Alien Enigma (7 page)

Doug still couldn't decide if it was deliberate cruelty, for he had also caught a glimpse of a Sinchik having the same thing done to it. At the very least, he could see that the punishment wasn't something designed specifically for humans - which didn't make the idea any more pleasant. It wasn't even possible to escape into the forest and live there, not without proper weapons. The carnivores had no fear of humans and they were fierce, not something you ever wanted to tackle with anything less than a heavy caliber rifle.

He wondered why he was being sent to Beta section to breed. Families might mix but they rarely took their humans along. In fact, he wondered why they were attempting to purposefully breed humans in the first place. There had been enough viable pregnancies already, especially after the contraceptive implants for both sexes ran out, although many women refused to have sex because they didn't want their children to grow up as slaves. Others did, holding out hope of rescue someday or for other reasons of their own. Perhaps the Sinchik had decided to breed for one trait or another-perhaps obedience? But if that were the case they were making a mistake with him! He simply pretended to be submissive while very carefully fomenting rebellion, preparing as well as he could if the chance ever came.

Or maybe the Sinchik wanted even more slaves to replace their reduced population? Sometimes he wondered about the alien psychology. He thought the status of humans on this world was more a matter of the Sinchik colonists taking opportunistic advantage of the surviving humans, rather than slavery being an ingrained institution of the species. No one even knew why they had fired on the
Jeane Baptiste
in the first place, and the Sinchik not only didn't talk about it, but questions were expressly forbidden.

For weeks after the surrender all the humans were held in one of the city's domed buildings and forced to learn the language of their captors. After that they had been parceled out to different Sinchik families with no compassion at all about separating married couples or lovers.
Bastards
. He hated their very guts even though he supposed he should consider himself lucky to be alive at all, along with the others. The food they were given, while generally tasteless, seemed to supply all the nutrients humans required. Perhaps those first ones who were taken away had been used to find that out. He shuddered at the thought of how the Sinchiks might have gone about it.

The trail widened out into a regular yellow-colored passageway marking the end of the central crop area of the city. He had to travel almost two more miles before reaching his destination. It was all a mix of spires, domes and rectangles with passageways between and among them, and with numerous arched openings into the interior of the buildings. Beta section, the home of several different families, was composed entirely of the one huge spire he was finally standing in front of. He had no idea where to begin looking for the Stronge den. He walked hesitantly through the nearest arched entrance and was immediately hailed by a Sinchik female holding out a balled appendage, an order to halt. It was easy to tell the gender. Females always had solid brown fur while males ran a gamut of colors and mixes, but never brown.

"Jah! I have been sent to the Stronge den," he said quickly to avoid being cuffed.

She hit him anyway, although not hard. He took it as stoically as possible. Females usually didn't strike very forcefully. It was the degradation he hated.

"Go there." She pointed a three-fingered middle arm toward several arched entrances in the courtyard into which he'd entered. One of them must lead into the bowels of the place or more likely directly into the Stronge den, The name didn't imply a den in human terms, but a series of rooms and cellars, living and working areas and all else that occupied a family. Including the human quarters.

"Jah!" he said and hurried that way before she decided to really let him have it. The courtyard was bare except for benches along the walls and a pool in the center. His bare calloused feet left marks on the surface of the floor which he knew some human would later be scrubbing off but there was nothing he could do about it. His boots had worn out long ago and his owner declined to furnish replacements of any sort.

He halted at the first archway, uncertain of how to proceed. He waited a moment, hoping someone would come. He was rewarded by a prepubescent boy dressed only in a worn loincloth coming into sight from the interior hallway. He stopped suddenly at the sight of Doug.

"I'm looking for the Stronge den. Can you tell me where it is?" he asked in English.

"This is Stronge," the boy said in Sinchik. It made Doug wonder if he even knew English. He might not and have only recognized the Sinchik family name.

"I've been sent here to be bred," he told the boy.

The youngster stared dumbly at him for a moment then motioned and turned away. Doug followed him down the hall and to another arched entrance, this one curtained. His eyes tracked the boy as they walked, feeling sorrow and compassion for the youth, growing up with little inkling of the glories of the home world or even its colonies, if Earth had colonies and hadn't been conquered by now. He certainly had no idea, but the Sinchik had originally been very curious about the location of Earth. If they had been told anything, no one knew what they had done with the knowledge. That was one of the worst things about their situation, not knowing what might be happening back on Earth.

"Here?"

"Jah," he answered as if Doug was his superior.

Doug grimaced at the way the boy spoke but it wasn't his problem other than in a broad sense. "Hello!" he called and parted the curtains. He stepped inside.

A naked woman with flowing red-blonde hair rolled off the low lounge she had been sitting on and came to her feet. She took one look at him and turned her back.

"Buster, if you came here to get laid, you may as well go back where you came from. I'm not raising a kid to grow up as a slave."

***

"I don't know where we're going," the tall rangy NCO with six stripes and a diamond in the middle of the chevrons and rockers said. He was answering Corporal Dan Bullet's question, the first one after his short brief on the alert the unit had just received. First Sergeant Ian Watkins spoke with a very slight lisp from a scar that began near the corner of his mouth and ran up the left side of his face to near the hairline. "All I can tell you at this point is that it'll be an extra-solar mission."

The corporal nodded his thanks soberly but Watkins could see how hard he was trying not to grin with excitement. It made him nostalgic for a moment, remembering when he had been that young and enthusiastic about going off on hazardous missions, having not a thought in the world that he might die in the process. All youngsters thought they were immortal. It took seeing the bloody carcasses of friends and comrades to remove those deep-felt thoughts that it could never happen to you.

And of course, Watkins did know where they were headed. The clandestine network of senior grade enlisted marines had passed that bit of intelligence on to him but he'd never reveal the source. He was more likely to turn his back on an enemy than do that. They were going to the area of a small cluster of stars where interstellar ships regularly disappeared, three so far, a potential clusterfuck, or so he figured. Otherwise, why the need for six hundred marines? He'd also heard there was something unusual on a planet within the cluster but that was as far as it went. What it meant to him was that he needed his troops even more prepared.
Lots of bullets, bombs and extra weapons,
Watkins thought as he looked out at the marines in the base gymnasium. The gym also served as an auditorium.

As he continued answering such questions as he could, he couldn't help wondering what might be waiting for them out there. He, like all the others here, had volunteered for this particular unit, a strange bob-tailed battalion of two companies, consisting of three platoons each, and with a heavy weapons platoon and a headquarters platoon added. It counted a shade over six hundred troops overall and was top-heavy with combat-experienced NCOs and junior officers. Each platoon registered eighty of the toughest and most experienced marines available, drawn from all over the Corps.

A few navy Seals and Black Op Special Forces were aboard, but they seemed to stay out of the way and kept to themselves. Watkins once had a bar fight with a Seal which he'd won by finally smashing a beer bottle over the man's head; he'd never really appreciated the attempt to steal his lady. But that was when he was younger and a little less wise. Whatever the mission entailed on this extra-solar excursion, he thought it would be a fitting capstone to his career. He had volunteered for exotic-world training shortly after the quantum drive opened up their little corner of the galaxy to exploration and gone on to see action on a number of planets. He read incessantly about the colony worlds and what was being found on them and how other marine units had fared during initial explorations. Some worlds were wimps while others had been very tough customers indeed, with high casualty counts. But this trip seemed different.

First Sergeant Watkins noticed that Corporal Barbara Zembra, a rifle expert and backup loader for the heavy machine gun of the second squad in the first platoon of A Company, was sitting up front near the podium, listening attentively. She was also sitting rather closer than necessary to Corporal Bullet. He smiled, but only to himself. Opening up the combat arms to females added a bit of extra elan to the special units, but also gave senior sergeants such as himself extra worries as well. Zembra had a nice-looking if rather plain face but her exquisitely curved body more than made up for any deficiencies there. He saw her and Bullet in a relationship and knew it probably wouldn't be long before those two were an item. Mixing the sexes in combat had worked better than even the enthusiasts had predicted and if it caused a few extra problems as well, it was no more than any new innovation in the military did until the bugs were worked out.

"Do you know what ship we'll be on, First Sergeant?" A young PFC who had just joined the unit asked.

He had heard something about their prospective ship being a brand new one called the
Doc Travis
but it hadn't been formally announced yet so he couldn't say anything. However ..."I believe all you young heroes would be well served if you prepare for a long mission and a ship that has plenty of room. That's about all I know at present."

"How about environment? Any data there?" A private piped up.

Watkins thought momentarily of chewing him out for such a stupid-ass question but quickly stifled the urge. The boy might not be coming back. Instead he said: "You're all volunteers so you should know this may be a hairy sonofabitch. You also should be aware if you'd bother using a few brain cells that we won't know what kind of climate we'll be operating in until we fucking get there, so there's no specific environment for us to prepare for-except I suspect it'll be raining bullets, grenades, and bombs on any assholes that get in our way. That right Marines?"

"Oorah!" yelled out the unit.

"But what you should do is make damn certain all your equipment is in shape and then find some way to sneak an extra ammo load or two on board. I don't have to tell you old salts how, so you be sure and instruct our young comrades properly. Clear?"

"Oorah!" the NCOs shouted in unison.

"All right, then. Get to it." Watkins turned and walked from the room, shoulders back and body as ramrod straight as it had been at eighteen, thirty years ago when he'd kicked that Seal's ass.

Chapter Five: Nice to know I'm wanted

I didn't mean to say that the Enterprise should be hauling garbage. I meant to say that it should be hauled away
as
garbage"
- Korax (The Trouble With Tribbles)

Brian climbed out of the golf cart and paused long enough to stare up at the huge bulk of the starship. Even though he had been around them all his life this was the first time he had seen the new C class by itself, away from the factory. It was even more impressive seeing it this way, he decided. He was proud of the part he had played in its design, giving it more power and thrust and a much more finely tuned gravitic regulator despite its greater size. He wondered what had been done internally since it left the Wannstead assembly building. He hoped any improvements DARPA had come up with would be enough to overcome whatever enigma that made ships in the Bolt Cluster disappear. He also wondered if the Navy knew that there wasn't a clue as to whether the ships were destroyed going into the cluster, trying to land on Xanadu, or even whether they were held captive by some unknown force and not hurt at all.

Whatever, he figured it wouldn't be too long until he found out. He made some minor adjustments to his new uniform and climbed the ramp up into the bowels of the
Doc Travis
. He traveled down a passageway while thinking what an apt name
Doc Travis
was. The scientist and science fiction writer it was named after was the co-author of one particular science fiction series that caused hair to stand up on the neck of anyone reading it, and the spaceship used in the series for battling aliens was also new and powerful, if only imaginary. He just hoped they came out as well in the end, although he thought he would settle for a few less casualties. He took an elevator to a higher deck and began traipsing along still another passageway toward the bridge, more commonly known in the Space Navy as the Control Room.

"Sir?" Brian said tentatively to the back of the man sitting in the captain's chair. He supposed it was Captain Keane but wasn't certain. The man turned around and Brian's eyes flicked to the eagles on the collar of his uniform.

"What is it, Lieutenant?"

"Sir, I'm Lieutenant Brian Wannstead. I've been recalled and assigned to the
Doc Travis
."

The Captain looked nonplussed for a moment as he stared at the well built young officer with blond hair and startlingly blue eyes. Then his face brightened. "
Wannstead
, you say? From
Wannstead Industries
?"