Starfist: Blood Contact (28 page)

She gave the time and direction of the departure then continued, "This one watched very carefully, Master. This one came to recognize differences between the barbarians so this one could tell them apart.

There are eleven who this one saw and can recognize. There might be more who this one did not see often enough to distinguish. Four that this one saw and can recognize carry instruments of some sort, but do not seem to have weapons. The others all carry the forever guns."

"Where are their positions?"

"This one thinks there are some that stay in the water-dancer. At least this one saw barbarians carry in things that were smaller when they came out. This one never saw any come out without first going in. The others, everyone this one knows of, stay in the building with small rooms and files. The ones with instruments are always accompanied by one with a forever gun. They go into the other buildings but always come out again."

"Do they have a routine?"

"No, Master. They come and go at odd hours, except for three times a day when one of them carries a package to the water-dancer."

The Master thought for a moment before deciding the watcher had told him all she knew. He wondered why she said some of them were invisible. Was it possible? That watcher was the first who was in a position actually to see the newly arrived barbarians. No, it couldn't be, the barbarians from Earth were not sophisticated enough to even think of making themselves invisible.

"Take her away and beat her for lying," he said to one of the leaders. Even if truthful, watchers needed to be beaten occasionally to keep them alert.

The watcher went quiet and docile after one small cry when the leader grasped her arm.

The half hour before dawn is one of those times when people, no matter how awake, are least alert.

Alertness at that hour requires a special effort. Perhaps it is because back in the primordial murk of the ancestors of modern man, that was the hour when protopeople began to awaken for the new day, and the night predators were returning to their lairs. Hardly anyone is alert while waking up, and when the predators are in their lairs, there is no need for alertness.

The half hour before dawn was when a force of forty fighters closed their noose. Earlier, they had slithered out of the water onto the island and began crawling toward the admin building. They didn't come onto land in one group; except for an arc in front of the Dragon, they were scattered around the island's perimeter. Neither did they all come ashore at the same moment. Their times were staggered so they would all be at the same distance from the admin center at the half hour before dawn. They moved in short rushes, now in one direction, now in another, mimicking the movement of the local amphibians. A technician would have to have been very alert to notice the pattern reported by the motion detectors—as alert as someone would be a half hour after dawn. They were within seventy-five meters of the admin center before Seaman First Class Broward noticed the pattern.

"They're coming!" he shrieked when he realized the random movement he was watching on the motion display wasn't random. His hand slapped the panic button, sounding an alarm throughout the admin building. The alarm was loud enough for the attackers to hear. Simultaneously, the panic button sent an alarm to the Dragon and beamed an alert to the
Fairfax
.

"Up! " a leader barked. "Charge!"

The leaders and fighters leaped to their feet and raced toward the admin building. The six nearest the Dragon ran to it. The doors to the admin building were locked, and the ground floor windows shuttered or barricaded. The Dragon was buttoned down for the night. The six reached the Dragon just as its engine roared and it lifted on its air cushion. That didn't phase the fighters; they knew what their weapons could do.

They had never before come against a water-dancer, but they had faced ground-effect vehicles at Central Station and were confident their weapons could destroy it. They pointed their nozzles and sprayed. Patterns were etched on the armor of the Dragon's sides and small holes appeared on its thinner skirts. Air jetted out through the holes, and the Dragon sagged on its reduced cushion.

Frantically, the driver shot forward to get out of range of the weapons, but one leader was close enough to jump and grab a tie-down near the rear of the Dragon. He scrambled onto its top. Groping in the predawn dark, his hands and feet found additional tie-downs, wires, spokes, and knobs to hold onto and he used them to pull and push himself forward. As he crawled he broke every hold fragile enough to snap or bend under the pressure of his hands or feet. He knew some of those things allowed the Dragon to communicate. Others were probably sensors that showed the crew the outside world. With luck, he was isolating and blinding the water-dancer.

In the crew compartment monitors and displays blanked out.

"Shit!" swore Mechanic's Mate Third Class Agropolis, the Dragon commander. "One of them's on top of us. Spin it, try to throw him off," he ordered Seaman Second Class Omega, the driver.

Omega stomped on his pedals and slammed his control stick left and right, and the Dragon slewed and jerked so violently it would have tossed the crew around if they hadn't been strapped in.

More monitors and displays went blind.

"Shit," Agropolis swore again. "Turn around, see if you can get the gun on any of them. I'm going topside." He drew his hand-blaster, waited a second for the Dragon to reverse its facing, then opened the commander's hatch and stood up. He twisted around to face the top of the Dragon and struggled to bring his hand-blaster to bear. He couldn't see enough of the top from where he was. He reached out with his free hand for a hold and pulled himself higher. The gun next to him cracked and shook him when it fired.

He had to brace the hand that held his weapon on the face of the Dragon to keep from losing his grip and falling back into the crew compartment. He lurched upward, one hand on the hold, the other braced on the slope, and saw a shape that didn't belong on top of his vehicle. He fought against the jerking and shuddering of the violently maneuvering vehicle to get a firmer grip on the hold and raised his hand-blaster. He took too long.

The leader had both feet and one hand on solid holds when he heard the commander's hatch clank open. Instantly, he pointed his weapon to the front. When a head rose over the forward edge of the water-dancer, he brought the nozzle of his gun to bear and fired. The barbarian took the full stream in the face and fell back, unable to even scream in the agony of his death.

The water-dancer's gun cracked again, and a ball of fire struck two fighters, who flared up and went into forever. Keeping his weapon at the ready, the leader scrabbled forward and looked over the edge at the front slope of the water-dancer. The barbarian he'd just shot hung backward over the lip of his hatch, his torso and hips bouncing and rolling with the violent movement of the vehicle. Holding as tightly as he could, the leader lowered himself far enough to jam the nozzle of his gun through the hatch past the legs of the dead barbarian. He angled it toward where he thought the driver was and sprayed.

Seaman Second Class Omega screamed when the acid flow hit his side and began eating away his flesh. His agonized, dying thrashing struck the controls and made the Dragon buck more violently than when he'd made it buck deliberately.

The bucking broke the leader's hold and he slid down the front of the Dragon. He let go of his weapon and grasped for holds with both hands, but the bucking and slewing were too violent and things slipped past his fingers before he could close on them. He hit the ground and the Dragon rolled, twisting and turning, over him. The jets of air the huge vehicle rode on slammed him from one direction, battered him from another, stomped on him from a third. He was mangled and dead before Omega's feet slid off the pedals and the Dragon settled its fifteen tons on him.

An assault team of two leaders and a dozen fighters hit the rear of the admin building at the same time the six attacked the Dragon. They didn't waste any effort attempting to break in through the ground doors or windows. One fighter, a large one, stood facing the building, his feet spread, hands braced against the wall. A small one clambered onto his shoulders and gripped the windowsill just above his head. A third fighter, carrying a heavy hammer, climbed up until he was able to fling one leg over the small one's shoulder. He slammed the hammer against the window frame until it burst in, then dropped the hammer as he clambered in through the opening. Before he could grasp his weapon, a barbarian threw open the door of the room and sprayed rapid fire bolts into it from his blaster. One hit the fighter and sent him into forever. But by then a leader was through the window and sprayed a stream of acid at the barbarian. The barbarian dropped his weapon and stumbled back into the hallway, screaming and tearing at his melting, eroding flesh.

In a moment both leaders and all of the fighters except the large one who was the base of their ladder were in the room. One leader gave hand signals and the fighters raced out of the room then split into two groups to run in both directions. A moment later they were followed by another assault team of two leaders and ten fighters. There were doors on both sides of the hallway, many of them closed. The fighters slammed open the doors that were closed, firing into the rooms, and sprayed into the open doors before entering. Sometimes fire came out of the doorways, and one or several fighters flashed into oblivion before others were able to shoot into the rooms and kill their occupants. But whether the barbarians died alone or took fighters with them, the barbarians always died.

Three minutes after Seaman First Class Broward sounded the alarm, Senior Chief Hayes, Boatswain's Mate First Class Ralston, their eight sailors, and the four techs were as dead as the crew of the crippled Dragon.

The Master looked upon the scene. "Seventeen of them dead and only twenty of our fighters gone to forever." He grunted in satisfaction. He looked to the south, toward where the Earth barbarian fighters had joined up with the ones who ran in disgrace rather than stand and die honorably. "We will destroy them." He looked with restrained glee at the two forever guns that had survived the fighting. They will try to take prisoners, he thought. They will not have a prisoner, not even for a moment of the short time they have left alive.

CHAPTER 21

The watcher lay well-concealed in a marshy spot where she could observe the island the Earth barbarians now occupied in force. She had been there for a long time—long enough for even her to notice the time was long—since before the invisible ones arrived. Her sole mission was to watch in the direction of the mountain where the smelly ones dwelt. But it was the noisy ones she had been sent there to wait for, and to warn of their arrival. The Master in his wisdom knew they would come for the smelly ones, and then return through the swamp.

The receptors on her sides sensed the movement of the barbarians as they neared the island and climbed its far side, then she began to hear their voices. That was very strange because when she looked toward the voices she saw no one. With some slight agitation, she observed the electronic impulses that impacted her sensors, which told her the barbarians were where she heard the voices, a place barely a hundred meters away. Were the Earth barbarians invisible? Those she had seen dead in their settlement had been visible. She wondered idly why the new ones were invisible. After a short time she saw some barbarians with her eyes and was satisfied; they looked like the dead ones.

Later the earth trembled with the arrival of water-dancers. The watcher noted the time of their arrival.

The visible barbarians stood taller than the fighters and leaders, though not as tall as the large ones.

Even mostly submerged and a hundred meters downwind of the barbarians, the watcher could still smell the presence of sodium chloride and other elements in the fluids that the barbarians' pale skin exuded.

Silent, alert, the watcher closely regarded Lance Corporal Hammer Schultz, whom she couldn't see with her eyes.

It took the platoon nearly all day to cross the swamp to the island. The trip could have taken half the time, but after receiving word from the
Fairfax
about the attack on the navy security team at Aquarius Station, Bass slowed the pace and put everyone on sharper alert. This time the things hadn't attacked a bunch of scientists and technicians with no combat training, nor a pirate band that wasn't expecting a fight; they'd wiped out a trained security team. They were every bit as dangerous as Baccacio and the pirates had said.

The trek was especially hard on the pirates and Dr. Bynum and her medical team, but none dared complain, and Bynum was not about to advise Gunny Bass on his tactics, especially not in view of the renewed danger. Lieutenant Snodgrass, knee-deep in mud and perspiring heavily while fighting off the flying pests, was tempted to say something, but he'd learned his lesson—for the time being. Besides, the tension remained high, so everyone concentrated on staying alert. During the frequent breaks, people remained mostly silent. When they did talk, it was only in whispers.

The sun was low on the horizon by the time Schultz reported reaching the island. The ground rose steadily where he came out of the swamp. Although it was surrounded by water and deep mud, and covered by a layer of springy vegetation a few centimeters thick, the island was relatively dry and firm.

Schultz declared the area solid enough to bring in an Essay. "But Gunny, I don't know. There's something about this place—be very careful." Schultz warily eyed the vegetation that sprouted in the swamp, aware of how easily it could conceal large numbers of people—or things—until they got very close.

Bass was instantly alert. Schultz's sixth sense for danger was well-known and very reliable. He ordered the rest of the point element to proceed with extreme caution as they established a defensive perimeter for the night. As dangerous as it was for the people planetside, Captain Tuit wasn't willing to send an Essay down for a night landing. He felt there was a possibility—and Bass agreed with him—that the things didn't know where the Marines were. Landing an Essay would surely tell them.