Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry (21 page)

She hesitated.

"I . . . I might have heard
something
, but it was so faint I didn't pay it any attention. It was like one of those sounds in a hearing test, where you can't really tell if it was a sound or not."

"What was it?" Kosutic asked, checking the inside of the bivy tent for any indication of what had slipped in and out of the camp with such deadly silence. The small, one-man tents were shaped like oversized sleeping bags with just enough room inside for a person and his gear. Whatever had killed the private had entered and left the tent without any apparent trace.

"It . . . sounded like . . . a bat," the plasma gunner admitted unhappily, fully aware of how it was going to sound. "I didn't think anything of it at the time."

"A bat," Pahner repeated carefully.

"Yes, Sir," the Marine said. "I heard a real quiet flapping sound once. I looked around, but nothing was moving." She paused and looked at the semicircle of her superiors. "I know how it sounds, Sir. . . ."

Pahner nodded and looked around.

"Fine. It was a bat." He drew a deep breath and looked back down at the body. "To tell you the truth, Corporal, it sounds like just another creature on another world we don't know much about.

"Bag him now," he told Kosutic. "We'll have a short service and burn him in the morning."

The Marine body bags could be set to incinerate their contents, which allowed bodies to be recovered rather than left behind. After the cremation, the bag was rolled up like a sleeping bag around the ashes and became just another package which could be carried with a minimum of weight and space.

"A bat," he muttered, shaking his head again as he walked back into the darkness.

"Don't worry about it, Troop," Gulyas told D'Estrees definitively with a tap on the arm. "We're on a new planet. It might have real vampire bats, and those are sneaky suckers, let me tell you." The lieutenant had grown up in the mountains of Colombia, where vampire bats were an old and known enemy. But
Terran
vampire bats didn't suck a corpse dry.

"It might have been real vampires," the corporal said dubiously.

The morning dawned with a sleepy, nervous company of Marines praying the fierce G-9 star back into the sky. After recovering the mines and sensors and conducting a brief service for Wilbur, they moved out down the valley on the jungle side of the mountains with a much more cautious attitude toward their new home.

Roger continued to walk with Cord as they moved down the gentler valley on the western side of the range. The pass was high and dry, which gave it some of the temperature characteristics of the desert beyond, and the morning was very cool when they first broke camp. The low temperature caused the Mardukan to move slowly, almost feebly; the isothermic species was obviously not designed for cold weather. But as the day progressed and the sun cleared the peaks at their backs, the oppressive heat of the planet came on full force and the shaman awoke fully, shook himself all over, and gave the grunt Roger had come to recognize as Mardukan laughter.

"Woe for my quest, but I will be happy to leave these awful mountains!"

Roger had been looking around at the banded formations in the walls of the valley and thinking the exact opposite. They were beginning to reach the low hanging clouds, the second cloud layer that obscured the lowland jungles, and the humidity was already increasing. Along with the gathering heat it made for conditions well suited to a steam bath, and he wasn't particularly elated by the thought of wading deeper into them.

But for now, the steep valley had temporarily plateaued, and Roger stepped aside from his slot in the column again as he paused to examine the small cirque. The valley was obviously a product of both runoff and glaciation, so temperatures must have been much lower at some point in the planet's geologic history. The remnants of that geologic event had produced a valley of surpassing beauty to a human's eyes.

The kidney-shaped valley was centered by a modest lake, about a half-hectare in area, fed from small streams that plumed down the rocky walls, and a primary stream that was apparently intermittent stretched up into the heights. The company had already refilled its bladders from the pool, and the water had been proclaimed not only gin-clear but fairly cool.

The upper and lower ends of the valley were marked by moraines, small mounds of stones, which had been dropped by the glacier in its retreat. The upper moraine would have been a perfect spot for a house with a breathtaking view of the lake and the jungles laid out below it. By the same token, the lower moraine could have provided a prime source of building materials.

The striated walls of the valley were clearly a product of the uplift that had formed the entire chain, but their strata indicated that at one point, long, long, long ago, they'd been part of a plain or shallow seabed. Roger noted evidence in different places of both coal and iron formations, specifically of banded iron, which was the richest possible form. The fairly pleasant, for a human, valley was perfect for mining development. Of course, as Cord's comment reminded him, for any scummies exiled to it, it would be a lesser ring of Hell.

"Oh, I don't know," he disagreed. "I like it here. I love mountains—they offer up the soul of a planet to you if you know what you're looking at."

"Pah." Cord snorted and spat. "What does a place like this hold for The People? No food, cold as death, dry as a fire. Pah!"

"Actually," Roger said, "there's a lot of good geology up here."

"What is this 'geology'?" the shaman asked, shaking his spear at the valley walls. "This 'spirit of stone'? What is it?"

It was Roger's turn to snort as he took off his helmet and ran a hand over his hair. He'd put it up in a bun, and the lake looked awfully inviting. He badly needed a shampoo, but the Mardukan's question intrigued him away from that thought.

"It's the study of rock. It's one of the things I found interesting when I was in college." Roger sighed and looked at the line of Marines hell-bent on protecting him from harm. "If I hadn't been a prince, I might have been a geologist. God knows I like it more than 'princing'!"

Cord considered him quietly for a moment.

"Those who are born to the chiefs cannot choose to be shamans. And those who are shamans cannot choose to be hunters."

"Why not?" Roger snapped, suddenly losing his temper at the whole situation and waving his arms at the company as it trudged past. "I didn't ask for this! All I ever wanted to do was . . . well . . . I don't know what I would've done! But I sure as hell wouldn't have been His Royal Highness Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock!"

Cord looked down at the top of the young chieftain's head for several moments before he finally decided on the best approach and drew a knife from his harness. A half dozen rifles snapped around to train on him, but he ignored them as he tossed it up for a grip on the long iron blade . . . and thunked the prince smartly on top of the head with the leather wrapped hilt.

"
Ow!
" Roger grabbed the top of his head and looked at the Mardukan in consternation. "What did you do that for?"

"Quit acting like a child," the shaman said severely, still ignoring the readied rifles. "Some are born to greatness, others to nothing. But no one chooses which they are born to. Wailing about it is the action of a puling babe, not a Man of The People!" He flipped a knife in the air and resheathed it.

"So," Roger growled, rubbing the spot which had been hit, "basically what you're saying is that I should start acting like a MacClintock!" He fingered his scalp and pulled away slightly red stained fingers. "
Hey!
You drew blood!"

"So does a child whine at a skinned false-hand," the shaman said, snapping the "fingers" on one of his lower limbs. The hand on the end had a broad opposable pad and two dissimilar-sized fingers. It was obviously intended for heavy lifting rather than fine manipulation. "Grow up."

"Knowledge of geology is useful," Roger said sullenly.

"How? How is it useful to a chief? Should you not study the nature of your enemies? Of your allies?"

"Do you know what that is?" Roger demanded, gesturing at the coal seam, and Cord snapped his fingers again in a Mardukan sign of agreement.

"The rock that burns. Another reason to avoid these demon-spawn hills. Light a fire on that, and you'll have a hot time!"

"But it's a good material economically," Roger pointed out. "It can be mined and sold."

"Good for Farstok Shit-Sitters, I suppose," Cord said with another snort of laughter. "But not for The People."

"And you trade nothing with these 'Farstok Shit-Sitters'?" Roger asked, and Cord was silent for a moment.

"Some, yes. But The People don't need their trade. They don't require their goods or gold."

"Are you sure?" Roger looked up at the towering alien and cocked his head. There was something about the Mardukan's body language that spoke of doubt.

"Yes," Cord said definitely. "The People are free of all bonds. No tribe binds them, nor do they bind any tribe. We are whole." But he still seemed ambivalent to the human.

"Uh-huh." Roger put his helmet back on, carefully. That tap had hurt. "Physician, heal thyself."

The jungle wore mist like a shroud. This was a cloud forest more than a rain forest—a condition of eternal damp and fog rather than a place of rain.

But it was also a transition zone. Soon the company would pass out of it into the enveloping green hell of the jungle below. Soon their vision would be blocked by lianas and underbrush, not mist. Soon they would be in the cloaking darkness of the rain forest understory, but for now there were only tall trees, very similar in many respects to the trees on the desert side of the mountains, and the omnipresent mist.

"This sucks," said Lance Corporal St. John, (M.). Sergeant Major Kosutic required him to respond that way—"St. John, M."—because he had an identical twin in Third Platoon, St. John, (J.) She also required each of them to have a distinguishing mark at all times. In St. John (M.)'s case, it was that one side of his head was shaved bald, and he reached up to scratch under his helmet as he looked around at the steamy twilight.

The temperature was over 46 degrees, 115 Fahrenheit, and the fog was dense and hot, like being in a steam bath, and nearly impenetrable. Visibility was no more than ten meters, and the helmets' sensors were overwhelmed by the conditions. Even the sonics were defeated by the swirling, choking steam. St. John (M.) turned to bitch some more to the plasma gunner behind him . . . just in time to be hit by a high-pitched squeal in his right ear.

"Eyow!"

"What?" PFC Talbert asked as the lance yanked off his helmet. The two of them were covering the right flank of the company, slightly out of line with the point man and fifty meters back.

"Ow!" the grenadier said, banging the helmet into a convenient tree trunk. "Goddamn feedback! I think this damned steam blew out a circuit."

Talbert laughed and let her plasma rifle dangle on its sling as she slapped a stingfly on her neck and fished in her jacket with the other hand. She extracted a brown tube.

"Smoke?"

"Nah," St. John (M.) snarled. He put the helmet on his head and yanked it off again. "Shit." He reached into the depths and pulled a harness plug, then held it up to his ear again. "Ah, that got it. But I just lost half my sensors."

Talbert popped the brown tube into her mouth and tapped the end to light it, then paused and looked around at the mists.

"Did you hear something?" she asked, hitching up her plasma rifle cautiously.

"I can't hear shit," St. John (M.) said. The big lance corporal rubbed his ear. "Nothing but chirping crickets!"

"Doesn't matter," Talbert said around the nicstick. The mild derivative of tobacco had a low-level of pseudonicotine and was otherwise harmless. It was, however, just about as addictive as regular tobacco. "Sensors can't do shit in this cra—"

St. John (M.) spun in place like a snake as the scream began behind him.

Talbert, shrieking like a soul in hell, was connected to one of the trees by a short, wiggling worm. The worm stretched down from perhaps a meter over head height and was connected to the curve where shoulder met neck. Even as the corporal watched, frozen, the juncture spurted bright red arterial blood, and the worm snatched Talbert up into the air.

St. John (M.) was shocked out of coherent thought, but he was also a veteran, and his hands jacked the belt of high explosive rounds out of his grenade launcher without any conscious order from his brain. They were reaching for a shotgun shell when Gunnery Sergeant Lai appeared out of the mist. The senior NCO paused for no more than a heartbeat to take in the situation, then blew the worm off the tree with her bead rifle.

The plasma gunner hit the ground like a sack of wet cement, then broke into convulsions. The ululating shrieks never stopped as her arms and legs spasmed on the ground, tearing up handfuls of dark, wet soil.

Lai dropped the bead rifle and ripped the first-aid kit off her combat harness. She threw herself onto the writhing plasma gunner and covered the spurting wound on her neck with a self-sealing bandage. But even as she did so, the wound erupted with red, streaming jelly. The smart bandage expanded to cover the bleeding areas, looking for clear undamaged tissue to bond to, but the damage spread faster than the bandage as flesh-eating poisons began dissolving the proteins under the skin that bound the private's flesh together.

Lai cut the gunner's camouflage jacket open with a combat knife as the subcutaneous hemorrhaging spread. She whipped out another bandage, but it was obviously useless as black-and-red pools of destruction crossed the private's tanned torso. The skin around the initial puncture broke, and a slit ripped open down Talbert's ribs as blood, fats, and dissolved muscle poured out onto the forest floor.

The plasma gunner went into fresh paroxysms as the blackness spread and both of her exercise-flattened breasts melted into pools and washed out through the slash in her chest.