“Corporal Tome!” the Sergeant yelled, and I went forward at a fast crawl. “Sir!” I said. We looked, together, over the hill, down at the river. There were several juvies, crawling around in the mud at the side of the river. They only stayed near the river for a little while, so these must have recently hatched.
“Corporal, take your squad and move over there, to the far right. I will have the other two squads take the left and center.”
It was funny, him calling us ‘squads’. We had a bunch of boys, mostly, plus a few newly married men. The older men were all ranging out, watching out for us, so we could do our hunting in peace. “Sir!” I said, crawling off.
The boys and I, safely behind the hill, took off at a run, with another squad following us soon after. We reached our assigned position and we each got out our nets. These were cool, weighted nets with a way to draw them closed. We spread out and our right flank reached the river and our left flank reached the center squad, with each boy about ten yards apart. We sat for a minute or two and then, from the sergeant’s position, we heard our whistle. I was watching the Juvies at the time, and they kind of lifted their heads up, but none of them tried to run away or anything, but went back to kind of random nosing around, like they do when they just get out of the eggs.
We started to move forward, slowly and, so stupid were they after their egg phase, that we were practically on top of them by the time that they started to notice us and mill around. And then, almost as one accord, to charge at us.
There was a lot of yelling, and throwing, and confusion. As the ‘squad’ leader I mostly stood back and watched, watching how things were going. Thus it was that I saw the one that got away, darting between two of my boys and off over the hills.
“Sergeant,” I yelled, as my boys pulled their sacks closed. My squad had captured four, and the other squads had done almost as well. “I’d like to go get that one, the one that ran away. With our luck it will be the one Adelphe will need.”
Everyone accepted her as ‘Adelphe’ now. As I was the only New Genevan around she didn’t have any competition for the title and, as our doctor in charge (her orders mediated through Uncle Andrew, of course) she was highly respected and unique.
The Sergeant looked around, seeing everyone else tying up their bags, and nodded. “Don’t go too far,” he said.
I called to my boys and we set off. It was actually kind of easy to see where it went, as the dew was still on the grass and it had left a trail. We couldn’t go to fast, as the boys with the struggling Juvies on their backs had to go slowly. I cursed myself for a fool for not having asked the Sergeant to send, instead, the unencumbered boys with me.
Three hills we crossed, and a couple of the boys were starting to make ‘why do we have to go after one lousy Juvy’ noises when I heard a noise from over the hill and, with a wave of my hand, we all dropped flat. My assistant, Micah, and I crawled to the top of the hill we were on and looked down.
“Yuck!” Micah said, but my hears stood still. Down, below us, a solitary pack was busy eating the Juvy we were chasing, obviously recently killed.
I rolled over and waved a boy up, “Get to the others,” I said. “I want everyone here, right away.”
“The others?” he said, looking down at my squad, which I could have called to me with a wave of my hand.
“The one’s with the Sergeant, all of them. Tell them to loose their captives and come, here, now, right now. Go!” I whispered, urgently and, with an incredulous look, he crawled and then ran away.
“What?” Micah asked me.
“Get down there and tell our boys the same thing. Kill their Juvies, and take their sacks and surround that Pack. It must be taken alive.”
“What?!”
“Now,” I said, and, as he scampered away, I turned back to watch the scene. The longer I stared, the surer I was. This one had to be captured.
Our boys surrounded the Pack, but our lines were so thin I decided to wait. The Pack, however, had other ideas. I don’t know if it saw one of my boys, or just got full, because, about a minute after our last boy was in place, it started to move. I stood up, “Take it, boys! Alive!”
The boys, confused by my reasoning but not by my order, stood up. The ones behind the Pack darted forward, and the ones in front got ready to throw. The Pack, itself, turned toward me at my yell, and hesitated, then charged the nearest boy.
This boy, a little early, threw his net, which the Pack ducked around. Then, bravely or stupidly, we still discuss it, the boy stood his ground, his arms outspread.
The enemy, even lowly Packs, are too quick to wrestle, tho, and the Pack was on him in a second, biting him in the arm. He screamed and started beating at him with his other arm, while the boys next to him tried to throw their nets over the Pack.
The nets were designed for Juvies, though, and weren’t big enough to surround him. He did let go of our boy and snap at the nets, though.
“He’ll kill him!” I heard from beside me and looked to see the Sergeant, raising his pistol.
“No!” I shouted, pushing his pistol out of the way. Just then the two neighbor boys followed their nets and literally jumped on the Pack. Seconds later three other boys had piled on and the Juvy which, despite its speed and teeth still weighed less than any of the boys, started to falter under their weight, squirming frantically and only rarely scoring with its claws.
Micah, from the far said, and I were both running forward, reaching for the wires that we had on our belts for just such a circumstance. I reached the Pack seconds before Micah and had the prepared loop over one claw, getting myself nicely scratched. I stepped back and started to pull, immobilizing the limb, and Micah, and then the sergeant, did the same thing. One of the boys on top of the Pack managed to loop his wire and give it to another boy, while two other boys pulled the injured boy free of the pile and stared administering first aid.
“You had better have a very good explanation for your behavior, ‘Corporal’, the Sergeant said, his voice cold as he watched the boy getting worked on.”
“Yes, sir, I believe I do,” I answered, “If you please, that Pack needs to be taken back to headquarters, alive, and as soon as possible.”
Apparently my orders, which the sergeant had actually obeyed implicitly, had been relayed to headquarters and beyond because, by the time we got the struggling Pack back (the injured boy having been taken back by his squad mates long ahead of us) there was an entire inquisition waiting for us… for me. Led by Uncle Andrew, in the sense that he came first, the Pack was soon surrounded by a whole group from headquarters, including Adelphe and the Colonel.
“Well, corporal,” the colonel asked, after they all had stared at the Pack for a minute or so, “What makes this enemy worth almost getting one of yours killed? You are all soldiers, and expected to risk your lives, but I would like for the mission to be important. We were planning on capturing Packs, in a little while, so I hope it wasn’t just that.”
“No, sir,” I said, rather intimidated by the company. Just then Bethany took my hand, which was embarrassing but reassuring. “Sir, we were chasing a Juvy that got away from the egg area and we came upon this Pack. Sir, he had killed the Juvy.”
Most of the crowd didn’t look particularly impressed, but Andrew, Adelphe, the Colonel, and a couple of the others turned and stared at the Pack with more interest. “And, colonel, Adelphe, it’s markings aren’t right. They aren’t male, but they aren’t female either.”
“He’s right,” Adelphe said. “The colors are wrong. Subtly wrong, but wrong. What is this?”
“It’s not a pack?” the sergeant said.
“It’s that age,” she said. “And I expect the brain development will be about equal, but the markings are all wrong. Even the physiology is wrong. And you say it killed that Juvy?”
“I didn’t see it kill it,” I admitted, “but we were second behind over a hill, and it certainly sounded like that, and then looked like that.”
“Well, corporal,” the colonel said, “it seems you can think on your feet, and aren’t afraid of overruling your superiors when necessary. I’m afraid we can’t have a corporal like that. That sounds like the kind of thing a particularly lucky lieutenant might do. I hope you enjoy the extra study.”
I stared at him. I hadn’t done this to get promoted!
Bethany squeezed my hand, and the sergeant started barking orders about getting the Pack to a cage ‘so the doctor can examine it’. As everyone moved away the colonel, Uncle Andrew, and Adelphe came up to me. “Will he be OK, that boy?” I asked Adelphe.
“We’ll have to regrow part of his arm,” she said. “He’ll be evaced in a few minutes. This is an incredible find, Carl.”
I blushed. I hated being the center of attention like this. Adlephe hugged me, which made me feel even worse. The colonel, however, just handed me a couple of shoulder tabs, saluted, and walked away. Andrew… “What are you trying to do, Carl? Start your own video series? ‘Carl Tome, Pathfinder extraordinaire!’ You two take some time off to cuddle, and prove you’re human.”
We tried to walk away but, halfway back to our tent, we were surrounded by boys. “I don’t get it, Carl,” Micah said. “What’s up with this enemy?”
I stopped, annoyed. Usually when you were told you could cuddle no one bothered you but here a whole pack of them were keeping us from going off. “Didn’t you hear? It ate a Juvy. Packs don’t eat Juvies, unless they’re dead. So there is something different about this Pack.”
“He wasn’t in a pack, anyway,” one boy said, and I looked at him.
“That’s true,” I said, “I hadn’t thought of that.” Packs weren’t always in packs, actually, but it very much was the regular rule. “Anyway, can we go cuddle? You all go talk about it or something. See if you can catch another one. You saw the differences, right?”
“Hey, that sounds good,” Micah said, and the boys ran off.
“Finally!” I said, and Bethany giggled as I led her into our tent.