Free Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil by Dan Cragg

we’ll find out it has a soul after all?” Fogel asked archly.
    “Your sense of humor, Fogel, is wearing mighty thin on me. But you can laugh all the way into the history books when we publish our findings.”
    Zechariah Brattle’s Office, Interstellar City, Kingdom Zechariah Brattle rubbed a hand wearily across his brow. He’d been had, hoodwinked, fooled and he was sick to the depths of his soul that he could have let the scientists get away with it. His routine inquiry to Universal Labs in Fargo on Earth had just been returned. According to the lab, Dr. Joseph Gobels was still on Kingdom and had reported nothing about finding a living Skink. “If you have any further information on this matter, please communicate it to us at once as it may be of the greatest importance to the Confederation,” the message concluded. There was no denying the imperious tone of the message or that it was perfectly justified.
    “So what am I to do?” Zechariah asked himself aloud. “Admit how serious a mistake I made?” He smashed a fist onto his desk in frustration. Well, admitting to that publicly wouldn’t be half as bad as when he told Hannah and the boys that Moses had been kidnapped by a pair of rogue scientists. He thought about taking it to the Lord in prayer. “No, Lord,” he said quietly, “You have given me this cup for a reason and I’ve got to drink from it.”

    So what does a man do when God has given him a job and then stands back to see how well he handles it? Zechariah knew. “Lord, I’ll try this first,” he said aloud, and then he sat down and wrote a long letter, which he sent by FTL drone to the one person he knew who could help him. He sent it to Charlie Bass.

CHAPTER
    SEVEN
    Office of the Commanding General, Task Force Aguinaldo, Camp Swampy, Arsenault The rain fell in sheets outside the headquarters building. General Aguinaldo had set up his training base in the tropical region of Arsenault because he was certain the Skinks came from a watery world and he believed that when the place was finally discovered his Marines and soldiers would have to be prepared to fight them there under the worst conditions. His mission was twofold: to find their home world and destroy them once and for all, and to be prepared at a moment’s notice to fight them if and when they appeared again anywhere in Human Space. But just then he was not quite ready to do either, at least not with the forces currently available. Colonel Rene Raggel, late aide to General Davis Lyons, who had commanded the secessionist army on Ravenette, sat quietly in General Aguinaldo’s office, waiting for him to return from a staff conference. The Marine corporal who was Aguinaldo’s enlisted aide had given him a delicious cup of coffee and told him to make himself comfortable. Raggel was tired. He had only just arrived from Ravenette, but his orders had been to report immediately and directly to the task force commander. So there he sat, still dripping from the downpour outside. When he’d first arrived at Camp Alpha, Arsenault’s main spaceport, he’d been impressed by the beauty of the world in that northern hemisphere. But deep in the tropics in the middle of the monsoon season, he wasn’t so sure anymore about the
    “beauty” of the place. And, of course, everyone was still talking about the tsunami that had killed so many in that region only recently.
    The room was not climate-controlled and one of the windows was open. The roar of the rain was muted but it was a constant background noise. A damp breeze wafted in through the window. It actually felt good. Suddenly several tiny blue flashes winked at the window. Obviously the building was equipped with some form of the commercial Silent Guard system that fricasseed insects trying to fly through it. Raggel was getting comfortable. That breeze, laden with moisture as it was, felt delicious. He wondered what it’d be like in the room without the Silent Guard system. If he sat there much