Starfist: Blood Contact (37 page)

Bass found Schultz and Sergeant Ratliff prone under a fringe of small, flimsy swamp trees at the edge of an islet. He lowered himself and bellied his way in between them. He immediately saw Schultz was right. Someone—or something—had bivuoacked there. The islet had a narrow fringe of growth at each end, but the fringes were new growth. More vegetation had been there, but over the surface of most of the islet it was beaten down to form a mat. None of the growth had yet had time to spring back up, if any of it still could, and no new growth was visible. He widened the area he scanned. The surrounding water was quiet. It looked like Schultz was right about nobody being at home. He glanced to his sides and saw that Schultz had deployed a motion detector.

"Lander Five," he said into the command circuit.

"Five, go, Six."

"Contact Skyhawk, I want a complete scan of this area." Hyakowa was closer to the Dragons and clear communications with the
Fairfax
than he was. He wasn't going to send anyone into the bivouac until he knew more; it could be a trap.

"Roger, Six." A few moments later Hyakowa came back on the command circuit. "Six, Skyhawk is scanning. Do you want verbal or data pack?"

"Data pack." Then he could go to one of the Dragons and see the situation while one of the analysts walked him through what he was looking at. It would give him far more information than a verbal report.

"I'll be back," he said to Ratliff and Schultz, then slid back and headed for a Dragon. "See if you can spot any sign beyond here."

By the time he reached the Dragon, the data pack was being downloaded to its computer. He brought up the display. Bright dots showed the disposition of the Marines and the Dragons, a moving dot was the UAV. Fainter spots of red, some moving, some stationary, were scattered about.

"Talk to me," Bass said as soon as he put on the radio headset.

"You know which ones are you?"

"I know which dots are my people."

"Good. Wait a second, let me try this. I'm not used to talking to planetside troops." A slight smile quirked Bass's lips. He recognized the voice of SRA3 Hummfree and thought that evidently the sailor wasn't used to radio communications either—he didn't bother with proper procedures. There was a few seconds pause, then a circle appeared around some of the faint marks. "See that?"

"Northwest."

"Right. That's local amphibians, the big insect eaters. I've seen enough of them I can recognize their signatures. Same with these." The circle vanished and another appeared just west of the Marines. "This here," a different circle enclosed a vaguely visible pink smudge, "is a colony of smaller amphibians.

Everything I can see is one or the other of them."

"Wait a minute! What's this?" A tiny red line, undulating near one of the Marines, was circled.

"I haven't seen it before. It's not one of them skinks, though. It's too big, and the heat signature's wrong."

Bass flicked on his HUD to see which Marine that line was near.

Goudanis. "One-three," Bass snapped into the all hands circuit, "heads up. Something big is approaching you from your right front." He glanced back at the data display. "It's less than thirty meters away."

"Six," Goudanis said, "it's got to be underwater. We're on land and I don't see anything."

"Keep an eye out for it. I'll let you know if it goes away."

"Roger, Six."

"Skyhawk, do you see anything else?" Bass asked into the satellite radio.

"Nope, that's everything. That big thing is the only thing I can't identify. Listen, if you find out what it is, would you let me know?"

Bass heard sudden shouting over the platoon radio, and the simultaneous crackle of blasters.

"Stand by," he told Hummfree. "We're about to find out." While he was speaking on the radio he signaled the Dragon commander to head for the fire, fast. The Dragon nearly hit its top speed covering the hundred meters to where first squad's third fire team was firing at something.

The Dragon roared onto the spit of mud Goudanis and Quick were on. The firing had stopped and Bass scrambled out of the Dragon before its rear ramp finished dropping.

"What happened?" he demanded, racing toward his men. Then, "My God," as he saw what they had killed.

A large, tubular creature lay part way out of the water, its rear half floating on the surface. Its body, banded like an earthworm, was nearly eight meters long, more than a meter across, and half that much high. A great maw with rows of spiked teeth filled its front end. Bristlelike whiskers ringed the maw. It had no eyes or visible hearing organs. Muscular contractions continued to ripple its rubbery hide. Great pocks were burned out of its front portion, where Goudanis and Quick had shot it. The insides of the holes were seered black. Bass slowly stepped toward it and looked where one hole was bigger than the others. He guessed two blaster bolts had struck there. Deep inside the rear portion of the hole he saw the stump of a cord the color of milk turned bad. He took a couple more steps and looked at the forward edge of the hole, where he saw a corresponding cord stump. He looked back at the Marines who'd just faced this monster. Their faces were drawn. He was sure that if he could see their bodies they'd be quaking.

"When did it die?" he asked.

Goudanis nodded toward the hole Bass had just examined. "When we hit it there."

"Looks like it's got a notochord. You were lucky to hit it deep enough to sever it. That's probably what stopped it."

The second Dragon arrived and Dr. Bynum climbed out. "Mon Dieu," she whispered when she saw the beast. In a second she was over her shock and ordering her people to take measurements and samples. While they rushed to do her bidding, she turned to Bass.

"Did we have any warning about this, Charlie? I don't remember anything about a creature like this in the reports we read."

Bass shook his head. "I didn't see anything either. Maybe the exploratory mission didn't get into the right parts of the swamp to find it. Big predators aren't common anywhere, and this is certainly a big predator."

Bynum looked at the corpse and blinked a few times. "Well, we'll get enough samples to fit it into Waygone's biota, if not its ecology."

Bass snorted. "I'd say its place in the ecology is top of the food chain."

She nodded. "I imagine you're right. Look at those teeth! They could shred a man with one bite."

The immediate danger past, Bass turned his attention back to the platoon and their current mission.

"Listen up," he said into his all-hands circuit. "If there are any skinks in the area who didn't know we're here, they know now. Be alert for them. Also watch for really big, ah, worms." He switched to the squad leaders circuit. "String-of-pearls didn't see anything else it couldn't identify. No point in waiting any longer, we're going to check out the bivouac area. Rabbit, don't move until I get to you." He reboarded the Dragon and gave Hummfree information on what the odd signal was while he rode to the islet with the beaten down vegetation.

"Find anything?" he asked when he rejoined Ratliff and Schultz.

"Found a footprint on the next island," Schultz said. "Goes north."

"All right, we'll follow it. But first let's check this bivouac, see if we can find anything."

"How are we going to check for booby traps?" Ratliff asked.

"The skinks don't seem to use explosives or large vehicles. I'll run a Dragon over it. Its weight will either set off any antipersonnel traps or disable them."

"I like it," Ratliff said.

Bass flicked to the Dragon circuit to give the order. Before he could tell the Dragon commander what he wanted, he received a message.

"Skyhawk wants to talk to the Actual. Sounds important." Bass reboarded the vehicle. "Lander Six Actual. Go, Skyhawk."

"Lander Six, Lima Zulu is under attack," said the voice of the starship's communications officer.

"Return to Lima Zulu with all possible speed. Over."

"Roger that, Skyhawk. Any details? Over."

"Negative details, Lander. Are you on the move yet? Over."

"Third platoon, mount up," Bass ordered into the all-hands circuit. He was no longer paying attention to the
Fairfax's
communications officer; he had a platoon to gather together and move out. If the ship was passing on any useful information, Dupont or the Dragon commander would let him know.

He was disappointed about not being able to examine the bivouac; it might have information they'd need. But getting back to the knob was more immediately important.

It took the platoon about four minutes to regroup and get aboard the two Dragons. What they didn't have was much time for Bass to make plans for what to do when they got back to the landing zone. Hell, he thought, I have no idea of what's going on, so what kind of plans can I make? Bass wasn't concerned that they'd run into an ambush along the way. As far as he knew, the skinks didn't have any explosive weapons that could damage the Dragons. The most dangerous time would be when they stopped to dismount the Marines. If any skinks were in the right place, they could do serious damage. They'd have to dismount outside the LZ and approach it on foot. But from what direction? He needed information badly.

"Raise the Dragons at the LZ," he ordered the Dragon commander.

It took a moment, but finally the commander said, "Got 'em." He handed the mike to Bass.

"Dragon Three, what's your situation?" Bass asked.

"I have you on my monitor and will link up in less than thirty seconds."

"Say again? You aren't at the Lima Zulu?"

"Negative. We were ordered to find you and link up."

"What's going on?" Just then Dragons Three and Four came into view in the Dragon's artificial light monitor. Gunny Bass's jaw clenched at the sight. Parts of the Dragons' armor plating were slagged and he saw a gaping hole in its flank. Suddenly he was glad he hadn't had the time to run one of his Dragons across the bivouac.

"I have the casualties and the medical team aboard," the Dragon Three commander said. "The pirates are fighting the skinks."

"How many?"

"I'm not sure. I think Lieutenant Snodgrass and three or four pirates were still alive and fighting when the lieutenant ordered us to find you."

"Skinks?" Bass shouted. "I mean, how many skinks?"

"I don't know. Too many."

Bass swore under his breath. For the first time on this mission he wished they had Marine Dragons, or at least Marine crews. A Marine could tell him how many skinks were attacking. Maybe he was asking too much to expect a sailor to know that.

"What direction are they attacking from?"

"They're all over the place."

Again Bass swore. That sailor wasn't giving him anything he could use. They were going in blind.

"Keep moving," he ordered the driver of his Dragon.

CHAPTER 27

Lieutenant Argal Snodgrass spent the hours waiting for the arrival of the Essay strutting about with an air of importance and self-confidence he did not really feel. At first light, when the third platoon had pulled out to follow the trail of the retreating skinks, he'd watched their progress with what was, for him, an unusual degree of trepidation. He did not feel the soaring sense of independence he thought he would as he watched the Marines disappear into the fern trees, because it had slowly dawned on him that truly he was on his own.

The Dragon in which the corpsmen tended the casualties sat with its ramp down, and another Dragon sat not far away. The pirates had found a clump of ferns nearby that gave enough shade to protect them from the intense sunlight, and they spent the hours there, talking among themselves in low voices.

Snodgrass whiled away the morning slogging around the clearing, pretending to watch the surrounding forest. The two corpsmen and the crewmen in the closer Dragon offered him only cold and begrudging awareness when he climbed the ramp and attempted to converse with them. And whenever he approached the pirate group, they suddenly stopped talking, and resumed only when he was out of earshot. And he did not like it at all, the way that man, Lowboy, leered at him. He thought the ridiculous little man was probably homosexual.

Thinking of ridiculous little men made Snodgrass reflect momentarily on some of the things he'd done since they'd been on Waygone, especially when he mistook the pirate Rhys for Dr. Morgan. His face still burned at the thought. That Bass had later openly laughed in his face over the incident did nothing for his self-confidence.

His unusually self-critical train of thought was interrupted by the Dragon commander's announcement that the Essay was at last inbound.

Hospitalman First Class Larry Horner checked Clarke's stasis pod for the umpteenth time.

Respiration, blood pressure, pulse, all were normal. The stasis devices would keep the wounded men in a state of deep suspended animation until they could be transported to the
Fairfax's
sickbay, or until they reached port, if Dr. Bynum couldn't repair the damage. He laughed, remembering the story, possibly apocryphal, of the corpsman who'd slept in a stasis pod when off duty. Over the years, his buddies noticed he wasn't aging as quickly as they were. In the end he was court-martialed for "misuse of government property," but the ten years he'd added to his life made the fine and loss of rank worth it.

He glanced at the ramp and thought about raising it. It was getting hot in the passenger compartment, but since the Essay was on its way, he decided not to. Lieutenant Snodgrass and his pirates would have to come aboard, and that would only mean lowering the thing again in a few minutes anyway.

On the opposite side of the bay, HM2 Tom Hardesty fiddled with the settings on Dornhofer's pod.

"Prettiest girl I ever seen, was smoking thule in my latrine," he chanted softly. His mind was light-years away, where cold beer and warm lips waited for him in a cozy bar in Duma City on Bulon, the
Fairfax's
home port. "When we get back to home port, Larry I'm gonna—"

"Danger! Danger!" a tiny voice shrilled.

Automatically, Horner drew his side arm and whirled toward the ramp, just as a skink charged up and into the compartment. Horner fired from the hip without aiming. The bolt struck the skink directly on its snout. The creature screamed and then flashed into vapor.