The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  Varlik was not clear on what Bik-Chan, or perhaps Visto-Soka himself, did to control shock, but the two returned to the rendezvous together on foot. The wounded T'swi had what was left of that day, and the night that followed, to rest. At first light the next morning the squad moved again, about two hours south, a little slower than they might have, and established a new rendezvous in a grove of large old trees on a broad bench, in an area thick with saplings. There Shan became Bik-Chan's new partner, while the wounded Visto-Soka took over as medic!

  And from there, Varlik went out with Bin and Tisi-Kasi on his first hit. As they set out, they again heard distant firing: Some other T'swa were in action.

  It was midday when they made first contact, and not from a selected ambush. They were moving quietly along a bench through heavy timber when abruptly they glimpsed a Bird patrol not two hundred feet ahead. Each side saw the other simultaneously, and opened fire as they hit the ground behind trees. Between bursts, Tisi-Kasi, in the lead, barked a command that Varlik didn't catch. Bin, snapping an order for Varlik to follow him, began to crab rapidly backward. Varlik did the same, trying to keep a tree between himself and the Birds while bullets thudded, ricochets sang, grenades roared. Bin and Varlik rolled on their bellies over a large fallen trunk where the bench broke into the slope beneath, and doubling over, scuttled downhill away from the fight.

  "Tisi-Kasi is back there!" Varlik gasped as they ran.

  Bin didn't answer, simply careened through the trees. Varlik struggled to keep up. For a minute they almost sprinted, then Bin, looking back at Varlik's bulging eyes, slowed to a trot. They were in the draw by then, the trees thicker again. The firing had stopped. Varlik wanted to ask if that meant Tisi-Kasi was coming now, but he had too little breath for it, and besides, he knew that wasn't it. They'd abandoned Tisi-Kasi! Bin had abandoned his lifelong friend, left him badly outnumbered; Varlik was certain he'd seen at least half a dozen Birds! Now Tisi-Kasi was surely dead, and here they were, running like rabbits!

  And he knew why. Bin was getting him away to safety, or trying to, by Tisi-Kasi's order.

  The Birds were probably following them. Clearly Bin assumed it. After jogging long enough for Varlik to regain a little wind, the T'swi changed course, angling up the slope, the timber less dense here but still fairly heavy. After two hundred feet of running uphill, Varlik could run no more, but slowed to a driving uphill walk. Bin, seeing this, slowed, waving him on while he himself crouched behind a tree, looking backward with his rifle poised.

  It occurred to Varlik that if Bin were killed, or stayed behind and lost him, he could never find the rendezvous. The T'swa always seemed to know where they were, relative to any other place, but he wasn't so gifted. So he slowed, preparing to stand with Bin to fight, but the T'swi, after a moment, turned and started up the slope again, suiting his own pace now to Varlik's.

  "Is he . . . ?" Varlik asked between gulping breaths.

  "Dead," Bin said. "He's with us."

  Varlik's hair stiffened, even as his legs drove him up the ridgeside. Shortly they topped the ridge, put the crest behind them, then Bin turned north, running again, along the contour now.

  "And the Birds . . . are following?"

  "Right."

  They kept running along the ridgeside for half a mile, sweat burning Varlik's eyes, then Bin crossed the crest again, slanting down the first side into the bottom, which here was a narrow strip of marshy meadow. It occurred to Varlik that the Birds would be slowed by having to follow their tracks. They'd be back there now, somewhere along their trail, eyes on the ground. Or probably just one or two would watch for tracks; the others would be watching ahead and to the sides.

  Then it struck him: He hadn't gotten any of this on cube! He'd forgotten what he was there for. He glanced down at his left hip. At least the belt recorder was on; its tiny red light glowed.

  Bin led him up the next ridge, and again they slowed to a driving uphill walk, through a dense young stand that gave excellent cover. Partway up was a bluff. They worked past it, then Bin stopped and crawled out on its top, Varlik close behind. From its brink they had a partial view of the wet meadow in the ravine, and Bin held his rifle ready to fire. Varlik peered downward, his camera raised.

  He had only a minute to wait; two Birds came into view a few feet apart, rifles poised. Varlik watched them in his monitor, zooming the camera until he could see, besides lean limbs and loincloths, the pouches on their belts and harnesses, the bolos at their hips. A dozen feet behind the first two, two more appeared. Bin fired a long burst, and Varlik saw all four fall. Instantly Bin shoved back from the edge, rose to a crouch, and led him off again on a run, angling up the ridge in the direction of their first encounter. But not for long. Near the crest they leveled off again, along the contour, still trotting, Varlik gasping. A little farther and Bin slowed to a walk.

  "Are there more of them?" Varlik asked. He prayed there weren't; he could hardly hope to run much longer.

  "I caught sight of two more. They took cover when I fired."

  "Only two? Do you think they'll follow us?"

  "Only two that I saw. And yes, I think they will follow. But warily."

  He didn't make Varlik run anymore right away. They passed by the next dense cover, but at the one after that, Bin led him running through it downslope, and through a tangle of blowdown in the bottom, then a little way up the other side. Varlik thought he saw Bin's plan: Shoot the Birds from above while they were climbing over blown-down trees. But instead of taking cover there, Bin doubled north along the contour a short distance, then into the bottom again, among trees not far from the blowdown.

  It was there they took cover, Varlik wiping again at the sweat which threatened to blind him, trying to keep his gasping as quiet as possible. He saw now what Bin had in mind. The Birds would bypass the blowdown, foreseeing an ambush from above. If they bypassed it on this side, Bin would get another chance at them.

  And they did. There were four of them, crouching and well separated. Bin let the first two pass nearly out of sight among the trees, then opened fire; the last two fell. Those ahead opened fire from cover, but Bin led Varlik scrambling backward, keeping trees in the line of sight, then turned and once more ran, Varlik behind.

  But only two! Almost surely now only two of the Birds were left! Bin led him fleeing northward along the bottom a little distance, then angled up the east ridge again, until shortly they slowed to the hard-driving walk, almost as hard on the legs as running but easier on the wind. Varlik, puffing, rubber-kneed, sweat-blinded, had almost nothing left, and told Bin so.

  "A little more," Bin answered. At the ridgetop they paused. Varlik dropped gasping to his knees. Bin looked him over, then looked northward where the crest sloped slightly up. "Can you hit anything with that sidearm?" he asked.

  Varlik nodded.

  "Good. Take cover up there, in that brush. I'll climb this tree. I should be able to kill them both from there, but if I can't, I will surely get one of them. The other one, if there is only one, will be up to you. Let them get close before you shoot; a sidearm is for short range only."

  Then he pulled Varlik to his feet, clapped him on the shoulder, and began to climb a liana that partly hung, partly clung to the trunk. Varlik started along the crest but stopped well short of the thicket, to lie behind a buttress-rooted tree with his holster flap unsnapped and his camera in his hands, watching Bin crouched on a branch with the trunk between him and their backtrail.

  It was several minutes before the Birds showed up at an easy half-trot, one looking at the ground, the other ahead and around. Varlik's eyes shifted to his monitor and he picked them up with his camera.

  He recorded Bin in the tree. Obviously the T'swi couldn't see the Birds—he was keeping behind the trunk—but he seemed to hear them. Apparently he planned to let them pass and shoot them from behind.

  They stopped at the tree's very foot, one examining the ground. They seemed to talk, then one moved around the tree, both scanning
the area. Abruptly one spotted Varlik and hit the ground, firing a short burst that sent bark, splinters, and dirt flying around the newsman. There was the roar of a grenade, and the shooting stopped. Another grenade exploded. Varlik peered out again; both Birds sprawled dead, Bin was looking down at them. Then the T'swa grasped the liana and began to lower himself to the ground.

  That was the moment when Varlik saw the third Bird. He'd come up the ridge about twenty yards north of the others, and now stood nearly forty yards from Varlik, raising his rifle in Bin's direction. Somehow Varlik's sidearm was in his right hand, and without taking time to aim, he squeezed the trigger. Four shots burst out before he could release it, and the Bird went down, his upper torso shredded by blast slugs. Bin let go of the liana and dropped the last ten feet, rolling, coming up with his rifle in his hands, but there was nothing left for him to shoot at. Still crouched, eyes downslope, he moved toward Varlik, who lay shaking on the ground.

  "There are no more," Bin said. "I am sure of it."

  You were sure before, when you killed the two with grenades, Varlik thought. But he didn't say it, because he too felt sure that was all, and because, except for him, Bin could easily have been well away from danger.

  Then, reaching down a large blue-black hand, the T'swi helped him to his feet.

  * * *

  They didn't wait until the next day, but went cautiously back to the rendezvous, as if another patrol, attracted by the much repeated gunfire, might come checking and find them. Which could happen, Varlik told himself.

  The next day Bik-Chan returned alone, Shan having been killed, while Jinto and Dzuk came back with Dzuk's right wrist bullet-broken. The squad was down to six T'swa, two of them wounded. Kusu moved them a few ridges farther east, where recent fire had swept away the undergrowth and killed the older trees. There, from an opening on the crest, he called on evac headquarters to pick up the wounded and Varlik.

  Then they sat together in the ashes, waiting. It would be somewhat less than an hour before the floater could arrive. After the pickup, Kusu and his three effectives would move back toward the Bird trails, operating as a single hit team instead of by pairs.

  The floater was actually in sight when Bin, one of the two lookouts, saw the Birds, and the shooting began at once, furiously. Varlik snatched up Dzuk's rifle and hit the ground with the T'swa. As he dropped, he felt the bullet slam his left hip, but somehow it didn't seem serious except that his vision was blurred. So he fired blind, a long burst and then another in the direction of the Birds; then the clip was empty. He tried to crawl to Dzuk, a few feet away, for another clip, but his leg wouldn't obey. And then there was heavy firing from overhead—surely a heavy caliber blaster—overriding the noise of rifles, its exploding slugs making a series of loud violent slaps farther along the crest, so closely spaced as to seem almost a single long sound.

  It was followed by silence. Then a long burst from a Bird called forth another staccato roar from overhead, and the shooting was truly over. Apparently the Birds hadn't seen the floater until after the firefight started, and were caught exposed.

  Dzuk and Visto-Soka were still alive; they'd been lying down to start with. Kusu's chin had been shot away and Jinto was both gutshot and lungshot; Bin was the only one unwounded. He and a profusely bleeding Kusu helped the evac floater crew load the rest, and they all left together. Then the two Iryalan medics began work on the wounded.

  Varlik had recorded none of the final fight on video, though its sounds were all on cube, but now, sitting weak and bleeding on the floater, he began to record the wounded and the busy medics. Then one of the medics knelt beside him with a syringe and shot him with it. That was the last thing Varlik recorded before he slept.

  PART THREE

  Tyss

  22

  When Varlik awoke from sedation, he was in a troop carrier fitted to move wounded from the Beregesh field hospital to the base hospital at Aromanis. He could remember nothing beyond the evac floater and the medic with the syringe. He'd known something was wrong with his hip, but now his guts hurt badly, too.

  He moved his head, his eyes finding a doctor with a captain's collar lozenge. The doctor saw his movement and spoke to him.

  "You're back with us, eh?"

  "More or less," Varlik answered thickly.

  Taking a syringe from a case, the doctor walked over. "The pilot tells me you're the famous white T'swi," he said. "You keep dangerous company. I'm going to give you a little sedative now. It's another hour to the base hospital, and it's best if you sleep your way there."

  The way he hurt, it seemed a good idea, but he had a question first.

  "Wait, doc."

  The doctor paused.

  "How are the guys in my squad?"

  "I have no idea. I don't know who was in your squad."

  Varlik looked at him blankly. Some of them were probably aboard this craft, and if he asked by name . . . But he was having trouble thinking.

  "What happened to me? Something hit me in the hip, and then I couldn't move. Now my belly hurts."

  "You were hit in the ilium—part of the pelvis, the hip bone—and the left end of it was broken off. Then the bullet went through the abdominal cavity and some of its contents emerged through the obliquus externus on the right side. They opened you up at the field hospital at Beregesh and did a nice repair job. Now all you have to do is lie quietly in a nice cool ward at Aromanis and heal. Just like your buddies."

  The doctor pressed the syringe against Varlik's bare shoulder and fired it. Somehow it seemed to Varlik that he had more questions, but he couldn't remember what they were. Then the sedative took him.

  * * *

  It was one of the T'swa wards, a busy place well stocked with medical technicians and wounded. His Romblit doctor there told him with some amusement that reception had initially been unwilling to put him in a T'swa ward. True, he'd been brought in with T'swa wounded, and his tag said "Company A, T'swa Second Regiment," but clearly he was not T'swa. Then a big T'swa sergeant with his lower face heavily bandaged had gotten off his stretcher, backed the reception sergeant into a corner, gathered a fistful of shirt front, and in grunted, barely intelligible words, made it clear that all his squad went with him, Lormagen included.

  Varlik wondered if this was another case of facts inflated and embroidered, but the story pleased him. And he was glad to be where he was, a feeling that increased with the days. T'swa wards had a reputation among hospital personnel as the most cheerful, and T'swa the patients who were easiest to work with and recovered most rapidly.

  Meanwhile Varlik enjoyed a rich dream life, though he could never recall more than bits and pieces of his dreams. Long afterward, he'd remember his days in the T'swa ward as among the more pleasant of his life, even though it was there he learned that only four of the First Squad had survived, besides himself. Bik-Chan had been killed on the ridge, and Jinto had died on the evac floater of multiple wounds.

  On his first day they took him into surgery, where they welded his pelvis and did a mesh job on some ligaments. His visceral and major vascular damage had been handled at Beregesh.

  By the end of the third day he'd talked the hospital into giving him temporary use of a small examination room, and there, after recording a long and reassuring cube to Mauen, he narrated his report on the T'swa raiders and the last days of the First Squad, then edited cubes both for newsfacs and broadcasting. This took him two days—his energy level was low—but when he was done, the cube was the best facs feature he'd ever seen or heard.

  Three days later General Lamons came through the ward, pinning medals on the wounded. Varlik, who'd been sitting in bed reading, was deeply surprised, but not too surprised to slip on his visor and pick up his camera. Lamons saw him with it, scowled only briefly, then continued. When he got to Varlik's bed, he stepped in beside it and looked down at him. Varlik set the camera aside, though the audio recorder was still running.

  "Your T'swa have been doing a good job," said Lamons.<
br />
  "Yes, sir."

  "Your Colonel Koda showed me a copy of your reports on the T'swa interdiction teams. That was good work you did. Took guts."

  "Thank you, sir."

  The general grunted, then bent and pinned a medal on Varlik's pajama top. "Carry on," he said, then turned to the next bed.

  By that time the hospital had begun to feed Varlik solid food—not whatever he wanted, but solid food. And he was allowed to wheel himself to the "library," where boxes of books had been spread unsorted on tables. Walking would have to wait a while.

  It was in the library that he ran into Konni. Eight days earlier she'd been recording the hardening of perimeter defenses when a Bird lobber rocket had hit a hover truck less than twenty yards away. Pieces of truck had smashed her left humerus and cracked her left supraorbital ridge and four ribs, while small rocket fragments had struck her in the left arm and leg. The left side of her face was an interesting purplish-green.

  "My Revax is all right, though," she said, "and I ought to be out of here in about three weeks. The home office is sure to be sending another team out, so I'll probably go back to Iryala then, although . . . it's a temptation to stay. How about you?"

  How about him? He hadn't looked at that. And for the first time, it occurred to him that there was nothing here to report on the T'swa now except more of the same. Maybe later, if there was a later, if the T'swa were given a new assignment. But now . . .

  "I'm going to Tyss," he said. The statement took him totally by surprise, but he continued from there. "To the world that produces the T'swa regiments. There are guys going there from my ward—guys disabled or requiring prolonged rehab and reconditioning. I should be able to talk my way into going with them."

  Having said it, he felt a pang of guilt. He could, after all, go home to Mauen now if he wanted to, and they could start the family they'd been approved for. Central News wouldn't complain. After all, he'd almost been killed. Probably they'd treat him like a hero.