Chapter Nine

Superb men, but the scrapings of every nation, an amalgam of every state, of every profession, of every social calling who have come to join one another and many of them to hide.

—Lieutenant Arnaud-Jacques Leroy Constantine,
French Foreign Legion, 1837

“Feels good to be back where we belong, huh, Spear?” Corporal Selim Bashar asked, as he powered up the magrep fields aboard the M-980 Sabertooth FSV. “I mean, those veeters are okay, but I’d rather be in the Angel any time, wouldn’t you?”

The voice in his headphones grunted a distracted response, and Bashar frowned. Spiro Karatsolis was the best friend Bashar had in the Legion, maybe the best friend he’d ever had, and he was sensitive to the Greek legionnaire’s moods.

They’d met during basic training on Devereaux, two nubes surprised to find that they came from the same homeworld, New Cyprus, though everything else about them was different. Bashar had come from a city background, his father a wealthy merchant shocked by his only son’s desire to join the Colonial Army. His father’s resistance and a desire for adventure had driven Bashar to the Legion, where he could start fresh, beyond even his father’s long reach.

But Karatsolis had come from a poor background, growing up on a farm raising the sheep that were the only Terran livestock that had adapted to New Cyprus. For the Greek kid’s family, military service was a way for the boy to better himself, and the Legion the service of choice because other family members had served with the unit in times past. From background to ethnic heritage to goals and desires, the two young soldiers hadn’t shared much in common, but still they’d gravitated toward one another.

Since earning the kepi blanc, Bashar and Karatsolis had managed to stay together, first in a regular infantry unit, then through specialist training and assignment to a Legion Transport Company. They’d soldiered together on more planets than Bashar cared to recall. On Hanuman, they’d lost the battle-scarred Sabertooth Karatsolis and christened Angel of Death, but they had weathered the long march. The Greek had even saved Bashar’s life. That was nothing unusual, of course; they’d been pulling each other out of danger since the first day of recruit training. Danger was something Bashar and Karatsolis thrived on, though of course like any veteran legionnaire neither would admit it.

Now they had a new Sabertooth, the Angel II, and enough danger on the horizon to keep a whole division of bored legionnaires happy. But Karatsolis had been withdrawn ever since Bashar had returned to the Sandcastle in response to orders recalling the Transport Section to prepare a major convoy to carry out the evacuation of offworlders from Ourgh. Since the riot in town, something had happened to disturb the normally cheerful Greek.

Karatsolis had been in a battle, of course, and by all accounts he’d been as close to death as he’d ever been. Rumors were already flying around the unit that the Greek was being recommended for the Commonwealth Legion of Merit for seizing an enemy rocket launcher and turning it on the wogs at the critical moment in the battle, and Bashar believed what he’d heard. Captain Fraser would be quick to recognize any legionnaire who deserved it.

What was bothering Karatsolis, then? Bashar wasn’t sure, and that realization worried him almost as much as his friend’s all too obvious pain.

“Roundup Escort, Roundup Escort, this is Alpha Two,” a new voice crackled in his headphones. “Status check.”

“Alpha Two, Roundup Escort,” Bashar replied, using the call sign selected for the FSV for Operation Roundup, the evacuation mission. “Receiving you five by five. Power at maximum charge. All diagnostics nominal.”

“Confirmed, Roundup Escort.” Lieutenant Gage sounded tired and worried. Bashar shrugged the thought off. The responsibility of putting together the entire mission, and the problems of making several hundred civilians cooperate once it was ready, would be enough to make anyone sound frayed. “Estimate time of departure at 1730 standard.”

Bashar entered the time on his computer terminal. “On the board, Lieutenant,” he replied. “You set ’em up, we’ll knock ’em down.”

“Standby, Escort,” was Gage’s flat response. The command circuit went dead. Bashar could picture her in the command APC, a variant on the ubiquitous Sandray design filled with computer and communications gear, running through a careful check of each vehicle’s status before giving the orders to depart the Sandcastle. She was a competent, careful Exec.

But he couldn’t help but wish that Captain Fraser or Gunny Trent was in charge. He still remembered Hanuman. Gage was a good officer, but Bashar had trouble envisioning her handling a hannie attack in the middle of the jungle.

He leaned back in the driver’s seat and cut in the intercom circuit. “Hey, Spear,” he said carelessly. “If we’re pulling an evac maybe we’ll get to carry Katrina. She was real grateful for the ride on the veeter yesterday. I mean, real grateful.” Actually the girl from the riot, Katrina Voskovich, hadn’t said more than four words from the time she got aboard, but Bashar needed something to get the banter started up.

Karatsolis didn’t rise to the bait. “I got a fault on my tracking scope, Bashar,” he said. “Give me another diagnostic on sensors, will you?”

Bashar sighed and punched the appropriate orders into the computer. Between the Greek and Lieutenant Gage, his own morale was starting to crack.

O O O

Floodlights held back the darkness and glinted harshly off the hulls of the vehicles parked in the center of the Sandcastle’s open courtyard. Looking around at the preparations for the convoy into Ourgh, Colin Fraser felt a tug of guilt. He would have preferred to take charge of the evacuation himself. The idea of letting someone else take responsibility for such a difficult undertaking was still hard to deal with.

He almost smiled at the memory of a similar problem back on Hanuman. That time he had wanted to take command of a rear-guard party, but Gunny Trent had convinced him that his duty lay in organizing the Legion’s withdrawal from a beleaguered fort. Now, just when his experience would have counted for something, he was stuck back here in the Sandcastle.

This time it had been Kelly, not Trent, who pointed out where his responsibilities were. For all intents and purposes he was in command—Captain Hawley, despite the flash of energy he had shown rescuing the old sapper during the battle, was obviously unable or unwilling to exercise his authority—and the CO had to remain in the command center and coordinate the overall operation.

There were Sandcastle defenses to put into order, recon drones to watch, contingency plans to be made, and though these could be done from the Sandray command van if necessary, they required his full attention.

But knowing that she was right didn’t make it any easier to accept.

The convoy didn’t inspire much confidence. When the legionnaires had been assigned to Polypheme, no one had envisioned much need for mobile operations. The transport section attached to the demi-battalion, sixteen men and ten vehicles before the nomad attack, wasn’t even sufficient to lift out a full company of a hundred and ten soldiers. There was only one Sabertooth fire support vehicle, a command van, two veeters, four standard Sandray APCs, and a pair of cargo vans. Those would carry fifty passengers in reasonable comfort, or perhaps twice that number under emergency conditions.

To make up the difference between the hundred people the Legion vehicles could hold and the estimated eight hundred plus workers, technicians, dependents, and other Commonwealth civilians in Ourgh, they would need to press every Seafarms vehicle into service, right down to the starport’s magrep forklifts. Jens had also promised that a bargelike contraption used in outfitting the Cyclops would have magrep modules fitted in time for the evacuation. It would be able to hold cargo and perhaps ninety more people, but it would have to be towed. That could be dangerous, especially if there was trouble in Ourgh.

For all of that it would still require at least two trips to get everyone out, especially since they’d have to take up some of the available passenger space with troops to guard the civilians and whatever equipment and personal effects they brought out. Edward Barnett had argued against sending legionnaires—apparently he was more afraid that they’d decide to loot the Terran Enclave than he was of native intervention—but Jens had overruled him. It looked like the woman really was ready to let the Legion take charge now.

That made him think of the Seafarms Cyclops. True to her word, Jens had ordered the ship’s captain to head for the Sandcastle, but it was a trip that would take several days. When Fraser had spoken to Watanabe, he’d come away with the feeling that the young subaltern was relieved to be on the way back. Hopefully, the nomads wouldn’t try any more attacks on the extractor ship, but Fraser knew he couldn’t count on it.

Those nomads were showing enough of a grasp of tactics to know that they’d be best served by picking the Terrans apart while they were separated. The next few standard days would be the most dangerous.

Gunnery Sergeant Valko was outside the command van, nodding sagely as he reviewed a compboard with a worried-looking civilian in a Seafarms coverall. The NCO looked up at Fraser’s approach and saluted smartly.

“What’s the word, Gunny?” Fraser asked him, forcing an encouraging smile.

The sergeant didn’t smile back. “On schedule, sir,” he said slowly. Valko was a man who weighed his words and his decisions before he committed himself. “I see no major problems as long as the civilians hold their end up.”

The Seafarms man flushed and looked away. Like many of the more hard-bitten legionnaires, Valko didn’t bother to hide the fact that he had as much contempt for civilians as people like Barnett had for the Legion.

But friction between the military and civilian organizations could undermine the security of the Sandcastle in the days ahead.

“I’m sure everything will be ready, Gunny,” he said firmly. “And if not, I’m sure that you’ll be able to work things out.” He nodded toward the van. “Is Lieutenant Gage aboard?”

“Yes, sir,” Valko replied. He rapped on the rear door, then moved off with the civilian in tow as the ramp dropped. A young legionnaire, probably fresh out of the training center on Devereaux, blinked at Fraser in surprise. “S-sir?”

“I’d like to see the lieutenant, son,” Fraser said. As the soldier disappeared into the bowels of the APC he suppressed a smile. He wasn’t really that much older than the legionnaire, but lately he’d been feeling distinctly paternal. A few more years and I’ll sound just like any other gruff old officer, he thought.

Lieutenant Gage came out of the command van’s center compartment, where the C3 gear was housed. Her face was creased into a dark frown. “You wanted to see me, Captain?” she asked.

Fraser nodded, feeling distinctly uneasy. Concern was plain on her face, in her voice, and that sort of thing could be contagious. “Just to see you off, Lieutenant,” he said, trying to sound confident and at ease. “Valko tells me everything’s going smoothly.”

“So far, sir,” she said. “But I’m still not certain how to handle things if the Council in Ourgh gets nasty. If you or Captain Hawley were along …”

“Let Citizen Jens worry about the Council,” Fraser told her. “She’s been dealing with them since before we got here, and I think you can trust her judgment. You stick with handling the technical side of the evacuation. Captain Hawley and I have full confidence in you.”

A flicker of anger clouded her features. Fraser wondered if he was sounding too patronizing, or if she was reacting to his reference to Hawley. No doubt she knew that Hawley hadn’t expressed any such sentiment. Alpha Company’s captain hardly noticed what his Exec did to keep the unit running. Fraser had never heard him utter a word of praise—or of reproof, for that matter. Hawley simply didn’t care.

“Keep a close eye on your people,” he went on, changing the subject. “We can’t afford a lot of conflict with Seafarms, so don’t let anybody decide the civilians are being uncooperative if it’s really just a case of a murphy getting out of hand.”

She nodded. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

“Good.” Fraser hesitated before going on. “And if you need help, we’ll do everything we can from this end.”

“Thank you, sir,” she responded, voice carefully neutral.

“Is Citizen Jens on board?”

“No, sir,” Gage said. “She took a floatcar back to Ourgh to start putting things in motion there. Her assistant’s with her, too.”

He fought back a twinge of irritation. It would have been better if Jens and Barnett had stayed to coordinate the civilian side of the operation more closely with the Legion, but probably that had been too much to expect. Although Jens now seemed willing to go along with his suggestions, she was still the same decisive executive she’d been all along, and her temperament wasn’t well suited to waiting when there was something she could be doing.

As he gave Gage a final salute and let her return to work, Fraser found himself thinking how much he and the Seafarms Project Manager had in common. He still wished he could join Operation Roundup himself.

O O O

Sigrid Jens cocked her head to one side and focused on the information coming in from the floatcar’s computer by way of the tiny implant in her brain. It was a curious sensation to be hurtling through the dark night, only a few centimeters above the angry water, in the small magrep vehicle, with her full attention focused entirely on statistics, progress reports on the dismantling of the corporate office in Ourgh, and dozens of other pieces of highly technical information.

The unaided human mind could never have juggled so much data even without the distraction of the floatcar’s high speed motion. With the computer implant linking her to the onboard terminal and, via microwave link, to the master computer system at the corporate office building near the starport, she had complete access to everything in the files, from personnel records to specs on all Seafarms equipment. The computer could turn her thoughts into voice communications by way of any computer terminal or portable compboard or wristpiece hooked into the Seafarms network.

An implant was power, real power on a frontier world, not just the fashionable status symbol it had become on Terra. They were scarce out here—the only other one on Polypheme belonged to Captain Hawley—and they were valuable in direct proportion to that scarcity.

Thinking of Hawley made her grimace in distaste. How could a man have an implant and waste its potential on pointless games? Hawley was as bad as the addicts who sold their souls for some pornographic dreamchip. Too bad Fraser didn’t have an implant: He was a man who would know how to use it.

Beside her, Barnett spoke for the first time since they’d left the Sandcastle, evidently taking her grimace as a sign that she’d finished her computer work. “I still think this is a bad move,” he said.

“You’ve made that clear, Edward,” she told him. “But I think the legionnaires made some valid points, and I have the final say.”

She glanced at him. Barnett looked pale, nervous, as if he were afraid of something. What?

“We’re perfectly safe in Ourgh,” he insisted. “Why uproot everything and everyone, because some paranoid legionnaire wants to play at being some kind of big hero?”

She cut the mental connection with the main computer and sighed. “I’m not going to keep having this argument with you, Edward. The evacuation goes through, and so does the recall order on Cyclops. If you want a future with this company, you’ll stop trying to second-guess me. Got it?”

Barnett subsided, suddenly meek. “Yes, ma’am.” He paused. “But this mess could mean the end of the company anyway.”

Silence followed. Jens contemplated her assistant with a trace of guilt. She knew his background: his parents killed in a border clash with the Ubrenfars, raised in an orphanage on New Atlanta, apprenticed to the Reynier Industries work-training program at age sixteen. Barnett had worked his way up to a position of responsibility despite a lack of formal education and all the attendant handicaps that had conspired to keep him back. His whole life centered on the drive to find security, and the company meant everything to him. Her threat must have cut deep.

She opened her mouth to apologize, but at that moment her implant signaled urgently for her attention. Although it was entirely computer-generated and quite inaudible, her brain interpreted the input as a tone as loud and clear as the whistle of the wind past the floatcar.

Jens focused her mind on the implant and mentally pronounced the code that established the computer link. At once she seemed to hear a voice, the dispassionate words of the computer system back at the Sandcastle. “Departure of Legion convoy at 1730 standard hours. Estimated time of arrival, Ourgh, 1815 standard hours.”

So it had started. She acknowledged the signal but kept the computer link intact. There was still a lot of work to do if this evacuation was going to be carried out smoothly.

O O O

Warrior-Scout !!Dhruuj listened to the sound of rushing water and extended his eyestalks above the surface to investigate. The tide was ebbing slowly, but that had nothing to do with what he was hearing.

He remembered the Strangers-Who-Brought-Gifts telling the Warrior-Scouts about the huge mechanical pumps that drew water into the center of the Built-Reef. They created an artificial tide that could flood or empty the interior of the Built-Reef at will, allowing the Strangers to enter or leave without sending an uncontrollable rush of water through the gates as they opened.

Then the Strangers-Within were preparing to leave! Surely that was important.

He waited.

The sounds died away, and then a harsh, mechanical noise filled the water: grating, wholly unnatural, and alien. The gates rolled slowly apart.

As !!Dhruuj had expected, there was water inside the Built-Reef now. He watched expectantly for swimmers to leave, but instead saw an ungainly shape riding on—no, actually it was above—the waves. More followed, each large enough to hold many swimmers. Some carried devices that looked much like the far-reach weapons the Clan was using, and one mounted a pair of deadly looking rocket shapes.

Weapons. The Stranger-Warriors were leaving the Built-Reef in force, well-armed.

That might create opportunities the War-Leader-of-Clans would want to exploit.

!!Dhruuj croaked two signals; one to the other Clan scouts who waited among the rocks closer to the land, the other directed at the War-Leader-of-Clans himself.

He felt a burning pride. The Clan would be that much safer for his actions … and the Strangers-Within far more at risk.