Jump Pay (12 page)

Then the interior of the warehouse rang as if it were a gong. Dem looked up and saw the western wall sag inward. A long, vertical crack appeared and widened.

"Let's get out of here!" he shouted. He turned around on his belly and scrambled out from under the water trailer, heading for the nearest door. His companions were less than a second behind him.

Abe was the last man out, just before the building's west wall collapsed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Schlinal prisoners were assembled into work gangs after the garrison surrendered. More than eleven hundred men had surrendered, about 20 percent of them civilians—prisoners or the descendants of prisoners. Even the female ten percent of the population were either prisoners or the descendants of men and women who had been sentenced to penal exile. Only in the rarest of circumstances did anyone descended from a penal exile make it off of a prison world. In the Hegemony, it was a crime to be born of criminals. And the sentence was life.

A half dozen of the highest ranking Schlinal officers, including the commandant of the penal colony and the commanding general of the army that had been staging on Tamkailo, were found together, their hands bound behind them, their throats slit. The commandant had been disemboweled and sexually maimed as well. More than thirty other officers and noncoms, mostly of the colony garrison, were also found dead in suspicious circumstances.

Not many Heggie officers of any rank survived. Two Accord Special Intelligence teams questioned those few officers, and a sampling of the enlisted men and civilians, through the remainder of the afternoon. Few of the prisoners were willing to say much, but the SI men learned enough—often by piecing together hints dropped by several different individuals—to know that in the last minutes of fighting there had been a mutiny coupled with a rebellion by the penal exiles. "Life's impossible here anyway," one private said sullenly. "We thought the whole place was going to blow up."

All of the munitions that remained in the depot were carried out into the open. The engineers burned what could be destroyed that way. Charges that had to be detonated were handled in small batches. Repeated explosions eventually gave the engineers a shallow pit to help contain later detonations. It was slow work. The depot had held tens of thousands of tons of tank shells, Boem and surface-to-air missiles, grenades, other explosives, and ammunition for rifles and machine guns, as well as thousands of those weapons.

—|—

Captain Hilo Keye limped into the field hospital that had been moved into one of the first buildings that had been emptied of its stores. Nearly three hundred Accord soldiers, and half that number of Heggies, were being treated. The warehouse did offer one very important advantage over the tents that had been used before. In addition to the insulation provided by its thick stone walls and ceiling, the warehouse had been air conditioned to help protect the munitions that had been stored in it, a luxury the Schlinal barracks did not enjoy. And the power supply had not been destroyed in the fighting.

For a couple of minutes, Keye stood just inside the door, off to the side, taking deep breaths of the interior air, luxuriating in the coolness of the interior. He leaned back against the wall to take his weight off of an aching left foot and ankle. Objectively, the temperature inside the building was still about 30 degrees Celsius, but the late afternoon temperature outside was closer to 40, without any shade except that available on the east and south sides of the buildings.

Echo Company, or as much of it as survived and wasn't in the hospital, was camped on the east side of one of those buildings. More than four hundred thousand liters of water had been liberated from the Heggies, and engineers were already making repairs to the water supply system. That had been seriously damaged in the battle. Accord troops were making liberal use of that water, not merely drinking it but standing under makeshift showers, just to cool off—a little. Sunset was still three hours away, and the air temperature had shown no indication of beginning to drop.

"Something I can do for you, Captain?"

Keye opened his eyes. He hadn't really been aware that he had shut them. He stared at the medic, a man he didn't recognize even though he had the 13th's patch on his collar. Keye blinked several times and dragged in one more deep breath before he spoke.

"Jammed foot, sprained ankle. Left foot."

The medic glanced down—the top of the boot was loose and a medical soaker had been wrapped around the ankle—then brought his gaze back up to the captain's eyes. "You can walk, sir?"

"I made it this far. If you'll give me a little help, I think I can make it the rest of the way. Doc Eddies busy?"

"Over in this corner, I think." The medic pointed, then pulled the captain's left arm around his neck and took a fair share of the weight. "We've gotten pretty well organized."

It seemed to Keye that the journey from door to corner took forever, but—logically—he knew that it could hardly have been more than two minutes, even shuffling along and detouring around stretchers, trauma tubes, and working medtechs and surgeons. Long before he injured his foot and ankle—that had been done after the fighting had ended, in a stupid accident (at least Keye considered it stupid)—his mind had been wandering. Although he had paced himself as best he could, the heat had started to get to him. If the fighting had continued for even fifteen minutes longer than it had, Keye thought that he would have been down, out of action, just from the heat.
I'm too old for this crap
was little comfort. Somewhere along the way between his men and the hospital, he had already decided that he really was too old to continue in a field unit. It was a job for younger men.
If I can't transfer to some sort of staff position, I'll have to get out.
It was a painful realization, more painful than his ankle. And he was certain that he would not change his mind later, when the ankle—and the heat of Tamkailo—were no more than bad memories.

Doc Eddies, Echo's medtech, saw the captain being helped toward him and broke away from what he was doing to go to the medic's aid.

"Captain?" Eddies said.

"Ankle and foot," Keye replied. "And the heat. I was starting to lose it"—he had to drag in a long breath before he could complete the sentence—"before I hurt myself."

The two men laid the captain on a stretcher. As soon as he was down, Hilo closed his eyes and again let out his breath. Being flat on his back came as a distinct relief. He could feel tension draining away. He heard Eddies thank the medic and then sensed that the medtech had knelt at his side. A medtech was more than a medic but less than a surgeon. Eighteen months of specialized training equipped him to perform anything less than major invasive surgery, but medical nanobots and trauma tubes meant that major invasive surgery was seldom necessary. And the military training would qualify Eddies for a civilian medtech's license when his contractual tour of duty was over.

"I'm going to set up a drip before I work on your ankle, Captain," Eddies said, his voice soft enough that it seemed to Keye to be almost part of a dream. "Got to get you rehydrated."

Keye didn't bother to answer. He felt as if he could slide into sleep, or something even deeper, but he felt no concern. Whatever happened...

—|—

Joe Baerclau felt sixty kilos lighter as he picked his way through the confusion in the hospital, heading back to his platoon. Since all of his combat gear had been taken off of him before he was carried to the hospital, he
was
significantly lighter. Rifle and gear added up to thirty kilograms, even allowing for the wire and grenades he had expended and two empty canteens. Dehydration would have accounted for perhaps another couple of kilos. Joe felt as if he were about to float off of the ground.

Other than feeling as if he were in low gravity, Joe felt exceptionally well. At the moment, he didn't even feel particularly hot. Fluids had been pumped back into his body. Even now, medical nanobots were coursing through his system, neutralizing toxins and completing their repair work. But the heat was just beyond the next door.

Although Joe didn't know it, the stretcher that he had vacated had been occupied less than three minutes later by Captain Keye, before Joe got across the room. Joe was eager to get back to his men, to show them that he was still in one piece and ready for duty, but he did hesitate before opening the door that would take him out of the hospital. The memory of the heat was almost as oppressive as the real thing. It wasn't until the door opened and two men carried in a stretcher with yet another heat casualty on it that Joe took one last breath of the air-conditioned air and went outside.

He had been given precise directions on where to find his men, and he had also been assured that the entire compound had been secured, that there were no more Heggies armed and on the loose. He wouldn't have let words alone reassure him, but the obvious presence of Accord soldiers along the side of the building did. If there
were
still Heggies around, there were more than enough friendlies to take care of them.

Looking along the avenue, Joe saw what remained of the warehouse that had been blown up from inside. Not much, that is. The buildings on the two nearer sides were both seriously damaged as well. Joe looked for a moment, then turned and walked the other way, north. He went to the corner, then crossed the open space to reach the shady southern side of the next building. Echo was supposed to be on the east side of that building.

Mort Jaiffer was the first man in Joe's platoon to spot him. Mort was the only man in the platoon on his feet, leaning against the building while everyone else was sitting, or lying, in the growing patch of afternoon shade.

"We expected you a half hour ago, Sarge," Mort said. His voice was flat, without the usual bantering tone.

"Couldn't tear myself away from the good life," Joe replied. "You got my gear stashed somewhere?"

"Better than new." Mort pointed to a rather disorganized-looking pile. "Right with mine. Even loaded your canteens for you."

Joe nodded. By that time Sauv Degtree had gotten to his feet and moved to meet Baerclau.

"The platoon's yours again, Joe," Sauv said softly. "And welcome to it." None of the men had their visors down. This was as close to "off duty" as they were likely to get on an enemy-held world.

"Give me the report," Joe said. He looked around for a place where the two of them might speak privately, but the shady zone along the side of the building was crammed from one end to the other, and Joe didn't relish moving out into the sunshine any sooner than he absolutely had to.

"Twenty effectives now that you're back," Sauv said, lowering his voice. "Two men in hospital."

Joe couldn't help the narrowing of his eyes. Twenty plus two: that meant that the platoon had lost seven men killed.

Sauv waited until he saw Joe's eyes start to relax. "Captain's in the hospital. Twisted his ankle. Underwood's back for duty. You know that I'm the only one left from third squad," he said.

Joe nodded again. "We'll have to reorganize. You'll take over first squad, at least until we get off this cinder. I don't have any idea what will happen then. Mort will be happy to go back to being assistant squad leader. Hang on." He gestured for Mort to come over and told him what he was doing.

Mort's nod was almost gleeful. "You can give somebody my corporal's stripes too. Let me go back to being just a plain mudder."

"It doesn't work that way," Joe said. That was a continuation of a discussion that had been going on between the two men for more than a year.

"Jaiffer, I'm going to need your help getting to know what the others in the squad can do," Degtree said. "
You
I know about."

Mort almost blushed. "My reputation precedes me." He had been feeling as low as he ever got. The talk was starting to revive him.

"It does," Degtree agreed. He turned back toward Baerclau. "You need me for anything else right now?"

Joe shook his head.

"Come on, Professor. Let's go talk to the men," Degtree said. He let Mort lead him over to first squad.

Joe trailed along. He strapped on his web belt, put the Corey belt over it, then picked up his rifle and other gear. He slung the rifle over his shoulder but just carried the backpack and the items that normally hung from it. He pulled down his visor long enough to make a quick call to the first sergeant.

"Where are you?" Joe asked.

"North end of the wall, just before the shade runs out," Walker said. "How you feeling?"

"Good as new. I'll be there in a couple of minutes."

Joe walked slowly. Even in the shade, it was oppressively hot, and there seemed to be no particular hurry. It was obvious that no one in the company had any news of impending action.
I guess nothing is going to happen before the captain gets back,
Joe thought.

"Take a load off," Izzy Walker said when Joe got to him. The first sergeant indicated a patch of ground next to him, against the side of the building. His visor was up and his helmet tilted back at an angle. "This wall is almost cool," he added. There was a space of almost three meters to the next man along the wall, the largest opening along the entire length of the building.

Joe sat before he spoke. "I've got seven dead and two in the hospital."

Walker sighed. "I know. Degtree gave me the platoon report thirty minutes ago. The rest of the company's been hit just as bad. Almost thirty percent killed or too badly hurt to get back to duty in the next twenty-four hours."

Any injury that required more than four hours in a trauma tube was rare, and
serious
. Those were life-threatening injuries, the type that were usually saved only because of very prompt treatment.

"Why couldn't we just sit back and let the flyguys and gun bunnies do the work? Hell, we coulda stayed on the ships until they leveled this place, just come in to clean up," Joe said, his voice somewhat plaintive. "That frontal attack..." He shook his head. "That was just plain suicide."