"Roger, Sink. We're on the advance," Mac's tense voice came through.
Morale had soared at his decision to go out into the night after the Rebels who harassed them continuously. For the operation, he had taken his best companies, A and B, dreading the need to expose Gretta, knowing it would look like favoritism if he didn't. He might even have taken that risk, but she'd have known why—and he wouldn't risk her anger.
Another movement. He studied the figures who appeared as if springing from the very ground. A cave or tunnel? The mountains, they had learned, were riddled with vents from ancient vulcanism. The Rebels deftly began setting up a mortar, placing the tube and handing out boxes of rockets.
"We're at the base of the big rock," Mac's voice came softly.
Sinklar checked the position. "Rebels are seventy-five meters ahead of you on the ridge. Can you see the flattopped pine from your position?"
"Roger."
"They're just on the other side of that. I make it five Rebels with a mortar.
They have a rat hole there, so be careful."
"Roger."
"Gretta, continue your advance. Careful now. See if you can get your hands on that mortar and the rounds to go with it. Be fun to shoot some of their stuff back at them. Gods know, our side doesn't supply us half of what we need."
"You've got it Sink. It'll be our pleasure!"
A POP-BOOM! sounded from back in the direction of the perimeter. The nightly shelling came right on schedule.
Also according to plan, he could hear the muted kackakacka of Shiksta's ordnance returning fire and making a racket to cover the advance of Sinklar's attack.
More movement.
"Hold!" Sinklar called. "Rotted Gods! There's ten, twenty, no, make that fifty, hell, a hundred or more!"
"Where?" Mac demanded.
"Coming up the crest of the ridge. They must have been massing down there on the other side. Looks like just small arms. Wait, there's a four-man portable blaster with a genset. They're moving up. Looks like they're. . . . Yeah, okay, they tied up with the mortar crew. I don't see any advance party out.
They must think we're still back in camp hiding in our hoes."
Stunned, he watched the massing troops. What should they do? Pull back? The odds began stacking higher and higher against them. What did it mean? Why were there. ... A major strike! The Targans were going to make an attempt to overrun the pass. Experiencing tendrils of uncertainty, Sinklar made up his mind.
His voice went dry. "Hang tight, people. Let them advance. We've got surprise and position; they'll be skylined on the ridge."
"Roger," Gretta and Mac answered in unison.
Listen to the confidence in their voices. Rotted souls, they believe in me.
All that trust. . . . What if I'm wrong? What if I lose them through some foolish error . . . some arrogant decision?
Behind him the pops and bangs of the bombardment had grown in pace, enough to trigger that sense of something gone wrong. Sinklar opened his mike again.
"Ayms, you been listening?"
"Roger."
"Be ready. I think you're about to take a major hit from the Rebels." He chewed his lower lip, considering the risks. "Ayms, can you and the troops hang on? If you can hold out for an hour, I think we can take this bunch, double back, and catch your assault from the rear. We can break these guys."
Silence stretched for a long minute before Ayms' voice came back. "Sink? We talked it over. We'll hold the fort. I think we could keep them out with half the men we've got now. Hauws says the soil organisms here are making the troops meaner. We'l keep them from being bored. Keep in touch." "Thanks, Ayms."
Sinklar smiled into the night, checking on the advance of the Rebel strike force. "We can see them." Gretta sounded hoarse. "Hang on," Sinklar whispered, noting where Gretta's people waited in relation to the advancing Rebels. Fear made his bowels turn runny. How good was the Rebel night vision gear? Would they see Gretta's people hiding in the rocks?
"Got them Sink," Mac whispered. "We're spreading out . . . working up. We'll wait for Gretta to open the ball unless some guy walks down on top of us."
Sinklar's heart began to pound. Adrenaline rushed to make his arms feel light as he pulled his assault rifle up and squinted through the scope. There're too many of them. This is suicide! Checking the advance, they were no more than sixty meters from his position, well into the jaws of the trap. Too late.
Can't pull out. They'll see us any second. "Hit them," he gritted into the mike, hating himself. "Fire!" He heard Gretta's order, terse and crisp.
Sinklar triggered his blaster, lacing the advancing Rebels, heart in his throat.
Once green troops Second Section had turned deadly. A week of dirty battle had honed them and steeled their nerves. Blaster fire raked the advancing Rebels, catching them completely by surprise. At the same time, eyes dazzled by the brightness in the starlight scope, he could see three figures in combat armor sprinting for the mortar crew. His heart filled with warm pride. Gretta hadn't forgotten the mortar.
The Rebels were firing back ineffectually as they tried to compensate for their confusion and the havoc wreaked by Gretta's devastating fire. Sinklar almost whooped when the Rebels broke and ran—right down the throat of MacRuder's B Group. From there it turned into a massacre. "Ayms?" Sinklar called into the mike. "Are you there?" A long silence was punctuated by the sounds of violent combat from behind him.
His heart skipped when Ayms' voice finally answered, high-pitched; "Rotted Gods, Sink! There's a million of them out there! The rocks are literally too hot to touch—through battle armor no less. We're taking that much fire!"
"Are you holding?" Sinklar's belly churned and his breathing strained as sweat began to bead inside his helmet. "Can you hold, Ayms?"
"How the hell do I know? Hell, yes! I think. Barely. I didn't know we'd have to fight off half of Targa! Get your ass back here!" A pause. "Uh, sir." It came contritely and Sinklar laughed, partially from hysterical relief.
"Advance and clean up," he ordered A and B Groups. "Ayms is in big trouble."
"Roger," Gretta called. "We're moving on the ridge now. Not much left. We're shooting the dead to make sure they stay that way. These guys have Regan blasters, so we're packing equipment as we go."
"Good thinking. Detail a team to bring that four-man gun along. Mac? How you doing?"
"We're moving up the ridge Sink. We got most of the final resistance. What we didn't get ran like rock-foxes. Shot most of them in the back in fact. They were covering and our guys just let them walk up and cut them down."
Sinklar nodded, suffering that curious elation of victory coupled with dread that his comand was dying behind him.
He shouldn't have worried. Either the Rebels knew less about war than the Regan army did, or else they got confused and botched the battle plan. Moving Groups A and B, Sinklar did the impossible that night. He managed to trap nearly a thousand Rebel troops between his fortified camp on one side, a cliff on the other, and the sheer mountain flank on the third. Placing his two crack Groups on a commanding ridge to fire into the defenseless Rebel rear, Sinklar blocked the exit. He cut them to pieces with a neatly coordinated assault from his camp while A and B held off three suicidal counterattacks by the frantic Rebels. or long bloody hours, blaster bolts streaked violently through the blackness.
The air hummed and jumped with pulse fire. Trees flamed in torches of yellow-orange while men and women screamed and died in macabre firelight.
Fragments of hot rock and blasted dirt jumped and pattered in the din. A brush fire raged through the fight to fry the wounded, their screams hideous in the night. To the ? shocked combatants it would have been no surprise had they learned that the tortured hell of the Rotted Gods had I broken loose in the universe of men.
CHAPTER 12
So cold. So black. Veteran of a thousand battles, fear ran bright along Staffa's spine as he floated through the stygian sewer. His flaiing hand slipped off a rung as cold pani
c gripped him. Better to have let them kill him with the collar than to die in here. Something smooth and rubbery—like skin—slid against his chest and his face popped out into air. His head at the top of the bubble, sewage rippled around his chin. Not much room—and someone else was taking most of it.
"Scared hell out of me!" a woman's voice told him in the wretched air. She coughed. "Brak, that you?"
"They're worried about you. What's the problem?"
"There's a body blocking the outlet. I... tried. Couldn't pull it loose. Ran out of air. This stuff just leaves me weaker." She coughed again as his own throat began to bum from the gas. Worse, she'd used up almost all of the oxygen in this pocket.
"How far?" Staffa asked, trying to fill his lungs with the stink.
"Five meters . . . maybe six."
He ducked past her body and hurried along in the blackness. Like working in vacuum, he decided, and the horror and panic receded. His momentum carried him into soft spongy flesh. Cloth still surrounded the body. He grabbed a handful and found one of the rungs. With all his might, he pulled back, feeling his lungs strain. Something soft came out of the blackness and bounced off his face as he pulled. He could feel other things slipping over his flesh as they were carried past by the movement of the water.
Grunting, he felt the body give. Water began to rush past, dragging ever harder at his burden. Despite the gurgle and surge racing by his ears, he could hear his heart—the blood pounding in his ears. His burning, gas-scorched lungs heaved, wanting to cough.
He braced himself and hooked a leg around the corpse so he could reach another rung and get that much more leverage. Water rushed faster as his strength began to fail and his heaving lungs started to spasm.
If he could get up one more rung, how long would it take before the air pocket extended to him? His fingertips slipped off the slimy metal. Fear gave him one last chance. Got it And he pulled himself against the weight of the water and the turning, twisting corpse.
By grim determination he held on, bits of vile material pattering his skin.
The chill stole the warmth from his body. Fire flared in his lungs as they sucked at the bottom of his throat.
Water swirled around his hair, dropping rapidly in a bubbling gurgle. His head broke clear and he raised his mouth to gasp in the fetid stink. Sewage bitter on his tongue, he spit, feeling fouled and filthy. A faint glow behind him illuminated the scaly roof above his face. A stir of fresh air reached him just before he gagged and vomited into the black swirling current.
As the waters fell, he looked back to see his gruesome burden, a young woman, flesh puffed ghastly white, hair twining blackly with the refuse of the palace. Grasping her robe, he pulled her back up the tunnel.
Kaylla still clung to her rung, panting as she hacked and coughed. Staffa got a glance of hair plastered blackly to her skull as she turned and looked, eyes large in the faint light. Her wet face shone in the gloom.
"Thought the Rotted Gods were gonna be chewing on my soul real soon," she rasped. "You weren't any too quick, friend. I owe you."
"Call me Tuff," he told her as he shivered and shook with exhaustion. How much could happen in a single day? How long had it been since he'd stepped off the CV?
He remembered Skyla's skepticism and closed his eyes while filth trickled down his pale flesh. Dear Skyla, she'd tried so hard to help. Would he ever see her again? At the thought that he might not, a wretchedness filled him.
"Let's get out of here," he growled, unnerved by what he'd been through.
"Got that right Tuff." She slogged her way ahead as the water fell to their waists. Staffa towed the limp, cavorting corpse behind him as he pulled his way along the rungs. "This the sort of thing that happens all the time?"
He could see the grating behind him now. The dead girl's body had blocked it, her thick robe making an effective plug.
Kaylla shook her head. "Nope. Mostly it's boring, backbreaking labor. Things like roadwork, picking up trash around the public buildings, cleaning up storm damage. We were supposed to go to the desert this morning to lay pipe. The other crew had casualties."
Ahead, light showed. Splashing and cursing, they made their way to the inspection hole. Kaylla helped Staffa lift the body so the two slaves above could pull it out.
He boosted her up first and then pulled himself out—only to realize his cloth wrap had disappeared, lost somewhere in the sewer. Bits of fecal material and other filth clung to his flesh. He fought the urge to vomit again, his very soul feeling sullied.
"Huh," Anglo was saying. "Another Priestess. Young one. Couldn't take it."
"Why do they do it?" Morlai wondered.
"Can't take the consecration, probably. The hard sell that they're giving of the Blessed Gods doesn't take. Some client says something about them. I don't know."
Staffa glanced up and found himself under Kaylla's careful scrutiny. A frown etched her brow as she studied him, reservation in her eyes.
She looked trim and healthy, with no fat on her muscular body. But then maybe slaves at the bottom of Etarian society weren't allowed fat. Her hair wasn't black but apparently brown and cut shoulder length. Her facial features might not have been those of incredible beauty, but she wasn't bad to look at either. She had a slightly crooked nose and a square jaw. Her face had been graced with high cheekbones, a generous mouth, and fiery tan eyes. Her breasts were small and high over a slim tapering waist that led to long firm legs. Her expression remained grim, full mouth pinched—a look of animal wariness in the squint of
those hard eyes. She leaned against the wall, gooseflesh rising in the chill air.
"Kaylla, take Tuff to the corner, there, and hose off; you smell like shit,"
Anglo ordered, and Staffa saw her tense, the wariness intensifying.
He got to his feet and followed her, noticing the coiled anger in her movements. She said nothing as she turned on the tap and let it run over her body, awkwardly trying to scrub herself with one hand and hold the hose with the other.
Staffa took it from her and doused her liberally. He even found a bar of soap on a sink corner. She lathered and soaped while he hosed himself down, aware of his wretched odor. She rinsed him after he'd used the rest of the soap bar.
He even washed his mouth out and spit, watching the water trickling back to the drain and shivering.
"Come on!" Morlai called. "We've got a full day yet."
"You going like that?" Kaylla asked, tone wry as she stepped into a loose garment.
"Lost my kilt in the sewer," Staffa admitted with a slight shrug.
She ripped a long section of hem off, leaving her legs exposed to above the knee.
"I owe you," Staffa told her as he tied it into a breechclout.
"Don't mention it," she said wearily. "I do that for all the guys who pull me out of the sewer. I keep remembering that Priestess' face. If you'd been a little slower. ..."
"We'd both have been there," Staffa added as they climbed into the back of the warden's battered aircar.
"What now, Morlai?" Kaylla slumped into the seat and closed her eyes as the vehicle hummed and rose.
"Pipe laying equipment west of the city is down. We go string pipe. That ought to make your backs crack. We'll sweat the fat out of you yet, Kaylla."
"Thank God," she whispered softly.
"Thank God? For hard labor?" Staffa studied her from the corner of his eye.
She glanced at him, tan eyes holding his for an instant before they flicked away. Her voice came as a low murmur almost lost in the wind. "Yeah, anything to keep out of that bastard Anglo's bed."
Staffa glanced out at the city they passed to avoid her haunted expression.
The hot dry air sucked his sweat away before it could form. "How did you get here? You don't sound or act like a slave."
She gave him a bitter smile. "No, I suppose not. Once, in what seems an eternity ago, I was the First Lady of a planet called Maika. I ruled with my husband. Tybalt valued our world more than our tr
eaty. He hired that pus-spawned Star Butcher, and the rest is history."
Is there no one I haven't ruined? Is my legacy truly as the Praetor said? Does everyone curse my name?
"I had heard that all the governmental leaders had been killed," Staffa said woodenly. He remembered Maika. They'd executed the Maikan leaders in the main cathedral. He remembered the First Lady, a shy thing, broken and bawling as they blew her head off with a pulse pistol.
Oh, yes, remember them all, Staffa. Remember, we laughed as we killed them.
Hear the jokes in your damned ears? No wonder the shades haunt your horror-filled nightmares. And what if this is only my beginning?
She shrugged. "My maid died in my place. When his troops had ceased raping me, they sold me. A broker bought me and I ended up here. Had a nice household to work in until the landlord jumped me one night. Maybe I was tired of rape. I killed him and wound up here. Now Anglo rapes me every night and can't convince myself to die simply for the pleasure of killing him, too." She paused, her mouth gone into that hard pinch, the lines about her eyes deepening.
"And all this is the fault of the Companions?" He raised an eyebrow, a tingle of loneliness growing in his breast.
She snickered sarcastically. "That water we just crawled out of is Myklenian honey compared to the foulness that runs in their pus-choked veins. Them and Tybalt."
Staffa lowered his gaze at the hatred in her contralto voice. Why did this woman's words sting so? Maybe because she'd had the guts to crawl into that sewer. And I put her here?
She remained silent as the car swept them beyond the square buildings on the outskirts and into the open fields of the fanning community: Square plots of green tied to the
oasis of water. Ahead, on the horizon, he could see the glare from the fabled white sands of Etaria.
Perhaps there is justice in the universe, Staffa thought bitterly. He glanced up at the sun where it blazed out of a brassy sky and he sat in silence, soul as desolate as the endless sands they now flew over. The heat beat down unmercifully.