March Upcountry

“T’anks, Denat,” he began, then broke off as his helmet started to pop and hiss.

“Shit!” He tore off the helmet as the earphones began to howl. “Modderpockers are suppose a be waterproof,” he grumped. He’d deal with it later.

The company had been slogging through the waist– to chest-high swamp all the long Mardukan afternoon. The going was slow and hard, with the black mud sucking at their boots and chameleon suits, and hidden roots and fallen branches grabbing at their ankles. Most of them were coated in muck from top to bottom after repeated falls.

The only exceptions were the marksmen sitting on the flar-ta.

“Look at t’at stuck up prig sittin’ up there,” Poertena grumbled, glaring at the prince who was on the lead pack beast.

“You’d be up there, too,” Despreaux said, moving forward to check on her Bravo Team, “if, of course, you could shoot as well as he can.”

“Rub it in,” the armorer muttered. “An’ watch where you step. One o’ these modderpocker swamp-beast eat you!”

Roger’s head twitched to the right, tracking a ripple in the water, but it was small and heading away. The ride wasn’t much different from normal, although it was perhaps a tad smoother. The flar- ta crushed most of the fallen limbs or trees they encountered without even breaking stride.

The swamp’s flora ran to smaller species than in the jungle, and many of those he’d seen seemed relatively young. Cord had indicated that these areas had been fields in his father’s day, so perhaps that explained their lack of age. Which, in turn, might explain their smaller size, now that he thought about it.

He turned to look behind him at the Marines sliding through the swamp and patted the snoring Dogzard on her head. The poor bastards were covered in the thick black mud and looked as worn and dragged as he’d ever seen them. The necessity of holding their rifles up out of the muck and pushing their way through it was obviously telling on them. It was particularly hard on the grenadiers, who had their boxes and bandoliers of grenades piled on their heads and shoulders with the heavy grenade launchers held up out of the slop. All in all, it made him feel like a shit to be sitting on Patricia’s back.

The only consolation was that he’d been contributing. The caravan had attracted a host of carnivores as it passed through the swamp, and the Marines’ bead rifles, even when switched to the heavier tungsten-cored armor piercing rounds, weren’t as effective in the water as his big 11-millimeter magnum “smoke-pole.” The lower velocity, heavier slugs punched into the water, rather than tending to come apart on the surface.

But he wasn’t happy about it, especially with night coming on.

Pahner moved forward, pushing against the drag of the swamp as he responded to a call from the lead mahouts. He sloshed up alongside, and D’Len Pah looked down from the slow-moving reptiloid and pointed his goad stick in the direction of the descending sun.

“We must rest the beasts soon,” he said. “And it will be very difficult to move in the dark.”

Pahner had recognized the inevitability an hour before. There was no end to the swamp in sight, and apparently no island-forming uplands. And even if there’d been islands, they would have been inhabited by something.

“Agreed,” he said. “We’re going to have to stop somewhere.”

“And we need to unload the packs,” the mahout said. “The flar-ta will sleep standing up, but we must unload them. Otherwise, they will be useless tomorrow.”

Pahner looked around and shook his head in resignation. It was the same wet, weird vista as it had been for the last few hours, so he supposed here was as good as anywhere.

“Okay, hold up here. I’ll go get started on unloading them.”

“We can’t just dump the stuff in the swamp,” Roger said. It was meant as an observation, but his tone made it sound like a protest.

“I know that, Your Highness,” Pahner said testily. Just when the prince started to get a grip, he said the wrong thing at the wrong time. “We’re not going to dump it in the swamp.”

“Going vertical?” Lieutenant Gulyas asked. Because he was a couple of months senior to Jasco, he’d taken over as XO when Sawato was killed, turning his platoon over to Staff Sergeant Hazheir, its senior surviving NCO. It didn’t really require more. Second Platoon had been hit hard, both in the ambush and before, and was already down to half its original complement.

“Yep,” Pahner responded, looking up. The trees in the area weren’t the giants of the rain forest they’d traveled under for weeks. They were lower, more like large cypresses, with branches that spread out to choke the light and red vinelike projections that reached up from their roots to search for oxygen.

“Start setting up slings. We’ll sling the armor off one piece at a time, then sling the rest of the gear in bundles.” The company had plenty of issue climbing-rope. The lines were rated to support an eighty-ton tank, but the forty-meter length that each team leader carried weighed less than a kilo. There was more than enough to lift all the gear.

“What about the troops?” Roger asked. “Where are they going to sleep?”

“Well, that’s the tough part, Your Highness,” Kosutic told him with a grin. “This is how you separate the Marines from the goats.”

“Besides the usual method—with a crowbar,” Gulyas said, completing a joke as old as armies.

“T’is really suck.” Poertena didn’t even bother to try to get comfortable.

“Oh, it’s not all that bad,” Julian said as he adjusted the strap across his chest. The ebullient NCO was coated from head to toe in black, stinking mud, and exhausted from the day’s travel, so his manic grin had to be false. “It could be worse.”

“How?” Poertena demanded, adjusting his own rope. The two Marines, along with the rest of the company, were tied with their backs to trees. Since they had no choice but to sleep on their feet, the ropes around them were designed to keep them from slipping down into the chest-deep muck. As tired as they were, there was a distinct possibility that they wouldn’t wake up if they did.

“Well,” Julian replied thoughtfully as the skies opened up in a typical Mardukan deluge, “something could be trying to eat us.”

Pahner had the sentries walking the perimeter and shining red flashlights on each individual. It was hoped that a combination of the movement and the light would drive off the vampire moths. Of course, there were also the swamp beasts to worry about, and it was always possible that movement and light would attract them, but there wasn’t a great deal he could do about that.

All in all, it looked like being a very bad night for the Marines.

“No, Kostas,” Roger said, shaking his head at the item Matsugae had produced. “You use it.”

“I’m fine, Your Highness,” the valet said with a tired smile. The normally dapper servant was covered in black slime. “Really. You shouldn’t sleep in this muck, Sir. It’s not right.”

“Kostas,” Roger said, adjusting his chest rope so that he could keep his rifle out of the muck but still get to it quickly, “this is an order. You will take that hammock and sling it somewhere and then climb into it. You will sleep the entire night in it. And you will get some goddamned rest. I’m going to be on the back on that damned pack beast again tomorrow, and you won’t, so I can damned well spend a night sitting up. God knows I’ve seen enough ‘white nights’ carousing. One more won’t kill me.”

Matsugae touched Roger on the shoulder and turned away so that the prince wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. Without even realizing it, Roger had started to grow up. Finally.

“Now that was something I never thought I’d see,” Kosutic said quietly.

The sergeant major had managed to rig a line so that she was out of the water, dangling in her combat harness. She didn’t know how long she could manage it, but for the time being at least she was off her legs. If she did sleep, she figured she was going to look like something from a bad horror holovid: a dead body dangling on a meat hook.