The Forever War by Joe Haldeman Page B

cilium legs like the bristles of a brush. Rogers said that there obviously had to be some larger creature around, or there would be no reason for the trees to have thorns. So we were doubly on guard, expecting trouble both from the Taurans and the unidentified "large creature."
    Potter's second platoon was on point; the general freak was reserved for her, since her platoon would likely be the first to spot any trouble.
    "Sarge, this is Potter," we all heard. "Movement ahead."
    "Get down, then!"
    "We are. Don't think they see us."
    "First platoon, go up to the right of point. Keep down. Fourth, get up to the left. Tell me when you get in position. Sixth platoon, stay back and guard the rear. Fifth and third, close with the command group."
    Two dozen people whispered out of the grass to join us. Cortez must have heard from the fourth platoon.
    "Good. How about you, first?. . . OK, fine. How many are there?"
    "Eight we can see." Potter's voice.
    "Good. When I give the word, open fire. Shoot to kill."
    "Sarge,.. . they're just animals."
    "Potter-if you've known all this time what a Tauran looks like, you should've told us. Shoot to kill."
    "But we need . . ."
    "We need a prisoner, but we don't need to escort him forty klicks to his home base and keep an eye on him while we fight. Clear?"
    "Yes. Sergeant."
    "OK. Seventh, all you brains and weirds, we're going up and watch. Fifth and third, come along to guard."
    We crawled through the meter-high grass to where the second platoon had stretched out in a firing line.
    "I don't see anything," Cortez said.
    "Ahead and just to the left. Dark green."
    They were only a shade darker than the grass. But after you saw the first one, you could see them all, moving slowly around some thirty meters ahead.
    "Fire!" Cortez tired tirst; then twelve streaks of crimson leaped out and the grass wilted black, disappeared, and the creatures convulsed and died trying to scatter.
    "Hold fire, hold it!" Cortez stood up. "We want to have something left-second platoon, follow me." He strode out toward the smoldering corpses, laser-finger pointed out front, obscene divining rod pulling him toward the carnage
    I felt my gorge rising and knew that all the lurid training tapes, all the horrible deaths in training accidents, hadn't prepared me for this sudden reality. . . that I had a magic wand that I could point at a life and make it a smoking piece of half-raw meat; I wasn't a soldier nor ever wanted to be one nor ever would want- "OK, seventh, come on up." While we were walking toward them, one of the creatures moved, a tiny shudder, and Cortez flicked the beam of his laser over it with an almost negligent gesture. It made a hand-deep gash across the creature's middle. It died, like the others, without emitting a sound.
    They were not quite as tall as humans, but wider in girth. They were covered with dark green, almost black, fur-white curls where the laser had singed. They appeared to have three legs and an arm. The only ornament to their shaggy heads was a mouth, wet black orifice filled with flat black teeth. They were thoroughly repulsive, but their worst feature was not a difference from human beings, but a similarity. . . . Whenever the laser had opened a body cavity, milk-white glistening veined globes and coils of organs spilled out, and their blood was dark clotting red.
    "Rogers, take a look. Taurans or not?"
    Rogers knelt by one of the disemboweled creatures and opened a flat plastic box, filled with glittering dissecting tools. She selected a scalpel. "One way we might be able to find out." Doc Wilson watched over her shoulder as she methodically slit the membrane covering several organs.
    "Here." She held up a blackish fibrous mass between two fingers, a parody of daintiness through all that armor.
    "So?"
    "It's grass, Sergeant. If the Taurans eat the grass and breathe the air, they certainly found a planet remarkably like their home." She tossed it away. "They're animals, Sergeant, just fucken