Pearl (Murphy's Lawless Book 5) Read online

  He looked between the girls and hesitated when Miizhaam caught his attention. She looked him in the eye, then cast her eyes down. She had a knife in her hand, out of the man’s view. Once she knew he understood, she closed her eyes and nodded.

  “Do it!” Vat barked in English.

  The M1 Garand’s 30-06 spoke from behind him, near the other truck. The man holding Salsaliin jerked as his head exploded into a red mist; he fell limply. At the same time, Miizhaam slammed her knife into her captor’s thigh.

  The man screamed as she spun away. He lifted the gun toward Vat and Artyom and fired twice. Vat and Artyom fired simultaneously, and he fell. Salsaliin was on her knees, her face in her hands, crying. Miizhaam took a couple unsteady paces then collapsed to her knees.

  “Are you okay?” Vat asked Salsaliin. He was shaking so hard it took three tries to swap out the magazine in his Thompson. She nodded but didn’t look up.

  Artyom calmly walked over to the man they’d just killed, his body still twitching as blood pumped out. The Russian reloaded his AK-47, looked down at the body, then spat on it. “Ublyudok.”

  “Where did you get the damn grenade?” Vat asked.

  Artyom took out a cigarette and lit it, then shrugged. “I won a few things in a card game.” He shrugged again. “Thought it might come in handy.” Vat was impressed, if chagrined that one of the assets they had come to secure was now a burning wreck.

  Sam walked past the ruined truck, gun held low against his shoulder, looking for more targets, but there were no more screams from the back. Vat shuddered as he realized it smelled a little like bacon.

  Sam glanced at the wreck and shook his head. “Who had the grenade?”

  “Who do you think?” Vat asked. Sam looked at Artyom, who grinned. Sam shook his head, bemused. “Taiki, you okay?” The man didn’t reply. Vat walked around the burning truck and saw why; a bullet had found the Japanese man. He lay on his back staring into the strange alien sky, eyes wide. The bullet had torn out his jugular. He had probably died in seconds. “Fuck.”

  “We heard the shooting,” Roberts said as his patrol rode up the hill behind the surviving truck. The second truck hadn’t held more soldiers; it held prisoners from the village. Ten young women, to be precise. “I guessed you’d run into them. Everyone okay?”

  “No,” Vat said. “Private Komatsu is dead. No other serious injuries.” Sam was quietly applying a bandage to a cut on Miizhaam’s arm while Artyom tended to the gouge in Vat’s arm.

  “My whinnie bought it, too,” Sam said, pointing to a motionless lizard a hundred meters off the road.

  Considering how much gunfire there was, Vat was surprised more hadn’t been hit. The reptiles hadn’t run off when the battle began, like horses might have. In fact, he noticed his own mount was eating something. It was one of the dead satrap men. Oh fucking hell.

  Roberts dismounted and surveyed the slaughterhouse. “What happened to that other truck?”

  “I think it must have had some explosives in it,” Vat lied. “It just exploded.”

  “Good ambush,” Roberts complimented. “They had you at least five to one.”

  “Wasn’t an ambush,” Vat admitted. “We just rode into them. I guess we managed to act quicker.”

  One of Roberts’ men was examining the burning truck for any salvage. He came back with a bottle from the cab. It smelled of alcohol. Vat nodded; now it made more sense. The satrap forces had probably been drunk, or at least some of them.

  “We got four prisoners from another truck,” Robert said. “I’m sending three men back to basecamp with them and the vehicle.”

  “Ten more guys ran off that way,” Vat said. “We going to get them?”

  “No, it’s not worth the risk. This terrain is perfect for ambushes. They’re a long way from home, on foot, and you said mostly unarmed.” Vat nodded. “I’ll only have seven men once I send those three back. I wouldn’t normally want to be out here with so few.” He looked over Vat and his three survivors with a different eye. “Now I’m not so worried.”

  “Don’t sell the women short,” Vat said, and told Roberts what Miizhaam had done. “They’re tough characters.”

  “I believe it. Even better, then. Let’s get the women and salvage back to their settlement, and get my men sent off. It’ll be night in a few hours; we might as well spend it at the village.”

  * * *

  The villagers were ecstatic to have their young women back. Three men were killed in the raid and two huts burned. Despite the losses, they threw a party for Vat’s and Roberts’ men. It turned out to be quite the shindig. There was music, dancing, and a fair amount of alcohol. As more of the latter came out, more clothes came off.

  Vat wasn’t interested in joining in. He buried Taiki on the hill where the raid took place. He would rest forever on a lonely hill, under an alien sun, trillions of miles from Earth. He guessed when the Searing came, his body would be burned to ash. He didn’t know the Japanese man’s beliefs, so Vat, alone, simply asked God to care for him.

  Salsaliin tried to get him to dance and succeeded once. She was very energetic. The local dancing involved lots of body contact, grinding actually, and she was eager to teach him. He was eager for the dance to be over. An hour past sundown, once he was sure he’d shown enough respect for their hospitality, he retreated to where they had set up their tents.

  Firelight from the celebration made exotic patterns against the shelter as he undressed and slid into the slightly musty sleeping bag. The planet was warm, even at night, so the bag was mostly to keep the bugs off and avoid the late-night chill that came though. He lay awake, staring at the peak of the tent for hours before his eyes slowly slid closed.

  Something touched his foot and made his eyes snap open. He saw the outline of someone at his tent entrance, and his hand came away from the 1911 under his bundle of clothes he used as a pillow. “Hello?”

  “Greetings.” It was Salsaliin. Her voice sounded odd.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “You saved my life.”

  “Corporal Potts took the shot.”

  “Makes no difference.” She turned slightly and closed the flap. The fire outside was still going, though it had dimmed, as had the festivities. When she turned back around, a naked breast was in perfect profile.

  He sat up a little. “What are you doing?”

  “Closing the tent,” she said and pulled back the sleeping roll. He wasn’t fast enough to stop her. There was little light, but enough for her to see he was naked. “Ahh, good,” she said, and slid down next to him.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” he said, making more room for her without making it obvious he was pulling back.

  “Why?”

  “B-because I am an officer and—” her hand wrapped around him and made him jerk in surprise at the intimate contact. “Please, stop.”

  “You are nervous?” she purred into his ear. “Am I your first? You do not look that young.”

  Oh, if you only knew. “Yes,” he said too quickly. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”

  “You are not my first. This is good for a man, I think.”

  His mind froze as he tried to find a way out of the situation. Her mouth went to work, and he groaned, which she took to mean something else. The truth was too dangerous without knowing the sociopolitical implications to their people. In short, he was trapped, and there was only one thing he could do.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Nine

  They left the village early the next morning after Roberts sent a report to Murphy via the satellite link. The satellites left in orbit by the Dornaani provided intermittent contact between ranging patrols like theirs and the base, as well as between the base and the space habitat where Murphy ran operations. Included in the report were casualty counts as well as Roberts’ intention to proceed. The satellite went below the horizon before they got a reply.

  The patrol climbed back out of the low valley and descended onto
the plains again. The grasslands were broken up by rocky outcroppings that extended as far as the eye could see.

  Sam and Lech both had the typical morning-after look you see on young people returning from leave; a mix of equal parts sexual gratification and hangover. It takes effort to look pleased with yourself and like your brain is about to explode at the same time.

  Artyom just looked surly, as usual. This was despite a report of how he’d done his best to sleep with every female in the village and drink every container of alcohol available the previous night. The longer Vat spent around the Russian, the more he doubted his first impression.

  “I thought you didn’t like to fight?” Vat asked as the big man sat astride his whinnie in the early dawn.

  “I don’t,” he replied. “That does not mean I am not good at it. I kill many Germans because I need to. So now I kill many Ka-whores because I need to.” He shrugged and laughed. “I not get laid as much killing Germans; I think I like this place.” Sam chuckled nearby from his new whinnie, provided by the villagers. They rode on for a few minutes before Artyom spoke again. “You do some laying yourself last night, I hear.”

  Vat’s face hardened, and he nodded glumly. At the front of the column, Salsaliin was talking with her friend Miizhaam. The two laughed, then looked back at Vat who felt his face growing hot. Salsaliin looked slightly confused, but she smiled at him, and he gave the barest smile in return. He’d never had to work harder to have fun in his life than he had the previous night.

  The women of the tribe had been extremely grateful for the Lost Soldiers’ arrival. They’d been grateful to all the men with Roberts and Vat, some of them several times. He tried not to dwell on the mixed message of gratitude at being saved from a bunch of sexual predators then giving the rescuers sex in return. My species has issues. Then he remembered how Salsaliin had felt under him, how different it was, yet somewhat the same, and sighed. You’re a fine one to talk.

  He’d spoken with the village hetman. He didn’t know what a Daaj was. He thought he’d heard the word once from an old woman in another village, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was a hiding place. The word also didn’t have the same dialect feel as their version of Ktor.

  It was like an itch Vat couldn’t scratch.

  By morning, he was sure there was no more to learn from the village, so they moved on. But as the kilometers slowly crept by, he found himself continually seeing Private Taiki Komatsu’s spartan, unmarked grave on the ridgeline where he’d died.

  Unable to shake the image, Vat took out the small data recorder Murphy had given him, the only high-tech item he had. Vat had recorded some of the hetman’s speech, as well as others in the tribe. He passed the hours listening to them, comparing them. He overlaid recordings of Ktorans from the Dornaani archives. While he had no formal linguistics training, he had his own shorthand for the elements of language. He made notes, slowly isolating elements of Ktoran and how it compared to the version spoken on R’Bak.

  Before they stopped for their midday meal, Sam moved his whinnie next to Vat’s and got his attention. “Whatcha doing, Lieutenant? I see you’ve been wearing your headphones all day.”

  Vat didn’t want to tell the young man he was trying to forget their dead comrade, so he said, “Going over some of the Ktoran language and comparing it to what we’re hearing from the R’Bak villagers.”

  “Sounds the same to me,” Sam said. “Maybe a funny accent sometimes, like someone from Louisiana.”

  “That’s an interesting analogy,” Vat said.

  “But they’re an isolated society, right?” Vat nodded. Or so we’ve assumed. “So, where would differences come from?”

  “Good question. I don’t have an answer. I’m just listening and trying to isolate the differences. Maybe something will click.”

  “You like languages, don’t you?”

  Vat shrugged. “I’m good with them, but never went to school for them. It’s something I can do rather than something I love.”

  “What do you love?”

  Vat grinned. “Figuring things out.”

  Near the end of the day, they spied a dust cloud coming toward them, indicating others were on the trail. What they were following now were merely trails through the scattered ground cover, not like the road through the hills behind them. Ruts had been ground into the rock, which meant it had seen a lot of people passing that way

  “There’s nowhere to hide,” Vat said, drawing his whinnie up next to Lieutenant Roberts’. He was getting better at riding the lizard, though he wondered if it was the whinnie getting better at carrying him.

  “No,” Roberts agreed, holding a hand above his eyes to shield them from the afternoon glare. “There are some rocks over there. They’re almost a kilometer away, though. Might as well just spread out and prepare.”

  After a few minutes, it was apparent the oncoming dust cloud was not caused by another group from the satraps, but by a caravan of locals. As they got closer, Vat could see they were in bad shape. Roberts and the soldiers approached them to render what aid they could.

  “The J’Stull attacked us,” the oldest in the group said; he was maybe fifteen years old. All the adults were gone, including any females over the age of twelve. It was pretty clear the same sort of raid they’d prevented at the previous village had also targeted theirs, only this time, the satrap forces took the men, too.

  “These are mostly kids,” Vat pointed out to Roberts.

  “I know that.” He was looking at the map of their route and rubbing his mouth.

  “We can’t just leave them.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That we abort and escort them to basecamp.” Vat didn’t like it. They were still a long way from the village where Salsaliin’s and Miizhaam’s grandmother lived. They had spent days on the damned lizards, and one of his team was dead. He hated the idea of giving up the whole thing, but they couldn’t leave this group of kids by themselves. It was, however, a decidedly suboptimal outcome.

  “My mission was to take you to these villages,” Roberts said.

  “Yes, and the satrap must have found out. They’re ahead of us and have trucks. The whinnies are good, but they don’t have the endurance of a fueled vehicle.” Don’t make me pull rank, damnit, Vat thought.

  Roberts looked up from his map at the survivors his troops were helping as best they could. Two were trained medics, applying bandages and rendering whatever first aid they could. Normally, there wouldn’t have been much for them to do: R’Bak’s medicines were amazing—almost magical, really—which was why the Kulsians were coming to steal them. The problem was that all the healers—along with any stores of the medicines—had been taken by the satrap forces.

  “Fuck,” Roberts said. “Let’s head back. I’ll update Murphy on the next satellite pass and let basecamp know. Maybe they can send a helo.”

  There were no helicopters available, so after tending to the wounded, they headed back.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Ten

  It was three days back to basecamp. Midway through the second day, a helicopter was able to meet up with them to take the worst of the casualties. They had lost a nine-year-old girl during the night from sepsis; she’d been stabbed in the stomach by one of the satrap bastards because she’d objected when they took her mother away. Vat was beginning to feel Artyom’s opinion of their adversary was apt.

  As fate would have it, the bird was a Huey with “Bruce” painted on the pilot door in blue letters.

  “Hey, Vat!” she yelled over the idling turbine. “I thought it was your op when I got the orders.”

  “Yeah, things went to shit.”

  She nodded, looking over the stretchers of the wounded who couldn’t move, and the ones who could still walk. She saw the body covered with a sheet and her face darkened. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner. We were evaccing our resident SEAL after he shot the shit out of another satrap patrol.”

  “Good; I hope he fucked them
over good,” Vat said.

  Bruce looked at the face of a young boy being helped onto the helicopter by her crew chief and nodded. “How are you doing?”

  “Well enough,” Vat said. “I lost one of my men in a fight a couple days ago.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” she said, then looked at his face. “This was your first, wasn’t it? You’ve never lost someone under your command.”

  “Yes,” Vat growled. “And it was just a fucking shot in the dark. Pure bad luck.”

  “Doesn’t matter how it happens,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Vat looked down and she cupped his chin, pulling his face up. He felt tears form and hated himself for it. “What you are feeling is normal,” she said, locking eyes with him. “You wouldn’t be worth a warm mouthful of spit if you didn’t feel what you’re feeling.”

  “How do I function, feeling like this?” he demanded.

  “That’s the other half of being a commander: finding the strength to go forward.” She looked over her shoulder. The helicopter was almost ready. El, her crew chief, was belting down the casualties while her copilot made sure the walking wounded had their seat belts in place. She moved in quickly and gave him a brief hug. “It’s bad decorum, but this isn’t exactly a typical deployment.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Hang in there, Vat. You brought the rest of them through.”

  He watched the old Huey take off, spin around, and fly off. He stood by his whinnie for five minutes until the horizon ate the helicopter, and they were alone.

  The last two days of the return were uneventful. They saw a small pack of wild whinnies several kilometers away—actually, their whinnies spotted them first—and the mounted lizards’ neck furls stood up at attention. A few warning hisses were exchanged, and the other lizards moved off. For the rest of the day, the humans’ whinnies seemed quite pleased with themselves, almost prancing down the dirt ruts.