Penn rushed back.  One look was all he needed, and grabbing Dana's rifle and pointed it at sinking man.  Penn paused for a second to look Sartac in the eye, seeing Sartac nod as Penn pointed the rifle at him.  The pleading look said it all.

“Vaya con Dios, hermano."  Penn murmured and shot him in the head.  Shoving the rifle back into Dana’s hands, he noted the sick smile on his face.  The sick prick enjoyed seeing Sartac die like that, but Penn said nothing, he just turned and walked away without a word.  Ellis saw a couple of men lift their weapons and quickly stepped between them and Penn, holding them back.  Like Penn, what she couldn't figure out was why squad Leader Dana was smiling.

"Why?"  Captain Carras asked, pointing a shaky hand at the mud hole, a finger of steam drifting up from the center where Sartac had been.

"If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand,” Sergeant Jaxx muttered before Ellis could answer.

"What… what did he say?” another asked.

"He said, 'Go with God, my bother'."  Ellis answered softly.

A few looked at Penn and nodded.  Feeling a fresh respect for this strange Earthman.  He might not be one of them, but he had the soul of a warrior.  With that, she turned and followed Penn.  They moved on, slower now.  Every muddy puddle became suspect except to Penn.  Even so, Penn was feeling the strain.  It would take a few days for his body to acclimatize itself to this place, and get his strength back.  Yet this place bothered him.  Too many things were the same as he’d know at home in the Amazon jungle, the leaf cutting ants for one.  Yes, there could be divergent evolution with the same kind, or type of life springing up on different plants across the universe, but the leaf cutting ants he’d watch were exactly the same as the ones in the Amazon, right down to the tiny red spots on the back half of their little bodies.  Even many of the tree and fern like bushes looked, and tasted the same.  In the end he shook it off and skipped across another mud hole and pressed on.

If the heat, humidity, and biting insects weren't enough to bother them, seeing crashed starship every few miles certainly were.  In some of those spots the going was easier, and the ground impact had incinerated everything in a mile or more around the impact point.  Some were recognizable as crashed ships, others nothing but giant water filled holes in the ground and scattered wreckage.  In some places, a few scattered bits, and fragments gleamed as if they were brand new, yet the decomposition of the crew's bones said they had been here many years, if not centuries.  This planet was nothing more than a gigantic death trap.

They made camp for the night in the wrecked hull section of some alien craft, happy to have a roof over their heads and be out of the rain.  As the pale green light quickly faded, they heard the evening chorus of hoots and screams begin as a different set of animals and insects took over.  So far, Penn had charted a path that avoided anything dangerous, and they'd seen nothing in the way of large animals.  Even so, they could hear something large moving around in the gathering darkness, but thankfully, the portable energy screen kept whatever it was at bay.  With so much activity going on in the darkness outside the perimeter Ellis knew she didn't have to worry about the guards falling asleep.  The first few nights everyone had difficulty sleeping, except Penn, who dropped off as if he were staying in a high credit hotel back at the Capital.  Ellis called General Tandy each evening to give him a status report and exchange information, but this particular evening the news wasn't good.

"We have a small problem here at the moment, Major, so move your ass and get to that building as soon as possible.”