The Service of the Sword

"Check the remote, Chief," Abigail panted.

"Yes, Ma'am." Palmer slipped his shoulders free of his backpack's straps and delved into it. It only took him a moment to extract the com tied into the remote still watching over their old encampment.

"Damn," Gutierrez said softly as he peered over Abigail's shoulder at the small display and the image of the second shuttle grounded beside the roaring flames of the first. "I'd hoped they wouldn't be quite that fast off the mark." He checked his chrono. "I make it roughly twenty-three minutes."

Abigail only nodded silently, but her heart sank. She'd hoped it would take much longer than that for a follow-up flight to reach their original campsite. The speed with which the pirates had actually managed it dismayed her. This wasn't the sort of tactical problem they'd trained her for at the Academy, and somehow, when she'd devised her plan, she'd assumed they'd have more time to move from covered position to covered position.

She patted Palmer on the shoulder, then nodded to Gutierrez to follow her, and the two of them made their way back to the mouth of the ravine. Abigail crouched there, Gutierrez squatting behind her, and gazed back up the way they'd come. Their position was as close as they were going to get to a private conversation, she thought.

"They're fast," she said finally, and half-sensed Gutierrez's shrug behind her.

"People who fly are always faster than people who walk, Ma'am," he said philosophically. "On the other hand, people who walk can get into places people who fly can't."

"But if they can pin us down in a place like this," she said quietly, "they won't really have to get into here after us, will they?"

"No," Gutierrez agreed.

"And it won't take them long to work their way here," Abigail continued in that same quiet voice.

"Longer than you think, Ma'am," Gutierrez assured her. She looked up at him, and her low-light gear showed her his expression clearly. To her surprise, he seemed completely serious, not as if he were simply trying to cheer her up.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Ma'am, they can overfly us in just a few minutes, but we're under pretty good cover here. They're not going to see us from overhead, and that means they're going to have to send people in looking for us on foot. Now, we knew exactly where we were going, and it took us a good fifteen, sixteen minutes to get here at a hard run. It's going to take them a helluva lot longer to cover the same distance not knowing where they're going. Especially when they're going to be wondering if the same people who shot down their shuttle are waiting to shoot them up, too."

Abigail nodded slowly as she realized he was right. But even if it took the pirates four or five times as long to cover the same distance, they'd be to the ravine in no more than an hour and half or so.

"We need to buy some more time, Sergeant," she said.

"I'm certainly open to ideas, Ma'am," Gutierrez replied.

"How good are those thermal blankets at blocking sensors, really?"

"Well," Gutierrez said slowly, "they're pretty damned effective against straight thermal sensors. And they'll help some against other sensors. Not a lot. Why, Ma'am?"

"We don't have enough of them to cover all of us," Abigail said. "Even if we did, it will only be a matter of time until they work their way far enough down the valley to spot this ravine." She thumped the rock wall behind her. "And when they do—" She shrugged.

"Can't argue with you there, Ma'am," the sergeant said slowly, in the tone of a man who was pretty sure he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear.

"It occurs to me that if we just stay here, they'll get all of us once they reach this point," Abigail said steadily. "I'm sure you and your people will put up a good fight, but with us pi

Gutierrez nodded, his expression grim, and she shrugged.

"In that case, our best bet is to decoy them away from the ravine," she said. "If we just stay here, we all die. But if some of us use the thermal blankets for cover while we move away from here, then deliberately show ourselves further down the valley, well away from the ravine, we can draw them after us, pull them past the others. There should even be a pretty good chance that they'll assume all of us are somewhere out there ahead of them and extend their perimeter past the ravine without ever realizing it's here."

Gutierrez was silent for several seconds, then he drew a deep breath.

"Ma'am, there may be something to what you're saying," he said very slowly. "But you do understand that whoever does the decoying isn't going to make it, don't you?"

"Sergeant, if we all stay here, we alldie here," she said flatly. "It's always possible some of the decoy force might survive." She held up a hand before he could protest. "I know how heavy the odds against that are," she told him. "I'm not saying I think any of them will. I'm only saying that it's at least theoretically possible . . .  whereas if we stay here, there's no possibility at all, unless Gauntlet somehow miraculously gets back in the nick of time. Or would you disagree with that assessment?"

"No, Ma'am," he said finally. "No, I wouldn't."

"Well, in that case, let's—" she looked up at the sergeant with a bittersweet smile he didn't quite understand "—be about it."

It wasn't quite that simple, of course. Especially not when Gutierrez found out who she intended to command the decoys.

"Ma'am, this is a job for Marines!" he said sharply.

"Sergeant," she shot back just as sharply, "it was my idea, I'm in command of this party, and I say that makes it my job."

"You're not trained for it!" he protested.

"No, I'm not," she agreed. "But let's be honest here, Sergeant. Just how important is training going to be, under the circumstances?"

"But—"

"And another thing," she said, deliberately dropping her voice so that only Gutierrez could hear her. "If—when— they finally catch up with the decoys," she said unflinchingly, "they're going to realize they've been fooled if all they find are Marines. That was a Navy pi

Gutierrez stared at her, his expression unreadable, as he realized what she meant. That despite anything else she might have said, she knew the decoys were going to die . . . and that she was deliberately pla

"You could have a point," he acknowledged, manifestly against his will, "but you really aren't trained for this. You'll slow us down."

"I'm the youngest, fittest Navy person present," she said bluntly. "I may slow you down some, but I'll slow you down the least."

"But—"

"We don't have time to debate this, Sergeant. We need every minute we've got. I'll let you choose the rest of the party, but I'm coming. Is that clearly understood?"

Gutierrez stared at her for perhaps another three heartbeats. And then, slowly, obviously against his will, he nodded.

"It's taking too long," Ringstorff said.

"It's a big planet," Lithgow replied. The depot ship was far enough from Refuge that Lamar's light-speed message reporting the loss of his assault shuttle had yet to reach it.

"I'm not talking about that," Ringstorff said. "I'm talking about Morakis and Maurersberger. They should have been back here by now."

"It's only been fourteen hours," Lithgow protested. "It could easily have taken them that long just to run the Manty down!"