Troopers move out of my way as I make my way through the camp. Maybe they’ve heard about what just happened, or maybe it’s just the way the SIG at my side keeps up a running commentary on their shortcomings.
“Crap tent.”
“Bloody awful uniform.”
“Call that a pulse rifle…?”
The battle is over for the day and both sides are busy licking their wounds. I don’t know about the Uplifted’s forces, but ours taste pretty sour. We’ve taken heavy losses and the ragged militia through which I walk are sullen and afraid.
With the last of our pods landed, the enemy’s high fighters have returned to their landing strip on the far side of Ilseville. Their batwings are also gone, leaving the sky empty except for strange stars.
“Over there,” I say, pointing to a low hillock that looks slightly less sodden than those around it. A group of militia are doing their best to light a fire from damp twigs and strips ripped from someone’s uniform. A foil tent is already erected with its flap facing where they hope the fire will be.
Their best is pitiful.
“Move,” I tell them.
One of them stands and finds my gun under her chin.
They pack their possessions in silence. As they turn to go, Neen tosses them a fresh tent from his pack and I shrug. “Send someone along in a few minutes,” I tell their leader.
She turns back.
“We’ll have a fire going.”
I’m speaking the truth. When she returns, flames dance against sodden logs, which hiss and spit with escaping steam. Mind you, setting a fire is easy when you have a holster full of incendiary rounds. Fixed properly, a single round can burn for hours, assuming it doesn’t blow your hand off first.
“Frederica,” she says. “Sergeant.”
She’s tall, dark-skinned, and dark-haired. Frederica looks as if she’d be good in bed and good in a fight. Life needs more women like her.
“Sven Tveskoeg,” I tell her. “Lieutenant.”
She feels better after that, because I outrank her and that makes losing the spot easier. “Which regiment?”
“Death’s Head.”
Her glance checks whether I’m joking.
“I’d better be going,” she says.
I watch Frederica retrieve a burning brand from our fire. She’s a good sergeant, and she’s going back to tell her troopers how narrow an escape they just had, but it makes me wonder about the outfit I’ve joined.
In the legion we regarded officers in the Death’s Head as mythic beings, the elite of an elite. Frederica’s response is based on something other than respect, something much more primitive.
“See you around,” I say.
She doesn’t look back.
Being semi-chameleon, our tents have already adopted the dirty green of the ground beneath. Fooler loops will help dampen their thermal pattern should the Enlightened bother to overfly this site. Although given the fires and the smoke that curls up into the darkening sky, few people in Ilseville can have any doubt that we’re here.
Behind our camp is a muddy-edged pond. It feeds from a narrow stream on our side and soaks away into marshland beyond. We’re filthy, stink of smoke, and need a wash, plus I’m tired and need something to snap me awake.
Cold water should do it.
“Get ready for a swim,” I tell Neen, stripping off my combat armor and tossing it into the pond.
My sergeant looks shocked.
There was an oasis behind Jebel Jebel, south of Karbonne. I remember the lieutenant making us wash away the memories of our first battle. Of course it was high summer back then, and we were filthy and the water was cool.
Unbuckling his boots, Neen discards his jacket, strips off his shirt, and climbs out of his trousers. He has the body of a farm laborer, rangy but lacking muscle. No implants, no augs. It makes me realize I don’t know which world he came from. Somewhere backward, from the looks of things.
“And the rest of you.”
Franc strips next, unbuckling heavy boots and fumbling with fastenings. When his shirt hits the ground to reveal breasts I realize the obvious. Franc’s a she, and the troopers in my group are mixed. Franc has no augmentations, either, but she’s been in battle before, because three knife scars cross her gut like claw marks.
“Seen enough, sir?”
“No,” I say. “Come here.”
She glares but obeys my order.
The scars are raised, stitched badly, and poorly healed. “Nasty,” I say, though I’ve seen nastier. “How recent?”
“Six months ago.”
“Combat?”
Franc’s smile is sour. “Family argument,” she says, and then waits for me to dismiss her.
I make her wait.
She’s got broad shoulders, small breasts, and tight hips, with no body hair anywhere, not even on her head, which has been shaved or something.
“Do you have ferox on your planet?”
It’s obvious from the bemused expression on her face that the answer is no.
Neen and Haze are male, Franc and Shil are not, although Haze has a body almost androgynous in its softness and whiteness. Shil is the eldest, at least that’s my guess. She undresses with her back to us all and discards her shirt only when she’s already in the water.
“Scrub your uniforms,” I order. “The fire will dry them quickly enough.”
The water is cold and fresh and tastes metallic. After a second even Shil is grinning and gasping as the coldness of the water takes her breath away. I make them stay in until their clothes are clean and the battle forgotten. And then I turn my mind to other things.
“We need food.”
“But we’ve got…” Neen hesitates, uncertain if he’s allowed to disagree.
“Go on.”
“We’ve got our food packs, sir.” He nods toward the tents. A cart has just been around, piled with extra battlefield rations. Vacuum-packed foil sachets of dried shit that just needs water to taste like dried shit with added water.
“Have you eaten that stuff?”
As one, they shake their heads.
“Keep it that way.” Having wrung the worst of the water from my uniform, I dress and go check my gun.
“Call this a camp?” it says, coming out of sleep mode.
“You seen better?”
The SIG names three campaigns noted for their viciousness. And my respect for Aptitude’s bodyguard reaches a new level.
To Shil I say, “Get your rifle.”
She does as she’s told, scowling furiously.
“Be back in an hour,” I tell Neen. “Anyone asks, I’m on reconnaissance and your orders are to wait here.”
He salutes, his eyes flicking to the woman beside me. And I wonder if there’s anything between them. She’s in her late twenties, scrawny as a skinned rabbit, and smiles when she sees him. The rest of the time she looks like thunder.
“Shil,” I say, when we’re on our own. “A couple of questions…Have you known Sergeant Neen long?”
Our fat-wheeled combats cool on a hillock behind us. God knows the machines are hopeless in battle; they might as well be used for something, even if it’s just a hunting trip into the marshes.
“He’s my brother, sir.”
Fucking great.
“And Franc and Haze?”
“My cousins, but Haze lives in a different village. So I don’t know him that well.”
“And your militia mixes sexes?”
Shil slicks me a sideways scowl. It asks, How can he not know something that basic? Only she swallows the comment and nods instead.
“Got a flash bang?”
She nods to that, too. “Good,” I tell her. “Go around that way. Quietly as you can. Toss it into a channel and come back, making as much noise as possible.”
“Where will you be, sir?”
“Waiting.”
THERE IS A right time for things and a wrong time. I want to explain this to the SIG diabolo, but it’s too busy turning off a row of diodes to listen, and it’s all I can do not to hurl the useless machine into a ditch and let it sit out the next fifty years underwater.
“Shutting down,” it says.
“Wait…”
It doesn’t, so I hurl it at the alligator instead.
The bastard is black and leathery, longer than Shil and probably four times her weight. Six legs power it through the mud toward me as it flees Shil’s stun grenade. Its teeth are blunt, but its jaws are tough and when they close on my thigh I can feel bones crack.
Nothing shatters, which is good.
“No you fucking don’t.”
As the beast rolls, trying to drag me under the water, I grab my laser knife and twist the handle until the blade flares brightly enough to be seen a mile away. Startled by the light, the alligator freezes and a smell of freshly seared reptile suddenly fills the air.
“Sir…” It’s Shil and she’s shouting.
We’ll need to talk about that.
“I’m fine.”
She slams to a halt, scowling. “Thought you were dead.”
“Well, I’m not. And, Shil…”
Shil looks at me.
“Don’t shout,” I tell her. “It unnerves people.”
Her eyes flick to the empty wastes around us.
“In battle,” I say. “It upsets people.”
“That why you killed Corporal Haven?”
A memory of an NCO with his legs smashed enters my mind. Only happened this morning, I remind myself, although it feels much longer ago. Can’t remember killing him, but that probably means nothing.
“Help me up.”
She struggles with my weight but gets me standing. My hip is better than I deserve, although it hurts and blood has filled my boots. My uniform is shredded down one side. If I were still in the legion I’d be carrying thread, a needle, a knife, and wind-dried meat, our basic survival pack. As it is, I’ve got my laser blade, throwing spikes, cracked bones in my leg, and a gun I’m going to need to find.
Looking at Shil it’s easy to understand my earlier mistake. She’s not bald like Franc, but her head’s been cropped back to her skull and her uniform is a baggy mess of cheap cloth with too many pockets, patches, and fasteners, all guaranteed to fill with water every time it rains. She looks like any other grunt.
“Got a needle and cotton in one of those pockets?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How are your nerves?”
“They’re fine.”
She’s insulted, which is good, but she needs to learn not to let it show. “They’re fine, sir.”
“My nerves are fine, sir.”
“Good, then fix my leg.”
My injuries will heal faster if the wound’s sewn shut, and it gives Shil something to do while my bones knit enough for me to go find my gun. And if that doesn’t given me long enough, there’s always the alligator for her to skin and joint.
“Not too bad,” I say when the job’s done.
In the end I skin the creature myself while Shil mends my trousers. The beast has no bones, though it possesses a leathery hide, strange teeth, and plates of something white and slimy where its skeleton should be. What look like feet turn out to be shrunken fins.
Throwing its innards, rudimentary lungs, and most of its skin into the marsh, I remove its head by cutting deeper into the wound I slashed across its throat, discard the last bit of its tail, and climb back into my newly mended uniform.
“Hold this.”
The scrap of skin Shil takes is slimy enough to justify her disgust.
“Taste it,” I say.
She stares at me, realizing that I’m serious and that things are going to get ugly if she doesn’t do what she’s told. So she does. She even manages not to wipe her lips afterward.
“Disgust gets you killed,” I tell her. “Before this is over you’ll be eating food that would now make you vomit. Understand me?”
I hold her gaze until she nods, then hold it some more.
“Yes, sir.” “Good. Now go find my gun.”
With the alligator slung over my shoulder and the gun at my hip, I power up a fat-wheel and wait for Shil to do the same. We need to find the crashed batwing before we can head back. All I know is that the machine went down between where we killed the alligator and our camp. My best hope is that the bog hasn’t taken it already.
Water splashes from our wheels and a sour stink fills the night air around me. Shil stays close and I realize she’s frightened by the dancing flames of marsh gas around us.
“It’s not magic,” I tell her.
She makes a sign against the evil eye anyway.