Their Majesties' Bucketeers

by L. Neil Smith

  I was disinclined, after spending the evening as I had so far, to commiserate much with him, but the evidence gathered thus far was a fascinating and frustrating logical puzzle. “Quite so—I suppose even a splinter out of place might be significant, mightn’t it? After all—”

  “By Pah’s sandy plains, I believe you have something there! We must hurry. I am sorry now I insisted upon walking—you were right, we should have taken a cab. There’s work to be done at the Museum!”

  I looked around me, having forgotten for a while to be afraid of my surroundings, and now, reminded of them once again, felt my fur falling flat with nervous anxiety. “You’re the one who said it would be ‘broadening’ for me to walk with you through the Kiiden. Well, you’re—”

  “Stand where you are,” hissed a voice from an alleyway. “Compose yourselves, for you’re about to meet your Maker!”

  VI: Lam of the Eastern Plains

  With vision-blurring alacrity, Mav leapt between me and the vicious brace of eye-blades that slithered around the corner. We retreated, step by step, as a daunting figure emerged from the alleyway, a darkly pelted lam of giant stature in the rough attire of a seafarer, his furry covering shirred in many places with a multitude of ancient and badly healed scars. Fully a hand-width taller than my companion and of incomparably greater bulk, his glittering sword points made tiny, menacing circles in the air before us.

  “Remsi vy’ by onsen, nrdeikaz!” He gestured with his empty middle hand. “By reban yat ot me avima!” We’d backed ourselves nearly to the curb, Mav reaching beneath his cloak, when a Fodduan voice behind the sailor warned:

  “My friend says stand where you are—there is nothing you can do to save yourselves!” I let my kitbag slide a little from my shoulder, ready to swing it with all the energy at my command, for I was determined, despite the trembling in my legs, that neither of our accosters should buy our lives as cheaply as they apparently expected.

  Mav drew his pistol, and the sealam lunged! One sword thrust through the eye—the only certain way to reach the brain—would leave its victim lying dead upon the paving stones.

  BANG! The sailor lurched, one of his weapons ringing where he dropped it, yet Mav’s bullet whined without further damage off the fellow’s carapace, gouging a brick wall across the alley. Dust and splinters showered down upon the second footpad, distracting him as he, too, made to reach beneath his cape. Mav held the sailor at bay a frozen fraction of the same instant, reciprocator muzzle to sword point.

  Marveling that I could even stir a limb, I crouched to scoop up the fallen sword as the Fodduan whisked out a smaller pistol of his own. Scarcely thinking, I slashed downward; his rightmost hand, the weapon locked between its fingers, leapt off his arm, thudding to the ground. He screamed—there was the briefest gout of blood before his reflexes fully took over—then, without turning, he ran and vanished down the street.

  Mav’s reciprocator never wavered. The bullet-stunned foreigner, deserted by his wounded comrade, cast an eye about desperately. “Katbami to hamodypen, vezis-ldesa! Fy tid ledyn wad fatat…Vyom hyden—!” He threw his sword point-first at Mav, who batted it away with relative aplomb. Yet before either of us could recover, the sailor ducked into the shadows and, like his companion, was gone.

  “Damp!” Mav reholstered his pistol, retrieving the other fellow’s gun where the slowly dying hand had released it. “Ah, well, I suppose it would have done us little good to shoot him, though there are a number of questions I should like to have—” He stepped back to fix me with a quizzical expression. “That lizard-sticker’s definitely you, dear Mymy. With ragged breeks and, perhaps, an eyepatch, you’d make quite the pirate!”

  I stared at the deadly thing in my hand, suddenly aware what I had done. The discarapaced hand squirming ever more slowly on the flagging at our feet seemed to point an accusing finger at me.

  I dropped the sword in revulsion. “Please be kind enough not to joke! For the love of Pah, Mav, I have just committed mayhem upon a fellow lamviin!” In the deepest recesses of my being, I felt ill and actually made to sit down upon the dirty paving.

  “Get up from there, Bucketeer! Do you hear me? That fellow was preparing to shoot one of us, and his accomplice seemed more than willing to put my lights out forever!” He turned the little pistol over in his hand, examining it.

  “But I’m a paracauterist,” I mumbled, a queer paralysis beginning to settle over my limbs, “sworn to saving lives, not taking them!”

  “Which is precisely what you have done. Get up, I say! The miscreant will grow a brand-new complement of digits before the year is out, and we are still breathing—an altogether ethical and satisfactory transaction, in my opinion.” He picked up the sword I’d let drop, turned, then plucked out, from where it still quivered in a telegraph pole, that which the sailor had thrown at him. “Great Desiccation, they’re Podfettian Navy issue!”

  This prompted further scrutiny of the pistol—a double-barreled contrivance designed chiefly for concealability—which, according to Mav, was of expensive private manufacture, the handiwork of Rammeth & Rammeth, a local firm that even I had heard of. He began searching round for other evidence, complaining bitterly at the lack of a lantern.

  I regained my composure, comforted—at least intellectually—by Mav’s earlier words, yet still inclined to tremble rather more than I cared showing. “Podfettian? I thought I recognized the fellow’s lingo. I wonder what—”

  “He asked us not to hurt him, and vouchsafed that he had only done what he was doing for the money. That is when he threw the sword!” He tucked the small, lightweight weapon with its mate under an arm, then did something with the little gun.

  “Well, do you suppose—”

  “Mymy, if I have learned anything at all from this adventure so far, it is not to suppose too much on little evidence. You’re still quite shaken, aren’t you? Take my arm, then, if you will, and when you feel equal to it, we will walk back to that cabstand, as we should have done in the beginning.”

  Which is precisely what we did. Despite Mav’s dissertation on the ethics of self-defense, I couldn’t rid my memory of the wounded fellow’s screaming. It was little help, indeed, that Mav had insisted upon wrapping the amputated hand in a kerchief and bringing it along with us. “One never knows the sort of thing that will eventually constitute evidence, my dear.” He assisted me in boarding the cab, advising the driver—who was taken aback somewhat by the many weapon-shaped lumps beneath my companion’s cloak (yet this was, after all, the Kiiden)—of our destination. This surprised me; however, it was unlike Mav to be deterred by even such an occurrence as being attacked in the street. My own self-esteem required that I agree cheerfully to accompany him to the Museum as we had originally planned.

  The taxi rocked and jostled us about, further troubling my uneasy stomachs. “I do apologize, Mav, for being such a child, but surely you must understand how deliberately hurting someone flies directly in the eyes of everything I’ve believed since long before I knew what gender I would be.”

  His fur rippled kindly assent. “Indeed, my dear, and I sympathize. I myself owe you an apology, not only for my unfeeling words back there, but for failing to remember how I took my own first exsanguinary experience.”

  “Your first? You mean to say—”

  “Yes, I am ashamed that, in my checkered career, I have had rather more than one. But there was a time, when I was considerably younger than you are, when all of that was still before me.…”

  You will recall (he told me) that my father was an Army colonel with our Imperial garrison in the Dominion of Dezer, whose ancient and mysterious culture he came to love and respect and whose subjects he attempted to govern with kindness and enlightenment. My mother was—or rather, is—a fine lady of the native nobility who shared her husband’s dream of blending the best from two civilizations and, for all that she deplored the violence of conquest, was grateful that the Empire of Great Foddu had come to end the ignorance and poverty of he
r people.

  I should likely have grown up to be a colonial officer as well, except that my surfather, a newspaper correspondent—and yes, a Podfettian national—taught me to dream of adventure in faraway places vastly stranger and more wonderful (as is always the case with faraway places) than even Dezer itself. It is the simple truth that rhe had been dispatched by rher government to spy upon our garrisons, if possible to foment rebellion, but rhe fell in love, both with my father’s visions and my mother’s great beauty. Thus the trine was married and I came into the world.

  In consequence of my unorthodox upbringing, I sometime later lied about my age and joined the Imperial Air Navy. Although he uttered not a word about it to his dying day, I’m certain Father never overcame his disappointment with my choice of Service. But admirable as they were, his dreams and ambitions were not mine, and my own, however nebulous and unformed they may have been, cried out for satisfaction. Eventually I was billeted to a post two whole continents away, deep in the interior of Einnyo, a rough-and-ready, totally uncivilized, and sparsely inhabited place of unparalleled promise—and instant death for those even momentarily unwary.

  I’d dreamt of flying giant airships, but instead—there being so few of the expensive craft available, I suppose, for the amusement of half-caste subalterns still adjusting to a newly entered masculinity—found myself appointed the number-three lam at a two-officer hydrogen station from which irregular patrols were launched across the flat and endless prairie that composes most of the continent. Occasionally savages, fierce peculiar fellows of smoky-gray color and short, bristly fur, would come to barter with us in their stoic manner. They hadn’t very much of worldly goods—scrubby little half-tamed watun, woven tents that folded up quite cunningly, and now and again they killed a game animal or two they couldn’t use, which was welcomed by us as a supplement to dreary Imperial rations. They were happy to receive in return what trinkets we could scrape together—chiefly mirrors and, if you will believe it, magnifying lenses much like yours with which they found it more convenient to light campfires than by rubbing dried-out cactus stems together. They were fond, too, of our inhaling fluid, but we were officially proscribed from trading amber to them, which they ardently desired, because the Admiralty feared that, employing furs or other fabrics in the ancient manner of our ancestors, they might become intoxicated, arousing some baser passions within them for rapine and murder.

  Service on the frontier is chiefly characterized by unendurable periods of stifling inactivity. Yet I discovered ways to ameliorate this condition. I found that I could persuade the airshiplamn into giving me occasional rides—my skill at games of chance had rather a lot to do with this, and, for their part, they were delighted I was willing to accept such excursions in lieu of the money they owed me. A thousand lam-heights above the rolling plains…I can’t recall being happier in my life, then or now. The steam engines—also driven by hydrogen, which we supplied—were exceedingly quiet—far quieter, indeed, than the soul-stirring sound of wind whistling through the airship’s wire bracings and the creaking spars of rher gondola. After a few such outings, even the captain grew to trust me with certain homely little chores of airlamnship, and I was highly gratified.

  Upon the fatal day, we had driven deeply into the empty plains, farther, perhaps, than these patrols were accustomed to flying ordinarily, certainly well beyond sight of the semaphore towers by means of which the Navy communicates with its ships at sea or in the air. Below us, yellow algaesand and low-lying orange cactus forests seemed to stretch into infinity; the shadow of our little craft raced and rippled like a living creature across the gently undulating countryside.

  Suddenly we spied a waggon convoy of colonists, and I knew why this exceptionally long mission had been posted. Their teams of great, slow-moving ajotiin lumbered toward whatever far-off settlement earlier brave and hardy souls had established in the interior. We drifted lower, giving them a cheery wave, and, as we did so, from a declivity ahead some several hundred savages arose, thundered toward the waggons as rapidly as watun can be driven, and filled the air below our keel with arrows.

  The bows these fellows used were something to write home about—provided that you lived through the encounter. Over two lam-heights in length, they cast an arrow half that long nearly a third of a fymo to bury its shaft in seasoned treewood (if such should happen to obstruct its path) so deeply it would take a squad of Bucketeers and a brace of watun to extract.

  The pioneer company did what pioneer companies always do: formed their waggons into a triangle, watun yoke to rear wheel, and prepared themselves to receive the hostiles. The glint and flash of Fodduan gun barrels was plain to see even five hundred lam-heights above.

  The savages were master watunslamn, having, for all that they were primitive in other respects, invented something we of Foddu have failed even to conceive: instead of battle chariots or waggons, they strap a circular device of leather, not unlike the tyre of a carriage, atop the beast to force its jaws shut and provide a comfortable seat for a rider. This harnessing they duplicate above, as well, fastening themselves so that they may dash about with frightening agility and use all three sets of arms to deliver arrows, eye spears, or stunning blows from massive war hammers. Fighting one of them is like engaging any three ordinary soldiers, so brave and intelligent are they.

  Nor were they without a sense of tactics. They formed a rapidly moving ring around the company, nearly out of rifle range, drawing Fodduan fire and showering their deadly arrows down into the triangle of waggons. A dozen people fell before even the first Fodduan volley was fired.

  The captain of our airship was inclined to swoop down to the colonists’ aid. We had aboard a newly issued rotary machine gun, but it had been intended for use against other aircraft and, on that account, could not be depressed far enough in its mounting for targets on the ground—a typically stupid Imperial oversight. He gave an order for descent and I drew my sidearm—a Navy revolver in those days—which I was accustomed to carrying in hostile territory. We wafted lower and lower, delayed considerably by a mild headwind, which made the ship bob up and down and forced us all to cling to stanchions and guy wires to keep our footing.

  Forward in the gondola, the gun crew, readying their weapon, cried out that we were nearly low enough to suit them, when abruptly, the lookout sitting at the top of his tunnel tube through the gasbag shouted down for us to observe the savages, some number of whom had dismounted and were employing the same breeze we fought to their own advantage. Through a telescope mounted on the rail near me, I could see that they were wrapping some material around their arrows and setting it afire—most likely with the very glasses and inhaling fluid we had traded them. These flaming projectiles they were raining down upon the colonists, who doused them frantically with the abundant sand around them. The captain’s fur stood straight upon his carapace at the sight, and he cursed and screamed at the crew to get us aloft again. Should even one of these fiery missiles penetrate the skin of our aircraft, rhe—and we with rher—would perish in a trice.

  However, it was dear that the waggoners below were dreadfully outnumbered, and if we could not assist them, they would die in our stead. This, I maintained somewhat forcefully to the captain, was not the proper order of things for the Imperial Air Navy, but he continued giving orders that would take us safely out of range of the flaming arrows.

  On their little railed porch at the front of the gondola, the gun crew were frantic, having had their prey snatched from them and being forced to watch the slow but certain attrition beneath us. One glance into their fur and I was sure of them. I leveled my pistol straight at the captain’s eye and ordered him to halt his unlamly retreat. You see, I had remembered a chemistry demonstration from my school days: our ship was surely doomed if we aided the colonists, yet if our altitude were such to permit the gun crew to operate, then the rest of us might jump clear toward the end of the run—because hydrogen bums upward, leaving cool air below.

  I stood my gro
und, confronting the captain across his steering wheel. His minions were stunned into silence by my mutinous behavior, but behind me I could see the gun crew ripping off the tops of crates of loaded magazines and twisting their elevation screw nearly off its threads to get the muzzle down.

  At the click of my revolver hammer locking in the sear, the captain’s fur drooped resignedly and he shouted out the orders I had given him. Our bow fell once again and we headed toward the waggon train. The rotary machine gun began to chatter and spew empty brass cases long before we were properly in range, but the puffs of dust near the savages’ position had two immediate effects: they ceased firing at the colonists—we could hear hearty cheering from the waggons even at this great height—and the savages began firing upon us!

  Nearer and nearer we drew, our trim adjusted at a steep bow-angle, until the savages must retreat or be churned to sausage beneath the hammering of our gun. I forgot the captain now and slid a window back to add my minimal firepower to that of the machine gun. To his credit, the captain maintained course, and I was joined in my efforts by others who had taken long, very accurate rifles from the ship’s locker.

  Lower and lower we sank until the updrafts from the fires started by the savage arrows made it necessary to cast off hydrogen and we dropped with a heartsstopping rush. The savages, to give them their due, refused to be routed, but continued firing as we passed over the waggons and approached them. Yet they were being inexorably nonimated—we afterward counted upward of a hundred bodies, riddled with large-caliber bullets from the rotary gun, lying heaped among the carcasses of their faithful and equally valorous watun. They no longer had time now to get their fearsome arrows lit—which was a blessing and a comfort—and, consequently, those that penetrated our thin hull only lost us gas and added further to the headlong speed with which we fell upon them.