Starfist: Blood Contact (5 page)

"Co—Sergeant Ratliff?" Getting used to all the new ranks in the platoon would take some doing.

"What Commander Van Winkle said at the end...is all that really true about Marines?"

"Mostly," Ratliff replied. He didn't give the answer his full attention. His mind was too full of the promotion he'd just received. "The commander exaggerated a bit. Marines haven't always been the first ones in. There have been major wars that Marines almost didn't get into at all. But yeah, Marines are the point, we're usually the first." It sunk in then, who asked the question, and Ratliff took Godenov by the shoulder and looked into the younger Marine's eyes. "Izzy," he said seriously, "we are the best, and we know it. So do most other people. Anybody who doesn't know it and thinks they can beat us usually winds up sorry they met us. Now get into the barracks and change into your garrison utilities."

"Right, Sergeant Ratliff. Thanks."

When Ratliff let go of his shoulder, Godenov raced to the barracks. He didn't even notice that he wasn't bothered by being called "Izzy." All his life he'd been tormented by the questioning play on his name, "Is he good enough?" Usually, no matter what he did, other people answered, "No." But on Wanderjahr he had demonstrated that he was good enough. On Diamunde he confirmed that demonstration. Now he was coming to understand and believe that the proper answer to the question

"Izzy Godenov" was an unequivocal "Yes."

CHAPTER 4

Cameron stared disconsolately into the small fire. Things had not been going well for him, not at all, since the group's arrival on Society 437 six months ago. Opposite the fire, snuggled against the cave wall, Minerva stirred in her sleep. Her blond hair, once so beautiful, was matted and dirty, as shaggy as the men's. She stank too. They all did. None of them had spent much time on personal hygiene for months.

But she was the only one of the surviving pirates Cameron could trust.

The cave they were hiding in extended for uncounted kilometers under the mountains. They only used the first hundred meters or so of the tunnel system that led into the caverns, but they had explored extensively behind the entrance and were satisfied that the place might provide refuge if... Cameron didn't want to think about "what if." He was sure their puny defensive measures would amount to nothing if those things did come after them in there. But he'd been careful not to share his thoughts with the others, for fear the tenuous grip he had on them would snap.

He stirred the embers of the dying fire and it flared up brightly. The fernlike trees they were using for fuel burned slowly and gave off adequate heat and hardly any smoke. That was good, because there was no smoke to bother them inside the damn cave and none to seep to the surface and give away their hiding place. At least something on that godforsaken lump was in their favor.

From the shadows farther inside the cave someone was pissing. Cameron could just make out Rhys Apbac, leaning against the wall back there. "Rhys!" he shouted. "We have to live in here!"

"I'm not going outside at night, Georgie boy," Rhys answered, shaking himself off. "Not with them things out there. No-siree." Rhys rearranged his clothes. "Thanks to you, Georgie boy," he added sourly.

"You'd have been dead six months ago with the others if it hadn't been for me," Cameron replied in a tired voice. He was referring to Captain Scanlon and the hundred other members of the Red 35 Crew, as the pirate gang had called itself. The surviving pirates blamed him for everything. True enough, it had been Cameron's idea to raid Society 437, but who could've imagined that those things...

Cameron shook his head and got to his feet. Carefully, he negotiated his way up the steep tunnel through the sleeping figures littered around tiny fires. At the cave entrance two men armed with the group's last functional plasma weapons—ancient relics even when Cameron was born—kept fitful watch.

They crouched behind a barricade of small boulders, scanning the rock-strewn slope below. In the pale moonlight the larger rocks cast weird shadows across the open spaces. If a man stared at them long enough, the shadows took on a menacing life of their own, but nevertheless, the things hadn't bothered them in months.

"Lowboy, I'm going outside," Cameron whispered to one of the watching men.

Lowboy stared at Cameron's back as he clambered over the chest-high barricade of rocks that blocked the cave's entrance—too high and steep, they hoped, for one of those things to get over, but just negotiable enough for a man. Lowboy wanted very much to burn a hole through Cameron. Sure, he was the "leader," but only by default. No. They had to conserve the energy packs, and besides, those...things might sense the energy release and come to investigate.

Lowboy sincerely hated Cameron, if that was his real name—nobody in the Red 35 Crew ever went by his real name. He'd showed up at their headquarters a year ago, breathing hatred and vowing damnation upon the entire Confederation of Worlds, saying he wanted to join their band, offer them his

"services." Educated fop, that's what he was, Lowboy reflected, not real pirate material. But Scanlon had accepted him into the crew. Now look what that's got us, Lowboy thought bitterly. A knife for Cameron, that's it, Lowboy told himself. He'd kill Cameron when the time was ripe. Him and that bitch of his. Hell with it, he thought, none of us is getting off this planet alive anyway, may as well have some satisfaction before those things get me.

Outside, Cameron stood bathed in the moonlight as he urinated down the slope. They were nearly a thousand meters above the swamp, and the mountains rose another thousand meters behind them. Those things didn't like the elevations. And they liked to stay near water. The only problem, living up there, was fuel and food. There was food at Aquarius Station, about thirty kilometers to the north of the mountain range, and the indigenous amphibians that inhabited the swamps were edible when they could be caught and killed. But leaving the mountains was very dangerous. The others were frightened; they would be content just to remain in the cave until they starved. Cameron knew that only his incessant goading had forced them to forage. The last expedition had been almost two months ago, and they would need to resupply soon.

What the hell, he thought, maybe I'll just give in and we can all stay here and starve. We'll never get off this goddamn planet anyway. No wonder everyone referred to it as Waygone. It was way gone all right.

Oh, someone'll come, sooner or later, he told himself, but the question is, will we be around later? He suspected those things had left them alone for a while because they were busy with something else. Once they turned their attention back to the pirates... Well, no profit thinking about that eventuality.

Cameron put himself back into the rags that passed for his trousers. He cinched the belt at his waist as tightly as he could. He'd lost at least thirty pounds since they came here, and he was conscious now of wearing the same clothes he'd worn when they landed at Aquarius. Well, who brings a change of clothes on a pirate raid? he thought. They were only supposed to stay a few hours anyway. There would be fresh clothes at Aquarius if he could get the others to go there with him. They'd fled the place in such a panic six months earlier that nobody thought to grab anything useful, much less replacement garments. In their wild desperation to get as far away from those things as they could, none of them thought he'd live six months anyway.

If I can't convince these bastards to go back to Aquarius Station with me, Cameron thought, Minerva and I will go by ourselves. Anything was better than crouching in the caves like frightened troglodytes, even taking a chance they'd run into those things again. Jesus, how come nobody knew those things were here in the first place? he wondered for the nth time.

Over the months in the mountains, Cameron had changed in ways that surprised even him. He'd taken charge of the survivors, imposed his will on them and made the correct decisions to keep them alive. At times he wished he'd just let them fend for themselves, but deep inside he knew he was responsible for them as much as for himself. He didn't much care for the survivors of Scanlon's band: Rhys Apbac and Lowboy were scum, and sooner or later he knew he'd have to deal with them. Minerva was a different case. He cared what happened to her, the first time in his life he'd felt that way about another person.

And he'd forgotten how much he'd hated the Confederation. Just then, as he stood looking down the slope, he'd have given anything to be on board a starship, leaving Waygone, even if it meant spending the rest of his life in prison. Even if it meant again facing up to who he really was.

But the most important change he'd undergone was that in the face of terrible danger, the man who called himself Cameron was the only one who had not given in to panic. Not like the last time...

The sun was coming up. The first rays were already illuminating the peaks above him. Watching the sun rise was just about the only pleasure he could get out of life in the mountains—that and Minerva, of course.

She'd lost weight too. Her pelvic bones and ribs had begun to show prominently when the two of them lay together. Cameron rather liked that, except that her slenderness was due to malnutrition. Thinking of her, he hitched up his trousers and walked back into the cave.

The Red 35 Crew pirate band called itself that because their leader, Finnegard Scanlon, considered red his favorite color and the number 35 a lucky one for him. In real life Scanlon ran a legitimate import business from a remote mining and prospecting world called New Genesee, "Jenny" to locals. Jenny was the oldest settlement in its sector of Human Space, and had the largest population, but it was still a distant backwater compared even to Thorsfinni's World. And, as with any frontier world, the law had not yet reached Jenny in any force, so fortunes could be made there if a man was quick and ruthless.

Scanlon made a living furnishing the colonists and surveyors of neighboring worlds with the necessities.

That was the facade he lived behind anyway, with the hundred or so men and women he employed. But whenever a little smuggling operation was afoot or a raid was conducted, they all happily made the transition from employees to outlaws—to Red 35 Crew—and when the operation was over, they quietly returned to being hardworking citizens.

Scanlon planned the forays with the utmost care. For one thing, he never combined piracy with legitimate business. His public affairs were always in perfect order and his accounts open for audit by anyone who wished to see them. And he kept no records on his illegal and highly profitable enterprises.

No illegal goods were ever allowed into his warehouses on Jenny, and they stayed in the holds of his star-faring vessels only long enough to be offloaded on an uncharted asteroid or one of the small moons scattered throughout various systems where he kept his stashes.

Other pirate bands, operating along more traditional lines—roving and marauding—also preyed on commerce between the pioneer worlds, and Scanlon made a public show of cooperating with the authorities to wipe them out. But when Scanlon himself "hoisted the Jolly Roger"—he liked that ancient term for raiding—he could be more vicious than any of his competitors. They were aboveboard about what they were and what they did, but Scanlon lived a double life. Piracy was merely business for Scanlon, and to protect his identity he did not leave behind many witnesses. He raided only when the chances of success were assured and the potential profits very high, and he was very good at foisting the blame on other bands for his depredations. Before Cameron came along, Scanlon had been enjoying a string of very profitable heists.

When Cameron showed up looking for a job at Scanlon's offices at Sodus Bay, the capital city of New Genesee, he was turned down at first. Lowboy, Scanlon's "personnel director," had advised his boss that Cameron was too chancy, and Scanlon agreed. It was dangerous to let someone you didn't know into an operation like his, so Cameron was told to go back to his hotel and look for other work.

Meanwhile, Lowboy put a tail on the stranger. If he turned out to be a spy for a competitor or working for the Confederation, Lowboy would take care of him.

Cameron knew a lot about the military and he drank a lot. And he hated the Confederation Marine Corps. "Probably an ex-Marine," Lowboy advised Scanlon. "Probably got kicked out."

Scanlon thought about that. "We could use someone with a bit of military experience," he mused.

"Think he really means it? I mean this hard-on for the Marines?"

Lowboy shrugged. "Sounds like he does. The guy drinks a lot. I mean a lot. No undercover agent would ever make that mistake. Still... He says his name is George Cameron. I checked him out in the Blue Book"—the register of commissioned Marines—"and there's nobody by that name in there, and never has been."

Scanlon laughed. "Hell, nobody uses his real name around here! Ex-enlisted?"

Lowboy shrugged again. "He claims to have been an officer."

"Ask him to come back for an interview," Scanlon said.

"I don't know, Cap'n—"

"Ask him."

Finnegard Scanlon was a good judge of character. He saw several valuable qualities in the young man who called himself George Cameron. For one thing, Cameron appeared as much disgusted with himself as with the Confederation Marine Corps, upon which he blamed all his difficulties with some vehemence.

When Scanlon asked him what had happened, Cameron became evasive. Scanlon smiled to himself.

Clearly, the guy had screwed up badly. That was very good; Cameron would be malleable. They talked about infantry weapons and tactics. Yes, Cameron knew them well; maybe he had been an officer.

Certainly an NCO. He was intelligent, knew weapons, tactics, communications, could handle administrative details.

That Cameron had showed up for the interview with alcohol on his breath was actually in his favor, to Scanlon's way of thinking. It tended to support his conclusion that Cameron really was an outcast looking to hide himself and get back at society at the same time.