Mamelukes

by Jerry Pournelle

  “Not here and not within earshot, Major. I’ve got Passavopolous out there watching the perimeter,” Bisso said.

  “Just in case,” Rick said. “The locals will be very curious about what star men say to each other. I expect someone has informed the King already. How did it go?”

  “All very correct, Colonel,” Mason said. He took his seat at the table. “Not a lot to report, though. They sent an English—well, Scot—subaltern, their idea of someone expendable.”

  “Art, you are not expendable—”

  “I know that, Colonel. I volunteered ’cause I’m as curious as anyone here! Anyway, you’ll meet their Major Baker tomorrow, a klick west of where I met Lieutenant Cargill. Tomorrow at True Sun zenith. Truce until then. And no one else is to know about this.”

  “No one else? Like who?”

  “Like the people we work for,” Mason said. “Cargill was explicit about that.” Mason’s voice changed to a bad imitation of a Scots accent. “Major Baker said that ‘our employers would not appreciate private conferences among us, don’t you agree?’ Something like that.”

  “Man, he’s right there,” Warner said. “Can you imagine what the little king would say if he knew? Put them Gurkhas with our troops and we can name the next High Rexja right off.”

  “It would still be a long campaign, now that Matthias is alerted, but I suppose that’s true enough.” Rick agreed. “Did Cargill say anything like that?”

  “No, Sir. Just that we ought to keep these conferences to ourselves.”

  “You trust them to keep a truce?”

  Mason shrugged.

  “Don’t reckon it matters what I think. I sure wouldn’t call off the guards.”

  “We won’t. So. What are they doing here?”

  “Damned if I know, Colonel. Cargill wasn’t there to give away information. Or swap any, either. All business. Respectful, though. Plenty of ‘sirs’ after I introduced myself as a major. But he didn’t give anything away.”

  “Begging your pardon, Colonel, but I don’t like this parley business much,” Sergeant Bisso said.

  “Come to that, I don’t either,” Mason said. “But my orders were to arrange a meeting, and I did that. Don’t mean I think the Colonel ought to go to that meeting. I may not be expendable, but I’m more so than the Colonel.”

  “But you’re convinced Cargill is genuine?” Rick asked.

  “Genuine how, Sir? He sure seems like a typical Brit officer to me.”

  “Not a Galactic in disguise?”

  “No way I’d know that, Colonel, but I sure didn’t get any false vibes from him. You know something we don’t, Sir?”

  “No.” Rick shook his head. “I’m as surprised by all this as you are. Look, there’s only one way we’re going to find out more, and we all know it. I’ll have to meet their commander.”

  “That you will, Sir, if there’s going to be any meeting. Something else,” Mason said. “You’re to bring identification. Something that proves you’re Captain Rick Galloway of the US Army.”

  Warner eyed Mason quizzically.

  “Major, you’re saying they know who Colonel Galloway is?”

  “Beats me,” Art Mason said. “I asked that, but Cargill wouldn’t comment. He just said that Major Baker would discuss matters with Captain Rick Galloway and no one else.”

  “And he called me ‘captain,’ not ‘colonel’?” Rick asked.

  “Yes, Sir. That he did.”

  “We have to meet him,” Rick said. He fingered Tylara’s message in his pocket. “But we need to get this over with fast, and that means making them an offer they can’t refuse.”

  He sat thinking for a moment.

  “Can Westmen women ride?” he asked.

  “Better than most of our men.” Mason looked at him quizzically.

  “Send a dispatch to Murphy. Tell him to ask Mad Bear to send as many of the young widows and fatherless ladies who’ve come of age from the lodges of the Silver Wolves as can get here in a day. Tell them to pack their finest traveling clothes, that we may have found men worthy of them.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PARLEY

  Sergeant Walbrook and the mortar crews were ready. The meeting place was in an empty field, the bottom of a shallow bowl overlooked by low hills to both north and south, a kilometer west of the main road to the Ottarn. A small dirt track led east to the main road, but otherwise there was nothing to see. The field had recently been burned over, so there was no cover anywhere. The center of the bowl was well in range of Rick’s mortars, and spotters lay at the top of the ridge overlooking the meeting place.

  “I don’t like it,” Art Mason said.

  “You don’t have to like it,” Rick said. “But if they kill me, you make sure their guy doesn’t leave there alive either.”

  “What you want to bet they won’t have their heavy weapons zeroed in on that flag?” Sergeant Bisso asked.

  “Not a thing, Sergeant,” Rick said.

  “We don’t know they have any heavy weapons,” Warner reminded them. “They haven’t used any.”

  “Not yet,” Rick said. “But they won’t need them, with fifty rifles.”

  “At that range they’d need to spray and pray,” Mason said.

  “So we have mortars and the Carl Gustav, and they have rifles. Area weapons on both counts at these ranges,” Warner said.

  “Mexican standoff,” Bisso said. “There’s the flag.”

  A lone rider rode from the north to the middle of the bowl. He carried a white banner on a lance, and after looking around in all directions, moved about twenty yards from where he’d stopped. Then he planted the lance in the ground. There was just enough wind to make the banner flutter. The rider turned and rode back in the direction from which he’d come.

  Two mercenaries crawled along the ridge behind Rick. Soft spoken commands guided them as they placed aiming stakes visible to the mortar crews but not to anyone on the other side of the meeting bowl.

  “You can bet they’ll be doing the same thing on their side of the ridge,” Mason said sourly.

  The messenger rode over the ridge and vanished. They all waited.

  “Here he comes,” Warner reported. He pointed to a lone rider coming down the opposite hill.

  Rick mounted and rode down the hill alone.

  “Good luck, Colonel,” Art Mason said softly.

  * * *

  Rick clucked his mount to a walk. No point in hurrying things. He watched, carefully, as the other rider came towards the flag. Closer.

  This would be the time, Rick thought. There was no sign of activity on the ridge ahead, but from what he’d heard of the Gurkhas there wouldn’t be any sign until it was too late. Fifty rifles at that range would spray down a big area, but if they fired now, they’d get me without hitting their man, and my troops may or may not be good enough to get him. He felt sweat running down his ribs. Damn all. I didn’t used to be this scared. That’s what having your wife back will do to you. Give you something to live for, and you’re scared as hell. He rode on at a walk. One. Two. Three . . .

  The critical moment passed. The riders closed on the flag. Rick got there first by seconds, and halted.

  The approaching rider wore British battle dress, jungle camouflage that stood out in this dusty land, hardly camouflage at all. His unit and rank badges shone. His sidearm—Good God, Rick thought, is that really a Webley revolver?—was holstered with the flap buttoned. The hat was a brimmed khaki hat with chin cord, clean and crisp like the uniform. Neatly trimmed mustache, no other facial hair. Brown hair combed back under the hat. Handsome fellow. Midforties, I’d guess. Looking closer Rick could see that the man’s uniform had been pressed.

  For a moment Rick felt shabby in his mail armor and tabard.

  The man came to a crisp salute, palm out.

  “Major Clyde Baker, at your service, Colonel. Shall we dismount?”

  Rick returned the salute.

  “Rick Galloway. Perhaps we’d be more comfortab
le mounted.”

  “As you wish, Sir. First there is the matter of identification.”

  “Guess I’ll dismount after all,” Rick said. “Major Baker, just what in the world do you expect me to produce as proof of my identity?” He swung down off his horse and dropped the reins.

  Baker dismounted crisply. Rick thought Baker was probably a better rider. He seemed to have an easy confidence, but he held the reins as he stepped towards Rick. Horses trained differently? But Baker couldn’t be used to Tran horses unless he’d been here a lot longer than Rick thought he had.

  “Sir, I’m not sure what I need for identification. Yet it’s important that I establish your identity. Perhaps you’d care to tell me how you got here?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Colonel, I’m not trying to be coy. There are matters of some importance here, and there’s only one man on this planet that I can be frank with. His name is Rick Galloway, one time captain in the United States Army. I believe that man is you, but I must be certain. I know how Captain Galloway got to this planet.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “Your story begins in Africa,” Baker said. “On a hill, making a last stand.”

  Rick frowned in thought.

  “Right. We were at the end of our rope when this flying saucer picked us up. We were taken to the Moon, where a police inspector named Agzaral examined us.”

  Baker nodded when he heard the name.

  “You spoke with Agzaral yourself?”

  “Yes. Tall, thin faced, wore a kind of gown with badges and honors on it. Like a dashiki. Spoke English but sounded more Brit than American. He offered me the choice of coming here as a mercenary or going somewhere else as what amounted to a welfare case. I chose Tran.”

  Baker nodded.

  “Sir, I’m going to take something out of my pocket. It is not a weapon.”

  “All right.”

  Baker reached carefully with his left hand into his right hand breast pocket. He took out what appeared to be a photograph. He looked at it, then at Rick, and his thin smile broke into a wide grin.

  “Excellent.” He held out his other hand. “I’ve been looking for you, Colonel Galloway. Had to be sure I’d found the right man.”

  Rick took his hand. The grip was firm, and Baker seemed almost friendly.

  “And why would you be looking for me?”

  “I’ve been told I can trust you.” Baker’s grin faded. “And I hope to God that’s true.”

  * * *

  “We seem to have a lot to discuss,” Rick said. “And this isn’t a very good place for it.”

  “Agreed. If our employers don’t know of this meeting yet, I expect they soon will. I forgot to mention it to mine—”

  “Somehow it slipped my mind to send a runner to the Wanax, too,” Rick said with a thin smile.

  “Considering that they’re both very likely to hear of this quite soon, it may make both your boss and mine a bit suspicious, don’t you agree?”

  A warm breeze blew across the valley. It felt good.

  “Suspicious is a mild word for it,” Rick said. “And they’re certain to hear of it within hours. So what do we do now?”

  Baker shook his head slowly.

  “Inspector Agzaral said you were a decent man and that I could trust you. That I should work with you if the situation warrants. He seems to have some kind of plan that involves both of us. Part of that involves sending you new resources in an indirect manner.”

  “New troops?”

  “I think not, at least none other than us. ‘Resources,’ he said. They’ll involve instructors but not troops.” Baker looked narrowly at Rick. “I don’t know all the details.”

  And you’re not telling me what you do know.

  “I see.”

  “In any event, I don’t have much choice,” Baker said. “I’m convinced that I must work with you. But I do have the men to think of. They’re not very happy with all this.”

  And they’ll be a lot less happy when they find out I can’t get them home, Rick thought. Unless they already know that.

  “I wouldn’t think they would be. Where do they think they are?”

  “The Senior NCO thinks we’ve been swept up by the gods to fight in their wars,” Baker said. “From what Agzaral said that may be as good an explanation as any.”

  Rick nodded.

  “I can think of worse. How did you get caught up in this?”

  “Force reduction. We were stationed in Malaysia. Some units were to be disbanded. Budget cuts. Rather than disband units, they chose the most expendable men from each unit to be sent home. I was given the responsibility of getting them there. My orders were to take the men to a beach area to wait for transport by hovercraft. An experimental hovercraft. We waited two days and a large hovercraft of a strange design came in low over the water in the middle of the night. It didn’t look like any craft I’d ever seen, but everything else seemed all right, so we went aboard. At which point I was summoned to the bridge.”

  “Where you were interviewed by aliens,” Rick said.

  “Not then. There was a man, certainly human, who said he was from the Foreign Office. We were being taken to another ship, and we would go aboard. It was in a hangar, God knows where, somewhere in Malaysia, and we never saw anything but a gangway. Once we were all aboard I met the aliens. They told me we’d been recruited into their service.”

  “But my God, man, won’t you be missed? Fifty Gurkhas and three British officers go missing?”

  “Sixty Gurkhas. And, no, I very much doubt we will be,” Baker said. “We were expendables and it happened once before, a Gurkha unit being disbanded turning bandit.”

  “I never heard that.”

  “And you won’t, either. Which is the point, don’t you agree? They’ll think my lot did the same thing and hush it up instead of asking questions. We weren’t far from the opium trade route. Enough jungle in the Golden Triangle to hide a dozen regiments. More than enough demand for good troops at high wages, too. I’m not guessing on this, Colonel. Inspector Agzaral said we were already listed as deserters.”

  “Was he happy about the situation?”

  Baker shook his head.

  “You met him. Hard chap to read. But my impression is that he was livid.”

  “I’d think he would be,” Rick said. “I got the impression that the only men the Shalnuksis were allowed to kidnap were men who were doomed already. Your story doesn’t match that.”

  “That’s close to what I was told,” Baker said. “Apparently there was a disagreement on the matter between this Inspector Agzaral and the aliens. It got pretty tense at one point until Agzaral straightened up and—well, I don’t know, Colonel, because it was in a language I never heard before, but it looked to me as if he laid down the law and read them the riot act. They weren’t happy about it, that was clear, but neither was he.”

  Rick tried to imagine the scene, but couldn’t.

  “On that score, can you describe the aliens you saw?”

  “Human sized, long legs. Rugged. Flat faces, nothing much of a nose, hands looked more like gorilla than human. General shape was more like chimpanzees without hair. Nose slit—well it was a little more than a slit, but not a real nose—moved as well as their mouths when they talked. There were three of them sitting at a table.”

  “Shalnuksis,” Rick said. “At least it sounds like them. Including the group of three. They work in trios for some reason. What did they say they wanted?”

  “To hire my services to protect their property. Apparently they have claims to this planet, and they face poachers.” Baker grinned. “I gather that’s you. My mission was to defeat you and turn over whatever you’ve collected to a ship that will come to find us. After that we would be returned to Earth.”

  “Did you believe them?”

  “At the time, I suppose, but Inspector Agzaral told me flat out that they were liars, and that we will never be returned to Earth. I didn’t much care for that, b
ut he made it very clear. We can work for the aliens or not, but nothing we can do will buy us a return ticket. This is a one-way trip.

  “Like you, I was given a choice: come here as a mercenary or be taken to some holding planet where I would have no position at all and would wait until they thought of some use for me. That was no choice at all, so I accepted mercenary service on his terms. That was when he told me I did have one choice: I could work with you or against you, but in his opinion you were the one man on this planet I could trust.”

  “Flattering,” Rick said. “Do your men know they’re never going home?”

  “Not yet. Leftenant Cargill suspects. Leftenant Martins is certain that once we kill you we’ll be homeward bound. As to the troopers, they never expected to go home until their service was up. As near as I can tell, they’re happy enough not to be dismissed, to still have jobs and expect pensions.” Baker gestured expressively. “They’re not stupid, Colonel. A bit primitive, but not stupid. They know about space travel, and they know they’re not on Earth, but they expect to encounter marvels serving Her Majesty, and this is just another of the technological miracles the English pull off from time to time.”

  A dry wind came up from the west. Clouds scudded across the sky. Even after his years on Tran the planet didn’t seem like Earth. It must have been worse for Baker, and his Hindu Gurkhas.

  “But they do expect to go home with pensions.”

  “Yes.”

  “That could be a problem. My men all know better. They don’t like it, but they understand we’re here to stay. What will yours do when they find out?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on Sergeant Major Tulbahadur Rai, I expect. He’s senior NCO. Understand, Colonel, this isn’t a regular setup. Many of these men don’t know each other. These are the men thought expendable when it came time for a reduction in force. Except for Sergeant Major, he’s near retirement age anyway, and chose to take early retirement so a younger man wouldn’t be sent home.”

  “So with the exception of your Sergeant Major, they’re not the best men in Her Majesty’s Gurkhas?”

  “Perhaps not, but I assure you the worst of them is damned good. They’d never have been recruited if they weren’t, and their training is thorough.” Baker paused. “Before you ask, I was being rotated home on family leave before they gave me this assignment. Martins had family leave to get married, and was anxious to get back to his fiancé. This detail was supposed to get him home two months sooner, and apparently he had friends in the right places to get put on.” Baker chuckled. “Some would say it serves him right.”