The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack (4 page)

Rakoan straightened, understanding coming into his eyes. “Assuming you’re right, Lieutenant . . .”

“If I’m right, the building I’m in wasn’t built for Khalia! They captured it and converted it, but. the stairwells didn’t give ‘em room for ramps, so they had to suffer with the steps or put in a lift.”

Rakoan nodded slowly. “That makes sense, yes. But I still don’t see its import.”

“Then think about this one with it—why aren’t there any Khalian juveniles here? Or teachers? Or nursemaids?”

Rakoan began to look thoughtful. He reached off-plate to key a pick-up, “All stations that have wrapped up hostilities, report. Have you found a juvenile Khalian? Out.”

Lutane waited on tenterhooks as the other platoons reported in, one by one. Finally, Rakoan looked up at her, his expression dark. “Not a single juvenile, Lieutenant—and of course, no Khalian responsible for taking care of one. Would you like to . . .”

“But there are featherhead juveniles, sir! I’ve got one! How many have the other platoons found?”

Rakoan frowned and keyed the unseen pick-up again. “All stations report. Have you found small-sized featherheads?”

Lutane held her breath as the seconds ticked by and tinny voices buzzed through the plate.

“Out.” Rakoan looked up, nodding heavily. “None of the troops in any of the public buildings have found any small featherheads, but the ones who are conducting the house-to-house search have found a lot.”

“Have they found any Khalia?” Lutane burst out.

Rakoan frowned and admitted, “Only a few. And in those houses, the featherheads have been huddled in fear.”

Lutane frowned. “They aren’t cowering in the houses where there aren’t any Khalia?”

“Not really. When our troops break in, they run for cover—
then
they cower.” He sighed. “I see your point, Lieutenant—the featherheads aren’t Khalian allies. Command was right—they’re slaves.” He frowned. “But I still say there’re way too many of them. Why would the Khalia have imported so
many
slaves of this one race?”

“Yes, sir. There are so many, many more of them, than of any other species—and
vastly
more than there are Khalia.”

Rakoan sighed and shrugged. “I suppose it’s not all that unlikely for slaves to outnumber the masters, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir, but not at interstellar freight rates. FTL ships have to be the single most expensive way of importing labor ever developed.”

“Where else do you think the Khalia would get their servants?”

“From every ship they’ve conquered,” Lutane answered, “as excess baggage—but
not
as the primary cargo. If they were, there wouldn’t be any more of the featherheads than of any other race. And I don’t think the Khalia are so swollen with booty as to be able to bring in
that
many more of anyone species—with their children, too.”

“So maybe the children were born here. After all, what’re . . .” Rakoan broke off, his eyes widening.

“Yes, sir.” Lutane nodded. “The Khalia got bored with stealing ships and moved on to bigger and, better things. This time, they hijacked ‘a whole blasted
planet!”

Rakoan nodded, his gaze never leaving her face. “And if they did, then the featherheads aren’t allies
or
imported slaves.”

“No, sir.” Lutane shook her head. “They’re the natives.”

The papers said the name was Neuton Bedfort Smythe. To Isaac Meier he represented a greater threat than the Khalia. Smythe was the special investigator appointed by the Alliance Council to investigate the “Target Fiasco.” He was currently at the Admiral’s desk, the heels of his shoes scraping gouges in a redwood desktop (that had been imported from Earth at Admiral Meier’s personal expense) while he was randomly accessing the files and reading them.

“Just trying to get the feel of it,” the special investigator had explained. The grapevine (admirals listen to it as well; that’s why they are admirals) was saying that he was looking for atrocities. The Admiral had a private theory that waste was first on the special investigator’s list. Senators like waste; finding it makes the taxpayers happy. Happier yet as they were still smarting under the recent increase required to finance the expansion of the Fleet to a wartime establishment.

Even though all this interfered with his preparations for the final attack on the real Khalian home world, Admiral Meier had to admit the Council’s dissatisfaction was justified, if ironic.

Politicians always look for the quick fix, for the easy, and more importantly, cheap solution. Some of those fools on the Strategy Board had been only too willing to tell the Council what they wanted to hear.

The attack on Target had been billed as the final solution to the entire Khalian problem. Instead it had unquestionably demonstrated that problem to be ten times as serious as was previously thought. Now the Strategy Board looked like fools, and he had to deal with Smythe.

With a resigned sigh, the aged Admiral settled back and slaved his console to the one Smythe was using. Now he could be aware of what the investigator was viewing. Meier was relieved when the next file accessed was labeled Medical Corps. No chance of trouble there, not even a combat unit.

THE CENTRAL LIFE-MONITOR
screen lit up, pinpointing the positions of soldiers down on Target wearing Fleet medical monitors in their gear. Even as the dots glowed into life, some of them began blinking distress, and just as quickly, others went blue. By watching, one could map out where action was taking place, and where the Fleet was losing ground. As positions stabilized, the medical ships moved in to pick up the survivors who were not able to get to their personnel carriers on foot. And the bodies of those that didn’t survive. It was the Fleet tradition to bring back every combatant, alive or dead, for reasons of honor, if not because of what the Khalians did to those left behind.

Hospital ships were supposed to be inviolate in battle.
Elizabeth Blackwell,
though unarmed herself, had an escort of three heavily armed battle cruisers to make that so. The
Elizabeth,
as the main hospital ship, had a complement of over six hundred doctors, researchers, diagnosticians, and technicians on board and standing by.

Sixty scooters—medical shuttles—were already flashing their way between the ship and the battle, carrying away the Fleet’s wounded and dead. Each worked its own territory which overlapped slightly with that of its nearest neighbors, so that no wounded man would go untended.

The streamlined scooters, at just under twenty-five feet in length, were among the smallest ships employed by the Fleet. They consisted mostly of engine, fuel, and powerful boosters designed for easy, rapid landing and takeoff. They were sprinters, not intended for long trips. The small cabin contained a compact primary care unit where a doctor could sustain life in up to sixteen beings while they were evacuated to a full-service hospital.

Inducer units were as much standard issue on a scooter as in the hospital ships. They were used during surgery to put a subject under without chemical anesthesia by broadcasting relaxing alpha waves to the lower centers of the brain, and did not interfere with normal dreaming of REM sleep. Violent or distressed patients often lay under its influence to halt manic spirals of energy. And it was common practice for doctors to use the device on themselves when running long, irregular shifts. It relaxed them enough to get in a little shut-eye. In fact, for anyone used to its effects, it would work almost instantly.

The computer woke Dr. Mack Dalle up from under the inducer in his research laboratory. He had crawled under for a much-needed nap when he realized he wasn’t going to be able to, sleep because of the excitement and anxiety surrounding the coming battle. Which, obviously, must be going on right now. He pushed the square metal hood up and lurched over to his intercom. “Dalle,” he grunted into the audio pick-up, almost falling against the switch in the effort to turn the com unit on. Six hours of sleep, the holographic analog clock face informed him. Almost his normal allotment, though induced sleep tended to be more restful. He felt as though he had been under for over eight.

“Can you wake up, Mack?” a female voice requested from the unit. The color monitor screen resolved into the image of a human woman with large brown eyes and dark blue hair streaked with white.

“Yes, ma’am,” Mack said, stifling a yawn and giving her his whole attention. Commander Iris Tolbert, herself a neurochemist, and a good friend of Mack’s, had been assigned as dispatcher of the Medical Shuttles for the assault against Target. “Just inducer sleep. I’m fine.”

“Good. I need a pilot,” she told him, looking as if she was under great strain. “Scooter FMS-47 is not responding to signal, and I haven’t been able to raise the scooter-jockey, Leodli Schawn. The computer reports no life forms on board except a couple of critical patients who were reported by Leo herself. Fleet controller refuses to lend me a pilot to retrieve a medical shuttle, so I’m forced to deprive myself of the services of a doctor.” Commander Tolbert let one corner of her mouth go up in a sour half-grin. “You.”

“Whatever you say,” Dalle said matter-of-factly, moving out of the viewscreen’s range. He assembled clean medical coveralls from a storage cabinet and made for the small bathroom attached to the lab suite. He caught sight of himself in the mirrors over the line of scrub sinks and groaned. He looked like a terminal patient himself. Bags under his eyes, lines around his mouth, hair ruffled into a shock. He swiped at his hair with one hand.

“I say we have to get those soldiers aboard,” Tolbert’s voice said, fiercely. “You won’t have time even for a shower,” she commanded, guessing his thoughts. “You’ll go down with Dray Kavid in FMS-38. I’ve called the flight deck. He’s expecting you, so you’d better get a move on. Tolbert out.” The screen went blank just as Dane moved in front of it. With a sigh, he stepped out of his sweat-smelling off-duty jumpsuit and reluctantly pulled the white flight coverall up over his tall, thin frame. The suit was stenciled on both chest and back with the stylized red caduceus of the Medical Corps. On his way out of the lab suite, he called Stores for an extra diagnosti-kit to be waiting for him at the launch bay.

* * *

The scooter shot away from the
Elizabeth
like a waterbug on a pond, frictionless. In the distant blackness around Target, Dalle could see the tiny rectangles of other scooters moving to and fro, silver in the planet’s reflected corona.

“The battle is gone from our sectors,” Kavid told him. He was a somber black-haired pilot with some paramedical training, and a lot of experience in bussing live freight. “Half the scooters are still hovering. God, the place is full of those stupid feather-faces. If they’re not staring at you in droves, they’re getting in the way. They live here, you know? It’s been all over the waves. They’re the native life form, and they’re greedy little buggers. I caught one of the short ones trying to make off with my medikit. They’ll steal anything.”

“So you’ve been down once?” Mack asked, swallowing a quick cup of caffeine.

Kavid waved a negative, still staring at the forward viewscreen, and presented four fingers. “Four times. Once because they steered me in while the fighting was still going on. I felt like a damned pogo stick:
Boing,
down, up. It’s a good thing I was strapped in. Damned near lost my teeth. The other three times I brought wounded back. The prep rooms are full. I’m going to get good and drunk when I go off duty.” He punched a control button, and the view changed briefly to their aft. The gigantic ring-shaped form of
Elizabeth Blackwell
was quickly receding.”

“I believe it,” Dalle said, and sipped his coffee in silence. He read down the list of shuttles and their pilots on a side screen, noting the indicator which showed whether the scooter was in the docking bay, in transit, or dirtside. “FMS-27, Jericho, bay; FMS-28, Otlind, transit; FMS-.29, Cooper, Target . . .” and all the way to one which was flashing: “FMS-47, Schawn, Target.”

He pictured Leo as she was the last time he had seen her, laughing over a game or a drink in the rec room, surrounded by their friends. The pilots did fraternize with the doctors, at least on
Elizabeth,
during the year she had been assigned aboard her. There were so many who overlapped into both functions, like Mack himself, both shaman and bus driver. Leo was a birdlike female—with a long, swanlike neck, and vestigial feathers along, her forearms and the nape, of her neck—from some interesting genetic cross between an avian race and some humanoid stock. She put up with the usual bird jokes with grace, retorting with wit directed at monkeys and pigs.

Target zoomed in on them from the corrected view. Kavid cut in the jets, and, the shuttle tilted and set down on its side in a dirt area that was obviously normally used for livestock. Empty feed troughs stood at the perimeter of the field. “Your shuttle’s that way,” Dray pointed to planetary west between two of the wooden troughs. “Sorry I can’t get you closer, but I’ve got to get moving.”

Mack shouldered his diagnosti-kit and picked his way out of the farmyard, avoiding the newest deposits of excrement. He passed through a wooden gate into a beautifully laid out garden of exotic flowers and pretty stones. Three of Kavid’s “feather-faces” peered out at him timidly from a glassless casement, their multicolored faces almost as exotic as their garden. Dalle and they stared at each other for a moment, and then he went on westward.

His monitor tracer gave him no clear idea where to look for the scooter. Undoubtedly, there were more wounded around than Leo had managed to pick up before she disappeared, so there wasn’t a concentration of red lights by which he could judge. He was afraid that she must be dead. He couldn’t believe that in an organization so rife with communications backups as the Fleet she could be conscious anywhere and still remain out of touch.

A handful of Alliance marines, their tan uniforms coated with dust, saluted him as they passed. He returned the salute sharply. “Have you seen a grounded med scooter?” he asked them. They pointed back over their shoulders, and he plodded on.

Scooter FMS-47 lay in the rubble of a blasted cottage, smooth blue-grey surrounded by splintered brown. There were five feather-face bodies lying outward near where the door had been, surrounded by pots and rolls of textiles: residents fleeing with their little household goods. A clutch of dead Khalia sprawled nearby, fur mottled with laser burns and bullet holes. No Fleet or Alliance dead. This must have been one of the more successful skirmishes. Dalle had to step right over one of them to get to the starboard hatch. He rolled the Khalian over with one foot. Its face had been punched inward and charred black with a laser blast. Dalle gave it another push so it landed facedown again.

He put his palm on the door lock and waited. A beep deep sounded within, and the door slid back. Dalle took a step to the side. A low, wide ramp extruded itself at his feet, and he walked into the ship, bowing a little to pass under the arch.

The two patients-were there, and one of them stirred as the door opened. “Doc?”

“Yes?” Dalle came over to the woman and took her wrist. The stocky woman’s pulse was strong, and the monitor showed her vitals to be good. At first he thought the bandages over her eyes hid the only wound, but when she sat up, he saw that there was a leg missing. Her hair was scorched, leaving a bald place over her left eye that stretched to the crown of her head.

“You’re not the same doc,” the marine accused, gently touching his chest with one hand.

“I’m Mack,” he said, in a soothing, professional voice. “Hasn’t Leo been back? Is anyone else here?”

“Nope. Just the guy breathing over there.” Mack glanced over at the other marine, who was in deep sleep. His wounds were more extensive than the woman’s, though not as severe.

“Do you need anything, corporal?”

“Nope,” the woman said. “Doc told me they’d try to do something about my eyes later. I’m okay for now.”

Stoic, Mack thought. Or shock. ”Fine. I’m going to look for Leo and the rest of the wounded out there, and then we’ll be heading back to the hospital.”

“That’s okay, Doc. Thanks.” The woman settled back onto her bunk, patting her bandage to keep it in place.

There were no other sounds within except the chucklings of the ship’s systems maintaining themselves, but he heard shuffling feet running outside. “Leo?” he called.

Mack was just in time to see a white-backed shape vanishing around the comer of a mostly intact house to his left. “Hello?” He stabbed at the communicator button on his sleeve, on general immediate-range broadcast. “Hello? I am Dr. Dalle. Please identify yourself.” No reply. It couldn’t have been Leo, or any other Fleet personnel. He hadn’t received even an echo from a nearby transmitter. A Khalian? A live Khalian in this area? His hand twisted forward to his sleeve.

Mack took another quick look around for the missing pilot, his hand curled under to the arming switch that operated the weapon hidden under the medical insignia on his sleeve. It was a laser, with a self-contained battery good for three short-range but powerful shots. He admitted at last that Leo was nowhere around, and went back to the scooter to begin his rounds.

“Doc?” the marine called out.

“Just me,” Mack said, and started gathering equipment. The motorized travois, a rolling two-tiered gurney for four, was, moored just forward of the inside hatch. He unfastened the straps holding it in place, and manipulated the control lead, a long, curving neck of metal that terminated in a tiny ten-button keypad, until the trolley followed him at heel out of the ship like an obedient three-wheeled dog. His medical paraphernalia rode on the near end of the cart, ostentatiously marked with the same red caduceus he wore. He had no armaments in plain view, but the laser was ready. He was also running through everything he knew about unarmed combat with opponents that bite, a required course ordered by Commander Tolbert.

He passed hundreds of featherhead natives, who all stared at him without comprehension. “I bet they don’t even understand they’ve been invaded twice,” Mack said to himself, sarcastically, stopping to run the portable monitor over the body of a very large Alliance marine. There were no wounds visible, not even bruises, but the man was deeply unconscious. Mack couldn’t even guess what had happened to him. The echo of the heartbeat and brain functions was weak, but the frequency monitor remained clearly on red, not blue. The cleanup shift would come in for the dead, later on after the battle had ended or moved on, led by the blue frequency band.