March Upcountry

Remember to use my chamber bucket and not the floor?”

“Yeah,” Roger chuckled. “Something like that.” He looked back along the line, where the natives of Pasule were pressing forward to offer baskets of food to the Marines.

Roger looked up and smiled as the sergeant major walked up the line of packbeasts but the smile slid off his face at her expression.

“What?” the prince asked.

“D’Estrees picked up a transmission,” said the sergeant major. “No direction and it was only a tiny snip of encryption. But it looks like somebody found the shuttles and reported them to the port.”

“Grand,” Roger snarled. He glared up at the clouds for a moment, then looked back at Kosutic. “You’ve told the Old Man?”

“Yep.”

“And he said?”

“He said it may be a good thing you and Elenora talked him into telling our friends along the way the truth,” the sergeant major said with a small, crooked smile. “Something about covering our back trail.”

“That was the idea,” Roger agreed, then sighed. “I just hope we don’t really need it in the end.”

“You and me both, Your Highness.”

“All right, SMaj,” the prince said, and punched her lightly on the shoulder. “Guess we’ll just have to improvise, adapt, and overcome.”

“Like always, Sir,” Kosutic agreed, and moved off to complete her own final check.

Roger watched her go, then turned to look to the northeast, where the mountains which were probably their next major obstacle loomed. They were reported to be high, dry, frozen and impassable. Of course, that was the judgment of a species which would find the Amazon drought stricken.

“I guess it’s time to get this train a-moving,” he murmured, and grasped Patty’s armored head glacis, stepped on her knee, and lifted himself onto her back. Another mahout had been killed, so somebody had to drive, and he plucked the mahout stick from his belt and lifted it.

The line of drivers behind him, Marine and Mardukan, lifted their sticks in response. Everyone was ready to go, and Roger looked to Captain Pahner, who waved in reply.

“Okay,” the prince said to the pack beast. “Time to head upcountry.”

“Move ’em out!” he shouted. He pressed the forked head of the stick into the tender flesh under the armored collar, and as the flar-ta lurched into motion, he looked up at the mountains once more.

They weren’t going to be fun.