went around him and rooted deeper.
'It's okay,' someone told him, 'it's our stuff.'
The hunt turned unruly. 'My spectroscope!' someone announced triumphantly.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' a voice requested.
Ali barely heard him over the shouting and jostle of equipment.
A single gunshot cracked the air. The bullet had been aimed out from camp, angled toward the ground. Where it struck the bare bedrock fifty feet out, the round blossomed into a shower of splintered light.
Everyone stopped.
'What was that?' a scientist said.
'That,' announced the shooter, 'was a Remington Lucifer.' He was a tall man, clean-shaven, slim in the fashion of field officers. He wore a chest rig with a shoulder holster for his modest-sized pistol. He had black and charcoal-gray camouflaged SWAT pants bloused into lightweight boots. His black T- shirt looked clean. A pair of night glasses dangled at his throat.
'It is an ammunition specially developed for use in the subplanet. It is a .25-caliber round, made of hardened plastic with a uranium tip. Different levels of heat and sonic vibration shape its functional capabilities. It can create a devastating wound, break up into multiple flechettes, or simply create a blinding distraction. This expedition marks the official debut for the Lucifer and other technologies.' The accent was Tennessee aristocracy.
Spurrier approached the soldier, muttonchops fluffed, hand outstretched. He had
delegated himself the scientists' spokesman. 'You must be Colonel Walker.'
Walker bypassed Spurrier's outstretched hand. 'We have two problems, people. First, those loads you have looted were packed by weight and balanced for carrying. Their contents have been carefully inventoried. I have a list of every item in every load. Every load is numbered. You have now set our departure back by a half hour while the loads are repacked.
'Problem two, one of my men made a request. You ignored it.' He met their eyes. 'In the future, you will please treat such requests as direct orders. From me.' He shut his holster case with a snap.
'Looting?' a scientist protested. 'It's our equipment. How can we loot ourselves? Just who's in charge here?'
Still wearing his pack, Shoat arrived. 'I see you've met,' he said, and turned to the group. 'As you know, Colonel Walker will be our chief of security. From here on out, he'll be in charge of our defense and logistics.'
'We have to ask him for permission to do science?' a man objected.
'This is an expedition, not your personal office,' said Shoat. 'The answer is yes. From now on, you'll need to coordinate your needs with the colonel's man, who will direct you to the proper shipment.'
'We're a group,' said Walker. With his uniform and trappings and his lean height, he had undeniable presence. In one hand he carried a Bible bound in matching camouflage. 'The group takes priority. You simply need to anticipate your individual requirements, and my quartermaster will assist you. For the sake of order, you'll have to speak with him at the end of each day. Not in the morning while we are packing, not in the middle of the day while we are on the trail.'
'I have to ask permission to get my own equipment?'
'We'll sort it out.' Shoat sighed. 'Colonel, is there anything else you'd like to add?' Walker sat on the edge of a rock with one boot planted. 'My job is hired gun,' he said.
'Helios brought me on to provide preservation for this enterprise.' He unfolded a sheaf of pages and held it up. 'My contract,' he said, skimming the clauses. 'It's got some rather unique features.'
'Colonel,' Shoat warned. Walker ignored him.
'Here, for instance, is a list of bonus payments that I get for each one of you who survives the journey.'
The colonel had their fullest attention. Shoat didn't dare interrupt.
'It reminds me a lot of a bounty,' said Walker. 'According to this, I get so much for every hand, foot, limb, ear, and/or eye that I deliver intact and healthy. That's your hands, your feet, your eyes.' He found the part. 'Let's see, at three hundred dollars per eye, that's six hundred per pair. But they're only offering five hundred per mind. Go figure.'
The outcry went up. 'This is outrageous.' Walker waved the contract like a white flag. 'You need to know something else,' he boomed out. They stilled, somewhat. 'I've put my time in down here, and it's time to smell the roses, if you will. Dabble in politics, maybe. Do some consulting work. Spend some downtime with my wife and kids. And that's where you come in.'
They drew quiet.
'You see,' said Walker, 'my aim is to get filthy rich off you people. I mean to collect every penny of this entire schedule of bonuses. Every eyeball, every testicle, every toe. Do you ever ask yourselves who you can really trust?'
Walker folded his contract and closed it in his daybook. 'Let me submit that the one thing in this world you can always trust is self-interest. And now you know mine.' Shoat was paying painful attention. The colonel had just threatened the expedition's union – and saved it. But why? wondered Ali. What was Walker's game?
He clapped the King James against his thigh. 'We are beginning a great journey into
the unknown. From now on, this expedition will operate within guidelines and the protection of my judgment. Our best protection will be a common set of ideas. A law. That law, people, is mine. From here on, we will observe tenets of military jurisprudence. In return, I will restore you to your families.'
Shoat's neck made a slow extension, turtle-like. His soldier of fortune had just declared himself the ultimate legal authority over the Helios expedition for the next year. It was the most audacious thing Ali had ever seen. She waited for the scientists to raise the roof with their protests.
But there was silence. Not one objection. Then Ali understood. The mercenary had just promised them their lives.
Like any expedition, they settled into themselves by inches. A pace developed.
Camp broke at 0800. Walker would read a prayer to his troops – usually something grim from Revelation or Job or his favorite, Paul to the Corinthians – The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light – before sending a half-dozen ahead to audit the risks. The scientists would follow. The porters brought up the rear, protected-driven, it was becoming evident – by the silent soldiers. The division of labor was succinct, the lines uncrossable.
The porters spoke Quechua, once the language of the Incas. None of the Americans spoke it, and their attempts to use Spanish were rebuffed. Ali tried her hand at it, but the indios were not disposed to fraternizing. At night the mercenaries patrolled their perimeter in three shifts, guarding less against hadal adversaries than against the flight of their own porters.
In those first weeks they rarely saw their scout. Ike had vaulted into the night of tunneling, and kept himself a day or two ahead of them. His absence created an odd yearning among the scientists. When they asked about his welfare, Walker was dismissive. The man knows his duty, he would say.
Ali had presumed the scout was part of Walker's paramilitary, but learned otherwise. He was not exactly a free agent, if that was the term. Apparently Shoat had purchased him from the US Army. He was essentially chattel, little different from his hadal days. Ike's mystery mounted, in part, Ali suspected, because people were able to attach their fantasies to him. She limited her own desires to eventually interviewing him about hadal ethnography, and possibly assembling a root glossary, though she could not get that orange out of her mind.
For the time being, Ike did what Walker termed his duty. He found them the path. He led them into the darkness. They all knew his blaze mark, a one-foot-high cross spray-painted on the walls in bright blue.
Shoat informed them the paint would begin degrading after a week. Again, it was an issue of his trade secrets. Helios was determined to throw any competitors off their scent. As one scientist pointed out,
