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CHAPTER FIVE

PARLEY

Sergeant Walbrook and the mortar crews were ready. The meeting place was in an empty field, the bottom of a shallow bowl overlooked by low hills to both north and south, a kilometer west of the main road to the Ottarn. A small dirt track led east to the main road, but otherwise there was nothing to see. The field had recently been burned over, so there was no cover anywhere. The center of the bowl was well in range of Rick’s mortars, and spotters lay at the top of the ridge overlooking the meeting place.

“I don’t like it,” Art Mason said.

“You don’t have to like it,” Rick said. “But if they kill me, you make sure their guy doesn’t leave there alive either.”

“What you want to bet they won’t have their heavy weapons zeroed in on that flag?” Sergeant Bisso asked.

“Not a thing, Sergeant,” Rick said.

“We don’t know they have any heavy weapons,” Warner reminded them. “They haven’t used any.”

“Not yet,” Rick said. “But they won’t need them, with fifty rifles.”

“At that range they’d need to spray and pray,” Mason said.

“So we have mortars and the Carl Gustav, and they have rifles. Area weapons on both counts at these ranges,” Warner said.

“Mexican standoff,” Bisso said. “There’s the flag.”

A lone rider rode from the north to the middle of the bowl. He carried a white banner on a lance, and after looking around in all directions, moved about twenty yards from where he’d stopped. Then he planted the lance in the ground. There was just enough wind to make the banner flutter. The rider turned and rode back in the direction from which he’d come.

Two mercenaries crawled along the ridge behind Rick. Soft spoken commands guided them as they placed aiming stakes visible to the mortar crews but not to anyone on the other side of the meeting bowl.

“You can bet they’ll be doing the same thing on their side of the ridge,” Mason said sourly.

The messenger rode over the ridge and vanished. They all waited.

“Here he comes,” Warner reported. He pointed to a lone rider coming down the opposite hill.

Rick mounted and rode down the hill alone.

“Good luck, Colonel,” Art Mason said softly.

* * *

Rick clucked his mount to a walk. No point in hurrying things. He watched, carefully, as the other rider came towards the flag. Closer.

This would be the time, Rick thought. There was no sign of activity on the ridge ahead, but from what he’d heard of the Gurkhas there wouldn’t be any sign until it was too late. Fifty rifles at that range would spray down a big area, but if they fired now, they’d get me without hitting their man, and my troops may or may not be good enough to get him. He felt sweat running down his ribs. Damn all. I didn’t used to be this scared. That’s what having your wife back will do to you. Give you something to live for, and you’re scared as hell. He rode on at a walk. One. Two. Three . . .

The critical moment passed. The riders closed on the flag. Rick got there first by seconds, and halted.

The approaching rider wore British battle dress, jungle camouflage that stood out in this dusty land, hardly camouflage at all. His unit and rank badges shone. His sidearm—Good God, Rick thought, is that really a Webley revolver?—was holstered with the flap buttoned. The hat was a brimmed khaki hat with chin cord, clean and crisp like the uniform. Neatly trimmed mustache, no other facial hair. Brown hair combed back under the hat. Handsome fellow. Midforties, I’d guess. Looking closer Rick could see that the man’s uniform had been pressed.

For a moment Rick felt shabby in his mail armor and tabard.

The man came to a crisp salute, palm out.

“Major Clyde Baker, at your service, Colonel. Shall we dismount?”

Rick returned the salute.

“Rick Galloway. Perhaps we’d be more comfortable mounted.”

“As you wish, Sir. First there is the matter of identification.”

“Guess I’ll dismount after all,” Rick said. “Major Baker, just what in the world do you expect me to produce as proof of my identity?” He swung down off his horse and dropped the reins.

Baker dismounted crisply. Rick thought Baker was probably a better rider. He seemed to have an easy confidence, but he held the reins as he stepped towards Rick. Horses trained differently? But Baker couldn’t be used to Tran horses unless he’d been here a lot longer than Rick thought he had.

“Sir, I’m not sure what I need for identification. Yet it’s important that I establish your identity. Perhaps you’d care to tell me how you got here?”

“Why should I?”

“Colonel, I’m not trying to be coy. There are matters of some importance here, and there’s only one man on this planet that I can be frank with. His name is Rick Galloway, one time captain in the United States Army. I believe that man is you, but I must be certain. I know how Captain Galloway got to this planet.”

“Do you, now?”

“Your story begins in Africa,” Baker said. “On a hill, making a last stand.”

Rick frowned in thought.

“Right. We were at the end of our rope when this flying saucer picked us up. We were taken to the Moon, where a police inspector named Agzaral examined us.”

Baker nodded when he heard the name.

“You spoke with Agzaral yourself?”

“Yes. Tall, thin faced, wore a kind of gown with badges and honors on it. Like a dashiki. Spoke English but sounded more Brit than American. He offered me the choice of coming here as a mercenary or going somewhere else as what amounted to a welfare case. I chose Tran.”

Baker nodded.

“Sir, I’m going to take something out of my pocket. It is not a weapon.”

“All right.”

Baker reached carefully with his left hand into his right hand breast pocket. He took out what appeared to be a photograph. He looked at it, then at Rick, and his thin smile broke into a wide grin.

“Excellent.” He held out his other hand. “I’ve been looking for you, Colonel Galloway. Had to be sure I’d found the right man.”

Rick took his hand. The grip was firm, and Baker seemed almost friendly.

“And why would you be looking for me?”

“I’ve been told I can trust you.” Baker’s grin faded. “And I hope to God that’s true.”

* * *

“We seem to have a lot to discuss,” Rick said. “And this isn’t a very good place for it.”

“Agreed. If our employers don’t know of this meeting yet, I expect they soon will. I forgot to mention it to mine—”

“Somehow it slipped my mind to send a runner to the Wanax, too,” Rick said with a thin smile.

“Considering that they’re both very likely to hear of this quite soon, it may make both your boss and mine a bit suspicious, don’t you agree?”

A warm breeze blew across the valley. It felt good.

“Suspicious is a mild word for it,” Rick said. “And they’re certain to hear of it within hours. So what do we do now?”

Baker shook his head slowly.

“Inspector Agzaral said you were a decent man and that I could trust you. That I should work with you if the situation warrants. He seems to have some kind of plan that involves both of us. Part of that involves sending you new resources in an indirect manner.”

“New troops?”

“I think not, at least none other than us. ‘Resources,’ he said. They’ll involve instructors but not troops.” Baker looked narrowly at Rick. “I don’t know all the details.”

And you’re not telling me what you do know.

“I see.”

“In any event, I don’t have much choice,” Baker said. “I’m convinced that I must work with you. But I do have the men to think of. They’re not very happy with all this.”

And they’ll be a lot less happy when they find out I can’t get them home, Rick thought. Unless they already know that.

“I wouldn’t think they would be. Where do they think they are?”

“The Senior NCO thinks we’ve been swept up by the gods to fight in their wars,” Baker said. “From what Agzaral said that may be as good an explanation as any.”

Rick nodded.

“I can think of worse. How did you get caught up in this?”

“Force reduction. We were stationed in Malaysia. Some units were to be disbanded. Budget cuts. Rather than disband units, they chose the most expendable men from each unit to be sent home. I was given the responsibility of getting them there. My orders were to take the men to a beach area to wait for transport by hovercraft. An experimental hovercraft. We waited two days and a large hovercraft of a strange design came in low over the water in the middle of the night. It didn’t look like any craft I’d ever seen, but everything else seemed all right, so we went aboard. At which point I was summoned to the bridge.”

“Where you were interviewed by aliens,” Rick said.

“Not then. There was a man, certainly human, who said he was from the Foreign Office. We were being taken to another ship, and we would go aboard. It was in a hangar, God knows where, somewhere in Malaysia, and we never saw anything but a gangway. Once we were all aboard I met the aliens. They told me we’d been recruited into their service.”

“But my God, man, won’t you be missed? Fifty Gurkhas and three British officers go missing?”

“Sixty Gurkhas. And, no, I very much doubt we will be,” Baker said. “We were expendables and it happened once before, a Gurkha unit being disbanded turning bandit.”

“I never heard that.”

“And you won’t, either. Which is the point, don’t you agree? They’ll think my lot did the same thing and hush it up instead of asking questions. We weren’t far from the opium trade route. Enough jungle in the Golden Triangle to hide a dozen regiments. More than enough demand for good troops at high wages, too. I’m not guessing on this, Colonel. Inspector Agzaral said we were already listed as deserters.”

“Was he happy about the situation?”

Baker shook his head.

“You met him. Hard chap to read. But my impression is that he was livid.”

“I’d think he would be,” Rick said. “I got the impression that the only men the Shalnuksis were allowed to kidnap were men who were doomed already. Your story doesn’t match that.”

“That’s close to what I was told,” Baker said. “Apparently there was a disagreement on the matter between this Inspector Agzaral and the aliens. It got pretty tense at one point until Agzaral straightened up and—well, I don’t know, Colonel, because it was in a language I never heard before, but it looked to me as if he laid down the law and read them the riot act. They weren’t happy about it, that was clear, but neither was he.”

Rick tried to imagine the scene, but couldn’t.

“On that score, can you describe the aliens you saw?”

“Human sized, long legs. Rugged. Flat faces, nothing much of a nose, hands looked more like gorilla than human. General shape was more like chimpanzees without hair. Nose slit—well it was a little more than a slit, but not a real nose—moved as well as their mouths when they talked. There were three of them sitting at a table.”

“Shalnuksis,” Rick said. “At least it sounds like them. Including the group of three. They work in trios for some reason. What did they say they wanted?”

“To hire my services to protect their property. Apparently they have claims to this planet, and they face poachers.” Baker grinned. “I gather that’s you. My mission was to defeat you and turn over whatever you’ve collected to a ship that will come to find us. After that we would be returned to Earth.”

“Did you believe them?”

“At the time, I suppose, but Inspector Agzaral told me flat out that they were liars, and that we will never be returned to Earth. I didn’t much care for that, but he made it very clear. We can work for the aliens or not, but nothing we can do will buy us a return ticket. This is a one-way trip.

“Like you, I was given a choice: come here as a mercenary or be taken to some holding planet where I would have no position at all and would wait until they thought of some use for me. That was no choice at all, so I accepted mercenary service on his terms. That was when he told me I did have one choice: I could work with you or against you, but in his opinion you were the one man on this planet I could trust.”

“Flattering,” Rick said. “Do your men know they’re never going home?”

“Not yet. Leftenant Cargill suspects. Leftenant Martins is certain that once we kill you we’ll be homeward bound. As to the troopers, they never expected to go home until their service was up. As near as I can tell, they’re happy enough not to be dismissed, to still have jobs and expect pensions.” Baker gestured expressively. “They’re not stupid, Colonel. A bit primitive, but not stupid. They know about space travel, and they know they’re not on Earth, but they expect to encounter marvels serving Her Majesty, and this is just another of the technological miracles the English pull off from time to time.”

A dry wind came up from the west. Clouds scudded across the sky. Even after his years on Tran the planet didn’t seem like Earth. It must have been worse for Baker, and his Hindu Gurkhas.

“But they do expect to go home with pensions.”

“Yes.”

“That could be a problem. My men all know better. They don’t like it, but they understand we’re here to stay. What will yours do when they find out?”

“I don’t know. It depends on Sergeant Major Tulbahadur Rai, I expect. He’s senior NCO. Understand, Colonel, this isn’t a regular setup. Many of these men don’t know each other. These are the men thought expendable when it came time for a reduction in force. Except for Sergeant Major, he’s near retirement age anyway, and chose to take early retirement so a younger man wouldn’t be sent home.”

“So with the exception of your Sergeant Major, they’re not the best men in Her Majesty’s Gurkhas?”

“Perhaps not, but I assure you the worst of them is damned good. They’d never have been recruited if they weren’t, and their training is thorough.” Baker paused. “Before you ask, I was being rotated home on family leave before they gave me this assignment. Martins had family leave to get married, and was anxious to get back to his fiancé. This detail was supposed to get him home two months sooner, and apparently he had friends in the right places to get put on.” Baker chuckled. “Some would say it serves him right.”

“And Cargill?”

“I’m not sure why Cargill was going home. I never served with him before. Nothing bad in his record that I know of.”

“I see. Excuse me a moment.” Rick turned away from Baker and raised his left hand to wave, lowered it, then raised it again. “Just letting Major Mason know all’s well,” Rick said. “What do we do now?”

“That’s rather up to you,” Baker said.

“Up to me.”

“Yes, I think so. After a lot of thought, I’ve decided that I would rather work with you than against you, Colonel Galloway.”

“Under what conditions?” Rick asked.

“Yes, that is rather the question, isn’t it? How far can we trust each other? I’ve been asking myself that since we got to this Godforsaken place.” He paused, frowned slightly in thought, and tried to smile. “You have rather a good reputation, you know. Formidable but fair. Honest, keep your word, loyal to your employer. Even the—” Baker broke off and changed to an even thicker northern Tran dialect. “Honorable Matthias agrees.”

Baker waved expansively. “Of course our meeting like this is somewhat outside of that,” he said in English.

“So we can work together,” Rick said. “Of course there’s the question of the product you’re supposed to take away from me. Your Galactic employers are unlikely to be satisfied with what you can grow, and if I give you much, my own will be unhappy.”

Baker hesitated.

“Colonel, can we work together? Will you accept me and my men into your service?”

“What about the Honorable Matthias?”

“He’ll have to be told. I have enough shards of honor left that I can’t be part of some treacherous plot. I won’t turn my coat in the middle of a battle.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want you to.”

“It probably wouldn’t work anyway,” Baker said. “The Honorable Matthias doesn’t much trust me to begin with. When he hears I’ve been meeting with you he’ll believe we’re plotting against him.”

“There’s that. Do you have any other conditions?”

“Only that all of us be treated the same as your other men, Colonel.”

“I can agree to that, but with limits. I have fewer troops than you, but we’ve been here longer. All my men have a status. Not quite noble, but nearly so. All of us are ‘star lords,’ but some of us are actual lords in our own right. You and your officers and the senior NCO’s won’t be a problem, but I can’t guarantee noble status for every one of your troopers. I’ll do what I can, but no guarantees.”

“That’s all right. Gurkhas are used to being treated a bit differently from white troops. Most of them are amused by it, so long as things are fundamentally fair.”

“Fair I can promise. Reasonably fair. But there’s still the problem of what we give your Galactic employers. I don’t think we’ll have enough madweed harvested to satisfy my own Shalnuksis, let alone supply yours.”

Baker regarded Rick carefully for a long moment.

“All right. In for a penny—Colonel Galloway, my employers probably won’t be coming. Officially we’re here on our own.”

“And why is this?”

“Inspector Agzaral ruled against the—he called them the Gadnatwen Trader faction—who’d hired me. He was telling them they had no claims on this planet or its products, and they were liable to heavy fines and penalties for kidnapping us, and if they sent unauthorized expeditions to Tran they would be in gross violation of the trade regulations.” Baker shrugged. “At least that’s what he told me he was telling them. They were certainly livid about it.”

“So how did you get here?”

“He made a deal with them. They’d created this problem, Earth humans who could never go home, and they had to contribute to its solution. They’d pay a fine and he wouldn’t report them to the Trade Commission. Part of their fine was to transport us and the gear they’d already kitted us up with here, regardless of the convenience or the cost. That was when he told me to use my judgment, but probably my best bet was to trust you. He never explained it in so many words, but I understood all this to mean that neither my kidnapping nor my transport to Tran would ever appear on an official report.”

Rick nodded understanding, but he felt bewildered. So now what is Agzaral up to? But I don’t dare ask, not yet anyway. How would he know that the—Gadnatwen faction—would deliver Baker and his troops safely? Did he care? But he must have cared enough to organize this. He must be planning another visit by someone he trusts. Les? That would be useful. Gwen can wheedle some information out of Les. Maybe. I think Agzaral trusts Les.

“So they brought you here.”

“Yes. Just before we landed, one of the aliens attempted to persuade me to serve them,” Major Baker continued. “To keep the mission they’d given us, to defeat you and take over your crops, take your place here. He promised rewards and more equipment—Agzaral caught them before they’d finished fitting us up—and hinted that if I killed you and took over he’d be able to take us all back home.” Baker cleared his throat. “Load of codswallop, of course. Agzaral was very clear on the matter. Even if Agzaral dropped dead, there was no way home, because that was a policy of the High Council. No groups of wild Earthlings go back, because if we ever got back to Earth there’d be no way to keep it all quiet, and with this many someone would believe us. I pretended to go along with the aliens because I didn’t see any choice in the matter.”

“How will you communicate with them?”

Baker took a familiar-looking device from his belt pack.

“This apparently works forever. They told me not to worry about power.”

Rick nodded.

“We’ve got one of those ourselves.” Best to keep knowledge of Gwen’s personal communicator to myself for now, besides the sets can’t seem to communicate with each other, only to starships. “It’s always worked and it never needed recharging. So you expect your Shalnuksi hosts to return?”

“No, Sir, I don’t,” Baker said. “Inspector Agzaral told me there might be strange offers, but that the Confederation had ways of knowing what ships visit this planet. Of course he could tell me anything he wanted, just as they could, but I rather believed he has that power.”

“How did you hook up with the Five Kingdoms?”

“That’s where they dropped us. They claimed they were teaching us the only language they had available, so they were sending us where that language was spoken.” Baker frowned. His tone changed. “You can understand this, can’t you?”

“Not very well. They taught you a fairly thick northern dialect,” Rick answered in the speech common within the Five Kingdoms, then snorted. “Must have amused them no end to hand you over to the locals out for my scalp already! It’ll just have to do for now. You’ll pick up the southern dialects quick enough. So you made a deal with the Five Kingdoms.”

“Sort of. They didn’t know what to do with us, until this chap in wolfskins showed up. It was Matthias. He didn’t appear to be overly surprised to see us. He was enthusiastic about hiring us to go after you. Since I didn’t have any other way to find you, we took the job. If you were anywhere near as competent as your reputation makes you, I expected it wouldn’t be long before you came up with a way to communicate with me. Wasn’t easy avoiding direct confrontation with you and still being useful enough that we had employment if I couldn’t negotiate something with you. Last thing I wanted was a blood feud.”

“You did a good job there. All right, what’s next? You have to go back to your camp to get your gear—”

“No, Sir. Everything we brought from Earth is with us. The only things we left in camp are replaceable local items. We’re ready to come over anytime you say. Now, preferably.”

Rick frowned.

“Major, I very much want to believe you, but are you asking me to allow your unit, fully armed, to close with mine?”

Baker laughed.

“Colonel, you have a nasty, suspicious mind.”

“The situation calls for a bit of healthy paranoia,” Rick said.

“On my part, too,” Baker said. “Surely you don’t expect me to disarm my men? I have more reason to trust you than you have to trust me, but even so—”

“An interesting impasse,” Rick said. “Have you any suggestions?”

“None immediately. Given your locals, you do outnumber us.”

Not by as much as you think.

“All right. For today we’ll march in separate columns and make camp independently.” Rick took out a map. “We’re here. How soon can you reach this crossroad? It’s about ten kilometers.”

“Three hours. Another hour to set up camp.” Baker studied the sky. “Still an hour of daylight when we’ve done all that.”

“Good. Do that. When you get there, I’ll have guides to show you where to camp. What about messing the troops? Any special requirements?”

“We don’t eat beef or pork, and not all that much meat of any kind.”

“That just the men, or officers too?”

“I enjoy roast beef and ham, but I won’t eat them when the troops are present. Neither will the other officers, but that’s just courtesy. Gurkhas know British troops will eat anything. They joke about it.”

“Local cereals all right?”

“Indeed. Colonel, I’m not worried about your men, but what of Wanax Ganton’s troops? Won’t they attack us on sight?”

“Or run away,” Rick said. “Wanax Ganton finds a different temporary camp every day. It will be within a few kilometers of my camp, and he’ll probably have scouts mingling with my forces, but I don’t anticipate any problems. Just to be sure, I’ll have Captain Lord Arwel join you en route. He’ll be carrying my banner.” Rick indicated the devices on his tabard. “He’ll have a dozen scouts with him. They’ll ride ahead, he’ll ride with you. You shouldn’t encounter any royal forces to begin with, but if you do, I expect that banner carried by a Drantos baron ought to be enough.

“I’ll also send ahead to have the evening meal ready for you. Major, you and your officers are invited to dine with me at dusk this evening in the star officers’ mess. The fare will probably include stew, and God only knows what kind of meat went into it, but it will be hot. I’ll have an officer come to escort you. Meanwhile, I’ll send Arwel and some mounted archers as guides. And I have your radio if you need to call me.”

“Sounds reasonable. Sir.”

“And what will you do when Matthias sends messengers asking where the hell you think you are going?”

“Sir, I will reply that it is no longer his business and send them back to him,” Baker said. “And warn him not to follow us, at his peril. I rather think that will be notice enough.”

“Right. Major, you mentioned some more resources Agzaral is sending to this planet.”

“I did, Colonel.” He looked up at the True Sun. “But it’s a somewhat . . . lengthy story, and I have more guesses than fact. If I’m to be at your dinner by dusk, I want a bit of time in hand to be sure I’m not late. By your leave, Sir?”

Rick nodded.

“You can tell me tonight at dinner. Godspeed, Major.”


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