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"As a little sweet wine mingled with a great deal of water is imperceptible in the mix..." Lieutenant Boort thought the words, took a slow breath of hot wet air, and broadcast them out to the four others in his team.
"God, I haven't had wine in a year!" Someone burst out, probably Houldi. "You can tell that old bastard that I'd be able to perceive the drop of wine in the water."
"It's a metaphor, you idiot," Orvin, the comm handler shot back.
"Aristotle's talking about how what's really yours gets lost in the millions of things when you take away ownership altogether." Felsang put in from the point. He was there because he could listen in on their thought chatter and do his job at the same time
The broadcasts went silent for a few seconds. You had to give your ears time to pick up the sounds around you. The recons moved through the brush, leaving no footprints or any other marks of their passage. There were five of them in a rough star formation, merging with the background in their apatetic jump-armor, masks and gloves. The war had ranged all over Durmestith-Ore.
Felsang raised his hand, crouched low to the ground. The soldier at the right point of the star, the young lieutenant commanding the squad, didn't have to query his pointman. All of them heard the approach of the NNOP, a primitive autonomous antipersonnel bomber. The five of them scrambled to merge with the cool forest detritus. The lightbomber whirred overhead, missing them.
The team could hear his thoughts but they arranged themselves to be able to see any signals from Lieutenant Artley Boort. He told them to stay low.
Within the last month the NNOPs had grown a little smarter, been reprogrammed, evolved, or something. They often flew in pairs. One would fly over a patrol, spot them, and move past as if not detecting them, then, sixty seconds later another would ambush the soldiers as they emerged from hiding. They flew over the surface, one flying a straight course and the follower zigzagging across the path of the forerunner. Once an NNOP located a group of targets the only actions left to them were to launch countermeasures and run. A fully loaded bomber could crater a mountainside.
Right on time. A minute later a second NNOP whirred past. The ambusher hadn't marked them. Boort waited another minute, heard nothing but the normal background noise, and then signaled for the rest to continue moving. The soldiers emerged from the ground like ghosts, and moved forward at the same slow careful pace.
They stopped at the whirring noise from their right. Another NNOP approached. They all heard the rasp of a hundred locked charges. The bomber launched a cluster. The little canisters flipped end over end and whistled above their heads.
Boort thought nothing. He gave the signal with his fingers and the five soldiers scattered. Regroup later. Different directions, harder to kill them all.
Branches whipped Boort's face. He didn't look back, but concentrated on the blasts. Behind him a man choked on a scream. The violent light from the detonations flashed off the leaves in front of him. The explosions radiated out from their original position. A wave hit him in the back like a hammer, throwing him forward. Dirt and chips of wood flew past him. One, maybe two of his soldiers were hit.
Boort slid down a muddy grade. His footing gave way. He tumbled over a log and landed upright. He skidded to the bottom, grabbing at plant stems and saplings as they whipped by.
His head jerked down. His eyes snapped to a little dirt mound, freshly made, barely noticeable, an antipersonnel mine. He opened his mouth to scream, then closed it and turned his head.
The blast hit him. His boot shot up, kicked him in the face, flew off over his head with his foot still in it. Boort landed five meters away, an unrecognizable knot of body armor.
#
Boort paused, breathing hard, his face almost in the dirt as he crawled away from the crater. He didn't know how long he'd struggled or how far behind he'd left his foot. One glance up at the cool star told him that at least half a day had passed. And there was something unfriendly approaching from the southwest.
He twisted around, looked at his trail for a second, then continued forward. He wasn't far enough. In front of him a row of tall overhanging trees rimmed the edge of a muddy cliff-face that bristled with roots. He heard a few short chirps, man-made. It was a signal to call a team together. They'd found the AP mine blast.
Boort heard a faint ecstatic laugh that trailed off into suppressed coughing. The corners of his lips curled up. Therewassomething grimly comical about it. They had found his foot. Boort's facemask was slippery on his face. He shoved it up, trying to suck in more air.
He looked down at his gloved hand, pressed into the soft wet dirt. He'd left an easy trail for them to follow.
There were two things he could do now, crawl or fight. Fighting would include the notion of making them think they were up against strong, fit team, not a footless remainder of one.
He pulled out three grenades, dropped two of them in his crotch. He pulled the charge on one and tossed it right up the middle. It hit the ground. One of the enemies barked. The grenade blew, shaking the trees. Bits of dirt rained down all around him. Boort heaved off the other two grenades, one to the left, and the other to the right of his original position. The twin blast caught at least one of them, hopefully enough to scare them into slowing down pursuit.
The lieutenant rolled over and pulled his body up the cliff face. Like swimming through sand, his arms worked against the force of his weight pressed against the ground. Loose rock flowed over the back of his thighs, his boot, the remains of his lower leg.
The waves of dirt filled some of the tracks Boort had left in crawling up to the cliff. A thick branch raked along his face. He snapped his neck back, bit into it, and used it to help pull his body over the cliff edge and into the shade of the jungle.
Feeling he'd gained a slight advantage, he fell back into the moist floor cover. His chest swelled with air. His eyes closed, lids spasming. Sweat pooled in the sockets, dribbling down the sides of his face. He shook away the stinging liquid, replacing it with a cleaner but more painful fluid. The tears streamed down his jaw, mingled with the sweat, striping the dirt that coated his chin. Boort's lips moved softly. He counted to five hundred. He silently mouthed the numbers, concentrating on something other than the pain. His jaw twitched. His eyes shot open. His mouth squeezed shut, and he pulled himself into a sitting position without making a noise. He unclipped a small pack from his waist and pulled out a box.
Boort slid back the cover of his DIAB - Doc-In-A-Box - medical field device, a thick plastic block with a flip up display. The bottom was grooved with the outlines of removable covers for different medical tools and storage. His finger shook violently, navigating through the touch interface. He pressed the "Services" symbol. He pulled down the medical menu, selected the interfaces application. Small blank UI boxes appeared in the lower right corner next to a body diagram showing him where to locate pulse and pressure sensors. (Field armor/medkit interoperability funding had been a little short). He pulled two slim packages out of his medical tray, unsnapped his body armor and jumpsuit, and stuck the sensors to his skin. His pulse showed in the monitoring window, a quick serrated line in bright green on black. A window popped up on the display screen, giving him instructions for the cameras. He pulled off the video equipment cover on the side of the field device. He raised his wounded leg, peeling back the bloody shredded cloth. He held the compact device up, letting the cameras scan what was left of his leg. He held the device over the wound for a few minutes, about as long as he could hold the position and remain conscious.
Exhausted, he dropped the machine on his chest. He pulled out more spray disinfectant and painkiller, curled to the left and coated the end of his leg. The cold spray replaced the pain.
A plan, he thought. Focus on the goal. Get his men and get home. That's what I must do. He rolled up his right sleeve, revealed his watch and locator. His finger skimmed the little panel. Where am I? 216 kilometers to the nearest expeditionary post. Doubtful I'd make it with two good feet. I'll need an extrac-
He stopped breathing. His skin went chill under his suit. The cloth cooled down, matching the ambient shade temperature in response to its automated proximity detection. He froze, tucking his lips over his teeth. His gloved fingers moved slightly to roll down the sleeve on his right arm. His face was exposed but it was too late to fix.
There was always a low humming of small creatures and wind and continuous waves of light rain. But it was the over-ambient that concerned Boort. He tuned the ambient down to zero, calibrated in his head like a scale. The insects natural to the forest crawled on him, up his nose, in his mouth and ears, in his hair. He ignored them. He listened for things that did not belong to the background. That was the key to survival, becoming as natural, as close to the background as he could. When you move and the jungle does not. When the background noise returns while you're still in the jungle, then you know you're catching on. When enemy soldiers who are out in this world doing the same thing you're doing walk right past you, you have become a backgrounder.
Slow, methodically placed footsteps approached. It was one soldier, but with obvious tracking experience. Boort heard a few short, repeated inhalations. The enemy sniffed the air. Boort looked at his leg. The disinfectant left a very faint vanilla odor. Damn marketing people. He pictured the tradeshow booth, grinning attendants, one holding the can and pitching the crap with, "a pleasant aroma!" Never mind that the smell of anything edible in any place you're likely to use the stuff would be like a prod to your gag reflex.
A soft breeze drifted south, carrying the sweet smell like an ocean current carries a downed craft's debris.
Boort's movement was almost imperceptible. His left arm drifted down and his hand rested on the holster of his handgun.
The enemy soldier stopped at the base of the cliff, crouched down to inspect the marks in the dirt. His head swung around, alarmed. He looked up the face of the cliff.
Boort's hand curled into the holster, slipped softly over his sidearm. The soldier continued his survey, but that could've been a trick.
The slow disciplined steps moved northwest along the line of the cliff. The background noise returned to the jungle around Boort, who, in spite of the pain, was scowling and swinging his eyes further into the trees. "What's that damn fool doing? Circling around to catch me from behind?"
A deep howl echoed over the treetops. Boort's head tilted in the direction of the sound. Close, less than half a klick.
Durmestith-Ore flora was thick and diverse but not unusual, much of it imported. Botanical study was a matter of importance, but DO was a zoologist's and ethologist's dreamworld.
There were two dominant higher lifeforms in the tropics, the first exceeding a 107 population which hunted the second about a tenth its quantity. Giant vegetation grazers roamed the planet preyed on by herds of parasitic lizard-like animals, called Wringids. Dragons, the soldiers called them. The male of the carnivorous species was the size of a man's knotted fist, bright blue, and lived a mostly sessile life embedded in the hide of the giant herbivores. The females pursued the giants, hunted them down, attacked them in groups, devoured them, and when digestive lethargy halted the herd, the males who survived the death of their host proceeded to mate with the sleeping female lizards.
Non-human zoogamy mattered little to most soldiers, but every green recruit stepping onto DO knew to avoid the grazers with visible blue plugs. The male version of the parasitic lizards released a chemical trail for the females. The more blue showing the closer the hunters.
Boort froze. The enemy tracker ran along the lower face of the cliff, back the way he'd come. He sprinted past Boort without stopping, making enough noise to alert Boort's suit's sensors, moving as if he didn't care. He was running from something.
Boort stuffed his med kit into a gap in his armor. He grabbed the bark on the tree behind him, pulling his body backward, up against the rough trunk. He tucked his good leg underneath him and lifted himself onto the lowest branch. He grabbed the next thick outgrowth and pulled up. Slowly, his body shaking, he climbed into the tree.
He was only a couple meters off the ground when a medium-sized Wringid scrambled through the brush, snorting. The dark gray reptile stopped in the impression Boort had made in the jungle floor. It's snout dug through leaves and dirt. It's head lifted. A row of nostrils, small moist flexible holes that ringed the dragon's head, twisted in different directions. It lunged forward, tumbled inelegantly down the face of the cliff and headed southeast. Boort climbed higher. Wringids traveled in herds.
He found two branches, ten meters off the ground, which formed a "Y", and settled into a sitting position at the joint. He did a quick scan of the terrain he could see through the leaves.
On the good side, the wringids gave him the opportunity to make noise. He pulled out a serrated utility knife and sawed through a long slim branch. He cut off all the twigs and leaves. He split one end of the branch and inserted a small chunk of wood. He made a crutch.
He pulled out the med kit and used the last of his painkiller. His fingers pulled at the small tabs, opening little compartments, sifted through the packets in the kit. Half of them were vacc's, small intravenous devices or tablets. What the hell do I need a vaccination for? Didn't I have twenty before I dropped into this damn atmosphere? He closed all the panels, and then closed his eyes. The Wringids owned the ground during the day. He waited for sunset.
He slept lightly, but fell into one dream after another like traps. He awoke every few hours, sweating, exhausted. His imaginings were filled with dirt and death. He didn't dream of crawling insects. He picked them out of his hair and mouth, and uncoiled them from around his ears when he jolted awake from the sound of distant destruction, explosions, and an occasional engine hum from low flying trackers. He dreamed of the soldiers who had died in his command, his head filled with the hollow wordless whisperings that only the dead make. He dreamed of flies harassing the carcass of a man. He dreamed of their larvae devouring his flesh.
Boort snapped awake, lifted his body up, and climbed down from the tree. He blinked, focused on the environment, ignored the dreams. He told himself, it's just the pain and the poison from a dirty wound starting at one corner and seeping into every corner of my life.
He had one flash of comfort. For a second he thought that he wouldn't dream in death, tilted his head a little as if contemplating this, and then stepped forward with his good leg and swung the useless one behind with the help of the crutch.
Aristotle said that life is motion, he thought. For Aristotle motion is the only efficient cause. Motion, fundamentally, is the only thing that can make things happen. Keep moving. I am alive as long as I keep moving. And I am human as long as I keep moving toward friendly territory.
The conflict on Durmestith-Ore was a controlled, stifled little war. There were dozens of careful little skirmishes scattered over the warmer equatorial region of the globe, like shaped charges, short volatile explosions contained in specific territories, and directed so as not to interfere with the normal economic operations and zoological analysis occurring on the planet.
Two years before a mining facility, Heisen Station, had been seized by Marinda Republic troops, and British and American forces in Kriphin had been sent in to take it back. In normal cases, on worlds not so earth-like, an eradication force would have been sent in that removed all forms of life on the disputed rock, but Durmestith-Ore was claimed jointly by many countries, most of whom had civilian personnel, mostly researchers, stationed there.
The conflict was careful and deadly at the same time. The large zoological teams that trailed the Wringid herds across the face of DO were in turn trailed by troops from both sides, giving them mobility and cover. The rules of conflict were damned strict and occasionally troops following one herd of wringids and researchers crossed the path of opposing troops following another herd without a shot fired. Once, a research team helped a disabled British soldier. The researchers never returned from their next expedition. Marindan soldiers tracked them down, executed them, decapitated them and hung their heads from a tree as a warning against interference.
An NNOP passed overhead once, forcing Boort to stop for three hundred seconds, and twice during the night, he frantically left the ground. He had marched directly into a large group of grazers. They were just dozing off, but a few of them had large exposed blue nodules, the male wringids. The dragons would not be far away, although they, too, would be settling down.
Boort waited an hour in the trees, and then headed off in a direction that took him in a wide half-circle around the herds. There were hundreds of groups of grazers and wringids crisscrossing the warmer regions of DO, but there was a chance that researchers and troops accompanied this one. And then there was a chance that the troops were friendly. He doubled back for a few kilometers on the other side of the herd and stumbled into a group of sleeping dragons. He immediately headed into the trees, a frenzied painful climb that wasted most of his strength. He sat still for a while, catching his breath and focused on his extraction plans, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his leg. The chorus of small nocturnal hunters and parasites arose.
The war spread out in ever-widening circles, from the rotting end of his leg to the enemy soldiers in the surrounding jungle, to the encircling trackers overhead, to the armies shifting across kilometers of terrain in all directions, to the world that looked so earth-like but nurtured monsters that preyed on every earthling who walked its surface.
Boort sterilized a needle in the med kit's irradiator. Without anesthetic he was reduced to using nerve blocks to deaden the sharp pain pushing up his leg. He held the med kit scanner over his bare leg and it painted a pattern of muscle tissue, veins and nerves on his skin. He marked the location below his knee, turned off the scanner, and inserted the needle. He sprayed an antiseptic on the end of his dirt and blood encrusted leg. A few hours later Boort climbed down and continued the journey, his mind working enough to guide him.
He stepped as lightly as he could, lurching from side to side, trying to hide the trail of holes in the dirt left by the end of the crutch. I am not going to die on some miserable, uncivilized world, devoured by wringids, he thought. I am human. I don't rely on chance to help me get through a problem. Chance is for those who haven't figured out how to use their heads. I've looked over the horizons of a dozen planets and moons, and watched the rising of stars through atmospheres of every thickness. Chance is for the unthinking. It's think or die.
#
"It is Boort," the Marindan soldier grumbled low. He crouched, examining the footprints and other marks of a man's passage. He whispered angrily, "It cannot be."
"How do you know, Captain?" A young soldier stood above his commanding officer, watching in awe.
Captain Morra ignored him. He kneeled, and then lowered his body almost to the ground. To Marindan forces, Boort had become a legendary monster that roamed Durmestith-Ore, preying on their assault teams like a hunter tracking and killing game, a deadly chimera who trained his soldiers to hunt as he did.
"He's wounded. Severely, too. He's either lost his leg or it is so badly injured that he's unable to use it." Morra smiled, a deadly, thin smile, a slash across his face. "That was his boot we kicked around half a kilometer back with the stump of his ankle sticking out of it."
Morra sat up, crossed his legs and rested his chin on his arm. This was not proceeding the way he'd expected. "Caught by an APM blast," he whispered in confused shock. He was disappointed. He lifted an eyebrow hopefully. "But maybe it wasn't Boort himself. One of his team? The wounded slowed him down."
Captain Morra was lean and hungry. His face was the hardened mask of a veteran, dark deep set eyes that moved slowly, calmly, but never missed a mistake, a footprint, a man moving stealthily against the light and dark background of the jungle. He wore the dull green molded body armor of the Marindan military.
He looked up at the two soldiers accompanying him. "Head back to the APM crater and see if you can pick up any other trail leading away from it. If not, return up the hill to their original position and see if you can pick up the trails of the other members of Boort's team. There should be five maybe six of them. I want body counts."
Morra sprang from the ground to his feet, and headed away from the setting sun alone. He ducked beneath the low canopy of branches, following the trail of his most hated enemy.
#
Boort stopped, squatted, looked around him. He slowed his breath and heart rate, and listened for a few minutes. Quietly, he pulled out a small, thick disk from one of the slide-pockets in his armor. It was an anti-personnel mine. He kneeled down in the dirt, lifted the top layer of leaves off. He set them aside, and then dug into the moist mixture of rotting vegetation. He set the charge, covered the APM and gently replaced the top layer of drier leaves. He moved on. This was the fourth he'd planted along his escape path.
The roar of pain that pushed up his leg had become so loud that Boort had to stop every few paces and concentrate on listening to the forest around him. The sounds of the animals in the trees and air - their response to his presence and the presence of others - were critical to survival.
Boort stopped, not listening for enemies. He smiled gently. He listened to the sweet chatter of some insect-like creature in the trees. He had named the creature, Teretismata, and the DO zoologists recorded this name. Early in the conflict, when there was more communication between the militaries and the researchers, Boort had brought one of the insects into a remote research station. He had noticed a change in pitch in the sound these creatures made when potentially dangerous animals approached. He used this to his advantage, and in appreciation, caught one and delivered it to a zoological analysis center for recording and study. Since the creature was a new entry in the list the researchers left the naming up to Boort. Teretismata was an ancient Greek onomatopoetic word derived from the chirping of crickets. It meant idle chatter, gibberish, useless noise. But for Boort the word was connected with a favorite quote from Aristotle, in which the old philosopher firmly stated his rejection of the foundation of Plato's philosophy, calling it teretismata.
The lieutenant moved on, swinging his leg, bracing his body, moving the crutch forward, a slow, sequential effort. He stopped, listened, and then continued on. A kilometer further, he stopped, listened, and, just as he started to move, the pitch of a teretismata's voice changed in the trees above him. Boort froze. He scrambled up the nearest tree that could support him.
Heart pounding, he counted the thuds in his head. He had just reached a thousand when five or six huge grazers lumbered through the forest, breaking branches, compressing the soft jungle floor, their heads almost as high in the trees as Boort. Right behind them a herd of large female wringids followed. Next, a team of researchers. Boort barely picked up their whispered communication. Several minutes later, much quieter, came a six man Marindan patrol, using the researchers for cover.
Boort slept in the tree for two hours before he descended and continued his journey toward friendly territory. Twice during the day he had climbed trees to escape an approaching herd. One of them was followed by a Japanese research team shadowed by another Marindan force. How can I get a message to the research team without the Marindans knowing, he thought? No, the trouble is how to get a message to one member of the research team without the other members knowing. To get an entire research team to help me would be impossible. The punishment for interfering in the war was too great.
He moved slowly, his head sagging. His eyes remained open, but looking at the ground. He stepped through the deep imprints made by the grazers and Wringids. He looked to the side. The tracks went from Southwest to Northeast. Boort stopped, breathing hard. The trail went up a wide channel of rock. The ground was level, pitted with the footprints of many herds. The trees were tall and bulky, the only ones able to endure the continual marching of the huge animals. Tall bushes and the finger-thick stalks of some reed-like plant grew in patches between and around the base of the trees, everything else stamped flat.
Boort turned and headed toward the entrance to the ravine. The rocky sides grew higher. The floor was wide enough for seven or eight big grazers to come through at once, and continued to open up to the Northeast.
The lieutenant walked, heavy on his crutch, stopping every fifty steps. He turned around, measured the distance to the ravine entrance. His head tilted a little. The slow thudding of an approaching herd stopped him. He climbed the nearest thick-trunked tree with branches big enough to hold him. He stopped about fifteen meters off the floor, froze, and watched the herd move through the ravine below him. This one did not have any following predators. He inspected the mottled gray hides of the passing herbivores. None of them had exposed male wringids.
Boort spent the rest of the day in the tree, thinking in spurts. He slept a few minutes at a time, but nothing blocked out the pain. Another herd with accompanying wringids and researchers moved through. He caught the hum of a few distant NNOP's and other tracking craft.
At dusk another herd of grazers followed by a few wringids indolently passed under him and settled down half a kilometer up the ravine. He pulled a thick loop of coiled cable from his pack, a four hundred meter length. He spent the next few hours cutting pieces of cable. He pulled it taught from one outstretched hand to the other, cut the piece off, and draped it over a branch.
When he had cut forty sections of cable he took out a bag of fasteners. He started overlapping the cable pieces at one corner, connecting them in right angles. He'd made a net. He spread out his hand over the square openings between the cables, measuring their size while he worked.
He finished around the middle of the night. The air was warm and wet. Hunger left him shaking, and his breath came in rough spasms. He pulled up his mask and weakly wiped the sweat from his eyes. Every few minutes his body jerked, a shudder of pain that roamed up his leg and across his torso and chest.
Boort tied one end of the remaining cable to a stout part of the tree, a third of the way up, just above a branch. He threaded a small cable section through the edges of his net and pulled it closed like the drawstring of bag, leaving an opening of two hand-widths.
The lieutenant leaned back in his perch and rested a few minutes. The night was noisy. He persistently monitored the pitch of a Teretismata off to his right. Its chirping started and stopped, rhythmic, unalarmed.
He awoke, listened for a minute, and then pulled out a small hexapod. It looked like a brick. As soon he opened up the interface six legs unfolded and curled into a ready position. An Automated Food Tracker or Afty, was a necessary field tool. It was small, very discrete, and could keep your stomach full whether you were on a seven-day recon or buried in the underbrush twenty meters from an enemy camp. An Afty could bring down an elk if that's what you wanted for dinner. But normally it would return with berries, an occasional reptile, skinned and sliced, insects, roots of various types, and it did this without being tracked and revealing the location of its owner. If it was captured it would immediately destroy itself.
Boort stepped through the Afty's programming interface. He instructed it to search for sleeping grazers. It would then use its cutting tools to extract a male wringid, return to his position, deposit the oozing blue animal in the net, and repeat the process. Boort looked toward the ravine opening, listening. He looked at his watch. Daylight would arrive in seven hours and the herds would be on the move again. He set the Afty vertical against the tree and let it go. It scrambled down the bark and disappeared.
Using the cable, Boort slowly let himself down from the tree. He pulled the cable tight and climbed the nearest trunk in line with the ravine opening. He swung the cable over a branch at fifteen meters and climbed back down. Over the next three hours he climbed the trees that grew in a straight line toward the Southwest, stringing the cable through the treetops. He stopped a little over a hundred meters from the other end of the cable. He left the remaining length coiled and wedged between the trunk and branch.
The lieutenant waited an hour at the south end of the cable. He redressed his leg and tried to rest. It was useless. Boort hoisted his body up against the cable and connected the link from his belt. He reached out and pulled himself toward the nearest tree. When he pushed up against the cable-bearing branch he unclipped on one side, re-clipped on the other, and continued pulling his body along the line. Boort timed the traversal from the south end to the net. It took him nine minutes. Faster, he thought. This is not going to work unless I am faster.
His Afty was just returning with another male wringid. There were three in the net. The sour odor of the slimy blue fist-sized nodules did not disturb Boort. It kept him awake.
At daybreak the grazers half a kilometer to the north awoke, fed for several minutes, and continued up the ravine. Boort waited for the next herd to pass through. His Afty had retrieved sixteen male wringids. The forest was silent. The smell from the net was so strong the animals in the trees had fled.
#
Captain Morra edged forward through a thick tangle of vines. He cut the thin network of stalks with clippers, quietly making his way toward a clearing in the trees. He sent out one of his mine extractors to inspect the ground. It was a little six-legged machine that crawled over and under the jungle detritus searching for APM's.
Morra paused for a moment, and then stepped into the clearing. His mine extractor had found an expertly placed mine on the far side, in line with Morra's direction. He smiled, slightly. Boort knows I am following him, he thought. Is he injured? If he's smart enough to plant traps then he must not be hurt badly. Morra's smile disappeared. But the boot was his!
Morra shook his head, trying to throw off this disturbing fact. Perhaps he doesn't need feet. The Marindan captain smiled once again, a grim showing of teeth, and moved forward. This time thinking of the fantastic stories his troops told of Boort, the ghost, the man who does not leave footprints, who drinks a devil's cocktail of human blood and wringid saliva.
I will drink a toast to Boort if I ever catch him, and salute him if he ever catches me. Morra shook off a spasm of disgust. His face tightened, eyes fixed in front of him as he walked on. He could not clear his thoughts of the doubt, the gnawing fact that Boort, his nemesis, a military genius, had stumbled into an antipersonnel mine.
#
Boort sat up straight. The slow thumping of a new herd of grazers grew louder. He pulled the net of blue male Wringids along the cable in front of him and clicked his belt in behind it. He twisted around, dangling from the cable. He watched the herbivores, some with exposed blue nodules, pass beneath him. A few grabbed a quick swipe at the leaves of his tree before moving by. A minute later Boort heard the noise of ten or twelve wringids following the scent of the males. The grazers moved gracefully, slow plodding, cadenced. The wringids were a disorderly mass, biting, clawing and climbing over each other to catch up to the grazers.
The wringids stopped below Boort's tree, heads held up, snorting, sensing the male wringids close by. Boort moved the bulging net in front of him toward the south end of the ravine. The wringids crowded together in confusion, pushing back against the late arrivals. The dragons growled at each other, snapping, trying to follow the scent. They turned around and headed back the way they had come. Above them Boort pushed the net in front of him, unhooking and hooking at each tree. He moved faster, pulling his body along the line, and the wringids followed him away from the giant herbivores.
When he reached the end of the cable. He stopped and dumped the net full of blue globules to the forest floor.
"They're coming back!" Screamed a man from below. It was a researcher. A soldier wouldn't have had to warn his team.
"Hurry!" Someone else yelled in fear.
Boort listened to the panicked scientists as they rushed into the trees. He climbed lower in the branches, trying to hear what they were saying.
Below Boort a woman in green shorts and hiking boots clawed at the bark. She raced to reach for the branches. The thundering footsteps and snorts of the Wringids were all around her. A big dragon stepped through the brush, stopped, spotted the scientist and charged. She sucked in a breath, jumped up, missed the branch. It was too high. She sprang into the air, missed the tree, but caught a hand.
Boort was hanging upside down, his good leg and one arm looped around a branch. He hoisted the woman up. She grabbed the bark with her left hand, trying to get footing on the side of the trunk. The wringid clawed her legs, biting into her backpack, ripping Boort off the branch. He grabbed the tree, still holding the scientist's hand. She unclipped her pack with her free hand and Boort pulled her up. The wringid shredded the cloth and moved off through the bushes leaving a trail of the pack's contents.
She looked up at him, startled. Boort put a finger to his lips. She looked at his face, but immediately noticed his leg.
"You're wounded?"
He put a finger to his lips.
"What is more dangerous? Up here with you or down there with them?"
Boort looked slightly put out, and pointed to himself.
One of the researchers a few trees away cried. "Everyone safe?"
Eight researchers shouted out their names.
The first researcher shouted out, "Frederika?"
The woman hanging from the branch below Boort was silent. There were several calls of "Freddy?" and "Dr. Taraz?"
Boort motioned her to respond.
"I'm fine," she yelled. "One of them nearly got me."
"You're injured?"
"A few scrapes from climbing the tree. Some from the wringid on the backs of my legs."
The voice of the lead researcher, the one who had first spoken, seemed calmer. "Anyone know what happened? I've never seen a Wringid group turn like that. Who's got answers?"
A few stunned researchers repeated, "I don't know."
"We'll stay in the trees till we're sure they're gone." The researchers spoke for a while, conjecturing about the new development in wringid behavior.
Boort leaned closer to the woman, whispered, "Please."
She studied him, a sharp directed look. Boort returned a similar look, guessing with some experience that she was South American, from Peru, possibly Chilean. She was young, her thick black hair pulled into a ponytail. She was a career biologist. Fair-weather scientists worked from closer worlds. She followed deadly creatures through the jungles of a distant world.
"I'd like to help you." She shook her head. "If the others find you the best I can expect is expulsion. You know what the Marindan's will do to me." She waved her hand in a circle. "And all of them."
Boort nodded, understanding. "I don't want to know who you are. I don't want you to physically help me get out of here. All I want you to do is remember two sets of numbers. Nothing else."
"Coordinates?"
"Just pass them to the Kriphin Expeditionary Force and they'll send in a group to extract me. I'll remain here and wait for them. The second set of coord's will tell them where we were ambushed so they can find any other survivors of my team. When are you returning to base?"
"Two days, but - "
"If you're caught helping me, the best you can hope for is death. All I'm asking you to do is pass the coord's on to your headquarters."
She paused. "They're distant, out of the jungle managers who won't move on something like this. They know the danger to our operations. Risky. I doubt they'll take it seriously. They'll think it's a ploy by the Marindan forces."
"Get it to KEF directly?"
"How? Marindans will intercept anything I send."
He nodded sourly. "You'll have to go through your headquarters, get the information offworld and to KEF without Marinda detecting it."
She looked up at him, chewing her lip. "Give me the numbers."
Boort showed her his watch. He waited till she looked back at him before asking for more.
"Do you have any antiseptics or painkillers?"
She started to nod. "No. They were in my pack. I can get some from the others."
Boort nodded weakly.
The other researchers climbed down from their perches.
"Think we're clear," one of them called.
She started to climb down, and then turned back. "One more thing."
"Yes?"
"What's your name?"
He hesitated. "Lieutenant Boort. Artley Boort."
"I'll do what I can. Thank you for catching me, lieutenant."
He stared down at her. "I won't move from this tree."
She turned, crawled to the lower branches and dropped down from tree. With the last of his strength, Boort quietly climbed up to the cable-bearing branch and hooked up his belt. Then he passed out, his body sagging upside down from the wire, arms dangling toward the ground.
#
Boort opened his eyes. He couldn't see. He blinked a couple times trying to sense where he was. He lifted his head up and saw one of Durmestith-Ore's small moons glowing in the sky above him. He was cold, shivering, sweating under his body armor. His mouth was dry, empty. He smiled. He was still alive. His plan working.
He'd often test himself to see how clear his head was by determining how long it took him to come up with some quote from Aristotle that fit a particular situation. The soldiers in his team were amazed by his ability to remember thousands of passages. After some particularly deadly firefight or a near miss from an NNOP, the first thing they wanted to hear was some related quote from Aristotle. And if Boort answered quickly and his response was dead on his team would demand the book and chapter, or even the Bekker number that pinpointed the location in the Aristotelian corpus.
Boort pulled his body against the tree and unhooked himself from the cable. He gripped the bark, his fingers whitening. All he could think about were the soldiers who had fought with him. Tears welled up in his eyes and softly rolled down his cheeks. He sat there, fifteen meters off the ground, holding the tree for several minutes. He couldn't think of a quote. He wiped his face, pulled out the coil of remaining cable and repelled as gently as he could to the ground.
He stood at the base of the tree, all his weight on one foot, looking through the shrubs for anything the researcher had secreted away from her colleagues. He spotted a small foil package. He bent down, dropped to his knees, reached in and grabbed it. His hands trembled as he tore it open.
He froze, and dropped the package.
"Do not move, Boort."
Captian Morra rose like a predatory cat from his crouching position behind a tree, gun aimed at the Lieutenant. "Throw away your helmet, pack and vest. Remove all of your weapons."
Boort tugged off his helmet and dropped it on the ground. He unsnapped his equipment vest, holster and belt. He pulled his crutch out and leaned on it while he took the ammunition out of the slide pockets. He looked at Morra without any expression.
The Marindan Captain motioned with his gun. "Walk." He pointed back down the ravine. "That way."
The two of them followed the footprints of the grazers and wringids. Morra directed him, but didn't tell him where they were going. Part of the track narrowed and permitted no choice of direction. They were silent for two hours.
The sun had risen and was blazing on his back. Morra walked along behind him, gun out. Boort stumbled twice. Morra just stopped, a cautious distance away, and waited for his enemy to crawl up his crutch and start moving again. It was almost dark before Morra let Boort stop. The lieutenant sat on the ground, leaned back against a boulder twice his height. He looked up wearily, happy for the darkness. If the wringids came he wouldn't have the strength to climb out of their way.
Morra paced back and forth in front of him, pensive, fighting an inner frustration.
"Let me tell you a story, Boort."
Morra paused, looking down at his enemy. "It's about an experienced naval captain. This is back on Earth during the Second World War. The captain - I do not remember his name - commanded a destroyer in the Mediterranean Sea. He was part of a group of American and British ships searching for German U-boats. A few had been prowling the shipping lanes off North Africa. On one mission he and the commander of a British destroyer managed to damage a U-boat with depth charges, forcing it to surface. The crew of the U-Boat abandoned their leaking vessel and scrambled into the sea. The British ship picked up some of the men. The rest - the majority, including the officers and captain, were picked up by the Americans. Within half an hour the men of the U-Boat were under guard on the destroyer's deck. All but one. The American captain came down to personally oversee the capture of the Nazi U-boat captain.
Morra looked for some reaction from Boort. Nothing.
"See, there is a common bond among men of the sea that precedes all other bonds, even the bond of nation and race. The American captain escorted the Nazi captain to his own quarters, and had him guarded there instead of on deck. The brotherhood between captains at sea - even between hated enemies - is stronger than blood. It is a brotherhood of shared experience, of a common understanding of what it was like to live at sea in those days. The moral and the monstrous could respect each other because they were tied by the deeper connection of the waves and wind and stars they navigated."
"What - " Boort whispered dryly and then stopped. He gasped out in one long breath, "What is your purpose in telling me this?"
"Good. Your mind has not entirely shutdown. I do have a purpose. You see, it was a long standing tradition that began on the ocean and continues today among the stars, going back centuries before the twentieth century, that sailors helped stranded or injured sailors of any other nation, even enemies, even sailors who served an opposing navy during war. Essentially, it came down to the seas and oceans were so inhospitable that to leave anyone, even an enemy, drifting on the waves was more than cruel, it was a deep sin, an unforgivable action. Anyone who put to sea understood the possibility of dying at sea, and what a horrible, lasting torture that might be, so this core empathy existed among all sailors of all ranks of all nations - that you always assisted anyone - even mortal enemies - at sea."
Morra enjoyed the way his slow, detailed exposition tormented Boort.
"You and I have been contenders, fighting for this world. I would track your team for a few kilometers, certain that I had you, certain that I would find you around the next hill, and when I lost your trail I would drop to the ground, weary of this battle, curse your name, and plan my next move. But I would always have this deep feeling of admiration for your skill. If you could out-move me you were good. I could feel your smile, that slight twist on the edge of your lips, a smirk, the only display of your pride in your abilities that you allowed to show. You are well-known, famous even. I have stared at your press photos for hours, wondering what you were thinking, looking for any sign of your abilities that the images might reveal. You always had the same smile, a look of certainty. I could feel that smile, gloating over my misfortune, haunting me, until the next time, when I knew it was you trailing me, and I played every trick in my head, and lost you in the jungle. Then I was wearing that smile. The smile was like a victory cloak we passed between us. We could never wear it at the same time. It was either you or me. You had just won the little war in this big war, or I had. One of us was smiling.
"But now I will wear that smile home. It will never leave me again. It is mine, like a trophy I can hang in some dusty hall above a blazing fire, and point to as I retell this story to my grandchildren.
Morra frowned. He was losing Boort, either to blood loss or pain.
"Boort!" The lieutenant lifted his head. "I've told you my quaint historical tale and elaboration because I've dreamed of this moment. For the last two years I have stared at these stars wondering what I would do if I ever had you in this position. I debated intensely within myself, struggling with the decision to spare you or kill you. Take you prisoner or execute you out of compassion. Bring you to a prison camp in chains, stripped of your rank, your honor, and allow the camp guards to slowly strip away your humanity. Or should I let you go? Not only spare your life, but aid you in your rescue, so that when you healed we could resume our contest. Wouldn't that be the honorable thing to do?"
"I always thought that when the time came I would do the last thing, set you free, even help you, so that we can..." Morra's voice trailed off with an emotional shudder. "...Continue."
"Unfortunately, Boort, you disgust me. You're a weak little pawn in this jungle, stumbling around like an animal, stupid and indifferent to his position now and in the future. It is my shame that has driven me to this state. I'm ashamed of ever having presumed you to be anywhere near my equal. I thought of you as my counterpart in the Kriphin Expeditionary Force. No, it went beyond that. I often thought you and I were the only ones combating. This was our war, our struggle, our contest. I thought of you -
"Morra - " Boort exploded into a fit of coughing. He continued weakly, but with a slight smile. "Funny. I haven't thought of you more than once or twice during my entire tour here. You mean nothing to me, Morra. I know who you are. I knew you were out in these jungles just like me, but to me you were no more important than the wringid herds that roam DO. You were just another deadly animal out there that we had to avoid or kill."
Morra's hands shook, closing into tight fists. Enraged, he pulled out his combat knife, and drove the edge against Boort's throat. He paused a moment, eased it back, and then pulled downward and cut through the straps that held the Lieutenant's body armor in place. Morra shoved the knife back into its sheath. He grabbed the edge of Boort's armor and tugged it away, exposing the sweat drenched shirt underneath. Boort's body jerked forward then slammed back against the rock. He didn't have the strength to resist. Morra pulled out a handgun and pointed the muzzle at Boort's face, pressing the squared off end into his cheek.
"You - " Morra was ghostly. His jaw knotted, bulging along bottom, clenching, loosening and clenching. Boort just stared up at him, defenseless, ready to die.
"Boort, you do not deserve a martyr's death, not a soldier's death, not a heroic death. You get a mean and painful death. A meaningless death. I will not salute you. You have failed."
Morra shifted the gun to Boort's shoulder and fired. Boort's body bounced off the rock, his right arm flailed wildly, loose, an uncontrolled effect of the impact. Boort held his eyes closed tightly. He braced himself with his other arm. A gush of warm liquid seeped down his chest and back, pooling in his armor.
"Boort, when I caught you kneeling there, looking for something in the bushes, your body filled with disease, with infection, I decided not to let you live. My shame began earlier, yesterday, when I found your boot with your foot still in it. I laughed then, but inside I was in pain. I felt sick, that I'd given you any attention. Now I don't want to wear that smile. I won't tell this story to my children. It will make me vomit. I thought I was engaged in a battle over combat skill with a peer, but you were caught with the weakest of attacks, an antipersonnel mine, a weapon for destroying civilians and animals."
"If the mine is laid carefully and skillfully, the most experienced warrior - or his tools - don't have a chance," Boort whispered, his eyes closed tight.
"You are wrong, Boort. I do not even respect your abilities enough to call you by your rank. You do not deserve a rank. The lowest rank is above your abilities. You are an animal blindly stumbling around in the forest. You are not even a man."
Boort smiled. It was faint, barely showing on his lips. "I can lay an APM that even you and your detectors cannot find."
"Bah! The madman rambles. Your body is infected with gangrene. You have lost whatever thinking capacity you originally had, as meager as it was. I found all the mines you planted for me yesterday."
Boort's eyes flickered open. The same slight smile came to his lips.
Morra lifted his canteen and took a long drink. "Don't look at me. You are a dead man. I would no more pour out my water on your grave than give you a drink of it. You are too weak to walk. You are barely able to talk."
Boort sagged lower down against the rock. He blinked weakly, trying to keep his eyes open. They drifted toward the ground, opened a little wider then closed.
"Goodbye, Boort. The dragons will wake in an hour. Hopefully you will have enough life left in you to know what is happening when they find you."
Morra gave him a farewell wave and walked off silently into the trees. #
Boort's eyelids trembled. Keep them open, he ordered.
Yesterday, he struggled to force his body to move a few paces. Today he struggled just to keep his eyes open. If I close my eyes, he thought, I won't be opening them again. His mouth pulled into a snarl. His eyelids parted slightly, two creases in his face. He gasped, and another gush of warmth seeped from the hole in his shoulder. His eyes opened a little wider.
Boort looked up. A rushing wind sound came from above him. A dull green boxy ship dropped out of the clouds, and thudded into the ground, crushing trees flat. A square hole opened in the side and two extraction troops jumped out.
Two tight beams of light pinned Boort to the rock. He shifted his knee under him, gripped the top edge and pulled himself up. He swayed back and forth, his eyes blinking, closed more than they were open. He tried to focus on the face of the trooper who suddenly appeared right in front of him. The man smiled.
"Good to see you alive, Lieutenant. Hell of a time finding you. We got your team. Couple are in rough shape but we got'em. You're the last one out."
The trooper lifted Boort's weight and guided him back to the doorway. "Docs'll fix you up, get you a new leg."
Off in the distance Boort heard a high-pitched Teretismata.
He rolled his head toward it and whispered, "Where there is most of mind and reason, there is least chance, and where there is most chance, there is there least mind."
"What's that, sir?"
"Aristotle," he whispered hoarsely. "Magna Moralia." He shrugged slightly, a short tightening of his shoulders. "A spurious work but still part of the corpus."
With the last of his strength Boort managed a slight smile. He fell forward and the trooper stopped to slide his grip tighter.
A short explosion sounded in the distance.
"APM," said the trooper.
The detonation was sharp with a soft trailing echo that nearly covered a man's scream. The second trooper at the door swung his head around in the direction of the blast. He slung his gun and helped his mate get Boort into the big open door of the carrier.
The door slammed shut and the ship jolted off the ground, and rocketed into the sky.
Chris Howard is a software engineer, writer and artist. He blogs at http://the0phrastus.typepad.com, and has maintained a web site devoted to Aristotle's philosophy since 1996. He currently resides in Stratham, NH with his family. His short fiction has appeared in several online magazines, and he has co-authored a young adult fantasy novel (The Wreath, ISBN: 0977380718) with his daughter, Chloe.
Personal site: http://the0phrastus.typepad.com
Book site: http://www.lykeionbooks.com/thewreath
© Christopher Howard
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