Summary: By Bud Sparhawk Read by Corson Bremer Discuss on our forums. All stories by Bud Sparhawk Scout By Bud Sparhawk Captain Sandels came in during prep. “Falcon,” he said, but softly, as if he didn’t want to disturb the techs working on squeezing me into the bomb casing. I twittered our channel and winked: Kind of busy right now. Something come up? “No,” the captain responded, again so softly that I knew he definitely didn’t want the techs to overhear. The only reason I could hear him was that my acoustic enhancements were so sensitive that I could hear a mouse fart from a klick away. “I just wanted to wish you luck.” For making it back? I answered. Not likely. “That’s brutal,” he replied and I heard his pain. “I thought that, after all we. . .’ I stopped him there. I’m not Falcon; just a revised edition. “So it’s just goodbye, then?” Sure. I closed the channel before he could say anything else. What I don’t need now is some damn puzzling reference to a past that no longer concerned me. Better not to dwell on the past. Given humanity’s precarious state, sentiment was dangerous. Besides, I had to concentrate on my scouting mission. We had to learn more about the aliens on the planet below. I shut everything but the maintenance channel as they oozing the cushioning gel around me. Its plasticity enfolds me in a warm, soft embrace that creeps into every crack and crevice, sealing me off from sight and sound and every sense save an assurance of my own humanity. My form might be much reduced, to be sure, but nevertheless I retain my inherent humanity. “We’re closing the lid,” the tech reports over the maintenance channel. It’s time for sleep. Landing will wake me up. # The idea behind the drop was dramatic and simple. Three attack cruisers would carpet bomb the area where the aliens landed. The drops consisted of ten burrowers, thirty sweepers, and twenty HE bombs from each ship, all distributed to randomly bracket the target. The third, eleventh, and nineteenth bomb of each pod were slow-fuse HE duds, except for the one that contained me. I woke as soon as the bomb slammed into the ground on an oblique angle. I was not quite fully awake by the second bounce but fully aware as my container rolled down some piece of bumpy geography, stopped, and rocked for a moment before finding a stable orientation. I pushed up to pop the hatch and got out, dripping gel over the dented casing of the faux bomb. I quickly scanned the area around me. Apparently I’d tumbled down a steep cliff to come to rest at the bottom among assorted rocks that had fallen from the eroding slope. I could feel the shock of exploding ordinance through my feet as the delay fuses fired. That told me that I’d landed near the center of the distribution. My empty casing still packed a punch –enough to fool a casual inspection into thinking it was just another delayed bomb– and the clock was running. I moved away to put as much distance as I could between me and the bomb before it –WHAM– exploded and threw me tumbling ass over teacup. Shit! The techs had set the fuse’s timer too short. Well, nothing I could do about that now, but I check my systems to be certain and find that no harm was done. I am hyper-alert to my surroundings and take note of insect sounds, random wind action on the sparse vegetation, small animal movements, and the trembling ground beneath my feet to establish a baseline of whatever passed for “normal” on this planet. So far, everything agreed with the data the former colonists had provided. Every ten meters I stop to feel the ground for approaching footfalls. I am continually sniffing the air for any unusual smell, listening for any sound, and watching for anything that might be artificial. At the same time I was “lis[...]
