Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (38 page)

“I got the one in the kitchen; the front of the house seems to be clear. I’m coming around to the rear now. Somebody keep an eye on the front, just in case I missed anyone.”

He dashed to the rear of the house. The back door stood open, and Daly raced past it to the window of the unused bedroom on its left. The window wasn’t broken. He looked in and saw one soldier leaning back against the far wall with his head turned toward the open door to the hallway. Without hesitation, he bashed the glass in with the butt of his hand blaster and torched the soldier. Even before

the light of the dead man’s fire began to fade, he smashed out more of the glass, then dove through the window, cutting himself in several places on the broken glass. He hit the floor and rolled, looking into the corners he hadn’t been able to see from outside. Nobody was in them. He scrabbled to the doorway and poked his weapon through it to fire into the doorway opposite. A brilliant flash replied to his shot, and he bolted across the hall, diving into the secure room and looking for more enemy. But the room was empty. He lay panting for a moment before saying into his all-hands circuit, “I got them. The rear of the house is clear. Are any of you in your chameleons?”

“We all are,” Corporal Belinski answered. “How about you?”

“Only my helmet.” Daly looked down at himself and gave a rueful laugh. “Other than that, I’m naked. So, since you guys are invisible and I’m entirely too visible, how about if you make sure the house is secure. And check Nomonon.” He looked at himself again and noticed blood flowing from multiple cuts. “Oh, yeah, and I need a medkit.”

“On it, boss.” Jaschke rattled out orders to the other three Marines.

Lance Corporal Ellis brought Daly a medkit before the Marines conducted their search of the entire house. Daly patched his wounds as best he could, then went to his room to get dressed when the search revealed no more enemy. Belinski, as the next most senior uninjured Marine, called for medical assistance and notified the constabulary. He decided to let Daly wake Planetary Administrator Spilk Mullilee to give him the news. All they found of the intruders were scorch marks.

THIRTY-TWO

Marine House, Sky City, Haulover Ensign Daly was just waking Planetary Administrator Mullilee when he heard the sirens of approaching emergency vehicles. That’s fast response, he thought. Belinski had just placed the call for medical assistance a moment earlier.

“Mullilee,” the planetary administrator said groggily.

“Sir,” Daly said to Mullilee, “Marine House was just attacked. We succeeded in defeating the attackers but I have several wounded. We’ve already called the hospital for emergency care and transport. We also notified the constabulary.”

“Buddha’s Blue Balls,” Mullilee swore, abruptly sounding wide awake. “D-Don’t do anything until I get there. I-I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

“Right. Daly out.” He cut off comm. Daly had no intention of not doing anything—he had injured Marines to attend to, and he was going to do everything necessary to care for them without waiting for anybody. He was already heading to the sergeants’ bedroom while he spoke to Mullilee.

“How are they?” he asked Corporal Belinski as he entered the room. Belinski and Lance Corporal Skripska were closing a stasis bag on Sergeant Kindy.

“Not good,” Belinski said. He glanced at Corporal Jaschke, who was kneeling over Sergeant Williams.

“I’ve got him stabilized,” Jaschke said. “Good thing emergency medical is responding so fast.”

“What about Nomonon.”

“He’s in the other stasis bag. Ellis is watching him. In the kitchen.”

Belinski and Skripska rose from installing their squad leader in the medical bag that would maintain him in an effective state of suspended animation until he could get proper medical attention.

“Nomonon is real iffy,” Belinski said. “If the navy doesn’t get here in a hurry . . .” He shook his head. Daly nodded, and swallowed a lump that formed in his throat. Nomonon had been one of his men when he’d been a squad leader, before he went to Arsenault to attend Officer Training College. He looked at Kindy; Kindy had been one of his men as well. Williams had joined the company after Daly had left for Arsenault. Without another word, Daly turned on his heels and headed toward the kitchen. Before he got there, the sirens stopped in front of the house and Lance Corporal Ellis opened the front door. But it wasn’t the emergency medical vehicles that Daly had assumed, it was the constabulary.

“What’s going on here?” demanded a man with sergeant’s pips on his collar. “We got reports of gunfire from this location.”

Daly turned from the kitchen to the constable. “We were attacked,” he said. “I’ve got casualties. Where are the ambulances we called for?”

The constable sergeant shook his head. “I don’t know anything about any ambulances. All I know is we got calls about gunfire from around here.” He turned around and spat out a series of orders to the men who accompanied him. They went off, weapons in hand, to search the grounds of Marine House and the surrounding area. Then he turned back to Daly and said, “You say you’ve got casualties?”

“Three men, seriously wounded.”

The constable got on his comm to call for ambulances.

“They’re already on their way,” he said when he signed off. He cocked his head at the sound of approaching sirens. “That must be them now. I’m Sergeant Watchman, who the hell are you?”

“Ensign Jak Daly, Fourth Force—”

“Yeah, you’re the Marine in charge here. Heard about you. My people are checking around outside. Now how about you tell me what happened in here?”

Before Daly could relate what had happened, two ambulances shuddered to a stop in front of the house and four medics piled out of them, carrying what Daly assumed were civilian medkits.

“Where are they?” the first medic through the door asked.

“One in a stasis bag in the kitchen. Two more in that room.”

Daly pointed. “One in a stasis bag, one badly injured but not bagged.”

“Stasis bag?” the first medic asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. He led one medic to the sergeants’ bedroom and sent the other pair to the kitchen.

“I’ve heard of these,” one of the medics murmured as soon as he reached the kitchen. “Wish we had them. Maybe someday.” He knelt to examine the med readings on the stasis bag’s front. “Is he dead?” he asked. “I don’t see any vital signs.”

“The stasis bags slow things down far enough that signs don’t always show,” Ellis explained, a touch of hopefulness in his voice, like he didn’t believe what he said himself. “It holds someone in a sort of suspended animation.”

“What should we do with him?” the medic asked uncertainly.

“Just get him to the hospital. Don’t try to give him any treatment yet.”

“All right, if you say so,” the medic said doubtfully. “Give me some data on him.” He got out his comp and asked a series of questions—name, age, home, nature of injuries, and more—

and entered the answers into his comp. While he did that, the other medic went back to the ambulance for a gurney. In the sergeants’ bedroom, the chief medic checked over

Sergeant Kindy while the other medic took down the answers to the routine questions. Finally, satisfied that Kindy was properly stabilized, the chief medic said, “Whoever patched him up did good work.”

He looked at Williams in the stasis bag and murmured something envious about offworld technology. He and his assistant went to the ambulances for gurneys. Before the constables allowed the ambulances to leave, the sergeant asked the medics a few questions. He wasn’t fully satisfied with their answers; the stasis bags prevented them from giving firsthand descriptions of the injuries of the bagged Marines. After he let the ambulances leave, Watchman turned to Daly.

“You were going to show me what happened here.”

“Detachment up!” Daly called, and began talking while his few remaining men assembled. “It began with Corporal Nomonon, who was on fire watch.”

Watchman raised an eyebrow when Daly said he had a man on fire watch; he wondered why the Marines kept an overnight watch, but didn’t comment on it. Not yet, anyway. Instead, he observed and listened quietly while the Marines walked him through what had happened. He took in the secure room, the manacles, the furniture bolted to the floor, and the charred mattress and bedding, but still didn’t say anything about the state of things. He barely blinked when Daly and the other Marines told him about the attackers’ vaporizing when hit by the plasma bolts shot from blasters—that was merely another anomaly in their account that would need further checking. Just then, all he wanted to do was gather data without putting anybody’s guard up.

They had completed the tour of Marine House and the recounting of what had happened when Planetary Administrator Spilk Mullilee showed up. But he wasn’t alone; he came in the retinue of Chairman of the Board Smelt Miner. They didn’t arrive to the tune of sirens, or even the screech of tires breaking to a stop outside. The first the people inside knew of the arrival of Mullilee and Miner was the chairman’s raised voice.

“Constable, disperse those people! Send them home. I don’t care who they are, get them away from here!” Then he swept through the entrance of Marine House.

“What in the name of the Goddess of Monumental Screwups did you do here?” Miner demanded, taking in the scorch marks on the living room floor and a half-burned easy chair.

“Were you trying to burn the house down? Did you want to get rid of any evidence of your incompetence?”

Ensign Daly pointed to the broken windows and the blood pooled on the floor where Corporal Nomonon had been shot.

“There was a fight,” he said tightly. “I’ve got three men seriously wounded and in your hospital. Two of them might not survive.”

“Four casualties,” Corporal Belinski said softly. “You forgot yourself.”

Daly ignored him. “As for the burned places, I don’t know how or why, but when we shot the people who attacked us they went up in flames.”

The remaining Marines nodded their agreement.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Corporal Jaschke said.

“People don’t do that when they get shot by blasters,” Lance Corporal Ellis added. “They just don’t flare up.” He looked haunted.

Mullilee looked sick, listening to the Marines. “How badly did they—whoever they were—hurt you?” he asked.

“Sergeant Kindy and Corporal Nomonon are injured so badly we had to put them in stasis bags to keep them alive until they could get proper medical attention. Sergeant Williams should be in one as well, but we only brought two. And if a Confederation Navy starship doesn’t arrive on station soon enough, the two bags might not keep them alive until one does. And I have no idea how long that may be.”

“Wh-What about you?” Mullilee asked. “Someone said you’re hurt.”

Daly grimaced. “Just a few cuts, nothing serious.”

Miner looked at the collection of civilian rifles and handguns

piled in the middle of the room. “I only see one knife there. What happened, did you have a knife fight with one of them?”

Daly shook his head. “I came in the back window to flank the last of them.” He didn’t explain further when Miner looked at him questioningly.

“These are all civilian weapons,” the chairman of the board said. “Are you sure you didn’t kill some locals and then try to get rid of the evidence by burning them?”

“Do you know any way to make a human body burn to vapor and do nothing more to its surroundings than leave a scorch mark on the floor?” Daly asked. “I certainly don’t. These people . . .” He shook his head. “These creatures simply whooshed up in flame when we shot them with our blasters.”

“People just don’t do that,” Ellis said again. His eyes were wide enough to show whites all around.

“Snap out of it, Marine,” Jaschke said, giving Ellis’s shoulder a shake. With Kindy out of action and Nomonon maybe dead, he was acting squad leader and had to take charge of the situation.

Ellis shook the hand off and turned his back to the civilian authorities, looking away from the signs of battle. He took a deep, shuddering breath to calm himself. And then another. Jaschke stepped around to look at Ellis. He put a hand on Ellis’s shoulder and leaned his forehead on Ellis’s. “You’re Force Recon now, Ellis,” he murmured. “Sometimes we see things that other Marines only see in their worst nightmares. You were with us on Ravenette. That was a straightforward operation, just going in and snooping and pooping behind enemy lines, getting intel, and hitting them where they thought they were safe. Sometimes we don’t have any idea what we’re up against. When that happens, we show the enemy that whatever they can do to us, we can do worse to them.”

Ellis was breathing more calmly and his eyes no longer looked haunted. “What worse can we do to these . . . these creatures?” he said. “We don’t know how many of them there are. They might have already killed one of us, and they’ve wounded half of the rest.”

Jaschke chuckled. “You know what they say about Marines:

‘The difficult we do immediately. The impossible might take a little longer.’ So we’re up against the impossible. Or at least the improbable. We’ll figure it out, don’t worry. And we’ve got a navy starship coming to give assistance. They’ll string their pearls around this planet, and then we’ll have the bad guys right where we want them.”

“When’s the navy going to get here?”

“When they do, that’s all.”

A corner of Ellis’s mouth twitched up in a wry half-smile.

“And as every Marine knows, the navy’s always late.”

Jaschke grinned back. “Except when they’re dropping Marines into harm’s way.” He gave the junior man’s shoulder a comradely shake.

While Jaschke was steadying Ellis, Daly continued talking to Chairman Miner, though he mostly directed what he said to the planetary administrator. Miner still seemed suspicious of the Marines, but had stopped asking if they’d actually killed innocent citizens of Haulover and tried to disguise the fact. Mullilee continued to look sick. Sergeant Watchman listened carefully for any discrepancies between what Daly told Mullilee and Miner and what the Marines had said before. There weren’t any—and the Marine officer left out the same details he’d left out when showing Watchman around.