Starfist: Blood Contact (40 page)

"Maybe the swamp critters know there are things too tough for even them," Claypoole replied when MacIlargie wondered aloud why they never ran into more of the large carnivores.

Kerr gave no sign of having overheard the byplay, but he approved of MacIlargie's caution and Claypoole's confidence.

In early afternoon Bass decided to rest the platoon and told Schultz to find a defendable elevated spot.

Nearly a half hour later, still looking for and occasionally finding skink spoor, Schultz stopped on one of two adjacent hummocks.

"I need to set up an oxygen tent," Dr. Bynum gasped when the platoon stopped near dusk. "These gases, it's too hard to breathe, everyone's respiratory system is getting too irritated." She paused frequently, since talking was hard in the miasma of the swamp. "They need, we all need, some relief."

Bass grunted. There were twenty-six Marines left in the platoon. The medical team was another four, including the doctor. "How much relief can we get?" he asked. Baccacio and Minnie made thirty-two people in the group.

She shrugged. "Set the tent up now. Make it big enough to accommodate four people at a time.

Everybody can get an hour inside overnight. It'll help a little."

Bass nodded. "Set it up." He heard coughing from the area the medical team was in. "Your people use it first." He went to check the defensive positions Hyakowa and the squad leaders had established.

"Put out motion detectors," he ordered once he was satisfied with the positions his Marines were in. "If anything we can't see comes by, flame it." Then he called for an NCO meeting. "Schultz too," he added.

While Staff Sergeant Hyakowa was gathering the squad and fire team leaders toward the platoon command post, Bass updated his tactical map and prepared it for transmission to the NCOs' HUD

displays.

"Here's the latest report from the
Fairfax County
," he said when the NCOs joined him. He didn't acknowledge Baccacio, who had joined the meeting without invitation. He transmitted the map to his NCOs. It showed their position at the bottom and continued for a couple of kilometers to the north. "All trace of the skinks disappears from the string-of-pearls' sensors about three and a half klicks from where we are." An area a bit more than an acre in size near the north edge of the map was suddenly rimmed in red. "That surveillance tech they've got up there, Hummfree, thinks the skinks went to ground."

The men ate their rations while they talked and studied the HUD. "What's the terrain like there?" Ratliff asked.

"Thought you'd never ask," Bass said. He made an adjustment and the red-rimmed area enlarged to fill the entire display. A pond took up about half its area, and the rest appeared to be tiny islands, or peninsulas separating channels of sluggishly moving water. Large vegetation, some resembling mangroves, grew along the edge of the pond. "That pond isn't deeper than two meters anywhere. Hummfree checked the filed reports of the mission's xenogeologists. He says there should be caves along the bank."

"They're in caves?" Bladon asked.

Bass shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe they got under those trees and managed to disappear so completely not even Hummfree could spot them; Hummfree doesn't think so."

"That means we try to find the caves and go in them," Hyakowa said.

Corporal Linsman grimaced. Goudanis shook his head but didn't say anything. Pasquin shivered. Kerr kept his face blank. Chan simply nodded—he was claustrophobic and had fought inside a cave before, but wasn't going to show how much the prospect frightened him.

"We all need a bath," Schultz grumbled.

"If I hear anything new on detected movement," Bass said, "I'll tell you. In the meanwhile, you all know about the oxygen tent?" The squad and fire team leaders nodded. "Set up your rotations for that, along with a twenty-five percent watch. If there are no questions, do it."

The NCOs glanced at each other, but no one raised a question. They returned to their men. Hyakowa took Baccacio aside and drew a map in the mud for him.

Everyone was still coughing at daybreak, but not quite as much as before.

"I guess your oxygen tent did some good, Lidi," Bass said.

Dr. Bynum's smile was a bit strained. "It seems to have, yes. Or maybe we're simply adjusting to the stench."

Bass chuckled. "That happens. People can get used to anything that doesn't kill them right away."

She curled a lip at him.

"How soon will your people be ready to move out?"

She looked about at the preparations. "About ten more minutes. Assuming everybody already ate when they were supposed to instead of waiting."

"Anybody who didn't eat will have to eat on the way or go hungry." He looked at the sky through the treetops, cloudless patches brightening with the dawn. "We should already be on the move."

"Now, now, Charlie, these are sailors, not Marines. They aren't used to this."

"Not being used to it won't keep them from getting killed."

A quick glance told her he was being neither sarcastic nor facetious, but deadly—an appropriate word choice, she thought—serious.

"They'll be ready to move out in less than ten minutes."

"Good." He walked away to check on the Marines.

Schultz could have led the platoon to the pond quickly, but he moved as slowly as he had before the break. He knew this was exactly the kind of situation where they were in danger of being ambushed—if he were leading the skinks, he'd set up an ambush on their back trail, at the approach to their encampment. So it was nearly an hour before he stopped, hidden in foliage, at the edge of the pond. He used all of his visual screens and a motion detector to probe the area while he waited for Bass to come to him. The pond, more than half an acre in size, was longer east-west than it was north-south. Part of the north and most of the east sides were rimmed with the mangrovelike trees, and most of the rest had lower growth. Several waterways led into it.

"Anything?" Bass whispered when he eased into position next to Schultz.

Schultz shook his head.

"The string-of-pearls hasn't detected any movement leading from here," Bass said. "If they went to ground, this is where they must be."

Schultz spat into the pond. The plop sounded just like one of the small amphibians jumping into the water. "We don't have echo locators," he said.

Bass nodded. Nobody had anticipated they'd have to search for caves, so the echo locators used to detect underground cavities weren't included in the
Fairfax's
equipment. "We do it the old-fashioned way," Bass said.

Schultz spat again and began stripping off his equipment.

"Don't go in the water until I tell you to."

Schultz grunted assent.

Bass and Hyakowa positioned the platoon. Sergeant Bladon with one fire team and one gun team was sent to the northeast, beyond the mangrove islands, to block a possible skink withdrawal. Most of the rest of the platoon went to the west and southwest, where they could fire across and into the front of the mangrovelike trees. Hyakowa took Sergeant Ratliff and Corporal Pasquin to the islet on the north to provide close cover for the divers.

The water was murky, and filled with slowly drifting leaves, twigs, and other organic detritus. Schultz realized immediately that even with goggles he was going to have to find the caves by feel because he wouldn't be able to see an opening. He regretted not being able to use a light to help his search—they didn't know what frequencies the skinks saw in, and so didn't know what frequencies they couldn't detect either. At least he only had to search where the bigger vegetation, the mangrove-things, grew to the water's edge, he thought. The ground sloped too smoothly everywhere else for cave mouths to form and hold. And he wasn't doing it all alone. Claypoole and MacIlargie were in the water with him., In Schultz's opinion, neither one was yet a great Marine, but they were both good and they both tried hard. The only problem with having them in the water with him was that Corporal Pasquin was the closest man covering them on the surface. Schultz didn't trust Pasquin. But then, Schultz didn't trust anyone who hadn't proven himself on at least a couple of operations with him.

The three Marines in the water were armed only with knives. Even though their blasters could fire underwater, the heat from the plasma bolt would instantly turn the water into steam and vapor along its path, and in a confined space might parboil the man firing it. Knives were the only weapons they had they could use underwater.

What if the skinks are in water-filled caves? Claypoole wondered. They have gills, they can breathe underwater. We won't be able to fight them. It didn't register on him that the acid from the skinks'

weapons would not be as effective underwater. If it had, he would have worried that they had other weapons that did work submerged.

It was difficult work, even though the breathing apparatus the medical team jury-rigged for them from oxygen bottles and surgical tubing allowed them to stay below without worrying about coming up for air every couple of minutes. The roots of the trees were gnarled, forming a three-dimensional web that might have been constructed by a battalion of maddened spiders.

"If a space is too small for you to fit through easily," Bass had said, "don't worry about it. Most of the skinks are smaller than us, but they've got some giants. The openings to their caves have to be big enough to let their big ones get through."

So they didn't worry about the tight spots, just searched as methodically as they blindly could through the mad spider's castle for spaces between the roots that would easily admit their bodies. For nearly an hour, every time they found an opening between the roots, it led to a gushy, slimy wall of mud held in place by rootlets. Then Claypoole felt a current of water. He backed out of the space he was in and floundered to the surface.

"I think I found something," he gasped as soon as he spit out his mouthpiece.

Schultz checked out the tunnel. There was a sinkhole several meters in diameter that angled downward under the bank, beneath the roots. Its oval quickly narrowed until it was less than a meter on its long axis and not quite as wide in the other direction. Schultz felt the walls of the tunnel and knew it had been made or improved—it had a lining of some woven material. The tunnel went down at a forty-five-degree angle for several meters, then leveled out for several more before angling up. He stopped as soon as he realized he was almost able to see in the water. He stopped breathing when the bubbles of his breathing apparatus popped on the surface; anyone watching the water's surface would see them. Schultz eased back into the level part of the tunnel, where his bubbles rose to the ceiling. When no one had come into the tunnel to investigate the bubbles after five minutes, he took a deep breath, held it, and swam forward once more. Still underwater, craning his neck, he saw the surface ripple. The tunnel widened as it neared its top. No shadows appeared on the surface. He rose until his face was barely submerged, and slowly turned around. He was in an apparently empty room with what looked like a glowball mounted high in one corner, but he was too low to be able to see the lower half of the room. Still holding his breath, he let himself drift up the last few inches and soundlessly broke the surface. As quietly as he could, he breathed deeply.

He made no attempt to climb out; he slowly turned around again and realized he was right to stay in the water. The room wasn't large, only three or four meters in diameter, nothing more than a vestibule, with a tunnel about a meter and a half high and wide leading from it. A skink guard sat next to that one exit. Schultz wanted to spit in disgust; the guard wasn't watching, he was doing something with what might have been a personal computer. Dummy, Schultz thought. With one surge he could be out of the water and kill the skink before it reacted or gave any warning. Schultz's fingers flexed on his knife, but he decided against action. He could hear low growling from beyond the tunnel exit. It would take the platoon time to prepare its assault on the cave, and the dead guard might be found before then.

Satisfied he'd learned as much as he could, Schultz lowered himself below the surface, doubled over and aimed himself downward. He checked the time and took hold of the sides of the tunnel to propel himself along. He didn't use his breathing apparatus, not because he thought his bubbles would alert the unalert guard, but to see how hard it would be to traverse the tunnel without breathing. There were only three breathers, and if more than three Marines would be going in, they would have to hold their breath.

Schultz determined that it was a short swim, half a minute. Nobody should have a problem.

The watcher fretted. Her instructions had been clear: notify the fighter inside the cave entrance as soon as the Earth barbarians passed the pond, then return to her position and watch for any others that might follow. But the barbarians didn't pass the pond, they stopped. While she considered whether she should notify the waiting fighter that the barbarians weren't moving on, they got between her and the cave entrance. So she couldn't notify the fighter. All she could do was follow her original instructions and wait for the barbarians to move on so she could do her duty. But what if the Earth barbarians didn't move on?

If they went back, she could notify the fighter of that, that was within the scope of her instructions. If they found the cave entrance, they could go in without those inside having any warning. And then what?

Except for a few watchers, all of the People were in the caves. She would not have done her duty. But no one had told her to notify the fighter if the Earth barbarians entered the caves.

She pondered the problem for a long time before she realized the fallacy in her thinking. The Earth barbarians did not have gills; they could not enter the caves because the cave entrance was through a water-filled tunnel. Her gills fluttered gently with relief. Everything was fine. She would wait until the barbarians moved on, and then notify the fighter inside the entrance.

"That's what we're going to do," Bass said, concluding his briefing. "Any questions?"