As the jeep sped onward, Phule kept sending his Mayday message while Beeker kept a lookout for any sign of imminent collision or other danger. But neither the jeep’s built-in comm unit nor Phule’s wrist communicator showed any sign that it was in contact with the base. Phule was still trying to give Mother (who might or might not have been able to hear him) his best guess of where they were and what was happening, when the jeep suddenly lost speed and came slowly to the ground.
Chapter Ten
Journal #550
Second Lieutenant Snipe was almost instantly dubbed “Lieutenant Sneak” by the Omega Mob. He was, if possible, more cordially hated by most of the enlisted legionnaires than even his superior, Major Botchup. And while the two other lieutenants were more or less forced to tolerate him, they were unable to find even the smallest ground for camaraderie with him.
This no doubt derived in large part from their having seen the transformation of Omega Company, under my employer’s guidance, from the least desirable billet in the Legion into a place where one might build a career. Botchup and Snipe had not been part of that transformation; instead, they were seen (quite accurately) as being sent to tear down everything that Captain Jester had built.
Neither the callow major nor his smirking subaltern—and certainly none of the brass who had sent them on their mission—quite understood that before they could persuade the newly liberated genie to return to its bottle, they would have to reconstruct the original bottle, which had long since been broken into a million fragments.
* * *
“Well, Snipe, what do you think of this outfit?” said Major Botchup. He was firmly established in Phule’s office, which was specially set up as a command center in the event of military action. A thick stack of Omega Company personnel dossiers was on his desk, and the screen of the major’s computer was already filled with his notes.
Snipe twisted his mouth. “A very poor excuse for a combat unit, sir,” he said. “It’s even worse than I expected. There’s no sign of proper discipline, not even among the officers. Half the personnel is totally unsuited for the jobs they’re doing. Believe it or not, the woman running communications can barely speak a coherent sentence. I suspect we’ll want a psychological evaluation there, sir. The supply sergeant is grossly out of shape and sits around reading hovercycle magazines. The enlisted personnel have no respect at all; there’s a Volton who insulted me directly and tried to browbeat me when I called him on it.”
“We can’t allow that,” said Botchup. “Give me a written report with the details, and I’ll take care of it. Just looking at these files, I can see that Jester has let them run amok.” He shook his head. “They’re lucky they’ve never had to deal with any real threats.”
“Yes, sir,” said Snipe. “It’s a good thing General Blitzkrieg assigned you to set them right, sir. Captain Jester has let the company go completely to seed.”
“I’ve been going over Jester’s file in particular,” said Botchup. He pointed toward a shipping box sitting on a chair by the door. The box was marked Captain Jester: Personal. It had been brought from Phule’s office in the company’s Landoor headquarters. Now that the CO’s office belonged to Botchup, these personal effects would normally be removed to Phule’s quarters, but the sealing tape was cut and the top lay open. “No warm laser crystals yet, but with all you’ve told me, it’s just a matter of time before I find something big enough to have him booted out of the Legion entirely.”
“None too soon, sir, to judge from what I’ve seen,” said Snipe, nodding vigorously. “I suspect their combat readiness is as pathetic as everything else Jester’s had a hand in. It’s appalling that Omega Company was given a mission as crucial as this one.”
“Chalk that up to Jester’s being in bed with the politicos,” said Botchup. “He pulled the wool over some ambassador’s eyes and talked him into backing this company for Zenobia. I’m surprised he wanted it. Really—you’d think he’d have been happier with a soft billet like Landoor.”
“Sir, perhaps Jester’s angling for a political career after he leaves the Legion,” said Snipe. “There’s nothing quite like leading a unit in battle to convince the voters you’re leadership material. They never ask how many casualties your unit took.”
“That’s the way of it,” said Botchup. “The dilettantes get all the credit, while the real legionnaires do the dirty work. Well, this time, the real legionnaires are going to take back command of the company before the dilettantes know what hit ’em. And if I have to put half the company in the stockade to turn it around, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Starting with the captain, sir?” Snipe grinned maliciously.
“Starting with the captain,” agreed Botchup. “As soon as he gets back from his little junket to the native capital, he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Very good, sir,” said Snipe. After a moment’s thought, he asked, “Should we order him back to base, sir? I’d think the sooner you can make him an example, the sooner this company will toe the line.”
“No, I want time to build my case against him,” said Botchup. “Besides, there’s nothing he can do from a distance, and by the time he gets back, I’ll have gone a long way toward establishing my own authority.”
Snipe leaned forward and spoke in a quiet voice. “Should we take any steps to prevent the other officers from warning him, sir?”
“No,” said Botchup with a nasty smile. “Let them yell their heads off, Snipe. If Jester realizes just what’s in store for him, he may just cut and run. That’s the usual way with his kind, and it’d suit me fine. Then I could get down to the business of turning this company around without any interference from him—or his cronies.”
“Very good, sir,” said Snipe. “I can see you’re not going to be satisfied with half measures.”
“Not at all,” said Botchup. “Now, why don’t you get started on your report. I want to know every single rotten spot in this particular apple, Snipe. You name the names, and I’ll kick the asses.”
“Yes, sir!” said Snipe with a salute that could have been molded in plastic and used as a model in the Legion Academy. He turned and strode out of the command center, grinning like a madman. It didn’t matter at all to Snipe that he was planning to take the best company in the Legion and return it to the mediocrity from which it had arisen. His orders said to do it, and the last thing Snipe would ever do was question an order … unless, of course, it was to his personal advantage to do so.
* * *
The Zenobian desert baked under its glowing primary, a hot, yellow G star. Until recently, humans had looked at the system and seen only worthless real estate: all the planets were in orbits either too close to or too far away from the primary for the system to be of interest. Except for one very useful space station, there was no Alliance presence here. Only when a Zenobian scout ship had made an emergency landing on Haskin’s Planet, halfway across the galaxy, did the Alliance learn the real story of this unappealing world—unappealing to human beings, but not to the lizardlike race that called it home.
The Zenobians were swamp dwellers, evolved from quasi-saurian stock. In the manner of all intelligent races, they had transformed much of their world into the sort of environment they favored. But much still remained in a state of nature, inhabited only by untamed indigenous life-forms. A good third of its land surface was, in fact, arid, similar to this patch perhaps a hundred kilometers from the Alliance camp.
Neither the Zenobian astronomers nor human lookouts observed the fireball cross the sky. After all, there were dozens of such events on any given day, far too many to be of interest unless the objects causing them were large enough to damage a populated area. But this object was no threat, and so nobody even noticed when it rotated and fired braking rockets, or when, in the lower atmosphere, it popped a hatch and deployed a drogue parachute.
And when the escape capsule settled to the ground in a shallow depression that in the rainy season would briefly become a
lake, only a few dull-witted desert creatures were there to see the main hatch spring open and a lone figure emerge.
This was just as well, since the figure that emerged looked ill-prepared for the environment it had arrived in. Dressed in a white dinner jacket and starched shirt, it looked as if it had come directly from a formal dance at some exclusive country club. Its highly polished shoes were obviously designed for a polished parquet floor or, at worst, a well-manicured lawn—hardly for a trek across untracked wilderness. Any man with a lick of sense would have been sobered by his first glimpse of the forbidding desert that stretched away from the escape capsule in all directions.
Of course, this was not a man but a custom-made Andromatic robot, designed and programmed to impersonate its owner, Willard Phule, in his role as owner/manager of the Fat Chance Casino on Lorelei. The Zenobian desert held no more fears for it than the hotel corridors from which it had been kidnapped. In fact, it had very few fears at all. In this detail, it was more like its human model than perhaps its builders realized.
After scanning the horizon in all directions, the robot Phule’s delicate sensors detected a signal of human origin from a not-unreasonable distance. Without a glance at the considerable stock of survival gear with which its escape capsule had been supplied, the robot turned in the direction of the signal and began walking. There was an incongruous grin on its face.
The unimaginative desert creatures, having decided that the robot was neither a threat nor a potential meal, turned back to their business.
* * *
Double-X crossed his arms and stared at Brandy. “OK, Sarge, what’s the story?” the legionnaire demanded. “Who’s getting punished and how?”
Brandy stared back at him from behind the desk. In a lot of circumstances, she’d have bitten his head off for the impertinence. But this wasn’t a lot of circumstances; the major’s heavy-handed discipline had made her as angry as any of her troops. “The story is, the major’s sticking to his guns. Which means punishment for the whole company.”
Double-X’s face turned red, and he angrily blurted out, “Yo, Sarge, you saw what the major did to Roadkill. I’m here to tell you, everybody in the company says that stinks.”
“Tell me about it,” she said wearily. “While we’re telling each other about things, the major’s pissed about discipline—like you guys talking back when I say something. He hears you interrupting me or griping about his orders, he’s likely to bust humps a good bit more. Not that I can’t handle it—or even worse—but a word to the wise, Double-X, a word to the wise.”
Double-X looked around as if to check for eavesdroppers before answering. Then he put his hands on the desktop, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “Man, that stinks even worse,” he said.
“A brilliant deduction,” said Brandy, slapping her hand on her desktop. “Just what do you suggest doing about the problem?”
Double-X fidgeted, his face screwed up in a frown. “I dunno, Sarge,” he admitted at last. “If the cap’n was here, I bet he’d have some way to get us out from under this mess.”
“I wish he was here, myself,” said Brandy. “I don’t think he’d be any happier than the rest of us with what’s going down, but I know he’d have some ideas for fixing it.” She paused and lowered her voice. “But don’t get your hopes too high, Double-X. Botchup is the latest dirty trick from Headquarters, and he’s got the full authority of the top brass backing him. I’m afraid not even the captain’s going to be able to flick him aside all that easily.”
Double-X shrugged. “All I know is, the captain’s took ’em on and won before. If anybody can do it again, he’s the man.”
“Well, then you better hope he gets back soon,” said Brandy. She paused a moment, then said, “You got anything else to gripe about, or are you going to hang out here until the major notices and puts you down for extra punishment?”
“Man, I don’t need no part of that,” said Double-X. “Catch you later, Sarge.”
“Yeah, see you on punishment duty,” said Brandy. She didn’t laugh, and neither did Double-X.
* * *
“Where are we?” asked Phule. He had opened the jeep’s canopy and was standing up, scanning the horizon for signs of … He realized he wasn’t sure what he was scanning for, but at the moment there was nothing noteworthy in sight, unless the boulders and scrubby vegetation concealed secrets beyond his guessing.
Beeker looked up from the map he had taken out. “Very approximately, sir, we are midway between the Zenobians’ capital and our own base. We have strayed some distance off our original course, however, and I cannot locate us exactly. Our instruments are not providing meaningful information at the moment.”
“Yeah, I got that impression,” said Phule. He sat down in the seat and looked over Beeker’s shoulder. “Does the map show any landmarks in this general area?”
“Nothing, really,” said the butler. “But this is an ordnance survey map provided by our hosts. They could conceivably have omitted items they preferred not to let us know about.”
“That’d be a lot of trouble to confuse an ally,” said Phule, although even as he said it, he remembered being ordered to provide similarly doctored information to Leftenant Qual when the Zenobian had been an observer with Omega Company. He shrugged. “Anyway, there’s nothing obviously military in eyeball range. Unless they’ve got it pretty well camouflaged, that is.” He paused. “Hmmm … we are trying to locate an invader that appears to have unusually effective camouflage …”
“You don’t think the Hidden Ones brought us down here, do you?” Beeker laughed. “What reason could they have for that? Although I don’t pretend to comprehend the psychology of an alien species; quite frankly, the human race gives me enough trouble.” He accompanied this remark with a meaningful nod in Phule’s direction.
Phule ignored the nod—or perhaps he simply missed it. “There’s not much research on the psychology of interstellar warfare,” he said seriously. “There haven’t been a whole lot of examples to study, partly because it’s usually not cost-effective. But any race that gets cheap FTL has at least the capability to wage interstellar war. That’s why there’s a Legion—so that if some rogue species tries to attack another race’s world, we can stop it.”
“In theory,” said Beeker, peering nervously at the landscape beyond the hoverjeep. “Still, someone appears to have invaded this world. Unless the Zenobians are deceiving us for some reason.”
“I’ve considered that,” said Phule. “Even the ambassador had some suspicions on that score. Don’t worry, old man, I’m keeping an open mind about it. On balance, I think they’re telling the truth about the invasion. There are still some questions I haven’t gotten good answers to …”
“Sir …” said Beeker, tentatively.
Phule ignored him. “The ambassador was worried they might be trying to get a fully equipped Alliance military unit on-planet so they could knock us out quickly and gain access to our equipment. But that assumes that our equipment is superior enough to theirs that they’d risk an interplanetary incident to get some, then expect to be able to replicate it before the Alliance could respond. I can’t see that.”
“Sir!” said Beeker, touching his employer’s elbow.
“Not that it wouldn’t be a good idea to develop some defense to the stun ray,” Phule continued. “I’ll bet you they have one, even though they haven’t mentioned it to us. You don’t deploy a weapon that powerful without … What is it, Beeker?” The butler was now tugging on Phule’s sleeve.
The butler pointed abruptly to the left. “Sir, that boulder over there just moved.” Phule turned abruptly.
“What boulder?” he said, reaching for his sidearm. But it was too late.
* * *
“Don’t like Major Botchup,” said Tusk-anini with characteristic bluntness.
“Well, that puts you with the majority,” said Super-Gnat, sitting at the far end of the mess hall table. “He’s about as popular as the itch.”
“Itch not popular,” said Tusk-anini, squinting at his partner.
“Sure it is,” said Do-Wop, scratching his left armpit. “Everybody’s got it, ain’t they? If it was a vid show, it’d be numero one-o.”
“Having it doesn’t mean you like it,” said Super-Gnat. She took a spoonful of soup and continued, “Besides, Do-Wop, you shouldn’t confuse Tusk. It just makes him ask more questions.”
“There’s nothing wrong with asking questions,” said Mahatma, setting down his tray at a vacant spot at the table. “It’s the best way for people to learn things. I have to keep telling Sergeant Brandy that.”
“The NCOs aren’t sure your main reason for asking questions is to learn something,” said Super-Gnat with a frown. “Then again, maybe you’ve got a better reason.”
Mahatma shrugged. “I didn’t say that the one asking the question was the only one to learn things, did I?”
“Well, I wish you’d go ask Major Botchup some questions, then,” said Do-Wop. “That sucker’s got a lot to learn, and I hope he learns it fast.”
“I hope he learns it without getting anybody hurt,” said Super-Gnat. “That kind of ignorance is dangerous—and not just to the ignoramus, if you know what I mean.”
“Who you callin’ ignoramus?” said a booming voice. They jumped and looked up to see Chocolate Harry, balancing a mess tray and grinning at them. After they relaxed, he said, “Mind if a sergeant sets his tray down?”
“What we gonna say if we do mind?” said Do-Wop. “Hey!” he added as Super-Gnat elbowed him in the ribs.
“Sure, C.H., join the party,” said Gnat, acting as if nothing particular had happened. Do-Wop glared at her for a moment, but he knew better than to say any more.
Chocolate Harry slid his tray onto the table and settled into a chair. He took a sip of his coffee and smacked his lips. “Man, Escrima is a genius,” he said. “Dude can cook as good a meal in the middle of no place as in the best hotel you ever saw.” He paused and thought a moment, then added, “Course, on this planet, maybe we’re in the best hotel there is.”
The Complete Phule’s Company Boxed Set Page 97