“Well, Deadshot,” Oakley said, finishing his coffee, “let’s get back to work. Projectile rounds this time! Fifty meters! Hubba, hubba!”
By the end of the day Puella was putting most of her shots into the black on the man-size target at fifty meters and was really feeling comfortable with the M26.
Mess Hall, Fort Keystone
The Seventh Independent Military Police mess facility was a battalion mess complete with its own staff of cooks and bakers. Kitchen police was performed by the enlisted men of the battalion assigned to the duty by their first sergeants. Each company had the duty for a period of one week. In the Lannoy army, cooks and bakers were the most dissolute soldiers of all. That was because they lived essentially an independent existence, which was necessary if they were to keep the mess in operation. They served under the supervision of the first cook, a senior sergeant who should have been retired years ago, and the biggest drunk in the battalion. Colonel Raggel went through their ranks with a scythe, reducing them so drastically that the men left were too busy to think about anything but running the mess. The quality of the food served there improved overnight.
It was also good because Raggel and every officer under him ate every meal there. When someone burned the stew, he knew about it. A small part of the mess hall had been set aside for officers and senior noncommissioned officers, but Colonel Raggel often ate with the men from the companies, and he encouraged the other officers to eat with their men also. Officers were allowed to go to the head of the line, but Raggel often stood with the men. “When we go into the field, officers will be the last men to eat in my battalion,” he often said.
Sergeant Queege ate (nobody ever “dines” in a military mess hall) with Sergeant Major Steiner at a table set off to one side of the mess. In the early days, they had cut the line and eaten their meals hurriedly so they could get back to work. Nobody ever complained about Steiner, but Puella often got dirty glances when she went to the head of the line by herself. That bothered her because she was not used to cutting lines, but without the privilege she could never have gotten her work done. But, as Colonel Raggel’s program began to take effect, work had slackened off at the battalion HQ. That is one reason Puella was able to spend time on the range. But she still ate quickly in the mess because she felt jealous eyes on her as she sat there, and she did not like that.
Sergeant Major Steiner was aware of what had been going on, so he started inviting other senior noncoms to join them, including his old friend Senior Sergeant Oakley. After that first day on the range, Oakley joined them at every meal. The old sergeant major knew Oakley and that the way he looked at Puella and engaged her in conversation meant that he wasn’t just sitting there to eat with them. Eventually Steiner would excuse himself, saying something like, “You two talk muzzle velocities and foot-pounds of energy; I’m goin’ over to Fourth Company’s table there and knock some heads together,” and leaving Puella and Oakley to finish their meal together. As long as Steiner was roaming the mess hall nobody had eyes to stare at Puella.
“Puella,” Oakley began one day after Steiner had left their table, “I’ve got to go to Mainside sometime today or tomorrow. If you can get away, come along with me. We’ll visit the exchange, maybe have some real chow. What do you say?”
Puella grinned. “I thought you’d never ask, Bill.”
CHAPTER
* * *
TWENTY-SIX
The Rebetadika Homestead, Three Hundred Kilometers Southeast of Sky City, Haulover
Unlike the other destroyed homesteads the Marines had visited, which had all been engaged in farming, mining, lumbering, or light manufacturing, the Rebetadika homestead had been set up as a musicians colony. Haulover’s population was large enough for it to have homegrown musicians and other artists, but the tycoons and bureaucrats who ran the planet had little use for creative people and insisted that they engage in “productive” work instead of what they called the “childish” pursuits of music and other arts. The musicians were the first to rebel and move out of the cities, towns, and farms to establish a place of their own, where they wouldn’t be badgered by the people they called “Philistines,” those who didn’t appreciate their art.
The day after Ensign Daly sent his message to Fourth Fleet Marines HQ requesting navy surveillance assistance, Sergeant Williams and fourth squad went to the Rebetadika homestead, which was named after a kind of restaurant with live music in Athens on Earth. This one affected Williams in a way none of the other destroyed homesteads had. As a child, he’d wanted to be a musician and play a pipe organ when he grew up. Either that or drums. Something big and loud, anyway. But he didn’t have access to a pipe organ, and his parents wouldn’t allow him to bring drums into the house—they thought drums were too big and loud to be entrusted to a child. Especially in their house. So the young D’Wayne Williams had gone in another direction and learned to play chess. He became good enough at chess that by the time he finished secondary school he was a ranked junior player on his home world, Adak Tanaka. He was good, but not good enough to win in professional competitions. But by the time he reached that realization, he’d seen a few Confederation Marines and been mightily impressed by their dress reds. So when he finished his schooling, being qualified for little more than chess instructor, he enlisted.
In the Marines, he’d been surprised to discover that the need to think many moves in advance in chess was of great benefit to an infantryman; it increased his ability to anticipate orders, and to outthink his opponents when he was a fire team leader on independent actions. And the ability to think several moves ahead also helped when he applied for Force Recon.
So that day, away from Ensign Daly, who was at a different homestead with Sergeant Kindy and third squad, Williams put his energies toward trying to think several moves ahead of the raiders while his men searched through the rubble of the destroyed homestead.
He didn’t think the raiders had been scared off by the presence of two Force Recon squads; the raiders had an entire continent and a number of populated islands to strike at, they showed no pattern in choosing sites to strike, and the nine Marines couldn’t spread far enough to provide any sort of reasonable security for the many homesteads that hadn’t been hit. Moreover, the raiders displayed a great deal of sophistication. A Marine blaster squad would have trouble destroying structures as thoroughly as the raiders did; the raiders must have stealth aircraft, since they’d left no radar signatures; and they’d left no trace of the people at the homesteads.
No, nine Marines hadn’t scared off the raiders. Ergo, they were lying low.
But why?
What were their plans?
And where was their base? It could be more than a month before the navy arrived to lay a string-of-pearls to locate it. If Fourth Fleet Marines agreed on the need, and if the navy agreed with the Marines, and if the navy had a starship in position to deploy to Haulover. Which meant that it was incumbent on the two squads of Force Recon Marines already planetside to somehow find the raiders without help, using only their own skills and the resources they’d brought with them.
So, where were the raiders, and what were their plans?
What would Sergeant Williams do if he was leading the raiders?
Several Kilometers Outside the Rebetadika Homestead
Intelligence reaching the Grand Master had told him that the Earthman Marines were being just as unimaginative as he’d expected in examining the destroyed outposts; they visited them in roughly the order in which they’d been destroyed, only occasionally visiting one of the more recent sites. So, while he had sufficient Masters, Leaders, and Fighters to thoroughly surround every one of the outposts, he elected to send only one squad each to three of the sites that hadn’t yet been visited by the hated Marines, two of the oldest, and one more recent. One Master, two Leaders, and nine Fighters were more than sufficient to capture one of the Earthmen, and to fight and kill the others if necessary—a task made much easier since the Marines had split the
ir forces.
One of the three sites the Grand Master selected was the Rebetadika homestead. Not that the Grand Master knew, or even cared, what the Earthmen called their outposts.
The transport craft hadn’t landed when it had brought the squad to the vicinity of the homestead site at dusk, but rather hovered over a deep pool in an otherwise shallow stream, allowing the squad members to jump into the water. The Master leading the capture squad knew that the original raiding party that had destroyed the outpost had paralleled the stream from just a few meters away on its way to and from its aircraft. He also knew that when the Earthman Marines came, they would follow the tracks of the raiding party. That was why he selected the stream in which to lie in wait. When the Earthmen came along, he would give the order and his Leaders would lead the Fighters in springing out of the stream to capture one of the Marines. And to kill the others.
This plan wasn’t in strict accord with the orders the Master had received from the Over Master who had assigned the mission; he was supposed to position his Leaders and Fighters in locations where they might capture one of the Earthman Marines when he was out of sight of his squadmates, and to avoid other contact if possible. But the Master believed more glory would accrue to him if he killed other Earthman Marines in addition to capturing one. He could always say his squad had had no opportunity to capture one of the enemy in isolation so he’d had to take more aggressive action. Besides, as long as the mission was successful in capturing one of the Marines, nobody was going to question the Leaders and Fighters to make sure the Master had run the mission exactly according to instructions.
So they waited in the water through the night. When the sun was halfway up the morning sky, they heard the sound of an approaching landcar and took positions. One Leader, the one nearer to the outpost site, lay with his upper half on the bank so he could watch for the approach of the Earthman Marines. The Master, the other Leader, and the nine Fighters lay submerged, their lungs collapsed, breathing through their gills. Out of sight from the path the raiding party had taken.
The Rebetadika Homestead
Fourth squad came up as empty-handed as they had at any of the other destroyed homesteads. Maybe emptier—they hadn’t even found bone shards. Corporal Belinski, Lance Corporal Rudd, and Lance Corporal Skripska gathered in front of Sergeant Williams, who was sitting at the base of a tree, lost in thought. They sat, forming an inward-facing circle, with Belinski opposite Williams and the two lance corporals flanking the NCOs. All of them had their helmets and gloves off so they were partly visible to one another.
“We’ve checked everything except their egress passage,” Belinski said when Williams barely seemed to notice their presence.
Williams grunted, an absent acknowledgment that someone had said something.
“You want us to check it on our own, or are you going to join us?”
Just as absent a grunt.
“You feeling okay?” Belinski rolled onto his knees. “I’m going to check your readings.” He reached for Williams’s chest to feel for the pocket that held the squad leader’s medical diagnostic card.
“Hmm? What?” Williams straightened up and brushed Belinski’s hand aside. He looked around, blinking at his men. He shook his head sharply and whooshed, as though letting out a pent-up breath. “Sorry, I was thinking. Trying to figure things out.”
Belinski rocked back onto his heels and wrapped his arms around his knees.
“Did you come to any conclusions?”
“You tell me. Check me on this.” Williams looked at his men, waited for them to nod. “I don’t believe we scared the raiders off.” The other Marines nodded; they didn’t think so either. “I think they’re waiting, watching to see what we do.”
“Do you think we’ve been under observation?” Skripska asked.
“It’s possible. Very possible.” Williams looked unfocused into the distance. “I think,” he said slowly, “they’re planning to take us on, try to kill us, once they have our pattern.” He grimaced and shook his head. “We’ve become very predictable. We’re pretty much examining these sites in the order they were attacked.”
“Shit,” Belinski muttered. “That means they can be anywhere we go, and be waiting for us when we get there.” Without looking around, he lifted his helmet and put it on.
“Button up,” Williams ordered, and they all donned their helmets, slid chameleon screens into place, and pulled on their gloves. As soon as they were effectively invisible, he stood and said, “If they’ve been watching us, they know exactly where we are. Let’s move.” He led the way to another tree thirty meters distant; the Marines followed by watching the ultraviolet markers each had on the back of his helmet. They took to the ground in a wagon-wheel formation, facing outward, feet together in the middle.
“If they want to attack,” Williams said on the short-range circuit, which couldn’t be detected more than ten meters away, “they pretty well have us where they want us. Four of us, and who the hell knows how many of them. Everybody, rotate through your infras and magnifiers. Use your light gatherers to look into shadows. Use your ears.”
The four Marines lay quietly for half an hour, cycling through their infrared and magnifier screens, and sometimes the light gatherers, even occasionally using two in conjunction. They turned up the volume on their helmets’ external mikes so they could hear farther, and softer, sounds. As far as they could tell, they were the only humans in tens of kilometers of the Rebetadika homestead.
“That doesn’t mean nobody’s watching,” Williams said at the end of the half hour of fruitless searching observation.
“You know what I’d do if I was them and I wanted to wipe us out?” Rudd asked.
“Spit it out,” Williams ordered.
“I’d set an ambush along the raiders’ back trail.”
“So would I,” the squad leader agreed. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
They went several kilometers before they saw anything.
Along the Raiders’ Back Trail, at the Streamside
The Marines
Force Recon Marines normally went out very lightly armed, not more than one blaster per squad. Their normal job was intelligence gathering, not fighting, and carrying defensive weapons rather than offensive ones discouraged the more aggressive among them from fighting when they could hide or slip away unnoticed. This time, Sergeant Williams wished all four of the members of his squad were carrying blasters instead of hand blasters; only Lance Corporal Rudd had a blaster. Each of them also carried a knife. Their main advantages were their invisibility; their chameleons were more effective than those worn by Marines in FISTs, and they also damped down their infra signatures—in case the enemy had infra capabilities—making them effectively invisible in that wavelength as well. Still, if a force of unknown size was in fact waiting to ambush them, Williams wished his squad had more firepower.
The Marines were spread on line; Corporal Belinski had the right flank, walking along the far bank of the stream; Lance Corporal Rudd walked to the left of the back trail; and Lance Corporal Skripska had the left flank. Williams himself was between the back trail and the stream.
The Skinks
The Leader watching for the Earthman Marines to come along the back trail waited patiently. He had learned patience the hard way when he’d been a Fighter trainee—by having patience beaten into him by the Leaders who trained him. Some of the other trainees had died from the beatings because they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, learn patience. If he’d allowed himself to think about it, he would have thought that the squad’s taking positions as soon as the Master heard the approaching land vehicle was needless. He would have thought that the hated ones would spend most of the day examining the site of the outpost and not come this way until the sun was well down the afternoon sky. But along with learning patience, the Leader had learned not to think. “If the Emperor wants you to think, we will teach you to think,” the training Leaders had said as they beat the trainees who dared to thi
nk. And when the Leader had been selected for promotion from Fighter, he had indeed been taught to think—but only to the extent a Leader should think. It was not a Leader’s place to think the things that a Master should think. Being trained not to think beyond that which was required of him, he didn’t think to wonder about whether there were only four Earthman Marines who would approach the ambush position, or nine of them, or an even greater number.
The Leader did not think at all as he waited patiently for the Earthman Marines to come along the back trail. He knew he might well not be able to see the hated Marines with his eyes; he’d been along on two of the earlier observation missions and knew that the ancient enemy had some means of tricking the eye so they could not be seen visually.
But the People had a means of detecting unseen people: Along their sides they had sensors, surgically embedded during infancy, that picked up the electrical fields given off by living creatures. So he knew that, even though he might not be able to see the Earthman Marines with his eyes, he could still detect their approach when they were about fifty meters away. And fifty meters was well within the effective range of the acid guns the members of the ambush squad carried.
There! The Leader felt the approach of an enemy! To his left front, where he’d been watching. He looked, but saw nobody, which he’d expected. But then he sensed another Earthman, and he was almost directly to his rear! What were the Earthman Marines doing coming from that direction? Were there more of them than he’d expected? He turned around as he slid under the water to notify the Master of the approach of the hated ones.
The Marines
Corporal Belinski paid most of his attention to the line of trees along the edge of the stream bank and the land away from the water, only occasionally glancing across the stream to look for the UV telltales that would let him know where the rest of the squad was. His hand blaster was drawn, held at the ready, its muzzle pointing side to side, up and down, with each movement of his head and eyes. If an enemy suddenly appeared before him, he wouldn’t have to waste even a nanosecond in shifting his aim before he could fire. He had set his screens on automatic rotation, switching from visual to infra to magnifier to light gatherer and back again. Most people would find the constant change in vision so disorienting they would soon be unable to walk in a straight line, much less interpret what they were seeing. But Belinski had been in Force Recon for long enough that he could observe his surroundings in so unnatural a manner and hardly even notice the difference; his optic lobe was trained to decipher what he saw in the four different modes and combine them into one visual. He also had one small window open on his heads-up display; it displayed what his motion detector picked up. For more than a kilometer, the HUD showed nothing that his eyes didn’t identify as local plant or animal life.
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