by David Drake
The senior petty officer behind the huge desk threw Sitterson a sharp salute without getting up. He didn't have room enough to stand because of the data storage modules in the ceiling, feeding the desk's computer.
Sitterson tried to project a sense of his own power—but the quarters assigned his operation were a far cry from even the jerry-built luxury of the District Government Building.
Fleet officers assigned to admin duty on the ground weren't usually the best and the brightest of their ranks. That was something Kowacs had to remember—though he wasn't sure how it would help him.
"Colonel Hesik has reported, sir," said the petty officer, nodding toward the tall, intense man who had leaped to attention from the narrow couch opposite the desk.
"Wait here, Hesik," Sitterson said as he strode between desk and couch to the room's inner door.
Kowacs eyed—and was eyed by—the tall man as they passed at close quarters.
Hesik's uniform was of unfamiliar cut. It was handmade, with yellow cloth simulating gold braid on the pockets, epaulets, and collar tabs. The slug-throwing pistol he wore in a shoulder holster was a Fleet-issue weapon and well worn.
Hesik's glare was brittle. Kowacs wouldn't have had the man in his own unit in a million years.
Sitterson's personal office had almost as much floorspace as the governor's did, though the ceiling was low and the furnishings were extruded rather than wood.
On the credit side, the floor didn't seep mud.
"Have a seat, Captain," Sitterson said with an expansive gesture toward one of the armchairs. Another door, presumably leading to living quarters as cramped as the reception area, was partly screened by holo projections from the interrogation rooms they had walked past. In the holograms, seated petty officers confronted civilians standing at attention, nude, with their clothes stacked on the floor beside them.
"We'll be working closely together, Captain," the security was saying. "I don't mind telling you that I regard this assignment as an opportunity to get some notice. It's a job we can sink our teeth into. If we handle the situation correctly, there'll be promotions all around."
The bearded civilian in the projection nearest Kowacs was babbling in a voice raised by fear and the clipped sound reproduction, "Only eggs, I swear it. And maybe butter, if they asked for butter, maybe butter. But they'd have taken my daughter if I hadn't given them the supplies."
"Ah, Commander," said the Marine, wondering how he'd complete the sentence. "I'm not clear why my unit rather than . . ."
Rather than anybody else in the universe.
"Your daughter was involved in this?" asked the hologrammic interrogator. "Where is she now?"
"She's only eight! For god's sake—"
Sitterson made a petulant gesture; the AI in his desk cut the sound though not the visuals from the three interrogations.
The security chief leaned over his desk and smiled meaningfully at Kowacs. "I know how to handle collaborators, Captain," he said. "And so do you—I've heard what went on on Target. That's why I asked for the 121st."
For a moment, Kowacs couldn't feel the chair beneath him. His body trembled; his mind was full of images of his drop into the Khalian slave pens on Target—and the human trustees there, with their torture equipment and the abattoir with which they aped the dietary preferences of their Khalian masters.
Every trustee in his sight-picture memory wore the features of Commander Sitterson.
Kowacs didn't trust himself to speak—but he couldn't remain silent, so he said, "Sir, on Target the prisoners were turning out electronics, stuff the weasels can't make for themself."
He lurched out of his chair because he needed to move and by pacing toward the wall he could innocently break eye contact with the security chief. "That stuff, giving the weasels produce so they don't put you on the table instead—that's not collaboration, sir, that's flat-ass survival. It's not the same as—"
But the words brought back the memories, and the memories choked Kowacs and chilled his palms with sweat.
"Well, Captain," Sitterson said as he straightened slightly in his chair. "If I didn't have responsibility for the safety of the hundred and forty thousand Fleet and allied personnel, stationed in this district, I might be able to be as generous as you are."
The commander's stern expression melted back into a smile. "Still," he went on, "I think your real problem is that you're afraid you won't see any action working with me. I'll show you how wrong you are.
"Send in Colonel Hesik," he told his desk. The door opened almost on the final syllable to pass the tall man.
Kowacs started to rise but Sitterson did not, gesturing the newcomer to a chair.
"Hesik here," the commander said, "was head of the resistance forces in the district before our landing. He's been working closely with me, and—" he winked conspiratorially toward the Bethesdan, "I don't mind telling you, Captain, that he's in line for very high office when we come to set up a civilian government."
Hesik grinned in response. The scar on his right cheek was concealed by his neatly groomed beard, but it gave his face a falsely sardonic quirk when he tried to smile.
"Tell Captain Kowacs what happened to your unit three months ago, Hesik," Sitterson ordered.
"Yes sir," said the indig—who had better sense than to try to make something of his shadow "rank," which if real would have made him the senior officer in the room. He was willing to act as Sitterson's pet—for the reward he expected when the Fleet pulled out again.
"We were organized by Lieutenant Bundy," Hesik said. He kept his eyes trained on a corner of the room, and there was a rote quality to his delivery.
"Technical specialists were landed six months ago to stiffen local resistance," Sitterson added in explanation. "Bundy was a top man. I knew him personally."
"We were hitting the weasels, hurting them badly," Hesik resumed. His voice had bright quivers which Kowacs recognized, the tremors of a man reliving the past fears which he now cloaked in innocent words. "There were other guerrilla units in the district too—none of them as effective as we were, but good fellows, brave . . . Except for one."
The Bethesdan swallowed. As if the bobbing of his Adam's apple were a switch being thrown, his head jerked down and he glared challengingly at Kowacs. "This other unit," he said, "kept in close touch with us—but they never seemed to attack the Khalia. Avoiding reprisals on innocent civilians, they explained."
One of the hologram civilians had collapsed on the floor. Her interrogator stood splay-legged, gesturing with a shock rod which did not quite touch the civilian.
"And perhaps so," Hesik continued. "But we heard very disquieting reports about members of that unit frequenting the spaceport, where the Khalia had their headquarters. We tried to warn Lieutenant Bundy, but he wouldn't believe humans would act as traitors to their race."
"Kowacs here could tell you about that," Sitterson interjected. "Couldn't you, Captain?"
Kowacs spread his hand to indicate he had heard the security chief. His eyes remained fixed on Hesik.
"They called us to a meeting," the Bethesdan said. "We begged the lieutenant not to go, but he laughed at our fears."
Hesik leaned toward Kowacs. "We walked into an ambush," he said. "The only reason any of us got out alive was that Lieutenant Bundy sacrificed his life to warn the rest of us."
"Doesn't sound like selling butter to the Khalians, does it, Captain?" Sitterson commented in satisfaction.
"Them?" Kowacs asked, thumbing toward the hologram interrogations.
"Not yet," said the security chief.
"But," Hesik said in a voice bright with emotion, "my men have located the traitors, where they're hiding."
"Up for some real action, Captain?" Sitterson asked. "You said you were a reaction company. Let's see how fast you can react."
"Download the coordinates," Kowacs said, too focused to care that he was giving a brusque order to his superior. He'd taken off his helmet when he entered the building. Now h
e slipped it on again and added, "How about transport?"
Sitterson was muttering directions to his AI. "You have trucks assigned already, don't you?" he said, looking up in surprise.
"You bet," Kowacs agreed flatly. "Priority One," he said to his helmet. "This is a scramble, Headhunters."
His helmet projected onto the air in front of him the target's location, then the route their computer had chosen for them. That decision was based on topographical data, ground cover, and traffic flows along the paved portion of the route.
"How many bandits?" Kowacs demanded, pointing a blunt finger at Hesik to make his subject clear.
"Sir," said Daniello's voice in the helmet, "we still don't have the hard suits back from decontamination."
"Twenty perhaps," said Hesik with a shrug. "Perhaps not so many."
"Fuck the hard suits," Kowacs said to his First Platoon leader. "We got twenty human holdouts only. Pick me and Sienkiewicz up in front of the security building when you come through the parade ground."
"On the way," said Daniello.
"We're going too," said Commander Sitterson, jumping up from behind his desk as he saw to his amazement that the Marine was already headed for the door.
"Please yourself," Kowacs said in genuine disinterest.
It occurred to him that the weasel commando in the area might have human support. And a group of turncoats like these could tell him something about that—if they were asked in the right way.
* * *
Satellite imagery reported seventeen huts in the target zone, which made Kowacs think Hesik had underestimated the opposition. By the time the four trucks were in position, each in the woods half a kilometer out from the village and at the cardinal points around it, Kowacs had better data from long-term scanning for ion emissions and in the infrared band.
The Bethesdan was right. There couldn't be as many humans at the site as there were dwellings.
For the last five kilometers to their individual drop sites, the trucks overflew the woods at treetop level on vectored thrust. It was fast; and it was risky only if the target unit had more outposts than seemed probable, given their low numbers.
"Probable" could get you dead if one guy happened to be waiting in a tree with an air-defense cluster, but that was the chance you took.
"Hang on," warned the driver—Bickleman from Third Platoon. Kowacs didn't trust somebody assigned from the motor pool to know what he was doing—or be willing to do it in the face of enemy fire, when people's lives depended on their transport bulling in anyway.
The truck bellied down through the canopy with a hell of a racket, branches springing back to slap the men facing outward on the benches paralleling both sides. A limb with a mace of cones at its tip walloped Kowacs, but his face shield was down and the scrape across his chest was nothing new. He held the seat rail with one hand and his rifle with the other, jumping with the rest of his unit as soon as they felt the spongy sensation of the vehicle's underside settling into loam.
The bustle of Third Platoon taking cover briefly, then fanning out in the direction of the village, was only background to Kowacs for the moment. He had the whole company to control.
Bradley and Sienkiewicz covered their commander while he focused on the reports from the other three platoons—"Position Green," the drop completed without incident—and the hologram display a meter in front of him which was more important than the trees he could see beyond the patterns of light.
"Advance to Amber," Kowacs said. A blue bead glowed briefly in the holographic heads-up display projected by his helmet and all the others in the unit, indicating that the order had been on the command channel.
They moved fast through the forest. The Headhunters were used to woods—as well as jungles, deserts, or any other goddam terrain weasels might pick to stage a raid—and here speed was more important than the threat of running into an ambush.
Kowacs couldn't see much more of Third Platoon than he could of the rest of the company. The undergrowth wasn't exceptionally heavy, but there were at least two meters between each marine and those to either side in the line abreast.
"Gamma, Amber," reported the Third Platoon leader, somewhere off to the left. Kowacs knelt with the rest of the unit around him, rifle advanced, waiting for the remaining platoons to reach the jump-off point.
"Beta Amber"/"Alpha Amber," reported Second, and First Platoons in near simultaneity. There was a further wait before Delta called in, but they were the Heavy Weapons Platoon and had to manhandle tripod-mounted plasma guns through the undergrowth.
Anyway, Delta had reported within a minute of the others, not half a lifetime later the way it seemed to Kowacs as his fingers squeezed the stock of his rifle and his eyes watched green beads crawl across the ghostly hologram of a relief map.
The only difference between Position Amber and any other block of woodland was that it put each platoon within a hundred meters of the village. The huts were still out of sight, though Second and Heavy Weapons would have clear fields of fire when they wriggled a few meters closer.
"Alpha, charge set," reported Daniello whose platoon had the job of driving a small bursting charge a meter down into the soil.
"Beta, sensors ready," answered his Second Platoon counterpart who had set the echo-sounding probes on the other side of the village.
"Fire the charge," Kowacs said.
As he spoke, there was a barely audible thump off to the right and somebody shook his arm to get attention.
"What's going—" demanded Commander Sitterson, whose helmet received all the unit calls—but who didn't have the background to understand them.
He didn't have sense enough to keep out of the way, either. Kowacs was very glad that because of the angle, he hadn't swung quickly enough to blow Sitterson away before understanding took over from reflex.
"Not now, sir!" he snapped, turning slightly so that Sitterson's head didn't block the pattern of lines dancing across his display as the unit's computer mapped the bunkers and tunnels beneath the village in the echoing shock waves.
There weren't any bunkers or tunnels. The target was as open as a whore's mouth.
"Was that a shot?" the security chief insisted. Hesik lay just back of Sitterson, his face upturned and the big pistol lifted in his right hand.
"Assault elements, go!" Kowacs ordered as he rose to his feet himself, so pumped that he wondered but didn't worry whether the wild-eyed Bethesdan colonel was going to shoot him in the back by accident.
First and Third platoons swept into the village clearing from two adjacent sides, forming an L that paced forward with the sudden lethality of a shark closing its jaws.
"Everyone stay where you are!" Kowacs boomed through the loudspeaker built into the top of his helmet. The speaker was damped and had a strong directional focus, but it still rattled his teeth to use the damned thing. Still, he was in charge, and the holdouts in the village had to know that.
Even if it meant that he'd catch the first round if the fools tried to resist.
The civilians in plain sight seemed scarcely able to stand up.
Two women—neither of them young, though one was twenty years younger than Kowacs thought at first glance—were scraping coarse roots on a table in the center of the straggle of huts. Beside them on a straw pallet lay a figure who might have been of either sex; might have been a bundle of rags, save for the flicker of lids across the glittering eyes, the only motion visible as the line of rifles approached.
"Don't move, dammit!" Kowacs bawled as a man directly across from him ducked into the hut.
There was a pop and a minute arc of smoke from Bradley's left hand—the hand that didn't hold the leveled shotgun. The smoke trail whickered through the doorway as suddenly as the civilian had—then burst in white radiance, a flare and not a grenade as Kowacs had half-expected.
Bawling in terror, the man flung himself back outside and danced madly as he stripped away the flaming rags of his clothing while the hut burned behind him. A ma
rine knocked him down with his rifle butt, then kicked dirt over the man's blazing hair.
Both platoons were among the huts in seconds. "Empty!" a voice called, and, "Empty!", then, "Out! Out! Out!"
Three of them tried to get out the back way as somebody was bound to do. That was fine, always let 'em think they had a way to run. The dazzling whipcrack of a plasma bolt streaking skyward, all the way to the orbit of the nearer moon, caught the trio in plain sight.
They didn't flatten on the ground or raise their hands, just froze in place and awaited the cross fire which would vaporize them if it came. Marines from Second Platoon threw them down and trussed them scornfully.
"He can't move, he's wounded!" a woman was screaming desperately from the hut beside Kowacs. That didn't sound like an immediate problem, so he glanced around for an eyeball assessment of the situation.
Everything had gone perfectly. The one hut was afire. Several Marines held an extra weapon while their buddies grasped the civilian who'd been carrying it. The woman didn't have to tell anybody that the fellow two of his men were dragging was wounded. Kowacs could smell the gangrene devouring the prisoner's leg.
The only shot fired was the warning round from the plasma weapons placed in ambush. Very slick. So slick that it probably looked easy to Sitterson and Hesik, pounding up from the treeline where they'd been left flat-footed by the Marines' advance.
The elder of the women who'd been preparing food cried shrilly at Kowacs, "Why are you here with guns? We need help, not—"
Then she saw Hesik. Kowacs caught her by one arm and Sienkiewicz grabbed the other when they saw what was about to happen, but it didn't keep the old woman from spitting in Hesik's face.
The Bethesdan colonel slapped her across the forehead with the barrel of his pistol.
The younger of the pair of women broke away from a marine who was more interested in the drama than in the prisoner he was holding. She jumped into the dark entrance of a hut. The three marines nearest lighted the opening with the muzzle flashes of their automatic rifles.
The prisoner flopped down with only her torso inside the hut. Her legs thrashed while one of the Marines, more nervous or less experienced than the others, wasted the rest of his magazine by hosing down her death throes.