If Yazzie hadn’t given me rendezvous coordinates, I’d have no more idea than this pinhead. The jacks had better be headed there or we’re dead meat.
With a flick of the reins and a kick of his boot, Shen wheeled his shaggy white mount around until he faced his subordinate. Like Vetch and Lily, he was mounted on a juvenile: fast, skittish, fearless of danger, and unable to resist opportunities for grazing.
“The legionaries we encountered before were headed west,” said Shen uncertainly. “Perhaps our targets are too. Back home to Camp Faxian. Maybe they’re massing there with their rebel friends.”
“They didn’t look like friends when we captured them.”
The heat bath from the lieutenant’s Renaissance helmet allowed his face to go uncovered. Shen used this to give Vetch the full benefit of his sneer. “And you believed them, Sergeant?”
Orion’s balls! What a piece of drent. Vetch bit his lip. He was depending on far too many people keeping to a plan he only partially understood. “My hunch is that they’re headed east, sir.”
“A hunch? You would risk our careers on guesswork?”
Vetch’s mount shook himself impatiently and turned his head to regard him through the black hemisphere of an eye. It blew lines of steam at him through the dozens of slits cut into a nose that looked like a glazed doughnut the size of a human head.
Vetch hated the animals. Despite the thick mat of hair that covered the Saruswine, any sudden movement was like pounding Vetch’s buttocks with war hammers. And they had only just set out.
He detested riding.
He was no fan of the lieutenant, either. “Sir, if our quarry started from Faxian, then they were headed east when we captured them.”
“And if they were returning to Faxian, then they were headed west.”
Vetch’s heart leaped. They were both talking about Camp Faxian as a fixed point of Legion certainty. As the most strongly defended place on Rho-Torkis, that had made sense until a week ago. Since then they had seen the flashes of explosions on the western horizon, a brigade or more phony jacks marching that way, and signs of orbital battles. Despite his thick fur coat, he felt his bones chill. They knew absolutely not-a-skragging-thing about what was going on around them. For all they knew, Camp Faxian could be a smoking ruin flying a rebel flag.
All he was sure of were the rendezvous coordinates.
“West,” Shen stated. He sounded confident now.
And the rendezvous point was east-northeast.
“Sir, before we make our decision, do you think we should…” Vetch faked a nervous cough. “I mean… Hjon is our most experienced officer. Obviously, she can’t be in command – she’s at the very bottom of the command tree – but that doesn’t mean she can’t help you take decisions.”
Shen recoiled at the abhorrent suggestion. If Vetch had suggested he smooch one of their steeds on their muscular, prehensile lips, the lieutenant would have taken it more stoically.
But Shen had just enough spark of cunning to realize how useless he truly was. Not that he’d ever admit it.
“No,” he replied. “I don’t need advice from her. However, Hjon was stationed here previously. Perhaps I can draw out a course of action from her local knowledge.”
Without waiting for the officer to finish speaking – figuring this was as good as he’d ever get from that moron – Vetch turned his shaggy beast around and headed for the rearguard, passing on the way the four adult Saruswine who between them carried eight troopers and lashings of equipment and animal feed.
“Oh, no!” said Lily as he drew alongside her.
“Shen wants–”
Lily leaned out of the saddle and beat him about the head with her riding prod, smacking him hard enough to make his helmet ring.
“Lily. Will you stop that? Listen! I know where the jacks are… headed.”
Damn! She’d ridden off. The long hind legs lifting her Saruswine’s rear and heading over to Shen in only a few bounds. Vetch cursed himself for not telling her earlier about the rendezvous.
It was too late now.
By the time he’d caught up with them, they were already arguing. Lily stopped to slap Vetch on the back of his head. “I was a captain,” she raged. “I knew this world. I can’t say I’m pleased about what they did to me, but you know what? I like being a trooper. Leave all that politics and backstabbing shite to the officers. I’m done with it.” She turned from Vetch to Shen. “I don’t want to lead. Get it?”
“No one said anything about leadership,” sneered Shen. “Don’t get above your reduced station, Hjon. However, you do have specialist knowledge.”
“The lieutenant requires your advice,” said Vetch when the other two resorted to glaring at each other in silence. And the major requires me to ditch you, sir. How are we to manage that, eh?
“I do not require advice from anyone,” said the lieutenant.
“Of course not, sir,” Hjon responded in that innocent voice she loved to put on for idiots. “Look, sir – and you too, Sarge – you figure out between yourselves how you want to run this show. That’s your problem, fellas. Leave me out.”
“Careful,” snapped Shen. “In these exceptional circumstances, I am magnanimous enough to cut you a lot of slack. Be warned! Even I have my limits.”
“Oh, drop it,” said Lily, ditching the innocent voice for one laden with contempt. “You’re out of your depth, Julius. Even taking a leak first thing in the morning without peeing on your boots is quite an achievement for you, and that’s in the warmth of the fort. Do you even know how to do it out here without your extremities snapping off?”
“Trooper! How dare you?”
“How? Because you need me more than we need you.”
Vetch was waving frantically at Lily to calm thing down. Everyone was hearing her insubordination.
Shen puffed his cheeks out. He looked like a three-year-old in a tantrum. “I will not tolerate any of this–”
Lily silenced him with a cutting motion. “Yes, you damned well will, Shen. Listen, you piece of shit. I do not want your position. I don’t even want rid of you. I am no threat to you, Julius, unless you make me one.”
Shen went silent; Vetch ceased flapping his arms. It was far too late now. Lily had just crossed a line. She’d threatened an officer.
“What you mean?” Shen asked in an ominous tone.
“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know?” Lily replied, once more in her innocent, singsong voice. “I know things about you, Shen. Bad things. If any mishap befalls me, people will know what I know, and unlike me, those people would relish the chance to ruin you. I can be your greatest asset. Who knows? I might even be able to make you look good. Or I can destroy you. Which is it to be?”
A hostile silence stretched out between the lieutenant and the disgraced captain.
Vetch looked behind at the party but his spirits only chilled further. All the other troopers were taking a sudden interest in the splotchy chocolate, straw, and white colored fur of their adult mounts, or looking into the distance, as far away from Lily and Shen as possible. All except Enthree. The Muryani trooper had a single adult Saruswine to herself. Usually, her riding position was to lie prone along its back, but now she rode erect with the front of her coat undone. Her species didn’t possess ears; they ‘heard’ by picking up vibrations through their body hairs. The damned alien had bared her hairy chest to listen in on every word. Loving it too, most likely.
He turned back to regard Shen, whose lips had thinned and puckered inward like a stretched sphincter.
Oh, crap. Vetch reached beneath his shaggy coat to unsnap one of the lead weights that would slot inside the head of his war hammer. He couldn’t. His fingers were trembling.
Please, Ma. Can’t you make an exception just this once?
“Splendid!” Lily announced, oblivious to Vetch’s murderous thoughts. “I’ll accept your silence as acquiescence, Julius. So, if anyone is still paying attention, this is what I recommend. Our fugitives are hea
ded east-northeast. It’s obvious.”
Was it? Did Lily know about the rendezvous? Yazzie had only told Vetch and the jack-head sergeant. Leastways, that’s what the major had said.
Come on, Shen. Listen to Lily. Vetch unsnapped the lead wafer and slotted it into Lucerne. Please!
“East-northeast,” Shen agreed. “Of course it’s obvious, though not to my idiot sergeant who urged me to head west. Still, it’s useful to have my thoughts confirmed.”
Idiot sergeant? Vetch sighed with relief. He could take such lies and insults all day and night, so long as the party was headed on the right bearing.
“Hurry up,” urged Shen. “You’ve wasted enough of our time as it is, Arunsen.” With a flick of his reins, the lieutenant sped away, his mount’s hind legs spraying snow over Vetch and Lily.
Vetch growled.
But he unlocked the lead weight in his hammer and locked it back onto his belt before snapping the reins.
The young Saruswine buck reared up on its strong back legs and let out a howl that would carry for miles.
“Woahhhhh!” screamed Vetch as he found himself riding the shaggy creature through the air.
From the neck down, a Saruswine’s body resembled a super-heavy rabbit with hind legs designed to leap to enormous heights.
And excited young bucks loved to leap…
The landing knocked the breath out of Vetch. He’d lost hold of the reins but gripped the animal’s fur just tightly enough to hang on as the creature bounded after Shen.
Deep within its chest, the beast rumbled powerfully enough to make Vetch’s legs shake. On every exhalation it gave a lengthy squeak of pleasure.
Vetch’s butt clenched in anticipation of the lengthy torture it foresaw in its near future.
Please slow down please slow down please slow down.
But the creature wouldn’t. And neither would Shen’s.
It was an hour before the two Saruswine tired and turned around, sniffing the air to acquire the scent of the rest of the expedition they’d left far behind.
“Exhilarating, don’t you think?” exclaimed Shen. The madman was genuinely joyous.
Vetch didn’t answer. He was too busy figuring ways he could ride his Saruswine without his thighs or backside touching anything. Walking back was an increasingly tempting prospect.
OSU SYBUTU
“Honestly,” Urdizine insisted, “the pain was only because my hydraulic bands had loosened. I need a few minutes more for them to harden. That’s all.”
Osu nodded, but he wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. “Didn’t anyone look at your wound at Fort Iceni?”
“Yeah.” The Zhoogene looked away. “Told me to embrace the hurt – painkillers would have made me loosen my bands, maybe fatally. They were going to remove the shrapnel this morning. That’s what I really need.”
Osu’s mouth gaped. “Holy skragg! I’m sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it, Sybutu. If you’d left me behind, they would be interrogating me now like they did to you.”
Damn! How could he have known that his wounded man had been so close to treatment? It probably wouldn’t have made any difference, Osu told himself. Probably. He realized he was too cold and tired to think through such complex questions.
The legionaries were squatting inside a ring made of their bikes with their heated seats set to maximum. When they’d first entered the Great Ice Plain, they’d secured camo sheets over their heads that had trapped the heat and shielded them from the wind. More sheets had been lain on the ground to make them snug as anything.
But the sheets had been lost in the encounter with the Cora’s World rebels. Now they were five men in thick coats getting their butts frozen off.
Literally.
The cold was relentless. Even with the sun up for two hours now, it felt as if invisible tongs coated with liquid nitrogen were reaching up from the ground and clamping around his buttocks.
The only upside was that the intense cold had slowed some of their metabolic processes. So far, none of them had needed to relieve themselves since fleeing the Militia fort, but the horrific prospect of needing to do so at some point without even the camo sheets was beginning to crowd out other thoughts. He wasn’t the only one developing a bathroom obsession, he was sure.
What a life!
Other than the need to give Urdizine a chance to harden his alien body, this stop, though, was about bodily input rather than output.
Osu rolled the frozen lump of rations around the inside of his cheeks, keeping it moving so as not to burn his soft tissue.
Duck in plum sauce, it said on the wrapper. The plums were a downright lie. And as for the duck, it was a species that had been left behind in the Orion Spur 12,000 light-years away. Whatever the paste’s ingredients, the first dollop he’d squeezed out the mouth of the packet had at least been warm. Now that it was frozen solid, he’d had to snap it off in sections.
Zavage had laid his food on top of his heated bike to keep it from freezing. Osu made a note to do the same next time.
A nagging thought thawed out of the frozen ether and pressed against Osu’s mind.
He stared at the Zhoogene. “What did you mean by being interrogated ‘like me’? Didn’t they question you at all?”
Urdi shook his head.
“They locked us up tight, warm and safe,” said Zavage. “It’s obvious that your experience was different. It seems to me that whatever games were being played at Fort Iceni, it was all about you.”
It was all about him.
Was it?
He hadn’t the luxury of time or warmth to figure that out. They had to keep going.
“Five minutes. Then we move out.”
“Or ten,” said Bronze. “We still don’t know where we’re going. Or why.”
“There’s no time.”
“Oh, c’mon, Sarge. I thought we were going to Raemy-Ela. Since our green man still needs fixing, I don’t understand why you’ve set us going in the wrong direction. We’re headed for coordinates that the map says are a random nowhere in the icy wilderness.”
Although the SpecMish man’s words were friendly enough, Osu heard an undertone that was accusing him of letting his team down.
Osu reached for an angry retort, but none would surface because Bronze was right.
What was wrong with him? Ever since Faxian, Osu had been running. Even chained to that damned boulder, or locked in his cell, he’d still been running inside his head.
From what?
Nydella’s death? Yergin’s?
Then it hit him in the gut.
He winced.
The Legion.
He was running from the Legion itself, because the institution he’d trusted with his life for so many years was… rotten!
The main guns that had turned and fired on Faxian.
The ease with which the rebels had gotten through the orbital defenses.
Someone had destroyed the Legion presence in the Rho-Torkis system within minutes, and they’d done it from the inside.
“I’m still struggling with the concept of Militia capturing legionaries and then subjecting them to interrogation,” said Bronze. “We’re still two branches of the same Federation military. What did they hope to learn from you?”
“They thought we were… biters.”
“And you convinced them that you were a vanilla SOTL and so they let us go?” Bronze laughed. “And just for fun, they made us climb down the walls on a rope?”
“No,” Osu replied. “We had insider help. There was a Major Yazzie. She seemed to already know everything we’re doing. She let us go and gave me this.” He reached into his coat and drew out the sheet of paper he’d found bundled with the weapons. “These are coordinates for a rendezvous point. Yazzie said she’d send us help.”
“Wait!” said Stryker. “We’re not friends with the Militia now, are we? Tell me we’re not actually going to make that rendezvous.”
“The hell we are,” said Osu. “That’s ou
r current heading, but we’ll double back before we get there and make for Raemy-Ela like we said in the first place. Hang on there, Urdi, buddy. We’ll get you sorted.”
“And the trackers?” prompted Zavage.
“If the Militia planted something on us,” Osu replied, “then that suits me fine for the moment. We’ll deal with them next stop. Okay, breakfast’s over, ladies and gentle-creatures. On my honor, I’ll tell you everything I know before we reach Raemy-Ela, but first, we need to get away. Zavage, you’re on point. Urdizine, you slot in behind our team empath. C’mon everyone, let’s ride.”
VETCH ARUNSEN
Vetch cleared his throat loudly. “Lily Hjon, you are a dirty sneak.”
The accused looked up from the tracker disk she’d secured to the ice.
And then returned her attention to the device.
“And ineffective,” he added.
Lily frowned, but otherwise ignored him, making slight adjustments to the little concave dish of the signal collector.
He planted a boot in the snow to either side of the tracker and crossed his arms. “Running off every time we stop to rest the mounts.” He shook his head. “Not very convincing. Especially not from someone like you with the constitution of a war droid, but I suppose it was enough to fool our glorious leader. So… this is your hunch? A tracker?”
“Uh-huh. I put the transmitter inside their sergeant.”
“And you’ve kept this secret... why exactly?”
“It suits my purposes to keep Shen in awe of my preternatural abilities.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough. Works for me.”
“Not anymore, it doesn’t.” She started folding up the device. “I thought I was being thorough. I desensitized the jack sergeant’s skin and covered up the incision with some light burn scars.”
“You lost the signal?”
“Me? I didn’t lose anything. Either the signal is being jammed–”
“Or it’s no longer transmitting. They cut it out of him.”
Having folded the equipment through more dimensions than seemed possible, Lily slipped it inside a tiny coat pocket. “It seems the pretty boy sergeant is not as stupid as he makes out.”
Chimera Company - Rho-Torkis Box Set Page 15