Sangrela had ordered each car to send a man to help guard the prisoners. Normally Huber would’ve complained—F-3 had carried out the assault pretty much by itself, after all—but he was just as glad for an excuse to send Costunna off. Learoyd was in the driver’s compartment now with the fans on idle. The squat, balding trooper wasn’t the Regiment’s best driver, but you never had to worry about his instincts in a firefight.
Nights here on the edge of the highlands were clearer than under the hazy atmosphere of the United Cities. Arne Huber could see the stars for the first time since he’d landed on Plattner’s World.
They made him feel more lonely, of course. The one thing that hadn’t changed during Huber’s childhood on Nieuw Friesland was the general pattern of the night sky. Since he’d joined the Slammers, he couldn’t even count on that.
He smiled wryly. “El-Tee?” Sergeant Deseau said, catching the expression.
“Change is growth, Frenchie,” Huber said. “Have you ever been told that?”
“Not so’s I recall,” the sergeant said, rubbing the side of his neck with his knuckles. “Think they’re going to leave us here to garrison the place?”
The slug that splashed the bow slope had peppered Deseau between the bottom of his faceshield and the top of his clamshell body armor. He knew that a slightly bigger chunk might have ripped his throat out, just as he knew that he was going to be sweating in the plenum chamber tomorrow, when he helped Maintenance replace the fan that’d been shot away. Both facts were part of the job.
Huber could hear the convoy now over Fencing Master’s humming nacelles. The incoming vehicles, mostly air-cushion trucks but with a section of combat cars for escort, kept their fans spinning at high speed in case they had to move fast.
“Charlie Six to all units,” said a tense voice on the common task force channel. “Eleven vehicles, I repeat one-one vehicles, entering the perimeter at vector one-seven-zero. They will show—”
A pause during which the signals officer waited for Captain Sangrela’s last-instant decision.
“—blue. Charlie Six out.”
As he spoke, the darkness to the southeast of the laager lit with quivering azure spikes: static discharges from the antennas of the incoming convoy. Huber didn’t bother to count them: there’d be eleven. Electronic identification was foolproof or almost foolproof; but soldiers were humans, not machines, and they liked to have confirmation from their own eyes as well as from a readout.
Captain Sangrela walked forward, holding a blue marker wand in his left hand. The troops between the armored vehicles rose and moved to the center of the laager where they wouldn’t be driven over. The newcomers would be parking between the vehicles of Task Force Sangrela.
If the units spent the night in two separate laagers they risked a mutal firefight, especially if the enemy was smart enough to slip into the gap and shoot toward both camps in turn. The Solace Militia probably didn’t have that standard of skill, but some of mercenaries Solace had hired certainly did. Soldiers, even the Slammers, could get killed easily enough without taking needless chances.
The convoy came in, lighted only by its static discharges. Huber could’ve switched his faceshield to thermal imaging or light-amplification if he’d wanted to see clearly—that’s how the drivers were maneuvering their big vehicles into place—but he was afraid he’d drop into a reverie if he surrounded himself with an electronic cocoon. He still felt numb from reaction to the assault.
“El-Tee, that combat car’s from A Company,” Deseau said, one hand resting idly on the grip of his tribarrel. He was using helmet intercom because the howls of incoming vehicles would’ve overwhelmed his voice even if he’d shouted at the top of his lungs. “So’s the infantry riding on the back of them wrenchmobiles. When did the White Mice start pulling convoy security?”
Huber’s mind kept playing back the moment Fencing Master had lurched into position above the canal so he could rake it with his tribarrel. In his memory there was only equipment and empty uniforms in the sun-struck channel. No men at all . . .
“You’ve got me, Frenchie,” Huber said. He should’ve noticed that himself.