by David Weber
* * *
Pahner glanced at his tactical display and made a decision.
"They're trying to close the route," he snapped over the command circuit. "First, stay in place, screening our flank. As we pass, roll in behind us. Everybody but sharpshooters off the pack beasts. Third to the point, Second in the body. Pick up the pace Marines. Let's go!"
* * *
Roger started to slide off Patty and got slapped on the leg by Sergeant Hazheir.
"Stay up there, Your Highness!" the acting platoon sergeant said. "You're probably who he meant by sharpshooters."
Roger laughed and nodded.
"Okay! " he yelled as the staff sergeant slid off the beast and trotted forward. "I'll try to remember who the good guys are!"
* * *
Corporal Hooker put another burst into the vegetation and cursed. The bastards were figuring out to stay behind cover.
"Behie! Flush those bastards for me!" she snapped, highlighting the cover with her target designator for the grenadier.
"Roger!" Pentzikis had just finished attaching a new belt and pivoted slightly, letting the launcher's sensors search for the target. "I need more grenades; I'm short."
"Roger," Edwin Bilali acknowledged. The NCO shot at a patch of gray and was rewarded by a scream. "Gelert! Get to the pack beasts and bring back three strings of grenades!"
"On my way, boss!" The newbie private put a burst into the vegetation in front of him and reared up to run for the passing beasts. He thought he knew where he could find the ammunition.
Ima Hooker popped out her first magazine and had just started to reload another of the half-kilo plastic packs when a scummy reared up from behind a log and hurled its javelin.
"Heads up!" she shouted, seating the magazine, and took aim.
The spinning HE grenade beat her to the shot, exploding a meter above the Mardukan's head and turning it into red jelly, but the burst also threw two more targets into her view. The fury within her howled like an enraged beast, for she'd seen the result of her momentary distraction, and she unleashed her rage and flicked the three-millimeter bead gun onto full automatic and cut the unfortunate natives in half.
"Bastards!" she screamed, and swept the muzzle onward, seeking still more targets and fresh vengeance.
Sergeant Bilali ran to the rifleman, but he knew he was too late. The private from St. Augustine scrabbled at the muck and loam of the jungle floor, choking on the blood that poured out of his mouth. Bilali pulled off the private's helmet and tried to roll him over, but the javelin pinned him to the forest floor, and the movement jerked a scream through the bright, scarlet flood.
"Ah, Christ, Jeno!" The NCO's hands fluttered helplessly over the wounds. Bullets didn't transfix their targets like specimens in some alien entomologist's collection, so all his training meant nothing. "Ah, God, man."
"Move!" Dobrescu was suddenly at his side. The warrant officer had already learned all he cared to know about wounds like this one. He figured the kid had about one chance in twenty, max, but it was worth going for.
"It's got to come all the way through," the medic went on as he pulled out a monomolecular bone cutter. The scissorlike device sliced open the chameleon suit and snipped the javelin shaft flush with the private's back effortlessly, with absolutely minimal movement, yet even that tiny twitch evoked another scream.
"Now comes the fun part," Dobrescu added through gritted teeth. "Gelert," he said firmly, applying a self-sealing bandage. "Listen to me. I got one way to save your life, and its gonna have to go quick. We are going to flip you onto your back. You're probably going to pass out from the pain, but don't scream. Don't."
Even as he spoke, he was running a drainage tube with frantic haste. The wound was going to have to drain somewhere, and if it drained into the lungs, nanites or no nanites, the kid was going to drown in his own blood.
Gelert was twitching and the blood was going everywhere as the company passed them by. Stopping for one casualty would get them all killed, but if Dobrescu couldn't get this kid evacuated soon, the company's advance was going to leave him behind the caravan.
"Bilali, I'm gonna need a stretcher party."
"Who the fuck is going to carry it?" the NCO demanded as fresh firing started to the front and another cry of "Medic!" cut through the bedlam. "We're getting hammered."
"Find someone!" the warrant officer barked. He wondered for a moment if he should just write the kid off and get him lashed to a pack beast until they could bag and burn him. But if he could get the holes patched and the bleeding slowed, the fast-heal nanites sometimes could perform miracles. Fuck it.
"And while you're finding somebody, we're going to need security!"
* * *
"Roger," Kosutic answered. "Shit!" She looked over her shoulder. "Captain!"
"What?" Pahner never looked away from his HUD. Second Platoon had just passed through in the leapfrog and reported that they were hitting signs of buildings and rock outcroppings. If they made it into the city, it was going to be by the skin of their teeth, and he could hear the howling of the Kranolta horns behind him. It was as if the Huntsmen of Hell had been loosed on their trail.
"Dobrescu is trying to get Gelert stabilized to move. He's already out of Third's coverage!"
That was enough to pull the captain away from his display, and he looked up in disbelief. The sergeant major looked as royally pissed as he felt, not that being in agreement made either of them feel any better.
"Dobrescu!" Pahner keyed his communicator. "Get your ass out of there—now!"
"Captain, I have Gelert stabilized. I think I can save him."
"Mr. Dobrescu, this is in order. Get your ass out of there!" He checked his HUD and realized that none of the private's fire team had moved out. "Bilali!"
"Sir, we're pulling out as fast as we can rig a stretcher," the NCO responded.
"Sergeant—!"
The company CO chopped off his furious command. Long, long ago at the Corps NCO combat leadership school, he'd been told something which had stood him in a good stead for fifty-plus Standard years: Never give an order you know won't be obeyed. He never had, and he didn't intend to start today.
"We'll be waiting for you in Voitan, Sergeant."
He knew he'd just written off their only medic, who was also an irreplaceable pilot, and a full fire team, but that was better than losing the entire company trying to cover them.
The line of flar-ta was pounding up a slope and through a ruined gateway partially choked by the rubble of the gatehouse. The area beyond was too large to hold for long—a fifty-meter-wide plaza surrounded by overgrown heaps of masonry—but it was a good place to rally.
"Hold it up on the other side," he called over the general company frequency. "Third Platoon on the gate, First and Second in support. I want a headcount."
He stepped up onto a liana-bound pile of masonry that had probably been the wall of a house, and looked around. A quick count showed him that all of the pack beasts had made it through, most of them with bead rifle or grenade launcher-armed Marines on top. Then he took another look at the riders.
"Where," he asked with deadly calm, "is Prince Roger?"
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Bilali triggered another burst and the group of scummies disappeared behind their log. He had them pinned for the time being, but he was also low on ammunition.
"Sarge," Hooker called, "you got any ammo? I'm dry."
He cursed silently. Hooker always put her rounds on target, but she always used too many of them.
"I'm about out here, too," he answered.
"I've got some," Dobrescu said. "Take 'em."
The medic had the patient fully prepped and was working on a field expedient stretcher: the trunks of two stout young saplings with the wounded private's chameleon suit stretched between them. It would be heavy and awkward and nearly impossible to get up to the city, but it was the only chance the wounded trooper had.
"Shit!" Hooker spun to the west.
"I've got movement between us and the Company!"
"Calm down, Hooker," came the prince's voice. "We're coming in."
* * *
Roger was positive that he'd killed not only himself, but Matsugae and O'Casey as well. Eleanora was shaking like a leaf, but she still managed to hold up her end of the heavily-loaded standard-issue stretcher. Matsugae was smiling, as usual, as he carried the other end, but the expression was a rictus.
"Roger," the valet told him, "this is quite insane."
"You keep saying that." Roger ducked down behind a tree. "Doc, you're going to have to take the other end for Eleanora on the way back."
He gripped the butt of the grenade launcher between his arm and rib cage, stood up, and ripped out a string of fifteen grenades. The end of the string traveled upward and off target, but most of them hammered into the area where the scummies had taken cover. The shrapnel and splinters of shattered branches scourged the cowering natives like flying knives, and drove them to their feet, screaming.
While Bilali and Hooker blew their flushed targets apart, Roger ejected the mostly-used belt and picked another off the stretcher. The stretcher was covered in belts, as were his shoulders, and more of them bulged his rucksack.
"We'd better move, Doc."
"Got it!" The warrant officer dumped the munitions off the stretcher. "Bilali, Hooker, Penti, get loaded."
Roger kept an eye on the woodline beyond the smashed lane where the flar-ta had thundered through the jungle while the remnants of the fire team gathered up the ammunition the civilians had humped in to them and Dobrescu got Gelert strapped into the stretcher.
"Thank you, Sir," Bilali said. "But this is goddamn stupid."
"My blood for yours, Sergeant," the prince replied. "Why the hell should you try to save my life if I'm not willing to reciprocate?"
* * *
"Break out the armor!" Pahner shouted furiously over the general circuit. "Roger, where the hell are you?!"
* * *
"Ah," Roger said as Matsugae and Dobrescu lifted the stretcher. "Our master's voice."
Pentzikis was so nervous that she broke into giggles and put a few rounds into the woodline from the twitch.
"We're fucking dead," she giggled. "If the goddamn scummies don't kill us, Captain Pahner will!"
"I don't think so." Roger lifted another belt of grenades out of his rucksack and draped it across the top. "Personally, I refuse to die today."
* * *
"Come on, you stupid hunk of crap!"
Julian watched the power levels rise in his helmet HUD. The suit wasn't even on completely, but he could feel the crash of grenades through the heels of his armored boots.
Despreaux hooked on his gloves, working with furious haste as the crack of bead rifles got closer. A moment later came the furious blast of another string of grenades in the distance, and she knew that Roger, at least, was still alive.
"You'll make it," she said.
"I know I'll make it. But will I make it before Pahner decides to just kill us and start over with scummies as bodyguards?"
"It's not our fault Roger went haring off!" Despreaux protested, furious with the prince.
"No, but after we save ourselves, Pahner is going to kill us. We were supposed to be watching the little shit."
"Now that's not fair," the female sergeant snapped as she hooked up the gravity feed to the stutter gun. The quad-barreled bead gun hooked to an ammunition storage box on the back of the armor, but despite the mass of rounds in the box, it could still run through its ammunition in a surprising hurry. And they had only so many boxes. "Roger was trying to save a wounded Marine," she went on. "And watch your ammo."
"I will," Julian said. "And he was. But he's still a little shit. If he gets killed, I'm gonna frag his ass."
"You're up!" Despreaux made the last connection and flipped his visor up to give him some air. Until the things came online, the armored suits could be sweltering.
"Still waiting for the God damned computer to settle down," Julian snarled. Why the damn thing took so long to load was always a mystery to the Marines. It was worse than a pad.
"Julian?" Pahner roared from his perch on the rubble.
"Waiting for warm-up to complete, Sir!" Julian yelled back, looking around his troops. He couldn't even do his status check until the damned computer completed dumping its memory or pulling its cheek or whatever took so . . . so . . . so modder pocking long. Finally, the damned light turned green.
"Up!" He shouted, and raised one hand, thumbs up. A moment later, two more hands came up, then a third. But that was it.
"What the fuck?" He'd lost Russell earlier, but that still left nine in his squad. "Status check!"
"Red lights," Corporal Aburia reported tersely, stepping up to Cathcart and looking into his helmet. The plasma gunner was yelling behind his visor, and the team leader lifted it just in time to hear ". . . motherfuckingcocksuck . . ."
"We've only got four, Sir," Julian told Pahner over the captain's private channel.
"Poertena!"
* * *
"How you doin' for ammo, Behie?" Roger yelled as he laid down another string and a screen of lianas vanished in the explosions. A javelin had come from beyond that screen, and Roger had become a major proponent of peace through superior firepower. A ghastly shriek sounded even through the thunder of grenades, and something thrashed and bled in the bushes. "Fuck with a MacClintock, will you?" he yelled.
"I've got five belts left, Sir!" The grenadier popped a single round into a suspicious looking bush, exercising an economy of ammunition expenditure His Highness seemed constitutionally unable to match. "You might want to conserve your ammunition a little, Sir."
"We can conserve ammo when we're dead," he retorted. "Move, I'll cover you."
The grenadier just shook her head and darted from behind the fallen tree she'd been using for shelter. The stretcher team—the struggling doc and Matsugae, with the prince's chief of staff holding a bottle of drip fluid—was nearly twenty meters ahead of them, closely protected by the bead gunners as the grenadiers covered the retreat. She'd already tried to argue about who should move out first and who should stay behind in a movement. And lost. She was done arguing.
She ran to where Hooker sheltered behind another fallen tree. They'd cursed all day long at the obstacles the passage of the flar-ta had thrown down, but now they were lifesavers.
"Move, Sir!" Pentzikis shouted, and fired a round into another likely looking clump.
Roger pushed himself up with both hands and turned to run . . . just as a massive flight of javelins erupted out of the brush.
"Oh, fuck," the grenadier said mildly. She'd become expert at judging the flight of the spears, and she realized they were all aimed at their previous positions. Hers . . . and the prince's.
Roger didn't even think—not consciously, anyway. He simply bolted straight towards the source of that massive flight, grenade launcher blazing. There was no way he could outrun the flock of javelins, but he might be able to run under them.
Their angle of flight, partially because of the slope of the ground, was high, and the speed he'd found so useful on soccer fields finally came into its own somewhere else. As the steel-tipped rain fell all around and behind him, he charged forward, grenade launcher spitting a metronome of fire.
* * *
Julian and his three armored companions passed the stretcher team, bounding by in run mode at nearly sixty kilometers per hour. They could have gone faster on better ground, but not on a track torn by flar-ta and covered in fallen trees.
"Man, Bilali," Julian said as he passed. "You are fucked."
"What the hell was I supposed to do?" the squad leader demanded, falling back to cover the stretcher team. "Knock him over the head and throw him on the stretcher?"
"Probably," the squad leader snarled, then tripped over one of the fallen trunks and plowed into a tree that was still standing. "Shit!"
"You okay, boss?" Gronningen called. Th
e big Asgardian had his M-105 plasma cannon trained outward. The company hadn't expected to be using them so quickly, so they hadn't been inspected with the same care as the M-98s. On the other hand, they were an older and more robust design which had never given any trouble. Yet.
"Yeah, yeah," Julian growled, scrambling to his feet. The impact had done far more damage to the tree than to his now sap-coated armor. It would take more than a sixty kilometer per hour impact to damage ChromSten. "I'll be right there," he added as another flurry of grenades exploded ahead of them.
* * *
Roger dropped the empty grenade launcher and pulled his sword over his shoulder. The sensei in school was always talking about The Book of Five Rings, but the prince had never bothered to read it all. Another of those little acts of rebellion he was beginning to regret. Still, he remembered the technique for battling multiple opponents: reduce it to one at a time.
Nice to know, he thought, surveying the fifteen or twenty Mardukans filtering out of the brush with a variety of swords, spears, and other sharpened artifacts. Now, how the hell do you do it?
Some of them were wounded, a few quite seriously. Most of them, however, were just fine. And seemed really upset about something. Worse, the clear notes of hundreds of hunting horns sounded, coming up the hill behind them. All in all, it looked to be just a little dicey. Maybe they would leave him alone because his forehead didn't offer any trophies? Right.
The first Mardukan charged, holding a spear at waist height and screaming to wake the dead. Roger parried the spear down and to the side, let the momentum carry him through a spin and took off one of the scummy's arm as he passed. Then the rest of the group charged, and he picked out the weakest: a Mardukan with a bloody shrapnel wound on one leg.
Roger charged the wounded warrior, parrying another's spear and carrying the sword into a high parry of the wounded Mardukan's own blade. A butterfly twist, and the katana-like weapon came down and across, opening the Mardukan from shoulder to thigh as Roger passed through the closing circle.