Under a Purple Sky

Four pall bearers carried a small casket with a green and white flag draped over it. Two appeared to be men. Of the other two, one floated beside the coffin, small and delicate in appearance. The other towered over the men, one huge hand under the casket, bearing most of the weight. Many others stood at attention beside the grave.

They had taken him in as a mascot, into the 125th Battalion, because he was an orphan, because he was different from his kind. They stood (or lay or squatted or hovered) around the grave, watching as the small casket was lowered down with ropes, crisscrossing underneath.

This wasn’t a proper cemetery. Just a hole in the red clay of this God-forsaken planet under a purple sky and a red sun that baked them. But they had brought him back to the post because Ju-Ju belonged with them, belonged to them, not to those who had rejected him, who had killed him. The hole was deep, twice the depth of the six feet under that they would someday earn, provided they managed to get off this scumbag world before they died. But here you had to bury the remains deep, deep down to prevent the claw hogs from getting at the coffin.

Sergeant Philipps was officiating, having once been a Pentecostal preacher. The ceremony was over and the sarge was telling the story of how Ju-Ju had stolen the Wander Stone right out of the Fairborn temple in the middle of the night. The tale made them all laugh despite the weight of the grief and the heat pressing them down. Ju-Ju had been a favorite of them all, all the eleven different species that made up the 125th. In general, the Taferians, the natives of this planet, were considered ungainly, even downright ugly, to say nothing of arrogant assholes, by the soldiers. Even the Paducci disliked them. And the Paducci liked everyone. But Ju-Ju was different.

Jamie Sanders stood a little apart from the others. A smile crossed his scarred face as he listened to the sergeant. He remembered that night. Ju-Ju had staggered into camp with the brilliant blue, red, and purple stone clutched in his arms. He had been up on his hind feet with all four of his upper appendages firmly clamped around the intricate carving that gleamed in the light of the five moons. The little Taferian had walked in that unnatural position the whole twenty kilometers from the city.

When they took the stone from him, very gently, very carefully, he had fallen to the ground, at least one third depleted. It had taken three days to replenish him. Even finding the hollow tip of his tongue in his desiccated feeding orifice was difficult. Many of the soldiers had been convinced that he would die. But Jamie and two others had taken turns through the long night pushing nectar through his tongue, while dozens of others spread out over the red clay desert, searching for the small bumps that marked the nectar deposits of the sweepbirds.

Returning the stone had been tricky, but Corporal Skadig, a Baruch, was able to burrow through the clay under the temple, come up through the basement, and replace it. Sanders thought the Baruch resembled a very large earthworm, like the ones he’d used as bait, fishing on a lake back in Minnesota. Or maybe a centipede/earthworm cross.

Ju-Ju had managed to bring them the delicate Wander Stone totally undamaged although some of the spokes were as thin as hairs. Skadig had carried it in a fairysilk bag with equal care and had returned it in the same pristine condition.

Since the Wander Stone stood in the High Priest’s quarters, a transmitter would send them all that being’s plans. They had inserted it into the interstices before they took it back. No reprisals ever came. Jamie suspected the Taferians were just too cavalier to think anyone could possibly steal their holiest object. They never even noticed its absence.

The transmitter proved useful over the next few years and Ju-Ju was proud of his work. The conversations they listened to helped prevent a couple of massacres. The Taferians hated the off-worlders. They wanted them gone, preferably slaughtered. But the planetary leaders had thought they could scam the Terran League - the Terran League that had turned out more con men, scam artists, hustlers, and sharks than all the rest of the known sentient races put together. When the Taferian scheme fell apart, several Terran corporations took over the planet and hired the 125th to police the aborigines. Now the corporations had hired other mercenaries and the 125th was leaving.

They would be off to another planet, another assignment in a month. The other grunts in the battalion made Jamie their spokesperson. He had to tell Ju-Ju that they were going. He got a sick feeling that started in his stomach and rose into his chest when he saw Ju-Ju coming that day. Feeling like he had when they took his dog, Rusty, to the vet to be put to sleep, Jamie had taken Ju-Ju aside and explained to him that the time had come. They had told him in the beginning that they wouldn’t be there permanently. Ju-Ju, with the exuberance of youth, had never believed it or had forgotten it.

The little Taferian tried to be strong. But he couldn’t hide the way his scales drooped, his neck receded into his body and his eyes slid from orange to yellow as grief overcame him. He had run, down on all sixes, out of the post.

Jamie watched him until he disappeared. Sighing, Jamie had gone back to the barracks, flopped down on his cot and buried his face in his pillow. No one had bothered him for hours.

They didn’t see Ju-Ju again for two weeks. When he returned, he was walking slowly on four feet, head down, scales drooping. Jamie saw that his eyes were green. He went out to meet the little Taferian, stomach knotted.

“What’s up, Ju-Ju?” and he reached out to grasp the little guy’s upper hand.

Ju-Ju threw his upper and lower arms around Jamie’s body and held on tight. Jamie heard him speak but couldn’t understand since Ju-Ju’s speaking orifice was buried in his shirt. “C’mon, my friend. Why are you sad?”

Ju-Ju looked up into the eyes of the human. “They going to kill the world. They going to kill Taferia.”

Jamie started to reassure him, but the little Taferian rushed on. “They lose so much respec’. The gods say shut up everything. That what the big ones say. Gods say kill everybody. Me. You. All off-world peoples. All Taferian peoples. All skooms and risers and flans. And everything!” His voice was rising in volume and all four of his arms were waving wildly. “They gonna let loose the friesens, the killing ghosts. The friesens be locked up in the Crimson Mountains for centuries. They let them out, people die. People die wherever friesens go. Turn black and die.”

Jamie went to the captain, who was skeptical. They questioned Ju-Ju for hours. Finally the captain agreed to send a platoon – just in case. The Taferians were religious fanatics.

They arranged to meet Ju-Ju at the place where the trail entered the Crimson Mountains before dawn the next day. When the platoon got there, Ju-Ju wasn’t there. Jamie started backtracking toward the city.

He almost went right past the little, broken body, but something made him turn and search the ravine. Ju-Ju’s empty eye sockets stared up at the stars. His breathing orifice had been cut off, leaving a gaping hole, but air bubbled in and out through the blood. He had been mutilated and left to die. Fingers, toes, genitalia had been sliced off and he’d been eviscerated. Yet he lived.

Jamie jumped from the Rover and knelt beside the child, tears flowing down his cheeks. “No!”.

He tried to pick him up, but Ju-Ju screamed, a horrible bubbly sound that slid around the rocks and off to the skies. The little Taferian tried to grip Jamie’s hand with the stubs of bloody fingers and whispered “Please save…” Then his head fell back and he went still forever.

After the burial at the post, they set off for the Crimson Mountains again. Ju-Ju had told them enough. They found the entrance to the caverns after nearly a day of searching, an iron door, locked and barred.

Ju-Ju had said that the leaders were coming to open the door on the 25th hour of the 13th day of the month of Fire. That night. There were fourteen in the platoon. Five different species. Waiting for those who had tortured and killed a child. It didn’t matter what their hearts looked like, the same cold, hard hatred filled each one.

The Taferians came a little after the 25th hour. More than a hundred gathered at the base of the hill, suddenly motionless as they stared up at the entrance. One of them spoke in a querulous voice, urging the others upward. More voices were raised, arguing, as reality struck home.

Three shapes ran back toward the city. There came the twang of bows. Arrows flew. The three shapes fell and lay still. Then a tall figure shouted and the leader started climbing. One by one, the others followed, slowly at first, then in a rush, yelling.

The sergeant screamed “Now!” and Jamie blew the head off the leader. The Taferians shrieked and came scrabbling up over the rocks like scorpions, long knives flashing in the moonlight. The quiet desert air filled with screams and hoarse cries and the roar of guns. Knives rose high and came down. The platoon fell back. Soldiers and Taferians died and blood splashed the boulders, dark splotches in the dim light.

Their backs to the door, five soldiers fought desperately. Guns on full auto, the platoon decimated the Taferians, but still they came. Jamie stood, spraying bullets. When his magazine emptied, he turned the rifle and swung it at the nearest native But the knives came for him. He fell back. No one else was left.

Jamie was dying, one lung punctured, his left arm all but amputated. The Taferians were gathered around the door, impeding each other in their insane frenzy. They had opened the locks. One started to open the door. Jamie tossed a grenade. After it went off, there were only bits and pieces left of what had been people.

He was somehow still alive although both of his feet had been destroyed by the blast. He crawled on bloody stumps to the door. It was opening. Pressure from within. Jamie caught a glimpse of an absurdly long white face with a hollow opening for a mouth and the saddest dark eyes as he slammed the door with his shoulder. He wedged his body between the door and a rock. Caught between a rock and a hard place. he thought with a little smile as he slid into blackness. It took him five hours to die. At the end, his skin was black and he was shriveled into an unrecognizable lump.

The battalion picked up all the pieces of their people. They had wrapped Jamie in a HazMat bag. Everything went into the same casket, which they buried even deeper than they had buried Ju-Ju. Then the captain led his battalion toward the city with hatred in his eyes.