Their Master's war

by Mick Farren

  Elmo went red behind his facemask. "In case you hadn't noticed, there are a whole lot of replacements in this twenty, and I don't want them getting into bad habits."

  Dyrkin lifted his mask and spit on the ground. "Most of them've got more on the ball than you."

  "You can't talk to me like that."

  "Can't I? What are you going to do, shoot me?"

  He turned his back on Elmo and deliberately walked away. The overman shouted after him.

  "You'll be on a field punishment when we get back to the ship. This is a capital charge, Dyrkin."

  "I'll worry about that when we get to it."

  The others watched the confrontation in silence. It was the worst thing that could happen to a twenty. A noncom who'd lost it could be a death sentence for his men, and nobody in the twenty was in any doubt that Elmo had lost it. He stayed on his own again until the order came through that they were to move down into the fungus. The twenty fell automatically into single file and started downhill. Elmo didn't have anything to say or do until they came close the edge of the fungus. Their approach to the jungle had become so routine that Renchett, without question, started organizing four of the relacements into the front-line burning party to start carving into the dense, pulpy growth. He was quite amazed when Elmo stopped him.

  "No burn?"

  "We don't want any chibas knowing where we are." "They always know where we are." "We still don't burn."

  Renchett shook his head and looked to Dyrkin for support. "You want to check out what's going on over here?"

  Dyrkin shrugged. "Whatever the overman says. I'm already on his bad side."

  Renchett turned back to Elmo. "So what does the overman say?"

  "We move along the line of vegetation until we come to a natural trail. Then we move into the woods."

  Renchett put his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky.

  "I don't want to be bucking no orders here, but I've been in these woods a lot longer than you have, and one thing I know is that a natural trail is a damn-fool thing to be walking on."

  "That's as may be, Renchett, but as of now, and in these woods, we do it my way."

  Renchett turned away, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "You're the boss."

  "One more thing, Renchett."

  Renchett halted, but he didn't turn. "What's that?"

  "Take the point."

  "Me?"

  "You."

  "I don't walk point no more. I did it for too long."

  Elmo smiled nastily. "Now you do."

  Hark had been watching the exchange. Up until Elmo had smiled, he'd been willing to give the overman any reasonable break. The smile cut it. Elmo shouldn't be enjoying this. Hark wouldn't go against him, but if it came to it, he wouldn't be backing him, either.

  They walked slowly along the edge of the fungus. Elmo took up a position back along the line. He seemed to be forever glancing nervously into the jungle. Such behavior was known in the trade as seeing shadows, and it was considered a bad sign in anyone but the most raw recruit. They'd been walking for maybe a half hour, and the single file had started to loosen up. Kemlo fell into step beside Hark. He seemed to be favoring his artificial foot.

  "Foot hurting?"

  "Yeah, a little. It's the forsaken damp. I ain't as bad as him, though." He jerked his thumb back to where Siryn was having trouble keeping up.

  Hark looked back at the new fish. "He looks like he screwed up his lungs back there."

  "He ought to be e-vaced out."

  "That's Elmo's problem. Nothing we can do about it."

  "We ought to say something."

  "I don't figure Elmo's interested in anything we got to say. Renchett tried to tell him not to go down a natural trail, and he put him on point."

  "So you're taking an attitude, too."

  Hark looked sharply at Kemlo. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "You know what it's supposed to mean. Are you going to get with Dyrkin and Renchett and ride him into the ground?"

  "I ain't riding no one, but I ain't pretending that he's not a disaster waiting to happen, either. He's the worst. He knows he ain't going to live through this, but he's not quite ready to die. He's likely to take the whole lot of us with him."

  Elmo's voice sounded in their helmets. "Cut the gab and get back in line up there."

  Hark muttered under his breath. "Fuck you, asshole." "You say something?" "Not me, boss."

  Kemlo moved into place in front of Hark, and they walked in silence for a while. When it looked as if Elmo had forgotten about them, Kemlo fell back to rejoin Hark.

  "You figure we'll see any chiba action?"

  Hark shook his head. "Not yet. Not until we reach the head of the valley. Seems to me that the tower was supposed to slow us in this section."

  Kemlo cracked his mask for a couple of seconds.

  "If it wasn't for this damn mask, I'd grow a mustache."

  JD4-1A had a weird system of night and day. Its natural rotation was 960 standard minutes. It didn't, however, revolve directly around its parent sun. Although everyone referred to it as a planet, it was in fact the largest of the satellite moons of JD4-1, that sun's huge single planet. It took seventy-four of its days to circle the planet, and of those, forty-eight were a sequence of bright sunlit days and a strange half night, illuminated by the light reflected from the giant planet that all but filled the sky on the side that was turned away from the sun. After this cycle was complete, it passed into the sun's shadow and went through twenty-six days of total darkness. The operation on the Ten River was taking place roughly halfway through the light period.

  The sun was still high when Renchett called into the communicator. "Looks like we got a trail here, boss."

  The twenty halted. Elmo walked up to inspect the opening in the jungle.

  "What do you think made that?"

  It was Renchett's turn to grin. "It could be a lizard trail, although lizards don't usually come this high, or it could've been cut by the Yal so we could walk down it like a bunch of fucking idiots."

  Elmo hesitated, but Renchett offered no further advice. Finally he made up his mind.

  "We'll take the trail."

  "Do I still walk point?" "Until I say different."

  Renchett raised his weapon and gave the overman a hard look. For an instant, it appeared that Renchett was actually considering shooting Elmo, but then he turned and started down the trail.

  "Keep a careful watch on your detectors."

  Renchett glanced back. His lip curled. "You're telling me?"

  Elmo started moving the other men down the trail.

  "Keep a good distance between you. Stick to the edges of the trail."

  It was the most obvious advice that he could offer to a jungle patrol and totally redundant for men who had been through it before, but he insisted on repeating it to each man as he passed, The troopers largely ignored him. They adjusted their suits to full cover and ducked grimly under the overhang. Only Siryn seemed unwilling to plunge into the fungus. He appeared scarcely able to walk.

  "I… don't think I can go much farther." "You got a problem, boy?" "I can't breathe."

  "Shouldn't have opened your facemask, should you?" "Couldn't I just stay here? I'll only slow up the others."

  "You just keep going, boy. I don't have no cowards in my twenty."

  "I'm no coward. It's my lungs; they're screwed."

  Elmo gestured with his MEW. "Get walking, boy. I don't want to hear no more out of you."

  It was in the jungle that the fear really started. It closed in with the damp heat and the shadows. Very little light penetrated the thick overhead canopy, and heavy moisture dripped constantly from the sweating porous fronds. It was a place of gray monochrome gloom, ide ally suited to traps, ambush, and surprise attack hi sects, small lizards, and land crustaceans rustled ami scuttled in undergrowth that was festooned with the i cous webs of giant arachnids. The continual small noises stretched the troopers' nerves to th
e limit. They tried not to look into the shadows-that way led to hallucination and madness. The one thing that they were spared was the smell of fungoid rot. They were protected from that by their masks, but they could still feel its presence They tried to keep their eyes fixed on the green detector displays that were projected in front of their visors and would give them first warning of chiba movement or antipersonnel devices.

  The first leg of the advance down the overgrown hillside was largely uneventful. A replacement almost blasted a large albino butterfly but managed to restrain himself in time. In a small clearing, they stumbled across a dozen of the small, shovel-nosed lizards rooting in the mold. There was a flash of panic as the creatures blundered away into the fungus, but Dyrkin quickly took charge.

  "Hold your fire! It's nothing! Nobody fire!"

  The company halted. Some were shaking; all could feel sweat running down inside their suite.

  "Okay, everybody calm down. It was just a bunch of grunters."

  Elmo was moving down the line. For a moment, it looked as if he were going to come down on Dyrkin for taking command, but he must have thought better of it. He simply waved the column forward again.

  "Okay, let's keep going."

  The trail faded to nothing, and they had to burn their way through virgin jungle. Elmo made no argument when Renchett called up three replacements to do the burning, incinerating the fungus with their MEWs set on low-yield heat ray. Eventually they reached a water course where a tiny stream danced down the hillside in a series of sparkling waterfalls.

  As the terrain began to flatten out, the going became more difficult. The ground underfoot, which had previously been dry, turned into semiswamp. The mold now had the consistency of thick, clinging soup, and the men found that they were sinking almost to their knees. Even with the grav in their boots assisting them, progress was exhausting. With each step, swarms of tiny creatures flew up in billowing clouds. They tried to stick to the troopers' suits and helmets. The suits shook them off with spasmodic twitches of their black hides, but the visors had to be constantly wiped, otherwise the displays became distorted and unreadable. There was also another annoyance: The wheezing rasp of Siryn's breathing was audible in everyone's helmet.

  "Something should be done about him."

  "It looks like the jungle's going to do it."

  Siryn had fallen well behind the rest of the column to the point where if he dropped back any farther, he would be out of sight.

  "Hey, Elmo, Siryn isn't going to make it."

  Everyone in the company heard Hark's voice, and they stopped to see what would happen.

  "Shut your mouth, Hark. That fool isn't about to get any preferential treatment. He can hump his pod same as the rest of us."

  Siryn chose that moment to give up. He stumbled forward and fell helmet-down in the muck. Elmo slung his weapon over his shoulder and walked back down the line. The column halted, and the recruits stopped burning the fungus.

  "You all want to see what happens to cowards in my twenty?"

  He stood over the fallen rookie.

  "Get up, boy."

  Renchett was starting back from his front position "Leave him alone, Elmo."

  "Stay where you are, Renchett." Elmo bent over Siryn. "Are you going to get up?"

  The rookie's voice was little more than a gasp. "I can't."

  "Then take off your helmet. You ain't fit to wear it." Renchett was on the move again. "You're crazy Elmo."

  "I told you to stay where you are." Dyrkin was also coming down the line. "You can't kill him," Renchett said. "I said take off your helmet." "No!"

  Elmo reached down. He was almost gentle as he lifted off the helmet. "Now the mask."

  Siryn didn't say a word. There was a soft sucking noise as Elmo pulled the mask away from his face. He pushed the rookie down and held his head under the dirty water. It was only a matter of seconds before the boy stopped breathing.

  "You're insane!"

  Renchett was almost on top of Elmo. The overman straightened up. His MEW was in his hands and pointed at Renchett's stomach.

  "It'd give me a lot of pleasure, Renchett."

  Renchett halted. His own weapon was unslung but not aimed. Dyrkin caught up with him. Elmo continued to hold his gun level.

  "You too, Dyrkin?"

  Dyrkin also halted. "You didn't have to kill him. He could have been moved out."

  "Sometimes there has to be an example." "We all know what a corpse looks like."

  "The new meat have to know that this ain't no picnic."

  "Are you just going to leave him there?"

  Elmo took a step forward. "You got a better idea?"

  Both Renchett and Dyrkin were silent. Elmo smiled.

  "Not so brave now? So what's it going to be? Are you going to get back in line or do you want to join this one in the swamp?"

  There was a long moment of silent tension, then the two longtimers turned and walked back to their places in the line. Elmo actually laughed.

  "Hope the rest of you sorry bastards took a good look at that. There's just one leader in this twenty, and I don't want any of you to forget it."

  Hark hefted his MEW. Elmo had made a bad mistake, and sooner or later someone would see that he paid for it.

  "Okay, get moving and let's not have any more delays."

  The burning started again, and the smoke drifted back down the line. The twenty resumed their slow progress. They moved as if there were an extra weight on them; an ugly sullenness had been added to the heat, humidity, and fear. They continued cutting their way through the jungle for another forty minutes, and then the fungus started to open out a little and there was no longer any need to keep up the continuous burn.

  "You can spread out some."

  The column, which had bunched up behind the burners, opened up a little. The spaces between the men increased. The resentment seemed to decrease a little as the men became more watchful. This kind of country was a favorite with the chibas. There was enough space for an open order attack but also enough cover for them to lay an ambush. Hark cracked his mask for an instant and breathed out hard. Sweat had started to collect in the base of the mask, and that was the only way to get rid of the accumulation. If it built up for too long, it would start getting in his mouth. He would be glad when this day was finally over. He was tired and hungry and heartily sick of putting one foot in front of the other. When a trooper felt like that, he was no good to either himself or the twenty; he would fall into a dull semi-trance and never sense the danger until it was too late. Hark was close to that state when Renchett's voice rang in his helmet.

  "Hold up there! Everybody stop!"

  Hark came back with a start, angry that he'd allowed himself to drift. He held his weapon at the ready and quickly looked around, but there was nothing that he could see.

  Renchett's voice was immediately followed by Elmo's. "What are you trying to pull now, Renchett?"

  "I ain't trying to pull nothing. You'd better get up here and take a look at this."

  Twelve

  The bodies had been hideously mutilated. Although they were in an advanced state of decay and the mold worms had been at them, it was still all too obvious that they had been skinned by whatever had killed them. It was possible that they had been skinned alive. Their genitals had been cut off and stuffed in their mouths. There was no sign of their suits. They had been arranged in a neat line. It was as if they had been placed there just waiting for someone to discover them. The entire twenty gathered around and stared in silence. Hark sneaked a look at Elmo. He was as green behind his mask as any of the replacements.

  "What the hell did this?"

  "Chibas?"

  "Chibas don't work this way; they just kill." "Miggies don't have the smarts." "Unless it's some new kind of psych war programming."

  "Designed to get to us?" "If it is, it's working on me."

  One of the new men was gulping and pulling off his facemask. He turned away and vomited.

  "D
on't breathe in!"

  The man coughed twice, wiped his mouth, and put the mask back.

  Renchett was staring'down at the bodies, shaking his head. "I've done some weird stuff in my time but nothing as weird as this."

  Elmo finally found his voice. "Burn them!"

  Half the twenty leveled their weapons.

  "Stop! Don't fire!"

  Dyrkin, who had started walking away from the group, was waving his arms. The troopers hesitated. He started pulling the nearest men away from the bodies.

  "Get back! Get away from them!"

  Elmo glared at him from behind his visor.

  "Have you gone crazy?"

  "The goddamn things are quite likely to be booby-trapped. There may even be a proximity fuse. Everybody get back."

  Helot was the first to react. He'd been bending over one of the corpses, conducting some kind of morbid inspection. He jumped back as if he'd been scalded.

  "Damn! He's probably right."

  The longtimers stumbled away from the corpses, pushing the replacements in front of them. This time Elmo didn't argue; he simply moved with the rest. Everyone seemed to be looking to Dyrkin for guidance.

  "So what do we do with them?"

  "If we're smart, we don't do nothing."

  "We can't just leave them."

  "That's exactly what we should do. We don't know how the bodies may be gimmicked, and I figure the higher-ups will want to know about this. It's got to be something new."

  "We need Rance out here."

  Elmo didn't comment on the obvious insult. The troopers-didn't even bother to look at him.

  "We won't hook up with Rance until we get down to the river."

  "So let's press on to the river."

  The longtimers finally turned toward Elmo. They were waiting for him to validate their decision with a formal order.

  He looked from face to face, and then he nodded.

  "Okay, we take a fix on this place and move on."

  Renchett helfted his MEW. "Let's get the fuck out of here." It seemed that Renchett was actually volunteering to go on walking point. "Just don't nobody be talking to me.

  They pushed on through the forest. A deep gloom had settled over the twenty. They were used to the constant presence of death, and even the idea that any one of them might lose limbs or be blown apart at an given moment. It was part of the function of war, part of their reality. They were so used to bodies twisted into mangled and distorted shapes that the sight of them could even inspire outbreaks of ghoulish humor. This deliberate mutilation, however, was something else. There was a gratuitousness about it that shocked men who thought they were no longer shockable. It wasn't part of the function, it was something extra, and that gave them a chill. This war was no place for extras.