VI
"Everybody got their bubbles on?" Another thing I hated about the Dutchman was his passionate need to ignore the obvious.
"I'd rather be wearing armor," Buchholtz said, giving a longing look at the armor locker as he tugged at the rubber seal that kept his inflated membrane helmet snug against the skin of his neck. "And taking the skimmer, for that matter."
I didn't blame him; I'd rather have been wearing full combat armor, too. But for different reasons: I would have wanted it for the added protection, not particularly for the extra weaponry. The wiregun pistol on my hip was enough for me. As far as the ground-effect skimmer went, the Dutchman had a point; if the shuttle had spooked the locals, the skimmer might, too.
The skimmer sat parked next to the shuttle, and each of us—except McCaw, of course—had a follow-me box that we could set off to call for the skimmer and its recoilless, as long as there was a cleared straight line between us and the skimmer.
"Don't worry about it." The Dutchman hitched at the Colt & Wesson point-forty-four Magnum revolver in his shoulder holster. Norfeldt turned up his nose at wireguns; he said he preferred the stopping power of an old-fashioned Glaser Safety Slug to the greater volume and rate of fire of a wiregun's two hundred silcohalcoid projectiles.
"I don't want to make us too hard to kill," he said. "That'd solve the problem, easy. No Fourth Team; Magellan would just fly through, drop the bomb, and fly back before it sealed the singularity."
Great.
"I'm ready, too, Major." If you exclude words like "check," "checkmate," "call," "raise," and "fold," that was a solid two percent of the words McCaw had spoken since I'd known him.
The Dutchman tapped at the hatch control panel. "Okay, children, it's show time."
In a few moments, we were all standing in the short purple grasses of the plain. My earphones hissed like a threatening rattlesnake. Sweating, I reached to the control box on my hip to turn up the squelch.
The air was hot, just not hot enough to require the more rigid suits, the ones with temperature control. Which made the job easier, at least in one sense. Unlikely as it was that any of the local bugs could bite us—and do us harm—through standard E-suits, if they could, that would "solve the problem," too.
There are times when I wish I'd gone to work for my father.
As blasé as I was trying to be, there was a certain something about being on a new world. The bounce in my walk as we headed away from the scout couldn't be accounted for just by the planet's low gravity—it was low only relative to Earth, not to freefall. After more than two weeks in zero gee, I should have been dragging; in fact, even after the three klicks from the shuttle to where the forest broke on the plain, I was still ready to break into a happy lope.
But it bothered me that we hadn't seen any locals yet. Once we were into the forest, the skimmer wouldn't be able to come when called. Not that there was a problem with the radio, but the autopiloting wasn't nearly good enough to work its way through a maze of trees.
A few hundred meters from the edge of the forest, McCaw started muttering to himself.
"Here we go, Kurt." The Dutchman's voice seemed distant, even though he was only a couple of meters away.
"Peeling off, Major." Buchholtz jogged away to our left, his assault rifle in one hand, a Korriphila 10mm pistol in the other. He was moving quickly across the plain; even though he was moving diagonally to our path, it was likely he would reach the stand of trees before we would.
"Contact, Major." McCaw didn't sound bored, for once. "They are about a quarter klick ahead, concealed in those columnar vegetable growths."
"Trees, Ari, trees."
For once I sympathized with Norfeldt. What else do you call ten-meter-high, three-lobed plants, covered with what looked like purple moss?
"Major, I like them."
I shot a look at McCaw, then caught myself. No, he wasn't armed. Comm officers are never armed. You can't trust an esper who is supposed to open himself to telepathic—and telempathic—communication with aliens.
"So you like them. Big deal; let's go meet the natives. Emmy, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Kurt, you on station yet?"
My earphones hissed as Buchholtz thumbed his communicator. The damn F9s put out enough RF to interfere with FM.
"Got them in my sights, Major."
I could barely make out the words through the interference. But Buchholtz's eagerness came through loud and clear.
The Dutchman caught it too. "You fire on my order only—you got that, Kurt?" Norfeldt liked repeating himself; he'd only given that order to Buchholtz and me a couple dozen times already.
"Got it."
The Dutchman stopped the three of us about twenty meters from the sharp edge of the forest with a sudden, chopping gesture of his left hand.
"Ari, just translate what I say. No unnecessary interpretation."
Three aliens walked out of a dark gap in the wall of trees, then took up positions facing McCaw, as though Norfeldt and I simply weren't there.
They were erect, bipedal creatures, tall and almost comically thin. Their purplish skin looked slick, but not wet. I could understand how First Team had described them as looking like amphibians, but we humans resemble lemurs more than they resemble salamanders. The orange splotches on their naked skin could have been natural pigmentation, I suppose, but the stochastic quasi-regularity of the patterns seemed to suggest dyes.
"They are . . . powerful, Major." I could barely hear McCaw. While Norfeldt was closer, he must have been having trouble hearing him, too; the Dutchman reached over and flicked a switch on the tall captain's belt.
"Just translate, Ari—easy, now. Easy now, boy."
The fact that the Dutchman was treating him like a dog would have bothered me more if McCaw hadn't been trembling all over like he was a scared puppy.
"T-they say: 'Greetings. We are the . . .' Untranslatable, Major, but it's their species name. Overtones of justice, and power, such power. . . . 'What we have, do, or are, it is yours.'"
"Ritual greeting?"
McCaw brought his gloved hands up in front of his face, the fingers awkwardly writhing, as though he wasn't used to having fingers. "There's a trace of ritual, but no, Major—they mean it."
The Dutchman snorted cautiously. "Sounds good. We'll—"
"But just for me and Buchholtz. They're waiting for a response from one of us."
"Just you two?"
"Wait." McCaw's trembling worsened, then ceased entirely. "Wait. They don't see you and Mark as people, just objects. Wait. The leader is . . . expressing admiration at my species' ability to create complicated . . . toys."
"Don't clarify matters for them. Have they seen other toys like me and Emmy before?"
"Wait. 'Yes. We admired greatly the toy that your . . . associates brought before. This time you have brought two. Is one a gift?'"
"What if it isn't?"
"Confusion. Wait. They don't understand the concept of not giving someone what he wants. They keep asking me to explain it another way. Wait. Wait."
I flipped the slipguard off my holster and let my hand rest on the hilt of my wiregun. The Dutchman caught the motion out of the corner of his eye.
"At ease, Mister von du Mark. We're all expendable—you most of all."
Which was why I'd flipped the guard off in the first place. I don't like being expendable. "Yes, sir."
"Relax, Emmy—I don't think I'll have to—" Norfeldt was cut off by the hissing of a wiregun, and then three quick gunshots. A muffled scream in our headphones was echoed off in the distance.
"Aie—Condition Red—" Buchholtz trailed off into a bubbling moan, then went silent.
McCaw crumpled to the ground; I drew my wiregun and thumbed the safety off.
Norfeldt drew his Magnum and fired off a shot into the air, but the aliens didn't make a move. Not at all. They just stood there, breathing slowly, watching us with their round, liquid eyes. The Dutchman squatted next to McCaw, keeping his eyes on the aliens.
"He's breathing," the Dutchman said. "Emmy, move. Condition Blue; fire if threatened. I'll stay here with Ari. Find him." He dropped a hand to the follow-me hanging from his belt.
A distant whoop whoop whoop sounded in my phones as the skimmer started toward the Dutchman.
"On my way." That last was unnecessary; I was already sprinting for the area where Buchholtz had entered the forest, several hundred meters to the west.
In five minutes, I was standing over what was left of Buchholtz, who lay in the middle of a horrid shambles that looked like something painted by Hieronymus Bosch.
I'd never actually seen a dead man before. Or a dead alien. It wasn't pretty. The claws that had ripped his outer suit and E-suit to ribbons hadn't stopped there; they had opened up his chest and belly like they thought he was a box of Cracker Jacks and they needed the prize right away. Pink viscera mingled with red blood and the brown pulp of half-digested food. Slick with blood, his ribs stuck out of what was left of his chest.
They'd ripped his left leg off; I could see the hip joint—
There was a strange calm in my head, although not in my stomach.
The night terrors would come later. I forced myself not to vomit as I eyed the woods, and then sent a stream of wires hissing into the trees, just for good luck.
"Report, Mark. Dammit, report."
"Yelling won't help, Major." I leaned back against a tree, my eyes on the woods. "Buchholtz is dead. They . . . clawed him."
"Pictures."
"Yes, sir." Using my left hand, I took my holocam from my belt and started snapping, not using either my right hand or the viewfinder. Both my eyes and my right hand were occupied. "You see any weapons on your natives?"
"No."
"None on these, either. There's five—no, six—bodies scattered around the clearing." Buchholtz had given them a good fight. Trails of blood leading into the forest showed that it had taken more than these six filthy lizards to kill Kurt Buchholtz.
I stowed the camera, then stooped to check his weapons. "His rifle's empty." I slipped the magazine out of his automatic. "Major?"
"Yeah?"
"Did Buchholtz keep a round in the chamber?"
"Yeah. Five rounds left?"
"Yes, sir. Pistol's been fired three times." His Fairbairn knife was stained with dark-purple blood. "He made the bastards pay, Major." I cleaned his knife with a dirtclod, then raised it in a quick if sketchy salute. There wasn't anything else I could do for Kurt.
I wiped the rest of the blood off the knife and slipped it into my belt. Maybe I'd be having some use for it. I almost wished—
"Don't give with the bullshit bravado, kid. Just keep your head on. May be some injured ones around, some survivors. Lessee if we can't survive this one, which would be nice." The Dutchman just kept talking. I don't know whether it was to reassure himself or me. "C'mon back now; the skimmer'll be here in just a couple of minutes. And keep your eyes open, shithead. Take it easy, Emmy. Deep breaths. Get away from the—"
McCaw's voice cut in. He wasn't talking to me or Norfeldt, I'm sure. "Thank you. Please. If you could . . ."
"What the fuck? Ah, no—Ari, Ari. Shit." Norfeldt's voice was suddenly calm, even. "Not back here, Emmy. Meet me at the skimmer."
"But—"
"Take off in twenty minutes, if I don't meet you. I want the skimmer back at the shuttle ay-sap, fuckhead. If I don't make it, you're going to have to Drop this one, all by yourself. That's an order. Acknowledge."
I swallowed. "Aye aye, sir."
"One more thing before you go. Take a look at Kurt's face."
"Sir?" It was hidden by his bloody, deflated helmet.
"Shut up and look, Mister. Is he smiling?"
Using Buchholtz's Fairbairn knife, I cut the rest of the helmet away. It was hard work; membrane helmets are tough.
"So? Is he smiling, Emmy?"
It was hidden by the blood, but he was. I couldn't understand it. "Yeah."
"So's McCaw. And he's dead, too."