Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (27 page)

Williams remembered his own chest being touched near the shirt pocket; he dropped the two slips of paper and dove for his own shirt, but the pocket was empty.

“You son of a bitch,” he swore. Kindy nodded as he scooped the numbers off the floor. “I probably will be,” he agreed. He displayed the numbers, one in each hand, as though balancing them. “All I know is, neither of these numbers is Barbora’s. Jindra? Petra? Marketa? Who is who here? I’m going to be in trouble when I call one and probably use the wrong name.”

Williams stared at him for a moment then held out a hand.

“Give me Barbora’s number and I’ll help with the recon to find out which number goes with which woman.”

Kindy stared back, then scrabbled for Barbora’s number and handed it over. “Force Recon!”

“We find out what others only guess.”

TWENTY-THREE

Flitterette Homestead, Haulover During the week after the raid on the Shazincho homestead, the Force Recon Marines split into squads and doubled the number of raided homesteads they could visit. They continued to find nothing that could lead them to the raiders. None of the sites they visited was new; the raiders didn’t strike that week. It was as though the raids had stopped.

“What do you think, boss,” Sergeant Kindy asked Ensign Daly when the search came up empty on a sixth homestead, “did we scare them off?” The two squads met up and the Marines of both squads were gathered around. Daly looked around the debris of the Flitterette homestead, another small timber operation, and shook his head. “No,” he said slowly. “Whoever did this isn’t likely to be scared off by a few Force Recon Marines. They’re too well organized, and too able to conceal their tracks coming and going. They might be lying low to see what we’ll do next, but we haven’t scared them off.”

“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” Kindy said.

“So what are we going to do about it?”

Daly gave him a quizzical look. “Him, that’s the kind of question I used to answer when I was a squad leader. You’re a squad leader now; why aren’t you answering instead of asking?”

“Because you’re here, and you’re in command,” Kindy answered.

“And once you see what kind of—” Daly began, but was cut off by Sergeant Williams.

“—mistakes the officer makes, the squad leaders will divulge a better plan.”

Daly shot a withering look at Williams, but the sergeant just looked at Daly with a bland expression. Corporal Nomonon nodded sagely. “That’s the way it always works.”

“But sergeants don’t normally say it in front of the officers concerned,” Daly said.

“Or in front of the peons,” Lance Corporal Skripska murmured. Williams elbowed Skripska in the ribs. “Ellis should have said that,” he said sotto voce. “He’s junior to you.”

“Yeah,” Skripska murmured back, “the only one on this mission who’s junior to me.” Ellis looked back at him; in his chameleons his shrug went unseen.

“Do what you think is best,” Daly told the squad leaders.

“But until somebody comes up with a better idea, we’re going to continue with what we’ve been doing. Maybe we’ll catch a break somewhere, find someplace where they didn’t simply vanish, left some sign we can follow, or something else that will lead us to them. In the meanwhile, I’ll send a drone back to Basilone, with a request for string-of-pearls assistance.”

The squad leaders allowed as how that was a very good idea, one worthy of a former squad leader. Before Daly’s message drone had time to reach Halfway, a drone came in from Halfway, telling the Marines to expect a navy starship that would take up station around Haulover and lay a string of pearls. That was the problem with interstellar communication; it took time, seldom less than two weeks, and sometimes as long as a few months, for a message to reach its destination and a reply to return, and sometimes an answer came before the question was asked. Office of the G3, Fourth Fleet Marines, Camp Basilone, Halfway Lieutenant Miltiades Atticus was far more on the ball than Colonel Archibald Ross from the Heptagon’s C5 had been. When he received the dispatch from headquarters Marine Corps that contained information on the announcement from President Chang-Sturdevant about the Skinks, he had just read the first report from Ensign Daly, commanding the two Force Recon squads on Haulover. Daly’s report gave what few details the Marines had managed to glean from the homesteads they’d investigated, and mentioned the lack of cooperation from both the planetary administrator and the board of directors. Atticus immediately made a connection between the two messages. He raced to the office of his commander, Colonel Lar Szilk, the G3 operations officer of Fourth Fleet Marines, and rapped on the door.

“Come,” Colonel Szilk said without looking up from his console.

“Sir, I believe we’ve got a problem,” Atticus said, rushing into the office and handing the flimsy to Szilk. Szilk’s eyes popped when he read the brief message. He looked up at Atticus and murmured, “Hostile aliens? I’d say we do have a problem.”

“Sir, Haulover. The incidents there. We sent two Force Recon squads to deal with the situation.”

“By Buddha’s blue balls! If these”—he glanced back at the flimsy for the word—“Skinks are there and all we have in place is two squads . . .” He jumped to his feet. “Thanks, Miltiades. Return to your post. I’m going to see the big guy.” Szilk bustled out of his office. Office of the Commanding General, Fourth Fleet Marines As was his habit, Lieutenant General Indrus left his office door open, so Colonel Szilk marched right in without waiting to be announced by Commander Eddit Gyorg, Indrus’s aide-de-camp.

“Sir,” Szilk said without preamble, “have you seen the latest dispatch from HQMC?” He placed the flimsy on Indrus’s desk.

“I’m reading it now,” Indrus said, waving Szilk to a visitor’s chair near his desk. He finished reading and looked up from his console. “So, she’s finally decided to go public with it.”

“Sir?” Szilk asked, confused. Indrus tapped a command into his console and his office door silently closed. “This isn’t to be repeated,” he told his G3.

“I wasn’t on the need-to-know list, but I’ve known about the Skinks for a few years now. Someone who is on the list realized that, since one of my FISTs had made contact with the Skinks on two different occasions, I should know about them. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, but I was sworn to absolute secrecy.”

“One of our FISTs has had contact with hostile aliens?”

Szilk said, shocked. “I had no idea.”

Indrus nodded. “A platoon from Thirty-fourth FIST was the first—the first that we know of. That was on Society 437. That religious war on Kingdom a couple of years ago?” The general shook his head. “It wasn’t about religion, it was against an alien invader—the Skinks the president just announced. Thirty-fourth FIST went in to deal with what was reported to be sectarian violence and found a strong alien force. They needed assistance, and Twenty-sixth FIST was sent to help them.

“Over the years, there have been unexplained disappearances of small military units and nongovernmental explorers. The thinking now is that at least some of them may have run into the Skinks. Anyway, the Skinks are why Society 437 hasn’t been colonized, even though it seems an ideal choice.” He cocked his head. “Do you know that those two FISTs are quarantined?” When Szilk shook his head, Indrus said, “That was to keep knowledge of the Skinks from getting out. They were threatened with Darkside if they told anybody about the aliens. As far as that goes, everybody who has knowledge of the Skinks faces a Darkside penalty for divulgence—as does everybody unauthorized who learns of them. Or did, I should say.” He lifted the flimsy Szilk had placed on his desk. “But now it’s public knowledge.”

“Kali’s bloody arms,” Szilk whispered. “I had no idea.”

“If my G3 didn’t know, that tells me security was as tight as it should be.” Indrus looked back to the reports he’d been reviewing. “And now it seems the Skinks are back,” he said softly, “and we sent two lone Force Recon squads to face them.”

“If that’s the case,” Szilk said, “those Marines have no idea what they’re facing.”

“They need intelligence and help,” Indrus said, nodding.

“I believe the first thing they need is to launch those Global Trekker satellites Haulover has,” Szilk said.

“Get a drone message off to Mullilee ordering the launch. And my compliments to Admiral Marsallas requesting he dispatch a warship to Haulover posthaste to install a string-ofpearls. And make an appointment for me to see him at his earliest convenience.” Admiral Marsallas was commander in chief of the Confederation Navy’s Fourth Fleet, also headquartered on Halfway.

“Aye aye.” Szilk began to leave Indrus’s office, but turned back at the door. “Should I notify Thirty-fourth FIST to stand up?”

“Thirty-fourth FIST, and the rest of Fourth Force Recon.”

CNSS Broward County, at a Jump Point in Interstellar Space Staying awake on the bridge of the destroyer escort CNSS

Broward County at midwatch was not an easy thing to do. The lights were dimmer than during other watches and the only sounds were the pings and blips of the instruments, and occasional murmured voices. On other watches, the crowded bodies on the bridge could keep a sleepy sailor awake. On midwatch, Bosun’s Mate First Tigure Sean saw to it that the duty officers and sailors remained awake and alert. The junior petty officers and sailors under him said that was because he was bucking for chief. Many of the starship’s officers thought Sean would make

a fine chief petty officer, and a couple had already written endorsements to go as attachments with the captain’s recommendation for his promotion. So nobody on the bridge was surprised when PO1 Sean was the first to notice the blip: “Jugo, that pip looks like a drone. Bring it up.”

Radioman Third Class Eric Jugo blinked at the display in front of him and belatedly saw the blip Sean had noticed from across the bridge. His fingers almost tripped over themselves from his embarrassment as they danced over the controls to bring the blip into sharp focus and get data on it.

“You’re right, First, it’s a drone.” He blinked again when he finished reading the data, and glanced over his shoulder at Ensign Hedly Tallulah, the watch officer, then looked at Sean.

“It’s addressed to ‘any Confederation Navy starship.’ ”

Sean merely nodded, but he thought, Very interesting.

“Give me the azimuth, range, and vector,” Tallulah ordered crisply. If he picked up on the significance of “any Confederation Navy starship,” he gave no sign. Jugo rattled off the numbers. Tallulah made a quick calculation for an intercept vector and gave the orders to engineering that put the starship on course to retrieve the drone. Navy starships on cruise were allowed to go wherever in their sectors their captains chose. But they were out of communications with Fleet when they were out on their own, or even as part of a task force. So starships were assigned specific times to be at specific jump points in order to meet drones that might carry alterations in orders, and often also personal messages from family, friends, or other associates for the officers and crew of the starship. On arrival at the designated jump point, the drones broadcast identifying data that included the name of the starship they were for. A drone addressed to “any Confederation Navy starship” usually meant an emergency, and quite possibly combat was in the offing for the next warship to arrive at the jump point. It took fourteen hours, standard, for the Broward County to intercept the drone and bring it aboard. Even though he wasn’t on bridge duty when the drone’s message reached the bridge, Bosun’s Mate First Sean made sure he was present when it did; he was very curious about this “any Confederation Navy starship” message. He wondered if it had anything to do with that news report he’d seen just as the ship was undocking to begin this cruise. All he’d gotten was a glance at the headline, but he thought it had said something about hostile space aliens. A smile creased the face of Lieutenant Commander Aladdin Bhimbetka, captain of the Broward County, as he read the message. He didn’t show it to anyone while he spent a moment in thought. Then he picked up his microphone and keyed it to all compartments and pressed the bosun’s key. A whistle piped throughout the ship, followed by a carefully modulated female voice saying, “Now hear this, all hands, now hear this,” followed by another whistle.

“This is the captain speaking,” Bhimbetka said into the mike when the whistle had finished. “We have just received new orders. The Broward County is ordered to proceed at flank speed to a world called Haulover. There is an unidentified hostile force on Haulover. We are to lay our string-of-pearls to assist the Marines already planetside in locating the base of said hostile force. We will intercept and either capture or destroy any spaceships or starships we discover that belong to said hostile force. We will conduct other operations as required in support of the Confederation Marines planetside, and to the civilian authorities in conjunction with support of the Marines.”

He finished drily, “I do not anticipate declaring a liberty call while we are in orbit. That is all.”

“Flank speed” was an inaccurate term, as the only place a starship could go at full engine speed was in Space 3. Nevertheless, the Confederation Navy used it to designate the most direct and swiftest means of reaching a destination. So Captain Bhimbetka briskly gave the orders that would have his starship back in Beam Space in less than three hours, and once again in Space 3 in the vicinity of Haulover two days later.

“Sir,” Sean asked when the captain finished giving orders and sat back in his chair, “does this have anything to do with the hostile aliens I saw something about right before we left port?”

“The message didn’t say, Chief.” Bhimbetka had taken to calling Sean “Chief” ever since he’d decided the first class deserved the promotion, and began the proceedings to get him his crow. “But it well could be.”

“Sir, how many FISTs do the Marines have in combat at Haulunder?”

“Haulover.”

“Right, Haulover.” Sean shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

Bhimbetka grinned. “They have an ensign and two Force Recon squads there. Nine Marines facing who knows what.”