Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (13 page)

"How far is more the question," Dean snapped back. "Let's find out." He dropped his blaster from his shoulder and ran. Quick bolted ahead of him.

Two hundred meters ahead they saw Godenov trying to organize the Kingdomites into a fighting formation in a tree line. He wasn't having much luck. About half the platoon refused to stop and kept running. The others milled about and had to be physically pushed into position.

So much for the Lancelot Guardians of the Faith, Dean thought. It always seemed to him that the fancier name a unit had, the poorer its fighting ability.

No acid streamed toward Dean and Quick as they ran. The Skinks still weren't close enough to detect them, Dean thought, or maybe they were outrunning the Skinks, who didn't think they were close enough to fire. He risked a glance back, and what he saw almost made him stumble. Most of the Skinks had dropped back, and three of the huge ones outraced their companions and had cut the distance between them to about thirty meters. They seemed to be running straight at him, crashing through the grain like a man running across a lawn. If they kept up that pace, Dean knew they'd catch him before he reached Godenov and the platoon. He put on an extra burst of speed. His heart thudded wildly in his chest and his breath came in gasps. Even if it was fast enough to outdistance the huge Skinks, he couldn't maintain this pace long enough to reach Quick and the remaining Kingdomites.

Abruptly, Dean stuttered to a stop and spun about, raising his blaster to his shoulder. The three Skinks were even closer! He sighted on the nearest one and pressed the firing lever. The huge Skink went up in a monstrous ball of light. The other two didn't hesitate, but arrowed straight at him at impossible speed. Dean flashed one of them, but the other was on him before he could shift his aim. He dove at the racing feet of the Skink as it swung its sword in a two-handed arc from above its head. The impact drove the air from Dean's lungs and spun him about. Groggy, he shook his head to clear it and looked for the Skink. The collision had tripped the great thing and its momentum tumbled it ten meters farther. It was already halfway back to its feet and turning toward him. Dean started to aim at the Skink before he realized he didn't have the blaster in his hands. Manically, he looked around for it, but couldn't spot it in the knee-high grain. The thudding footsteps of the monster were almost on him. He jumped to the side and rolled, unaware of the crack-sizzle of blasters and the sharper cracks of fléchette rifles.

The Skink's sword flashed and Dean felt a searing pain where it sliced through his side. He felt an odd irregularity under his body as he rolled and grabbed it. He didn't know what it was, but anything could be used as a weapon. It was the sword of one of the Skinks he'd flared. He didn't know how to use a sword, but it was the only weapon he now had.

Dean saw the flash of the Skink's blade above him and instinctively threw up his own sword to block the strike. The Skink's swing was so shockingly powerful it almost jarred the captured sword from his hands, but he managed to deflect the blow and the sword struck the ground just above his head. He curled in an attempt to gain his feet and move away, but the Skink kicked out and landed a glancing blow on his kidney. He went with the kick and rolled several meters away. Struggling to regain his breath, he scrambled away and jumped back to his feet. The Skink was almost on him again, and Dean slashed out one-handed as he dove to the side. He felt the blade slow as it hit the Skink.

The Skink, silent in its attack until now, roared out a bloodcurdling bellow. Dean leaped back to his feet and sprinted away. He changed direction then and tightly circled around to face the Skink. It came toward him, limping slightly. Bright red blood stained its trouser leg from a cut in its thigh.

Dean turned his left side toward the Skink, extended his left leg and angled back, the sword in both hands above his right shoulder.

The Skink gave out a surprisingly human laugh and came on. It stopped three meters away, legs wide, left foot forward, arms extended with both hands on the sword's hilt, the blade almost vertical. It smiled and softly said something that sounded to Dean like it should be, "Your move."

Dean stayed motionless; he had no idea of what to do. He saw how well-balanced the Skink's stance was, how it could move in any direction, block any swing he made, or make a thrust or cut of its own. Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw that he was closer to a tree line than the Skink was to him. He shifted forward, as though about to move toward the Skink, then lifted his back leg and pushed off with his front. In two backward bounds he was in the trees, with the Skink rushing toward him.

The Skink swung its sword horizontally. Dean ducked behind a tree, and the blade sank deeply into the wood. As the Skink yanked at it, Dean came around the tree's other side and jabbed at it. Without letting go of its sword, the Skink jumped back and to the side, but didn't get far enough to completely avoid the thrust. He roared as the tip of the sword stuck several inches into its abdomen, and then finally jerked the blade free. He came at Dean in a rush, and the Marine barely managed to scramble behind another tree—the Skink was far more agile than he'd thought someone that big could be.

They danced about, zigzagging among the trees. The Skink matched Dean almost move for move. But loss of blood was weakening Dean faster than the Skink was weakening from its two wounds. Then he remembered his training: if you get into a fight with someone a lot bigger than you, get in close—if you're inside his swing, he can't hit you with his full power. The next time the Skink swung at him, Dean dropped his sword and dashed in close, drawing his fighting knife as he moved. He grabbed the neck of the Skink's shirt and pulled himself tight to its chest. He realized then how big the Skink really was—his head didn't even reach the creature's throat.

The Skink cried out in rage, and slammed the hilt of his sword into Dean's back.

The pain was bad, but Dean thrust upward with his knife. The blade went deep into the Skink's abdomen, into his chest cavity. Dean twisted the blade around, sawed it from side to side. The Skink screamed in agony and beat on Dean's head and shoulders with his sword hilt and free hand. Dean stabbed again. Warm blood gushed from the holes in the Skink's abdomen, washed over the Marine's front and splashed up onto his helmet shields, almost blinding him. He stabbed again, and the Skink staggered backward. Dean held on for all he was worth and moved with the Skink. He stabbed again. The Skink shrieked and fell backward. Dean landed on top of it, pulled himself forward and sliced the thing's throat. The Skink's sides heaved as it tried to breathe through its gills, and Dean repeatedly jabbed his knife between the Skink's ribs, hoping to hit its heart.

The Skink spasmed, then lay still.

Breathing heavily, Dean waited a moment, then rolled off. Warily, he rose to his feet and backed off. He looked at the Skink, whose glazed-over eyes stared unseeing at the treetops. The giant was dead.

Dean remembered the other Skinks then and dropped to a knee, looking wildly around. He saw none, but infra showed a man-shaped red splotch approaching. He lifted the infra shield and saw Quick's face hovering in the air, coming toward him.

"You okay, honcho?" Quick asked.

"I think so," Dean answered as he stood up again.

"You don't look like it. How much of that blood is yours?"

Dean looked down at himself. His entire front was stained the deep red of spilled blood. He shook his head. "None, I think." At that point, the loss of blood combined with an adrenaline crash and he collapsed.

Later, after he was carried semiconscious back to base, Dean learned that Quick and Godenov and the half platoon that remained had managed to fight off the two-pronged attack. Two Kingdomites were killed in the battle, and three more wounded. Quick had recovered his blaster.

CHAPTER EIGHT

General Anders Aguinaldo, Assistant Commandant of the Confederation Marine Corps, sighed and leaned back in his chair. The back-channel message he'd just received from Brigadier Sturgeon about the military situation on Kingdom was painfully terse and direct: the 34th FIST, now reinforced by Jack Sparen's 26th FIST, was holding defensive positions around Haven, the capital city of Kingdom, and preparing a counterattack. But what got Aguinaldo's attention was Sturgeon's recommendation. It was his considered opinion that the Skinks were present in force on Kingdom and constituted a major military threat to the Confederation. Therefore, he urged Aguinaldo to inform the commandant of these facts and ask him to recommend to the Chairman of the Combined Chiefs (so he could tell the President) that it was now necessary, immediately, to lift the cloak of secrecy surrounding their existence. Furthermore, he recommended every resource be devoted to finding their home world and destroying them before they could launch further attacks on humanity. He concluded by stating that in his opinion it was not fair to the member worlds to keep them in the dark any longer about such a deadly menace.

"Ah, Ted," Aguinaldo whispered to himself as he read, "you let this out and you'll really be stepping on your dick."

Fortunately, Sturgeon's comments were contained in a back channel, a secure and very private means of communication between flag officers that gave them a means to frankly and honestly say what they really thought about issues. What even generals would never dare say in public was generally safe in a back channel. While Sturgeon's comments and recommendations in his message were blunt, he was forwarding them through an approved channel, even if it was not through his direct chain of command, which would have included at least one Fleet commander.

Sturgeon's information was just too sensitive and requested emergency measures too important to be bogged down in normal Fleet communications channels.

Aguinaldo transferred the message to a crystal—he might need that to cinch his argument—then leaned back and considered the situation.

He knew that Ted Sturgeon never, never, got excited. This recommendation was not a hasty call for help from Chicken Little. If Ted Sturgeon said the sky was falling, Aguinaldo knew they better get under cover quick. The Skinks—the name had stuck from Charlie Bass's first encounter with them on Society 437—had wiped out an entire scientific mission on Society 437, and they'd now wreaked havoc with the local armed forces and the Marines on Kingdom. They were a powerful and, on some levels, very deadly alien force of unknown origin. And they were on the move—so far, only on the fringes of Human Space, but . . . well, he thought, they first showed up on the very fringe, Society 437, and were now well within the explored and settled regions. Kingdom was out there, but not that far out. Next could—probably would—be a populated mainstream world. And if that happened . .

.

"Jesus' dirty toenails," Aguinaldo whispered. Then he said to his calendar,

"Gladys, get me in to see the commandant, ASAP!"

"Not only no, Andy, but hell no!" General Dov Tokis thundered at his ACMC. He glared silently at General Aguinaldo for a moment. "Do you have any idea what news like this would do to the morale of the civilian population, General?" When Aguinaldo did not respond immediately, Tokis rushed on: "I'll tell you. People would be so spooked, the stock markets would crash immediately, send us into a Confederation-wide depression! And the first thing the governments would want to know is why we didn't tell them sooner! Goddammit, tell Sturgeon to get off his ass and whip these things now! What's he waiting for anyway? Christ's macerated nuts, we've given him another goddammed FIST to back him up, and he's got the entire armed forces of this—this—"

"Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles," Aguinaldo answered tiredly. "Sir, would you at least read Brigadier Sturgeon's report?"

"Right, Kingdom. ‘Yahweh and His Saints,’" Tokis muttered, shaking his head.

"Who ever heard of a place with a name like that? Nah," he waved away the crystal that Aguinaldo was offering, "I don't have the time to read such goddammed crap."

"Sir," Aguinaldo began—he had long ago stopped calling the commandant by his first name, although they were both generals—"what will the member worlds say if the Skinks get onto one of the mainstream planets and begin to slaughter the population there? They'll wonder why we didn't get off our asses up here and do something to prevent it. They'll want someone's neck for not warning them in time."

Tokis shook his head. "Andy, I can't go to the Chairman with a request to alert the entire goddammed universe based on the report of one field commander. I almost had to get down on my knees and beg to get authority to reinforce Sturgeon with the 26th. I go into the Chairman now, with this wild story about these, these things . . ."

"Skinks, sir. Amphibians of some sort. No one's ever taken one alive or dead so we don't—"

"Yeah, yeah." Tokis waved his hand impatiently. "But if I go in there with this wild-assed story, I'll come out thinking God had just shoved his dick up my ass.

Has Sturgeon gotten shell-shocked or what?"

Aguinaldo bristled at the insult to a proven combat commander but kept his silence. He also didn't much care for the commandant's language. The man constantly used the crudest language because he thought it made him appear tough.

He had never liked Tokis, an officer who had somehow risen to the top Marine's job—a position traditionally held only by infantry commanders with combat experience—through a variety of rear-echelon, staff specialist assignments. His only commands had been in peacetime. Normally that would not have bothered a man like Aguinaldo, who never considered his own combat awards significant. But it was altogether too obvious that Tokis actually resented his combat decorations and felt nervous around him when he was wearing them.

But the clincher came when Aguinaldo had learned by chance that Tokis was a big buddy of Fleet Admiral Wilber "Wimpy" Wimbush, another rear-echelon officer.

Wimbush had been in charge of the Diamunde Incursion, which, because he knew nothing about ground operations and trusted his army commanders, had gone awry.