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Sam saluted the guard at the gates of the fortress. Finally, she had made her way to the capitol. She waved the courier message before the guard’s face when he asked her business. “For the Marshall, Sargent; his eyes only.”
“What do you hear from out there?” the guard asked before waving her in.
“It’s crazy. Someone or something is creating havoc and destruction. No one knows how or why, but they have it in for the military; makes a soldier almost want to ditch the uniform. Whole battalions decimated right where they stand. But I’d better get this to the Marshall, or I won’t have to worry about getting killed by this creature or whatever it is, because he’ll have my hide if I don’t get it to him right away.”
The guard nodded and turned his gaze back to the busy street before him, already dismissing her as if she weren’t even there. This suited her purposes just fine. She wanted to be as invisible as possible here. She had something special planned for this group and wanted it to be a surprise. She liked surprises as long as they were on somebody else.
She chuckled to herself. She was worn out and needed sleep and time to plan. There were messenger barracks in the keep, and it would give her a chance to orient herself and give herself the best chance of success.
She handed the message to the Marshall. She had managed a simple bit of forgery to alter the message slightly. Basically, it said that they needed help at the farthest city away she could think of a name for. The message was a cry for help because the Mayor was dead, and people were dying and please to send help right away. It was signed by a citizen totally made up out of whole cloth by Sam and marked “Urgent”.
The Marshall scowled at the message without dismissing Sam. “Another one,” he said shaking his head. It was all Sam could do not to smile. She could well imagine the number of these types of messages he had received in the past several days. She had been very busy indeed.
“Well, there’ll be no reply. I’ll pass this on to the guys who make these kinds of decisions. Glad it’s not me. I imagine you’re tired and could use some feeding up.”
He handed her a voucher for food and lodging with the garrison in their “guest quarters” which basically meant a large room with a few score beds in it and a shared privy. She thanked him and left to make herself comfortable.
Sure enough, it was only a large barracks room. Most of the beds were unoccupied and there was a place at the end of the bed to insert the lodging half of her voucher to claim the cot as her own. Next to the bed was a footlocker. No one was there, so she made herself at home.
It was common for traveling soldiers pretty much anywhere else to provide their own locks, but these were seldom used in the Insenium. The penalty for stealing was death. The concept of a prison was foreign to them. People knew the rules. If they chose not to obey them, they didn’t belong in Inseni society. That meant removal, not free meals and housing. The executions were always public, but they were few, as these people were conditioned to not even think in that direction.
She stowed her belongings in the trunk, kicked off her boots and got as comfortable as she could, still in her uniform. It didn’t take long for her to go to sleep.
When she awoke later in the day, she realized she was famished. She rearranged her hair, put her boots back on and wandered out to the mess hall. She found it easily drawn by the aromas of cooking food. Although Inseni didn’t go out of their way to make fancy dishes, the food was always tasty enough and stuck to your ribs. Sam thought wryly that if she spent much more time on this wretched planet, it was going to ruin her girlish figure. Not that her Norgoth persona had much of a figure to be concerned about. Norgoth were mostly built tall and solid, no curves worth mentioning.
She sat down at a random table next to another female soldier. The woman didn’t even look up. She just continued to stare at her plate, shoveling the hearty stew into her mouth as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks. That suited Sam just fine. She plowed into her own meal in silence. The woman next to her finished and took her tray back to the area designed to collect them.
Sam finished and after putting her tray into the collection bin wandered out to have a look around.
The fortress had open areas around the main buildings, unlike the towering self-contained community on her home planet. Of course, this planet was in a stable orbit around a healthy sun, so they had plants and scenery worth looking at and didn’t have to restrain population due to limited resources as the Fleistians did.
Sam had never explored her planet much beyond going to the Groga encampment. She had heard there were mountains somewhere, but the mountains were as barren as the plains and Sam only knew about them from her instructors.
In the courtyards surrounding what passed for a palace here were garden plots and herb gardens, but no statuary or decorative plants. Every building was all edges and right angles and all the same color. The only thing that differentiated one building from another was the simple lettered signs which hung over each door.
Various military personnel, servants and those who appeared to be dignitaries moved purposefully about the grounds. Occasionally a few would stop to talk. Norgoths weren’t supposed to “gossip”. It was considered counter-productive, a sin in the opinion of the Overlord of the Grand Insenium.
But they were definitely passing the latest news about the depredations of the mysterious stranger among them, looking occasionally over their shoulders to see if anyone was looking.
“Someone told me the creature shot lasers from its eyes!”
“No, it used a bomb. Nothing else could have caused so much death at once.”
“I heard they are hunting the creature with master hunters from all over. They will bring its head back and post it on the fortress walls!”
“All I know is that I’m glad I retired from the military already. I don’t see how they are going to defeat the creature.”
Sam walked by trying to hide a grin. It was satisfying to see that even in the capitol she had sown fear and misinformation. She noted the appearance of one of the servants and stepping into a deserted space between buildings, assumed the persona changing the features slightly. She had discovered that a good disguise didn’t have to be a huge difference from the person you copied. Small differences, hair color, a difference in the length of a hem or adding freckles or a mole seemed to work just as well as radical changes.
She walked into one of the larger buildings as if she knew where she was going. The sign above the door said, “Necessaries”; the Norgoth version of the word hospitality. Sam found it amusing that this was also the British word for toilets.
She strode down the main hallway to a large room. Standing at a table laden with what appeared to be unfolded laundry was a hard-looking woman, her hair woven into a simple braid that she had wound around her head. She stopped folding the rough towel in her hands and put both hands on her hips.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, looking Sam up and down, obviously unimpressed.
“I was told you needed some help,” Sam said simply, meeting her eyes, but not projecting any kind of challenge.
“Hmmph. Well, it’s about time. You can start on the linens,” pointing to a pile at the end of the table.
It was obvious someone had already started folding, which was good. Sam supposed there was a limited number of ways to fold a sheet, but she wanted to be sure to not stand out by not knowing how to do such an apparently simple thing.
She began folding, allowing the woman to see her hard at work. The woman nodded and went back to folding towels.
“New here?” the woman asked, not looking up from the towel she was folding.
“Yes. I lived with my sister in Ankal until the ‘creature’ came through and killed all those soldiers. I didn’t stay around. I’d always wanted to visit the capitol, and my brother-in-law knew someone on the staff here and sent me with a recommendation. I hope I can stay. I would like to do something that is worthwhile, and this might be the best place to start.”
“My name is Jolla,” the woman said, stacking yet another towel on the large stack before her.
“Kinney,” Sam said.
“Well, help me get this laundry folded and put away, and I’ll see what else I can find to keep you busy. There’s never a shortage of work here. Once we have a few other chores done, I’ll take you on my delivery rounds. We deliver towels and bedding to the maids and body servants every day about this time. It lets them do their work before everyone returns to their rooms after supper.”
Sam nodded and kept folding. She would make herself invaluable here and move up from where she was until she reached her goal. This was a perfect position to gather the intel she needed to pull off her little plan.
After all, no one paid attention to a servant or guarded their tongue in their presence. “The help” were invisible to the powerful. She wasn’t afraid of a little work, and she knew from experience how to ingratiate herself to someone and make them think they had a valued employee or...a best friend.
Her lips pursed at that thought. Yes, she was very good at that. She hoped Jolla didn’t see her wipe a tear that ran down her cheek. She wiped it away and picked up another sheet to fold.
