Vorgens rejoined Mclntyre and Giradaux. who were still slogging along side by side over the steadily-rising ground.
“How’s it going?” Vorgens asked the sergeant.
Mclntyre shrugged with one shoulder. “Okay. The arm hurts a little, but not much. You know, we’ve been passin’ guard posts for the past hour or so.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Vorgens blurted.
Mclntyre pointed with his eyes. “Up there, sir, there’s another one.”
Vorgens glanced at a jutting rock off to one side of the trail. A Komani was flattened out on top of it, his reenish body hair and gray clothing a near-perfect camouflage in the heavy foliage atop the rock.
“Yes, I see,” Vorgens said. “We must be approaching their headquarters.”
“Geny and I have been takin’ bearings as well as we can, sir,” Mclntyre said in a lower voice. “I think we’ll be able to spot their headquarters on map coordinates when we get back to the Mobile Force.”
“Fine,” Vorgens said absently as he silently changed Mclntyre’s when to an if.
“Sir?” Giradaux asked, and at Vorgens’ nod went on, “How come a native priest is with the Komani? I thought the barbarians were raiding this planet and the natives want us to throw ’em out.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Vorgens said. “But there’s more to this story than the part we know. A lot more.”
The Face of the Enemy
The Komani camp was a shock.
Not only was it bigger and much better equipped than Vorgens had expected, but there were almost as many Shinarian natives milling around in it as Komani.
The camp was set on a broad, thinly wooded meadow. Off to one end were dozens of landing ships, slim, needle-nosed, erect and gleaming in the slanting rays of the setting sun. Except for a small blast ring around the ships, the meadow was covered with Komani bubbletents, thousands of them, each brightly colored in a distinctive family insignia, each housing anywhere from one warrior to a dozen. Laced between the colorful bubbles were pennants, ceremonial fires, stacks of equipment and weapons.