Orphan's Triumph

THREE

AFTER FIFTEEN SECONDS, the captain swallowed, then said, “Yes, sir.”

The spotter scrunched his face, then nodded. “I think there will be time if we take the shot as soon as she turns and aims at you, General.”

“No shot, Sergeant.”

“Of course not, General. Until she turns and-”

“No shot. I’ll handle this.”

The spotter, the captain, and even the sniper stared at me.

Then the captain pointed downslope. “If the Casuni rush her, do we shoot? And who do we shoot?”

“The Casuni won’t rush her. That’s why I’m going now.” I shook my head, pointed at the sky. “It’s six minutes before noon. At noon the Casuni will pause an hour for daily devotions. That’s our window to talk her down.”

The captain stood. “Then I’ll go, sir. I’m her commanding officer.” He rapped gauntleted knuckles on his armored chest. “And I’m tinned up.”

I pulled him aside, then whispered to him, “Son, you’re right. If I were in your boots I’d be pissed at me for pulling rank.” I tapped my collar stars. “But I need you up here to be sure your sniper doesn’t get the itch.”

I had given him a ginned-up reason, and he was smart enough to know it. But the captain was also smart enough and resigned enough that he just nodded his head. There was no percentage in arguing with the only three-star within one hundred light-years. Besides, he probably figured his sniper could take the shot before I could get myself killed, anyway.

Twenty minutes later, I had crept and low-crawled to within fifty yards of the girl and she hadn’t spotted me. Downslope, I heard the twitter of Casuni devotion pipes. The warriors would all be head-down and praying for an hour, during which we could clean up this mess, before they rushed her. I kept behind a rock ledge as I cupped my hand to my mouth. “ Sandy?”

“Who the hell’s out there?”

“Jason Wander.”

“Bite me. The old man’s pushing paper back in Marinus. Whoever you are, I can’t see you, but I can hear you well enough to lob a grenade into those rocks. So back off.”

“Sandy, I really am General Wander. I came out from Marinus to award a unit citation. When I heard what happened, I came here. I’d like to talk to you.” I paused and breathed. “I’m going to stand up, so you can see me, see that I’m unarmed.”

“I’ll drop a frag on your ass first!”

Ting.

The M40 is an excellent infantry weapon, except that it makes a too-audible “ting” sound when it’s switched between assault-rifle mode and grenade-launcher mode, as a grenade is chambered in the lower barrel.

So far, so good. My heart thumped, and I drew a breath, then let it out.

I stayed behind cover, levered myself up on my real arm, and glanced back to confirm where I was in relation to the sniper farther up the hillside. Then I got to my knees, spread my arms, palms out, and stood.

The girl had swung around from facing the Casunis downslope and now faced me, her unhelmeted cheek laid along her rifle’s stock as she trained her M40 on my chest. She lifted her head an inch, and her jaw fell open. “General?”

I nodded, then called, “Mind if I come closer? Then neither of us will have to yell. We won’t wake the baby.”

The voice of the captain upslope hissed in my earpiece. “General! Sir, you need to move left or right a yard or two. You’re blocking the shot.”

Which was the idea, though the captain hadn’t anticipated it until too late. They don’t teach enough sneakiness at West Point.

The girl jerked her head, motioning me closer, but she kept her finger on the trigger. “Two steps! No more.”

I took the two steps, which brought me within fifteen yards of her, then shuffled until the distance between us was down to ten yards.

She poked her M40 forward, then growled, a pit bull with freckles. “I said two steps, dipshit! Sir.”

In my ear, the captain said, “Sir, move left or right! Not closer! Now you’re obscuring her even more!”

The rifle quivered in the girl’s hand.

I swallowed. There’s a class in MP school that teaches how to talk jumpers down. I never took it. There was probably a series of soothing questions to ask, but I didn’t know what they were.

So I said, “Tell me what happened, Sandy.”

“The Blutos tried to kill the baby.”

“And you’re tired of seeing things killed.” Even though her “baby” was a killing machine growing deadlier by the day. I kept my arms out, palms open toward her as I inched closer.

“The other Blutos-the caravan raiders-killed my loader. I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

“I started out as a loader. I was there when my gunner died, too. It’s an empty feeling.”

I wasn’t lying, either, about the feeling or the death. But my gunner’s death had come less than three years ago, though it had come in combat and while I watched, unable to prevent it.

Her gun’s muzzle dropped an inch as she nodded. “It feels like there’s a hole in my gut.”

“The hole heals. It takes time, but it heals.” I didn’t tell her how much time, or how disfiguring the scar could be.

I stepped forward. The voice in my earpiece whispered, “Sir, the psyops people predict that she’ll shoot. Just kneel down and we’ll take her out.”

She came up onto one knee, her M40 still trained on my chest. “What about the baby?”

I could see the snapper infant now, curled up asleep, tail over snout, on a bed of leaves the girl had prepared for it among the rocks. Empty ration paks littered the ground, where the girl must have been hand-feeding the little beast. Regardless of the girl’s maternal instincts, within a week the snapper’s predatory instincts would take over, and the monster would snap the girl’s hand off at the wrist if she held out a snack. The exobiologists said snappers were the most implacable predators yet discovered on the fourteen planets of the Human Union.

I said, “We’ll care for it for a while. When it’s old enough to fend for itself, we’ll release it into the wild.”

In fact, the Casuni would insist the devil’s spawn be gutted on the spot and its entrails burned. And with three of their own maimed by the beast’s mother, we would have no choice but to turn the little snapper over to the Casuni like a POW.

Harmonious interface with indigenous populations wasn’t all handing out Hershey bars. Sometimes it required tolerating customs we found barbarous. I used the moment to inch closer, within three yards of her. One step closer and I could lunge forward, grasp her rifle’s muzzle, and twist it away.

Her rifle’s muzzle came up again and she snarled. “Liar!”

Crap. I’ve always been a lousy liar.

She fired, point-blank.