Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry (41 page)

"Well," Julian replied thoughtfully as the skies opened up in a typical Mardukan deluge, "something could be trying to eat us."

Pahner had the sentries walking the perimeter and shining red flashlights on each individual. It was hoped that a combination of the movement and the light would drive off the vampire moths. Of course, there were also the swamp beasts to worry about, and it was always possible that movement and light would
attract
them, but there wasn't a great deal he could do about that.

All in all, it looked like being a very bad night for the Marines.

"No, Kostas," Roger said, shaking his head at the item Matsugae had produced. "You use it."

"I'm fine, Your Highness," the valet said with a tired smile. The normally dapper servant was covered in black slime. "Really. You shouldn't sleep in this muck, Sir. It's not
right
."

"Kostas," Roger said, adjusting his chest rope so that he could keep his rifle out of the muck but still get to it quickly, "this is an order. You will take that hammock and sling it somewhere and then climb into it. You will sleep the entire night in it. And you
will
get some goddamned rest. I'm going to be on the back on that damned pack beast again tomorrow, and you won't, so I can damned well spend a night sitting up. God knows I've seen enough 'white nights' carousing. One more won't kill me."

Matsugae touched Roger on the shoulder and turned away so that the prince wouldn't see the tears in his eyes. Without even realizing it, Roger had started to grow up. Finally.

"Now
that
was something I never thought I'd see," Kosutic said quietly.

The sergeant major had managed to rig a line so that she was out of the water, dangling in her combat harness. She didn't know how long she could manage it, but for the time being at least she was off her legs. If she did sleep, she figured she was going to look like something from a bad horror holovid: a dead body dangling on a meat hook.

"Yep," Pahner said, just as quietly. He'd slung himself against a tree like the rest of the company. He had a hammock packed as well, but he'd bundled O'Casey into it. There was no way he was going to use it unless every member of the company had one. And Roger, apparently without prompting, had come to the same decision.

Amazing.

"Wake up."

Julian shook the private by the arm. The bead rifleman dangled limply from the tree, her face gray in the predawn light, and pried one eye open. She looked around at her wet, indescribably muddy surroundings and groaned.

"Please. Kill me," she croaked.

Julian just shook his head with a laugh and moved on. A few moments later, he found himself looking up at the sergeant major, spinning slowly on the end of her rope and snoring. He shook his head again, thought about various humorous possibilities, and decided that they wouldn't be good for his health.

"Wake up, Sergeant Major," he said, touching her boot as it swung into range.

The NCO had her bead pistol out and trained before she was fully awake.

"Julian?" she grunted, and cleared her throat.

"Morning, SMaj," the squad leader chuckled. "Wakee, wakee!"

"Time for another glorious day in the Corps," the sergeant major replied, and pulled an end of the rope to release the knot. She splashed into the water, still holding her bead pistol out of the muck, and came up coated in a fresh covering of mud. "Morning ablutions are complete. Time to rock and roll."

"Sergeant Major, you are too much," Julian laughed.

"Stick with me, kid," the senior NCO told him through her brand new mud. "We're gonna see the galaxy."

"Meet exotic people," Pahner said, untying himself and stretching in the early dawn light.

"And kill them," Julian finished.

After changing socks, the company moved out on cold rations and vague dreams of dryness. Pahner, recognizing the danger to the Marines' feet, started cycling the company up onto the
flar-ta
two at a time. Even with the company's reduced manpower, however, it would take most of the day to get everyone up for a brief respite. And it would be brief.

As the morning progressed, there was no sign of a break in the swamp, nor of the sort of increasing depth that might signal a river ahead. In fact, the humans could see no change at all in their surroundings, but the pack beasts seemed to be getting less and less happy about continuing.

Finally, when one balked, Pahner slogged up to D'Len Pah.

"What's wrong with the beasts?" he asked.

"I think we might be in the territory of
atul-grack
," the mahout answered nervously. "They're very frightened."

"
Atul-grack
?" Pahner repeated as Cord's nephew Tratan waded up, and the young tribesman started waving all four arms in agitation.

"We must go back!"

"What?" Pahner asked. "Why?"

"Yes," the mahout said. "We should turn around. If there are
atul-grack
around, we are in grave danger."

"Well," the human said, "are there, or aren't there?"

"I don't know," Pah admitted. "But the beasts act as if they're afraid, and the only thing that would frighten
flar-ta
is
atul-grack
."

"Would someone
please
tell me what the hell an
atul-grack
is?" Pahner demanded in frustration.

His answer was a deafening roar.

The beast that exploded out of the swamp was a nightmare. Solid and low, like a damnbeast, the gray and black-striped monster was at least five times as large—nearly as large as the elephantine
flar-ta
. Its mouth was wide enough to swallow a human whole and filled with sharklike teeth, and it sprinted across the swamp like a tornado, water fountaining skyward from every impact of its six broad feet, as the company's weapons opened up on all sides and the pack beasts erupted in pandemonium.

Roger rolled off of Patty's back as she hot-footed away from the charging carnivore. He came up sputtering, covered in mud, but he'd managed to keep the rifle out of the swamp.

Dogzard had followed him, spinning through the air out of a sound sleep and splashing into the water beside him. The sauroid planted her amphibian hind feet in the muck and shot her head above water just long enough to determine the problem. Then she promptly ducked back under and swam away at top speed. She was a scavenger, not a fighter. And certainly not a fighter of
atul-grack
.

The carnivore was intent on pulling down one of the
flar-ta
as its dinner. It was being bracketed by grenades and hit on either side by dozens of rounds from the bead rifles, but it charged on, ignoring the pinpricks, and Roger realized that it was charging dead at Captain Pahner, who was sliding out of its way as fast as he could while firing a bead pistol at it one-handed.

The prince put the dot of the holographic sight on the beast's temple, led it a little, and let fly.

Sergeant Major Kosutic stood up, coughing and spluttering. One of the pack beasts' tails had hit her hard enough to harden her chameleon armor and throw her ten meters through the air and into a tree. She spun around in place and immediately spotted the bellowing carnivore that had started the ruckus. The friction-sling of her bead rifle was still attached, and she raised the weapon, then froze and checked. A twig frantically inserted into the barrel came out dry, so she switched to armor piercing and took careful aim at the head of the beast.

The two shots sounded as one, somehow echoing clearly in a lull as the rest of the company was reloading. Armand Pahner abandoned dignity and comfort for survival and threw himself into a long, shallow dive out of the way as the beast slid to a halt where he'd been standing in an all-enveloping bow wave of water, muck, and shredded swamp vegetation.

He was back up almost instantly, pistol in a two-handed grip, but the emergency was over. The beast was down and quivering, its tail thumping a slow, splashing tattoo. The back of the tiger-striped beast overtopped the tall Marine by at least half a meter, and he looked over at Roger, who was shakily reloading.

"Thank you, Your Highness," he said, putting his pistol away with a steady hand.

"
De nada
," Roger said. "Let's just get the fuck out of this swamp."

"Yours or mine?" Kosutic asked. She stepped up to the beast and emptied half a magazine of armor piercing into its armored head.

"Uh." Roger examined what was left of the evidence. It sure looked like his 11-millimeter had done the main damage. "Mine, I think."

"Yeah, well," the NCO said as she carefully inserted another magazine, "you shoot it; you skin it."

The good news about the thing Mardukans called an
atul-grack
and the humans just called a bigbeast was that they were very solitary, very territorial hunters who required at least one high, dry spot in their territory. It took a while, but Cord's tribesmen found it.

And the river.

The large mound was clearly artificial, part of a dike system which had once contained the Hurtan River within its banks. The artificial island supported the remains of a burned gazebo, just a few charred sticks succumbing to the Mardukan saprophytes, and the barest outlines of a road paralleling the river it overlooked.

The Hurtan wasn't a huge river by any stretch, but it was big enough. And the current was noticeable, which was unusual in the swamp.

"No way," D'Len Pah said. "
Flar-ta
swim, but not that well."

Their raised elevation also permitted a view of the low mountains or high hills where their intermediate objective lay. They seemed to be within easy reach, no more than one day's march.

If, that was, they could get across the river.

"We could go upriver," Roger suggested. "Look for a crossing point. Was there a ford?" he asked Cord, who shook his head.

"A ferry."

"We could build a raft. . . ." Pah started.

"Huh-uh," Pahner said, cutting everyone else off. He'd been staring at the river and its far bank thoughtfully.

"Bridge it?" Kosutic asked.

"Yep," the company commander replied. "And we'll belay the pack beasts across. Pah," he turned to the mahout, "the beasts can cross on their own, but they have a problem with the current. Is that it?"

"Yes," the mahout said. "They're good swimmers, but we can't ride them while they swim, for if we fall off, we'll drown. Swept downstream, without us to guide them, they might panic and drown as well." He clapped his true-hands in agitation. "You don't want us to lose any, do you?"

"No, no, no," Pahner said soothingly. "But we will cross this river. Right here."

"Why tee pock do
I
have to do t'is?" Poertena demanded as he took off his boots.

"Because you're from Pinopa," Kosutic told him. "Everyone knows Pinopans swim like fish."

"T'at's stereotyping, t'at is," the armorer snapped. He struggled out of his filthy chameleon suit and stood in his issue underwear. The flexible synthetic material made for an adequate swimsuit. "Just because I'm from Pinopa doesn't mean I can swim!"

"Can't you?" Julian asked in an interested tone. "Because if you can't, it's going to be funny as hell when we throw you in."

Dogzard sniffed at the two of them, then walked down to the water's edge. She sniffed at it in turn, then hissed and walked away. Somebody else could swim that river.

"Well, yes," Poertena admitted.

"Fairly well, right?" Kosutic asked. She did have to admit that it was stereotyping. There could be a Pinopan who couldn't swim. It would be like someone from the planet Sherpa, which was basically one giant mountain chain, being afraid of heights. It
could
happen, but it would be like being afraid of oxygen.

"Well, yes," the armorer admitted again, sourly. "I was on a swimming team in high school an' you've gotta believe tee competition was pocking pierce. But t'at's not tee point!" he continued in protest.

"Right. Sure. Anything you say," Julian soothed as he tied a rope around the diminutive Pinopan's waist. "One sacrifice to the river gods, coming up!"

Roger shook his head at the good-natured wrangling going on below his tree and took his rifle off safe. The river appeared placid, but no one intended to settle for appearances.

The rifle normally mounted a three-round magazine to save weight, given how heavy the big magnum rounds were, but the manufacturer also offered a ten-round detachable box magazine as an option. Roger had never understood why anyone who could hit what he was aiming at would need ten rounds—unless, of course, he was trying to kill main battle tanks—but two of the ten-round boxes had come with the rifle, and he'd brought them along without really thinking about it.

Now that he was down on Marduk, he'd discovered that his original contemptuous opinion of the option had undergone considerable modification, and he snapped the first, fully loaded ten-round box into place, then slid an eleventh round "up the spout" before he closed the bolt. He also had additional standard magazines laid out on the broad branch in front of him, a box of ammunition opened on his belt, and Matsugae stood ready to reload empties for him on the fly, but even all of that wasn't enough to banish his fear that he might run out of ammo as the day wore on.

Marine sharpshooters were scattered in other trees along the river, but more and more, it was Roger the company depended on when an accurate shot was needed. The time he'd spent big game hunting was coming to the fore, as he invariably placed his big bone-smashing bullets in vulnerable spots.

Julian climbed into the tree next to his and Matsugae's and unlimbered his bead rifle.

"You really ought to have one of these," the NCO noted, gesturing with his chin at the ammunition scattered across the tree limb. "Fifty in a magazine beats three—or even ten—all hollow." The sergeant pulled one of the dual magazines out of the bead rifle and replaced it with one filled with armor piercing. "And now I've got a hundred."