Soldiers Out of Time (18 page)

Time passed, its pace slowed by tension. They used it to make plans and try to foresee contingencies. Finally, with the usual nerve-wracking lack of warning, the hatch opened. Two guards entered—fewer than usual, which suggested that Mondrago was right and that most of the Transhumanists were absent. Both were goon-caste. After so much time with no trouble from the prisoners, they had grown lax . . . even more so now that Stoneman was absent, Jason suspected, for only one had a laser carbine, and it was slung over his shoulder. Both held neural-stimulator batons in a contemptuously nonchalant way.

“You two,” said the one with the laser carbine, gesturing at Jason and Mondrago. “Come!”

Jason rose slowly to his feet, followed by Mondrago. As he did so, he gave Rojas an almost imperceptible nod.

As Jason and Mondrago passed between the two guards, Rojas suddenly screamed and went into what appeared to be an epileptic seizure.

“What—?” exclaimed the guard with the laser carbine, who stood to Jason’s left. By sheer reflex, he swung toward the source of the commotion.

As he did so, Jason grabbed the laser carbine and heaved, swinging the guard to whose shoulder it was strapped around to collide with the other guard, knocking him off-balance. Simultaneously, Mondrago dropped to the deck, avoiding the batons, and grappled the two guards’ ankles.

All the IDRF people sprang to their feet. Jason grasped the wrists of the guard he had unbalanced and pinned him to the floor, desperately straining against genetically upgraded strength as the guard tried to bring his baton into contact. He only had to do so for a second before Bakiyev kicked the guard in the temple, hard. At the same time, Jason heard a scream from Mondrago, for the other guard had fallen on top of him and applied his baton. But then Hamner gripped the guard’s baton-arm, rolled him over and finished him with a quick, economical chop to the throat with the edge of his stiffened hand.

“Are you all right?” demanded Jason as he hauled the trembling Mondrago to his feet.

“Never better,” the Corsican managed to gasp.

“Not a bad performance,” Jason told Rojas. He scooped up the laser carbine. “And now, let’s go!”

Guided by Jason’s map display, they rushed through the transport’s passageways, encountering no one. The hatch giving access to the cargo bay was closed, but its controls were standard. Jason slapped a button, and it slid open.

The cargo port was open, as Jason had hoped, with its ramp expended to the ground, and the outside world was visible in blurred gray tones it always showed when viewed from inside an invisibility field. “Come on!” Jason ordered.

They were halfway across the cargo bay when a guard, who had been standing outside, stepped in with laser carbine at the ready. As he brought it into line with one hand, he punched a control box beside the opening. The cargo port began to rumble shut.

Odinga, who was closest to him, launched himself at the guard with a roar. There was the
crack!
of a weapon-grade laser drilling a hole through air, and Odinga’s chest expelled the steam of heat-exchange. He crumpled without a sound.

But he had given Jason the split second he needed. His own laser beam speared the guard.

“Run!” he shouted.

They all crowded through the port before it had finished closing. Jason was the last, and as the port slammed shut it caught his laser carbine, crushing it.

There was no time to mourn Odinga. They ran toward the stern of the transport, not wishing to test their theories about the laser turret. Then they were out of the field, the transport was no longer visible, and the landscape around them abruptly came into focus and assumed the clarity of mountain sunlight.

CHAPTER TWENTY

There was no immediate pursuit, and Mondrago’s optimism about the laser turret appeared to have been justified. Still, Jason wanted to put as much distance as possible between them and the now-invisible transport. So he kept them running for a spell, until they all needed to stop, gasping for breath—this clearly was high-altitude terrain, and they were used to standard sea-level atmospheric pressure. Only then did he permit himself to look around at their surroundings.

It seemed mid-afternoon, judging from the position of the sun. They were on an upland plateau, stony and barren like the slopes of the mountains that loomed above, although the upper reaches were covered with dense forests. Spurs projected from the sides of the ridge, forming narrow gorges, in which what looked like villages could be glimpsed. To the west, below and barely visible between two peaks, the westering sun glinted on a river—Stoneman had mentioned the Swat. He had also mentioned isolated British detachments off to the flanks, which was undoubtedly why he had landed up here in the surrounding mountains.

It was a dramatic landscape, but Jason was in no mood to appreciate it. He swallowed to wet his throat—the air was dry as well as thin, and he was growing thirsty in the August heat—and turned to face the others.

“All right, let’s get moving. They’ll be after us soon, and they must have sensors that can detect my implant—maybe fair-sized, long-ranged ones.”

“Where shall we go” asked Hamner.

“Toward that valley over there. We’ll find the nearest village.”

“How will we communicate with them?” Rojas inquired. “None of us speak whatever it is they speak around here—”

“Pushtu,” Mondrago supplied.

“—and I doubt if any of the villagers speak English.”

“Well, Stoneman said the Brits are operating in this area. Maybe there’ll be some around . . . or maybe the headman will have picked up a few English words.”

“Anyway,” said Bakiyev with his usual stolid calm, “we’d better get going.” He pointed back to the location where the transport rested inside the field that bent light-frequencies around it. Figures were popping into view around it.

“Move!” Jason snapped. The distant figures weren’t many—Stoneman hadn’t returned yet—but they had twenty-fourth-century weapons, which made numbers irrelevant. And they would undoubtedly be driven by a desire to not have to explain to Stoneman how they had lost the prisoners.

None of them needed any urging. They all got to their feet and scrambled uphill, up the rugged slopes, over tumbled heaps of boulders. They soon lost sight of the remote figures of their pursuers, but Jason wasn’t about to let up, knowing what a beacon his implant provided to anyone with the right sensors.

As they gained altitude, the heat grew somewhat less oppressive. But the air also grew thinner, so that exertion was exhausting to their unacclimated bodies. It also grew drier, and Jason’s thirst became ever more tormenting.

After a time, his sense of direction began to tell him that his efforts to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Transhumanists might not be working. The topography was tricky, and they might simply be circling around in such a way as to cross the path of their pursuers. He licked his dry lips, croaked “Halt!” and tried to get his bearings.

“Freeze!”

Jason froze, and slowly turned his head to the left, from which had come the command. A figure in standard shipboard coverall stood at the edge of a cliff up which he had presumably clambered, pointing a laser carbine at them. Keeping the weapon on target with his right hand, he raised his left arm to speak into a wrist communicator.
Summoning the others
, Jason thought bleakly.
After which—

“Hit the dirt!” Mondrago’s dry-throated rasp held a tone that caused Jason and the others to instantly fall prone to the ground. As Jason did so, getting a mouthful of dust, he looked to his right. Three figures wearing khaki uniforms and pith helmets topped a ridge, and one of them opened fire with some kind of shoulder arm. He heard a cry to his left and, turning his head, saw the Transhumanist clutch his midriff and fall over backwards off the cliff.

For a moment, Jason could only lie there and cough dust out of his desiccated mouth. Then he heard a scrape of sandaled feet and looked up.

It was a small, scrawny man of indeterminate age, clad only in a dirty-white breechclout and a kind of turban. His leathery skin was a darker-than-average brown compared to most predominantly Indian-descended people of Jason’s acquaintance. Over his shoulder was slung a goatskin sack which looked to be partially full of liquid and seemed much too heavy for him. He squatted beside Jason, propped up his head, and put the sack’s unstopped opening to his mouth.

The water was lukewarm and none too fresh. Jason had never tasted anything so exquisitely delightful.

The man smiled, his teeth white against his dark face, and spoke in an odd singsong version of nineteenth-century English.

“I hope you liked your drink,
sahib
.”

The entire party had been watered by the time the three men in khaki had scrambled down the slope and joined them. At closer range, Jason saw that all three had what he recognized as early bolt-action repeating rifles slung over their shoulders, and wore sergeant’s chevrons. The one who had shot the Transhumanist also had a tiny crown in the chevrons’ angle. He had the build of a heavyweight boxer—a good one—and a ruddy face that could have been cited as evidence for the still-contentious theory of Neanderthaloid ancestry in modern
Homo sapiens
. He took off his pith helmet and wiped the sweat from his dark reddish-brown hair.

“Thanks,” Jason told him, and gestured at the nearly naked Indian. “You and that man, between you, saved our lives.”

The massive sergeant gave a dismissive gesture in the direction of the Indian and spoke in a kind of deep, clipped rasp in which
th
shaded slightly toward
d
. “Ah, he’s just the regimental
bhisti.
” Jason assumed that meant “water carrier.” Then the sergeant gave him a surprisingly shrewd look, and stroked his narrow mustache. “Yank, eh?”

“Actually, my friend and I are Canadians.” Jason had already decided on this dodge to account for his and Mondrago’s North American accents while at the same time establishing them as loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen. He introduced the two of them, using their own names, which he hoped would sound French to this bruiser. “We’re with a company exploring for minerals in these mountains. Our employees, here, are Americans.” He pointed to Rojas and Bermudez. “Those two are Mexican-Americans, and the others are recent immigrants. So their English is limited . . . sounds pretty strange, in fact.”

“Ah,” nodded the sergeant. If he found anything odd about the presence of two women in the party, he kept it to himself. “I’d say you picked a bloody awful place for prospecting, especially these days with the niggers running wild up here.” He gazed at the men’s three-week beards and general filthiness. “And I can tell you’ve been out here a while. But what . . .?” He gestured in the direction of the cliff over which the Transhumanist had toppled.

“Uh . . . he worked for another company that’s in competition with ours, you see. They attacked—took all our equipment. We’ve been running from them.”

“Ah.” The sergeant gave another sage nod. “That explains those buggers. We’ve had trouble with them ourselves. And we didn’t know what to make of them. They’re not local tribesmen, that’s for certain. And they’re dressed peculiarly . . . rather like . . .” He gave Jason’s own garb a narrow regard.

“Well, as you say, that explains it,” said Jason hurriedly, anxious to change the subject. “But to whom do we owe our lives?”

“McCready, Royal West Kent Regiment.” He gestured at the other two sergeants, both younger than he. “This is Carver, and this is Hazeltine.”

“Top o’ the afternoon, mate,” said Carver in an accent that was pure cockney. He was a roguishly handsome, black-haired man whose clean-shaven face featured a deeply cleft chin and an infectiously raffish grin. Jason instantly summed him up:
engaging rascal.

“Good day,” said Hazeltine in educated tones. His unconsciously languid posture didn’t disguise the athleticism of his slim body. His hair and neat mustache were blond, his features clean-cut, his eyes blue and alert. From somewhere, Jason recalled the old British army term
gentleman ranker.

“All right, let’s move our bloody arses,” McCready rumbled. “There are a few of the 24th Sikhs over the ridge,” he explained to Jason. “Our battalion is brigaded with them, and with the 24th and 31st Punjab Infantry, and the three of us got seconded to their regiment.” Jason recalled Mondrago mentioning something about such arrangements. “We were up here on the flank of our main column, and got separated. Then we got into a bit of a dust-up with these business competitors of yours. Lost a couple of the Sikhs before we got away. By the way . . . what kind of rifles are those they’re using? They don’t seem to
do
anything, but—”

“New American models,” Jason cut in. “Don’t know much about them. But that reminds me, Sergeant. It seems you and we both want to get back at these people, and I wonder if your unit would help us to—”

“Sorry. Our duty is to rejoin our brigade.” McCready turned to his fellow sergeants. “Right. Let’s go.” Then he noticed the
bhisti
, still doling out sips of water. “Get moving, you lazarushian bugger, before I help you along with the toe of me boot!”

“Come on, Mac,” Carver remonstrated as they started trudging up the ridge. “Go easy on him. He means well. And he has a hard enough time in life, what with bein’ an untouchable and all.”

“Not an insuperable hindrance with the Sikhs of the 24th,” Hazeltine reminded him. “They don’t believe in caste. They’ll drink water from him even though he’s touched the bag. But you’re right about him meaning well. He’s so proud of the little bit of English he’s learned.”

“And he’s given me a new tip!” Carver’s dark eyes lit up. “Yes, all right, I own that the last one didn’t exactly work out so well—”

“Not exactly,” Hazeltine interjected drily. “It landed the three of us in close tack, as I recall. We’re lucky we still have our stripes.”

“But this time he swears by Rama and Vishnu and all them heathen idols that he knows the location of a buried treasure of the old Mughal emperors, in these very hills! Enough to make us all richer than bloomin’ dukes! If only we could’ve just taken a slight diversion . . . You know, a bit of tactical flexibility, like.”

McCready drew a deep breath of long-suffering exasperation into his barrel of a chest. “So help me, Carver,” he growled slowly, “if I hear you mention treasure one more time . . .!”

“Ignore them,” said Hazeltine to Jason with a wink. “I do so habitually.”

Jason decided to risk exposing their ignorance, for he badly needed information. “I was wondering if you could bring me up to date on the state of affairs here in the Swat Valley. We haven’t been in this country long, you see, and we don’t know anything about the background of this campaign.”

“Well,” Hazeltine began, “you must understand that this entire area—the Bajaur-Dir-Swat-Buner region—is an explosively hostile Pathan stronghold, British in name only. After all, it’s outside the Administrative Boundary.” Realizing that a colonial like Jason wouldn’t understand what that meant, he elucidated. “You see, the official boundary between India and Afghanistan—the Durand Line, it’s called, after the chap who marked it out—has a belt on this side of it where we don’t even try to keep the Pathan tribes from robbing and murdering each other to their black little hearts’ content as long as they don’t molest our forts at points where we have to keep control, like the Khyber Pass. The Administrative Boundary is the inner border of that belt. “

“Ain’t he something?” declared Carver, beaming with pride at Hazeltine’s education. “Would you believe, he’s even learned Urdu, like a proper officer?”

“I say, let the heathen sods learn English,” muttered McCready.

“But the present problem,” continued Hazeltine, demonstrating his expertise at ignoring the other two members of this comedy team, “began last month, when our fort at Malakand Pass, at the southern end of the Swat Valley—one of those crucial posts I mentioned—was attacked by the followers of Sadullah the Mad Mullah.”

Jason made surreptitious eye contact with Mondrago. The Corsican gave a nod that said,
Yes. Seriously.

“In addition to all the usual tosh about Allah,” Hazeltine continued, “Sadullah has been carrying around a thirteen-year-old boy he claims is the legitimate heir to the Mughal dynasty. So the local Pathan tribes—Yusafazis, Swatis, Bunerwals and the like; treacherous brutes—were ready to carry fire and sword to Delhi and restore Muslim rule so they could get back to the enthralling fun of massacring Hindus, from which we British have been cruelly restraining them. But even though the entire Frontier has been simmering, the
sirkar
—that’s our bloody government—didn’t take it seriously until July 26th. Then ten thousand
ghazis
—fanatics—attacked the Malakand fort and the even smaller one at Chakdara. The garrisons—24th Punjab Infantry and 45th Sikhs, mostly—only amounted to a thousand men, but they managed to hold out until reinforced. At this point, even the politicians realized this wasn’t just a few tribesmen out for an evening’s amusement, and early this month the Malakand Field Force was formed under Brigadier General Blood.”