“So what if it does cause Gilder to do some thinking,” Rudi said. “I can’t see the military people being very impressed. They’re our main problem now.”
“I know the psychology of the rank and file,” Kieran told him. “They’re like mercenary military anywhere, rootless and insecure underneath all the imagery. It makes them suggestible and superstitious—like old-time sailors.”
Rudi eyed him dubiously. “And you think you can exploit something like that to our advantage?”
“You’d be surprised,” Kieran said, and smiled gaily.
15
Crunch . . . crunch . . . crunch . . . crunch.
The sound of Trooper Slezansky’s footsteps came hollowly through his own suit as he slowly patrolled through the warren of caverns and diggings below the camp. This far underground, it shouldn’t have made any difference that his and Delaney’s was the 2:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M. watch, but the gloom and somberness of the surroundings somehow intensified the bleak feelings that came with the hour. He had turned his local area channel off because of intermittent interference from somewhere that had become persistently more irritating, cutting himself off from base except for emergency band. Maybe that was adding to the sense of isolation that he was feeling.
Still, he’d had worse assignments in his time, before taking a tour with the Lowell-based enforcer service that had sent them here on this job. The mission to take out that bandit stronghold on an asteroid out in the Belt somewhere, for instance. The officers who were supposed to know about these things hadn’t allowed for alliances among the enemy, and a counterattack from the rear had cost some good men. Thieves protecting each other. The incursion force that Slezansky was with had to pull out, and he’d never found out what the final outcome was. And then there was the fringe settlement that they had defended, who then wouldn’t pay, or whatever the disagreement afterward had been about, and the protecting force had turned around and taken what they said they were due. That had left a bad taste in his mouth for a long time. But the job to be done was the job, was the job. . . .
The passage Slezansky was following opened into a wedge-shaped chamber that narrowed into shadows above the dim glow from a couple of the lights strung on a cable running along one wall. He stopped to run his flashlamp around and up, revealing a slab of rock leaning drunkenly across the space overhead. It looked as if it had fallen away from one side of a fissure extending upward into darkness beyond. Slezansky wasn’t sure if it was his eyes playing tricks, but he thought he could see wisps of greenish light among the rocks and crevices up there. Should there be lights down underneath a plateau on what was supposed to be a dead planet? He didn’t know. But it seemed eerie. He swung the flashlamp beam over tumbled rocks looking like skulls sticking out of the sand; shadows twisting and writhing upward out of sight among the silent, brooding pillars. . . . This whole place was eerie.
He carried on through to a larger cavern of branching passages and shafts, past the partly uncovered remains of what looked like something that had been built by somebody, to the place where they had placed the monitor panels for the security systems deployed through the area. The routine check showed all ultraviolet transmitters and sensors functioning; motion detectors reset by his ID signal after registering to his progress; infrared fences live and intact. He updated the log and tried local again to report to base, but again the transmission was swamped before he had exchanged more than a few words. He delivered his opinion in the form of some chosen and well-practiced obscenities, killed the circuit, and carried on.
At least, there were no plasma bolts here, or smart munitions homing on you out in a void with no cover you could trust. Running a few professors, or whoever they were, out from where they had no business being had a lot more going for it than some of the action he’d seen. He needed to think seriously about getting out of this business while he was young enough to make a go of something else and still in one piece to do it. Something where he could market the skills he’d picked up, but less violent and with a lower wastage factor. A corporate security outfit, maybe, or a private bodyguard; even a bouncer somewhere. But in the meantime the pay was good, so the life had its compensations. Horrocks and Malotto could laugh if they wanted when he talked about his plans and how he’d have it made one day. He’d show them.