War Games. Brian Stableford
start.”
When neither Delizia nor Justina Magna moved to go, he turned abruptly on his heel and went off down the line of wagons. Justina Magna stood up, brushing sand from her hands.
“My men,” said Delizia, calling her attention to what Garstone had said.
“They are his men,” she replied, quite calmly. “What did you want to say to the lieutenant? A few words of condolence—an apology—or a prayer?”
“Maybe a little of all three,” he answered, unperturbed by the irony.
“He’s all yours,” she told him. She turned to follow Garstone back along the line. He went beyond his own wagons to those of the veich, and when she caught up with him he was trying to inquire of one of the Calvar’s clanless servants what was likely to happen next. He wasn’t getting very far, because the only language the two had in common was that of the sioconi of Omer, and neither was proficient in it. She took over the questioning, using the language of the clanless.
“We will continue to Ziarat,” he told her.
“Immediately?” she asked.
He confirmed that that was his meaning. She explained this to Garstone, who seemed displeased. “It’s probably best,” she told him. “The less time we spend on the road the better. We can take the dead with us and bury them when we do stop for the night.”
Garstone shrugged, scowling. “We’d better ask Scapaccio. It’s his expedition.”
They walked back to the wagons they had brought from Omer, looking for Cesar Scapaccio, who was responsible for their being here. They found him in the back of one of the wagons talking to the optiman Andros. Andros had the casing of a heavy machine gun in his lap, having stripped it down to adjust the ammunition feed. The gun had jammed during the fighting. Of all the people in the party, only Scapaccio seemed to get on well with the optiman; the rest regarded him as a rather nightmarish prospect, an object of muted horror.
Scapaccio looked up as the sergeant and the woman approached, and brought the lamp from the front of the wagon to the back.
“They want us to move on,” explained Justina Magna. “I think they’ll proceed anyway. They don’t want to spend any more time on the road than they have to. Do we go with them?”
“Of course,” said Scapaccio, ignoring the scowl on Garstone’s face.
“I don’t...,” began the sergeant, but trailed off almost immediately as something caught his eye. It was something at or beyond the front of the wagon train, and he was the only one of the four in a position to see it. The other three could only watch the expression on his face changing.
“What is it?” asked Justina Magna, stepping around him so that she, too, could see.
“Visitors,” replied Garstone, grimly.
* * * *
Remy dismounted in front of Garstone and the woman. By this time Scapaccio had come out of the wagon, followed by Andros. All four stood and stared at the newcomers, and along the line all work had stopped. There was a momentary silence.
Scapaccio pushed his way in between Garstone and Justina Magna and looked Remy up and down.
“Who are you?” he asked, taking no pains to control his surprise at finding a human on the road to Ziarat.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” said Remy dryly. He noticed that Garstone’s rifle had shifted in such a way that the muzzle was now directed at his head, though the sergeant’s finger was not as yet on the trigger.
“Remy,” said the sergeant flatly. “His name is Remy. He was once a sergeant in the army.”
Remy looked at the sergeant for a long time, his eyes hard and bright, trying to remember where he had met the man and what name he had borne. He couldn’t capture the essential memory until the other said, “I’m Garstone.” Then it fell into place—a minor incident in the pacification, involving the annexation of some property. There had been a squabble concerning the matter of how much annexation was to be done by two separate groups under different wings of Command Haidra’s network of authority.
“This man’s a deserter,” said Garstone to Scapaccio.
“That’s right,” said Remy. “I threw away my stripes.” He pointed behind him at his mounted companions. “This is Doon, and Madoc, and Iasus Fiemme. We make a living trying to keep the roads clear for the benefit of innocent travelers. We don’t always succeed.”
“My name is Cesar Scapaccio,” said the man in front of Remy. “Colonel, Command Kilifi. I’m an archaeologist.”
Remy’s eyes narrowed. “What brings an off-world archaeologist to Azreon?” he asked. “Or to Haidra, come to that?”
“I travel quite a lot,” replied Scapaccio. “Visiting sites of various kinds, mostly to do with the mapirenes. Haidra was once a mapirene world.”
“Thirty thousand years ago.” said Remy. “And there was just a small base—not far from our base in Omer. As I remember, the word was that it was taken out by a particle beam from orbit. Pulverized entirely—not that there was much of it to start with. That doesn’t explain why you’re here in Azreon.”
“I have reason to believe that there was a second base on this world. In the heartland of this continent.”
“The heartland!” Remy made no attempt to mask his astonishment. “You mean Syrene?”
“The area that’s now a desert—that’s correct.”
Remy glanced sideways at Iasus Fiemme, who looked quite impassive. One of the horses ridden by the humans snorted loudly.
“How badly did the er’kresha hit you?” asked Remy, his voice much softer now, with the aggressive edge quite gone.
“We lost four men, including the officer in charge of the platoon. Our doctor is also wounded, though not seriously. I don’t think the other party lost any men at all—the attack was concentrated on our wagons. There were about fifty in the group that attacked us—you can count the dead back in the canyon, if you wish.”
Remy let his eyes roam from Scapaccio’s face to the sergeant’s gun, then to the woman’s face and finally to the huge bulk of the optiman. Then his gaze passed beyond the group to meet the eyes of a newcomer who had come up behind them—the veir with whom Justina Magna had talked.
“They were from one of the hill tribes,” said the veir. “They must have been ahead of us, keeping just clear of the road, heading south. I don’t know where they were going.”
“I think I do,” muttered Remy. Automatically, he made the comment in the same language the veir had used, and Justina Magna looked at him sharply. She was the only one of the humans able to understand it.
“What do you mean?” she asked, also in the language of the clanless.
Remy looked at her, surprised to hear the alien words on her lips. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Justina Magna. I’m a linguist. I’m supposed to be the mission’s interpreter—I learned the languages of Azreon from strangers in Omer. This seemed to be a good opportunity to use and extend my knowledge.”
Remy turned his attention back to Garstone, more to evade the woman’s question than because he had anything to say to him.
“Still a sergeant,” he commented, “after all these years.”
“What are you?” retorted Garstone.
Remy pointed at the giant, and said, “What’s he?”
“My name is Andros,” said the optiman. His voice was surprisingly soft. Remy looked at him more closely. He was over two meters tall, with massive shoulders. Remy noted that he held the machine gun effortlessly, though an ordinary man would have staggered