Chapter 9
No one came storming into the barracks in the predawn darkness before reveille. No one came and grabbed him in the shower, or on his way to breakfast, or even at breakfast. Everything, in fact, settled nicely into the normal morning routine, from the rotten food to the blaring trumpet calling the recruits to the morning parade-ground maneuver.
It wasn't until they'd finished the first two drills that the routine was abruptly broken.
He spotted the officer angling across the field toward Grisko as the sergeant shouted out the commands that ended the second drill. Grisko set the recruits to attention and for a moment he and the officer talked quietly together. Then the officer turned to face the trainees, and Jack saw that it was Lieutenant Basht from the recruiting office.
'All right, listen up,' Grisko bellowed across the ranks. 'The following fall out and go with Lieutenant Basht: Brinkster, Kayna, Li, Mbusu, Montana, Randolph.'
The sodden breakfast, which had already been lying heavily on Jack's stomach, suddenly picked up about a ton of extra weight. Heart pounding in his ears, he left his position and moved up through the ranks.
'Form up: two by three,' Basht ordered as the six recruits reached the front. They did so, Alison and Jommy taking the front two spots. Jack stepped into place behind Jommy, with Rogan Mbusu falling in behind him. Brinkster and Li, both girls, took their places behind Alison.
Basht glanced over their formation, and for a second Jack thought he was going to make some snide comment. But he merely did a crisp military turn and strode off the field.
They followed, automatically falling into step with him. As they walked, Jack tried to puzzle out what was going on.
His analysis didn't get very far. Jommy and Alison were certainly the best of the bunch, which might imply this group had been singled out for special commendation. Problem was, he and Rogan were here, too, and neither of them was exactly near the top of the list. As for Brinkster and Li, Jack had noticed them along the way but neither had struck him as being either particularly good or particularly bad. So ordinary and unnoticeable were they, in fact, that he'd never even heard their first names.
Maybe it was a random sample, then. But with a hundred eighty boys and only twenty girls in the group, it didn't seem likely that a spin of the dart board would end up with three of each.
He was still trying to come up with some explanation when he suddenly realized that Lieutenant Basht was leading them straight toward the headquarters building.
Jack's heart had been starting to quiet down. Now, it picked up its pace again. So that was it. They'd figured out somehow that he was last night's casual visitor, and this whole thing was a smokescreen to get him away from the main group.
Beneath his shirt, he felt Draycos shifting around against his skin. Apparently, the K'da had figured it out, too. 'Easy,' he muttered a warning. The first rule Uncle Virgil had hammered into him when facing the authorities was not to do their job for them. You're innocent until they absolutely prove otherwise, he had told Jack over and over. And for ten minutes after that, too, he'd usually added.
There didn't seem to be any extra security hanging around the building as Basht opened the door and led the way inside. Jack rather expected him to take them straight upstairs to the records room, or maybe to split Jack off from the others and take him up there. To his mild surprise, Basht led them instead to a first-floor room.
To his even greater surprise, the room was filled with computer stations. The stations were unoccupied, but a thin man wearing colonel's insignia was standing near the front beside a double stack of sealed cartons. From the way he eyed them as they filed in, Jack guessed he'd been waiting specifically for them.
'Parade rest,' Basht ordered as they formed into their two-by-three again. 'Mbusu. Tell me about Sunright.'
Sunright? Frantically, Jack searched his memory. Then he remembered: it was one of the worlds that had been listed in the Current Whinyard's Edge Missions section of their training manual.
And that was about all he remembered. If Basht called on him, he was going to be in serious trouble.
For a second it looked like Rogan was already there. 'Uh—' the boy floundered. His voice quavered the way it always did whenever he had to talk to a superior officer, and Jack winced in sympathy.
Then the mental wheels seemed to catch. 'Sunright, sir,' Rogan said, his voice still trembling a little. 'Third planet of the Gamma Lartrin system. Human colonized in 2115; ceded to the Parprins and Agri by the Treaty of Mcdougall in—'
'Lose the sniveling,' Basht cut him off. 'Kayna? What are the Edge's interests in the place?'
'The Edge has been hired by a Parprin daublite mining colony to protect its interests from a group of Agrist claim-jumpers,' Alison said briskly. So she was on top of this, too. That figured. 'Troops have been in position on the ground for the past sixteen months.'
'Planetary bio stats?'
'Atmosphere is slightly oxygen-heavy, but well within human tolerances,' Alison said. 'Gravity is three percent less than Earth Standard; temperatures average two degrees cooler.'
Basht nodded. 'Who are we facing there? Randolph?'
'The Agri have their local military group,' Jommy said. 'Mostly volunteers. They've also hired units of the Shamshir mercenaries.'
'Relative strengths?' Basht asked. 'Li?'
Li seemed to shrink behind the smooth skin of her face. 'I don't remember, sir,' she said in a barely audible voice.
For a long second Basht's eyes burned into her, as if he was trying to set her on fire. Then, the glare flicked over her shoulder. 'Brinkster? What's our strength?'
Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw the girl wince. 'I think we have eight hundred troops on the ground, sir.'
'You think?'
'We have eight hundred troops, sir,' she said, more firmly this time.
'And the Shamshir?' Basht asked, his eyes finally focusing on Jack. 'Montana?'
