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"Whatever," Macek grumped. "It just offends my sense of professionalism."
"And Gomer here pushing me off the cliff didn't?" Julian asked.
"Nah," the corporal replied with a grin. "In fact, that was about the most professional payback I've ever seen!"
* * *
The column rounded the last corner of the interminable track just after dawn. It had started to rain again, but with the increased elevation, it was a cold, miserable rain that ate into the Marines' uniforms like acid. The chameleon uniform was, technically, all-environment—capable of handling anything from jungle to arctic. But the Marines had been slogging across a hostile world for nearly six months, and it showed.
The uniforms were a tattered patchwork of different cloths. There were whole sleeves and legs of dianda— the silklike flax of distant Marshad—as mute testimony to the terrible battle at Voitan. The dianda, in turn, was patched with the fine sedgelike cloth of K'Vaern's Cove and Diaspra. All of the patches were of faded dark cloth, which had the virtue of low visibility but blended poorly with the changeable chameleon cloth.
The Marines looked as faded as their uniforms. Their faces were drawn and pale, from the ascent into the mountains, from the cold, from the ongoing low-level vitamin deficiencies of their coll –oil supplements substitute, and from the omnipresence of war. All in all, Roger thought, the company looked on its last legs.
He walked to the front of the column and waved an ironic salute at Captain Pahner.
"I make you a gift of the Fortress of Shesul Pass, with fifty turom, one hundred and twenty rather questionable soldiers, and a rich booty of small arms," he a
"I think you're getting too into this, Your Highness."
"Just trying to make like a Roman, Captain," Roger replied with a grin. "Seriously, we should probably rest up for a day or two before we move on."
"We can't discount pursuit," Pahner pointed out.
"No," the prince agreed. "But when you get a good look at this place, I think you'll agree we can also leave a nonexpendable rearguard to hold any pursuit off." He waved to O'Casey as she joined them.
"Ms. O'Casey." He greeted her with a nod. "The mountain air appears to agree with you," he said, and it was true. In many ways, the academic looked better than the Marines about her.
"That's a long walk to force on an old woman," his chief of staff replied.
"Well, the captain has almost convinced me to let you take a break," Roger joked. "The Krath must've had plans for this pass; the facility's area is far larger than necessary for the garrison. There are sufficient quarters to house all of us in relative comfort, although they don't appear to have discovered the chimney, so the fires fill the rooms with smoke."
"If you don't mind, Captain," Doc Dobrescu said, dropping down from one of the passing carts, "I have to agree. We've got a lot of wounded and injured, and these carts are pure hell on them. Give them a couple of days under a roof and warm, and they'll be able to heal much faster."
"All right," Pahner said. "We'll stay. Two days. Your Highness, I assume the Vashin are down from the cold as well?"
"They're not doing well," Roger agreed. "Actually, they're more used to it than I expected, probably from being from the northern plains, but the most they can do is to maintain sentries."
"We'll let them rest as well," Pahner decided. "We should be able to go down to about ten percent security. I'd really prefer to put out a sentry group down the valley, but we'll settle for putting them up on the walls. Sergeant Major!"
"Yes, Sir," Kosutic replied. The carts had reached the open bailey of the fortress and were now stopped in a line. Roger noticed that most of them were being driven by Marines, and the handful of native teamsters driving the rest had small charcoal braziers burning under their seats.
"We're stopping here for a day or two," Pahner told Kosutic. "Leave the carts mostly packed; there should be stores in the castle, and we'll live off of them. Ten percent security, Marines only. Get everybody bunked down and working on gear."
"Yes, Sir," Kosutic repeated, making no effort to conceal her obvious relief. The sergeant major was like iron, but she knew when a unit was on its last legs. Now she looked up and shook her head.
"Speak of the devil," she said, and gri
"Sirs," he said, nodding at the officers, then held up a small device. "I found this in the commander's quarters."
Pahner accepted it, turned it over in his hands, and frowned at the maker's mark.
"A Zuiko tri-cam?" he mused.
"I think they must have been in contact with the port," Julian said darkly. "We may have a real problem, Sir."
"Maybe," Roger said. "And maybe not. We need to find out where it came from. Get some of the locals functional and find out."
"Yes, Sir," the sergeant said. He turned towards the fortress' main entrance, then stopped. "Or, maybe not."
One of Rastar's Vashin was walking slowly towards them, trailing a plume of smoke. One of the ways the cavalry coped with the cold was by toting small braziers of charcoal around with them like incense censors.
"Captain Pahner," the cavalryman said slowly when he finally reached the group, and saluted. "Marine. Gro
"We have got to get lower. Soon," Kosutic said to fill the gap in the conversation.
They'd all known that this moment would come, but this was the first "new" human they'd had contact with since crashing on the planet. And while the Mardukans might have stopped them from getting off-planet at any time, the humans could stop them if they realized what they faced. How to handle the local humans had been considered and debated at vast and exhausting length, but it had been impossible to make any clear plans without more information than they had. Now the moment of reckoning was upon them.
"Well, I guess we'd better go meet him," Pahner said finally.
* * *
Harvard Mansul wished he had his camera. Of course, he might as well have wished he were back at Society headquarters on Old Earth, while he was at it. As a matter of fact, he did wish that, too, but he was a realist. He would have settled for getting the tri-cam back intact. The Zuiko was tough—it had to be, to survive around him—but it wasn't invulnerable, and sooner or later they would open it up to find out how it worked.
At which point, it would stop. Working, that was.
When he wasn't worrying about his tri-cam, he passed the time in his rather dank cell by wondering how long it would take the Society to mount a rescue. If they ever bothered. He'd reached the point of regretting his habit of disappearing for years at a time. Considering his stint on Scheherazade, the Society might not start looking for decades.
He sighed and banged on the door again. Usually the horned-ones roused before now, and he looked forward to the morning exercise time. But so far, there'd been virtually no sound filtering down to his little stone cube today.
"Hellooo! It's morning! Would you kind gentlemen mind letting me out?"
* * *
"I felt it was best to let you handle it, Sir," the private said. "I didn't know how you wanted to play it, or even if you wanted him to know we were here, so I sent one of the Vashin down to check on him. He's been ... kind of loud."
"Okay, come on," Roger said. "Let's find out what they caught."
"I wonder if they were keeping him tucked away in the larder for munchies later?" Kosutic mused.