By force of arms lotd-4

by William C. Dietz

  Booly laughed. “I’ll take my chances.” The Pioneers made room—and the hour passed quickly. Booly returned to his office to find a package waiting on his desk. His adjutant turned from a pile of printouts. Her name was Tan. She had served under Cadet Leader Voytan during the battle forLos Angeles , survived, and been posted to Algeron. She had short black hair, serious brown eyes, and quick little hands. “That came while you were away, sir. A cub gave it to one of the sentries and said it was for you.”

  Booly raised an eyebrow. The relationship between the Legion and the Naa was complex to say the least. Even as some of the tribes encouraged young warriors to join the organization, others continued to fight it Just as they fought each other. Patrols were subject to ambush, sentries had been killed, and the occasional SLM slammed into the fort. Many of the chieftains would like nothing better than to bag a general. The box could contain anything ... including a bomb.

  Tan read his expression and shook her head. “No, sir. The package is clean. I had the demolitions folks check it out.”

  Booly nodded his thanks and took a moment to remove the protective wrappings. The gar wood box had been decorated with crudely cut semiprecious stones. Such containers were common among the Naa, and he had seen hundreds of them. But not like this, not with the cap badge of the 13thDBLE

  carved into the lid, above the motto:

  “Legio patria nostra.” (The Legion is our country.)

  Booly had watched his father bum the words into the wood with a laser pen. Then, long after his mother had opened the present, and remarked on how beautiful it was, he had seen it on her dressing table, next to her bed, and on her desk. For this was the box in which Connie Chrobuck kept small treasures. He remembered them welt: one of her mother’s earrings, a rock her son retrieved from a riverbed, a holo of her sister, some small, extremely sharp scissors, and, Algeron being what it was, some stray rounds of ammunition. Those and other things had lived in the box. Now, at long last, they lay before him. The officer turned, discovered that Tan had left the room, and was grateful. Generals weren’t supposed to cry—everybody knew that—but the tears continued to flow.

  Booly closed the door, wiped his face with his sleeve, and sat at his desk. Was the box empty? Did it contain the odds and ends she had kept there? Or had they been looted? Or more likely lost? Treated like what most would think they were: junk.

  Carefully, lest his suddenly clumsy fingers betray him, Booly opened the box. It was empty, except for his mother’s scent, and a note written in her neat hand. “I knew you would return as surely as a brella must return to its roost. In spite of the fact that I wasn’t born on Algeron, and lack your father’s blood, his mother taught me many things . .. Among them was the importance of a peaceful heart, the beauty that dwells around us, and the way of the Wula sticks.

  “They speak of a great chief, the Chief of all Chiefs, and of great sadness. A battle lies ahead, a great battle, the one you were born to fight. No one can be sure how it will end, not even the sticks, but look at the map. Follow it and find that which you seek.

  “We love you—and always will. Watch your six ...

  Your mother and father.”

  Booly laughed, wiped the last of the tears away, and examined the reverse side of the note. The map was good—but me officer didn’t need one. He’d been there before. He departed two hours later. It was dark at the moment, but that made little difference to the Trooper n, who, thanks to a full array of sensors, could “see” quite well indeed. She had light amplification equipment, infrared sensors, and the benefit of a highly accurate Global Positioning System, which, thanks to high quality maps, displayed her position to within three inches. More than enough data for a little stroll in the boonies. The cyborg went by the name of Wilker, although her real name was something else, and was glad to clear the fort. Yeah, the rider was a pain, but what else was new? Anything beat garrison duty. She scanned the terrain ahead, spotted the heat that radiated from some recently deposited dooth droppings, and headed that way.

  First Sergeant Neversmile had ridden on cyborgs before and knew better than to tighten up. The best thing to do was stick boots into the slots provided for that purpose, lean backwards, and allow the harness to take your weight. Then, with knees bent, the motion was easier to take. Wilker followed the trail down into a gully and up the other side. Servos whined, heat radiated off her cowling, and the odor of ozone filled Neversmile’s nostrils. Just one of the things he hated about box heads.

  Still, they did have their advantages, not the least of which was the firepower they carried. Wilker was equipped with an arm-mounted air-cooled .50 caliber machine gun, an arm-mounted fast recovery laser cannon, and a pair of shoulder-mounted missile launchers. Yeah, Colonel Kirby knew what she was doing. Wilker had more than enough clout to deal with a handful of bandits—or some warriors on a tear. Alt of which was fine, or would have been, had the mission made more sense. It seemed that nobody was sure what the hell the general was up to. A gift had been delivered to his office. The rumor mill was clear about that, but the rest was weird. Shortly after receiving it the Legion’s most senior officer had announced that he was going on a trip, would need a dooth, and would dispense with the usual escort. A dooth for god’s sake’ Neversmile hadn’t been aboard one of the wooly beasts in more than fifteen years—and figured Booly was the only officer on Algeron that knew how to ride one. The noncom felt a momentary sense of pride in the nature of the general’s origins and remembered Kirby’s orders: “Don’t let the old man see you .. . and don’t come back without him.”

  Not that the last part was necessary, since Neversmile had served under the general during the mutiny and had a lot of respect for him. Good officers were hard to come by. A faint pink line marked the eastern horizon. Wilker followed the. trail, and the Naa continued to worry. The general was crazy, the colonel was pissy, and the problem was his. Dimwit Timewaster was standing there, pissing on a rock, when the rich pungent odor of dooth passed beneath his nostrils. Not his dooth, a mangy animal tethered to a withered bush, but a distinctly different beast. And there was something more, the tan, not altogether unpleasant smell which, along with plastic and ozone, he had learned to associate with humans. The clip clop of hooves combined with the clink of poorly secured equipment served to reinforce what the Naa already knew. A lone, presumably stupid human, was heading up into the hills. Not only that, but, judging from odors ranging from gun oil to aftershave he came bearing gifts! His mother had been right. The gods did smile on those in need. The Naa shook himself off, secured his trousers, and slipped through the rocks. The bedroll looked like a long lumpy tube. Nocount Quickknife jerked as a hand covered his mouth, went for his blade, and relaxed when he smelted who it was. Dimwit nodded toward the trail. His voice was little more than a whisper. “We got company. Easy pickin’s. Move your ass.”

  Nocount yawned. Dimwit winced at the smell of his companion’s breath and started to gather his gear. There was no particular hurry, something neither of them liked to do, since every stride carried their victim further from the fort. An advantage if the idiot called for help. Not that it mattered . . . since he’d soon be dead.

  Booly left the reins loose and allowed the doom to pick its own way up the rock-strewn trail. A good decision since the animal was native to Algeron and well equipped to survive there. It had been a long time since the officer had ridden anything more challenging than a command car, and his knees were starting to hurt. His butt would come next, followed by his lower back. The legionnaire had already started to regret the journey but was too stubborn to turn back.

  The dooth completed one long stretch of trail, tried to snatch a bite of greenery from a likely looking bush, and took a kick to its barrel-shaped ribs. Dooms were never ones to suffer silently and were famous for the variety of sounds they could make. This particular animal produced something that bordered between a belch and a grunt.

  Booly kicked the animal again and guided it up through still anot
her hairpin turn. The gravelly trail stretched up toward the swiftly rising sun. It was then, as the dooth started to climb, that Booty detected, or thought he detected, a foreign scent. The officer’s hand went to his sidearm. He stood in the stirrups and took a long careful look around.

  Weather-smoothed boulders littered the surrounding hillside. Many were the size of battle tanks. A full company of legionnaires could have hidden there, concealed among the rocks, and he wouldn’t have been able to spot them. Especially if they were Naa—and didn’t want to be seen. Uneasy now, but not sure why, the legionnaire climbed toward the sunrise. Everything was normal.. . except for the fur that ran the length of his spine. That stood on end. The Trooper IF rounded an outcropping of rock, “saw” a patch of green smear itself across the blue grid that overlaid her surroundings, and stopped dead in her tracks. Then, weapons ready, she backed around the corner. Numbers shifted in the lower right hand comer of the cyborg’s vision as the threat factor gradually decreased.

  Neversmile, who had allowed himself to be lulled into a sort of half-conscious trance, came fully awake. He spoke into a wire-thin boom mike. It was jacked into a panel at the base of Wilker’s duraplast neck.

  “What’s up?”

  “Naa,” Wilker replied. “Two of them. Both mounted.

  Maybe a quarter mile ahead. Between the general and us.”

  Neversmile swore silently. Just his luck. The general get’s a wild hair up his ass ... and the colonel chose him to deal with it. “Can you nail the bastards?”

  “A shoulder-launched missile would handle it. assumin’ you ain’t too worried about due process or how big a hole I make.”

  Neversmile remembered how many innocent females and cubs the Legion had accidentally slaughtered over the years and knew he wasn’t willing to take that chance. Not to mention the fact that he was supposed to maintain a low profile. “No, hold your fire. Feel free to close the distance, however—but don’t let the shitheads see you.”

  It was a stupid order—Wilker thought so anyway—but knew better than to say so. Not to a sergeant—and not to this Sergeant. Gravel crunched under her weight, and the cyborg continued to climb.

  Dimwit emerged from the rocks still buttoning his pants. It was the second time he had stopped to take a pee and the second time he had fallen behind. Nocount was irritated. “Hurry up! The human’s slow but not that slow. We’ll lose the furless bastard.”

  “It ain’t my fault,” Dimwit complained. “I had to pee and it hurts.”

  “Alt because you’ll screw anything with a pulse,” his companion replied unsympathetically. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Dimwit mounted his dooth, kicked the animal onto the trail, and kicked it yet again. The animal groaned, sent plumes of lung-warmed air down toward the ground, and passed a prodigious amount of gas. The trek resumed.

  If the mesa had a name, Booly didn’t know what it was. Only that it stood straight and tall, just as it had the last time he’d been there, camping with his mother.

  It was she who showed him the narrow, often dangerous, path that circled the sheersided cliffs, pointed out the tool marks the ancients had left on the rock, and fired his imagination. “Who were they?” she asked. “And from whom were they hiding?” For surely some great evil had been upon the land, a threat that drove them up off the slowly rising plain, to make a home in the sky. Had they won? These hard-pressed Naa? And survived that which sought to hunt them down? Or had the group been decimated? And wiped from existence? There was no way to be sure. And there was another story, a more personal tale, which came back to Booly as his dooth labored toward the top. It had to do with his grandfather, William Booly I, a onetime sergeant major who was wounded during an ambush, taken prisoner, and nursed back to health by a Naa maiden, a beautiful maiden, named Windsweet.

  His grandfather was smitten, very smitten, and soon fell in love. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong according to the Legion, wrong according to the Naa, and wrong according to her father. Windsweet helped the legionnaire escape, bandits gave chase, and a patrol saved his life. Later, after returning to his unit, the soldier tried to forget the maiden and the way he felt about her, but found that impossible to do. That’s when Booly’s ancestor did something which Booly himself, as an officer, could never forgive: William Booly I went over the hill.

  The dooth rounded a comer, rocks clattered away from its hooves and fell toward the scree below. They rattled, started a small slide, and tumbled down the mountain. The noise caused Nocount to jerk his animal to a halt. He turned to Dimwit. ‘The motherless alien is halfway to the lop.”

  “So?” his friend inquired sarcastically. “If he can make it, so can we.”

  “I know that you idiot,” Nocount responded impatiently.

  “But why bother?”

  Dimwit frowned, processed the words, and brightened.

  “We could wait here!”

  “Now there’s an idea,” Nocount replied sarcastically. “Let’s try it. No point in doin’ all that work if we don’t have to.”

  Dimwit agreed, swung down from the saddle, and headed for some likely looking rocks. He needed to pee.

  The trail wound through the site of an ancient rock slide, shelved upwards, passed through a rocky defile and ended on a windswept plateau. A crust of icy snow covered what remained of the ancient walls. Yes, Booly thought to himself, whatever roamed below must have been very unpleasant to force the old ones up here.

  The officer dismounted, took the dooth by its reins, and led the animal toward a rocky spire. It was there if memory served him correctly that his mother and he had camped. Not on the surface, at the mercy of the groaning wind, but below, in chambers created by the ancients. He located the spiral stair without difficulty, pulled a torch out of his pack, checked to ensure that the underground common room remained habitable, and allowed the light to play over some empty ration boxes. Others had camped there since his childhood visit, but not for many years, judging from the dust on the containers.

  Someone had left a mound of somewhat desiccated dooth dung, however, which meant the legionnaire could enjoy a fire and a more pleasant evening than he had counted on. But dooths came first, as all Naa learn the moment they are allowed to ride, and Booly returned to the surface. He removed the animal’s saddle, rigged a nose bag filled with grain, and hobbled its feel. Then, confident that his mount would remain nearby, the officer carried his gear below. It took the better part of a hour to build a dooth dung fire, clear the room of trash, and prepare a simple meal. Firelight danced the walls as the story retold itself.

  Having deserted the Legion, his grandfather went back for the maiden, and took her away. Knowing that her father would follow, and fearful of what might happen if the two of them came into contact, Windsweet led her lover to the high plateau.

  The Hudathans attacked Algeron shortly thereafter. Booly’s grandfather went off to fight them and left Windsweet by herself. And it was there, in that very room, that his grandmother threw the Wula sticks and learned that the child in her belly would be male.

  Was that what his mother meant? That what he needed was here? Buried among old memories?

  Something caught Booly’s eye. Something white, something beyond the dance of the flames, something almost obscured by graffiti.

  The legionnaire stood, circled the fire pit, and found what he was looking for: the badge of the 13thDBLE. A coincidence? Or something more? The officer discovered a lump in his throat, wondered why the room felt so warm, and took his coat off. That’s when Booly knelt on his parka, felt for his combat knife, and started to dig. The well packed earth was dry and hard. The fire, augmented by some Legion-issue fuel tabs, burned hot and bright. Nocount took a pull from his canteen, passed the container to Dimwit, and delivered a prodigious belch. “I hope the human comes down tomorrow. We’re almost out of drak.”

  The second Naa took a drink, felt the liquor bum its way down into his stomach, and wiggled his nose. That odor ... What was it? Not dra
k, not his friend’s pungent body odor—it was something else. Then he had it. Dimwit’s brain sent the message to his lips, told them what to say, but not in time. First Sergeant Neversmile had stripped to the waist. His fur was black with patches of white. They seemed to glow as he stepped out into the firelight. “Greetings my brothers ... I saw your fire and wondered if you might spare a traveler something to eat.”

  Both of the bandits were in the habit of taking things from travelers but never gave them away. They ran their eyes down the newcomer’s body, saw no sign of weapons, and felt a lot more secure. Nocount decided to toy with the stranger. He pulled a Legion-issue .50 caliber recoilless out from under his jacket and waved it back and forth. “Sure, I’ll give you something to eat... How ‘bout a bullet?”

  Neversmile smiled. A bad sign if there ever was one.

  “Sure, if you don’t mind eating a few yourself.”

  Nocount frowned. “I have a gun, and you don’t.”

  True,” the legionnaire said agreeably, “but I have a friend . .. and her gun is bigger than your gun.”

  Dimwit squinted into the surrounding gloom. “Friend?

  What friend?”

  “That would be me,” Wilker replied, stepping out into the light. Servos whined as weapons came to bear. “Hi, how ya doin’?”

  Dimwit peed his pants. Nocount decided to gamble.

  The knife point struck metal and skidded through olive-drab paint. Booly gave a small grunt of satisfaction, scooped dirt with his hands, and revealed the top of an old ammo box. Though faded, the words “Grenades 40 mm HE,” could still be read. Such containers were highly prized by the Naa and used for a multiplicity of purposes. The officer dug around both ends, freed the handles, and checked for wires. There were none. Then, careful lest the box be resting on some sort of spring-loaded mine, he felt underneath. Nothing.