March Upcountry

Pahner turned and looked towards the distant mountains. Trees were faintly visible on the lower slopes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The trees were spindly and very tall. There were branch scars on their lower surfaces, but the first actual limbs were nearly twenty meters up the trunk. From there, the trunk continued upwards another ten or twenty meters in a spreading crown. They looked misshapen, like some sort of odd, oversized toadstools. The bark was generally gray and smooth, but some of the trees showed gouges that reached nearly to the spreading crowns.

Roger glanced up at the trees through the extruded plastron of his helmet and shook his head.

"Bad sign. Strop marks," he commented. There'd been chatter about the gouges on the tactical net, but he was still having a hard time making out what everyone was talking about. Now, looking up the trees, some of the comments made more sense.

"Pardon me, Your Highness?" Eleanora said, pausing to take a couple of deep breaths. The pace Captain Pahner had set wasn't fast—he knew better than to rush forward in terrain about which he had no knowledge—but combined with the heat, it was terribly debilitating to a woman who'd practically never set foot outside a city. She'd kept up with the Marine company so far, but only by dint of iron determination, and it was obvious that she was exhausted.

The company had been walking for nearly six hours, marching for fifty minutes and then taking a ten-minute water break as per doctrine for the environmental conditions. It had taken them that long to get off the salt flats, and now they were entering an alluvial outflow from the mountains. The outflow, unlike the salt flats, had some vegetation. But not much, and the trees that made up the majority of it were widely spaced. And scarred.

"Strop marks," Roger repeated, absently offering the academic the left arm of his armor to support some of her weight. The prince was sweating profusely, but didn't look particularly worn. That might have something to do with carrying less gear than the rest of the company or being in powered armor, but mostly it had to do with the fact that he preferred being on safari to anything else.

He'd traveled, hunted, and studied in more unpleasant, out-of-the-way places than almost any of the Marines realized. And he rarely hunted game that didn't hunt back.

"Marks on a tree like that come from two things," he explained. "Animals eating the bark, and territory marking. And if it were bark-eaters, all the trees would be marked."

"So," O'Casey asked with another gasp, "what does that mean?" She knew it should be obvious, but she was wilting in the heat. She checked her toot and suppressed a whimper. Twenty minutes until the next rest.

"It means that there's a something around here that's territorial," Roger said with a glance at the marks high overhead. "Something really, really big."

Sergeant Major Kosutic watched the point guard, PFC Berent, from Julian's squad. The company was moving with two platoons forward of the headquarters unit, and one behind, and they'd started with Third Platoon forward, since Third had the only squad with armor. The private on point not only had her suit sensors on maximum, she had a hand-held sca

"Well, if we run into whatever it is," Eleanora said, taking a deep gulp of water, "just let it kill me, okay?" She suddenly realized that she was talking to herself and that the whole company had stopped. "Roger?" she said, and turned to look back.

Pahner had a repeater of the scout's data on one-quarter of his visor, and general data on the company and its formation on two other quarters. The fourth was left for figuring out where to put his feet. Currently, the only one he was paying attention to was the repeater from the scout.

The beast that had come into sight around a pile of boulders was dark brown and nearly as high in the shoulder as an elephant, but longer and wider. The head was armed with two long, slightly curved horns that looked useful for fighting or digging, and the neck was protected by a ruff of armor. Massive shoulders were covered in armored scales that faded back to pebbly hide, and it had six squat, forward-thrust limbs and a fleshy tail that flailed back and forth as it pounded from left to right across the company's path. As it ran, it bugled in rage at whatever it was chasing.

The captain examined it for just a moment. The beast was fearsome looking, but a closer examination confirmed his initial judgment. There was no sign of canines or any analog; only grinder teeth were revealed when it opened its maw to scream. Nor did the beast have the sort of long, lean look one found in virtually all predators. It was undoubtedly something to keep an eye on and could be a problem, but it wasn't a carnivore, and was therefore unlikely to attack the company.

"All units," he said, knowing that the tac-comp in his communicator would set the radio to all-frequency broadcast. "Don't fire. It's an herbivore. I say again, do not fire."

There was chatter on the net, and although Roger's inexperience with the com link kept him from following it at all clearly, he could certainly understand its excited overtones. He looked at the creature and its paws. They were odd for a desert creature, webbed and clawed like those of a carnivorous toad. And it was just about the right length and design to be able to rear up on those trees. It was obviously an herbivore, but it was just as obviously a part of whatever herd had marked these trees as its territory. That put it in the "dangerous" slot, and Roger wasn't about to let it circle around and hit the company from behind like a Cape buffalo, or a Shastan rock toad. Or go and get the rest of the herd to squash them all to paste.

He put the rifle to the shoulder and drew a breath. Lead it, easy squeeze.

Pahner's jaw dropped as the giant beast snapped at its side. It turned on its tail once, then slammed over sideways in a self-made hurricane of dust and gravel. The ground shuddered underfoot with the impact, and it lashed and snapped at the air for several seconds until it was still. He watched it for one sulphurous moment more, and took a deep breath.

"Okay! Who the hell fired?!" There was complete silence on all the nets. "I said, 'who fired?'!"

"That would be His Highness," Julian said ironically.

Pahner cut out the snickering on the squad leaders' net and turned to where Roger stood with a smoking rifle propped on his thigh. The prince had the Parkins and Spencer set for bolt action, and Pahner watched as he jacked the spent round out of the chamber and caught it in midair. He pulled a fresh round out of his vest, chambered it, and put the empty case where the new one had been. Each of the movements was precise, but jerky and over-muscled. Then he reached up and cleared the chameleon field from his helmet so that he could meet Pahner's eye.

Pahner stepped over to where the prince stood and switched to the command frequency they alone shared.

"Your Highness, could we talk for a moment?"

"Certainly, Captain Pahner," the prince said sardonically.