He whistled softly, just loudly enough for everyone to hear. When his men looked at him, he gave the assemble-here hand signal. In a moment the whole shift was standing at attention in two ranks in front of him.
Chan shook his head sadly. These men had had entirely too much bad training.
"Never stand at attention in a parade ground formation in the field," he said quietly. "That makes you entirely too easy a target. I don't want to have to explain to Ser—ah. Acting Company Captain Hyakowa—how I got some of my people killed."
Some of the troopers glanced uneasily at each other. A few shuffled their feet nervously. None broke formation.
"Spread out, get low," Chan instructed. He demonstrated getting low by kneeling on one knee. "Some of you watch the rear, some watch the flanks, some watch behind me. Don't look at me, just listen. I'll tell you what we're going to do. Then I'll show you."
"Acting Shift Sergeant," one of the troopers asked, "are we allowed to look at you when you show us what it is you will show us?"
Chan briefly closed his eyes and counseled himself in patience. "When I—show you, you'll have to look," he said when he reopened his eyes.
Lance Corporal Schultz was in as vile a mood as he'd ever been in. These numskull Wanderjahrian FPs couldn't do a damn thing right, not unless it was looking parade ground sharp and marching in straight lines. He'd spent almost a whole week trying to teach them how to shoot and how to move, and it looked like they hadn't learned a damn thing. They couldn't maintain proper distance from each other, they kept wandering off, every other step they tripped over things a blind man could see in the middle of the night—And they made so much noise the guerrillas could hear them two hard days' march off! He couldn't understand why this war hadn't already been lost. By God, Schultz thought, if the 257th is an example of the Feldpolizei, give me a FIST and I'll take the whole damn planet in a week. Week and a half, tops!
As distracted as he was by his vile mood, Schultz still had the discipline to watch and listen for danger—he had better; he suspected he was the only one in the shift who was!
All morning long, and now well into the afternoon, he'd been hearing the sounds of things, big things, blundering through the woods. At first he wanted to take the shift on a flanking maneuver to deal with whatever this potential danger was, or at least send scouts out to determine exactly what it was. But Acting Assistant Shift Sergeant Kharim assured him, insisted actually, that there was no danger, that what he heard was merely grazing cows. Kharim showed none of the fear Schultz had seen in the local forces he'd worked with on other operations when they tried to convince him that the bad guys who were out there weren't there, because the local forces were afraid to face them. Maybe Kharim was right about the cows.
That didn't mollify Schultz very much. He didn't trust cattle. Cattle were things you ate, and then you used their hides to make boots. No matter how placid something was, if it was facing the prospect of being eaten, it could get brave in a hurry and attack. Besides, he remembered entirely too well the time three years earlier when a regular army unit on Eritreafra had used Earth evolved humpbacked cattle as cover for an approach to the Marine position, and then as a shield when they attacked the 28th FIST. That was an operation Schultz had been on. No, he didn't trust cattle at all. But he saw that Acting Assistant Shift Sergeant Kharim was almost laughing at him for his concern about the cattle—"cows" was the word Kharim used—and if he laughed, that would have created a discipline problem Schultz didn't want to have to deal with on a patrol. So he dropped the matter, and kept an ear cocked to the blundering sounds.
A mild breeze was wafting through the woods, ruffling the leaves and swaying the fronds of the grospalms. So what with the constant small movement wherever he looked, the distraction about the "cows," and his near constant grumbling to himself about the inadequacy of the Wanderjahrian FPs, Schultz didn't notice that a patch of foliage some fifty or sixty meters to the flank was much denser than anything else he'd seen this day until it ambled about ten meters to one side.
"Alert right!" Schultz screamed as he spun toward the moving foliage and dove to the ground into a firing position. What he saw through his blaster's sights made his eyes bug and his mouth gape.
He lowered his blaster and lay there looking at the moving wall of foliage for a long moment. It wasn't really foliage, it was fauna. No, make that faunum, one fauna. It stood on four legs the same thickness and tan color as the grospalm trunks, and as tall as the middle-sized spikers. Where the legs met the massive body, the coloring changed to mottled green with flecks of red and blue. The massive, tapering tail that stuck straight out from one end was buff on the bottom, mottled green on the top. At the other end, a sinuous neck snaked its way to a smallish head that seemed to be mostly mouth. The mouth was placidly chomping on the succulent leaves of hochbaums.
Schultz had been to Old Earth and seen an African elephant in a zoo. He'd thought it was huge, with its four-meter height. He went on an operation to Xanadu and saw the roc, a six-meter-tall biped that vaguely resembled the flightless birds of Earth. On Hell, he'd seen the beelzebub, a five-meter monstrosity that looked like it was designed by the makers of an ancient Japanese flatvid he once saw.
This creature made them look puny. It was at least eight meters high at the top of its arched back, and twice that from the tip of its tail to its chest. He tried to tell himself it wasn't that big, it couldn't be that big, it had to be closer than it looked, that a trick of the light made it seem farther away. But he knew that wasn't true, this thing really was that big.
A tittering behind him finally broke through, and Schultz twisted around. The entire shift stood there. Most of the men were calmly looking at the huge animal. A couple of them were looking at him. Three or four were watching their surroundings—a small part of Schultz's mind registered that those three or four were doing something he'd been trying to teach them. All of them had straight faces; he couldn't tell who had laughed.
"It's only a cow. Acting Shift Sergeant," Kharim said calmly. "Nothing for us to be concerned about."
Schultz looked at Kharim for several long seconds before saying, "All right, that's a cow. Let's get moving again, we still have a patrol to run."
Kharim nodded and began giving the orders that got the troopers back into formation and moving.
Schultz got to his feet. Before moving out with his shift, he gave the "cow" a long look. He remembered Top Myer's briefing aboard the Denver, when the first sergeant mentioned the large animals that lived on Wanderjahr. He'd thought he was ready, but seeing something that huge for the first time was far different than hearing about them. Then he looked at his blaster and thought about firing it at the behemoth. He concluded that all the puny weapon would do was piss it off—if it even noticed it was being shot.
A few minutes later it occurred to him that on every world he'd ever been on or heard of, the grazing animals that were the equivalent of cattle were food animals. Food animals were preyed on by carnivores. He wondered what kind of animal preyed on something like the cow he'd just seen. For the first time, Schultz was frightened.
Chapter Ten
Dean's mind was not on his work.
Claypoole didn't notice his friend's lack of attention until several days after their return from Morgenluft. When the FIST sergeant major announced they were going to work for Chief Long henceforth, Claypoole at least had been thrown into a tailspin.
"Sergeant Major," Claypoole protested, "we're Marines, not policemen!"
Sergeant Major Shiro, a man with huge shoulders and a prominent stomach, shifted his tobacco wad to the opposite side of his mouth and glared at him. "I know what and who you are, Claypoole." He expectorated into a container he kept handy at his desk. All Marines loved tobacco products. "The brigadier says yer goin', 'n' yer goin', it's that plain goddamned simple, Marine. Lookit it this way, you get your own vehicle and ye'll be workin' fer a civilian.
"Okay. Clean out Commander Peters's—may God help
that poor man's recovery—office. Yer gonna have to do all this 'cause he's in no condition to give you and Dean advice from the Denver. Download all his computer files and gather up any paperwork he had in there 'n' take everything up to police headquarters in town. You need any of the hardware, take it with you on hand receipts. You'll work outta police headquarters until further orders. Ye'll be billeted here and I'll expect you to take yer turn on all the duty rosters. You may be spending yer days in town, but you'll be responsible for knowing what's in the Plan of the Day, just like any other Marine. Ya need to be excused from any duty"—spoot tang! A brown glob of spittle arced neatly into the sergeant major's tiny spittoon—"have Chief Long or Lieutenant Constantine call me and I'll square it away. Now move out."
After the pair had departed, FIST Sergeant Major Frederico Shiro wiped a droplet of tobacco-stained saliva from one end of his mustache. His mustache pushed the limit of what Marine Corps regulations would allow, but nobody, not even Brigadier Sturgeon, would ever point that out to him. He shook his head. Charlie Bass had called him three times already. Captain Conorado twice, asking if they could have the pair back. After that fracas at the lady oligarch's place, he understood why the brigadier had said no. Privately he'd have recommended against the brigadier waiving time in grade requirements and battalion quotas to promote the two privates, but he admired their spunk. The idea of one Marine taking on forty men appealed to his sense of pride in the Corps. He had done something just like that when he was a young PFC.
"Fred," Brigadier Sturgeon had told him when he'd asked him to handle the temporary reassignment of Dean and Claypoole, "officers are the brains of the Corps, but you give me a junior enlisted man who can think for himself and I'll trade him for any three ensigns, and that includes me when I was one!" After that the sergeant major knew the pair weren't going back to their company anytime soon.
Claypoole had thought it strange Dean didn't jump into it with him in the sergeant major's office, but he forgot about it as they launched into the details of shifting their workstations to police headquarters. Just as the sergeant major had said, though, they were assigned Commander Peters's landcar as their own transportation, and as they drove it uptown that first day, Claypoole rattled on and on that it was a great break for them since he fully expected, working for civilians, they'd get what no other Marine on the deployment would see until they got back to Thorsfinni's World—time off.
"Man, we'll see the sights!" Claypoole nudged Dean beside him as he guided the car through the late-morning traffic. Dean grunted noncommittally. "Hey, are you sure you ain't picked up a fever or something?" Claypoole asked. He turned to look at Dean, who just sat there staring ahead. "Nope. No," Dean answered. "I'm okay."
"Well, we'll see the sights," Claypoole continued. "You know, Dean-o, these little brown girls here are, well, I don't know, more friendly than those big breasted blondes back on Thorsfinni's World. We are gonna get laid, partner!"
"Wouldn't you rather be back with the platoon?" Dean asked listlessly.
"Yeah!" Claypoole answered quickly. "Sure. But hell, Dean-o, we're here, my man, and we ain't going anywhere but here, so we may as well settle down and make the most of it. Besides, so far on this deployment, we've seen more action, you and me, than any other Marine. We don't have to back up to the pay table!"
Matters came to a head the next day. Dean had taken the landcar to fetch more computer equipment from the office at the port while Claypoole worked in their new office, setting things up. A trip that should have taken him forty-five minutes took him three hours. When he finally returned, Claypoole accosted him.
"Where the hell you been?" he shouted.
"Huh? Rachman, I just stopped off for a little while. Calm down, will you?"
Claypoole looked closely at his friend. His uniform was rumpled and dirty, and he had an expression about his face, an air about him as of a man who had just done something—secretive.
"You been seein' that girl," Claypoole shouted, slapping his forehead. "I shoulda known. She's the reason you've been wool-gathering since we came back from Morgenluft."
"Her name is Hway, Rachman," Dean said, his face coloring.
Claypoole began to feel his temper slipping too. "Dean-o, snap out of it. I'm depending on you. We not only work together, we gotta cover each other's asses too. I don't want to depend on some gigolo with his mind on pussy when he should be thinking about watching my back. What would've happened to us at Juanita's if your mind had been on pussy when the sniper fired at you? What would've happened to the brigadier and the rest of us if you'd been swapping spit out there on that ridge the other night? Jesu, Dean, and you ain't even fucked that girl yet!"
Dean's face went white. "Goddamn you, Claypoole!" he shouted. "You ever, ever say anything about my girl like that again, and I'll... I'll..." He turned away quickly and smacked a fist into his palm.
Claypoole stepped over to where Dean was standing, grabbed him by the shoulder, and spun him around. "Now, you listen to me, you goddamned boot. No, shut the fuck up and listen! You're a Marine, you're on a combat deployment, and you got your duty to do, and you will do it. Dean. Besides, what are you going to do?" Claypoole's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Marry the bitch? You can't! It's against regulations. Quit the Corps? Fine. You just gotta get her to wait seven more fucking years and she'll be all yours."
Dean stood rigidly, staring at Claypoole, his own eyes bulging.
"You snap out of this. Dean, or I ain't workin' with you no more. I mean it!" He paused to catch his breath. "You poor, dumb shit," he continued, calmer now. "All you can do is just fuck that cunt and forget it."
Dean's fist landed squarely in the middle of Claypoole's mouth and the two went down in a thrashing tangle of arms and legs and rolled on the floor. Lieutenant Constantine, who'd been sitting in his cubicle nearby and had heard everything, stepped through the door, a bored expression on his face. When he separated them, he needed to use a stun stick to get their attention.
Claypoole had been wrong about the intimacy between Dean and Hway.
Dean followed Hway's directions to her granduncle's farm carefully. That the place was almost on the way to the port facility made it easier for him to justify the digression to himself. The side trip would only take a few minutes, it wasn't like going AWOL, and nobody would know because he'd programmed the detour as "official police business." Chief Long had told him and Claypoole that they'd be doing a lot of traveling around the city and its environs as his intelligence aides, and Dean thought of this little visit as a "test run." That he'd filed a false report, a court-martial offense, bothered him, but in his own mind the prize was worth the risk. He comforted himself with the thought that since Brigadier Sturgeon liked him, if he was found out, the punishment wouldn't be that severe.
Hway's granduncle's farm proved in fact to be fifteen kilometers beyond the port, and the road was tricky to drive. And Dean got lost twice. He did not dare call for help using the onboard communications system since he knew the transmission would be monitored. When he finally saw the long, tree-lined, winding drive leading up to the cluster of one-story stucco buildings on the crest of a ridge that Hway had described, he knew he'd found the place at last. His pulse beat quicker at the thought of seeing her again.
Hway's granduncle was a sturdy man of about seventy, with a firm handshake and a friendly smile. "Welcome to my home, Mr. Dean," he said. "After what you have done for Hway, consider this place your home too for as long as you are on Wanderjahr."
Emil Keutgens, Hway's grandmother's younger brother, wanted to hear all the details of Dean's recent adventure, so the young Marine was forced to sit with him, his wife Helga, and Hway as he tried to retell the story as quickly as possible in order to get some time alone with Hway. Emil's wife, a pudgy blonde with a perpetual smile, who kept nodding while Dean talked, occasionally interrupted the narrative by asking if he would like something to eat. Each time. Dean politely refused, until he realized he was hurting the woman's
feelings, after which he relented and a huge snack was immediately produced. Not at all hungry. Dean forced himself to eat a sampling of cakes and sandwiches which under any other circumstances he'd have found delicious. But now they filled his mouth like old newspapers.
"Uncle," Hway said at last, "maybe I could show Joe your tomato crop?"
"Ah," the old man responded with a deprecating wave of his hand, "what warrior would be interested in tomatoes, eh, Lance Corporal Dean?"
"Oh, no, sir," Dean replied at once, swallowing a half-chewed mouthful of cake, "I've never seen tomatoes before, sir. Sure, I'd be interested." Dean smiled so widely the old farmer thought at first his young guest might not be completely right in the head. But his wife had seen the furtive glances between the Marine and her niece, and she knew the young couple wanted to be alone.
"Emil," she said, "let them walk a bit." It was an order. Emil shrugged, as if to say. In the house you are the boss.
"I don't have much time, Hway," Dean said once they were outside. "I've got to go to the port and pick up some office equipment and then take it downtown, but I just couldn't come this close without dropping by to see you."
Hway frowned. "Joe, is it all right for you to be here?"
"Sure," Dean answered quickly, and Hway knew it was not all right.
"Joe," she took his hand in hers, "I don't want you to get into trouble over me."
School of Fire Page 17
