“Via, where’s there to run to?” Deseau said. He spat toward the camp a hundred meters away, then started to shrug out of his poncho after all.
“Back into the tunnels, for one thing,” Huber said. “There might be enough guns down there to equip a division. It won’t be safe till the support column comes up with the gas cylinders.”
“That what they’re doing, El-Tee?” Deseau said, his tone bright with interest. “Pump the place full of gas?”
Huber shrugged. “Nobody’s appointed me to the staff,” he said, “but that’d be standard operating procedure: fill the tunnels with KD1 or another of the persistent agents and forget about ’em.”
Sledges had been ringing on iron posts as prisoners constructed a narrow chute from the eastern end of the camp. An off-key whang indicated a hammer’d hit skew and broken the helve. A Gendarme shouted in a tone of anger tinged with fear, drawing the three troopers’ attention.
“Naw, nothing,” Deseau muttered, lifting the muzzles of his tribarrel a safe fifteen degrees again so that the weapon wouldn’t hit anything in the vicinity if it fired accidentally. “Them cops, they’re ready to piss their pants they’re so scared.”
Twenty Gendarmes guarded a crew of no more than fifty prisoners driving posts and stringing the wire. They seemed nervous to Huber, also. Maybe they knew what was planned and were afraid of what would happen when the prisoners learned also.
“Sierra, this is Flamingo Six-three,” the voice said. “We’re coming into sight. Flamingo out.”
The vehicles of the task force were bows-out in a defensive circle, though the formation was looser than it’d have been if there were a real likelihood of attack. Instead of turning his head, Huber switched the upper left quadrant of his faceshield to the view from Floosie at the opposite side of the formation.
A combat car slid over the ridgeline where Sierra had launched its assault on Fort Freedom. Three similar vehicles followed, then a dozen air-cushion trucks, and after them two wrenchmobiles modified to carry troops. The last vehicle in line was a command car.
“It’s the White Mice,” Deseau said. From the tone of his voice, Huber thought he might be about to spit. “You know, I was kinda hoping I wouldn’t see them again for a while.”
“If they’re relieving us,” Learoyd said, “I don’t care who they are.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right,” Deseau said; but Huber wasn’t sure he agreed.
Some prisoners drifted toward the south edge of their camp, interested in the column as a break in their miserable routine and probably also concerned about what it might mean. Huber noticed that others of the former Volunteers were disappearing into tents. He didn’t know what they expected to gain by that, but he understood the impulse.
A dozen civilians had come in by aircar a few hours before. They wore hooded raincapes even now that the sun was out, but Huber had raised his faceshield’s magnification until he was sure of what he’d suspected: one of the newcomers was Speaker Nestilrode, and he recognized two others as cabinet ministers he’d seen when he entered the Assembly with Captain Orichos.
Now they came out of Orichos’ tent. She and the Speaker shook hands; then the civilians strode quickly to their car without a backward glance.
Orichos sauntered toward the chute of razor ribbon. Perhaps she felt Huber’s eyes on her because she turned her head and waved before she walked on.
Deseau snickered. “She fancies you, El-Tee,” he said.
“Balls,” Huber muttered. Orichos had been running the operation ever since enough Gendarmes had arrived to take primary responsibility from Task Force Sierra. The route march had been just as hard on her as on the Slammers, and so far as Huber’d seen she hadn’t had a moment’s downtime since. Despite that, Orichos looked as coolly fresh as she’d been the night a lifetime ago when Joachim Steuben introduced her at Northern Star.
Learoyd looked over his shoulder at Huber. “He’s right, El-Tee,” he said. “She does.”
Huber shrugged rather than speaking. He didn’t know what to say because he didn’t know what he thought. He figured if he pretended not to care, they’d drop the subject.