Chapter Sixteen

Go and tell your general that we’re not here to surrender.

—General Pierre Koenig,
during the siege of Bir Hakeir,
French Foreign Legion, 1942

The water stung DuValier’s face and hands, and the FEK slung across his back felt heavier than the four kilograms claimed in the technical stats, but he ignored the discomfort as he pushed away from the Sandcastle’s wall and fell into a slow, steady breaststroke. Behind him the rest of the legionnaires kept pace.

On the wall behind them DuValier could hear FEKs whining, laying down covering fire. That must have been Trent’s work. The Gunnery Sergeant was a good man, except for his obvious attachment to Colin Fraser.

Or was that just further proof that Fraser wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought?

DuValier thrust the question from his mind. What mattered now was getting men in position to clear those walls and keep them cleared. Fraser could wait.

Stopping and treading water, DuValier signaled for a halt. “Pascali, keep an eye out for bad guys,” he said. The oxymask made it hard to talk clearly, but Corporal Pascali nodded and signaled her lance to disperse in a loose perimeter. “Braxton, your people concentrate on those wogs.” He pointed at the wall, where at least twenty nomads were using their suckerlined limbs to climb toward the parapet.

Braxton kept his head and shoulders out of the water by using powerful kicks, and raised his FEK. As he fired, DuValier turned away to study their surroundings. Were any of the wogs taking an interest in them yet?

From the wall, shouts and screams attested to the deadly effect of the legionnaires’ fire. They reminded DuValier of the cries he’d heard that day on Fenris.

It took all of his will to shut the sounds out of his mind.

“Sir!” That was Vaslov Dubcek, touching his arm and pointing to the left. “Over there!”

He followed the gesture and saw the bobbing figure thirty meters away. A wog, apparently unmoving.

Trent had mentioned a wounded or dead scout. DuValier started toward the figure, knowing that the C3 technician was following close behind.

He reached the body and rolled it over. Blood was oozing sluggishly from two stab wounds in the native’s chest, but the gills were moving slowly and there was a pulse in the big artery on the front of the throat. DuValier wasn’t familiar with wog first aid, and thought it would be wisest not to meddle with what he didn’t know. He turned the wounded scout over again to get a better water flow past the gills, then started back toward the Sandcastle.

Something thrashed in the water nearby. He released his burden and turned in time to see a nomad driving a pike through Dubcek’s chest. The legionnaire struggled at the end of the lance like a fish on the end of a spear, then went limp.

With a curse DuValier started to fumble for his FEK, then gave it up and drew his PLF rocket pistol instead. The wog wrenched the spear out of the dead C3 tech’s body with a deep-throated shout and raised himself halfway out of the water, brandishing the weapon.

DuValier squeezed off a round and threw himself sideways. The spear missed him by inches. He surfaced again, ready to fire, but the wog was drifting now, as helpless as the injured scout.

He dived, squinting through the dark water, searching for fresh signs of pursuit. Something that he felt more than heard made him shake his head. Sounds, but at the very lowest limit of a human’s range of hearing. They were nothing like wog speech, but there was something … intelligent about that noise. Organized.

He surfaced again beside the floating scout and wiped uselessly at his stinging eyes. Corporal Pascali was swimming toward him, another legionnaire close behind. “They’re retreating, sir,” she said. “And Captain Fraser’s sent some hardsuited troops to take over.”

He got a grip on the wounded native and nodded. “Get Dubcek’s body,” he said tiredly.

But although he was suddenly feeling exhausted from the short but intense clash, Antoine DuValier’s mind was still racing, trying to piece together the whirling fragments of a half-formed idea.

O O O

“All right, Gunny, what’s next?” Fraser asked wearily. The attack had ended less than six hours before, but routine had reasserted itself inside the Sandcastle. The administrative side of running a military unit had never appealed to him, but even in the face of the native threat the work had to go on.

“Four men for company punishment,” Gunnery Sergeant Trent said stiffly. “Unfit by reason of intoxication.”

Fraser glanced at the four prisoners lined up just outside the office door. They were flanked by a pair of guards from Alpha Company. Antoine DuValier, looking none the worse for his swim the night before, was with them as well, presumably as the officer filing the charges.

Softly, to Trent, Fraser asked, “What’s the story, Gunny?”

“They’re from Wijngaarde’s platoon, skipper,” Trent replied in the same quiet tones. “Apparently Legionnaire White, there, had a still set up down in the maintenance tunnels by the pumping station. They decided to celebrate Legionnaires’ Day with something stronger than wine, and were passed out cold when the fun and games started last night.”

Fraser frowned. There was no rule to prevent legionnaires from drinking, even on duty, but stiff penalties were imposed on men who rendered themselves unfit. Still, in their current situation, he was reluctant to put these four in cells. “Any way we can look the other way on this one, Gunny?” he asked.

The sergeant shook his head. “Lieutenant DuValier found them sleeping it off behind the docking cradle after the battle. He threatened them with cells in front of witnesses.”

“Well, let’s get to it, then,” Fraser said, rubbing the bridge of his nose and wishing he could do something easy, like face another native raid.

The prisoners were brought in, and he went through the formalities of hearing their stories, and DuValier’s. When the testimony was over he nodded gravely. “Sounds straightforward enough. One week in cells.” Fraser paused. “White, your hobby has endangered the security of this command, so I’m ordering your still dismantled. You’ll have an extra week in cells to think about, too.”

The legionnaire glared at him. “Nothin’ in regs about runnin’ a still, sir.”

“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care if you were brewing homemade rat poison to drink,” Fraser told him bluntly. “But I need men who can see straight and put up a fight. Gunny, see to the punishment.” He waved a hand in dismissal.

They started to leave. “A moment, Mr. DuValier,” he said to the Exec.

“Sir?” As usual, the Frenchman managed to turn the polite formality into thinly concealed contempt.

Trent closed the door, leaving the two officers alone. “What the hell were you thinking of, Lieutenant?” Fraser asked.

“I don’t understand, sir,” DuValier said.

“The last thing we need is to throw those men into cells. They might not do us much good when they’re drunk, but they don’t do us any good when they’re locked up, damn it!”

“Then why didn’t you let them off?” DuValier challenged. “It’s your decision.”

“Because, Mr. DuValier, I am obligated to back up my officers even when they pull a damn-fool stunt. You threatened them publicly with punishment, and I had to hand out that punishment or undermine your authority.”

“I’m not asking for your support, sir,” DuValier said harshly.

Anger welled up inside Fraser. “I’ve had it with this goddamned posturing, Lieutenant! If you can’t start playing on the team, at least quit pulling the other way!”

“At least I don’t let my men down,” DuValier shot back, flushing. “Not like you did on Fenris!”

Fraser stood up slowly, fighting for control. “What happened on Fenris, and my part in it, doesn’t make a strakking bit of difference here, Lieutenant. Do what you want to after we’ve got the nomads under control, but until then you can forget about Fenris. It’s ancient history, and by God you’ll keep it that way! Do you get me, Lieutenant?”

The Exec drew himself up stiffly. “I’ll never forget Fenris, Captain,” he said slowly. “Never. I lost too many friends there … and too much of myself.” He paused. “Am I dismissed?”

Fraser sank back in his chair. He hadn’t realized DuValier had been part of the fighting on Fenris. No wonder he’d been so hostile.

But there still wasn’t room for a personal vendetta now. “I meant what I said, Lieutenant,” he told DuValier quietly. “About the past … and about the present. Every man in this compound is needed if we’re going to get off this planet alive.” When the other man made no response, Fraser added a curt “Dismissed.”

DuValier left the office. A moment later, Gunny Trent returned. “Rough, skipper?”

“Yeah,” Fraser thought about Fenris. “Yeah, rough. What else do you have for me, Gunny?”

“Warrant Officer Kelly has some ideas she wants you to look over, skipper,” Trent said. “She says she has a way to keep those wog bastards off the walls.”

“Send her in,” Fraser said, forcing a smile. “If she can do that, I’ll put her in charge of this circus and go fishing.”

O O O

DuValier slammed the door to the Headquarters building behind him and stalked across the compound, seething inside. For once he didn’t care how much of his anger showed through.

Damn Fraser! The man was so smug, so superior, with his fatherly pretensions and his sham concern over the men. Fraser hadn’t cared about the soldiers on Fenris!

He knew, now, that his first judgment had been right, that the captain really was to blame for everything. What had Fraser done last night during the attack? Nothing. But the man would probably grab the credit when the time came.

DuValier had planned to broach his ideas on the nomad coordination techniques this morning, but it was clearly useless to try now. He’d work out the rest of the puzzle on his own, then present Fraser with the finished product later, when the time was right.

Sergeant Mohammed Qazi, Third Platoon’s senior NCO and the noncom in charge of Supply, hurried across the compound to intercept him. “Lieutenant?” he began, saluting.

“What is it, Qazi?” DuValier responded curtly.

The sergeant seemed to recoil from him. “Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, but you wanted to know when the sonar installation was complete. We’ve got all the transducers in place. I put Legionnaire Sinora in charge of the electronics end of things, since Dubcek bought it.” Sinora was Third Platoon’s C3 specialist.

DuValier nodded. “Good job,” he said. “How soon until it’s online?”

“Sinora said four hours. Less, if he can get some help from the Seafarms technical people.”

“You light a fire under the civilians, Qazi,” DuValier ordered. “I’ve got another project I need to get on.”

Qazi looked unhappy. “Sir … C-cubed just called. I’ve got a meeting with Captain Fraser and Miss Winters—er, Miss Kelly, that is. Supply problems.”

“Then tell Bartlow to take care of it!” he flared. “Just get that sonar system up and running!”

DuValier turned away, conscious of Qazi’s eyes following him as he headed for the Sandcastle’s hospital section.

O O O

“The main problem will be jury-rigging the power system. If we can nail that down, I think we’ll be home-free.”

Fraser nodded as Kelly finished, looking down at the terminal screen on his desk. He couldn’t find anything wrong with the technical side of her scheme. If they could make this work …

“Any opinions, Gunny?” he asked.

Trent spoke up from the other side of the office. “It won’t be perfect, skipper. Magrep’s been tried for antipersonnel work before, and there are always problems with it. But anything that makes it hard for those bloody wogs to get at us is a good idea.”

“That’s the way I see it, too,” Fraser said. “Thanks, Kelly. That was good work.”

She smiled. “Actually, the idea came from one of my sappers—MacAllister.”

“Is he back on duty already?”

Kelly nodded. “Yesterday. He says he remembered something similar to this being used during the campaign on Thoth. A mobile column got pinned down by lokes in an open valley, and the CO dismantled the magrep generators and set them up as a perimeter defense.” She glanced at Trent. “As you said, Sergeant, some of them got through. But it kept them alive until a relief column reached them.”

The intercom on Fraser’s desk buzzed. “Sergeant Qazi, sir.” Garcia’s voice came over the line.

“Send him in,” Fraser said.

The dark, hawk-nosed sergeant always managed to make him feel uneasy. Qazi was the kind of NCO who regarded officers as a necessary evil at best, and didn’t hesitate to let his feelings be known. Fraser waved him to a seat and started outlining Kelly’s scheme. The noncom listened with a solemn expression to the plans for immobilizing the magrep vehicles in the compound and mounting their magnetic-field generators on the outer wall to hamper climbers.

“Have you worked out the spacing you’ll need between modules to make this work?” he asked as Fraser finished.

Kelly answered for him. “It’s on the computer,” she said.

Qazi moved to a terminal and studied the specs. “Legion generators won’t be enough,” he said at last. “I don’t have enough spares, and even ripping the guts out of all our MSVs won’t give us enough.”

“There’s always the Seafarms vehicles,” Trent commented. “And whatever spares they have in stock.”

“Barnett will scream,” Kelly said.

“Let him,” Fraser told them. “Sergeant, get together a work party to dismount those modules. Kelly, your sappers can mount them. If you need help from anyone, Legion or civilians, they’re yours. Do it.”

As they left, Fraser turned back to study the schematics again. He told himself this was the kind of teamwork they needed. Not the kind of infighting DuValier was fostering.

If they could just stand together, they might pull through.…

O O O

The wounded scout was awake, but obviously in pain. As DuValier leaned forward trying to catch his low, labored voice, he found time to admire the work Dr. Ramirez had done to patch the native up. The doctor had chipped a study on native medicine when they brought Oomour in, and it looked like regen therapy would have the nomad up and around in a day or two.

Considering how bad those wounds had been, that was getting close to a miracle, even given Commonwealth medical technology.

“The Voice of the Clan …” the nomad said softly. “The Voice of the Clan you heard … but …”

His voice faded away and DuValier leaned forward, alarmed. “But what? Come on, Oomour, explain it to me! Come on!”

An eyestalk swiveled to fix on him. “Not … the same. Not a Clan Voice.…”

Another half hour of patient questioning left the wog exhausted. Ramirez finally administered a sedative and chased DuValier out of the ward, but not before he had the answers he’d been looking for.

He wished he had someone else he could use as a sounding board. Dubcek would have been perfect for that, but now he was dead. It left the Exec feeling very much alone among the legionnaires. They were Fraser’s people, and Hawley’s, not his own.

The best he could do was locate Warrant Officer Koenig. The Native Affairs specialist was going over the reports from the Seafarms Cyclops. He seemed happy to turn off his computer terminal and listen.

At length Koenig nodded. “You may be on to something here, Lieutenant,” he said. “The sophonts do indeed have a method of broadcasting what you might call ‘territorial signals.’ It is a very low frequency sound, quite independent of normal speech. The actual information content it could convey would be quite small, however.”

“But with considerable range, correct?” DuValier asked.

“Yes,” Koenig confirmed. “Possibly several hundred kilometers. Before Mankind developed engine-propelled ships on Terra, whales could communicate across oceanic distances using much the same method. Very likely it was the disruption caused by these new sounds which contributed to the decline and extinction of the whale population.”

“So the wogs send out signals that identify them by Clan.”

“Yes,” the specialist said again. “Members of the clan can track the main body as they forage, and other clans are warned away from waters a given clan is exploiting.” He checked a computer reference. “I believe they also use these same sounds to herd the presentient juveniles.”

DuValier nodded. “Now, the big question. You say the information content is low. Could these messages be made to transmit enough information to coordinate a battle? Last night I heard something that might have been one of these signals, but one of our wog scouts says that what he heard wasn’t anything like a recognized Clan Voice. Just after I heard it, the natives retreated.”

“The missing link in how they’re coordinating their activities, then. Yes.” Koenig looked thoughtful. “If they’d prearranged it …”

“What?”

“A code. As long as they have a prearranged set of signals, they could handle a variety of evolutions with a relatively limited ‘alphabet.’ The British Navy in the Age of Sail could send dozens of specific orders, even before they developed a true alpha-numeric signaling system. It was rigid, but an intelligent officer could use it quite ingeniously when the need arose.”

“We’re dealing with a very intelligent officer in this Choor!,” DuValier said. “But now that we know how he’s giving his subordinates their orders.…”

Koenig grinned. “We can make his life miserable.”

“Exactly,” DuValier said.

He wondered what Fraser’s reaction would be when he discovered it was his despised Exec who had ended the native threat.

O O O

Low tide.

It left the open ground beyond the Sandcastle’s dun-colored walls uncovered, a muddy plain dotted with tidal pools and the flotsam and jetsam left behind by the receding waters. From the parapet above the gatehouse, Colin Fraser surveyed the flat terrain through the image-intensifier of his battle helmet.

The handful of natives were plainly nomads, adorned only by harnesses and tattoos and carrying a variety of weapons. They walked toward the base with no sign of fear, secure under the blue-green banner that fluttered in the wind above them.

His chipped knowledge of nomad customs told Fraser that they were envoys. The Clans regarded land as neutral ground, ideal for holding parleys between rival parties—another reason for their hostility toward their land-dwelling cousins, no doubt, who claimed to own the tracts of land that had been ownerless in nomad eyes for aeons.

A red banner would have signaled an intent to negotiate a blood-feud; yellow would have summoned all comers to trade. Blue-green, the color of the oceans, was the color of a truce between warring clans.

Beside him Trent had his FEK out. “It could still be a trick, skipper,” he said quietly. “Remember, they lump us with the city people, and I’ve heard of cases where nomads broke a parley to attack land-dwellers. They don’t regard them as real people.”

“Just the kind of trick friend Choor! would try, too,” Fraser said. “He may figure that our leadership is as vulnerable as his.”

“Not if his intel is as good as it’s been so far. But anything that would upset morale would be a good move. After last night …”

“He needs a victory now,” Fraser finished. “By whatever means he can get it. All right, Gunny, we’ll talk to them from here.”

They waited for the natives to advance to within earshot. “Clansmen!” Fraser said at last, through an amplifier mike hooked up to Legionnaire Garcia’s C3 pack. “You seek a parley? State your mission.”

Nomads exchanged looks as if taken aback by having to talk from a distance. Then one of them responded.

“In the name of the Clans United,” he began, proceeding through a litany of eighteen individual nomad tribes before reaching the heart of the message. “In the name of these, who are the voice of the Free Swimmers, the Terrans who have intruded into our world are called upon to surrender themselves or face death. We are many times your numbers, Terrans, and we swim free while you crouch within your stone reef. We pledge that you shall be allowed to leave our world in peace should you surrender, but should you choose to resist further the Clans United shall not rest until the last of your people has been killed.”

Fraser switched off the amplifier. “They learn fast,” he commented. “But I doubt that whoever’s been feeding them this stuff is really serious about letting us go.”

“Yeah,” Trent agreed. “This isn’t quite the same thing as taking in a recalcitrant tribe and turning it into part of the organization.”

He nodded to Garcia and spoke into the mike again. “No surrender,” he said shortly. “You’ll have to come in here and dig us out.”

He turned away from the parapet. There would be no turning back from here.