No Man's Land Read online

  “All right.” Kit stood and took a final tally. Little Cissy, Nan, Marianne’s husband, Denise and Sylvester, dead. Four surviving humans. Five including Jimmy, but he wouldn’t stay on that list very long. The others had made it out the door, condition unknown at this time.

  Kit picked up the radio and tried calling the Meeting House. No answer. She tried other frequencies, but still got no response.

  Was everyone dead? Underground in the bunker?

  Up until this moment, she’d been in action, her mind busy with staying alive and trying to keep others alive. Now she surveyed the clinic, and the debris of everything she’d worked to create these past three years.

  Not again. Please, dear God whom the colonists all pray to, please don’t take everyone away from me again.

  When Kit was sixteen, Sharks had slaughtered her family and most of her frontier world. When she was seventeen, she’d joined the Casimir Space Command so she could learn how to hunt, fight, and kill Sharks. She was very good at it, patrolling the frontier worlds with her unit. Until it was wiped out. Until her quest for revenge overwhelmed her while interrogating prisoners.

  That was about the time the more populated human worlds, safe and cozy far from the frontier, voted the Caritas Unity into ascendance. Anti-war, anti-violence, anti-Kit and the death of prisoners.

  But by then Kit knew that violent revenge didn’t bring anyone back, didn’t make anything right, didn’t heal the wounds of her soul. She explained this at her court-martial. She’d had enough. She didn’t want to fight any more.

  The powers-that-be chose someone else to parade through the media as the face of evil violence. For Kit, an unpublicized sentence of five years probation—no killing—on New Hope.

  The most pacifist colony of them all. A community based on love, acceptance, non-violence. The kind of home she’d once had.

  For three years, it worked.

  Well, it was ruined now. People she loved were dead and she’d violated her probation. Prison was probably next.

  So, she might as well make a clean sweep and kill every Shark she could find and safeguard any people who were left. Go out in style.

  Kit pulled out a cast cutter and freed her stuck fingers. Thankfully, the foam didn’t stick to human skin the way it did Shark’s. She stuffed her pockets with foam packs and, looking around, noted the scalpels. She grabbed all six, still in their padded, sterile packs, and squeezed them in with the foam. She still had the nano-injector, syringe, and meds.

  She told the survivors to stay hidden, and went to see if anyone else was still alive.

  It was late summer on New Hope, the air heavy with heat and yellow dust and the tang of eucalyptus shrubs. The dirt street in front of her was quiet. Too quiet. Where were the rest of the Sharks?

  She ducked across the street, but no one shouted, nothing shot at her. Trying to stay invisible, she made her way toward the Meeting House.

  Reaching a corner, she peered around it from behind a sheltering house. A Shark sauntered toward her half a block away, feathery blue fronds below the gill-like nostrils. A female.

  A long rope of pearls draped around her neck, with a typical Shark bandolier underneath. Wads of jewelry and silk scarves sagged from the loops that should have held spare charges. Obviously the Shark had helped herself to Alline’s Ladies Apparel.

  So, these were just a bunch of raiders on a smash and grab. Shark military only used males. Females did, however, learn basic fighting skills, thinking it would imbue sons with ferocity while still in the pouch. And those skills could be formidable. Kit saw no visible weapons on the female, but there would be some, somewhere.

  Kit burrowed into a hedge, ignoring the sticks poking her back, hoping the eucalyptus smell covered her sweaty scent. She fingered the half-filled potassium syringe in her pocket.

  The Shark crossed right in front of her, oblivious, simply out for a stroll to do a little looting, enjoy the sunshine, kill some humans.

  When it was three steps past, Kit pulled the syringe from her pocket and sprang from the hedge, stabbing the needle into the Shark’s neck.

  When the creature screamed and twisted to see its tormenter, Kit felt the needle snap off. The Shark reached for her, but its hand tangled in the pearls, slowing it enough for Kit to pull out her bandage scissors and stab them deep into one of the gill-like nostrils.

  Kit yanked her hand out and ran like hell, ducking through a wooden gate and behind the hedge. She peered between the branches, breathing hard, as she wiped blood and mucus off her hand and scissors.

  The Shark was already down, still and silent.

  Kit waited a few minutes, but the creature did not move and no one came to investigate. She edged up to it, cautious, alert for trouble.

  The Shark lay with bloody bubbles of its final breaths clustered, unmoving, around the stabbed gill.

  The flashback flicked in an instant: another time, another Shark, bloody bubbles oozing from the prisoner’s gills as it struggled for air, its final breath spent on calling to its god.

  No, no, no. Not here, not now. Kit took a deep breath, trying to steady herself.

  She reached down and pulled the strand of pearls off the creature, plus the bandolier of stolen trinkets. If other Sharks came looking, she didn’t want them to help themselves to the loot. She tucked them under the hedge; later she’d tell Alline where to find them. If there was a later.

  Kit searched the body for weapons, finding a short eating knife in a red scabbard and (yes!) a Kappel Snake dart.

  Slim, pointed, about 10mm long, it was a handy little dart in its own right. But once it impacted flesh, a hundred fractal threads emerged, each wriggling like a little snake to rip apart everything in its path. They also acted as flagella to pull the dart in deeper until it ran out of power. It could turn a limb to mush in a few minutes.

  Kappel sheathes came with a fingerprint lock to prevent anyone but the owner from opening it, and to keep it from activating by accident. The lock on this one, probably stolen in some raid, was cracked.

  Kit opened one of her scalpel packs and placed the sheathed dart in the padding. With great care, she slid it into a thin pocket designed for scissors.

  She scanned the street. Nobody. No Sharks, no humans, a landscape devoid of all life.

  She eased around the corner and faced the town square. The Meeting House sat on the far side, the largest structure in town built of local, pale yellow stone. She skirted the periphery of the square, and just as she climbed the three steps to the Meeting House, the door opened.

  “Get in, quick.” A human arm pulled her in and slammed the door behind her.

  It took a moment for Kit’s eyes to adjust to the indoors.

  Tom Miller, who ran the machine shop, glared down at her. “You could have been killed. There’s Sharks.”

  “I noticed.”

  “What were you doing out there?”

  Kit slid past him. “Trying to get here.”

  The Meeting House consisted of an assembly room, big enough for two hundred people to sit comfortably, and a labyrinth of smaller meeting rooms. Today the large room smelled of sweat and coffee. A dozen men were there with net guns, watching through the windows and manning radios.

  At least somebody else was still alive. Kit could have cried, but didn’t have time. She moved over to stand beside Max Stimpel, the mayor. A large, burly man with black hair and beard, some people called him Bear. But never to his face.

  “Who else is here?” she asked.

  “We got about a hundred folks down into the bunker,” Max answered. “And you’re right, that tracking system isn’t worth the price of scrap metal.” He told her the ship had originally landed on the other side of town, then moved near the ethanol plant. Patching together radio reports, it looked like three Sharks had gotten off first, then another two at the plant.

  So Kit still had two to hunt down.

  “I met those first three,” she said. “Two in the clinic. One on the way here
, a female. That’s good, means they aren’t regular military.”

  “You met them?” Max narrowed his eyes. “If you’re still alive, where are the Sharks?”

  “I, um, left them immobilized and...sedated.” Kit wasn’t ready to explain the fatality of that sedation, not until everyone was safe. She hurried on before they could ask about it, and told of the attack on the clinic. A quiet moan rippled through the room when she reported the list of casualties. “I tried to radio you, but didn’t get through,” she said.

  Max rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, it’s been a little crazy here, with all the outlying farms trying to call and jamming things up. We did try to warn you when we saw they’d slipped through, but no one answered at the clinic. We thought...” His voice caught. “Well, let me just say I was real happy to see you walk through that door. Glad at least some survived.”

  He cleared his throat. “We got a call from one of your evac guys after he ran out. He holed up at the post office, got through to us on the radio. He didn’t think anyone at the clinic would still be alive.”

  “Yeah, well...” Kit looked at her toes. “So what do you plan to do next?” She had her own ideas, but wanted to know what Max had to say.

  “Wait ’em out,” Max said. “Come look out this window.”

  She crossed to the back of the room with him. Tom Miller followed, along with Tom’s teenage son, Samuel.

  Max had the sense not to outline himself in the window, but kept behind the shadow of a curtain. “Look out here. The Sharks are over at the ethanol plant, looks like they just want to re-fuel. We can afford to gift ’em some, so let’s leave them be and maybe they’ll leave us in peace.”

  The plant lay three blocks from there, but even at that distance Kit saw two Sharks roll a fifty-gallon drum out of the plant’s loading doors.

  “But, Max,” she said, “Sharks don’t fuel their ships with ethanol.”

  He looked out the window, puzzled. “Then what are they doing?”

  “Looks to me like they’re after booze,” Kit said.

  Samuel’s face lit with interest. “You can get drunk on ethanol?”

  Max scowled. “Hush, Samuel. Well then, Kit, we’ll just hunker down till they drink their fill and leave.”

  Kit turned to face him. “No, Max. If we let them leave with the ethanol, they’ll set this up as a regular stop any time they’re thirsty. These are just pirates, out to find whatever catches their fancy. But eventually their military will notice. And from here they’ll expand to other human worlds—”

  “Yeah, yeah, we get the point.” Max crossed his arms over his barrel chest. “So what are we going to do that won’t get us killed?”

  “You can help me immobilize the Sharks,” she said, “take them prisoner. Can we get a Caritas security team to come pick them up?”

  Max nodded. “Yeah, we already called and they’re on their way. Soonest they can get here is tomorrow afternoon. So what do you have in mind before then?”

  “First we have to disable their ship so none of them can sneak off.” Kit pulled a packet of cast foam from her pocket. “I could use these to block the air intakes of their ship, then they can’t lift off. But I only have six packs left. We’ll need something else to slow the Sharks down.”

  “We’re pretty good with these net guns,” Max said.

  “Are you willing to go out there and sneak up on them to get in range?” Kit asked.

  Samuel’s hand shot up. “I am!”

  Max and Tom Miller both glared at him and said, “Hush, Samuel.”

  Tom lifted the foam packet from her hand and inspected it. “We could get the fabber at the machine shop going on this, make more. As a backup for the net guns.”

  The fabricator! She hadn’t even thought of it. “Isn’t it just programmed for metals?”

  “It has wider parameters than that.” Tom and his son Samuel murmured between themselves, wondering what to enclose the liquid foam with (an impermeable membrane they used to line water conduits) and how to make an airtight seal(fishing line).

  Tom looked up. “Yeah, we can have another dozen or so in half an hour, I think. You coming with us?”

  Kit tapped her foot, thinking. “As far as the shop, yes. I can go that way to the plant. Then I’ll leave you to it while I disable their ship.”

  “Sounds good.” Then Tom looked her right in the eye. “Miss Kitling, I will unlock the shop, I will program the fabber for this stuff, my son Samuel and I will make it,” (Samuel nodded so hard his neck must have hurt) “but only on one condition.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m not going to slow these Sharks down just to make it easier for you to kill them.”

  “Of course I won’t murder them,” she said.

  Max stepped between her and Tom. “And our definition of murder is any killing. So no executions, no accidents, no deaths. You were sent here to learn how to live without violence, and I can tell by the fire in your eyes and the set of your jaw that you’re not thinking peaceful thoughts right now. So unload that gun and other weapons and leave them here.”

  “Why, so you can use them?” she snapped.

  “No, so you can’t.”

  Kit wanted to step back, get some space, but was caught between the two men. “Max, I still don’t think you get what’s happening here. I’ve seen you fight forest fires and you went after that rampaging bull, for which I had to stitch you back together. You’re a brave man, but until today you’ve never seen a Shark and never had to survive one.”

  Max paled. “Kit, come over here where we can talk in private.”

  They retreated to a back corner, where Max said quietly, “No one knows this, but I read the transcript of your trial.”

  Kit sucked in a breath.

  “Now, I may be pacifist, but I also try to be a realist,” he said. “I know what happened to your family, and I know what happened to your platoon. And maybe getting those prisoners to talk saved lives. Now some of the people here, like the Buddhists, think any killing is evil. My mind is divided on that. But I have no doubt that killing a foe you’ve already vanquished is evil, and I will not be party to it.

  “So, again, we’ll help disable the Sharks and their ship, but not just to make it easier for you to kill ’em. You have to promise me that you will honor our help. If you don’t promise, we’ll have to keep you here and take our chances.”

  Kit glanced at the door, considered running out with the weapons. But too many men stood between here and there, watching. They would no doubt grab her if she tried to bolt, or even use the net gun.

  She was out-maneuvered. Sharks in full battle array were easier to deal with than righteous pacifists. Well, one step at a time. Disable the ship, get more foam, and figure the rest out later.

  “All right, no killing.” With a scowl, she pulled out the Shark eating knife, the scalpels, even her bandage scissors, and set them on a bench.

  Max insisted she also leave that lovely heat gun, despite her protests that it was empty. “If it’s empty, you won’t need it. Set it here with these other things.”

  He handed her a net gun, which she checked to ensure was loaded. He also gave her a two-way radio and told her to stay in comm.

  Kit followed Tom Miller and his work team out the door.

  She hadn’t mentioned the Kappel Snake dart, tucked in its little pocket and covered by her tunic.

  And so, with a little secret lethality, Kit set off to do some hunting.

  Late afternoon made for long, dark shadows, easier for getting through town without any Sharks seeing them. They made it to the machine shop without incident, and Kit left Tom, Samuel, and two other men to work the fabricator.

  She was halfway to the ethanol plant, only one more street to go, when she found more human bodies.

  Three lay on the road in the shade of a huge tree, two men and a woman. As Kit already knew from their stillness, all were dead. Kit rolled the woman over, and bit back a low moan.

 
It was Agnes Danielson, the first person on New Hope to treat Kit with any degree of warmth, to be a friend, to laugh and chat and bring cookies. This kind and generous person, a pacifist in the best sense of the word...

  Kit’s promise of no killing wavered.

  A fly (similar enough in form and function to an Earth fly to get the name) landed on Agnes’s cheek. Kit swore and brushed it away.

  A pile of small sacks lay scattered on the ground next to the bodies. Kit poured their contents onto the dirt and used the sacks to cover the faces. “I’ll come back for you,” she said. “But first I have some business to take care of.”

  Kit stood, her lips and eyes tight in determination.

  There was a scraping sound behind her. Kit whirled, stepped deeper into the shadows, crouched. She pulled out the wrapped Kappel dart.

  “Kit?” a girl’s voice said. “Is that you?”

  Kit stayed in the shadows. “Yes. Who are you, and where are you?”

  “It’s me, Lacy Danielson.” One of the high school girls, a cute, redheaded tomboy. “Oh, thank God, someone is here. I’m coming down.” Her voice quivered with fear.

  A large tree rustled as Lacy descended. Similar to an elm, its drooping branches extended all the way to the ground, making a good place for a terrified girl to climb and hide. How much had she seen?

  Lacy landed with a thump and ran, throwing her arms around Kit in a tight, trembling hug, spewing out her story of terror and Sharks and guns and screams and blood and trees and why didn’t anyone come for her?

  Kit wasn’t a huggy person herself, but didn’t interrupt or push the girl away. She did watch the street, and she did wonder what she was going to do with a hysterical teenager in her wake.

  Finally, Lacy took a deep breath and loosened her hold, her face chalk white, eyes red and swollen. “Are we the only ones left alive?”

  “No, no,” Kit said. “There’s a bunch at the Meeting House, safely underground in the bunker.”

  Lacy started to cry again, a quieter cry of grief rather than fear. “They came when we were leaving. I was staying here with Aunt Agnes, and we were leaving. We were going to the Meeting House, like Mr. Stimpel said to.” She hiccupped. “And I was slow, and Aunt Agnes and Uncle Peter already came out the gate but I was still in the yard, and the Sharks came, and they didn’t see me...” Her face crumpled.