Starfist: A World of Hurt (31 page)

"Ah, lay down. Right, Gunny. Aye aye, Gunny." Claypoole was about to lower himself back to the ground, then turned toward the tree where Thatcher said MacIlargie was laying. "I'll just check on Wolfman first."

"Belay that!"
Thatcher roared. Everybody who could looked to see who the company gunny was chewing on. "You'll lay right back down right now!" He lowered his voice so only Claypoole could hear, and added, "You're concerned about your men, that's what a good Marine noncommissioned officer is supposed to be. I'm your superior, and I'm telling you your men are taken care of. It's
my
responsibility to take care of my NCOs. You're one of my NCOs. I'm telling you to lay down and rest. Now do it."

Gunny Thatcher had said he was a good NCO! Claypoole exulted.
I'm one of his NCOs
and he's taking care of me.
"Aye aye, Gunny." He pulled the oxygen mask back over his face and sat down.

"On your back, Corporal," Thatcher growled.

Claypoole lay back.

"That's better. Now stay there until I, or one of the corpsmen, tell you it's okay to get up."

"Aye aye, Gunny."

Thatcher nodded crisply and moved on.

Claypoole lay there, absorbing fluids through the osmosis fluidizer, breathing clean, cool oxygen. Knowing his men were taken care of. Thinking how Gunny Thatcher said he was a good Marine NCO. Or as close as the Gunny ever came to saying that.

Mike Company had gotten out of the valley's forest fire in better shape than Company L--none of its platoons had gotten trapped, as third platoon had. Kilo Company's corpsmen came to help Doc Hough and Company L's other corpsmen treat the Marines of third platoon. In less than half an hour all had been cared for and were recovering--even the six who'd been medevacked to the hospital in Ammon weren't in severe danger, though they would need a couple days of treatment to fully recover.

Commander van Winkle made the rounds of his companies; he wanted to check on his Marines as well as get firsthand explanations of what had happened.

"We were attacked, sir," Captain Conorado said. "Our plasma bolts set off fires, and the fires grew. It's as simple as that." He looked toward the saddle that led to the valley.

"Just like that, it grew," van Winkle repeated quietly. Captain Boonstra, Mike Company's CO, had told him the same thing--the fire simply started, and it spread as if the forest was tinder dry. Yet the forest hadn't been dry. The ground was damp, the foliage lush, and many tiny streams ran through it. A forest like that shouldn't ignite easily, nor should a fire spread through it so rapidly.

Damn these people, he thought. No one had ever made a proper survey of Maugham's Station. There must be something in the chemical makeup of the forest vegetation that made it more susceptible to fire than forests of other worlds. Even a cursory examination by the Bureau of Human Habitability Exploration and Investigation should have discovered that volatility. Evidently, BEHIND's initial study of Maugham's Station before the colony was established, when it had been an emergency way station, was even more casual than he'd imagined.

But if the vegetation was so highly flammable, why weren't frequent forest fires recorded in the database on board the
Grandar Bay?
The number of forest fires worldwide that the string-of-pearls detected was well within the statistical norm for a world with the area of woody tracts of Maugham's Station.

So what was different
here?

He needed to secure samples and have Brigadier Sturgeon send them to the
Grandar
Bay
for analysis.

"Where's Bass?" van Winkle asked. "I want him to tell me about what happened with his platoon."

"He's over here, sir." Boonstra led the battalion commander to a tree, under which Ensign Charlie Bass was giving a corpsman from Kilo Company a hard time about his treatment.

"--all right, I tell you. Take care of my men!"

"Ensign, maybe you scare your own company corpsmen, but you don't scare me." The corpsman did his best to sound firm, but he didn't sound as tough as his words--Charlie Bass
did
scare him. "They wanted to medevac you, and so do I. Your lungs need to be suctioned to get the gunk out. We can still medevac you, you know. Now suck on this tube if you don't want me to put you on the next Dragon out of here!" He was trying to insert a flexible tube into Bass's mouth and down his throat when van Winkle interrupted him.

"Ensign Bass, are you trying to damage Marine Corps property?"

Bass twisted his face away from the tube and looked up. "Sir!" he said, harsh-voiced, and began to stand up.

Van Winkle clamped a hand on his shoulder to stop him from rising. "Sit, Charlie." He glanced at the corpsman and gestured for him to leave them. When the corpsman was gone, van Winkle squatted next to Bass. "What the hell happened that you got stuck in the middle of a forest fire?" he asked.

"Sir, there were fires all around, but there was a clear path through them that the company was following." He coughed and spat to the side. "The fire jumped into the path and cut us off."

Van Winkle nodded. "I was watching the download and saw that. What I really want to know is, you had fires all around you--how did you think of the tactic you used to get out of it?"

Bass snorted, the snort turned into a wracking cough. Van Winkle slapped him on the back and he spat out a large globule of blackened mucous. "Sorry 'bout that, sir," he said when he was able to speak again.

"Don't apologize. Tell me briefly--and let me know if talking becomes too difficult."

"We heard something to our flank, thought it was an ambush and reacted. It wasn't an ambush, it was a tree going up. Its trunk split and popped, threw out embers. Our return fire put so much more heat in the fire over there it burned out in a hurry. I saw"--he looked at Conorado--"the Skipper and I saw a burned-out area with a screen of fire between us and it.

I remembered watching the tree go up, and had the platoon volley fire into the fire until the vegetation got hot enough, flared up, and burned out. We went through and waited." He shrugged; it was simple.

"That was good thinking, Charlie. I knew we had a reason for making you an officer."

Bass snorted again. The coughing it brought on this time wasn't as violent as before and he recovered faster, without having his back pounded. "Nothing any old gunnery sergeant couldn't come up with."

"But an ensign couldn't figure it out for himself?" van Winkle said with a wry smile.

"A lot of ensigns used to be gunnery sergeants." Bass stopped before adding, "Not everyone takes a dumb pill when he gets commissioned."

"Regardless, it was good thinking. Congratulations, Charlie." Van Winkle stood. "Now,"

he said, looking around for a corpsman, "I want you on the next Dragon out of here--you belong in the hospital. That's an order, Ensign."

"But, sir--" Bass looked to Conorado for help, but the company commander just looked back at him, and he saw no help there.

"I'll have Gunny Thatcher make sure he's on it, sir," Conorado said.

The Kilo Company corpsman who had been trying to work on Bass returned.

"Ensign, let this good corpsman stick that tube down your throat," van Winkle ordered. He nodded to the corpsman and walked away.

"He's one of the best small-unit leaders I've ever seen," van Winkle said to Conorado when they were far enough away that Bass wouldn't overhear.

"Yessir, he is," Conorado agreed.

"But he's sometimes stubborn almost to the point of being suicidal."

Conorado barked out a short laugh. "Yessir, he's that too."

It was the next day before the forest fire finally burned itself out. Brigadier Sturgeon agreed with Commander van Winkle about sending vegetation samples up to the
Grandar
Bay
for analysis. He contacted Commodore Boreland, who sent down a three-member science team. The string-of-pearls showed a single stand of trees and brush untouched by the flames, on a small island in the middle of a large pond near the middle of the valley. Kilo Company hadn't been involved in the fighting or the fires in the valley, so Commander van Winkle sent one of its platoons to escort the scientists to the island. They went on foot; the forest leading up to the saddles was too dense for Dragons to get through, and neither he nor Sturgeon was willing to send people in the flimsy civilian vehicles that were small enough to fit between the trees. They didn't know whether Skinks or other enemy were left alive in the valley, or if they had rail guns or other antiaircraft weapons, but Sturgeon wasn't going to risk losing a hopper and everybody in it if there were.

The string-of-pearls' ground-penetrating sensors didn't pick up anything that indicated caves or tunnels under the surface inside the valley, but that didn't mean there weren't any underground formations.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Corporal Juliete lay between Lance Corporal Rising Star and PFC Bhophar, his point man. They were on top of a different saddle from those Company L and Mike Company had used to enter the valley; its sides weren't as steep and they wouldn't have to rappel to reach the valley floor. They peered into the valley. It was burned for almost its entire breadth and width. Only a few green trees still stood, outside of the sparkling emerald oasis several kilometers away on the island in a small lake near its center.

Juliete heard Staff Sergeant Oconor, his squad leader, slither into position between him and Rising Star to look for himself. Oconor whistled softly at the devastation. A moment later Ensign Zantith, commander of Kilo Company's first platoon, joined them. Unlike Mike Company and Company L when they went into the valley, this platoon could see the lay of the denuded land. It rippled slightly, and rose and fell in longer swells.

The four Marines studied the valley for a few minutes. The floor was mostly shades of gray, with blackened spikes sticking up here and there, the remains of trees. A few thin waterways were discernible as glistening gray ribbons. Nothing moved over the ground that wasn't propelled by breezes. Nothing flew above the dead valley.

Zantith used his magnifier to scan the sides of the valley. "Where does the water go?" he asked softly.

"Sir?" Oconor said.

"All those waterways. They don't flow to any outlet from the valley that I can see. So where does it go?"

Nobody answered, which was all right with Zantith. They knew as well as he did that if the water didn't flow out of the valley on the surface, that meant it went underground. That, in turn, meant there were probably caves under the valley floor, even if the string-of-pearls hadn't found any yet. Skinks liked caves--they must really like caves with water running through them. And those caves would extend well beyond the limits of the valley, which meant Skinks could be anywhere.

When he realized he wasn't going to gain any more advantage from looking at the valley, Zantith projected his map onto his HUD and adjusted the route already drawn on it. He transmitted the revised map to his platoon sergeant, squad leaders, and Corporal Juliete.

He also forwarded a copy to his company commander. "Let's do it," he said.

Juliete nudged Bhophar and said, "First fire team, move out," into his fire team circuit.

Bhophar led off, followed by Juliete and Rising Star. Oconor trailed them with a gun team, the rest of first squad behind him, then Zantith and his comm man. The platoon sergeant followed second squad with the three scientists off the
Grandar Bay
and the cargo scoot that carried their equipment, and third squad pulled drag. The cargo scoot was the reason they had to use an easier way into the valley.

Lieutenant Brightly, the
Grandar Bay's
botanist, looked around in dismay. He'd studied the maps and knew that much of the botany of this isolated valley had to be unique to it.

Such a loss! he thought. Why did the Marines think it was necessary to burn it down? He mourned the life-forms that might have been exterminated in the fire.

Well, maybe not completely. As he looked about, he saw individual trees and bushes that seemed almost untouched by the fire, even the occasional clumps of bushes in their brilliant colors. And the island they were headed for didn't appear to have suffered from the flames and heat--at least, no damage showed up in the images from the string-of-pearls. And it was unknown flora, so no one knew what kind of damage it could sustain before suffering irrecoverable stress. Of course, being burned to char was considerably more stress than he thought the plant had evolved to deal with.

Lieutenant Brightly had lived up to his name: no matter how morose he felt at any time, a negative mood was unlikely to be sustained. He was soon looking forward to examining the flora on the island. Maybe he'd be able to find out what had made the fire spread so rapidly.

He began walking more jauntily.

Unlike Lieutenant Brightly, there was nothing jaunty in PFC Bhophar's gait on the platoon point. He neither knew nor cared about the uniqueness of the flora of this valley. What he did know and care about was that Company L and Mike Company had been attacked with acid shooters in this valley. Acid shooters meant Skinks. Skinks liked water and caves, and there was both of them in the valley. He moved cautiously, placing his feet carefully to stir the ash as little as possible. His head moved constantly, checking his front from one side to the other, and halfway to his rear. The muzzle of his blaster pointed everywhere his eyes looked; if he saw a threat, he wouldn't have to waste even a split instant to bring his blaster to bear on it. He paid particular attention to narrow waterways the platoon crossed, looking for signs of anything moving--or waiting--under the surface. As softly as Bhophar stepped, he still raised some ash, and by the time they'd gone a quarter of a kilometer his boots and ankles were coated with ash--in visual, he was a pair of ghostly feet stalking across the valley floor.

Behind and to the right of Bhophar, Corporal Juliete watched almost as broad a front, from his right rear to his left front. He also looked down and, after a while, grimaced. He realized that, like him, everyone in the platoon was gradually becoming visible from the feet up from the ash. He looked closer at the space between himself and Bhophar. Fine ash was suspended in the air. He looked down and saw that his legs were visible higher up than Bhophar's. Even staggered as the platoon column was, each man walked through a low cloud of ash raised by the men ahead of him, and each increased the density of that cloud.