Mick Farren - Their Master's war

"Combat fatigue, my ass."

"Yes, Topman Rance."

Rance turned on Elmo. "Do you want to press formal charges against this man?"

"No, I'll deal with him."

"Then let's get the men bedded down."

He faced the twenty and indicated five freshly dug foxholes over on their right.

"Four men to each hole. There'll be an inspection in thirty minutes. Dyrkin, organize a guard rota. Three of you will rotate on the perimeter, and there'll be one area watch. Now, get going."

"There are three dead."

"Then some of you will have more room to roll around in your sleep."

"We'll look forward to it." "I'm sure you will, Dyrkin."

Dyrkin led the twenty away. Rance indicated that Elmo should walk with him in the other direction. As soon as the men had gone, his whole attitude changed. There was no more grim banter. He became cold and businesslike, a man who no longer had the tune to be angry.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Elmo was taken by complete surprise.

"What are you talking about?"

"I told you to lay back on the longtimers and let Dyrkin and Renchett take care of things. They can handle it. It may be news to you, but I want to keep my longtimers alive. We can't clear this forsaken planet with replacements."

Elmo was too tightly wrapped to accept the advice. His jaw set, and he started straight ahead. "I can run my own twenty."

"The hell you can. They're starting to look like walking corpses."

"It was a bad day."

"It's always a bad day in the jungle." "This was different."

"Damn it, man, you only lost three men. Whole twenties were wiped out in the center section. What hit you?" "Miggies." "How many?" "A group of twelve." Rance's voice was like ice. "Twelve?" "Right."

"A dozen miggies don't make a bad day." "There was something else." "What?"

'There were these bodies."

As far as Rance was concerned, Elmo was hanging himself out to dry.

"There are always bodies."

"These were different. They'd been mutilated. Deliberately."

"Mutilated? How?"

"The skin had been flayed off them, and their dicks had been stuffed in their mouths. It was disgusting." "You're kidding."

"I've never seen anything like it. The men took it bad. They've started telling each other that it's some new psych program."

Rance didn't like the sound of this at all.

"Where was this?"

"Back in the jungle, not too far beyond the perimeter. I fixed the spot."

"I'll call it in. Hopefully they'll send out a data team." Rance touched a stud on the side of his helmet. "Open a command channel." He waited.

"Patch me through to Line Officer Berref." He waited again.

"What do you mean he's returned to the cluster? Yeah… okay."

He glanced at Elmo. "You get a dataspot or just a fix?"

"I took a spot."

"The brain wants you to shoot it in." "On D-four?" "Code three."

Elmo touched a similar stud on his helmet, activating a direct link facility that wasn't shared by the ordinary troopers. He waited a few seconds and removed his finger.

"It's in."

Rance was briskly final. "So that's it."

Elmo shook his head. "I don't know."

"Whatever they do with the information, you can be assured that you won't hear anything about it."

"That shit was so weird."

Rance nodded curtly. "It's out of our hands."

Elmo looked back at where the twenty were breaking out their environ bubbles. "What do I do?"

"You? If I had my way, I'd have you shipped back to the rear. The trouble is that I don't have my way. It's been decided that you can't be spared, and you have to lead a twenty even if you kill them all in the process. The way things are, I can't get that reversed."

Elmo grunted. "Don't do me no favors."

"I'm not doing you a favor. As far as I'm concerned, you didn't ought to be leading a combat twenty."

"I'm telling you I can handle it."

"And I'm telling you to back off. Take it as an order — don't take out your problems on your squad."

Elmo's face was stiff and blank. "Is that all?"

Rance sighed. "Yeah, that's all."

Elmo turned on his heel and marched away. Rance watched him go. He seemed to be moving like a robot.

The group of men in each foxhole had combined their individual environ bubbles and spread the resulting transparent sheet over the hole. It was anchored around the edge with rocks and dirt. Once in place, the bubbles slowly inflated until they formed a low protective dome. They also took on the coloring of the surrounding ground. The EBs were living entities, biotailored first cousins of the suits. On a planet that was a vacuum or one that had a poisonous atmosphere, the EBs sealed in an environment of canned air. In an emergency, they could also generate oxygen for the men sheltering inside them. On a planet like this one, however, where the air would have been breathable but for the contaminates and the wildlife, they actually filtered the toxins and impurities through their thick membranes.

Structures were going up all over the assembly area. In addition to the individual foxholes, there were larger command posts and supply marquees. Some were inflatable; others were solid domes that were assembled from portable sections. It was all part of the Therem passion for overorganization. Each time the task force paused in its advance prior to the next push, it felt the need to quickly put up what amounted to a small fortified town. When the force moved on, the town would just as quickly be torn down, leaving a tangle of holes, trenches, and debris to mark its passage.

When the foxholes were set up to everyone's satisfaction and the first guard shift was in position, the remainder of the twenty were free to attend to their most pressing personal needs. The most pressing of all was hot food. After days of living on F-rations and concentrates, any kind of cooked meal had to constitute a luxury. The cookhouse was now open, and there was almost a sense of anticipation as the men made their way to the temporary mess hall. As they eased through the bubble lock and pulled off their helmets and masks, they found that there was already a long line stretching to the serving area. Among those first on the line were some of the raw replacements who had come up on the crawlers. Dacker immediately took exception to this.

"Will you look at this new meat? We've been out in the forsaken bush getting our asses shot off and they get to eat first when they ain't done nothing but ride up here in comfort."

"Ain't that always the way of it?"

"I say make 'em wait."

Some came down on the side of being reasonable.

"Aah, leave the poor bastards be. They're probably scared out of their minds."

"So what the hell? I've been scared for as long as can remember, and with good reason. I'm going to t* front and get myself some food."

Dacker defiantly started toward the head of the line. After only a moment's hesitation, the others followed, even those who hadn't agreed with him. As the troopers elbowed their way to the front there were a couple of protests from the new recruits, but these were quickly silenced by glares from the longtimers. One of the mess orderlies was less easily intimidated. He set down his ladle and returned Dacker's angry stare.

"You men get back in line or you don't get served."

"Say what?"

"You heard me."

Dacker leaned forward so his face was very close to the orderly's. "Now you listen to me, dickhead. Not more than sixty minutes ago I was in combat, almost overrun by chibas. In another sixty minutes, I intend to be fast asleep with a full belly. Are you telling me that I've got to waste my precious downtime waiting on line while a bunch of pussy-assed new meat get their chow in front of me? What were you doing an hour ago, watching the soup on a burner?"