* * *
"Modderpockers, let me go!" Poertena shouted. He snarled at the laughing Marines who were crawling out of their one-person tents to sniff at the morning air. "Gimme a pocking hand, damn it!"
"Okay, everybody," St. John (J.) said, slowly clapping. "Let's give him a hand."
"Now that," Roger said, "is a truly disgusting menage a . . . uh . . ."
"Menage a cinq is the term you're looking for," Doc Dobrescu said, laughing as he walked over to the pinned armorer and the four comatose Mardukans wrapped tightly about his diminutive form.
Roger shook his head and chuckled, but he also waved to the Marines.
"Some of you guys, help the Doc."
St. John (J.) grabbed one of Denat's inert arms and started trying to disengage it from the armorer.
"This really is gross, Poertena," the Marine said as he tried to pull one of the slime-covered arms off the armorer.
"You pocking telling me? I wake up, and it not'ing but arms and slime!"
Roger began to haul on Tratan as the Mardukan groaned and resisted the pulling Marines.
"They seem to like you, Poertena."
"Well," the armorer's response sounded mildly strangled, "they tryin' to kill me now! Leggo!"
"They like his heat," the warrant officer grunted as he helped Roger heave, then said something unprintable under his breath and gave up. The united efforts of three Marines had so far been unable to get Denat to release his grip, and the bear hug actually did threaten to kill the armorer. "Somebody build a fire. Maybe if we warm them up, they'll let go."
"And somebody help me get Cord," Roger said, then thought about the weight of the Mardukan. "Several somebodies." He looked over to the picket lines where the mahouts made their camp. "Did anybody notice that the packbeasts are missing?" he asked, bemusedly.
* * *
"We passed through a cold front," the medic said, shaking his head. "Or what passes for one on this screwy planet."
Captain Pahner had called a council of war to consider the night's events. The group sat near the edge of the camp, looking down on the forest of clouds that stretched into the distance from their foothills perch. Above them, the true mountains loomed trackless.
"What cold front?" Julian asked. "I didn't see any cold front."
"You remember that rain we had yesterday afternoon?" Dobrescu asked.
"Sure, but it rains all the time here," the NCO replied skeptically.
"But that one went on for a long time," Roger noted. "Usually, they just sort of hit in short spurts. That one rained, and rained, and rained."
"Right." The medic nodded. "And today, the air pressure is a few points higher than yesterday. Not much—this planet doesn't have much in the way of a weather system—but enough. Anyway, the cloud layer got suppressed," he gestured to the clouds, "the humidity fell, and the temperature . . ."
"Dropped like a rock," Pahner said. "We got that part. Can the locals handle it?"
The medic sighed and shrugged.
"That I don't know. Most terrestrial isothermic and posithermic creatures can survive to just above freezing temperatures as long as they don't stay that way too long. However, that's terrestrial." He shrugged again. "With Mardukans, Captain, your guess is probably as good as mine. I'm a doc, not an exobiologist."
He looked around at the camp, and especially at the flar-ta.
"The packbeasts, now, they seem to be better adapted. They burrowed underground last night on first watch and stayed there till things warmed back up. And their skin is different from the Mardukans', scaled and dry where the Mardukans' is smooth and mucous-coated. So I think the packbeasts can make it, if we stay below the freezing line. But I don't know about the locals," he finished unhappily, gesturing at Cord and the lead mahout.
They had been speaking in the dialect of Q'Nkok so that the two Mardukan representatives could follow the conversation. Now Cord clapped his hands and leaned forward.
"I can withstand the conditions of last night with dinshon exercises. However," he waved a true-hand at D'Len Pah, "the mahouts are not trained in them. Nor are any of my nephews, except Denat, and he poorly. Also," he pointed to patches on his skin, "it is terribly dry up here. And it will only get worse, from what Shaman Dobrescu says."
"So," said Pahner. "We have a problem."
"Yes," D'Len Pah said. The old mahout looked terrible in the light of midmorning. Part of that was the same dry patches that affected Cord, but the greater part was bitter shame. "We cannot do this much longer, Lord Pahner, Prince Roger. This is a terrible, terrible place. There is no air to breathe. The wind is as dry as sand. The cold is fierce and terrible." He looked up from the scratches he'd been making on the ground with his mahout stick. "We . . . cannot go any farther."
Pahner looked over at Roger and cleared his throat.
"D'Len Pah, we must cross these mountains. We must reach the far coast, or we will surely die. And we cannot leave our gear." He looked up at the towering peaks. "Nor can we carry it over the mountains without the flar-ta. It's not like we can call Harendra Mukerji for a resupply."
The lead mahout looked around nervously. "Lord Pahner . . ."
"Calmly, D'Len," Roger said. "Calmly. We won't take them from you. We aren't brigands."
"I know that, Prince Roger." The mahout clapped his hands in agreement. "But . . . it is a fearsome thing."
"We could . . ." Despreaux started to say, then stopped. With the loss of most of the senior NCOs, she was being groomed for the Third Platoon platoon sergeant's position. This was the first time she'd been included in one of the staff meetings, so she was nervous about making her suggestion.
"Go ahead," Eleanora O'Casey said with a nod, and the sergeant gave the prince's chief of staff a brief glance of thanks.
"Well . . . we could . . ." She stopped again and turned to D'Len Pah. "Could we buy the packbeasts from you?" She looked at Captain Pahner, whose face had tightened at the suggestion and shrugged. "I'm not saying that we will, I'm asking if we could."
Roger looked at Pahner. "If we can, we will," he said, and the Marine looked back at him with a careful lack of expression.
His Royal Highness, Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock, Heir Tertiary to the Throne of Man, had changed immeasurably from the arrogant, conceited, self-centered, whiny spoiled brat he'd been before a barely bungled assassination by sabotage had shipwrecked him and his Marine bodyguards on the hellhole called Marduk. For the most part, Pahner was prepared to admit that those changes had been very good things, because Bronze Battalion of The Empress' Own had been less than fond of the aristocratic pain in the ass it had been charged with protecting, and with excellent reason.
Pahner supposed that discovering that a dangerously competent (and unknown) someone wanted you dead, and then coping with the need to march clear around an alien planet full of bloodthirsty barbarians in hopes of somehow taking that planet's sole space facility away from the traditional enemies of the Empire of Man who almost certainly controlled it, would have been enough to refocus anyone's thoughts. Given the unpromising nature of the preassassination-attempt Roger, that wasn't something Pahner would have cared to bet any money on, of course. And he more than suspected that he and the rest of Bravo Company owed a sizable debt of gratitude to D'Nal Cord. Roger's Mardukan asi—technically a slave, although anyone who made the mistake of confusing Cord with a menial probably wouldn't live long enough to realize he'd stopped breathing for some odd reason—was a deadly warrior who had become the prince's mentor, and not just where weapons were concerned. The native shaman was almost certainly the first individual ever to take Roger seriously as both prince and protege, and the imprint of his personality was clear to see in the new Roger.