Authors: Tanya Huff
Like shit through a H’san.
They died long before they were close enough to do any return damage.
“Marines, at the walk, advance.”
The line moved forward.
When the second attempt to flank the line failed—the shot that stopped it coming from within the jumble of rock—the Silsviss began to realize they couldn’t survive the fight. Instead of attacking, they stood and shrieked, banging their spear butts against the hard ground.
To Torin, it sounded as if they were shouting, “
Come on, I dare you!”
* * *
“I could take them all out,” Binti muttered, lifting her weapon and miming the shots. “Bang. Bang. Bang.”
“Staff says to leave them alone,” Hollice reminded her.
“I don’t see why.”
“Perhaps because the Silsviss are our allies,” the Dornagain ambassador suggested calmly—in spite of the volume necessary to be heard above the surrounding shrieks of defiance. “Although,” he admitted when heads craned and all eyes turned toward him, “the treaty is not yet signed.”
* * *
The line moved closer to one of the standing Silsviss.
Still shrieking, he dropped the spear and slid a slender branch out of the open weave of his harness.
They’ve learned we won’t shoot if they don’t attack and they’re using that to lure us into range of their arrows. Time for a new lesson.
Torin put a shot into the ground between the archer’s legs.
His tongue flicked out. He pulled an arrow out of the weave and set it in the end of the whip.
Wondering if he were brave or stupid, Torin shot him.
Two of the shriekers finally broke and ran.
When their companions saw they were allowed to retreat, five more joined them.
The Marines were now on the south side of the rocks, the Silsviss on the north.
“Listen up, everyone—we’re going to form a large half circle around the north side of those rocks so that when the Dornagain break cover, they’ll have as much protection as possible. We’ll break the line to my right, outside positions move in, double time. Now.”
As military maneuvers went, it could have gone better.
Moving in closer to the rocks, his eyes on the enemy, Kleers tripped over a dead Silsviss who turned out not to be. As he staggered, fighting to regain his balance, he took a tail blow across the backs of both knees. Falling, the Krai fired and missed and had no chance to get off a second shot before the Silsviss was on him, pinning him to the dirt with one set of claws, slashing with the other.
A moment later, Kleers kicked the headless corpse away and spat a mouthful of blood into the dirt.
“Any of that yours?” Torin asked, extending a hand. His med-alert hadn’t gone off, but the chips had been set to trip only when they read too much damage to carry on. Combat soldiers learned early there was a whole lot of hurt between damage and
too much
damage.
“Some,” Kleers admitted, sounding more confused than in pain. “My shoulder...”
As he stood, the right sleeve of his dress uniform tunic fell away in three perfectly parallel lines that stopped at the edge of the combat vest. Three slices of shirt fell away under the tunic. It quickly became apparent that the blood soaking the remains of his sleeve was his.
Torin sat him back down again. “Get a field dressing on that! The rest of you, fill in the line.”
Encouraged by the success of one of their number, another two Silsviss charged and died.
The remaining eight retreated...
...and then followed Marines and Dornagain all the long, slow way back to the buildings. Lightning-fast charges that ended before they came close enough to be considered an attack wore at the defenders’ nerves. But worst of all, was the noise; singly and collectively, the shrieking never let up.
* * *
“Ssso. Sssuccesss.”
“Did you do that on purpose,” Torin muttered, as the extended sibilants cut a painful path from ear to ear.
Cri Sawyes stopped and looked around. When he saw there was no one else in the immediate area, he frowned. “Do what?”
“Never mind.” Guards had been posted, the injured and the civilians were safely inside, and the grain-bag walls were going up as quickly as the Marines could build them. She winced as the background shrieking hit a new high note. “Do you think they’ll stay out there all night?”
“No. I don’t underssstand the actual language, but it’sss clear they’re building up their courage for an attack.”
“But there’s only eight of them.”
“I know.”
Standing with one hand on the top of the northern barricade, she listened to the night and tried, without much success, to think like a hormonally hopped-up teenage lizard. “We have weapons on both roofs. We’re covering all approaches.”
“Yesss. But they are fasst and very hard to sssee in the dark. They don’t know about your ssscanners, so they’ll asssume they can ssslip in, ssslit a few throatsss, and ssslip out, none the wissser.”
On cue, the lookout on the north end of the west roof shouted, “Lieutenant! There’s a Silsviss approaching from the north. Damn, he’s fast!”
Cri Sawyes’ tongue flickered out at the suspicious expression on Torin’s face. “It isss what I would have done,” he explained. Then he sighed as her expression remained fixed. “Would I have sssaid anything if I’d wanted them to sssucceed?”
“I suppose not,” Torin allowed.
“You could consssider it a lessson in our tacticsss.”
“True.”
“Or a warning.”
“All right!” She raised her hand. “I get it. You’ve made your point.”
Crossing the compound on the run, drawn by the lookout’s shout, Jarret slid to a stop at Torin’s side. “Can you stop him without killing him?” he called toward the roof.
“I can try, sir.”
“Do it, then.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Without killing him?” Torin asked softly.
“We’re trying to make the Silsviss our allies, Staff Sergeant.”
He glanced over at Cri Sawyes as he spoke. “I’m not playing whatever game the Others think they set up when they brought us down in here.”
“You believe it was the Others?”
“Don’t you?”
She shrugged, unwilling to commit.
Two shots rang out, so close together the echoes back off the hill overlapped into one sound.
“He’s down, sir! About fifteen meters off the end of the building.”
“Corpsmen!”
“Sir?”
“Let’s go!”
Jarret vaulted over the grain bags and paused on the other side. “You coming, Staff?”
“Yes, sir.” She contemplated saying something like, “
You’re in command, sir. You shouldn’t be wandering around outside the perimeter in the dark with the enemy nearby,”
but since he knew that and was out there anyway, there didn’t seem to be much point. “Corporal Conn! Bring your team!”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Staff.”
“I don’t want to lose you, sir. It’d look bad on my record.”
They found the injured Silsviss without any difficulty but approaching him was another matter.
“Watch his tail! He’s got some kind of thorny vine wrapped around it! Damn it, Conn! I said, watch his tail! Are you all right?”
“He caught my pants, Staff. Didn’t break the skin.”
Hissing through his teeth, one leg flopping uselessly by his side, the young Silsviss lashed out with the spear he still held, missed, and barely stopped himself from toppling over.
“Calm down, kid.” Jarret held out his empty hands in a gesture common to all tool-using species. “We want to help you. We’ll patch you up and send you back to your friends, and you can tell them we’re not the bad guys.”
We’ll send you back to your friends, and you can attack us again,
Torin thought, but she didn’t say it because it looked as if the lieutenant’s approach was working.
His weight on the spear, the Silsviss sank slowly to the ground, staring up at the surrounding Marines through half-lidded eyes. He roused himself to make a couple more halfhearted feints but Lieutenant Jarret kept talking, quietly and calmly, and finally the spear slid from slack fingers.
“All right, corpsmen, move in.”
Breathing rapidly, he ignored them as they put the stretcher down by his good side.
When they bent to lift him, he attacked.
One of the corpsmen was thrown like a rag doll into two of the Marines. The other screamed.
As Torin moved to get a clear shot, the lieutenant fired. The Silsviss flew back missing half his head, the corpsman still impaled on his claws.
Grabbing the cooling wrists, Torin yanked the claws straight out of their entry wounds, took a look at the extent of the abdominal damage and didn’t like what she saw. “Get him in to the doctor. Now!”
With the other corpsman staggering alongside the stretcher, Conn’s team raced toward the nearer of the two buildings. The doctor met them at the door.
When it closed, and she could hear the sound of expletive-laced explanation rising in the compound, she turned to the lieutenant.
He was staring down at the body, still holding his sidearm. di’Taykan didn’t have the best night sight, but there was starlight enough for him to separate the shadows and the dead.
“I’ve never actually...” he began, then shook his head instead of finishing.
“I know.” The troops knew as well. Torin could feel the weight of them watching, waiting to see how their young officer would handle his first kill, but they were far enough away that she could cover for him if she had to.
When he finally looked at her, his eyes were so dark she could see no color at all. “I had the only clear shot.”
“Yes, sir. You did.” And considering that it was a partially blocked, moving target, it had been one hell of a shot, too. But he wouldn’t be ready to hear that for a while.
“Do you...” A deep breath and he tried again. “Do you ever get used to it?”
Torin looked down at the body, then up at the lieutenant. She could see that he half wanted her to lie, but this was part of the job also so she told him the truth. “Yes, sir. I’m afraid that you do.”
He held her gaze with his for a long moment, drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, almost as if it was his first since pulling the trigger. “Let’s get back inside, Staff. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.”
“Yes, sir.”
Before going over the grain bags, he paused and turned to look down the way they’d come. The shrieking, silenced by the shots, had started up again.
Torin waited, wondering what he saw.
“Staff Sergeant Kerr.”
“Sir.”
“Tell the lookouts to shoot to kill.”
The lieutenant’s feeling had been wrong. It was a short night. Before the first moon had risen a handspan above the horizon, all eight of the Silsviss who’d attacked the Dornagain’s escort were dead.
* * *
The grain-bag walls were finished at almost the same time the Silsviss were. Torin went over watch schedules with the sergeants, made sure everyone had taken the time to clean their weapons, sent all nonessential personnel to bed, then went for a walk around the perimeter.
She found herself standing at the same place at the north wall staring out into the now quiet night. She could almost understand about the attacks on the buildings. What she was having difficulty getting her head around was the reaction to the overwhelming odds of the afternoon.
“You look troubled, Ssstaff Sssergeant.”
One moment she was alone, the next Cri Sawyes was standing beside her.
“You’re lucky I heard you coming,” she growled. She hadn’t, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “If you have a minute, I’d like to hear your take on what happened today.”
“The attacksss?”
“No, during the rescue of the Dornagain.”
“I sssee.” He leaned against the wall and stared out into the darkness. “It hasss been a long time sssince I wasss that young, Ssstaff Sssergeant, but I will give you what enlightenment I can.”
She mirrored his position. “When we fired those first four warning shots, we were giving them a chance to get away. Why did they charge us?”
“Becaussse they sssaw your arrival asss a challenge and a challenge mussst be anssswered.”
“But by then they
knew
we could kill from a greater distance than they could. What were they thinking?”
“They weren’t thinking.” Cri Sawyes dug a thumb into the top bag of grain, pushing into the yielding surface. Torin watched him and waited. “At that age,” he said at last, “we merely react. A ssstrong leader can make usss do anything. I sssussspect that the attack this afternoon wasss a way for the local leader to get rid of hisss worssst troublemakersss.”
“He was hoping they’d be killed?”
“Yesss. He probably goaded them into attacking what he knew to be a sssuperior force. He couldn’t have known that a sssmall group would have ssseparated. Had my people won thisss afternoon, the ressstructuring of the pack would have kept them from attacking the ressst of usss for three or four daysss.”
“A mixed blessing at best,” Torin observed.
His tongue flickered out. “Yesss. Also, I sssussspect that the local leader wasss keeping the troublemakersss from sharing in whatever advantage he acquired at the VTA.”
“There’s no advantage he can acquire. Everything we left behind is locked up tighter than a H’san’s grandmother.”
“And that’sss tight?”
“Yeah. That’s tight.” She dug a hole of her own into the grain. “If a strong leader can make you do anything...”
“We’d be quite an addition to the Othersss’ forcesss, wouldn’t we? If the Othersss are asss unprincipled as your Confederation diplomatsss sssuggessst...”
“Trust me, they’re the bad guys.”
“...imagine what they could do with an army of our young.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather not.” Out in the darkness, vegetation rustled, and a small something squeaked its last. “I take it this means you, your people, were definitely going to join up?”
“Trust
me,
Ssstaff Sssergeant...”
When she turned to face him, she could see the stars reflected in his eyes.
“...we want our young to die no more than you do.”
T
orin lay, barely breathing, wondering what had roused her. One moment she’d been dreaming about leading a charge on the Confederation’s Parliament and replacing the politicians with the remarkably lively bodies of all the Marines who’d died under her care—her subconscious had never been particularly subtle—and the next she was wide awake. She could hear the quiet breathing of the surrounding sleepers and smell the faintest trace of the Dornagain, two rooms away. Opening her eyes, she stared up past the rafters into the thatch. A small, dusty green lizard, almost the exact same color as the Silsviss of the area, stared unblinkingly back.