Their Master's War (22 page)

and the disintegration fields. The wounded were being loaded onto e-vacs, and the dead were being incinerated in one huge pit. Above it, smoke mixed with the black dust. The sunlight filtering through was turned a bloody red. The three towering dynes were attempting to raise their fallen comrade, droning at each other in their deep, resonant language. While the twenty had been in among the fungus, amphibious armored crawlers had come upriver, bringing supplies and replacement troops. They had clawed their way up the bank and were now being unloaded. In the middle of it all, two red spheres floated close to the ground, right beside the ruins of the Yal tower. It was just as if they were observing the whole operation.

The combat twenties coming in from the bush seemed somehow out of place amid all these flurries of preparation. They had yet to be told what to do. They crunched aimlessly across the fused earth and black flake ash hoping for a topman to assign them to a bivouac area. Their mood was rapidly deteriorating. The field kitchens, always an obvious goal, were being set up but had not yet opened for business. The nohans seemed to have been quicker off the mark. Lines of the armored aliens were already forming in front of the tall tubular devices that prepared their nourishment. This caused a certain noisy resentment among the troopers. The nohans never actually fought except in the most dire emergency, and the men saw it as a positive injustice that they should get to eat, or whatever they did that passed for eating, before the human fighting men. Elmo tried to stop these complaints in his twenty, but the troopers simply ignored him. Dacker was the first one to lose patience with this purposeless tramping across the assembly area. He threw down his MEW and faced Elmo.

"If you can't find us a place to set up camp, why don't you go look for someone who can?" Renchett joined in. "Yeah, Elmo, why don't you go find Rance? A report's got to be put in on those bodies. Do something useful for a change instead of busting our chops." Elmo turned on them. "You two watch your mouths. You're back in the world of discipline now," he snarled.

Dacker waved a dismissive hand at the milling men and machinery. "It looks like it, don't it?" Renchett shook his head. "One little nuke could take out all of this lot."

"Lucky they don't have any, ain't it?"

"You never know; they might come up with one."

"At least it'd be quick."

"Cut that out!" Elmo tried again.

"Quit trying to prove it, Elmo. We've had enough of your dickhead blustering."

"You bastards..." Elmo's voice was shaking.

Renchett pushed his helmet close to Elmo's visor. "What are you going to do, Elmo? Threaten to burn us down again? How are you going to explain it in the middle of all this?"

"Damn you

There was a familiar roar in their helmets. "Something going on here?" It was Rance.

"Tempers getting a little frayed here, Topman," Renchett answered. "It's been a long day." Rance halted and fell into a parade rest. He looked Renchett up and down.

"A trooper's temper doesn't get frayed with his overman, Renchett. A trooper doesn't have a temper as far as an overman is concerned."

Renchett snapped to an ironic half attention. "No, Topman Rance. You'll have to put it down to combat fatigue."

"Combat fatigue, my ass."

"Yes, Topman Rance."

Rance turned on Elmo. "Do you want to press formal charges against this man?"

"No, I'll deal with him."

"Then let's get the men bedded down."

He faced the twenty and indicated five freshly dug foxholes over on their right.

"Four men to each hole. There'll be an inspection in thirty minutes. Dyrkin, organize a guard rota. Three of you will rotate on the perimeter, and there'll be one area watch. Now, get going."

"There are three dead."

"Then some of you will have more room to roll around in your sleep."

"We'll look forward to it." "I'm sure you will, Dyrkin." Dyrkin led the twenty away. Rance indicated that Elmo should walk with him in the other direction. As soon as the men had gone, his whole attitude changed. There was no more grim banter. He became cold and businesslike, a man who no longer had the tune to be angry.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Elmo was taken by complete surprise.

"What are you talking about?"

"I told you to lay back on the longtimers and let Dyrkin and Renchett take care of things. They can handle it. It may be news to you, but I want to keep my longtimers alive. We can't clear this forsaken planet with replacements."

Elmo was too tightly wrapped to accept the advice. His jaw set, and he started straight ahead. "I can run my own twenty."

"The hell you can. They're starting to look like walking corpses."

"It was a bad day."

"It's always a bad day in the jungle." "This was different."

"Damn it, man, you only lost three men. Whole twenties were wiped out in the center section. What hit you?" "Miggies." "How many?" "A group of twelve." Rance's voice was like ice. "Twelve?" "Right."

"A dozen miggies don't make a bad day." "There was something else." "What?"

'There were these bodies."

As far as Rance was concerned, Elmo was hanging himself out to dry.

"There are always bodies."

"These were different. They'd been mutilated. Deliberately."

"Mutilated? How?"

"The skin had been flayed off them, and their dicks had been stuffed in their mouths. It was disgusting."

"You're kidding."

"I've never seen anything like it. The men took it bad. They've started telling each other that it's some new psych program."

Rance didn't like the sound of this at all.

"Where was this?"

"Back in the jungle, not too far beyond the perimeter. I fixed the spot."

"I'll call it in. Hopefully they'll send out a data team." Rance touched a stud on the side of his helmet.

"Open a command channel." He waited.

"Patch me through to Line Officer Berref." He waited again.

"What do you mean he's returned to the cluster? Yeah... okay." He glanced at Elmo. "You get a dataspot or just a fix?"

"I took a spot."

"The brain wants you to shoot it in." "On D-four?" "Code three." Elmo touched a similar stud on his helmet, activating a direct link facility that wasn't shared by the ordinary troopers. He waited a few seconds and removed his finger.

"It's in."

Rance was briskly final. "So that's it."

Elmo shook his head. "I don't know."

"Whatever they do with the information, you can be assured that you won't hear anything about it."

"That shit was so weird."

Rance nodded curtly. "It's out of our hands."

Elmo looked back at where the twenty were breaking out their environ bubbles. "What do I do?"

"You? If I had my way, I'd have you shipped back to the rear. The trouble is that I don't have my way. It's been decided that you can't be spared, and you have to lead a twenty even if you kill them all in the process. The way things are, I can't get that reversed."

Elmo grunted. "Don't do me no favors."

"I'm not doing you a favor. As far as I'm concerned, you didn't ought to be leading a combat twenty."

"I'm telling you I can handle it."

"And I'm telling you to back off. Take it as an order —don't take out your problems on your squad." Elmo's face was stiff and blank. "Is that all?"

Rance sighed. "Yeah, that's all."

Elmo turned on his heel and marched away. Rance watched him go. He seemed to be moving like a robot.

The group of men in each foxhole had combined their individual environ bubbles and spread the resulting transparent sheet over the hole. It was anchored around the edge with rocks and dirt. Once in place, the bubbles slowly inflated until they formed a low protective dome. They also took on the coloring of the surrounding ground. The EBs were living entities, biotailoredfirstcousins of the suits. On a planet that was a vacuum or one that had a poisonous atmosphere, the EBs sealed in an environment of canned air. In an emergency, they could also generate oxygen for the men sheltering inside them. On a planet like this one, however, where the air would have been breathable but for the contaminates and the wildlife, they actually filtered the toxins and impurities through their thick membranes. Structures were going up all over the assembly area. In addition to the individual foxholes, there were larger command posts and supply marquees. Some were inflatable; others were solid domes that were assembled from portable sections. It was all part of the Therem passion for overorganization. Each time the task force paused in its advance prior to the next push, it felt the need to quickly put up what amounted to a small fortified town. When the force moved on, the town would just as quickly be torn down, leaving a tangle of holes, trenches, and debris to mark its passage. When the foxholes were set up to everyone's satisfaction and the first guard shift was in position, the remainder of the twenty were free to attend to their most pressing personal needs. The most pressing of all was hot food. After days of living on F-rations and concentrates, any kind of cooked meal had to constitute a luxury. The cookhouse was now open, and there was almost a sense of anticipation as the men made their way to the temporary mess hall. As they eased through the bubble lock and pulled off their helmets and masks, they found

that there was already a long line stretching to the serving area. Among those first on the line were some of the raw replacements who had come up on the crawlers. Dacker immediately took exception to this.

"Will you look at this new meat? We've been out in the forsaken bush getting our asses shot off and they get to eat first when they ain't done nothing but ride up here in comfort."

"Ain't that always the way of it?"

"I say make 'em wait."

Some came down on the side of being reasonable.

"Aah, leave the poor bastards be. They're probably scared out of their minds."

"So what the hell? I've been scared for as long as can remember, and with good reason. I'm going to t*

front and get myself some food."

Dacker defiantly started toward the head of the line. After only a moment's hesitation, the others followed, even those who hadn't agreed with him. As the troopers elbowed their way to the front there were a couple of protests from the new recruits, but these were quickly silenced by glares from the longtimers. One of the mess orderlies was less easily intimidated. He set down his ladle and returned Dacker's angry stare.

"You men get back in line or you don't get served."

"Say what?"

"You heard me."

Dacker leaned forward so his face was very close to the orderly's. "Now you listen to me, dickhead. Not more than sixty minutes ago I was in combat, almost overrun by chibas. In another sixty minutes, I intend to be fast asleep with a full belly. Are you telling me that I've got to waste my precious downtime waiting on line while a bunch of pussy-assed new meat get their chow in front of me? What were you doing an hour ago, watching the soup on a burner?"

The orderly stood his ground. "The rule here is first come, first served, no exceptions. So you heroes can just get to the back of the line."

"Can you imagine the disaster area we could make out of this place?"

"Can you imagine what will happen to you if you start anything in here?"

"So what can they do? Shoot us? We'll be back in combat tomorrow." There was complaining back down the line that quickly built in volume to curses and catcalls. No food had been served since Dacker and the others had walked to the front of the line, and the line was getting impatient. A supply overman emerged from the rear kitchen area.

"What the hell's going on here? What's the holdup?" A steel plate that covered more than half of his forehead indicated that he was a wounded combat veteran who had been placed on light duties. The head injury made his speech a little strange, but there didn't seem to be anything wrong with his thinking.

"You men just in from the bush?"

"Damn right we are."

He glanced at the orderly. "Go ahead, feed 'em and get the whole bunch out of the way." The orderly started to protest, but the overman stopped him with a look. "Just get them out of here." Dacker grinned. "Just get us out of here."

The orderly scowled but started slopping out the food.

As Hawk walked back down the line with his full tray, he couldn't help looking into the faces of the new intake. Poor little bleeders. They were like blank pages waiting to be written on. Sure, they were afraid, but that was it—no marks, no scars. Their skins were smooth and unblemished, and there was nothing in their eyes but ap prehension. He thought back to when he had been like that. It seemed like a lifetime ago. The sun dropped behind the hills, and the river valley sank into deep shadow. The lights came on around the perimeter. The minutes after sunset were the darkest of the whole half night. Then the huge parent planet would start to rise beyond the opposite horizon. At first the giant world was nothing more than a thin luminous band, a second horizon with a slight curve on the leading edge. Rapidly, though, it grew and grew, filling up the sky with its enormous bulk and casting a bright twilight over the jungle that turned the fungus ghostly pale. The planet was an expanse of parchment-yellow banded with strips of red, orange, and purple that slowly twisted and rippled and spiraled into great ponderous vortices as they were driven by the unimaginably violent storms that tore through its deep, dense atmosphere. The night sounds began, dominated by the booming moan of the big green lizards. The big lizards seemed to make a nocturnal practice of raising their long necks to the sky and baying at the planet. It wasn't an unusual sight to see four or five of them, with necks intertwined and heads raised in unison, moaning together as a group. Above and around their bellows, the smaller creatures shrieked and howled. One particular species—nobody was quite sure which because nobody'd actually seen it—had become a particular favorite of the ground forces. It made a croaking noise that could be approximated by the word "walleye." Isolated troopers had taken to duplicating the cry. With surreal bravado, they'd yell back into the night.