By Blood Alone Page 7

  Booly nodded and saluted in return. His voice made its way through a wire-thin boom mike and out over the PA system. Thank you, Major. Put the troops at ease.”

  Judd did a perfect about-face, gave the appropriate order, and was rewarded with something less than perfection. The entire headquarters company seemed a little slow on the uptake, as if they hadn’t drilled in quite a while, and the cyborgs, who backed the rest of the troops, made no move whatsoever. They’d been at ease from the start. Sloppiness? Or insolence? The first was regrettable—the second could be dangerous.

  Booly cleared his throat, brought the orders up in front of his face, and read them aloud. The language, though stilted and somewhat archaic, still possessed power. Not because of the words themselves, but because of the thousands who had both spoken and heard them. Some had gone on to live long, happy lives. Many had not. They lay buried beneath thick jungle foliage, under piles of hastily assembled rocks, and in tidily kept cemeteries.

  Finally, after all the words had been read, Booly added some of his own. He allowed his gaze to roam over the parade ground, finding as many eyes as he could, willing them to listen. The objective was to notify them that things were about to change-but to do so in a way that built morale rather than tore it down.

  There were all sorts of incompetents, slackers, and worse out there, he knew that, but they would have to be rooted out one by one and dealt with individually. That being the case, he chose a positive approach, knowing that some were beyond his reach, and hoping to hearten the rest. An honest assessment of their position was a good place to start.

  “The 13th is one of the oldest and most famous units in the Legion. The men, women, and cyborgs who fought in it won hundreds of battles, and lost some too, like Dien Bien Phu, where, on March 13, 1953, the Viet Minh used artillery to open fire on strong point Beatrice. We lost thirty-six men that day.

  “A few days later, when it became apparent that Colonel Charles Piroth, the Legion’s artillery officer, had severely miscalculated the enemy’s capabilities, he committed suicide.

  “During the successive weeks, the Legion’s position became little more than a killing zone. The airstrip was destroyed. The main road was cut off. No one could leave-not even the wounded. That didn’t stop the men of the 3rd and 5th REI, though.... None had parachute training-but they jumped anyway.

  “Meanwhile, under the ground, in a hospital which was little more than a hole filled with mud, amputated limbs, and well-fed maggots, Dr. Paul Grauwin did the best he could. And it was volunteers from the 13th DBLE who drove his ambulances, who risked their lives to drag the wounded out of the wire, and frequently died in the attempt.

  “In spite of their gallantry, in spite of their sacrifice, the Legion lost more than one thousand five hundred dead.”

  Some of the legionnaires seemed to stand just a little bit taller. Others, transported back in time, felt a chill run down their spines. Many, their minds already made up, felt nothing at all.

  Booly allowed the echoes to die away before starting again. “Yes, we have a proud history, or had, until the 13th became the Legion’s favorite shit can. I was sent here for telling the truth ... what were you sent here for? Did you screw up one time too many? Fall asleep on duty? Spill coffee on the colonel’s lap?”

  The last question drew laughter, just as it was supposed to, and seemed to acknowledge the fact that the Legion was a gigantic machine, and that some of the troops had simply been caught up in its gears.

  The colonel’s words were different from what many had expected them to be. Some eyes registered hope ... others were filled with cynicism.

  “So,” Booly continued. “Each and every one of us is faced with a choice. We can focus on the past, and be what we were, or on the future, and put the past behind us. Some of you joined the Legion as a way to get a new start. Others wanted a chance at something better, a bit of adventure, or the excellent food.”

  The laughter was general this time—which caused Captain Winters to look and marvel. She couldn’t remember the last time the battalion had laughed.

  “The opportunity is there,” Booly concluded. “The opportunity to start again, to restore the 13th to what it once was, and to wear the uniform with pride. Thank you. That will be all.”

  The operations center was located six stories beneath Fort Mosby, where it was theoretically impervious to the Hudathan bombs it had been built to withstand.

  The Situation Room was a large octagonal space dominated by wall-mounted multipurpose video screens, rows of computer consoles, the soft murmur of radio traffic, and the faint odor of coffee mixed with ozone.

  The transmission was scrambled and came over a little-used civilian frequency. No one at Fort Mosby would have intercepted-much less recorded-the message, had Corporal Bonsky not been listening for it.

  Corporal Bonsky was a small man, with a small man’s paunch, and feelings of inadequacy-a weakness that others had managed to exploit. He waited for the “squirt” to end, dumped the message to a one-inch disk, and slipped the object into his pocket. The com tech stood, asked Skog to monitor his boards, and waved to Sergeant Ho. She stood only five-one in her combat boots-but nobody messed with her. Not twice. “Hey, Sarge ... gotta pee. Back in zero-five.”

  Ho didn’t like Bonsky, or the people he hung with, but was careful not to show it. Not the way things were ... which was all screwed up. “Better take ten, Bonsky-it’ll take five just to find it.”

  The rest of the staff laughed. Bonsky flipped them off and stalked out of the room.

  It took the better part of five minutes for the com tech to reach the drop, leave the disk, and make the return trip. Which was all to the good because he did need to pee ... and had plenty of time to get it done. Who retrieved the disk, and what they did with it, well, that was none of his business. Long as they remembered him when the shit went down—and made his considerable grievances right. The com tech thought about Ho, smiled, and imagined what he would do to her.

  5

  Voyage/gas/planet/want/take/home/happy.

  Baa’l Poet Star/Searcher

  Year unknown

  Somewhere on the Rim, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings

  Once recovered from the trauma of losing both the Pelican and the drifter, Jepp found life on the Sheen vessel to be unexpectedly serene. The days, as recorded as scratches in the ship’s hull metal, seemed to drift by.

  For the first time in years the human found himself with plenty of time to think and reflect. In fact, had it not been for the certainty that he would eventually run out of food, the experience might have been rather pleasant.

  Jepp followed a self-imposed routine that provided a modicum of both structure and comfort.

  His body clock woke him at approximately 0800 each morning. Never one to lounge about, the prospector rolled out of his improvised bag and onto the cold metal deck. The calisthenics included thirty-five push-ups, followed by thirty-five leg lifts, thirty-five sit-ups, and thirty-five additional push-ups.

  Once the exercises were complete, there were prayers to say, not the repetitious sort of nonsense favored by his father, but long, one-sided conversations with God that left him feeling clean but empty.

  Then, having strengthened both body and spirit, it was time for a sponge bath and a little bit of hot cereal.

  The bay in which the Pelican had been reduced to her component parts had proved far too large for the human’s psychological comfort, so he had long since opted for smaller, more intimate quarters. Jepp had divided his “cabin,” a nameless and insofar as he could tell purposeless alcove, into both a “galley” and “stateroom.”

  With the exception of some emergency rations, which the prospector had decided to save for last, the rest of his food required cooking. Jepp’s first attempt was an unmitigated disaster. He rigged a stand on which his pot could sit, lit the welding torch, and applied the blue flame.

  Everything was fine at first, and the water had just started to boil wh
en the ship’s fire-suppression system was activated and the entire area was drenched with gallons of creamy white foam. He spent the better part of a shipboard “day” cleaning it up.

  That experience led to hours of careful experimentation in which the prospector sought to determine the exact amount of heat that the ship would tolerate prior to extinguishing the flame. Unfortunately for Jepp, that level was so low that it took a long time to boil his water.

  The human wasn’t sure how to calculate which was more efficient-to run the torch on high, which used more of his precious fuel, but boiled the water more quickly, or to utilize the lower setting, which consumed less gas but took longer. He feared that it was the second approach, the one the ship forced him to accept, that was the less efficient of the two.

  Breakfast was followed by self-appointed “rounds,” which started out as exploratory journeys and evolved into a complex ritual, the main purpose of which was to occupy his time and ascertain that nothing had changed. Once that finding was confirmed, he felt mixed reactions.

  While it was comforting to know that his surroundings remained unchanged, there was a downside, too.

  Assuming the status quo continued, he would run out of food in a month or so and water not too long after that. The simple fact was that he needed some sort of change. Escape would be preferable, but failing that, additional supplies.

  And so it was that Jepp rolled out of the sack on his twenty-seventh day of captivity, completed his “morning” rituals, and armed himself for the upcoming patrol. He generally carried a light wand, for peering into corners, and a pouch loaded with hand tools in case he wanted to try his luck on one of the panels, junction boxes, and access doors scattered about the ship. A somewhat iffy activity-and one the ship took a dim view of. That was something he learned the hard way.

  The first shock knocked Jepp on his ass, the second threw him across a corridor, and a third, had he been stupid enough to trigger it, might very well have killed him.

  Jepp made his way toward what he regarded as the ship’s bow. The ship, or the intelligence that ran it, had chosen to illuminate some areas and leave others inexplicably dark. The wand threw an oval-shaped pattern of light onto the deck ahead. There were no signs of the bolts, screws, or other fasteners that humans relied upon to hold everything together. It appeared as though the alien nano had bonded disparate molecules together so there was no need for connecting hardware.

  His boots clanked on metal, the ship continued the steady round-the-clock hum that he had learned to hate, and his tool belt creaked as he moved.

  Suddenly, without warning, conditions started to change. The all-pervasive hum increased a notch, the deck started to tilt, and Jepp fought to keep his feet. The vessel was up to something-but what?

  Hoping to find an answer, Jepp fought his way forward. A completely unprecedented source of light threw a glow down the corridor. The human felt his heart start to pound, wished he had his flechette thrower, and knew the thought was absurd. He was the only bio bod aboard-and the ship was impervious to darts.

  Jepp knew the passageway by heart. There was a right-left turn just ahead. He slid along a bulkhead, peered around the bend, and dashed forward.

  The bulkhead that had once blocked access to the area had been retracted up into the overhead. Jepp paused. What if the barrier fell? He’d be trapped, cut off from his food supply, and damned to starvation.

  The prospector removed his tool pouch, placed it into the receiver slot, and continued his way forward.

  The control room, for there was little doubt as to its function, was different from what he was used to. There was one monitor rather than the multiple screens found on vessels like the Pelican, and an extremely simple instrument panel that featured four oval buttons, a joystick, and a hole that Jepp refused to explore.

  The presence of two pedestal-style chairs confirmed that the oxygen-breathers not only existed, but occasionally rode their ships.

  The entire setup reminded Jepp of the highly automated ground cars popular on the more industrialized worlds. Most had only minimal controls, barely enough to get the vehicle out of trouble. Did the same logic apply here?

  Jepp blinked, found his eyes had adjusted to quite some extent, and eyed the monitor. It was at least eight feet across and filled with an unfamiliar star field. The deck tilted as the ship banked. A planet swung into view. It more than filled the screen. A thick layer of unbroken yellow clouds obscured the surface.

  Henry, the Pelican’s navcomp, would have fed the prospector all sorts of data, but the ship was gone, and so was the computer. All Jepp could do was watch, and wonder what the Sheen vessel was up to.

  The scout shuddered as it entered the planet’s upper atmosphere, locked onto its target, and began to track. There was food among the sulfurous clouds-and the ship was hungry.

  The Baa’l ship was more than five hundred feet long and consisted of a ram scoop, some very complex separators, and six cylinders, each of which was divided into multiple tanks.

  As with all the Baa’l race, the intelligence who controlled the ship and served as its single crew member was known by his job description, a rather lengthy affair that filled the brains of no less than 107 nonsentient storage beings, but could be summarized as: “The one who travels vast distances in search of materials required to repair, maintain, and further Baa’l infrastructure to the benefit of the race.”

  The last part was especially important, since all activity was measured in terms of its usefulness to the race-and anything that failed to meet stringent criteria went unresourced.

  Still, as with most of his peers, the pilot had chosen an abbreviated identifier in the form of a two-symbol poem: Far/ Finder.

  But none of that was on the Baa’l’s mind as he cruised the ocean of clouds. They were wonderfully thick, about sixty dom deep, and ripe for harvest. Far/Finder checked his sensors and took pleasure from the readings. There were useful amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbonyl sulfide, sulfer dioxide, argon, and xenon, all flowing out of the separator and into their pressurized storage tanks.

  The ship carried other gases as well, but these made an excellent addition to the haul, and would earn praise from the Off-World Resource Procurement Committee.

  Far/Finder’s body consisted of a brain, neural fibers, three hearts, one lung, and twenty-seven interconnected gas bladders, all of which could be individually pressurized. He fed some additional air to number sixteen. That particular part of his anatomy grew larger, pushed on a pressure sensitive plate, and sent the ship downward. The Baa’l “saw” the computer-mapped surface rise slightly and “felt” the vessel’s skin grow warmer.

  Air was allowed to escape from bladder sixteen, the ship leveled out, and a volcano loomed ahead. Far/Finder turned to avoid it. That’s when the alarms sounded and the Baa’l knew something was after him.

  Jepp tried one of the chairs, discovered that it was uncomfortable, and chose to stand. There was nothing to see at first except the thick, swirling clouds. They were yellow and appeared rather dense. The deck tilted, he grabbed a chair back for support, and saw a flash of what? Metal?

  The scout turned toward the right, and the clouds parted to reveal a ship. A strange ship consisting of clustered cylinders and stubby outriggers. Now the prospector understood. The Sheen vessel needed fuel ... and was about to take it.

  The prospector felt sorry for the pilot and crew. He wished he could help them and started to pray. It didn’t make any difference. The Sheen ship closed the distance; the fugitive filled more of the screen, and jinked back and forth.

  Jepp, for some reason he couldn’t quite articulate, had assumed the other ship was human. He’d been wrong. The bow scoop and long narrow tanks were clearly alien.

  The ships were close now, very close, with the Sheen vessel hanging above and slightly behind its intended victim. What looked like a jagged bolt of lighting jumped the intervening gap. The viewscreen flickered, and lights dimm
ed. The victim had teeth!

  Jepp felt a sense of excitement, remembered where he was, and considered his space suit. Should he leave the control room? And get his armor?

  The battle was fought and won in the time it took the human to frame the question. The scout used tractor beams to lock the Baa’l vessel in place, drilled a hole through Far/Finder’s life support tank, and waited for the pilot to die.

  Far/Finder “felt” the tractor beams seize control of his ship, followed by intense pain as an energy beam punched a hole through bladder seven. He sealed that part of himself off, checked his sensors, and knew the situation was hopeless. There was no choice but to abandon ship.

  The life pod was small and extremely uncomfortable, but the Baa’l managed to squeeze inside. He inflated a pseudopod, applied the correct amount of pressure, and felt the emergency vehicle fall free. But not before a final act of defiance. Even as the life pod fell away, and the Sheen allowed it to go, gases flowed from one tank to another, hydrogen mixed with oxygen, and a spark was prepared.

  The food ship was available for the taking. The scout opened the main hatch, shortened its tractor beams, and pulled the recently subdued prey inside. It was long, too long, but the Sheen had consumed such meals before and knew the nano could handle it. So, like one snake consuming another, the digestive process began.

  Jepp, who had been watching in open-mouthed amazement, heard something whir. He turned, saw the hatch start to close, and dived toward the opening. It was too far, however, way too far, and the prospector knew he wouldn’t make it.

  The tool pouch saved the day. The door hit the object, whined upward, and descended again. The human was through by then, grabbing the tools, and taking them along. There was a thud as the hatch closed. That’s when a series of three explosions rocked the ship.

  The alien vessel! It had exploded! What about the atmosphere? Had the hull ruptured? The space armor! He had to reach it!