Jim Baen's Universe

Science Fiction Stories

The Darkness

Written by David Drake

Illustrated by Rob Dumuhosky

"Hi, Lieutenant," someone said as he walked into Ruthven's room. "Good to see you up and around. I gotta do a few tests with you back in the bed, though."

On the electronic window, a brisk wind was scudding snow over drifts and damaged armored vehicles. Ruthven turned from it; a jab of pain blasted the world into white, buzzing fragments. It centered on his left hip, but for a few heartbeats it involved every nerve in his body.

"Your leg's still catching you?" said Drayer. He was the senior medic on this ward. "Well, it'll do that for a while, sir. But they did a great job putting you back together. It's just pain, you know? There's nothing wrong really."

Pain like this isn't nothing, thought Ruthven. If he hadn't been nauseous he might've tried to put Drayer's head through the wall; but he had no strength and anyway, there was no room for anger just now in the blurred gray confines of his mind.

He eased his weight back onto his left leg; it reacted normally, though the muscles trembled slightly. The agony of a few moments past was gone as thoroughly as if it'd happened when he was an infant, twenty-odd years earlier.

"Anyway, come lie down," Drayer said. "This won't take but a—"

Drayer noticed the window image for the first time. "Blood and Martyrs, sir!" he said. What d'ye want to look at that for? You can set these panels to show you anyplace, you know? I got the beaches on Sooner's World up on all my walls. Let me tell you, walking to my quarters across that muck is plenty view of it for me!"

Ruthven glanced back at the window, catching himself in mid-motion; his hip ignored him, the way a hip ought to do. The snow was dirty, and what appeared to be patches of mud were probably lubricating oil. The Slammers' hospital here on Pontefract shared a compound with the repair yard, a choice that probably reflected somebody's sense of humor.

"That's all right," Ruthven said, walking to the bed; monitoring devices were embedded in the frame. "I chose it deliberately."

He grinned faintly as he settled onto the mattress. The juxtaposition of wrecked personnel and wrecked equipment reflected his sense of humor too, it seemed.

Drayer knelt to fit his recorder into the footboard. "Well, if that's what you want," he said. "Me, I was hoping we'd be leaving as soon as the Colonel got transport lined up. The government found the money for another three months, though."

Drayer looked up; a sharp-featured little man, efficient and willing to grab a bedpan when the ward was short-handed. But by the Lord and Martyrs, his talent for saying exactly the wrong thing amounted to sheer genius.

"Had you heard that, sir?" Drayer said, obviously hopeful that he'd given an officer the inside dope on something. "Though I swear, I don't see where they found it. You wouldn't think this pit could raise the money to hire the Regiment for nine months."

"They're probably mortgaging the amber concession for the next twenty years," Ruthven said. He braced himself to move again.

The fat of beasts in Pontefract's ancient seas had fossilized into translucent masses which fluoresced in a thousand beautiful pastels. Ruthven didn't know why it was called amber.

"Twenty years?" Drayer sneered. "The Royalists won't last twenty days after we ship out!"

"It'll still be worth some banker's gamble at enough of a discount," Ruthven said. "And the Five Worlds may run out of money to supply the Lord's Army, after all."

He lifted his legs onto the mattress, waiting for the pain; it didn't come. It wouldn't come, he supposed, until he stopped thinking about it every time he moved . . . and then it'd grin at him as it sank its fangs in.

"Well, I don't know squat about bankers, that's the truth," Drayer said with a chuckle. "I just know I won't be sorry to leave this pit. Though—"

He bent to remove the recorder.

"—I guess they're all pits, right sir? If they was paradise, they wouldn't need the Slammers, would they?"

"I suppose some contract worlds are better than others," Ruthven said, looking at the repair yard. Base Hammer here in the lowlands seemed to get more snow than Platoon E/1 had in the hills. He'd been in for hospital three weeks, though; the weather might've changed in that length of time. "I've only been with the Regiment two years, so I'm not the one to say."

Drayer's brow furrowed as he concentrated on the bed's holographic readout. He looked up beaming and said, "Say, Lieutenant, you're so close to a hundred percent it don't signify. You oughta be up and dancing, not just looking out the window!"

"I'll put learning to dance on my list," Ruthven said, managing a smile with effort. "Right now I think I'll get some more sleep, though."

"Sure, you do that, sir," said Drayer, never quick at taking a hint. "Doc Parvati'll be in this afternoon to certify you, I'll bet. Tonight or tomorrow, just as sure as Pontefract's a pit."

He slid his recorder into its belt sheath and looked around the room once more. "Well, I got three more to check, Lieutenant, so I'll be pushing on. None of them doing as well as you, I'll tell you. Anything more I can—"

The medic's eyes lighted on the gold-bordered file folder leaning against the water pitcher on Ruthven's side table. The recruiter'd been by this morning, before Drayer came on duty.

"Blood and Martyrs, sir!" he said. "I saw Mahone in the lobby but I didn't know she'd come to see you. So you're transferring back to the Frisian Defense Forces, is that it?"

"Not exactly 'back,'" Ruthven said. He gave up the pretense of closing his eyes. "I joined the Slammers straight out of the Academy."

Sometimes he thought about ordering Drayer to get his butt out of the room, but Ruthven'd had enough conflict when he was in the field. Right now he just wanted to sleep, and he wouldn't do that if he let himself get worked up.

"Well, I be curst!" the medic said. "You're one lucky dog, sir. Here I'm going on about wanting to leave this place and you're on your way back to good booze and women you don't got to pay! Congratulations!"

"Thank you, Technician," Ruthven said. "But now I need sleep more than liquor or women or anything else. All right?"

"You bet, sir!" said Drayer said as he hustled out the door at last. "Say, wait till I tell Nichols in Supply about this!"

Ruthven closed his eyes again. Instead of going to sleep, though, his mind drifted back to the hills last month when E/1 arrived at Fire Support Base Courage.

****

"El-Tee?" said Sergeant Hassel, E/1's platoon sergeant but doubling as leader of First Squad from lack of noncoms. "We got something up here you maybe want to take a look at before we go belting on int' the firebase, over. "

"Platoon, hold in place," Ruthven ordered from the command car, shrinking the map layout on his display to expand the visual feed from Hassel some 500 meters ahead. The platoon went to ground, troopers rolling off their skimmers and scanning the windblown scrub through their weapons' sights.

Melisant, driving the high-sided command car today, nosed them against the bank to the right of the road and unlocked the tribarrel on the roof of the rear compartment. She used the gunnery screen at her station instead of climbing out of her hatch and taking the gun's spade grips in her hands. The screen provided better all-round visibility as well as being safer for the gunner, but many of the ex-farmers in the Regiment felt acutely uncomfortable if they had to hunch down in a box when somebody might start shooting at them.

Ruthven expanded the image by four, then thirty-two times, letting the computer boost brightness and contrast. The command car's electronics gave him clearer vision than Hassel's own, though the sergeant can't have been in any doubt about what he was seeing. It was a pretty standard offering by the Lord's Army, after all.

"Right," Ruthven said aloud. "Unit, there's three Royalists crucified upside down by the road. We'll go uphill of them. Nobody comes within a hundred meters of the bodies in case they're booby-trapped, got it? Six out."

As he spoke, his finger traced a virtual course on the display; the electronics transmitted the image to the visors of his troopers. They were veterans and didn't need their hands held—but it was the platoon leader's job, and Ruthven took his job seriously.

The Lord knew there were enough ways to get handed your head even if you stayed as careful as a diamond cutter. The Lord knew.

Instead of answering verbally, the squad leaders' icons on Ruthven's display flashed green. Seven troopers of Sergeant Rennie's Third Squad—the other two escorted the gun jeep covering the rear—were already on the high ground, guiding their skimmers through trees which'd wrapped their limbs about their boles at the onset of winter. The thin soil kept the trees apart, and the undergrowth was already gray and brittle; Heavy Weapons' jeeps, two with tribarrels and the third with a mortar, wouldn't have a problem either. The command car, though—

Well, it didn't matter that a command car's high center of gravity and poor power-to-weight ratio made it a bad choice for breaking trail in wooded hills. This wasn't a choice, it was a military necessity unless Ruthven wanted to take the chance that the bodies weren't bait. His two years' experience in the field wasn't much for the Slammers, but it'd been plenty to teach him to avoid unnecessary risks.

The victims had been tied to the crosses with their own intestines, but that was just the usual fun and games for the Lord's Army. Ruthven grinned. If he'd had a better opinion of the Royalists, he might've been able to convince himself the Regiment was Doing Good on Pontefract. Fortunately, Colonel Hammer didn't require his platoon leaders to maintain feelings of moral superiority over their enemies.

His eyes on the dots of his troopers slanting across the terrain display, Ruthven keyed his microphone and said, "Courage Command, this is Echo One-six. Come in Courage Command, over."

The combat car's display showed that the transmitter in Colonel Carrera's headquarters was one of half a dozen in Firebase Courage which were live, but nobody replied. Ruthven grimaced. He wasn't comfortable communicating with the Royalists to begin with, since any message which the Royalists could hear, the Lord's Army could overhear. It added insult to injury that the fools weren't responding.

The car bucked as the forward skirts dug into an outcrop with a skreel! of steel on stone. Ruthven expected they'd have to back and fill, but Melisant kicked her nacelles out and lifted them over the obstacle. She was driving primarily because her skimmer—now strapped to the side of the car in hopes of being able to repair it at the Royalist base—was wonky, but she was probably as good at the job as anybody in the platoon.

"Courage Command, this is Echo One-six," Ruthven repeated, keeping his voice calm but wondering if showing his irritation would help get the Royalists' attention. "Respond ASAP to arrange linkup, if you please. Over."

The car shifted back to level from its strongly nose-up attitude, though it continued to rock side to side. Ruthven had a real-time panorama at the top of his display, but he didn't bother checking it. His responsibility was the whole platoon, not the problems of weaving the car through woodland.

"Echo One-six, my colonel say, 'Who are you?'" replied a voice from the firebase. "We must know who you are, over!"

Ruthven sighed. It could've been worse. Of course, it might still get worse.

"Unit, hold in place till I sort this," he said aloud. Rennie's squad, now in the lead, must be nearly in sight of the firebase by now. "Break. Courage Command, this is Echo One-six. We're the unit sent to reinforce you. Please confirm that your troops are expecting us and won't open fire."

He hesitated three long heartbeats while deciding whether to say what was going through his mind, then said it: "Courage, we're the Slammers. If we're shot at, we'll shoot back. With everything we've got. Over."

Third Squad was in sight of the Royalists: the feed from Rennie's skimmer showed the firebase as a scar of felled trees on the hill 700 meters from him. Ruthven frowned; he was looking down into the firebase. The ridge by which E/1 had approached was a good fifty meters higher than the knoll where the Royalists had sited their guns.

"You must not shoot!" squealed a new voice from the Royalist firebase; a senior officer had apparently taken over from the radioman. "We will not shoot! You must come in and help us at once!"

Ruthven grinned faintly. "Courage, I'll give you three minutes to make sure all your bunkers get the word," he said. "We don't want any mistakes. Echo One-six out."

"Hey El-Tee?" said Sergeant Wegelin on the command push; he was crewing the tribarrel at the end of the column. "What d'ye mean, come in shooting with everything we got? We're not exactly a tank company, you know, over."

"They don't know that, Wegs," Ruthven said, smiling more broadly as he examined the real-time visuals. "And anyway, I don't think we'd need panzers to put paid to this lot, over."

Fire Support Base Courage housed four 120-mm howitzers with an infantry battalion for protection. Treetrunks had been bulldozed into a wall around the camp, but they wouldn't stop light cannon shells as effectively as an earthen berm. The Slammers' powerguns would turn the wood into a huge bonfire.

"Why in hell did they set up with this ridge above them, d'ye suppose?" asked Hassel. Though the platoon sergeant had his own line of sight to the firebase, the display indicated he was using Wegelin's higher vantage point. "We could put the guns out of action with four shots, over."

"Because I never met nobody wearing a uniform here who knows how to pour piss outa a boot, Top," said Wegelin. "Over."

"The ridge's too narrow for a battalion and the guns," said Ruthven. He was using text crawls to monitor the panicked orders flying across the firebase, but he didn't see any reason to wait in respectful silence for the Royalists to get their act in order. "They should've left a detachment—"

"Echo One-six, you must come in now," Lieutenant-Colonel Carrera said sharply. "Quickly, before the Dogs take advantage! Quick! Quick!"

"Break," said Ruthven, closing his conversation with his squad leaders. "Rennie, take your squad in. Wegelin, stay on overwatch. I'll follow Rennie, then Sellars, Wegelin, and you bring up the rear, Hassel. Six Out."

Again green blips signaled Received and Understood. Sergeant Rennie knelt on his skimmer to lead the way down and up the wooded saddle to the firebase. His troopers were lying flat with their control sticks folded down. That wasn't a good way to drive, but it made them very difficult targets in case somebody in the garrison hadn't gotten the word after all.

Rennie wasn't the brightest squad leader in the Regiment, but he was reflexively brave and never hesitated to take a personal risk to spare his troopers. They'd have followed him to Hell.

Melisant was sending power to the fans before Ruthven'd finished giving his orders, but the command car lifted awkwardly and only slowly started to wallow forward. The grace with which the troopers flitted around him made Ruthven feel like a hog surrounded by flies, but the skimmers'd run out of juice in a matter of hours without the car's fusion bottle to recharge them. He knew he was doing his proper job here inside the vehicle, though he didn't feel like he was.

The gun jeep that'd been reinforcing the lead squad didn't follow Rennie's troopers. The driver/assistant gunner waved as the combat car swept past; the jeep was hunkered down in a notch on the reverse slope that gave it a line of fire to the four howitzers and most of the interior of the firebase.

Sergeant Wegelin'd probably ordered the crew to keep under cover till he came up with the other gun and mortar. That wasn't precisely disobeying Ruthven's instructions, but it came bloody close; and Wegelin was probably right in his caution, so the El-Tee would keep his mouth shut. That was a lot of what a junior lieutenant did when he had good noncoms. . . .

The infantry moved toward the firebase through the stumps and brush in a skirmish line, but Melisant swung the car onto the road as soon as she reached the swale connecting the knolls. The track'd been cut with a bulldozer rather than properly graded, but the car's air cushion smoothed the ride nicely. The deep ruts from wheeled vehicles were frozen now and had snow on their southern edges.

Royalists cheered from the top of the wall. The soldiers were male but there were scores of women and children in the compound as well, some of them waving garments.

Ruthven grimaced, thinking of what'd happen if the Lord's Army overran the place. His job was to prevent that, but if the rebels were in the strength Intelligence thought they were—well, one platoon, even a bloody good platoon like E/1, wasn't going to be able to do the job without help that the Royalists might not be able to provide.

The firebase entrance was a simple gap in the wall, but bulldozers had scraped a pile of trunks and dirt as a screen ten meters in front of it. Semi-trailers bringing in supplies would have a hard time with the angle, but Melisant should be able to guide the combat car through without trouble.

There were three strands of barbed wire in front of the wall. That gave negligible protection against assault, but maybe it'd hearten the defenders: placebo effects were real in more areas than medicine.

Ruthven grinned. It wasn't much of a joke, but in a situation like this you took any chance for a laugh that you got.

Rennie parked his skimmer beside the entrance and hopped up the front of the wall like a baboon with a 2-cm gun; he stood facing inward. His troopers split to either side, four of them joining him on the main wall while the other two mounted the screen and looked back to cover the rest of the column.

"Melisant, ease off a bit," Ruthven said over the intercom as he opened the roof hatch. "We don't want to spook our allies, over."

"You mean they'll mess their pants, El-Tee?" Melisant said. "Yeah, we don't want that. Out."

The fan note didn't change, but the driver let gravity slow the heavy vehicle as they started up the slope toward the entrance. Ruthven thumbed the lift button and a hydraulic jack raised his seat until his head and shoulders were above the hatch coaming. This way the Royalists could see him instead of watching forty tonnes of steel and iridium growl toward them impassively.

Ruthven tried to keep his face impassive as he eyed the barrier. It was a tangle of protruding roots and branches, no harder to climb than a ladder. Defenders firing over the top from the other side would have very little advantage over an attacking force. The common soldiers carried locally made automatic rifles, but the three blockhouses spaced around the wall mounted pulsed lasers; each weapon had its own fusion bottle.

The Lord's Army wasn't any better equipped, but the Prophet Isaiah certainly did a better job of building enthusiasm in his followers than King Jorge II did. Rumor had it that Jorge and his three mistresses had left Pontefract for a safer planet several months ago . . . and this time rumor was dead right. Ruthven'd heard that from a buddy on Colonel Hammer's staff.

The command car eased through the S-bend at the base entrance. Melisant was squaring the corners, apparently to impress the locals. Ruthven looked down at them, trying to keep a friendly smile. They were impressed, all right, waving and cheering so loudly that sometimes he could hear them over the car's howling fans.

Good Lord they're young! he thought. It really was a war of children. Most of the Royalist soldiers were teenagers and so undernourished they looked barely pubescent, while the Lord's Army recruited ten year olds at gunpoint from outlying villages.

It'd go on for as long as King Jorge managed to pay the Slammers and the Five Worlds Consortium shipped arms to the Prophet. A whole generation was dying in childhood.

History was a required subject at the Academy; Ruthven had done well in it. The realities of field service had provided color for those textual accounts of revolts, rebellions, and popular movements, however. That color was blood red.

He'd expected a vehicular circuit inside the wall, but the interior of the compound was sprinkled randomly with shanties and lean-tos except for the road from the gate to a clearing in the center. The four howitzers were emplaced evenly around the open area, each in a low sandbagged ring, which again must've been built for its morale value.

"You want us up between the guns, El-Tee?" Melisant asked. "Looks like they dump the resupply there and the troops hoof it back to their billets, right? Over."

"Roger that," Ruthven said. "Break, Unit, we'll form in the central clearing while I figure out what to do next. Six out."

Blood and Martyrs! This's looking more and more like a ratfuck. Ruthven hadn't been thrilled by the assignment from the start, but until E/1 got to Firebase Courage he hadn't have guessed how bad things really were.

He'd expected the Royalist troops to be ill trained and poorly equipped—because all Royalist field units were: the defense budget never percolated far from the gaudily dressed officers in the capital, Zaragoza. He hadn't expected Fire Support Base Courage to be so ineptly constructed, though. It was a wonder that the Lord's Army hadn't rolled over the position long before.

The Headquarters complex was four aluminum trailers which'd been buried in the ground to the right of the gate. A tower in the middle of them carried satellite and short-wave antennas, making the identification obvious and coincidentally providing an aiming point to the Prophet's gunners. The Lord's Army had only small arms, but painting a big bull's-eye on your Tactical Operations Center still isn't a good plan.

An officer in a green dress uniform with gold crossbelts was coming up the steps from one of the trailers, steadying his bicorn hat. The three aides accompanying him were less gorgeously dressed; that, rather than the rank tabs on his epaulets, identified Lieutenant Colonel Carrera.

Ruthven dropped into the compartment again. As soon as Melisant brought the car to a halt, he swung the rear hatch down into a ramp and stepped out to meet the Royalist officers.

Carrera stopped where he was and braced to attention. A rabbity aide with frayed cuffs scurried to Ruthven and said, "Sir, you are the commander? My colonel asks, what is your rank?"

Ruthven frowned. Instead of answering, he walked over to Carrera and said, "Colonel? I'm Lieutenant Henry Ruthven, in command of Platoon E/1 of Hammer's Regiment. We've been sent to you as reinforcements."

"A lieutenant?" the Royalist officer said in amazement. "One platoon only? And where are the rest of your tanks? This one thing—"

He flicked his swagger stick toward the command car.

"—this is not enough, surely! We must have more tanks!"

What Major Pritchard, the Slammers Operations Officer, had actually said when he assigned Ruthven was, "to put some backbone into the garrison." It wouldn't have been polite or politic either one to have repeated the phrasing, but now Ruthven half-wished he had.

"We're infantry, Colonel," Ruthven said calmly, because it was his job—his duty—to be calm and polite. "We don't have any tanks at all, but I think you'll find we can handle things here. We've got sensors to give plenty of warning of enemy intentions. We've got our own powerguns, and we have direct communications to a battery of the Regiment's hogs."

"Oh, this is not right," Carrera said, turning and walking back toward his trailer. "My cousin promised me, promised me, tanks and there is only this tank."

"Sir?" said Ruthven. Sellars was bringing her squad in; the jeeps of Heavy Weapons followed closely. "Colonel! We need to make arrangements for the siting of my troops."

"Take care of him, Mendes," Carrera called over his shoulder. "I have been betrayed. It is out of my hands, now."

Carrera's aides had started to leave with him. A pudgy man in his forties, a captain if Ruthven had the collar insignia right, stopped and turned with a stricken look. The Royalists didn't wear name tags, but he was presumably Mendes.

"Right, Captain," Ruthven said with a breezy assertiveness that he figured was the best option. "I think under the circumstances we'll be best served by retaining my troops as a concentrated reserve here in the center of the firebase. We're highly mobile, you see. We'll place sensors around the perimeter to give us warning of attack as early as troops there could do."

That was true, but the real reason Ruthven'd decided to keep E/1 concentrated was so that his troopers could support one another. Self-preservation was starting to look like the primary goal for this operation. The Slammers'd been hired to fight and they would fight, but Hank Ruthven knew the Colonel hadn't given him troopers in order to get them killed for nothing.

All elements of E/1 were now within the compound. Hassel'd put the troopers with 2-cm shoulder weapons on the wall aiming northeast, toward the ridge they'd just come from. Both the tribarrels covered the high ground also.

The ten troopers with sub-machine guns faced in, keeping an eye on Ruthven and the babbling crowd of Royalists. They weren't threatening; just watchful. With their mirrored face-shields down they looked like Death's Little Helpers, though, and they could become that in an eye-blink if anybody gave them reason.

"We'll need the use of your digging equipment," Ruthven continued. "The bulldozer and whatever else you have; a backhoe, perhaps?"

"We have nothing," Mendes said.

Ruthven's face hardened; he gestured with his left hand toward the dug-in trailers. His right, resting on the receiver of his slung sub-machine gun, slipped down to the grip.

"They went back!" Mendes said. "They came, yes, but they went back! We have nothing here, only the guns; and no tractors to move them!"

Bloody hell, that was true! Ruthven'd assumed he wasn't getting signatures from heavy equipment during E/1's approach simply because nothing was running at the moment, but the shanties scattered within the compound would make it impossible for even a jeep to move through them.

"Right," said Ruthven. "Then I'll need a labor party from your men, Captain. We have a few power augers, but there's a great deal of work to do before nightfall. For all our sakes. However the first requirement is to garrison that knob."

He gestured toward the high ground. When Mendes didn't turn his head, Ruthven put his hand on the Royalist's shoulder and rotated him gently, then pointed again.

"It's not safe to give the enemy that vantage point," Ruthven said. To any real soldier, that'd be as obvious as saying, "Water is wet," but real soldiers were bloody thin on the ground on Pontefract.

And it seemed they all wore Slammers uniforms.

"Oh, we can't do that!" Mendes said. "That is too far away!"

"Together we can," Ruthven said. "I'll put a squad there, and you'll supply a platoon. We'll rotate the troops every day. Dug in and with fire support from here, they'll be an anvil that we can smash the rebels on if they try anything."

"Oh," said Mendes. "Oh. Oh."

He wasn't agreeing—or disagreeing, so far as Ruthven could tell. He sounded like a man gasping for breath.

"Right!" Ruthven said cheerfully, clapping the Royalist on the shoulder. "Now, let's get to your ops room and set up the assignments, shall we?"

He'd put Rennie's squad on the ridge the first night, though he might also take Sellars' up for the afternoon also to get the position cleared. He could only hope that the Royalists would work well under Slammers' direction; that happened often enough on this sort of planet.

"Top?" Ruthven said to Hassel over the command push as he walked Mendes toward the trailers. He'd cut the whole platoon in on the discussion through the intercom, though he was blocking incoming messages unless they were red-tagged. "Take charge here while I get things sorted with our allies."

He paused. Because Mendes could theoretically hear him—in fact the Royalist officer appeared to be in shock—Ruthven chose the next words carefully: "And Top? I know what you're thinking because I'm thinking the same thing. But this is going to work if there's any way in hell I can make it work. Six out."

****

"Good morning, Hank," a professionally cheerful voice said. "Oh! Were you napping? I didn't mean to wake you up."

"Just thinking, Lisa," Ruthven said, opening his eyes and smiling at Lisa Mahone, the Frisian recruiting officer. Apologetically he added, "I, ah . . . I haven't gotten around to the papers, yet."

He thought he saw Mahone's eyes harden, but she sat down on the side of his bed and patted his right leg in a display of apparent affection. She said, "Well, I've used the time to your advantage, Hank. I told you I hoped I'd be able to get Personnel to grant you a two-step promotion? They've agreed to it! I'm authorized to change the recruitment agreement right now."

She leaned forward to take the folder from the side table, her hip brushing Ruthven's thigh. "How does that sound, Captain Ruthven?"

"It's hard to express, Lisa," Ruthven said, forcing a smile to make the words sound positive. He slitted his eyes so that they'd appear closed. In truth he didn't know what he thought about the business; it seemed to be happening to somebody else. Maybe it was drugs still in his system, though Drayer'd sworn that they'd tapered his dosage down to zero thirty-six hours ago.

Ruthven watched silently as Mahone amended the recruitment agreement in a firm, clear hand. She was an attractive woman with dark, shoulder-length hair and a perfect complexion. Her pants suit was severely tailored, but the shirt beneath her pale green jacket was frilled and had a deep neckline.

The gold-bordered folder not only acted as a hard backing for Mahone's stylus, it recorded the handwritten changes and transmitted them to the hospital's data bank. There they became part of the Regimental files, to be downloaded or transmitted by any authorized personnel.

Mahone wasn't as young as Ruthven'd thought when she approached him three days earlier, though. Perhaps the drugs really had worn off.

"I have to admit that I didn't have to do much convincing," she said in the same bright voice as she appeared to read the document in front of her. "My superiors were just as impressed by your record as I am. Very few graduates in the top ten percent of their class join mercenary units straight out of the Academy."

"I wanted to be a soldier," Ruthven said. This time his wry smile was real, but it was directed at his naive former self. "I thought I ought to learn what being a soldier was really about. I wanted to see the elephant, if you know the term."

"Seeing the elephant," had been used by soldiers as a euphemism for battle from a very long time back. It might even be as old as "buying the farm," as a euphemism for death.

"And you certainly did," Mahone said. "Your combat experience is a big plus."

She met his eyes with every appearance of candor and said, "The Frisian Defense Forces haven't fought a serious war since the Melpomene Emergency fifteen years ago. You knew that: that's why you enlisted in Hammer's Regiment when you wanted to see action. I know it too, and most importantly, the General Staff in Burcana knows it. The Defense Forces are willing to pay very well for the experience that our troops haven't gotten directly."

Mahone smiled like a porcelain doll, smooth and perfect, and held the folder out to Ruthven. "You bought that experience dearly, Captain," she said. "Now's the time to cash in on your investment."

Ruthven winced. It was a tiny movement, but Mahone caught it.

"Hank?" she said, lowering the folder while keeping it still within reach. She stroked Ruthven's thigh again and said, "Is it your leg?"

"Yeah," Ruthven lied. "Look, Lisa—can you come back later? I want to, ah, stand up and walk around a bit, if that's all right. By myself."

"Of course, Hank," Mahone said, smiling sympathetically. "I'll leave these here and come by this evening. If you like you can just sign them and I'll pick them up without bothering you if you're asleep."

Mahone set the folder upright on the table, between the pitcher and water glass. Straightening she glanced, apparently by coincidence, at the electronic window.

"Thank the Lord you don't have to go back to that, right?" she said. She smiled and swept gracefully out of the room.

Ruthven continued to lie on the bed for nearly a minute after the latch clicked. Then he got up slowly and walked to the window. He'd been thinking of Sergeant Rennie. That, not his leg, had made him wince.

They'd met on Atchafalaya. It'd been Ruthven's first day in the field, and it was Trooper Rennie then. . . .

****

"Here you go, chief," said the driver of the jeep that'd brought Ruthven from E Company headquarters. "Last stop this run."

It was raining and well after local midnight. This sector was under blackout conditions; water running down the inside of Ruthven's face-shield blurred his light-enhanced vision and dripped on the tip of his nose. It was cold, colder than he'd dreamed it got on Atchafalaya, and he was more alone than he'd ever before felt in his life.

"Sir, you gotta get out," the driver said more forcefully. "I need t' get back to Captain Dolgosh."

Besides the jeep's idling fans, the only sound in the forest was rain dripping into the puddles beneath the trees. Air-plants hung in sheets from high branches, twisting and shimmering in the downpour. Ruthven couldn't see anything human in the landscape.

"Where do I . . . ?" he said.

Two figures came out of the blurred darkness. "Hold here, Adkins," one of them said. "I'll be going back with you. It won't be long."

"If you say so, El-Tee," the driver said. In bright contrast to his resigned agreement he added, "Hey, it's captain now, right? That was sure good news, sir. Nobody deserved it more!"

"Lieutenant Ruthven?" the newcomer continued brusquely, ignoring the congratulations. He was built like a fireplug and his voice rasped. "I'm Lyauty; you're taking E/1 over from me. I thought I'd stick around long enough to introduce you to your squad leaders."

"Ah, thank you very much, Captain," Ruthven said. He'd heard the man he was replacing'd been promoted to the command of Company K. That'd worried him because it meant Lyauty must be a good officer. How am I going to measure up?

The trooper who'd accompanied Lyauty was looking in the direction they'd come from, watching their backtrail. He had his right hand on the grip of his 2-cm weapon; the stubby iridium barrel was cradled in the crook of his left elbow. He hadn't spoken.

"This your gear?" Lyauty said, reaching into the back of the jeep before Ruthven could forestall him. I thought the trooper would carry the duffle bag. "Via, Lieutenant! Is this all yours? We're in forward positions here!"

"I, ah," Ruthven said. "Well, clean uniforms, mostly. And, ah, some food items. And the assigned equipment, of course."

The driver snickered. "He's got his own auger, sir," he said.

"Right," said Lyauty in sudden harshness. "And you let him bring it. Well, Adkins, for that you can haul his bag over to the car. I've got Sellars on commo watch. The two of you sort it out. Leave him a proper field kit and I'll take the rest back to Regiment with me to store."

"Sorry, sir," the driver muttered. "I shoulda said something."

"Come along, Ruthven," Lyauty said. "Sorry about the trail, but you'll get used to it. Say, this is Trooper Rennie. I've got him assigned as my runner. You can make your own choice, of course, but I'd recommend you spend a few days getting the feel of the platoon before you start making changes."

The trooper leading them into the forest turned his head; in greeting, Ruthven supposed, but the fellow didn't raise his face-shield. He was as featureless as a billiard ball.

Ruthven turned his head toward Lyauty behind him. "A power auger is assigned equipment, sir," he said in an undertone.

"Right," said the captain. "We've got three of them in the platoon. A bloody useful piece of kit, but not as useful as extra rations and ammo if things go wrong. The brass at Regiment can afford to count on resupply because it's not their ass swinging in the breeze if the truck doesn't make it forward. Here in the field we pretty much go by our own priorities."

The trail zigzagged steeply upward; Rennie in the lead was using his left hand to pull himself over the worst spots, holding his 2-cm weapon like a huge pistol. Ruthven's sub-machine gun was strapped firmly across his chest, leaving both hands free. Even so he stumbled repeatedly and once clanged flat on the wet rock.

"It's not much farther, Lieutenant," Lyauty said. "Another hundred meters up is all."

"I thought—" Ruthven said. He slipped and caught himself on all fours. As he started to get up, the toe of his left boot skidded back and slammed him down again. The sub-machine gun pounded against his body armor.

"I thought your headquarters would be the command vehicle," he said in a rush, trying to ignore the pain of his bruised ribs.

"We couldn't get the car to the top of this cone," Lyauty said. "I've been leaving it below with three troopers, rotating them every night when the rations come up."

"The jeeps couldn't climb above that last switchback," said Trooper Rennie. "We had to hump the tribarrels from there, and that's hell's own job."

There was a tearing hiss above. Ruthven jerked his head up. The foliage was sparse on this steep slope, so he was able to catch a glimpse of a green ball streaking across the sky from the west.

"Is that a rocket?" said Ruthven. Then, "That was a rocket!"

"It wasn't aimed at us, Lieutenant," Lyauty said wearily. "Anyway, our bunkers're on the reverse slope, though we've got fighting positions forward too if we need them."

"I just thought . . ." Ruthven said. "I thought we, ah . . . I thought that incoming artillery was destroyed in the air."

"They can't hit anything with bombardment rockets," Lyauty said. "Anyway, they can't hit us. To use the tribarrel in the command car for air defense, we'd have to shift it into a clearing. That'd make it a target."

"We're infantry, Lieutenant," Rennie said over his shoulder. "If you want to call attention to yourself, you ought to've put in for tanks."

Ruthven opened his mouth to dress the trooper down for insolence. He closed it again, having decided it was Lyauty's job properly since he hadn't formally handed over command of the platoon.

"We can hit hard when we need to, Lieutenant," Lyauty said. "But until then, yeah—keeping a low profile is a good plan."

"Who you got with you, Rennie?" a voice called from the darkness above them.

Ruthven looked up. He couldn't see anybody, just an outcrop over which a gnarled tree managed to grow. His torso beneath the clamshell body armor was sweating profusely, but his hands were numb from gripping wet rocks and branches.

"Six's come up, Hassel," Rennie said. "And we