The Complete Phule’s Company Boxed Set

by Robert Asprin

  Once free, it would automatically seek out the nearest human-habitable planet and make a soft landing there. The lifeboat had only rudimentary controls on board, for dodging debris in the vicinity of a damaged mother ship. There was no way to take control of it remotely. The only way to prevent the escape would have been to send another, faster lifeboat, equipped with grappling gear—something only a military vessel would carry.

  The crewman looked at his screen again. The skipper would have his hide for this; lifeboats were expensive, and he might have been able to prevent its loss if he’d been alert. He hadn’t been, and it was probably going to cost him his job. But he was already in all the trouble he could get into, and there was really nothing more he could do about it. Having come to that conclusion, he yawned. The skipper would learn what had happened in the morning, and that would be time enough to face the consequences. He yawned again and settled down to go back to sleep.

  On the screen, the blinking light moved slowly away from the ship, seeking a planet to land on.

  Journal #533

  To call Zenobia a swamp world is, of course, a gross oversimplification. As with any world large enough to support highly evolved life-forms, it presents a rich variety of habitats, from warm, tropical bays to frozen tundra, from mountain meadows to salt marshes, from rain forest to stony desert. Not to forget, of course, that as a planet that has given birth to an advanced technological civilization, it has by now become, to a great extent, an urban landscape. The capital city boasts as much square footage of glass, concrete, and polished metal as any city of old Earth.

  But the Zenobians themselves evolved from swamp and jungle dwellers, and (not surprisingly) they retain the habits and preferences of their remote ancestors. Landscape designers work overtime to create the illusion of deep jungle on the grounds of popular resorts, and some of the most affluent suburbs of the great cities look, from the air, much like primitive swamps. Where a human civil engineer would be looking for ways to drain a swamp to get some buildable land, a Zenobian looks for ways to drown a desert.

  So, despite the popular image of the Zenobians as swamp dwellers, it came as no surprise to my employer when the Zenobian government requested that he set up his base in a semiarid highland some distance from the capital city. They were no more likely to ask him to set down in swampland than a Terran government would ask off-world visitors to locate in the middle of a golf course or football stadium. The fact that it was comparatively comfortable to us had nothing to do with it.

  What mattered to the locals was that it was, from their point of view, a completely worthless piece of property. And of course my employer had no intention of letting them know that it had any attraction whatsoever to him.

  Of such conflicting values are bargains created.

  * * *

  The black ship settled onto its landing skids, surrounded by a cloud of dust from the dry land underneath. After an interval, the dust settled and the rear hatch swung down. A moment later, a party of armored legionnaires were out onto the ground, taking up strategic positions. Above them, a bubble turret popped up from the lander’s roof, with energy weapons poised to fire on anything that threatened the landing.

  When the advance scouts were in position, they began digging in. So far, nothing unexpected had happened. Lieutenant Armstrong, who led the initial party, spoke into his wrist comm unit. “All elements in place,” he said. “No sign of resistance; no hostiles in view. Perimeter secure, in my opinion.”

  “Reading loud and clear,” came Mother’s teasing voice. “Electronics report no power equipment except ours in use within five kilometers. And there’s no sign of any large life-forms within the same radius. So it looks as if you’re all safe for now, cutie pie.”

  “Good,” said Armstrong crisply. “Get the next wave out, then. The sooner we get some shelter set up, the happier I’ll be. This place is hot.”

  “Aww, don’t you fret, now, Armie,” said Mother. “We’ll send somebody out with a nice cool drinkie for you. Just keep your pants on.” She broke the connection.

  Almost immediately, the second echelon, led by Chocolate Harry on his “hawg,” began to roll down the shuttle’s ramp. Where the first wave had been equipped to deal with possible enemy action, this group’s mission was to get secure shelter set up in the shortest possible time. For the first time since Phule had taken command, the company wouldn’t be quartered in a first-class hotel; the Zenobians’ buildings were scaled for their own race, far too small for comfortable use by humans.

  Chocolate Harry’s team steered a large trailer carefully down the ramp and across the landing area until it was well clear of the shuttle—nobody wanted to spend time setting it up if it was going to be knocked off its moorings by the departing lander. Harry scowled at the site the remote sensors had selected for setting up the structure, pacing its length and width, looking at the ground for any sign that the electronics had been wrong. At last, satisfied that everything was up to spec, he nodded. “OK, let’s get this muvva set up,” he said. “You ready, Double-X?”

  “Yeah, Sarge,” said the legionnaire from a perch high atop the MBC. “All systems nominal; ready to assemble on your signal.”

  “All right, you heard him,” shouted Harry to his team. “Take your positions and be ready to assemble.”

  The legionnaires scurried to their assigned positions while Double-X went down a last-minute checklist, reading his instruments to be sure the MBC was level, the mechanicals powered up, the structure solid after being loaded on a shuttle, flown several dozen light-years, and unloaded on an unfamiliar planet.

  “All settings nominal,” Double-X finally shouted, looking up from the instruments. “Ready to deploy shelter.”

  “OK, look alive, people,” said Harry. “You’ve all done this before, so it should be a piece of cake. If anybody screws up, your ass is mine.” He paused and looked around at the circle of legionnaires. Satisfied that everyone really was in position and ready to do his job, he shouted, “OK, Double-X, let ’er rip.”

  “Aye, aye, Sarge,” said Double-X, and he pulled the starting lever. Harry held his breath. They’d practiced this operation back on Landoor, but back there, if the MBC didn’t work right, they could just go back to the Landoor Plaza Hotel and try it again the next day. Here, if it didn’t work, they’d be living on the shuttle—or out in the open, once the shuttle left—until they got it fixed. They had no experience sleeping in the open on this world, but if the conditions now were any indication, it was likely to be uncomfortable. Chocolate Harry really didn’t want to have to explain to the captain why the shelter wasn’t ready—not when he knew how much the captain had paid for this full-featured deluxe housing module.

  But there weren’t any obvious problems yet. The MBC had quietly begun to unfold along previously invisible joints in its surface, doubling, redoubling, and again redoubling the size of its footprint. Somewhere near the center, a pipe was augering its way down into the ground, anchoring the structure firmly. At the same time, it was seeking out the water that instruments had located somewhere below the surface. Combining the water with common elements from the soil and air, the MBC would synthesize many of its major structural elements within the next hour—assuming the water was where the instruments said it was.

  With the structure’s main skeleton now laid down, the rest of Harry’s crew leapt into action, moving swiftly along the outflung structural members to throw switches, open valves, and check readouts. The unit sent additional anchors into the soil, and once they’d gotten a grip, began to erect uprights to support the walls and ceilings. Subunits of the main engine began to click online, and electrical outlets, comm connections, ventilation ducts, and plumbing fixtures began to unfold in place. Crew members marked them on their charts; later crews would verify that everything worked properly.

  Reaching the center of the structure, Harry stopped and turned in a full circle, admiring the rapid progress of the job. The rest of the company had begun to
come out of the shuttle, too, unloading equipment and supplies, setting up additional structures, and in general preparing the area for an extended stay on Zenobia. He smiled, but only for a moment. Then his eyes opened wide, and he shouted, “Yo, what the hell you think you’re doin’? Let go of that thing! You wanna tear down the whole wall? Let go of it!” He began to move his considerable bulk in the direction of the impending disaster, cursing under his breath. Omega Company might have brushed up its image, but deep down, it still had the capability for instant catastrophe.

  It made for interesting times, even when things seemed to be going right.

  * * *

  At last, darkness was falling on Zenobia, and Lieutenant Rembrandt scanned the Legion encampment with a satisfied expression. There had been screwups—with this outfit, there were always screwups—but on the whole, the MBC had gone up without a hitch and with a minimum of damage to the troops erecting it. A few sprains and minor cuts, not to forget a few frayed tempers, was a small price to pay for what they’d accomplished today. The captain’s investment in the new equipment had more than repaid itself, she thought.

  By dinnertime, the troops had sat down together in the new mess hall to a hot meal. Of course, Sergeant Escrima had complained vociferously about the primitive facilities he had to work with and the shortage of fresh ingredients—that last would be remedied as soon as they could find local sources of supply—but Rembrandt thought the food was every bit as tasty as what the cooks had turned out in a state-of-the-art hotel kitchen. And if anyone else had noticed a decline in quality, she hadn’t heard them say so. That was probably just as well, given the mess sergeant’s hair-trigger temper and homicidal fury.

  The other camp buildings had gone up quickly too, and there was a second well already drilled in the center of the compound. Chocolate Harry had put up a supply depot as soon as the living quarters were done, and all the company’s motorized equipment and electronics were now safely under cover. The company had only a general idea what kind of weather this planet offered, but unless a tornado sprang up out of nowhere, the equipment could probably survive it.

  Meanwhile, the troops had established a secure perimeter and systematically begun to extend their control into the countryside beyond it. Electronic surveillance equipment had been put in place, and they were ready to tap into the natives’ military intelligence satellite network as soon as the captain had gotten passwords from the government. Rembrandt hoped those would come through soon; they were secure against anything local, but to do the job they had been sent for, the company needed to know what was brewing beyond their line of sight or on the planet’s other continents.

  What worried Rembrandt was the natives’ silence about the exact nature of the threat they were facing. That made no sense. You didn’t take your skimmer to a mechanic and then refuse to tell him what was wrong—not if you wanted the problem solved, you didn’t. But the little lizards hadn’t said word one about who or what they’d called the Omega Mob here to advise them how to fight. If they continued to keep their mouths shut, it could mean big trouble.

  With any luck, they’d have the answer before much longer. The captain had landed directly in the Zenobian capital to meet representatives of the local government for a full briefing on their mission here. He wasn’t likely to be satisfied until he’d found out exactly what mysterious mission the Zenobians had requested Omega Company for.

  She hoped they wouldn’t find out the hard way, before the captain got back.

  * * *

  Chief Potentary Korg grinned. It was not a spectacle calculated to put Phule at his ease. The xenosemanticists who’d briefed him back in the Alliance swore up and down that the expression meant exactly the same in the Zenobians as it did in humans. That didn’t make it any more reassuring, given Korg’s full complement of razor-sharp teeth. The oversized sunglasses the Zenobian wore did nothing to improve the image.

  “It is great privilege at last to meet you, Captain Clown,” said Korg. “Flight Leftenant Qual has been enthusiastic in detailing your species’ peculiar adaptations for warfare, and it is very much our pleasure to see that you have accepted our invitation to advise us on defending ourselves against the invaders.”

  “I am honored to have been invited,” said Phule, who along with Beeker had attended a welcoming ceremony in the Zenobian capital while his company set up their camp out in the boonies. They were sitting in a reviewing stand of sorts, constructed of some local vegetable material that, without quite being wood, had a similar degree of rigidity and ease of assembly into useful structures. Before them was arrayed a large assembly of Zenobian military in the uniforms of various service branches. They were distinguished primarily by their berets: red for the Mudrovers, blue for the Swamplurkers, green for the Paratreetoppers, and so on. And all of them wore sunglasses.

  “I can assure you that the Alliance will do everything possible to assist your people in meeting the threat you are facing,” Phule added. “But perhaps we should talk about the exact nature of this threat.”

  “But undeniably!” boomed Korg’s translator. “As soon as we have done with the display of our disputatious spirit and thorough preparedness, all shall be revealed to you!”

  The display was long and instructive. Having seen Flight Leftenant Qual in action, Phule already knew how agile the Zenobians could be; now he saw that Qual was merely a somewhat above average specimen of his race. Many of the troops in the review were larger, faster, stronger, and far more agile than the flight leftenant. Several of their weapons (such as the stun ray, the design of which Phule had acquired for his father’s munitions company) were more advanced than those of the Alliance races. Korg’s grin seemed to have grown wider with each contingent of troops or display of equipment that passed the reviewing stand. And Phule was quite certain that not everything was being shown to him. After all, the alliance was only a few months old and had barely been tested. Any sensible race would have a few hole cards it wouldn’t be showing a newly acquired ally. He was just as glad he had gotten off on the right foot with them.

  Finally, the demonstration concluded with a convincing demonstration of unarmed combat—a somewhat paradoxical concept when applied to a race naturally equipped with a saurian predator’s teeth and claws. Korg turned to Phule and said, “Now, Captain, let us retire for refreshment and some candid conversation.”

  “I look forward to both,” said Phule, and he and Beeker followed the Zenobian leader into a nearby building. To one side, a buffet was laid out with a variety of foods.

  * * *

  In deference to the humans’ dietary prejudices, the spread included several cooked dishes, as well as a selection of vegetables (many no doubt imported for the occasion). And whoever had been involved in the planning had thoughtfully laid in a full Terran bar. After filling their plates and glasses, Phule and Beeker joined Chief Potentary Korg and his adjutant at a table. Korg played host to perfection, making certain that both Phule and Beeker got everything they wanted.

  “That was a very impressive display,” said Phule politely. If anything, it was an understatement. The Zenobians would be a formidable opponent for any race that went to war with them. Except that their request for Phule’s company as military advisors seemed to indicate that they’d encountered something they couldn’t handle. Exactly what was it they couldn’t handle? Phule wondered. And what made them think that Omega Company could handle it? It was very puzzling.

  “Thank you, Captain,” said Korg, flashing his saurian grin once more. At least he’d removed the sunglasses now that they were indoors. “It would please me, sometime, to see a similar demonstration of the Alliance’s capabilities. But in due time, all in due time. Meanwhile, as you can undoubtedly guess, we have invited your company here for a very good reason.”

  Aha, here it comes, thought Phule. “I find it hard to imagine an adversary that your forces wouldn’t be able to deal with on their own,” he said.

  “Nevertheless, we have encounter
ed one,” said Korg. “They are here on the planet even as we speak. And yet I tell you in all candidacy, we have been unable to make even the slightest maneuvers against them.”

  “That’s very surprising, sir,” said Phule. “What can you tell us about these invaders? The more intelligence you can give me, the better we can determine how to assist you.”

  “What we have, you shall have,” said Korg. “All our intercepts of their communications shall be given to you. But to initiate you into the situation, behold! Here, in the shell of an armored land beast, is what we know.” He waved his foreclaw, and an assistant turned on a view screen.

  An aerial view of the Zenobian capital appeared, recognizable despite an odd distortion. “This is an intercepted high-frequency signal from an alien surveillance device,” said Korg. “Without going into details, I will tell you that this and several other devices have been systematically monitoring our major population centers and military installations.”

  “I see,” said Phule. “Have you eliminated the possibility that these signals are from some internal agency—monitoring the traffic or weather, for example?”

  “This occurred to us, but it seemed very unlikely, even at first,” said Korg. “To begin with, the frequency employed is not one used by any of our normal communications equipment. In fact, the signals were first discovered quite by accident. Only when it was discovered that the source was mobile did we know they were artificially generated.”

  “A mobile source,” said Phule, nodding. “Some sort of surveillance drone, then. Have you been able to intercept one of the drones?”

  “No,” said Korg. He reached one of his foreclaws up to pick a small piece of meat from between two teeth. “To be absolutely veracious, other than by their signals, we have had no success whatever in detecting these drones. It is as if they are invisible.”

  “Invisible!” said Beeker, leaning forward. “That would seem to defy the laws of physics, would it not, sir?”