Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (6 page)

Planetary Scouts

-1-

I
was about to order another beer when a rumbling in the floor announced the arrival of the passenger liner. I thought about letting my new partner find me in the bar but decided against it. New recruits are impressionable. No use scaring off another one.

Picking my left leg carefully off the bar rail, I placed the offending appendage on the floor. My knee had locked again. Hobbling would make me late. I forced the scarred fingers of my left hand into a fist and smacked the back of my knee. It gave with a jolt of pain. I was barely able to grab the edge of the bar to break my fall. Levering myself up, I flashed my credit chit at the pay station and made my way unsteadily to the door.

Some parents and their Scout son were standing at the door of the bar making “oo-ah” noises at the painting on the bar's domed ceiling. The owners had hired a starving offworld artist to immortalize the Planetary Scouts. The artist was talented, but he never talked to any of us. To start with, there's the motto:
Discover and Explore
. That's our motto all right, but we don't do discovery any more. The boredom of hop to a planet, take a few readings, and repeat endlessly, had driven humans nuts, so discovery is now left to robot ships. The only reason they use us for exploration is because they've never come up with a computer that's as adaptable as a human; although there are more than a few Scouts who wish they would, and pronto.

Then there're those planets the artist has us exploring. All the planets look a whole lot like primitive Terra or one of its clones. The fauna looks cuddly—nothing with claws or fangs. Some day I'd like to explore a world like that. Hasn't happened yet.

The space dock wasn't far, so I walked. The night was typically warm and cloudless. In spite of the lights along the commercial strip, stars shone. One of the two moons was rising, and the docking stations that ringed the planet formed a brilliant necklace. A street vendor was preparing a dish that smelled of curry for a wobbly-looking Scout. As the knee warmed up, my pain eased.

The railing by the dock's reception area was filled with expectant Scouts waiting for visitors and new partners. Brushing the hair away from my artificial left eye, I zoomed in for a better view of the disembarking passengers. I had no idea what an A. Lester would look like. A short woman in her late twenties wearing a fresh Scout uniform came out first, long brown hair pulled back from a fine-featured face. Her body was full, lithe, muscular. She carried a large pack on her back.

“Oh yes,” I said under my breath, “if there is a good deity, this will be the one. I deserve her after that last mush-for-brains.” The young woman spotted a middle-aged female Scout holding a sign with a name on it, approached, and shook hands. So I reverted to being an atheist.

The remaining passengers were all civilians. The railing cleared. My knee ached.

A female flight attendant with short red hair left the hatch, the kind of woman—tall, poised, gorgeous—who managed to look great in the shapeless uniforms the spacelines pack their attendants into. She was laughing and talking to the person behind her.

A young man ducked out of the hatch. I zoomed in. The kid was nearly two meters tall, with short blond hair, strong features, and a body capable of towing a small excursion vehicle out of a swamp. He joked amiably with the flight attendant who didn't take her eyes off him. The man carried both of their bags effortlessly in one hand. Hell, he even had a cleft chin. I turned my eyes to heaven. “There is a God: it's Loki.”

I made my way to the gate. “You must be my new partner.”

The young man dropped the bags and sprang to attention. “Scout Private Lester reporting for duty.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I turned to the flight attendant. “And you would be?”

“Marina.” She offered a flawlessly manicured hand.

I handed Marina her bag. “Thanks for keeping the kid safe.” I turned to Lester. “Come on, kid.”

Lester shrugged and waved goodbye to the crestfallen woman. He fell in beside me. “It's an honor to meet you, sir. Aidan Pastor is a legend in the Scouts.”

I flinched. “Right, kid.”

“We study your tactics in Planetary Scout Academy.”

“I better check on my royalties.”

“I can't wait to take off on our first mission.”

I waved my credit chit at a ground car, and it opened. We climbed in, and the door swung shut. The seats were too small for Lester. “Scout enlisted quarters building 42,” I said. The car moved out.

I looked at the eager face and pulled up my left shirt sleeve. “You know what these are, kid?”

“Burns?”

I nodded. “My last partner played by Academy rules. That's why I've got these. We're going nowhere till I'm sure you've got my rules down to instinct. So what do you do when an unknown lifeform comes at you fast?”

“Attempt to determine if the lifeform is intelligent.”

“Wrong. Rule one: if the local fauna or flora starts chasing you, shoot it. My last partner wouldn't shoot the natives because he thought they might be intelligent. They were intelligent—intelligent enough to have a catapult. The creatures he wouldn't shoot hit us with a boulder as we tried to get the hell out. It damaged the ship—caught on fire, burned him to death and nearly killed me.”

“It was bad for you, but it saved the beings.”

I stuck a scarred index finger into his oversized chest. “Nope. When they hit the ship, there was a radiation leak. Killed everything for fifty kilometers. Wiped out all the intelligent life on the planet. Only thing that saved us was our suits. If he'd shot a couple of them, there'd still be intelligent life on that planet, he'd still be alive, and I wouldn't be in constant pain. You don't shoot, I'll shoot you.”

Lester quieted. “Yes, sir.”

“Part of the reason that the Scouts were formed was so humans wouldn't wipe out any more intelligent lifeforms, but we've got to protect ourselves so that we can protect them.”

I held up a second scarred finger. “Rule number two: this is work; we're not on vacation. Get in, get the info, get out. The longer you stay on a planet, the better the chance you'll get in trouble. You want a vacation, go to Vega 5.”

Lester nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Last rule: I make the rules.”

“You've got the experience.”

“Just remember that when we're in the field. Now, we've got a few months of training before we go anywhere.” I looked at the kid.
Kid
—I was barely twenty years older than him. His eager, unscarred face reminded me of a dozen other new Scouts I'd watched come off that passenger ship. Most never made the return trip home. “You ready for this?”

“Yes, sir.” Lester sat up very straight. His head touched the roof of the car.

“No, you're not.” The car reached the barracks. I got out and grabbed Lester's bag. I waved my credit chit at the car's sensor. “Lakeside Hotel, also credit one return trip for the passenger.” The car flashed an acknowledgment. I saw Lester was puzzled. “You got a credit chit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You'll probably find Marina at the hotel bar drowning her sorrows. Enjoy yourself. It'll be the last time for a while. I put the return on file so you can get back here if you spend all your savings trying to impress her. You're in room 36 of the barracks. You get up at the normal time, no matter when you get back.” I slammed the car door and it sped off.

The kid had overpacked. I had a hell of a time lugging that bag to his room. A couple of other Scouts in the barracks saw me dragging the bag and asked if I'd gotten a care package from mommy. No one offered to help. I love my fellow Scouts.

When I checked in the morning, the barracks computer said Lester had crawled in at 0200. I cut him some slack and didn't roust him until 0530. He dragged himself down to the mess hall and started downing what passes for coffee on this planet. They brew it a lot stronger here than they do at the Academy. Lester downed enough to make him really twitchy and keep him awake for a couple of days. That probably saved his good looks.

We went on a long hike after breakfast. The doc had given me a shot in the knee so I could keep moving. I took a bang-stick to lean on and for extra defense. Lester outfitted himself. The class 3 fence around the facility should have given him a clue, but, as expected, he dressed for a warm summer's outing.

Outside the fence, a road led, arrow-straight, to another Scout facility. We took the trails instead, winding through a land of red boulders and sparse desert vegetation. Lester, who hadn't bothered to tuck his pants into the tops of his boots, was being eaten alive by the sand fleas. He tried to keep up a good pace while scratching and beating on his legs.

Snarky was waiting in his usual hiding place in the rocks next to a well-worn animal track. Lester had the lead. He managed to get his arm up before Snarky smacked him. That prevented Lester from getting permanent scars on his face, but his arm broke. I sat on a rock to view the melee.

Snarky is something like a cross between an ant, a bear and an alligator: over two meters tall standing on what goes for his back legs, unpleasant to look at and highly territorial. Snarky got his name from the crooked grin he gets on his mouthparts when he first sees a Scout. The grin is kind of endearing until you realize it has less to do with how pleased he is to see you than how tasty he thinks you are.

Most of his kind avoid humans, but Snarky seems to enjoy the challenge. Snarky's been learning from his encounters with Scouts. He attacks the right side now so that the Scout can't get to his stunner. The kid did a decent job defending himself in spite of the arm. He managed to lob a few rocks at Snarky and even launched Snarky backward using his legs. When Snarky bared his fangs, I decided to end the match, stunning him with the bang-stick. The Base commander gets pissed if you bring back a dead recruit. It takes a lot longer to patch them up.

Lester was holding the broken arm and looking green. “What the hell was that thing?”

“Local fauna.”

“Why didn't you warn me?”

“Nobody's gonna warn you on a new planet. If you aren't ready, you face the consequences. Better get that bleeding stopped and set the arm before Snarky wakes up.”

“Aren't you going to help?”

“Sure, I'll give you all the advice you can stomach.”

Lester made it halfway back to Base (probably courtesy of the coffee) before I had to call for a transport.

I flirted with the nurses while the docs patched Lester up. My usual suave and debonair repartee wasn't doing it that day. It may have been my recently acquired scars, but I noticed the nurses kept sneaking peeks at Lester sitting shirtless on the examining table.

On the way back to the barracks, Lester looked sullen. “Come on,” I said. “Spill it. What's eating you?”

“What the hell kind of training was that?”

“The best kind. Half the veterans take their trainees out for a tête-à-tête with Snarky, half don't. Of the ones who don't, twenty-five percent lose their new partner on their first outing.”

“And the ones that do?”

“Only ten percent.”

Lester grimaced. “That's still high.”

“Hey, I better than doubled your chances of survival. That should be worth a little pain.”

Lester cradled his arm. “I guess so.”

“You'll remember this and be prepared for your next encounter.”

Lester moved in front of me. “So why doesn't everyone use Snarky?”

I stood there and looked the kid in the eye, which was some trick since he was a full third of a meter taller than me and my neck was stiff with burn scars. “If a guy loses enough new recruits, he gets paired with another veteran. That raises his chances of making twenty-five missions and going home with a full pension.”

“They let their partners die?”

“There's three ways out of this organization: dead, disabled and twenty-five. You'd be surprised what a person will do when their own skin is at stake.”

“What about you?”

“Me, I'll let Snarky beat the crap out of you to teach you a lesson you'll never forget. That doesn't mean I've got any illusions that you'll be with me when I celebrate my twenty-five, even though I've got eighteen already. I've lost four partners. You could easily be the fifth.” We stood by the door of Lester's room. “Tomorrow I go to Prime for surgery. They're supposed to get rid of the burn scars and replace the knee. That gives you a couple of weeks to train on your own. I've set up a bunch of simulations for you to work on while I'm gone. If you baby yourself because you've got a broken arm, you'll learn nothing. Think of the arm as added realism. When we're off on a mission, we have to keep going—broken arm or not.”

“I'll get started on them now.”

“Tomorrow. Get some sleep.”

I left Lester at his door and went to my room to pack. I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, shaking. I hate doctors.

T
he Scouts have their own star system with two more-or-less habitable planets: Base and Prime. Base is hot, miserable, and nothing much grows there. Prime is cold, miserable and nothing much grows there. They send you to Prime when you need major medical attention, especially if they think you might be contagious. The hospital they sent me to was new. The last one had gotten contaminated with some alien crud, and they had to permanently quarantine the whole thing: buildings, doctors, nurses, patients and all. I was not looking forward to this.

I was the sole occupant of the shuttle that day. It blasted off Base, giving me a view of the arid landscape broken by small seas and a band of temperate climate near the poles that we weren't allowed to visit in order to preserve the native biota. The trip lasted only an hour, and I was presented with the vista of Prime with its polar glaciers extending over two thirds of its surface, broken by a band of somewhat livable forests and tundra around the equator.