Freedom's Choice

by Anne McCaffrey

  Vic Yowell was back on duty, standing squarely in the inset door, his expression inscrutable until Mitford leaned out of the driver’s side of the trundler.

  “Open up, will ya, Vic. I’ve requisitioned some of the gear on board to outfit my scouting teams.”

  Vic took no exception to that and pushed the main door back. So Mitford reversed the vehicle right up to the hatch, the load bed almost level with it. With Joe, Sarah, Whitby, Leila, Pete, and Mitford working quickly and quietly, Kris checked off the items they were taking from the inventory list. They soon had emptied the passageway lockers. While the others were stowing the last acquisitions, Mitford took a quick look at the arsenal and closed that compartment firmly.

  Temptation, step behind me, Kris thought.

  Just then Scott appeared in the forward end of the passageway.

  “What’re you doing, sergeant?”

  “Looking at the arsenal sir. Could be useful.”

  “Pete and I have just finished the inventory of the lockers, admiral,” Kris added, holding up the pad.

  “Good idea, Bjornsen. Carry on.”

  “We will,” she said jauntily, and, stifling a giggle at her deception, she followed Mitford out.

  “Get what you needed?” Vic asked as the flatbed silently moved out of the hangar.

  “I think so,” Mitford said, and elbowed Sarah before she laughed loud enough for Vic to hear.

  * * *

  They had their loot all neatly stored at the back of Mitford’s office covered with Catteni-issue blankets. The rest of Kris’ team went to get some lunch while Mitford called in Judy Blane, who’d been a cartographer. He wanted to match the photos to their appropriate areas on the map. Meanwhile, Mitford called in the recon squads he wanted, ordered travel food from the kitchen, and was ready to equip them as soon as they reported in.

  “Before the brass-heads find out where it’s all gone to,” Kris said when the sergeant paused briefly.

  “Brass-heads?” He chuckled. “Zainal?” She nodded.

  “Are you going to lead a group this time, sarge, and get out of their way?”

  He shook his head with a rueful smile and grimace. “Naw, not this time. I figure I better hang around.”

  “I can’t say I’m not happy you will, Chuck,” she said, tilting her head toward the hangar and the “brass-heads” occupying it. “But you deserve to get out of here for a while and clear your head. You’ve done more than your share. You need some R and R.”

  “I’ll go after Phase Two’s complete. And don’t you worry, Kris. No matter what they decide in their conferences and brass-headed strategy meetings, they need Zainal more than he needs them. Or us.” Then he leveled a cocky grin at her. “With the exception of you…Bjornsen.”

  “Scott doesn’t trust him at all,” Kris said, perching on the edge of the worktop.

  “The admiral doesn’t trust anyone,” Mitford said with a snort, folding his arms across his chest. “For starters, he’s stuck on dry land, which isn’t really where he functions best. But distrust’s not altogether a bad habit.”

  A knock on the door, which opened without his permission, disclosed the first of the teams he’d called in, Ninety Doyle’s. The Scandinavians arrived, breathlessly eager, before Mitford could brief Ninety’s squad on the current situation. Kris left him to it and eased herself out of the now crowded office and went to get some lunch.

  Part of the original strategy-and-tactics group were still busy at the end table and those coming in to eat left a sort of no-man’s-land of unused tables around the area to maintain their privacy. She picked up her lunch of soup and fresh bread and made her way to where Sarah, Joe, Leila, and Whitby were sitting.

  “Are we going to get to use some of that beaut gear?” Joe asked.

  “We won’t be going out…”

  “Until the brass start believing Zainal?” Sarah asked in caustic voice.

  “Oh, I think they believe him,” Kris said.

  “It’s trust that’s lacking,” Whitby added when she paused.

  “I would rather wait until Zainal comes with us,” Leila remarked in her quiet but firm way, and sipped soup.

  “Besides which, I wouldn’t want to miss Phase Two for anything,” Joe added. “Got any update on that, Kris?”

  She shook her head and gave a little snort, jerking her thumb toward the earnest knot of men at the end table. “They have to make up their minds first.”

  “Whaddya bet they’ll end up doing what Zainal suggested in the first place?” Joe asked, looking around the table.

  “Just so long as they make up their minds before the next transport gets here,” Sarah said. “It could come any day now, too, judging by the frequency we’ve been getting drops lately.”

  “You’d think they were planning World War Three,” Whitby said, entering the conversation, “instead of a minor commando action.”

  They had just finished their meal when the rumble of male voices was heard, heralding the arrival of Scott, Fetterman, Rastancil, Beverly, Marrucci, and Zainal. Zainal halted at the door, surveying the room, spotted Kris, and, cocking his finger at her, indicated she was to join them at the strategy table.

  “I’ve been paged,” she said, cleaning the corners of her mouth of any traces of soup with two fingers and brushing bread crumbs off her front with the other hand as she rose. “Hang about, will you?”

  “Over at Mitford’s, dear,” Sarah said, also rising. “I don’t want to get sucked into another session of KP just because we’re all sitting here looking as if we’re doing nothing.”

  “Which we are,” said Joe, but he got up, too, and as Kris joined Zainal, they all left the mess hall. Peter Easley passed them on his way in, sauntering in that easy bent-knee gait, pausing to exchange a few words and a laugh.

  As he came up, he winked at Kris.

  “There you are, Easley,” Scott said. “When can the next transport be expected?”

  “Anytime now,” Easley replied indifferently.

  Every one turned around to stare at him.

  “They come when they have a full load, evidently,” he said, and looked to Zainal, who shrugged.

  “Last one was eight days ago. Sometimes there’s twenty-one days between drops.” He dismissed that concern with a flick of his fingers. “Deskis hear the best. Deskis spread out…” and now he waved his big hand, splay-fingered, over the map that occupied one end of the long table. “They hear. They report.”

  “And they have been using the same field they dropped us in?” Scott asked.

  “Lately at any rate,” Easley said, grinning at Zainal, “ever since Zainal had a little word with them.”

  “Can the Deskis be trusted?” Rastancil asked.

  “With what?” Kris asked. “Hearing or reporting?”

  “Do they know how to use comunits?” Scott asked, ignoring her remark.

  “The ones we have even your grandmother could manage,” Kris snapped back, “begging your grandmother’s pardon,” she added, making herself grin at Scott’s indignant reaction.

  “Are they capable of giving a detailed enough report, though?” Beverly asked, slightly more respectfully. “I mean, I’ve never heard them use more than one word.?

  “What more is needed? ‘Hear ship. Comes down near. Comes down far. Your way,’” Zainal said, and Kris was delighted to hear him effect the odd tonality of the Deski voice.

  “A Deski did all right warning us about the scout,” she added. “And telling Worrell exactly where it had landed.”

  “Point,” Beverly said. “So we can count on their ears…”

  “And eyes,” Easley added. “Deskis and Rugarians are also blessed with exceedingly acute night vision.”

  “Send a human along if you’re worried,” Kris suggested.

  “No need,” Zainal said, and then took out of his coverall a sheaf of pictures, evidently second copies of the ones now being examined in Mitford’s office. He spread them on the table, while some of the other
tacticians exclaimed and reached out for one to examine. Zainal found the one he wanted. “This is the line I flew in.”

  It had been taken at an altitude of the descent well above the cliffs in which Camp Narrow was located but showed the fields leading to what was now called the Drop Field. The scope of the photo included the third drop area, and the boggy swamp where Zainal had lain, wounded by the toxic thorns.

  “Drop made here, too.” He put his finger squarely on the little patch of field.

  “But all the others have been made here,” and Easley pointed to the Drop Field.

  “Good cover for troops in those hedges. We can improve on it, though,” Fetterman said, indicating the three upper sides.

  “And move forward when enough crates have been positioned,” and Rastancil tapped a pencil on the spot where the supplies were usually unloaded.

  “There are some spare Catteni uniforms on the scout…” Kris said. “They’ll have to be washed first, but I saw them in the lockers. So guys stocky enough could actually get on board easily.”

  “Catteni don’t talk much when unloading,” Easley said, having watched the procedure often enough in his official capacity as inflow officer. “Most don’t even carry whip or stunner.”

  The whole procedure was then gone over and over until Kris felt her stomach rolling. She hated meetings where the obvious got repeated and repeated and no conclusions made. Once, when she shifted impatiently, she felt Zainal, who was sitting next to her, press his leg against hers and she settled for a little while longer.

  Then orders were issued for Deski teams—Easley, Beverly, and Rastancil backed Zainal’s assurance that the aliens would manage such a duty without a human counterpart—to spread out in a wide circle around the sprawling human settlement, equipped with comunits, to report the first rumble of an approaching transport ship. They were given extra rations and blankets and a translation in Deski by Zainal of their orders, in case they hadn’t understood Beverly’s. They had grinned broadly enough when they listened intently to the black general but they hiccuped with amusement after Zainal’s remarks. Kris saw that he was smiling back at them, but his face was serious as he turned back to the brass-heads.

  “Now, we wait,” he said.

  “No, now we train the assault forces,” Scott said, and he marched off with those who were assisting him in that. The others drifted away, gathering up their notes and maps and papers, and leaving, probably to get some sleep.

  “You cleared equipment?” Zainal asked Kris as he guided her to the buffet table to get some lunch.

  “Everything that looked useful—except the dirty uniforms.”

  She asked for a cup of the herbal tea and joined him at the table he took, set at the opposite end of the mess hall from the conference area, in an unoccupied corner. All day and night, people drifted in and out of the mess hall, eating whenever their duties permitted. Kris noticed Aarens coming in, arguing with a man she recognized as a senior design engineer. Aarens had lost a lot of his arrogance, though he still maintained a unique position as a clever adapter of useful gadgets from the Farmers’ materials.

  “By now the sergeant probably has sent most of it out with the scout teams he called in.”

  Zainal grinned slightly. “Did he go?”

  Kris shook her head. “He’s got the right to be in on Phase Two.”

  Zainal nodded. “He is.”

  “Oh, was that decided in the scout?”

  “I believe so.” Something else about this morning amused Zainal, and although she tried to get him to tell her, he shook his head.

  “Not to worry,” he said. “He is in his office?”

  “Probably.” She stood as Zainal did. When they had carried their dishes to the weary young woman who was handling that chore, they made for Mitford’s office.

  Although he called a cheery “Come in” when they knocked at the door, he was not alone. A rather officious-looking young man with a receding hairline, holding a clipboard fashioned from a piece of supply crate, was jotting notes down as fast as he could write. Glancing to the back of the office, Kris noticed that the equipment, which had reached nearly to the ceiling when they finished unpacking it that morning, was down to a single level in most places.

  “I’m in charge of recon groups and I sent all of them out, properly equipped for the first time. You tell Admiral Scott that we took nothing else.” Mitford flipped an indolent finger at the neatly stacked inventory sheets Kris had made. “All signed out or accounted for. Not a damned thing he’d need for an assault force or training. Ah, Zainal, come to brief me on the overall picture? Well, this in-die-vid-jual’s just leaving. Aren’t you, son?”

  “As I told you earlier, sergeant,” the man said in an icy tone, stressing the rank. “I was Admiral Scott’s aide in the resistance…”

  “And still no doubt an admirable aide in this one,” Mitford said, “but, lieutenant, we’re all droppees here on Botany, ain’t we, Zainal?”

  “We dropped. We stay.” Zainal held the door politely open for the lieutenant to leave by.

  As soon as he was gone, Mitford dropped his chair on all four legs and whistled softly. “Damn fool. Scott, too. Not a fragging thing he’d need, and my teams do.”

  “Good on you, sarge,” Kris said, chuckling as she settled down on a stool. Zainal pulled one up closer to the desk and she let him tell Mitford what had happened so far.

  * * *

  As occasionally happens with well-laid plans, and just about the time everyone in Camp Narrow started to get real antsy from the waiting, a Deski called in to the command post in the dim light of false dawn five days later. Mitford happened to be duty officer on that shift.

  “Comes now. Bad noise. Bad smell,” she said. “Wrong noise.”

  “What could she mean by that?” Beverly asked. He’d jumped out of his cot in the duty office and was hunched over the hand unit which Mitford had politely tilted so the general could hear the report, which Mitford asked Tul to repeat.

  “Let’s ask Zainal.” He rose and shook awake the runners who’d been stationed in the office for this contingency. Each of the youngsters knew who he was to waken and where they were bunked. Then he turned to the diagram on the wall which showed the position of each Deski. “Hmmm. Tul’s here,” and he pointed. “If it was coming in properly, we should have heard from Fek.” He moved his finger, and drew it in a straight line down to the Drop Field. “Off course?”

  Beverly ran a straight line from Tul’s position and wound up klicks away from the usual area. “We’d better get vehicles ready.”

  He was gone before Mitford could remind Beverly that they had plenty of leeway to get to a different position, and still mount the rehearsed assault.

  Narrow was not the only camp alerted. The Deski followed Zainal’s orders to contact Narrow first, and then their camps. Worrell called in to ask for instructions. Even Camp Bella Vista, up in the hills, had been included in the contingency plans that the brass-heads had made. Well, it was something to do to keep busy until Phase Two actually started. It had!

  Fek’s report came in a moment before Zainal, Kris, and the rest of their team arrived.

  “It comes. Noisy,” Fek said.

  “Where is it headed, Fek?” Mitford asked.

  “You,” she answered.

  “Thanks, Fek. Keep listening. Tul said the noise is wrong.”

  “Is.” Fek agreed, and Zainal nodded to indicate he had heard and understood.

  “Kris, find Beverly and tell him it’s headed here after all,” Mitford said. “He’ll be at the main garage. Why would a transport be making a ‘wrong noise,’ Zainal?”

  Zainal cocked his head. “I told you ship’s not in good condition. I must hear noise to make a guess. I go up!” He pointed to the roof of the office.

  A ladder had been affixed in one of the alleys between barns to reach the cliffs against which they were backed.

  Mitford swore but stayed on the comunit desk for any further reports.r />
  Two more Deski listeners reported in, also remarking on “wrong noise.” A runner came back and Mitford beckoned him to the desk and the comunit while he went outside to listen. There was so much noise now, with men and women running up and down, seeking their assigned vehicles, getting their gear on, that he gave up and went back inside.

  His comunit went off again. This time it was Zainal.

  “I hear wrong noise, too. Ship in trouble. Drive is bad.”

  “Fraggit. We need an operational ship,” Mitford said, hopes blasted by the news.

  “Not to worry. Attack plan may need change.”

  “Not if Scott has anything to say about it and he is in charge of Phase Two.”

  “Phase Two is my idea,” Zainal said, and the comunit went dead.

  * * *

  It wasn’t long before everyone could hear the transport, wheezing and rumbling and giving off hoarse metallic shrieks, landing lights blazing and onboard sirens audible. The surface force made it to the Drop Field, and into their assigned positions, before the ailing transport came into view, barely skimming the lodge-pole trees and skidding to a stop, rather than landing. As many landings as Mitford had already seen, some bouncing several times, others skidding to a stop, this was the worst. He dreaded to think of the unconscious bodies being thrown around inside the shallow decks.

  Steam poured out of the base of the transport. The main hatch opened and Catteni, coughing, sneezing, staggering, made a disorderly descent from the vessel. All of them. Mitford counted twenty, which Zainal had estimated was the usual crew complement. And they were running as fast as they could, away from the ship.

  Zainal ran into the light, waving a stunner and barking orders. He pointed to one of the faster runners.

  “Get him!” he called in English, and roared louder in Catteni.

  The vanguard did not slow and Zainal left off a stun bolt, hitting the Catteni in the head—a mortal shot—and got the next two in the legs. They fell, moaning in frustration. That was enough to halt the others and make them turn around, hands in the air. He barked another order and they reluctantly retraced their steps, their eyes wide and frightened, darting anxiously from Zainal to the hulk they had somehow managed to land.