Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [40]
As if reading his mind, Sulati pointed to the foot of his bed and spoke. “They have a suit like this for each of you. Each of us, I should say.” She politely turned her back while he scrambled out of the bed and slipped on the trousers and shirt. There were no buttons, just drawstrings, but the garment fit well and was comfortable, not unlike a lightweight martial arts uniform. Still, he felt only a little less naked than he had before. There was nothing to put on his feet, but the temperature in the room was comfortable, and the smooth metal floor was rather warm.
Some of the other SEALS were stirring. One by one they awakened, groggy and pissed off. As they dressed themselves, the officer went over to Ruiz, who was sitting up. The master chief had a pair of black eyes and looked as though his nose might be broken.
“Fucking Zaro!” Ruiz snarled. “He got the drop on me, on all of us, in the station. Tossed some kind of knockout grenade that took me out before I even knew he was a hostile!”
“Dobson, Smokey? What did you guys see at the air lock?”
“We were tipped off by some of the station staff, LT,” Robinson replied. “We were closed in the station’s main air lock, watching the front, and these bastards came in the side door. We went to check on the master chief, but they were already bundling him and the doc—and that Char-Kane woman—out to the shuttle.”
“When Sanchez and Marannis came in, they said you were going after them, LT. Damn!” Dobson’s Alabama accent stretched the word into two syllables. “We didn’t want to miss the party.”
“Of course not,” Jackson said, proud of his men even though their courage had brought two more of them into this untenable situation. He turned back to Ruiz. “So it was Zaro, huh? What the hell was he after?”
“I don’t know, sir. But I’d like to wring his skinny little neck, I’ll tell you that.”
Ensign Sanders, also dressed in white pajamas, came stumbling over, rubbing a bruise on his cheek. “I never liked that son of a bitch,” he grunted. “Kept prattling on about Caracas; asked if I’d like to visit it someday. Damn! I bet he’s never even seen the place. I saw him on the shuttle, and his eyes were different—green as emeralds, sir.”
“So he’s one of them. An Eluoi,” Jackson deduced.
The hatch opened, and a man stepped through. He was wearing a white suit not unlike the pajamas except for some gold braid on the arms. A shiny black belt encircled his waist, with a few mysterious-looking tools, including what looked like a pocket computer and an obvious utility knife, attached. He also had a red hat that was wrapped like a turban around his skull. The pupils of his eyes were a piercing green.
There were two others behind him bearing small weapons that could have been machine pistols, except that they were attached by cords to compact packs that the men wore on their backs. They, too, wore turbans but had no gold braid decorating their sleeves. The two were green-eyed like their leader and clearly ready to defend themselves. They kept their guns trained casually on the prisoners.
After a critical look at the ugly short-barreled weapons, Jackson didn’t much like the SEALS’ chances if they tried to rush them. But he knew his men were already measuring distances with their eyes and calculating the odds of taking the aliens down. He stretched elaborately and lowered his hands, palms down, to his sides, knowing that the SEALS would see and obey the sign language version of an order to stand down. Instead of attacking, they would watch and wait.
The man who had entered the compartment said something that was utterly unintelligible. It didn’t even sound like a language but was more of a series of clicks and sibilant whistles.
“What?” Jackson asked. “I can’t understand you.”
The man reached into one of his belt pouches and pulled out a very small device. He pantomimed placing it in his ear, then handed it to the lieutenant, turning his head sideways so that Jackson could see that the fellow wore an