Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (33 page)

“Sorry about this, sport,” Kindy said as he wrapped packaging tape around the prisoner and the back of the chair, “but we’ve got to keep you still and quiet for a while.” He knelt to secure one of the prisoner’s legs to a chair leg, and fell back with a thump when the small man kicked him.

“What was that?” a suspicious voice called from the front of the house.

“Nothing,” Kindy called back. “I tripped on something, that’s all.”

Quickly, and more carefully because of the kick, the Marines got the prisoner’s legs secured. When they went to the front of the house, Kindy left a minnie on a windowsill to keep an eye on the prisoner.

Inside, Daly got Williams, Mullilee, and the two wounded Marines into the kitchen before Mullilee had a chance to notice that three of the Marines weren’t present. He had Belinski and Rudd strip off their shirts as they went. Williams rolled up his sleeves for greater visibility.

“Dr. Tabib,” Daly said to the white-haired, white-coated man who stood next to a table with medical accoutrements laid out on it. The doctor was washing his hands with something from a spray can. “Here are your patients. Corporal Belinski suffered a human bite on his lower arm. Lance Corporal Rudd was hit by some kind of acid that ate a hole in his upper arm.”

If the doctor was at all discomforted by seeing half-men approaching him with no visible means of support, he gave no sign of it. “Human bite? That can be very—” Tabib began, then the rest of what Daly said registered. “Acid? Come here, young man.” He waved at Belinski, blinked when Rudd stepped forward. “Ah, you have the acid burn? Let me see.” Rudd held his arm out to the doctor, who prodded the synthskin covering his wound. “Very interesting dressing.” He looked up at Daly with a question in his eyes.

“It’s called synthskin, sir,” Daly explained. “Standard field dressing in the Confederation military. If it’s left on long enough, it bonds with the surrounding skin.”

“Ah, I see. Then we should not leave it on long enough, neh?”

“No, sir, we should not.” Daly reached in to show Tabib how to remove the synthskin dressing.

“Ingenious.” Tabib examined the dressing, then glanced up at Mullilee. “We should get this synthskin. It could save lives when people in the homesteads are injured and have to wait for good medical assistance.” He returned his attention to Rudd’s arm without waiting to see how Mullilee responded. “Very professional packing. Who did it?”

“I did, sir,” Sergeant Williams said.

“You are a surgical assistant?”

Williams let out a surprised laugh. “Not hardly, sir. That’s just the field expedient first aid that Force Recon Marines are taught.”

“Impressive.” Tabib continued removing the packing and began examining the deep hole in Rudd’s arm. He used an absorbent ball to blot the blood that was seeping into the hollow.

“All the way to the humerus. And how did this happen?” He looked into Rudd’s eyes.

“We were ambushed by raiders, sir,” Williams said. “They had guns that shoot streams of acid.”

“Acid guns?” Tabib looked back and forth between Daly and Mullilee. “I’ve never heard of such things.”

Mullilee looked shocked. Daly didn’t, but said, “I’ve never heard of them either, sir.”

Tabib looked back at Williams. “How did you clear the wound? Its walls are abraded.”

Williams drew his knife. “With this, sir. Then I suctioned it out—along with a drop of the acid that was still in the bottom of the wound.”

“Yes, I see the scoring on the humerus from your knife,”

Tabib said. “Where is the sample?”

“Lance Corporal Skripska has it, sir. I believe he’s still parking the landcar.”

They heard the front door open and the sound of voices.

“See who’s there,” Daly told Williams. The squad leader moved to where he could see into the main room. “It’s Chairman Miner. He’s talking at Jaschke and Ellis.”

Daly gave him a look. “At them, sir. It’s not a conversation.”

The doctor manipulated Rudd’s arm during the byplay involving the front door. “I believe the tissue can be regenerated, even with the primitive equipment we Hauloverans have. If not, your arm may be crippled for life.”

They heard a thud from the back of the house, and Miner called out, “What was that?”

Daly and Williams didn’t know exactly what the thud was, but they knew it must have to do with the prisoner. They both headed for the front room to forestall Miner from going to investigate. Before they got there they heard Kindy call out,

“Nothing. I tripped on something, that’s all.”

“We’ll see what’s ‘nothing,’ ” Miner snarled, and started through the room to the hallway leading to the back of the house.

“Chairman Miner,” Daly said loudly, interrupting the chairman of the board. “How good of you to come, sir.”

“What’s this about you killing the raiders?” Miner demanded.

“One of my squads found some of them, sir. Sergeant Williams was just about to tell us what happened.” Daly stepped aside and gestured for Miner to precede him into the kitchen. With a brief glance toward the rear of the house, Miner went where Daly directed. Dr. Tabib had just finished redressing Rudd’s wound and was starting to examine Belinski’s bite wound.

“Your work again, Sergeant?” Tabib asked. When Williams said Skripska had dressed Belinski’s wound, the doctor shook his head. “If either of you decide to leave the Marines, I won’t hesitate to hire you as my assistant.” He half listened as Williams described the action outside the Rebetadika homestead to the others. Williams gave a fairly accurate description of the firefight; the only significant details he left out were the raiders vaporizing in flame when they were shot, the fact that they seemed to breathe underwater, the capture of Corporal Belinski—and the prisoner. He also exaggerated the number of raiders and said the Marines had been driven off by superior firepower.

“But you said their guns had a range of only about fifty meters,” Miner objected. “Your blasters fire farther. Couldn’t you have pulled back and shot them all?”

“Possibly,” Williams said levelly. “But if we stood off, we wouldn’t have been able to see all of them; for that matter, maybe we didn’t see all of them anyway. So while we were standing off, picking off the ones we could see, some of them could have been maneuvering around behind us.” He shrugged. “Withdrawal in this case was the better part of valor.”

Miner grunted. He wasn’t satisfied with the answer—and his suspicion that the Marines didn’t deserve their reputation was strengthened.

When Williams was through with his report, Dr. Tabib broke in. “Take it easy with that arm,” he told Belinski, “and come to my office tomorrow so I can check it again. In the meantime, take these—the dosage is marked on the label.” He reached into

his medkit and handed Belinski a small bottle from it. “You,” he said turning to Rudd, “I want you to come with me to the hospital so we can begin the tissue-regeneration process.”

Rudd looked at Daly, not sure he should go with the doctor. Daly hardly had to give it any thought. “We don’t know how long it’ll be before you have access to navy medical facilities. So go with him.” Then to Tabib: “Doctor, how long will you have to keep him?”

“The regeneration should only take a week or two. Why?”

“Sir, he won’t be in therapy constantly, will he? Could he be treated as an outpatient?”

Tabib considered the question for a moment, then nodded.

“As long as he’s on time for all of his treatments and doesn’t do anything to aggravate the injury, I guess so. But if he does anything to retard the treatment, or misses a treatment, then I’ll have no choice but to hospitalize him.”

“Thank you, Doctor, I’ll see to it that he makes all of his treatment sessions—and that he’s on time for them.”

“All right, then. Mr. Rudd, if you will come with me?” Tabib said as he repacked his implements. “Mr. Mullilee, could you do me the favor of providing us with transportation to the hospital?”

“Y-Yes, I can do that,” Mullilee answered, speaking for the first time since fourth squad returned to Marine House. He hastened to lead the way out to his landcar. Miner glared at the Marines, but left with the others. Moments later, third squad and Skripska joined the rest of the Marines. Skripska had taken time to change out of his chameleons into garrison utilities. Kindy went directly to the kitchen.

“What were Mullilee and Miner doing here?” Williams wanted to know.

Daly made a face. “We don’t know any doctors here, so I called the constabulary and asked who they used. It turned out their doctor had strict orders to notify Miner and Mullilee if we ever requested his assistance. So he called them, even after I asked him not to tell anybody.”

Kindy came back with bottles of beer for everybody and began passing them out. Williams shook his head. “I guess it makes sense,” he said.

“Especially if Miner’s involved with the raids.”

“Yes, the raids. Now what the hell really happened out there,” Daly demanded as soon as everybody had a beer and was settled.

“I’ll let Belinski tell you what happened to him,” Williams said. “Otherwise, everything happened just about exactly the way I told it in front of the locals.” He grinned grimly. “I only left out a couple of details.”

Daly didn’t interrupt, or allow anybody from third squad to interrupt, while Belinski told his story, and then Williams filled in most of the details he’d left out of his earlier account. There was another thing he mentioned at the end.

“When we caught up with the two carrying Belinski, it was, well, it was odd. They hesitated before they dropped him and turned to fight us. It was like they were waiting for orders from somebody.”

The room was silent for a few moments when Williams finished. Daly finally broke the silence.

“A couple of things. First, I’m glad Dr. Tabib didn’t ask to take the acid sample with him. Even if we have to wait a month for the navy to show up, I want our own people to analyze that acid. Second, are you crazy, or do you think we are? People don’t vaporize when they’re shot by a blaster! They just don’t do that. And they don’t breathe underwater, either.”

Williams nodded. “I’ve always believed the same thing. But as sure as”—he was about to say “as sure as Muhammad has pointy teeth,” but remembered the prisoner’s pointed teeth, and changed it to—“as sure as Buddha has hairy blue balls, that’s exactly what they did today. At least ten of them vaporized in huge gouts of flame when they were shot. And two of them left scorch marks on the ground.”

“Why only two if you flamed ten of them?” Ellis asked.

Williams snorted. “Because eight of them were in the water when we shot them, that’s why,” he said. Ellis had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Speaking of people doing strange things, what’s the prisoner doing?” Daly asked. Kindy glanced at his minnie feed, as he’d done occasionally since leaving the secure room. “Struggling against his bonds. The same as he’s been doing ever since we left him alone. Doesn’t look like he’s managed to loosen anything, though.”

“Let’s go take a look at him,” Daly said. The prisoner stopped struggling when the Marines crowded into the small room; he twisted his head around and glared at them. Kindy went directly to him to check the bindings. The prisoner hadn’t managed to budge any of them.

“Remove his gag,” Daly said. “I want to talk to him.”

“Careful, he bites,” Williams added. Kindy looked curiously at Williams; he hadn’t seen the deep gouges on Belinski’s arm. Still, he stood behind the prisoner to remove the gag, and stepped back as soon as he had. Even at that, the prisoner didn’t miss by much when he twisted his head around to bite.

“Damn!” Jaschke exclaimed. “Did you catch the teeth on him?”

“Yeah, I did,” Belinski said drily.

“Oh, right.”

“On premodern Earth, some warlike, primitive peoples filed their teeth,” Daly explained. “Maybe he’s from a world where people wanted to revert to that kind of culture.”

When he heard that, Kindy got busy with his comp. After a moment he said, “Sorry, boss. According to my database, none of the couple hundred human worlds were settled by people who wanted to file their teeth.”

“Where are you from?” Daly asked the prisoner, moving to where the small man wouldn’t have to twist around to see him. The prisoner growled something unintelligible and punctuated whatever it was he said by spitting at the Marine officer. Daly calmly looked at the spittle that marked the chest of his shirt, then quickly stepped forward and slapped the prisoner across the face. He pulled back just in time to keep from getting bitten. Daly shook his head. “That’s a no-no, mister. Don’t bite the hand that decides when you get fed. I’m Ensign Jak Daly, Fourth Force Recon Company, Confederation Marine Corps. What’s your name?”

The prisoner growled again but didn’t spit this time; maybe he had learned not to bite the hand that . . .

“This interrogation will go a lot easier if you speak Standard English,” Daly continued. “I certainly don’t understand the language you’re using.” He looked at the other Marines. “Do any of you recognize his language?” They all shook their heads. “Interesting. In this group, I imagine we’d recognize almost every language in common use in the Confederation.” He gave the prisoner a hard look. “And I believe everybody in the Confederation speaks at least some Standard English. So stop playing language games and switch to a language we can all understand.”

The prisoner looked at him blankly for a moment, then growled a few syllables that none of the Marines could recognize. Skripska felt a rumbling in his midsection. “I’m beginning to feel a bit hungry,” he said. “Do you think he is too?”

Daly stared at the prisoner for a moment. “Could be,” he said. “Did you secure him so he can have a hand free to feed himself without being able to undo his bonds?”

“Affirmative,” Kindy said.

“Well, it’s about that time. Whose turn is it in the kitchen?”

Daly didn’t need to ask, he knew the rotation; he was looking for a reaction from the prisoner, but didn’t get one.

“Let’s go,” Jaschke said to Ellis. Then to Williams: “What do you think he likes to eat?”

Williams shrugged. “Those guys spent a lot of time in the water. Maybe he likes fish.”