He gestured toward the high ground. When Mendes didn’t turn his head, Ruthven put his hand on the Royalist’s shoulder and rotated him gently, then pointed again.
“It’s not safe to give the enemy that vantage point,” Ruthven said. To any real soldier, that’d be as obvious as saying, “Water is wet,” but real soldiers were bloody thin on the ground on Pontefract.
And it seemed they all wore Slammers uniforms.
“Oh, we can’t do that!” Mendes said. “That is too far away!”
“Together we can,” Ruthven said. “I’ll put a squad there, and you’ll supply a platoon. We’ll rotate the troops every day. Dug in and with fire support from here, they’ll be an anvil that we can smash the rebels if they try anything.”
“Oh,” said Mendes. “Oh. Oh.”
He wasn’t agreeing …or disagreeing, so far as Ruthven could tell. He sounded like a man gasping for breath.
“Right!” Ruthven said cheerfully, clapping the Royalist on the shoulder. “Now, let’s get to your ops room and set up the assignments, shall we?”
He’d put Rennie’s squad on the ridge the first night, though he might also take Sellars’ up for the afternoon to get the position cleared. He could only hope that the Royalists would work well under Slammers’ direction; that happened often enough on this sort of planet.
“Top?” Ruthven said to Hassel over the command push as he walked Mendes toward the trailers. He’d cut the whole platoon in on the discussion through the intercom, though he was blocking incoming messages unless they were red-tagged. “Take charge here while I get things sorted with our allies.”
He paused. Because Mendes could theoretically hear him …in fact the Royalist officer appeared to be in shock …Ruthven chose the next words carefully: “And Top? I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking the same thing. But this is going to work if there’s any way in hell I can make it work. Six out.”
“Good morning, Hank,” a professionally cheerful voice said. “Oh! Were you napping? I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Just thinking, Lisa,” Ruthven said, opening his eyes and smiling at Lisa Mahone, the Frisian recruiting officer. Apologetically he added, “I, ah …I haven’t gotten around to the papers, yet.”
He thought he saw Mahone’s eyes harden, but she sat down on the side of his bed and patted his right leg in a display of apparent affection. She said, “Well, I’ve used the time to your advantage, Hank. I told you I hoped I’d be able to get Personnel to grant you a two-step promotion? They’ve agreed to it! I’m authorized to change the recruitment agreement right now.”
She leaned forward to take the folder from the side table, her hip brushing Ruthven’s thigh. “How does that sound, Captain Ruthven?”
“It’s hard to express, Lisa,” Ruthven said, forcing a smile to make the words sound positive. He slitted his eyes so that they’d appear closed. In truth he didn’t know what he thought about the business; it seemed to be happening to somebody else. Maybe it was drugs still in his system, though Drayer’d sworn that they’d tapered his dosage down to zero thirty-six hours ago.
Ruthven watched silently as Mahone amended the recruitment agreement in a firm, clear hand. She was an attractive woman with dark, shoulder-length hair and a perfect complexion. Her pants suit was severely tailored, but the shirt beneath her pale green jacket was frilled and had a deep neckline.
The gold-bordered folder not only acted as a hard backing for Mahone’s stylus, it recorded the handwritten changes and transmitted them to the hospital’s data bank. There they became part of the regimental files, to be downloaded or transmitted by any authorized personnel.
Mahone wasn’t as young as Ruthven’d thought when she approached him three days earlier, though. Perhaps the drugs really had worn off.
“I have to admit that I didn’t have to do much convincing,” she said in the same bright voice as she appeared to read the document in front of her. “My superiors were just as impressed by your record as I am. Very few graduates in the top ten percent of their class join mercenary units straight out of the Academy.”
“I wanted to be a soldier,” Ruthven said. This time his wry smile was real, but it was directed at his naive former self. “I thought I ought to learn what being a soldier was really about. I wanted to see the elephant, if you know the term.”
“Seeing the elephant,” had been used by soldiers as a euphemism for battle from a very long time back. It might even be as old as “buying the farm,” a euphemism for death.
“And you certainly did,” Mahone said. “Your combat experience is a big plus.”
She met his eyes with every appearance of candor and said, “The Frisian Defense Forces haven’t fought a serious war since the Melpomene Emergency fifteen years ago. You knew that: that’s why you enlisted in Hammer’s Regiment when you wanted to see action. I know it too, and most importantly, the General Staff in Burcana knows it. The Defense Forces are willing to pay very well for the experience that our troops haven’t gotten directly.”
Mahone smiled like a porcelain doll, smooth and perfect, and held the folder out to Ruthven. “You bought that experience dearly, Captain,” she said. “Now’s the time to cash in on your investment.”
Ruthven winced. It was a tiny movement, but Mahone caught it.
“Hank?” she said, lowering the folder while keeping it still within reach. She stroked Ruthven’s thigh again and said, “Is it your leg?”
“Yeah,” Ruthven lied. “Look, Lisa …can you come back later? I want to, ah, stand up and walk around a bit, if that’s all right. By myself.”
“Of course, Hank,” Mahone said, smiling sympathetically. “I’ll leave these here and come by this evening. If you like you can just sign them and I’ll pick them up without bothering you if you’re asleep.”
Mahone set the folder upright on the table, between the pitcher and waterglass. Straightening she glanced, apparently by coincidence, at the electronic window.
“Thank the Lord you don’t have to go back to that, right?” she said. She smiled and swept gracefully out of the room.
Ruthven continued to lie on the bed for nearly a minute after the latch clicked. Then he got up slowly and walked to the window. He’d been thinking of Sergeant Rennie. That, not his leg, had made him wince.
They’d met on Atchafalaya. It’d been Ruthven’s first day in the field, and it was Trooper Rennie then….
“Here you go, Chief,” said the driver of the jeep that’d brought Ruthven from E Company headquarters. “Last stop this run.”
It was raining and well after local midnight. This sector was under blackout conditions; water running down the inside of Ruthven’s faceshield blurred his light-enhanced vision and dripped on the tip of his nose. It was cold, colder than he’d dreamed it got on Atchafalaya, and he was more alone than he’d ever before felt in his life.
“Sir, you gotta get out,” the driver said more forcefully. “I need t’ get back to Captain Dolgosh.”
Besides the jeep’s idling fans, the only sound in the forest was rain dripping into the puddles beneath the trees. Air-plants hung in sheets from high branches, twisting and shimmering in the downpour. Ruthven couldn’t see anything human in the landscape.
“Where do I …?” he said.
Two figures came out of the blurred darkness. “Hold here, Adkins,” one of them said. “I’ll be going back with you. It won’t be long.”
“If you say so, El-Tee,” the driver said. In bright contrast to his resigned agreement he added, “Hey, it’s captain now, right? That was sure good news, sir. Nobody deserved it more!”
“Lieutenant Ruthven?” the newcomer continued brusquely, ignoring the congratulations. He was built like a fireplug and his voice rasped. “I’m Lyauty, you’re taking E/1 over from me. I thought I’d stick around long enough to introduce you to your squad leaders.”