Markos spoke grimly. “I’ll divide us up into parties, send them out to counter any actions. Will you help me rouse the people?”
Ryan nodded, and the companions separated, moving among the sleeping and half-awake Pilatans, rousing them as they went. Their actions were greeted with a mixture of fear and hostility—fear at being attacked and some residual resentment that it was whitelanders who were telling them to get up to prepare for battle.
Markos sent scouts out to the sentry posts to see what was happening and to recall those sec men so that they could be briefed. The job of the scouts was to send back reports with the returning sec men, then keep a roving brief, so that they could plot the progress of the outsiders.
Swiftly, the mood in the Pilatan camp changed. As they fully awakened and could hear the arriving wags, the Pilatans realized that they were in for their first taste of a firefight on the mainland. They rapidly checked and primed their blasters, and assembled in front of Markos, who received the reports of the incoming sec force. He turned to the assembled Pilatans and the companions, and spoke concisely, rapidly.
“They come from the one area, across the plain where the skirmish took place last night. There are ten wags, with approximately five or six people on each. This means that we outnumber them, but they appear to have machine blasters. They may have grens, mebbe even rocket launchers. We cannot know their firepower, therefore must assume the worst.
“I will divide you into small groups and assign posts. We will concentrate our efforts in the direction from which they will come, but also have outlying parties to flank them. You must be alert and shoot to chill. Use the natural cover. They undoubtedly will.”
With which, Markos moved among the Pilatans, dividing them into groups and mixing some of them with the companions. “They have experience of firefights in the whitelands—listen to them,” he told the relevant groups. But despite this, J.B. and Krysty were put into small war parties where there was hostility from diehard separatists who weren’t comfortable with the idea of listening to pale ones.
Before the groups set off into the woods, J.B. managed to snatch a few words with Ryan, telling him of the residual resentment. “Another thing—I don’t like the idea of so many people with blasters wandering about in such a small wooded area, blasting at anything that moves.”
Ryan agreed. “I know. We should be drawing the enemy out where we can get a clear sighting of them. It’ll be too easy to blast our own out there.”
“Yeah, I’ll go with that,” the Armorer agreed grimly. “Good luck out there.”
The war parties were about to move out when a scout returned with further information. The wags had rolled to a halt and discharged their cargo of heavily armed men, with a guard of four left to cover them. The men had fanned out and were now in the woods.
“We outnumber them heavily, so the odds are on our side,” Markos added when he relayed this to the baron, “but we need to proceed with caution.”
Sineta agreed, clutching her blaster. She turned to Mildred as Markos gave the order to move. “I fear I shall not be of much use in the conflict to come.”
“You concentrate on keeping alive, sweetie,” Mildred told her. “We’re a far-flung group, so the chances of you being risked are low. Markos has made sure of that—”
“But I must lead my people,” Sineta protested.
“You can’t lead them when you’re chilled,” Mildred countered, cutting her short. “He’s done the right thing in the circumstances. Now just stay close to me and don’t argue about it, all right?”
The Pilatan war parties moved out into the woods and straight into trouble.
The wooded areas they had to traverse were thick, and it was impossible for them to move stealthily. The same was also true for the incoming attack parties, but the sounds by which they could have been tracked were obliterated by the noise of the Pilatans. Blasterfire filled the air in staccato and irregular blasts, and the air became thick with cries of surprise and pain.