by Leo Champion
“Sure you can,” said Blanket. He hefted his rifle: “At gunpoint.”
“Yeah, and guess what we’ve been apparently giving them. Guns of their own.”
“Just blackpowder shit,” said Blanket.
Damn fish, thought Mullins. Blanket hadn’t known the guys who a lot of Masons, armed with blackpowder muskets and cannon, had killed at Bergschloss.
“You guys are being way the hell idealistic,” Mullins said. “For members of an expendable fighting force, you guys are being way the hell idealistic.”
“For a liberal,” Reuter shot back, “you are being way the hell too cynical about human nature.”
“Eaties aren’t human,” Khaliq pointed out.
“For a liberal, he is being way too cynical about sapient nature.”
* * *
Half an hour later, while approaching the cleared area inside a still-standing wall – the intent had been to find an intact stairway up and take a look from the top, after finding no safe way up into the higher floors of the trashed palace they’d discovered in the center of the city – they came across a bunch of Qings. Nomads, suddenly, half a dozen of them on zak-back.
The nomads were very lean compared to the Vazhao Chongdins and their exoskeletal, black but otherwise horse-like zaks were leaner. They wore belts and thin skins, long narrow blades hanging from the belts and longer ones from scabbards tied to the thin necks of their zaks. Over their backs were slung bows and flintlock jezzails, and they reacted to the four Legion men with jerky body language Mullins couldn’t read but didn’t like.
Before he knew what he was doing, he’d drawn his machine-pistol. Just to be safe.
“Who the hell you?” asked a slightly taller nomad on the biggest of the zaks, in Chongdin that was close enough to the Qing interlang Mullins could get the gist.
He stuck the gun back in his belt – pretty sure he hadn’t instinctively un-safetied it – and raised his hands forwards, palms up and fingers spread.
“Friends,” he said.
“You can talk to him?” Reuter asked.
“Interlang,” said Mullins. “Probably sounds to him like I’m speaking pidgin. But I get him.”
“Friends bring gifts,” said the Qing leader. “Our land.”
Fuck, thought Mullins, trying to think of anything he had that he could afford to give away. Gun, like hell. Phone, no way. Wristwatch, he also needed, he’d been ordered to keep. Earphones, but what use would the Qing have for them?
“Guys, we need a gift for them,” he said. “Someone pony up something.”
Mullins didn’t take his eyes from the Qings, because these guys did not look friendly. There were six of them in sight, but how many more were nearby out of sight?
“Tell them they’ll get a gift of lead if they don’t show us a little respect,” said Blanket.
“I don’t think we have shit to spare on us,” said Reuter after a moment. The others had probably been looking at each other and maybe shrugging.
Well, Mullins had been an advertising man. The Central Territories Improvement Program wasn’t something he believed in, but all his experience in the Legion had taught him you didn’t have to believe in something to fight for it. And his career until enlisting had taught him that you had to believe in something even less to market it.
“We bring gifts,” Mullins said with a broad but very carefully toothless smile. He spread his hands and gestured at the wall, hoping the Qings would see he meant outside the city. “We bring wealth and – uh, wealth. We bring water and great herds, we bring the opportunity to make all the silver and gold you want!”
The Qing leader inclined his head back slightly. His jaw made a sideways motion Mullins couldn’t identify.
“Others are bringing us gifts,” he said flatly. “Our land. Leave.”
One after the other, four more mounted nomads came into sight to their right, down the street Mullins and his group had come from. He was painfully aware of them to his three o’clock.
And our odds in a fight are really now longer so good, he thought. Flanked. And if there were four more, there were going to be yet more past that.
“Come to our fort, we will bring you gifts,” Mullins said. “Fine gifts.”
And if nothing could or would be scrounged up, the fort at least had walls and defenses and a whole damn lot of friends handy.
“Others bring gifts,” the Qing leader repeated. “Leave. Four of you.”
“Guys,” Mullins said in English to his friends, “don’t turn around, keep your hands on your weapons but for God’s sake don’t point them at the fuckers, and back off along the wall until we get to the gap we came in by.”
The Qings didn’t follow; more came out of a side-street until there were twenty of them, facing the terrified Mullins and his group as they stepped backwards along the curving wall.
Once they were out of sight, Mullins drew his machine-pistol and un-safetied it.
Christ.
“That guy sounded menacing,” Reuter said. “What’d he say?”
“Something about how someone else was bringing them gifts and we were to get out of here right now. Some kind of tribal exchange maybe, I can see this as a meeting point. But we need to get the fuck out of here.”
“I could sort of tell that,” said Blanket as they hurried toward the gap in the wall.
None of the nomads even reappeared, but Mullins felt the back of his neck prickling until they were out of the breach in the wall and halfway across the mile of clear ground between Kandin-dak and the fort.
Exploring the city had been fun, but next time he was going to bring his rifle.
And a few expendable doo-dads for gifts.
If there was even going to be a next time. That had scared him. The natives might have been intimidated into peace, but you couldn’t intimidate someone into friendship.
And these ones seemed restless.
* * *
Croft was in what passed for his office, a tiny – about eight feet by six – room with a cot in one corner and a desk along one wall, covered with maps. He was studying those maps, looking at Third Platoon’s projected area of operations, when a knock came on the flimsy door.
“Yeah, come in,” he said.
It was Mullins, looking uneasy.
“How was your exploration?” he asked. “Find anything interesting?”
“City spooked me,” the RTO said. “What we saw there spooked us further. In my field capacity, sir, I’ve got a real damn bad vibe about those nomads.”
“What happened?”
“We ran into a few of them. They asked for gifts.”
“They do that. You know their culture,” said Croft. Honestly, he’d thought Mullins, who was definitely one of the brighter men in his platoon, would have paid better attention. He’d proven himself pretty competent with the interlang.
“Yeah, and we should have remembered to bring something just in case we ran into some. My bad. But these ones gave me a bad vibe. They were twitchy, and then more came in our three o’clock. They told us to leave – and then said something about how someone else is bringing them gifts.”
“Colonel Newbauer probably has something going on. Cultural advisory team we haven’t been told about, to smooth things out with them,” mused Croft.
“Sir, these guys gave me a bad feeling. I’m warning you.”
“Warning noted, Mullins. I don’t think there’s anything to it, but I’ve heard you out. Anything else?”
“No sir. I’m going to take this up to company field intelligence if you don’t mind. Sir.”
“Go ahead,” said Croft. “And can you do me one favor?”
“Sir?”
“For God’s sake don’t tell Sergeant – sorry, Corporal – Hill or any of those guys that there might be someone in the city willing to fight them.”
Mullins grinned.
“I’ll try to keep them from hearing about it, sir.”
* * *
Bravo Company�
�s headquarters section wasn’t at all far from the lieutenant’s office. Mullins saluted Senior Lieutenant Gardner as he stepped out of the way, the acting skipper casually returning the salute as he hurried off on some errand. From the field kitchens set up not far away came the smell of some kind of stew being cooked; it was getting toward the early evening.
“Signals?” Mullins asked Corporal Arwen, set up at his desk – doing something on a personal tablet, it looked like – just inside the offices. Company HQ seemed as cramped and tiny as Third Platoon’s – more so, given that there were several times as many people based out of there.
The small red-haired company clerk didn’t look up from the tablet, but he gestured to his left with a thumb.
Past a store-room, Mullins found Signals; four guys – table of organization said there should have been six, but one guy had died on New Virginia, another man had been seriously injured and was allegedly on his way back, neither had been replaced – in a room with a couple of laptop computers set up.
“Mullins,” said Sergeant MacGallagher. “What can we do for you?”
“First, just checking in to see where my dotted-line chain of command was set up,” Mullins said. “Second – Sergeant Robinson, you got a moment?”
Robinson was MacGallagher’s number two and the senior field intelligence man of the company, reporting along a dotted line to Battalion S-2. He was a prematurely-balding young man in his early twenties.
“What’s up, Mullins?”
“So a couple of us decided to take a look around the abandoned city…”
“That sounds fun,” Robinson said. “A couple of us were going to do that once we’ve had some chow.”
“Bring gifts, Sergeant. Bring gifts and bring your damn rifles just in case. I got a really bad vibe from the nomads we met there.”
Robinson raised an eyebrow.
Mullins told him the story. The field intelligence man nodded as Mullins told it.
“S-2 has been assured from higher up that we’ve got nothing to worry about,” Robinson said at the end. “Maybe a few young bucks feeling their oats, no more. There’s the occasional raid along the borderlands, but not in any force and they’re not going to mess with us.”
“Sergeant,” said Mullins. “Battalion intelligence didn’t have a clue things were going to go up like they did on New Virginia. But we’ve both heard those rumors about how Richmond was getting very antsy, like they knew something was going to happen but didn’t know when or how, or something.”
“Bullshit gossip,” MacGallagher put in. “I thought you’d been a journalist or something, Mullins. Don’t you know not to believe everything you hear.”
“Nah, Mac,” said Robinson. “I buy that one myself, it’s consistent with other shit they were doing. But we’re no longer on NV and all we can do here is rely on S-2.”
“Sergeant, S-2 gets their information from up high, yes. They also get it from down below, from field intelligence, and they pass shit up the line.”
“And you want me to tell Battalion HQ that a PFC radio man got a bad vibe when he was goofing off and ran into some armed people who outnumbered him,” Robinson asked flatly.
Mullins nodded.
“Actually, Sergeant, yes I do. Bits of a jigsaw puzzle. They could add up to something.”
“Good job, Private. That was a test and you passed it; maybe it ties into something else they know. No such thing as a useless data point. OK, Mullins, I’ll pass it on. I’ll also let the acting skipper know, for what it’s worth. And we’ll find something to bring the nomads if we run into any ourselves in the city.”
Mullins nodded again. That was about all he could do, he figured.
* * *
It was very dark in the night when the first of the European Federation VTOL planes landed in a cleft between hills. About a hundred and fifty miles west of the new fort of Kandin-dak, although Captain Dieter von Kallweit wasn’t thinking about that as the big hauler bumped down on uneven ground.
“Perimiter security ready,” First Lieutenant Gemmel reported in Eurolang, a constructed language based around the simplest of German grammar. It was so simple even the feebleminded Slavic races could understand it, which was the point; inferiors had to communicate with their superiors somehow. Gemmel was a good German, but his sergeants and corporals were also listening on this channel.
“Perimiter security deploy,” von Kallweit shot back. Eurolang was good for issuing clear orders; that was most of its purpose. Through the heads-up display over one eye he could see through a rotating succession of the cameras facing outside the windowless plane. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Qing nomads surrounded the plane.
Doors on each side slid open. Carrying bulky ME-DE railguns, two dozen stocky European Federation troops, part of an airborne unit seconded like von Kallweit to the Department for this operation, jumped out of each side. They were Scandinavians for the most part, with a couple of Spanish and German NCOs mixed in.
von Kallweit watched through his heads-up as, shouting memorized phrases that meant ‘clear off’ and ‘out of the way’, Gemmel’s platoon made their way around to the back of the plane. Some of them formed, rifles facing outwards, an area for the rear cargo ramp to go down into.
Others headed off to the designated landing spots, shouldering past crowds of interested nomads, to mark off the landing points for the oncoming four planes. They waved infrared lights and their NCOs waved landing signals. Their own lights on infrared, the other cargo VTOLs began to descend.
“Where’s their khan?” Major Andre Lavasseur asked. The mission commander was a very handsome young man with black hair under his helmet and an aristocratically beaked nose. He came from an old family and he’d been extensively schooled, but von Kallweit had been keeping in mind that this was the major’s first field assignment.
“Looks like that one,” von Kallweit said, going to the door and pointing out. A seven-foot Qing on a zak was coming towards them, draped in skins and blades. What looked like a foreign submachinegun – and how the hell, von Kallweit wondered, did an eatie get his hands on that? – was proudly slung in front of him. Behind the Qing was a clear entourage of banner-bearers.
“Cover my back, Captain,” Lavasseur said without looking at him.
“Sir.”
Lavasseur, who aside from his sidearm wasn’t carrying a weapon, jumped out the side door. von Kallweit followed him as the major stepped forwards to address the khan.
“I am Tenzhen,” the tall Qing said. von Kallweit knew enough of the interlang to understand, although he hoped he wasn’t going to be asked himself to talk. Knowing his chief, it wasn’t likely. “Son of Venzhen, lord of the Anzing hills and the plains in all directions. Speak.”
“I am Lavasseur,” the major said in perfect nomad Qing. “Envoy of the Red-White-Blue. This” – he motioned with his head at von Kallweit – “is von Kallweit, chief of my bodyguards. Are your people ready to receive their weapons?”
A grin, the same as for Qings as for humans, spread across the khan’s face.
“Yes.”
“Hecht, Dumont,” von Kallweit said into his throat-mike. “Show them.”
Second Lieutenants Hecht, a former enlisted man, and Dumont, a Frenchman seconded to the Department from an elite regiment of Grenoble and as Lavasseur’s aide technically outside von Kallweit’s authority, stepped out of the plane and presented their samples to the khan.
Dumont carried a black tube connected to a square guidance device; a stinger, its dimensions slightly modified to make it more comfortable for the Qings’ shorter-than-humans’ forearms and longer-than-humans’ upper arms.
Hecht carried something much simpler: a ten-kilogram satchel charge.
“The blazing arrows that can shoot down the metal birds of the Stars-and-Stripes?”
“The first one is for you,” Major Lavasseur said. He gestured Dumont forwards. One of Tenzhen’s bannermen took it from his hands and raised it in the air.
There was a cheer from the Qings surrounding them, one that echoed for long seconds through the thin desert air.
“And the explosives, for destroying the works of your Stars-and-Stripes enemies from another world.”
Hecht moved forward and another bannerman accepted the satchel charge.
“Now, to remind you how they work. You aim them and allow the red dot to line up with the blue dot. When it does, there is a missile lock,” Lavasseur said.
“You said. But my warriors will hear again.”
“Then you pull the trigger, and you can hide.”
“The warriors of Tenzhen lord of Anzing do not hide!” declared Tenzhen.
There was another loud cheer from the thousands of nomads assembled here. His horde.
Sounds like a great way to get killed, thought von Kallweit, a practical career soldier who had fought on half a dozen worlds.
“Do the warriors of Tenzhen destroy? Destroy the weak constructs of the puny Chongdins, for gold to be paid by the mighty Red-White-Blue?” Lavasseur asked.
von Kallweit had to admit, even not really knowing the language but understanding his boss’ tones and the massive cheer that came from the gathered horde, that his boss knew his shit. Well, what did you expect from the younger brother of Assistant Director Julius Lavasseur – a legend in the Department and in France, the man who had almost averted the disaster on Fleurent – anything but brilliance?
Behind Tenzhen, directly behind, was a Qing, taller and slimmer than even the khan. Now that one moved his zak forward to accept the weapon.
He held it in the air but said, “This is a coward’s weapon! Hordes should rule, not destroy! The honor of our great forefathers must be redeemed by conquest, not destruction!”
“I don’t believe I know you, great warrior,” said Lavasseur.
“I am Axhar son of Tenzhen, the fastest warrior of eight generations!” the skeletally lean nomad declared proudly.