The civilians, some of whom employed Jithi bearers, carried similar loads. Many were dressed appropriately and clearly knew what they were about, while others wore casual attire and carried superfluous items like an antique mirror, heavy pots and pans, and at least one vase. Most looked miserable, and many were crying as they glanced back over their shoulders.
Santana kept an eye out for the Qwan family, wondered if Qwis would recognize him, and was pleased when she waved. The young woman was dressed in a loose-fitting green shirt, khaki shorts, and a pair of rugged-looking hiking boots. The pack she wore looked as though it had seen use many times before, and, judging from the way she carried the scope-mounted hunting rifle, it appeared that Qwis knew how to handle a weapon. Santana waved in return, but there was no opportunity to speak, so that was the extent of their interaction.
As more civilian families streamed past, Santana was thankful for the fact that all the children under the age of twelve had been held back, and would be brought forward using the three aircraft that hadn’t been destroyed during the last few months. There wasn’t enough fuel to use the lifters often—not to mention the fact that more frequent flights would almost certainly bring the Ramanthian fighters down on them.
As the last of the bedraggled-looking civilians passed the checkpoint, Santana alerted his troops, and Bravo Company hit the trail. Walking drag was a miserable business thanks to the ankle-deep mud, heavy loads, and frequently obnoxious stragglers who had to be dealt with.
Not only that, but the colonists claimed that the so-called wild Jithi, which was to say 99 percent of them, weren’t likely to approve of the column and might decide to attack it. A very unpleasant possibility since the indigs would have the advantage of surprise.
There was nothing the legionnaires could do, however, except stay alert and muck their way up the trail. It wasn’t long before various items appeared alongside the path, including the mirror that Santana had noticed earlier and all manner of other household items. The lieutenant grinned, ordered his officers to keep a sharp eye out for military equipment, and continued up a rise. The mud made sucking sounds as it tried to pull his boots off, birds flitted between branches high above, and time seemed to slow as the rain misted the air.
The half hour lunch break had already come and gone, and the column had just passed between a couple of widely spaced hills when it arrived at the spot where Awanda’s patrol had been ambushed. A team of scouts radioed their find back to Kobbi, who went forward to see for himself and quickly wished that he hadn’t. The jacker had been in the Legion for a long time, and seen a lot of horrible things, but nothing like the scene laid out in front of him. His rations tried to come up, and he forced them back down.
The officer sent for Santana, along with what remained of Awanda’s platoon, but specified that Sergeant Brio and Private Eckers remain behind. It took the newly appointed company commander and the other legionnaires more than fifteen minutes to make their way to the front of the column and the horror that awaited them there.
The tableau, for that’s what it was, occupied the very center of the trail. The surrounding vegetation had been shredded by the mine that Ito had accidentally detonated, and white scars could be seen where hundreds of steel spheres had ripped into the surrounding trees.
The carefully staged scene consisted of heads, four in all, each on a thick, gore-drenched post. Bodies had been propped up against the uprights, but it appeared as though they had all been intentionally switched, as part of some sick joke. One corpse had fallen over, however—and all had been attacked by small scavengers.
Santana saw two columns of antlike insects. One marched up into Awanda’s left nostril, while the other exited through the right, each with a tiny bit of tissue clutched in its pincers. Not satisfied with murdering his fellow legionnaires—Kuga-Ka had posed them as a way to both taunt and intimidate any pursuers who might be sent after him.
Kobbi appeared at Santana’s side. “We have to keep going,” the battalion commander said gently, “but I thought her platoon would prefer to take care of its own. There’s no sign of Haaby by the way—so it seems safe to assume that she’s alive.”
“Thank you,” Santana replied hoarsely. “We’ll take the bodies off the trail so the column can pass. By the time Bravo Company arrives, we’ll be ready to put them in the ground.”
Kobbi nodded. “Here,” the officer said, and handed Santana the slim waterproofed volume that he always carried in the field. “Once the company is assembled, read them a passage from this.”
Santana said, “Yes sir,” accepted the book, and called his troops forward. Once the bodies had been removed from the center of the trail, the column got under way, and a single grave could be dug.
The ground was wet, and thick with humus, which meant that the digging was relatively easy. By the time the rest of Bravo Company arrived, the heads had been placed in a row, aligned with the correct bodies, and covered with a thick layer of dark earth.
One of the patrol’s assault weapons had been hit by a steel sphere and rendered useless. Santana shoved it barrel down into the dirt at the head of the grave, and a private placed a helmet on top. The jungle would close in around the site within a matter of weeks, adding the nameless mound to thousands of others that the Legion had left in its wake over hundreds of years, but never forgotten.
Then, with his company gathered around him, Santana pulled Kobbi’s book out of his pocket and turned to the spot marked with a crimson ribbon. Tiny droplets of rain populated the page as the officer read the already-familiar words. They had been written by Alan Seeger, a member of the Legion’s Marching Regiment, who had been killed in 1916.
God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
7
* * *
The first artificer of death; the shrewd, Contriver who first sweated at the forge, And forc’d the blunt and yet unbloodied steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war.
—William Cowper
The Task
Standard year 1758
* * *
PLANET SAVAS
The river made a joyous noise as it rushed downstream, jumped off a rocky ledge, and splashed into the pool below. The water was deliciously cool, and the Jithi warriors delighted in the feel of it as they took turns climbing up onto a natural platform next to the waterfall and jumping into the spray-spattered reservoir. The foursome were supposed to be hunting, but the prospect of a swim had lured them away from the assigned task, and the noise produced by the river served to obliterate all other sounds.
Ool, who prided himself on his athletic ability, jumped into the air and turned a full somersault before hitting the surface of the water. Eyes watched the Jithi through a scope as he surfaced, swam to the bank, and took Tobo’s hand. A single jerk was sufficient to pull the swimmer up onto dry land, where Camba and Uth compared his dive to that of a rock heaved off the edge of a cliff.
The entire group was laughing when Sawicki made a final adjustment to the Legion-issue sniper’s rifle. The barrel was sixty-one inches long, and the .50 caliber slugs could strike targets located more than a thousand yards away. The trigger gave, the stock thumped the human’s shoulder, and a loud crack! bounced back and forth between the canyon walls.
Ool felt something knock his right leg out from under him, wondered what had occurred, and was still in the process of falling when the second slug hit Tobo. The other warriors went into motion at that point, both breaking to the right, hoping to recover the weapons that lay not ten feet away.
But Saw
icki had anticipated such a move. He nailed Uth on the fly and Camba as he bent to retrieve a weapon. Four shots—four hits. Three left legs and one right leg. Not bad for somebody who had washed out of sniper school.
“Nice shooting,” Kuga-Ka observed indulgently. “Let’s get down there before the digs crawl too far into the jungle.”
The initial shock has worn off by the time the deserters emerged from the jungle, and in spite of the fact that all four of the Jithi were in extreme pain, none of them made a sound. Not as proof of courage, but because they lived in a very dangerous environment, and had been taught the importance of silence from birth.
Blood trails showed where the Jithi had dragged themselves into the jungle. “Find them,” the Hudathan ordered tersely. “Tie their hands, slap battle dressings on their wounds, and build a six-foot-long fire. I’ll take care of the framework.”
Twenty minutes later a long narrow fire was burning, the Jithi warriors dangled from a six-inch-thick tree trunk supported by two improvised A-frames, and their feet were starting to blister. Ool wanted to scream, had to scream, but refused to do so until one of his companions did. His face was contorted with pain, rivulets of sweat ran down along the flat planes of body, and he performed a series of jerky pull-ups in a vain attempt to escape the flames.
“The machine in my hand will translate for us,” Kuga-Ka said, as he held the device up for the Jithi to see. “How many days will it take to reach the northern desert?”
Tobo heard a series of incomprehensible sounds followed by stilted Jithi. Not the finely nuanced language that his people spoke but the harsh patois the tribes used to communicate with each other and the off-worlders in Savas Prime. The pain was all-consuming, and he could smell his roasting flesh. His voice was little more than croak. “It makes no difference stink-thing. My people will track you down and kill you.”
“Wrong answer,” Kuga-Ka said coldly, as he slit the warrior open and allowed the Jithi’s entrails to fall into the fire. Tobo felt the moment of release, heard his intestines start to sizzle, and passed out.
“Now, how ’bout you?” the Hudathan demanded pointedly, as he paused in front of Uth. “How many days till we reach the desert?”
Uth lost control of his bladder, felt warm liquid trickle down the inside surface of his right thigh, and heard the explosion of steam as the urine hit the fire. The shame of it humiliated and motivated the warrior at the same time. He called upon every bit of strength left to him to raise both of his raw, blackened feet and kicked outward.
Kuga-Ka felt the Jithi’s feet thump against his chest, roared his outrage, and began to slash. Blood flew in sheets as the Hudathan vented his spleen, the other renegades backed away, and there was a fountain of sparks as Camba’s dead body collapsed into the fire. That was when Kuga-Ka realized that the Jithi who had dishonored him was dead, that the others were dead as well, and that the front of his uniform was soaked in alien blood.
The other deserters watched silently as the Hudathan stripped, threw the camos on the ground, and turned toward the river. Knifethrow waited until the ex-noncom was actually in the water before shaking his head in wonderment. “Whooee. The gunny sure lost it that time.”
“No kidding,” Sawicki agreed soberly. “Do you think he’s crazy?”
The Naa grinned. “Do colonels shit on privates?”
Both renegades laughed.
THE GREAT PANDU DESERT, PLANET SAVAS
The dark finger of basalt rock pointed up at the feet of the Paguumi warrior who stood on top silhouetted against the cloud-streaked sky. Farther up, high above his head, a long-wing could be seen, turning lazy circles as it waited for something to die.
Srebo Riff, his subchiefs, and selected tribal elders sat in the shade provided by a large piece of Jithi trade fabric and watched as a mob of carefully groomed zurna backed and filled in the area before them. Most of the animals were tan in color, but browns, blacks, and reds weren’t unknown. The quadrupeds snorted, farted, and nipped each other as both they and their riders waited for the race to start.
Riff’s eldest son, a proud, some said arrogant, youth named Tithin, had drawn one of the less-desirable starting positions way out at the end of the line. It was unfortunate but not insurmountable. Especially given the fact that the youngster’s steed was superior to at least 80 percent of those that milled around him.
The chieftain looked over to Kal Koussi, his most senior general, and gave a nod. The warrior was bipedal, stood about six units tall, and wore a loose-fitting robe over baggy pants and sturdy pull-on boots. Notches, one for each enemy killed, ran the full length of his bony heat-dispersing headcrest. His eyes, which were protected by semitransparent side lids, blinked as he raised a hand over his head.
The warrior on top of the rocky outcropping had been waiting for that movement and cocked his single-shot trade rifle in response.
Riff saw Tithin’s mount nip the zurna on his right so viciously that the bite drew blood, smiled thinly, and gave the necessary order. “Now!”
Koussi brought his hand down, the warrior fired his rifle, and the mob of frantic zurna lurched into motion. One of the mounts fell and threw its unfortunate rider onto the ground, where he was trampled to death. There were cries of anguish from his relatives and long strings of oaths from those who had bets on him, but no calls to stop the race.
But Tithin had no such difficulties as he remained glued to the saddle-shaped mass of bone and cartilage that was an integral part of the zurna’s spine. The warrior saw a hole up ahead, and thanks to the spinal extension that connected their nervous systems together, the animal “saw” the same picture. He pushed his way into the momentary gap and nipped the mounts to either side.
Metal weapons were forbidden, but wooden staves were permissible, and with both hands free to use them most riders carried at least one six-unit-long pole. Tithin ducked as a stick passed over his head, used his stave as a lance, and jabbed a black zurna in the flank. The animal screamed in outrage, tried to turn toward the source of the attack, but was forced to obey as its rider sent a countervailing command.
Then came the wonderful sweet-sour stench of the animals that surrounded him, the cacophony of fierce war cries, and moment when he and the war mount were one. The warrior screamed his joy, urged his steed forward, and gave thanks for the fact that he was alive.
But there was more riding on the race than the honor associated with finishing among the top five, there were hundreds of bets, including one that Srebo Riff had placed that very morning. If Tithin came in first, the chieftain would win a hundred prime katha. But if he failed, the warrior’s father would lose a hundred prime katha, not to mention a measure of vath (face).
So even as Tithin relished the tumult of competition, Riff felt his own stomach muscles tighten as his son rounded the obelisk-shaped piece of basalt, and a pair of sturdy-looking zurna closed on him from either side. The sudden convergence of two animals, both pressing in at the same time, might have been a matter of coincidence, but Riff didn’t believe it. Odds were that Sorn Dukk, the subchieftain against whom his bet had been placed, had hired a couple of low-level competitors to make sure that the advantage fell to his son.
Tithin felt a stick strike the padding on his shoulders, turned to deal with the attacker, and took a sharp jab from the other side. The warrior knew the simultaneous attack was no accident and felt a sudden surge of anger. He was just about to lash out when the off-worlder spoke from afar. The remote talker, plus the tiny receiver hidden in one of his ear slits, were among more than a dozen gifts that the insectlike alien had presented to his father. “Remove the device from your pocket,” the voice advised. “Use it now.”
Tithin might have refused, but the warrior on the left brought his staff down on the zurna’s hindquarters, and the warrior felt the animal’s pain. He stuck his right hand into his pocket, took hold of the alien construct, and pulled it free. Though designed for humans by humans, the stunner fit the Paguum’s four-fingered ha
nd a lot better than the Ramanthian equivalent would have.
Tithin aimed the device at the mount on his left, pressed the firing stud, and saw the animal go down. A quick turn to the right, and a second touch of the trigger produced a similar result.
The riders and their mounts had completed a second circuit of the rocky pylon by then, and Riff caught a glimpse of his son as the second conspirator went down and the youngster surged forward. With only one more lap to go, and having lost valuable time, Tithin found himself about halfway back in the pack. Dust boiled up around the warrior as he eyed the bodies massed ahead of him, visualized a path that would take his zurna toward the inside edge of the pack, and felt the animal change course.
A smaller animal issued a scream of outrage as it was pushed aside, a stick shattered on Tithin’s crest, and hooves thundered as the mob rounded the rocky tower once again. A hole opened ahead, the zurna galloped through it, and Tithin found himself in third place. The race was nearing an end by that time, so the stick fighting ceased as the warriors put their heads down and urged their mounts to greater speed.
The number two zurna tripped, squealed as it went down, and was soon pounded into reddish mush by the tidal wave of flesh and bone that followed. That left the lead to Sorn Dukk’s son, and knowing how much the race meant to his father, Tithin was tempted to use the stunner. But there was no honor in that, no zis (elegance), and he shoved the device back into his pocket. The wind ripped the words out of his throat even as he shouted them. “You can do it! Pass him on the inside! Take him now!”
The zurna wanted to please Tithin. What little bit of identity it had reached down, located a small reservoir of remaining energy, and tapped into it.
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