“Innik, small tribe,” Skagga says.
I notice the elder wiggling his three long fingers, seeking to soothe his tribal warriors.
“Small tribe now, but zhee-kaharak bring big die to many tribes.”
He’s not wrong about that. Since those first junk freighters crash-landed on the planet, the zhee colonists have been steadily expanding their territory and waging small-scale war with the inland tribes. It’s a different story on the coasts, where the former Republic government still has some sway. But out here, it’s open conflict almost every day.
“Well,” I say, half-turning to look at my men. “We’ll need to speed out before the sun really gets cooking.”
I turn and nod at Lana. “She’s a doctor. If any of you need assistance, she has her medical kit with her and would help in the name of friendship.”
Skagga nods, pantomiming the humanoid acknowledgement for our benefit. “This tribe-ah, is strong.”
His koob soldiers croak and click in agreement.
I smile. “Then… the winds brought us to this moment, may the winds send you safely on.”
That’s a Standard translation of an old koob parting phrase. Hopefully it’s not lost on these visitors.
The koobs begin croaking and clicking in their own language, and I can see that the elder is taking in whatever it is they’re talking about. He finally holds up a slim, knobby hand and silences his gallery of rough and tumble tribal warriors.
“Kik-ke-kik’ak-taki.”
At Skagga’s command, one of his warriors runs up to his side in that odd, half-lope, half-hop run that the Kublarens do.
Skagga looks at me. “Maybe this one look in-ah you trucka? Innik tribe known to us. Sometime kin. This one look for Kublakaren hatch-kin.”
I don’t really see a way I can refuse without causing some trouble, so I step aside and gesture for the warrior to go ahead. Just because I can’t tell one koob from another doesn’t mean it’s the same for them. Hopefully Command wasn’t just making something up for me to offer to Skagga when they gave me a tribe name.
The koob warrior hops on by, his beat-up N-4 blaster rifle held at the low ready. The thing looks like it passed up its life expectancy about a hundred charge packs ago.
There’s a tension in the air right now. Like all the pleasantries between me and Skagga come down to whatever determination is made in the back of that truck. I know my guys are ready to KTF—or whatever they want to call it—and I can see from their posture that they’re ready to start shooting at a moment’s notice. Their arms are still aimed down or at the side, but they’re held close enough that it would be one clean motion to get them up into firing position. Or they could fire from the hip with a little spray and pray even faster.
I watch as one koob tries to sneak his way toward the back of one of their trucks. Probably positioning himself to get on the technical if things boil over.
“Don’t worry, Carter,” says Easy over the comms. “I see that koob. He’ll be the first one I drop if this gets real.”
I make a small popping sound with my lips to let him know I copy.
The koob warrior is rummaging around the back of the truck for a while before he climbs back out on hands and knees and hops back down to the dust.
“Innik Kublakaren,” he says, and while I don’t speak koob, it’s clear enough that he just confirmed what I’d said previously.
Good job, Brisco. That could have been a lot messier.
“Everything all right?” I ask Skagga.
The Kublaren elder licks his eyes. “Yes. Big die for Innik. No kin of Kepka.”
And with that, the koobs all get back into their trucks and fire up the engines, carefully rolling around us and our truck.
Brisco is back in my ear. “I heard tribe ‘Kepka’. Can you confirm.”
“Affirmative,” I answer.
And then Brisco is on the squad-wide comms. “Terminate those koobs. Don’t let one of them escape.”
Now, we’re paid a substantial salary to do as we’re told. Call us mercs, call us private contractors, but most of us are out here for the money. Or at least I am. There’s no way I could make what I’m making in a year in the civilian world, let alone the Legion.
But there is still a part of me that wants to ask why. Because everything we’re doing is pretty much a mystery. We kill some koobs but not others. I don’t know why. We dust just about every zhee band we come across—that’s a no-brainer. We gather up a bunch of dead koobs killed by who-the-hell-knows and I have no idea why. And now this.
There isn’t any chance for me to voice my curiosity, though. And if there were, it would have been stupid of me to do so. That’s not what they pay me for.
The blaster fire that issues in response to the order from Command is almost instantaneous. Bolt after bolt slams into the caravan of technical trucks, crashing through glass and causing the koobs inside to dance spasmodically in a rave of pain-wracked flailing as their flesh is cooked from the bolts’ heat and torn from the force of the blasts hitting them at range.
Lashley sweeps his SAB across the entire column, doing as much damage to the truck’s ability to get away as he is to the koobs inside. Every time Abers shoots, he blows a fist-sized hole through his target and everything behind it. Lana is already changing charge packs on her sub-compact, and Easy’s moving from target to target like a true rifleman.
Still, some koobs spill from the doors, seeking to put up some resistance. I figure that’s about their only hope, since there’s no way they’ll be able to run across all this desert.
One of them raises an old slug-throwing machine gun with a wooden stock. I send an ionic shotgun blast
