by Rick Shelley
The snake reacted quickly, trying to twist into a coil while the head turned toward the threat. Walter did not get a secure grip with his left hand. The reptile’s body was too thick, and it moved too fast. But the point of his knife, moving up and out, went through the snake’s head, bottom to top, through the mouth and out the top of the snout, pinning the jaws together. Blood gushed from the wounds, but the cuts were not lethal. The snake thrashed around and started to coil around its attacker.
Walter fought to hold his grip on the knife, twisting the blade, pushing to keep the snake from freeing itself from the metal. At the same time, he worked to get a better grip on the snake with his other hand, pulling it toward him, under his arm. He had never trained at putting large reptiles in headlocks, but there seemed to be no alternative.
The snake got several coils around Walter. He could feel when it started to squeeze. It must be twenty feet long, he thought. Walter finally got his left hand up to the snake’s head, from the side. Once he had what he hoped was a firm grip on the snake’s snout, he started working the knife, twisting harder, trying to slice back from the original puncture toward a point between its eyes. But the pressure on Walter’s chest and abdomen was increasing. He found it difficult to breathe. Walter feared that he was about to pass out from lack of oxygen.
Suddenly, the pressure ended. The snake went limp. Although Walter felt as if he were looking through a bloodred haze, he realized that one of his mates had come to his assistance. Someone was trying to uncoil the snake from around him. There had been another knife slicing into the reptile.
“Hang tough, Walt. The snake’s dead.”
When Kaelich regained consciousness, he found that he had been moved. There were a half dozen people hovering over him, including both medical orderlies and Captain Spencer. Walter’s helmet was off. It took a moment before he realized that he had been stripped and laid on a blanket.
“Not to worry, Walt,” Gene Greenberg, one of the medical orderlies, said. “No bites, no poison. We’re not even certain that the snake was venomous. Not many constrictors are.”
Walter tried to draw in a deep breath. It hurt, enough to make him wince.
“I can’t be sure, but I don’t think any of the ribs are broken,” Greenberg said. “Bruised, maybe cracked, but not broken. I can’t be one hundred percent sure without more gear than we have here. We’ll put med-patches on and tape you up so you can walk. If that doesn’t do the trick we’ll have to stop and pull out the trauma tube, but I don’t think that will be necessary.” Greenberg continued to work while he talked.
“At first, I thought you had been bit on the leg. There’s one hell of a bruise, but I couldn’t find any bite marks, and there were no breaks in your field skin or battledress.”
Walter shook his head minimally. “That was from the explosion,” he said, surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. “Caught a bit of a bang on the shin.”
“I thought it looked old,” Gene said. “You should have said something right away. It might have been serious.”
Walter closed his eyes. “I didn’t want to get shipped back up to Avon.”
Gene hesitated before he said, “Under the circumstances, it’s hard to fault you for that. Still, you’re lucky you’ve been able to walk on that leg. I’ve slapped a patch on it as well. You shouldn’t even notice that the leg’s been hurt while you’ve got your ribs to occupy your mind.”
“Is he going to be able to travel?” Spencer asked the medic after Kaelich’s treatment was concluded. The captain had taken Greenberg off to the side, far enough away that the injured man would not overhear. “Is he going to be able to keep up the kind of pace we’ve got to maintain?”
“The best I can say right now is that I think so, Captain,” Gene said. “What I told him was on the level. He’s going to hurt a bit, even with med-patches and tape, but heshould be able to keep going. It would help if he didn’t have so much weight to carry. And the longer it is before we start moving again, the easier it’s going to be for him, the more time his own medbugs will have to repair the damage. If I’m wrong, we’ll find out soon enough. But if I am wrong, he’s going to need at least two hours in the trauma tube.”
“We can take some of the weight off for a few hours, even though everyone’s already loaded down, but we have to start moving just as soon as we can. There was too much noise before.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Greenberg said.
“If it becomes necessary to stop to give him further treatment, let me know.” Spencer turned to stare at the dead snake. It had been stretched out in a small clearing. One of the men had measured it—twenty-two feet and a few inches long. It had taken four men to move it.
“There was one serious casualty, Captain,” Greenberg said. “That snake managed to kill Kaelich’s field skin. The whole section around the middle was dead.”
“You got him a new skin?”
“Yes, sir, straightaway.” Field skins were expendable. The detachment carried spares, roughly one extra per man.
Mitchel Naughton came over as the medical orderly went back to Kaelich. “The lad did himself right, Cap,” the lead sergeant said, nodding in the direction of the wounded clerk. “He kept his head and performed like a proper Marine, he did.” Naughton gestured at the snake. “That thing outweighed him by more than fifty pounds. I’ve never heard of the RM giving out medals for killing a snake, but I’d like to write him up for one. They could use the tale for training recruits.”
“If we ever get someplace to turn it in, Mitch, go ahead.” David said. “The lad ought to get something for his pains. What were you planning, to have him write up his own recommendation?”
Naughton laughed without making a sound. “I hadn’tthought that far ahead, Cap. I guess I’ll rough it out myself, then give it to one of the other clerks to put in proper shape when we get to a complink and printer. Then you can polish it off proper.”
“I’ll let someone at headquarters worry about the polish, Mitch. They didn’t spend much time teaching us how to write up heroes at leadership school. In the meantime, see what you can do about lightening his load for a while. Spread as much of his gear around as you can. Give him a chance to heal those ribs.”
“Already in the works, Cap. I figured he was going to need a little help. We’ll be ready to move in three minutes.”
“Make it fifteen, and make sure everybody eats first.”
The detachment moved more slowly the rest of the night, not so much because of Walter Kaelich’s injuries but because Spencer decided to take more care to avoid ambushes. Two squads were sent ahead to look for roadblocks, or any signs of Federation patrols. After the third ambush the day before, the ruse of going on in the same direction had apparently worked. The commandos had moved for several hours without running into a fourth blocking force. Finding Federation troops without simply walking into range of an ambush and drawing fire was a slow process, not speeded up at all by not finding any. Proving the negative was time-consuming, cutting the detachment’s speed nearly in half.
Shortly after first light, Spencer called a halt to give his men a short rest and a meal. As before, they settled into the deepest cover the jungle provided. Many of the men were clearly leery of their positions in heavy undergrowth along another stream. No one was likely to forget the snake anytime soon.
Gene Greenberg examined Walter Kaelich again before he got off his feet and pulled out a meal packet. But he didn’t start eating. Instead, he went to the captain to report.
“He’s in better shape than I expected, Cap,” Gene said.
“I think I was right about there being no broken ribs. His painkillers wore off and he didn’t ask for more. Sometime in the last hour he even started collecting his gear from the others.”
“Thanks, Gene. Get that food down your throat and get off your feet. That’s what a break is for,” David told him. He waited until the medical orderly went off before he turned to his immediate companions, Hopewell a
nd the three senior sergeants.
“That’s one bit of good news,” David said while he pulled out a meal packet and got ready to eat his own breakfast. The five leaders were sitting together under a tree. “I don’t expect that the Feddies will give up trying to find us, especially not after we did for three of their patrols yesterday. All that did is confirm that we’re here.”
“Maybe they’ve lost the trail completely by now,” Hopewell said. “It’s been fourteen hours since the last contact. They might not have the manpower to do anything thorough enough.”
“We can hope that we’ve seen the last of them, but we sure as hell can’t count on it, Tony,” David said. “We’ve also got to worry about them getting to that hotel ahead of us now. If they know about the Commonwealth Excelsior, they’ll have to give it a look. Where else could we be headed on this continent?”
“That’s still quite a ways off,” the lieutenant said. “They might think just about anything about why we’re here, and by now they should be getting awful antsy about more of us popping out of Q-space ready to jump straight down their throats.”
“We would be a good diversion at that, wouldn’t we, Cap?” Alfie Edwards asked. “I mean, drop a few nasty blokes like us off on the far side of the world from where everything is just to see how many of the enemy we can draw off before the big push.”
“It’s possible, Alfie, but again, we can’t count on them thinking anything that might help us,” David said.
“When do we turn straight for our target?” Will Cordamon asked. “The farther we go on the tangent, the longer it’s going to take us to get in and do whatever we have to do. And the more time the Feddies will have to get there first and screw us.”
“I know,” David said. “And the hotel might not be as easy to find as we thought. Without Avon to update our mapboards, we’re going on dead reckoning, and if we misidentify a stream, we might need a week to find where we’re supposed to be going.”
“You don’t mean we’re lost, do you, Cap?” Alfie asked.
“I don’t think we are, but I could be wrong.”
“I wish you hadn’t told us that,” Alfie said. “I was happier not knowing.”
“Burden of leadership, Alfie-lad.” David grinned despite his concern. “But, assuming that I do know where we are, at least roughly, we’ll stay on this course another two hours. If we haven’t had another sniff of Feddies by then, we’ll change course in two steps to put us on the heading we need. Half and half. We come across any terrain features that give us a better plot on our position, we’ll make whatever adjustments we need.”
David had been using the brief intervals when others were talking to eat, and they had eaten while he talked. Now, he took a moment to catch up on his meal before he went back to the day’s plans. “Since Kaelich seems to be fit, we’ll pick up the pace again, a little now while we’re still taking extreme care about ambushes, more once we change heading. My estimate is that we’re still fifty miles from our target, about where we had hoped to be when we landed. There’s no way we could make it there today, but I do want to be on site by dark tomorrow.”
There was a pause before any of the others spoke. “We’ve already covered more than sixty miles in not quite two days,” Lead Sergeant Naughton said. “And had our troubles as well along the way. Two more days like that …” He shook his head. “Even for our lads, that’s asking a bit much.”
“I know, but we can always tell them that it’s a luxuryhotel we’re going to. There might even be a chance for something better than field rations when we arrive.”
“If there’s anything left,” Alfie said.
“The hotel is still there. Avon got a glimmer of it before we were half down to the ground. And the last report I had from Avon was that there was at least one person visible on the hotel grounds during the glimpse the ship had of it. The hotel is still there, and it’s not completely deserted.”
The detachment did not run into any ambushes during the two hours before it changed course. Only once was there even a hint of alarm. The Marines heard—at a distance—the sound of a fighter, just barely audible. Since the commandos were under thick cover, there was no chance that they would be spotted as long as they maintained electronic silence, and they had been doing that routinely.
David’s first course change put the commandos paralleling a narrow river, just beyond the thick undergrowth along the bank. Every quarter hour he sent a fire team to look at the river, hoping that they would spot a distinctive feature that would confirm that they were where David thought—hoped—they were. It was past noon before he had his confirmation, a long, narrow island. It was time for another meeting.
“The way I read the mapboard, we’re forty-two miles from the hotel now, straight-line distance,” Spencer told Hopewell and the three senior sergeants. “This river flows right past the hotel, but following the stream in would add fifteen miles, and I don’t think anybody wants to do that.” He ignored the nods from the others. “We stay on the course we’ve been following for another mile. Not too far past the far end of that island, the river bends left. When it does, we turn left as well, but only about five degrees. That should put us almost dead-on for the hotel.”
“You still figure for us to get there by tomorrow night?” Naughton asked. “We’ve already done about seventeen miles today.”
“It has to be by tomorrow night, Mitch. We need to dowhat we came for before dawn the next morning.” Dawn that morning at the Excelsior would be sunset on the far side of the world, and that was when the regiment was scheduled to arrive.
“Can I make a suggestion?” Hopewell asked.
“Of course.”
“Have you considered splitting the detachment? That could double our chances of at least some of us getting through to accomplish our mission.”
“I’ve thought about it, long and hard. Splitting into two groups might—might—insure that at least some of us get through, but it also might make us easier to pick off. I think it’s a toss-up, and I’ll feel less nervous keeping together. We’ve already lost too many men on this mission. I might have decided the other way if we had all made it in safely.”
Hopewell nodded. “I just had to mention the possibility.”
Spencer smiled. “If you ever get to where you think you can’t make suggestions, we’re all in big trouble. I just hope you don’t get to say ‘I told you so’ on this one.”
“If this goes wrong, I hope we’re all still around for ‘I told you so,’” Hopewell said.
11
There was a second welcoming ceremony for Prince William and his party in the courtyard of Dirigent Council Headquarters. The seat of government clearly showed the military tradition that infused everything on the world. It looked like a fortress. The main portion of the structure formed one of the long sides of the large parade ground. Lower, narrower wings formed the ends, and the final side was a wall with defensive ramparts. The building was painted a stark, flat white. The only decorations were the flags of the fourteen mercenary regiments that flanked the planetary ensign, which also sported the regimental emblems in a circle. Antique cannon lined each of the narrow ends of the parade ground, the oldest dating back to Renaissance Europe.
The motorcade drove into the courtyard, following a circular drive. The floaters halted in front of the main entrance to what would have been termed Government House or Parliament on most worlds. Of the hundred or more people who were waiting to greet Prince William only a handful, all women, wore civilian clothing. The rest were in uniforms of one description or another.
“Maybe I should have worn my formal dress uniform instead of mufti,” Ian said when he saw the assemblage.
“No, we’re here on a mission of peace,” William said. “They do present a colorful sight, do they not?”
“There are so many different uniforms the word hardly sounds appropriate.”
“Each regiment regulates its own attire,” William said. “Most have made a conscious
effort to make certain that they can be easily distinguished from all of the others. That does not hold in battledress, of course. The Council of Regiments has the final say in that, and they are much more practical.”
Ian had no chance to follow up on that. A footman was there to open the floater door.
Prince William was the first out. Ian followed. They moved out to the arc of dignitaries and officers who were waiting to greet them. The silences in the proceedings were filled by a military band that was evidently well rehearsed in providing snippets of music to cover lacunae. Eventually, the party from Buckingham was escorted inside and taken along a series of broad corridors to the south wing. A series of suites had been made available for the delegation. As aide to Prince William, Ian Shrikes was accorded a separate bedroom in the prince’s suite.
Colonel Edmund Tritesse, commander of Dirigent’s 3rd Regiment, had been selected as liaison with the representatives of the Second Commonwealth. He remained behind after the servants and two other members of the welcoming party had left.
“The representatives from the Confederation of Human Worlds will land in forty-seven minutes, Your Highness,” Tritesse said. “They will be quartered in the north wing of Council Headquarters.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” Prince William crossed to the windows and looked out. “Across a parade ground with lines of cannon facing each other. Not at all inappropriate, considering.”
The colonel seemed uncertain how, or whether, to respond to that. After a moment, William turned back toward him and smiled. “That was not meant as a criticism, Colonel, I assure you. I sincerely hope that, before we leave, the Second Commonwealth and the Confederation of Human Worlds can meet without the need for any weapons between them—anywhere.”
“Yes, sir. I see what you mean.” Tritesse hid his relief better than he had hidden his uncertainty. “We share your hope. We would like to see this war end as soon as possible.”
