“Manfred, you are now a lieutenant,” I told him.
He glared up at me. “Sir, I don’t want to be a lieutenant. I’m a noncom.”
“You’re a lieutenant, Manfred, until I can get someone else to head Vorl’s squad. You will behave like a lieutenant and the squad will treat you like a lieutenant. End of discussion.”
Clearly unhappy, he mumbled, “Yes, sir.”
“How long will this transfusion take?” I asked one of the troopers.
She squinted at the readout numbers. “Nine minutes, sir.”
“Lieutenant Manfred, there will be an officers’ meeting in fifteen minutes, where my tent used to be. Report to me there.”
“Yessir.”
Both the troopers were grinning at him.
It was a pitiful officers’ meeting. Manfred’s shoulder and face were covered with spray bandages. Frede sat with her legs poking straight out, encased in regenerator packs up to the hips. And Quint looked strangely uneasy, as if he thought he ought to be wounded somewhere, too.
I had several nicks and burns on my arms, legs, and face, but nothing that required more than a smear of protein salve and a bit of time.
“What’s the supply situation?” I asked Quint.
He took a deep breath. “Not good, at the moment. Practically everything was destroyed in the fighting. We have enough food on hand for three days, max. We’re down to a dozen spare power packs. And the medical supplies are already stretched to the limit. We need more regenerators, especially. And fresh tents, cots, clothing, replacements for damaged body armor—”
“That’s enough,” I said. “I get the picture.”
“When does the medevac ship arrive?” Frede asked.
“It doesn’t,” I said.
“What do you mean? We’ve got wounded here we can’t even treat properly! They’ve got to be lifted back to the fleet.”
“There isn’t any fleet. They were jumped by a superior force and had to retreat.”
“They ran away?” Quint’s eyes went so wide I could see white all around them. “They’ve left us here and run away?”
“That’s the situation,” I said. “We’re on our own.”
It took several seconds for them to absorb the bad news. Frede and Quint stared at each other.
“Those goddamned lizards,” Quint muttered.
Frede looked down at her encased legs. “I never did trust them, the cold-blooded bastards.”
Manfred nodded to himself, as if he had expected nothing less. I was struck by the difference in looks between Manfred and the two lieutenants. The features of his face were sharper, harder. A hawk’s beak for a nose, narrow eyes of dark brown, almost black. Thick bristles of black hair, cropped close to the skull. Even his skin was different from theirs, swarthier, stretched tight over his jutting cheekbones.
“We’re going to die here,” Quint whispered.
Manfred almost smiled. “What’s the difference? If the fleet had taken us back they would’ve just put us back in cryo storage.”
Quint glared at him. “You can be revived from cryo storage, soldier, sooner or later.”
“Sure,” said Manfred, “when they’re ready to let us die for them.”
“That’s treasonous talk!”
“Hold on,” I said. “We’re not dead yet, and I won’t have my officers squabbling.” Turning to Manfred, I added, “Not even my new officers.”
“Sorry, sir,” he muttered. To me, not to Quint.
Frede asked, “If we only have a few days’ rations and no prospect of resupply from the fleet, what chance do we have?”
“There’s a Skorpis base on this planet,” I replied. “They have plenty of food there.”
“Raid the Skorpis base?”
“That’s suicide!” Quint insisted.
I gave him a wintry smile. “Would you rather die fighting or starve to death?”
Manfred said, “Sir, with all due respect, that Skorpis base is on the other side of the planet. It’ll take a helluva lot more than a few days to get there. What do we live on in the meantime?”
“We live off the land,” I said. “Our briefings said that the local vegetation and animals are edible. Some of them, at least.”
“What about our wounded?” Frede asked. “Some of them can’t travel.”
I said, “We can’t leave the wounded here. They’d starve to death. And the Skorpis will probably come back; they still want to knock out our transceiver, I’m sure.”