March Upcountry

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Hey, Julian, old puddy!” Poertena yelled across the shuttle bay. “Gimme a hand what t’is pag!”

“Jesus Christ, Poertena!” Julian hefted the carry handles on the outside of the quivering memory plastic sack. “What the pock . . . I mean, what the heck do you have in here?”

“Every pocking ting I could pocking pack,” the armorer answered. “Tee pocking suits don’ run on t’eir pocking own. You know t’at!”

“What the hell is in here?” Julian asked, reaching for the mouth of the sack. It was heavy as hell.

“Get chore pocking hands out o’ my pocking pag!” Poertena snarled, slapping at the offending member.

“Look, if I’m gonna help you hump it, I’m gonna know what the hell I’m carrying.” Julian popped the sack opened and looked in. “Jesus Christ, Poertena!” he repeated. “The fucking wrench?”

“Hey!” the little Pinopan shouted, practically hopping up and down in fury. “You got your pocking way of doin’ it, an’ I got my pocking way! You never can get people out, they power goes off? Huh? Have to blow tee pocking seals! Only ting holding t’em seals is tee pocking secondary latches! You get tee secondary latches loose, you got tee armor open, and tee seals not damaged! Bot no! Big time billy badass soldier always gotta blow tee pocking bolts!”

“That’s what it says to do in the manual,” Julian said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Not bang on ’em until they come apart!”

“Hey!” Sergeant Major Kosutic shouted from the entrance to the bay as she strode across to break up the incipient fight. “Am I gonna have to jack both of you up?” she asked, glaring up at Julian.

“No, Sergeant Major,” he said. “Everything’s under control.” He should have known she’d show up. She popped up like a damned Djinn every time anything got out of whack.

“Well, keep it strack! We’ve got a hard, cold mission to perform, and we don’t need any sand in the gears. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major!”

“And, Poertena,” the sergeant major said, rounding on the braced Pinopan. “One, you’d better learn not to tell any more sergeants ‘pock you’ in public, or I will have your ass. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major,” Poertena said, looking for a convenient rock to melt away under.

“Two, you’d better learn a new word to replace ‘pock,’ because if you say it one more time in my hearing, I will personally tear off your stripes and feed them to you— raw. You are in The Empress’ Own now, not whatever rag-bag line outfit you came from. We do not say ‘pock’ or ‘rap’ or any of those other words. We especially do not say them while rigging the pocking Prince. Do I make myself pocking clear?” she finished, pounding a rock-hard index finger into the lance corporal’s chest.

Poertena’s eyes flickered for a moment in panic. “Clear, Sergeant Major,” he answered, finally, obviously unsure if he could get along without his verbal comma.

“Now what’s in the Santa bag?” she snarled.

“My pock . . . my tools, Sergeant Major,” Poertena answered. “I gotta have my po . . . my tools, Sergeant Major. Tee armor don’ run by itself!”

“Sergeant Julian?” the sergeant major said, turning to the sergeant who’d started to drop out of his braced position as Poertena seemed to be getting the worst of the chewing out.

“Yes, Sergeant Major?” Julian snapped back to attention.

“What was your objection? You seemed to have one.”

“We have mass limitations, Sergeant Major!” the NCO barked. “I objected to certain of Lance Corporal Poertena’s tools that I didn’t believe were strictly necessary, Sergeant Major!”

“Poertena?”

“He doesn’t like my po . . . my wrench, Sergeant Major,” the lance corporal answered somewhat sullenly. He was fairly sure he was going to lose the tool.

The SMaj nodded and opened the bulging sack. She glanced at the packrat’s nest inside, and nodded again. Then she turned to the armorer and fixed him with a glare.

“Poertena.”

“Yes, Sergeant Major?”

“You know we’re humping across tee whole . . . this whole planet, right?” the top sergeant asked mildly.

“Yes, Sergeant Major.” Poertena didn’t brighten up; he’d been on the receiving end of mild and bitter before.

The NCO nodded again, and pulled on her earlobe.

“Because of your unique position, you will probably be exempt from helping to hump the ammo, power, and armor.”

Kosutic looked around the bay, then back into the sack.

“But I’m not going to have any of these people carrying unnecessary stuff,” she growled.

“But, Sergeant Major—”

“Did I ask you to speak?” the NCO snapped.

“No, Sergeant Major!”

“As I say, I’m not going to have anyone carrying unnecessary stuff,” she continued, fixing the Pinopan with a frigid eye. “However, I’m not going to tell you, the armorer, what you really need to do your job, either. I’m going to leave that entirely up to you. But I will tell you that nobody else in the Company is going to hump one item for you. Is that perfectly clear?” she ended, with another rock- hard index finger, and the armorer gulped and nodded his head.

“Yes, Sergeant Major.” He winced internally at what that meant.

“You are being given slack on what you’ve got to carry,” Kosutic said, “because you have your own stuff to hump. Not, by Satan, so that other people can hump it for you. Clear?”

Index finger.

“Clear, Sergeant Major.”

“So, if you want your hammer, or wrench, or whatever, fine. But you —” index finger “—are gonna hump it. Clear?”

“Clear, Sergeant Major.” Poertena’s voice sounded more strangled than ever, not least because Julian stood grinning at him behind Kosutic’s back. The sergeant major gave the armorer one last glare . . . then turned to the squad leader with cobralike speed.

“Sergeant Julian,” she said mildly, “I’d like a moment of your time out in the passage.”

Julian’s smile froze, and he cast a burning glare at the Pinopan before he followed the top sergeant out of the shuttle bay. Poertena, for his part, could have cared less about the glare. He was trying to figure out how to fit two hundred liters of tools into a ten-liter space.

“We can’t fit that in,” Lieutenant Jasco said, slowly and carefully so that Lieutenant Gulyas could understand. He pointed to his pad, where the loading program was already in the yellow. “We’re . . . gonna . . . be . . . overloaded,” he continued in the simplest possible terms, and Gulyas gave him a friendly smile that stopped at the eyes. Then he reached up to clap the much larger platoon leader on the shoulder.

“You know, Aziz, you’re an okay guy, most of the time. But from time to time, you’re a real prick.” He went on as the other lieutenant’s face colored up. “We need trade goods. We need ammo. We need power. But if we don’t have enough supplements to last the whole trip, we’re all gonna die anyway!”

“You’ve stripped the ship of every last vitamin and herbal remedy!” Jasco snapped, slapping the hand off his shoulder. “We don’t need three hundred kilos of supplements!”