Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

The lids had squeezed down over her eyes. There wasn’t much I could do. My stomach fluttered. I’d never witnessed serious violence. During my early months on Nok, they’d kept me away from the wars. In fact, everybody stayed away from the combat areas. They were dangerous. “Try not to make any noise,” I whispered. I carried her to the edge of the trees. Put her down behind a bush. But they were right behind us. One of them stopped, moved the shrubbery aside with the barrel of his rifle. Advanced a few steps. Listened.

I reached into a pocket of my vest and pulled out my tensor. It was designed to disable the nervous systems of the local wildlife. But it would also work on the Noks themselves.

Trill groaned softly.

The raider heard her.

“Help me,” she whispered, her voice faint. “Help me.”

He had a light, and it picked her out. He raised a rifle and pointed it at her. I could simply have stood aside. Let it happen. It was in fact what the regulations required.

But I couldn’t do it. I pulled the trigger on the son of a bitch. He sighed and went down, and in that moment I wished I had something lethal. It even crossed my mind to take his rifle and put a bullet in his brain.

The raiders collected their comrade. (I’d moved Trill by then.) They carried him off, making that odd whistling sound that was the Nok idea of displaying regret. Then they were gone.

Trill never woke. She made occasional gasping sounds. But there were no more cries of pain. And after awhile she grew still.

In the distance, I heard more gunfire.

“ Art. ” The voice on the commlink startled me. It was the boss. Paul McCarver. Northeastern United States accent. Classic Yankee.

“Hello, Paul.”

“ We’ve picked up sporadic shooting in your area. Just wanted to check. You’re okay? ”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m good.”

“ What’s happening? Can you tell? ”

“They hit a wedding party. It looks as if they killed everybody.”

“ Yeah. That sounds like the way they operate. Okay. Be careful. Maybe you better come back. ”

“I’m okay. I’ll be back in a bit.”

I retreated to the lander, which lay within its own lightbender field in a forest clearing about a kilometer off the road. I’d been hungry when the wedding started, but I had no appetite when I got back to it. I kept seeing the cool green eyes of the killers, saw them striding through the celebration. Enjoying the work.

I should mention that I’m not big on confrontation. Never was. I do compromise real well. And I was always willing to overlook stuff. But the raid on the wedding had entailed a level of disagreeableness and lack of reason that made me want to kill someone. I mean, what was the point of sending a military strike force—that’s what they were—against a wedding party?

“George,” I said to the lander AI as I buckled in, “lift off. Let’s see what else they did.”

In the west, a kilometer away, there was a glow in the sky. That would be Itiri , the town which had probably been home to most of the celebrants. Population about eleven hundred. No military targets. I’d been there all day, taking pictures, observing, enjoying myself.

“ Very good, Dr. Kaminsky, ” said George. “ After we look around, will we be going back into orbit? ”

I thought about it. I had what I’d come for, the record of the wedding. Even if it hadn’t turned out exactly as planned, the mission was complete. Still, I wanted to make somebody pay for what I’d just seen. “George, where do you think the raiders came from?”

“ Had to be by sea, I suspect. I would have detected a dirigible. ”

Nok industrialization had risen and fallen several times. We now know they’d put forty thousand years of civilizations and dark ages on the scoreboard before anybody started laying bricks in Sumer. They had all but exhausted their fossil fuels even though their original supply had been almost triple the terrestrial stores. The Noks seemed incapable of establishing political stability. One of the objectives I’d set for myself was to figure out why. With few exceptions, the only gas-powered vehicles operating on Nok belonged to the various dictators and their military and political establishments, and the police. Everybody else walked. Or used beasts of burden.

The engines came on. There was no sound, only a slight vibration in the chair. Most of my weight, and that of the spacecraft, vanished. It began to rise, over the trees into a clear summer sky.

Itiri was ablaze.

A narrow winding road ran parallel to the sea. The raiders moved along it, a happy group, their weapons slung casually over their shoulders. More mob than military unit. They looked not at all worried about a counterattack. Two kilometers ahead, three small warships waited at anchor in a harbor. The ships were steam-driven ironclads. They showed no lights. “What can you tell me about them, George?”

“ They are all of the same type. Approximately 2500 tons, six guns able to fire four-inch shells. Accuracy doubtful beyond a thousand meters. ”

“Automatic weapons?”

“ None. They haven’t been developed yet. ”

“Not at all?”

“ They had them a few thousand years ago, most recently during the Turullian Age. But they lost the technology. ”

“Doesn’t seem as if it would be that hard to figure out. They have rifles.”

George blipped. It was his equivalent of shrugging his shoulders.

“What about sensors or radar? Anything like that?”

“ They have no tracking devices other than their eyes. And telescopes. ”

“They do have telescopes.”

“ Yes. Most certainly. ”

We overtook the raiders, passed above them, and arced out over the beach. Several small boats lay in the wet sand, apparently awaiting the arrival of the land force.

“George,” I said, “let’s take a look at the ships.”

We glided out into the harbor.

“The one in the middle,” I told him. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. We loped in, moved slowly over masts and gun turrets, and stopped directly over the bridge.

The guns were primitive, but that wouldn’t matter if one of the shells hit us. The only Noks I could see were manning the rails with rifles.

I could make out several figures on the bridge, in the glow of instrument lights. I thought about the wedding guests, and Trill, help me , and I wished I had a few bombs.

“ What’s that, Dr. Kaminsky? I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. ”

I didn’t realize I’d said anything. “Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”

I wanted a way to pay them back in their own coin. While I watched, the raiders arrived on the beach, scattered across the sand, and headed for the boats. They moved with a jaunty precision that implied they were happy with the evening’s slaughter. Still taking no precautions for their own safety. And you might be thinking that nonverbal cues are deceptive even among humans of different cultures, and what did I know about Noks. But it was my specialty. “George,” I said, “get us over to the beach and take us down to ground level.”

“ That’s not advisable, Doctor. ”

“Do it anyway.”

“ If you insist. But it is dangerous. Someone might walk into us before we can react. ”

“Just do it.”

There were seven boats. They were made of wood, and each was designed to accommodate about twenty. The raiders surrounded each boat and began pushing it into the surf. When it started to float, they jumped aboard. I watched as, one by one, they set out for the ships, which were about a kilometer away. They were spreading out, making for different vessels.