“Q’Nkok is to be our first stop,” he observed after a moment. “The humans want to trade for such things as only the shit-sitters can provide. We will discuss this with the humans.”
“But—” his brother started to object.
“The humans aren’t good in the jungle,” Cord overrode the objection, “but they are very wise, nonetheless. I know they’re shit-sitters, but they’re smart and, I think, honorable shit-sitters. If I had my old master here, I would ask him for advice. But I don’t. Far Voitan is fallen, and all its heroes with it. I can’t ask my master; therefore, we will ask the humans.”
“You’re a stubborn
“But I’m also right,” Cord retorted with a grunting laugh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Eleanora awoke to a high-pitched, atonal chanting and a low-tempo, muffled drum beat. Her eyes flickered open, and she froze in adrenaline shock at the sight of a swaying vampire larva. The perspective was weird as the flickering firelight of full dark combined with the swaying dance of the creature to make it seem a strange hallucination. It seemed to shrink to the size of a caterpillar, and then swelled suddenly up to the size of a . . . Mardukan in a mask.
The dancer swayed in the firelight, and as Eleanora blinked at him the long, dripping fangs of the beast were revealed as a crown about his head, the camouflaged body as a painted wrap. Behind the shuffling figure were more dancers: a giant, pincer-armed beetle, a two-armed snake like the legendary Naga, and a low, writhing, six- armed beast whose maw was filled with sharklike teeth.
The fog of sleep and firelight, the swaying of the dancers, the singing and drumbeats were hypnotic. Eleanora lay in a spell, trapped by the symbolism of the animistic rite as the drumbeats increased and the singing shifted through patterns of atonality. The tempo increased, and the dancers’ rhythm became more frenzied, until with a final burst of song, now perfectly blended with the drums in tone and pitch, there was a final crash, and the dancers froze.
The audience was left with a feeling of pleasant incompleteness as the dancers departed and conversation broke out among the Marines and Mardukans. Eleanora tried to shake off her fog and looked around for something to help with the attempt, only to find herself rather dreamily contemplating a boot.
She blinked, and her eyes moved upward. The female Marine to whom the boot was attached stood at parade rest by her head, one arm behind her back, plasma gun cocked forward. Eleanora looked around, and discovered another one—this one a grenadier—at her feet. How interesting.
She sat up and rubbed her eyes. It didn’t help. She still felt like death warmed over, but at least her brain was a little clearer than before the nap. She looked up at the Marine at her head.
“How long was I out?” She hadn’t checked the time at any point in the afternoon, so the current time, halfway through the local evening, told her nothing. Nor did her question communicate very much to the Marine. It came out mostly as a croak, so she cleared her throat and tried again.
“Corporal . . . Bosum, isn’t it? How long was I sleep? And, thank you, but guarding me was probably unnecessary.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” The Marine looked down and smiled. “But His Highness told us to make sure no one bothered you.” She thought about the other question. “I don’t know how long you were asleep before we got here, but we’ve been on guard for three hours.”
“Five or six, then,” was Eleanora’s mumbled guess. “I should feel better than this after five hours’ sleep,” she muttered plaintively.
She stood up, and every joint in her body seemed to creak or pop. Her legs hurt so much that she felt lightheaded and queasy, and she swayed for a moment until the Marine corporal steadied her.
“Take it easy, Ma’am,” the plasma gunner said. “You’ll get used to it after a few more days.”
“Oh, sure,” Eleanora said bitterly. “That’s easy for you Marines to say. You’ve got so many nanites running around in you, you’re practically cyborgs! And you’re trained for this, too.”
“But we don’t start out that way,” the male Marine put in. “They start us off systems-free in Basic.”
“He’s right,” Bosum agreed with nasty cheerfulness. “We all go through this the first few days in Basic. It’s just your turn,” she added with an evil grin.
O’Casey twisted her torso and gasped as she felt her back crack in half a dozen places. Rotating her shoulders, arms, and legs extracted more crackling, and she decided that with a shower, a bath, another shower, a couple of tubes of heating gel, and two days’ sleep, she’d be just fine. Barring that . . .
“Where is His Highness?” she asked, as she glanced around the clearing without seeing either Roger or Pahner, who was bound to be close by the prince.
“I’ll lead you to him,” the plasma gunner replied, and the male Marine fell in behind as they wove their way across the stockade.
Roger, Pahner, Kosutic, and the senior Mardukans were in a nearby hut, watching the festivities. Roger looked up from feeding the lizard he’d apparently adopted and smiled as Eleanora hobbled in.
“Ms. O’Casey,” he said formally. “You’re looking better for your nap.”
The creature swarmed onto his lap at the chief of staff’s approach and hissed at her faintly. His Highness tapped it lightly on the head, and it ducked down and stretched out its neck to sniff at her. Apparently, it decided she was part of the pack, because it gave one last sniff, then twisted around and curled up on the prince’s lap, exactly as if it belonged there.
“I feel like death warmed over,” she answered. “If I’d known you were going to be taking me on adventure tours, I would have had the appropriate upgrades before we left.”
She nodded at Matsugae as he handed her a plastic cup of water and two analgesic tablets.
“Thank you, Kostas.” She took the tablets and a sip of the water, which was surprisingly cool. It had obviously been chilled by one of the bladders. “Thank you again.”
She looked around the gathering. The Marines were scattered throughout the village, interacting much more fully with the Mardukans than they had been. Some of the humans were cleaning weapons, and some were quite obviously on alert, but most were socializing. Poertena had produced a pack of cards from somewhere and appeared to be teaching some of the younger Mardukan warriors poker while other Marines were demonstrating their entertainment pads or simply talking. Warrant Dobrescu had apparently set up an aid station and was doing a little “hearts and minds” work.
Dobrescu, it turned out, was a pearl beyond price in more ways than one. The chief warrant officer had gone to flight school as a second career track after spending sixteen years as a Marine Raider medic.
Normally, the Navy provided Marine units in combat environments with corpsmen, but the Raiders were the Empire’s version of Saint special ops teams. They were designed to be out of contact with support for long periods of time, and thus needed specially trained medics who could do more than slap on a bandage and decide who went into the cryochambers and who didn’t. The training was intense, and included everything from primitive methods of reducing gangrenous infection to serving as the hands of a remote surgeon for thoracic trauma surgery.
Since Prince Roger’s company had never been intended for detached duty, none of the Powers That Were had ever considered the need to assign it an integral, dedicated medic. Unfortunately,
At the moment, he was examining the Mardukans who were willing to let him and doing his best to repair the various wounds and infections that any jungle inflicts on its inhabitants. As in other jungles, both on Earth and other planets, surface lesions were the main complaint. The Mardukans’ mucus covering helped in that regard, however, and only in spots where the coating had been damaged did the sores break out.
Dobrescu had analyzed the lesions and determined that they were primarily fungal in nature. A universal antifungal cream seemed to work on them and didn’t cause negative side effects. Better yet, the cream was produced by yeast in an auger jelly which could be replaced with sterilized meat broth. That made it one of the few
