Soldiers Out of Time

by Steve White

  “But what if they collect some souvenirs to corroborate their story?” countered Odinga.

  “You’ve raised a very real concern, Private Odinga,” Jason admitted. “The lack of any recorded mention of any such incident does seem to suggest no local people transmit any such story. Which in turn may mean that we may have to take measures to see that they don’t.” He recalled what he had done to Henry Morgan because reality had required it. Only this time I don’t have any fancy memory-erasure device, he reminded himself.

  “You mean, sir . . .?”

  “Yes, Private Odinga. It might mean that we end up having to take locals back to the Drakar system with us. In a lawless, primitive area like the one we’re headed for, missing persons won’t raise any eyebrows or suggest any abnormal causes.”

  He didn’t mention what else it might mean. He didn’t know whether any of these people had already thought that through on their own. If so, they kept quiet about it. And he himself didn’t want to think about the possibly necessary nature of those “measures.”

  I’ve killed a number of people, he thought. But I’ve never killed anyone in cold blood without what I considered a sufficient reason. This may put that to the test.

  Rojas interrupted his thoughts. “It could also simply mean that we’re going to fail.”

  That could just as happily have been left unsaid, Major. But, Jason reflected, it at least had the virtue of taking everyone’s minds off whatever choices they might have to make.

  Then their weight seemed to momentarily waver and there was a very brief surge of acceleration before the inertial compensators took over. The transport was approaching an Earth that could never have imagined such a visitor.

  “So, Alexandre,” said Jason, “tell us all you can about the area where we’re going to be landing. Stoneman said something about the ‘North-West Frontier.’ What does that mean?”

  “It was the area on both sides of the border between the British Indian Empire and Afghanistan. The border was pretty vague, but I think that sometime shortly before this it was marked out in accordance with an agreement the British made with the Russians.”

  “With the Russians?” queried Hamner. “What about the Afghans themselves?”

  “They weren’t consulted. Abdur Rahman, the amir, just had to sign on the dotted line. Afghanistan was pretty anarchic, and part of the reason it kept its independence was because neither the British nor the Russians wanted the other to have it. They were always intriguing over it—‘The Great Game,’ they called it.”

  “What was the other part of the reason?”

  “The fact that the tribes that inhabited it were simply too wild to be permanently conquered—the British have tried, a couple of times in this century and failed, as other people, including the Russians, will at different times.”

  “Stoneman called them ‘Pathans,’ I think.”

  “Right. They live on both sides of the border. They have no sense of nationalism—their loyalties are only to their tribes, or more likely to their clans, septs and extended families. These people are barbarians—savages, really. They’re nominally Muslims, but with them that just means going on a jihad whenever some mullah gets them pumped up. The rest of the time they’re fighting blood-feuds among themselves, or raiding the Indian plains and valleys to the south. But those on the Indian side of the Frontier are perfectly willing to fight for the British against their fellow Pathans—no nationalism, remember. In fact, they make up some of the best recruits for the British Indian Army, as opposed to the British Army in India.”

  “Uh . . . what’s the difference?” asked Hamner.

  “The British Army in India is simply the British units stationed in India, and it consists entirely of Brits. The Indian Army is a separate organization, recruited locally. All its enlisted men—or ‘other ranks’ as the British call them—are Indians, called sepoys, or sowars if they’re in the cavalry. But British Army warrant officers and NCOs are sometimes seconded to the Indian Army for limited terms. All of the Indian Army’s officers are Brits . . . except for a special category of ‘Viceroy’s Commissioned Officers’ or ‘VCOs’ who command units but all of whom, even the most senior, rank below the most junior British officer.”

  “Why?” Bermudez sounded puzzled.

  Jason answered that one, on the basis of his knowledge of the attitudes of European and European-descended people in this era. “Because it’s unthinkable that British troops could ever find themselves commanded by someone with a skin darker than theirs.”

  The commandos’ faces looked blank. “What has the color of their skin got to do with it?” Armasova wanted to know.

  “Trust me—it’s just the way they think.”

  “But apart from that,” said Hamner, looking more perplexed than ever, “how does this army function when the enlisted troops speak a different language from the officers?”

  “Languages,” Mondrago corrected. “The Indian troops speak dozens of languages and dialects. But the Mughal Empire that preceded the British had come up for a solution to that: a common language called Urdu, a mixture of Hindi and Persian and various northern Indian languages. All recruits have to learn it—not too difficult for most of them. And so do all the British officers.”

  “Still, language must be a problem.”

  “Not to mention religion,” said Mondrago—who, Jason had begun to suspect, knew more about this area of military history than he had indicated. “These other ranks are Muslims or Hindus or Sikhs. The Muslims look on the Hindus as pagan idolaters—even worse than Christians and Jews, the ‘People of the Book.’ The Hindus are divided into various castes that can’t stand the thought of physical contact with each other. The Sikhs are the result of an unsuccessful attempt to merge the other two—and since Muslims killed a particular martyr of theirs, they have a reputation for killing any Muslim they can catch, in ways he almost certainly won’t enjoy. And they all have different dietary restrictions—the Muslims think the pig is unclean, and the Hindus think the cow is sacred—so they have to be in separate companies. The failure of the British to remember that helped bring about a nasty mutiny forty years ago. But then, the Brits think the lot of them are a bunch of benighted heathens.”

  Hamner shook his head slowly. “How can an army like this possibly work?”

  “But it did . . . or I should say it does. Ever since the mutiny I mentioned, the Indian Army has been practically a byword for loyalty. And it will stay loyal right up to the time, about sixty years from now, when India will become independent. Somehow, a bond formed between these troops and their British officers.” Mondrago looked thoughtful. “It may have had something to do with the fact that the Brits do their recruiting among what they call the ‘Martial Races’ of India: castes and ethnic groups that have a warrior tradition and consider soldiering an honorable profession. There’s never any problem getting recruits, and they never resort to conscription. During World War II this will be the largest all-volunteer army in history.”

  “So,” Jason reflected, “the British are able to put a medieval ethos to work for them in the First Industrial Revolution era.”

  “And it’s a tremendous military asset to the British Empire—a pool of military manpower. Indian troops serve in places as far apart as China and Africa, and in the World Wars they’ll fight for the British on all fronts. And when the Indian Army is fighting the kind of wars it’s intended to fight and not playing out of its league—as when they try to put Indian troops into the trenches in World War I—it doesn’t lose very often.”

  “So what, exactly, is going on here on the North-West Frontier right now?” asked Rojas.

  “I’m sorry, Major, but I don’t have that kind of detailed knowledge. Punitive operations are frequent, but I can’t say what’s happening on a particular date. The British permanently hold the key passes through the Hindu Kush mountains from Afghanistan—especially the Khyber Pass—with the Frontier Scouts, recruited among the Pathans. Well back from th
e frontier, they have camps where British battalions are brigaded with Indian Army units. In between, the wild Pathans are pretty much left alone.”

  “In short, good slave-hunting ground,” said Jason morosely.

  At that moment there was a seeming hiccup in their weight as the artificial gravity cut off and the brute pull of Earth’s mass took over. Simultaneously, they felt a slight bump as the transport landed under grav repulsion and settled onto its landing legs. There was no change in their weight, for the ship had been using the standard one G of the world on which they now rested.

  After a tense interval, the hatch opened and Stoneman entered with his guards and addressed them. “As you are aware, we have landed. It is late August, 1897, as you are also aware, Commander Thanou, from your computer implant—oh, yes, we know about that. Bit of hypocrisy, isn’t it, for one who claims to abide by the Human Integrity Act? At any rate, the British are conducting one of their innumerable punitive expeditions in this area—it’s known as the Swat River Valley—and we’ve located some isolated detachments of theirs nearby, off the main line of march. I and most of my men are about to depart, to do some collecting. As soon as we’re on our way back, I’ll be sending for you, to perform the function I mentioned before. Hold yourselves in readiness.” He turned on his heel and departed.

  They all looked at each other. Mondrago was the first to speak. “So most of them will be gone . . .”

  “And I can find the way to the cargo port we were brought in through,” said Jason. “My implant has had a chance to build up a partial deck plan of this ship.”

  “But,” said Rojas, “what happens if we get there and it’s closed?”

  “I have a hunch they’ll simply leave it open while Stoneman and his slaving party are gone. Why not?”

  “What about that laser turret they used to destroy our gig?” asked Hamner. “It could fry us once we’re out in the open.”

  “It’s a ventral turret,” Mondrago reminded him. “I doubt if it can protrude when the ship is on the ground. And even if it can . . . from what I recall of its location, I don’t think it can cover the area astern.”

  “Besides which,” added Jason, “I’d be surprised if they even have it activated. From their standpoint, these people around here aren’t just Pugs, they’re also primitives—totally beneath contempt.”

  “It’s still a long chance,” said Rojas.

  “It’s the only chance we’ve got,” Jason reminded her. He gave her a close but surreptitious look. In the course of the voyage she had gradually come out of the shell of despondency in which they had found her, but her personality still hadn’t altogether reasserted itself. While Jason couldn’t pretend that he missed her abrasive assertion of authority, its absence wasn’t entirely reassuring. He could only hope she was up to what they were contemplating.

  Time passed, its pace slowed by tension. They used it to make plans and try to foresee contingencies. Finally, with the usual nerve-wracking lack of warning, the hatch opened. Two guards entered—fewer than usual, which suggested that Mondrago was right and that most of the Transhumanists were absent. Both were goon-caste. After so much time with no trouble from the prisoners, they had grown lax . . . even more so now that Stoneman was absent, Jason suspected, for only one had a laser carbine, and it was slung over his shoulder. Both held neural-stimulator batons in a contemptuously nonchalant way.

  “You two,” said the one with the laser carbine, gesturing at Jason and Mondrago. “Come!”

  Jason rose slowly to his feet, followed by Mondrago. As he did so, he gave Rojas an almost imperceptible nod.

  As Jason and Mondrago passed between the two guards, Rojas suddenly screamed and went into what appeared to be an epileptic seizure.

  “What—?” exclaimed the guard with the laser carbine, who stood to Jason’s left. By sheer reflex, he swung toward the source of the commotion.

  As he did so, Jason grabbed the laser carbine and heaved, swinging the guard to whose shoulder it was strapped around to collide with the other guard, knocking him off-balance. Simultaneously, Mondrago dropped to the deck, avoiding the batons, and grappled the two guards’ ankles.

  All the IDRF people sprang to their feet. Jason grasped the wrists of the guard he had unbalanced and pinned him to the floor, desperately straining against genetically upgraded strength as the guard tried to bring his baton into contact. He only had to do so for a second before Bakiyev kicked the guard in the temple, hard. At the same time, Jason heard a scream from Mondrago, for the other guard had fallen on top of him and applied his baton. But then Hamner gripped the guard’s baton-arm, rolled him over and finished him with a quick, economical chop to the throat with the edge of his stiffened hand.

  “Are you all right?” demanded Jason as he hauled the trembling Mondrago to his feet.

  “Never better,” the Corsican managed to gasp.

  “Not a bad performance,” Jason told Rojas. He scooped up the laser carbine. “And now, let’s go!”

  Guided by Jason’s map display, they rushed through the transport’s passageways, encountering no one. The hatch giving access to the cargo bay was closed, but its controls were standard. Jason slapped a button, and it slid open.

  The cargo port was open, as Jason had hoped, with its ramp expended to the ground, and the outside world was visible in blurred gray tones it always showed when viewed from inside an invisibility field. “Come on!” Jason ordered.

  They were halfway across the cargo bay when a guard, who had been standing outside, stepped in with laser carbine at the ready. As he brought it into line with one hand, he punched a control box beside the opening. The cargo port began to rumble shut.

  Odinga, who was closest to him, launched himself at the guard with a roar. There was the crack! of a weapon-grade laser drilling a hole through air, and Odinga’s chest expelled the steam of heat-exchange. He crumpled without a sound.

  But he had given Jason the split second he needed. His own laser beam speared the guard.

  “Run!” he shouted.

  They all crowded through the port before it had finished closing. Jason was the last, and as the port slammed shut it caught his laser carbine, crushing it.

  There was no time to mourn Odinga. They ran toward the stern of the transport, not wishing to test their theories about the laser turret. Then they were out of the field, the transport was no longer visible, and the landscape around them abruptly came into focus and assumed the clarity of mountain sunlight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  There was no immediate pursuit, and Mondrago’s optimism about the laser turret appeared to have been justified. Still, Jason wanted to put as much distance as possible between them and the now-invisible transport. So he kept them running for a spell, until they all needed to stop, gasping for breath—this clearly was high-altitude terrain, and they were used to standard sea-level atmospheric pressure. Only then did he permit himself to look around at their surroundings.

  It seemed mid-afternoon, judging from the position of the sun. They were on an upland plateau, stony and barren like the slopes of the mountains that loomed above, although the upper reaches were covered with dense forests. Spurs projected from the sides of the ridge, forming narrow gorges, in which what looked like villages could be glimpsed. To the west, below and barely visible between two peaks, the westering sun glinted on a river—Stoneman had mentioned the Swat. He had also mentioned isolated British detachments off to the flanks, which was undoubtedly why he had landed up here in the surrounding mountains.

  It was a dramatic landscape, but Jason was in no mood to appreciate it. He swallowed to wet his throat—the air was dry as well as thin, and he was growing thirsty in the August heat—and turned to face the others.

  “All right, let’s get moving. They’ll be after us soon, and they must have sensors that can detect my implant—maybe fair-sized, long-ranged ones.”

  “Where shall we go” asked Hamner.

  “Toward that valley over there. We’ll
find the nearest village.”

  “How will we communicate with them?” Rojas inquired. “None of us speak whatever it is they speak around here—”

  “Pushtu,” Mondrago supplied.

  “—and I doubt if any of the villagers speak English.”

  “Well, Stoneman said the Brits are operating in this area. Maybe there’ll be some around . . . or maybe the headman will have picked up a few English words.”

  “Anyway,” said Bakiyev with his usual stolid calm, “we’d better get going.” He pointed back to the location where the transport rested inside the field that bent light-frequencies around it. Figures were popping into view around it.

  “Move!” Jason snapped. The distant figures weren’t many—Stoneman hadn’t returned yet—but they had twenty-fourth-century weapons, which made numbers irrelevant. And they would undoubtedly be driven by a desire to not have to explain to Stoneman how they had lost the prisoners.

  None of them needed any urging. They all got to their feet and scrambled uphill, up the rugged slopes, over tumbled heaps of boulders. They soon lost sight of the remote figures of their pursuers, but Jason wasn’t about to let up, knowing what a beacon his implant provided to anyone with the right sensors.

  As they gained altitude, the heat grew somewhat less oppressive. But the air also grew thinner, so that exertion was exhausting to their unacclimated bodies. It also grew drier, and Jason’s thirst became ever more tormenting.

  After a time, his sense of direction began to tell him that his efforts to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Transhumanists might not be working. The topography was tricky, and they might simply be circling around in such a way as to cross the path of their pursuers. He licked his dry lips, croaked “Halt!” and tried to get his bearings.

  “Freeze!”

  Jason froze, and slowly turned his head to the left, from which had come the command. A figure in standard shipboard coverall stood at the edge of a cliff up which he had presumably clambered, pointing a laser carbine at them. Keeping the weapon on target with his right hand, he raised his left arm to speak into a wrist communicator. Summoning the others, Jason thought bleakly. After which—