Star Corps (39 page)

“I…no…twitch…frog…” the Ahannu said, its voice raspy and hard to make out, but intelligible all the same.

“Jesus!” Sergeant Dunne said at Garroway's side. “The
thing speaks English!”

“We…thing…speak…” it said. “A few of…we…thing…speak….”

“Who are you?” Captain Warhurst demanded, keeping his laser carbine aimed at the Ahannu's chest. “What do we call you?”

“We are…Zu-Din,” the being replied. “We are…the Mind of God.”

“No weapons,” Garroway said. “He must either be a scout…”

“Or what?” Warhurst asked.

“Or an officer, sir. I don't think he's a regular warrior.”

“We'll let Intelligence sort that out,” Warhurst said. “Schuster! Evans! Dumbrowski! March our friend here up to the top. Ride with him back to the compound and tell the colonel it speaks English. Sort of.”

“Aye aye, sir!” The three Marines led the Ishtaran out.

Warhurst, meanwhile, was studying the only piece of equipment in the small, black-walled stone chamber, a football-shaped object two meters wide suspended from the ceiling by a cable that appeared too slender to bear its weight. A dark red cloth had been draped over the top, covering it. Carefully, he used the muzzle of his laser to tug the cloth off.

Underneath, an oval screen glowed softly deep within black crystal. A human in civilian clothing was visible on the screen, apparently reading an e-pad in her hands.

“Excuse me,” Warhurst said. The woman didn't react. Warhurst reached out and touched the bottom of the device with his gauntlet; there was supposed to be a touch-sensitive volume control there. “Excuse me,” Warhurst said again.

This time the woman jumped. She turned her head and stared at the Marines with eyes widened in shock.
“Mon Dieu!”
she exclaimed. She launched into a torrent of something sounding like French.

“Whoa, whoa, there,” Warhurst said, holding up his hands. Reaching up, he removed his helmet. “We do not
have net access here, so I can't understand you. Uh…
non comprendez
. Do you read me?”

The woman blinked. “I understand,” she said in heavily accented English. “I am Giselle Dumont of the Cydonian Quebecois Research Team. And you are…?”

“Captain Martin Warhurst, First Marine Interstellar Expeditionary Unit, 1st Division, 44th Regiment, UFR Marine Corps,” he replied. “Can you patch me through to the UFR Military Communications Network, Code one-five-alpha-three-echo, Priority One, please?”

“I am sorry, sir, but the WorldNet interplanetary relays are offline at this time. We have had a period of bad solar weather….”

Garroway stood to one side of the chamber, beyond the FTL communicator's pickup field. It figured. Communications between Llalande 21185 and the vast underground facility on Mars were obviously crystal clear. The ordinary speed-of-light channels between Earth and Mars, however, seemed to be out of commission.

Or…was that really the whole story? The woman was Quebecois, and the nation of Quebec was allied with the EU, had been ever since the UN War. What if there'd been some political or military changes back home in the past ten years? What if the Cydonian complex was under EU control now? Hell, how were they supposed to know
anything
was as it seemed?

As Warhurst continued speaking with the woman, Garroway noticed something on the floor…a folded piece of fabric that apparently had been pulled from the top of the FTL comm device when Warhurst had dragged the red cloth cover off. Stooping, he picked it up.

It was a small, folding monitor display, fifteen centimeters by twenty-one, with a tiny camera woven into the smartthreads of the upper border. Printed on the bottom were the words
SURVIVALCAM: UFRS
EMISSARY
.

“Emissary,”
he said aloud.

Warhurst turned from the screen and looked at him.
“What was that, Marine?”

He looked up. “Sorry, sir.
‘Emissary.'
I found this on the deck.”

Warhurst took the cloth and studied it.

“Emissary,”
Kat Vinita said. “That was the Terran Legation ship, wasn't it? The one that was destroyed?”

“That's the one. I wonder who—” He stopped. “My God!”

Warhurst stepped beyond the FTL unit's pickup field, holding the display screen taut in his hands. Garroway was close enough to see a face, a human face looking up out of the cloth, a face as surprised as the captain's and perhaps even more delighted.

“You came!” the face said, the voice thin and reedy over the folding screen's smarthtread speakers but clear enough to be understood. “My God, you came! We
knew
you would!”

“I'm Captain Martin Warhurst, UFR Marines. Who are you?”

“Uh…sorry, sir! Master Sergeant Gene Aiken, UFR Marine Corps! Currently assigned to the Terran Legation, Ishtar!”

“Goddess!
Where
are you?”

Aiken grinned. “The Ahtun Mountains, sir. Roughly fifty klicks east of New Sumer. We've been holed up here ever since the Frogs chased us out.”

“Ten years…?”

“I reckon so, sir. But we knew you wouldn't forget us. We've just been waiting for the Marines to land and put the situation well in hand!”

“Stay on this line, Master Sergeant,” Warhurst said. He handed the cloth to Garroway, then stepped back in front of the FTL screen. “Um, Madame Dumont?”

“Yes, monsieur. I could not catch what you were just saying. Is there interference at your end?”

“My apologies, Madame Dumont. Something urgent has come up. We'll be in touch shortly.”

“But, monsieur—”

“Let's go, people.”

Wondering just what the hell was going on, Garroway followed Warhurst and the others out of the Chamber of the Eye.

Regimental HQ
Building 5, Legation Compound
New Sumer, Ishtar
1924 hours ALT

“This Dumont person didn't tell you anything more?” Ramsey demanded.

“No, sir,” Warhurst replied. “She seemed helpful enough and surprised to see me. But she would not make the connection for us with Washington.”

Ramsey rubbed his chin. “She
could
be telling the truth, of course. Solar weather does play hob with the comm relays sometimes. But I don't like this.”

“Neither do I, sir.” He pointed at the unfolded screen on the table beside them, with Aiken's bearded face looking up at them. “That's why I decided to keep this quiet, at least until you decide otherwise.”

“Well done, Colonel.” Ramsey looked at General King. “General? I suggest we defer further communications with Earth until we can transport the Legation survivors back here.”

“I agree, Colonel. A communications malfunction right now is just a little too convenient.”

“So, Master Sergeant,” Ramsey said, looking down into Aiken's face. “How would you like to come back to the compound?”

“We'll have to bum a lift, sir,” Aiken replied. “We got all our people out here on board three old Starhauler TAVs. We had to make a bunch of trips, though, to get everyone out, and ten years sitting in the jungle afterward didn't do their power plants any good. They're just rusty junk now.”

“Not a problem. We can deploy a Dragonfly with a land
ing module and bring at least some of you back. How many survivors are there?”

Aiken pursed his lips. “Well, sir…our current roster has eighteen Marines and 158 civilians. Twenty-seven of those last are children.”

“Children?” Ramsey exclaimed. “
What
children?…Oh.”

“Yes, sir. It
has
been ten years.” He grinned. “And the natives are friendly.”

“Natives?”

“Yes, sir. We're living at a village of…well, they call themselves
dumu-gir
. It means a native child in the Ishtaran common tongue…but it means ‘freeborn.'”

“You mean these are humans?
Free
humans? Escaped from the Ahannu?”

“Some are runaways, yes, sir. Most of them have always been free. They're descendants of humans who got away from the Frogs, oh, over the past few thousand years, I guess. Maybe going all the way back to when humans were first brought here as slaves. A few must have escaped even back then and set up communities out in the jungle. The Ahannu…they don't come out in the wild all that much. They tend to be content to stay where they are, inside their cities and tunnel complexes.”

“The Ahannu try to recapture them, surely.”

“Oh, once in a while. Sometimes the Frogs band together and try to catch them or stomp them out, but the
dumu-gir
have learned a few things, living out here in the jungle all these years. Sir, they're
good
. The Marines could learn a few things from them.”

“How many natives are there?”

“Oh, about a hundred at last count. In this village, anyway.”

“A hundred? A hundred free Ishtaran humans?”

“There are other villages, of course. No one knows how many. They don't go in much for governments and such
here. Nothing more than a tribal council, anyway. They took us in when we got out of Dodge…uh, I mean, when we retreated from New Sumer. We've been teaching them a few tricks, helping them develop weapons and tactics against the Frogs.”

“You speak the local language, then?”

“A bit, sir. Our expert is Dr. Moore. She was our xenosoc expert, and she's gone on to learn a lot about the Ishtarans, both the humans and the Ahannu. And a lot of the
dumu-gir
speak pretty good English now. They've been learning it for ten years.”

“Master Sergeant, you may have just saved this expedition's collective ass. Whose bright idea was it, anyway, to leave a survivalcam screen in the Chamber of the Eye?”

Aiken grinned. “Mine, actually, sir. I figured the Marines would be coming, and one of the first things they'd do was get the Chamber of the Eye back, so they could talk to Earth. One of our locals, Kupatin, volunteered to sneak in and put it in place, since he could look the part of a Sag-ura, with all those tattoos and stuff, and I couldn't. That was maybe…oh, a year ago, maybe. When we began to think that you guys would be showing up any day now. And actually, sir, to tell the truth, I was under the impression that it was you who were saving our ass.”

“Either way. That was damned good thinking on your part. We're sending a Dragonfly for you. Please report to me…with your Marines and any senior Legation people who want to come. We'd particularly like to see Dr. Moore, if she's available.”

“She sure is, sir.” He grinned. “Happens I married the lady, a few years back.”

“Ah! Well. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir. But our people have been intermarrying with the locals too. There haven't been any problems at all in that regard. The biggest difference between Earth humans and Ishtaran humans is in the psychological condi
tioning. And the
dumu-gir
have managed to break most of that conditioning.”

Gavin Norris had been watching and listening in silence to the entire exchange. Suddenly, he stepped up close to the table. “Master Sergeant Aiken,” he said. “Is Randolph Carleton among the survivors, by chance?”

“Who are you?”

“The PanTerra Dynamics trade representative on this planet.”

“I see. Yeah, Carleton's here.”

“Tell him to come along as well.”

Aiken looked at Ramsey, who nodded. “Tell him, Master Sergeant. We'll see you in a few more hours.”

“It's gonna be good, Colonel. Damned good! Five years we were here since
Emissary
arrived, and then ten more out in the sticks. I tell you, sir, we've gotten more than a little tired of the same old faces!”

“We'll see you soon, Master Sergeant. New Sumer out!” He turned to Warhurst. “Quite a stroke of luck,” Ramsey said. “If one of your men hadn't spotted that comm cloth…”

“Yes, sir. Although Master Sergeant Aiken indicated that they have been expecting us. They've probably had locals watching New Sumer for our arrival and would have been able to contact us sooner or later.”

“Right. But we're in contact now. And we need people who speak the language.” Ramsey looked across the room. Their most recent captive, the unarmed Ahannu taken in the Chamber of the Eye a short while ago, was tied to a chair, his face and expression unreadable.

“You said you did hear that Frog speak English?” General King asked. “I haven't heard anything from him except gibberish.”

“Yessir. Clearly. He hasn't spoken since we got him back down here?”

“Not since I ordered some of our people to clean him up.”

“Sir?”

“That purple jelly. It must've been rolling in the stuff, or something. I thought at first that it might be blood and had a corpsman start washing—”

Warhurst's eyes widened. “General…I don't know what that purple stuff is, but we've found it on several Ahannu corpses. Not on all of them, but on a few.”

“You think it's something for communication?” Ramsey asked.

“Yes, sir. I do. Look, for primitives, these guys have been doing pretty damned good at coordinating their attacks. Up there on top of the pyramid, they started coming up out of a hole behind us at the same instant they were coming up over the sides of the building. Some of their other attacks have shown a high degree of synchronization too.
Somehow
they manage to talk to each other. That guy was up in the Chamber of the Eye, which gave him a perfect OP from which to watch us. He wasn't armed. He wasn't a sniper…which means he was watching us and passing on information to his HQ.”

“But how would that help him speak English?” King demanded.

“Well, we know some Ahannu spoke English ten years ago. They learned it from the Terran Legation, right?”