On terrain as broken as that of the untended starport, that was only half the problem. Because of their contents and their armored sidewalls, the cases were extremely heavy. They wobbled on their narrow bases of support, threatening to fall over unless the person guiding them was relentlessly vigilant. The poor illumination didn’t help either.
“Not bad training for life,” Coke muttered.
“Sir?” Sten Moden said, turning his head back.
“Just talking to myself,” Coke explained. “Sorry.”
A bus pulled away from the terminal area. Its wheels were driven by four separate electric motors. One of the drives shrieked jaggedly as the bus headed toward the gate of the port compound.
“It’s a lot easier,” Sten Moden said without emphasis as he watched the bus go, “to replace a bearing than it is to replace a driveshaft and a bearing.”
The bus didn’t have headlights. A spotlight jury-rigged to the driver’s side window swept the road and a stretch of the fence surrounding the compound. The forest beyond was a black mass. The sky had some color still in the west, but it no longer illuminated the land beneath it.
“Let’s hope the soldiers aren’t any better than the mechanics,” said Robert Barbour.
Coke didn’t have any more of a handle on the intelligence specialist than he did on Vierziger. Based on Barbour’s personnel file, he was an easy-going man who was brilliant in his field. He had a bright career ahead of him, despite a lack of ambition outside his professional specialty.
There was no question about Barbour’s qualifications. Coke had thought he himself knew his way around a sensor console, until he saw what Barbour could do casually with one.
In the flesh, though, the young lieutenant was withdrawn and apparently miserable. The file would have indicated if Barbour had survived a close one, as had happened to Daun. Maybe he’d had trouble with a woman. The Lord knew, there was plenty of that going around.
“They don’t have soldiers here, Lieutenant,” Johann Vierziger said. “On Cantilucca they have thugs, gangsters.”
“We’re not going to prejudge the situation,” Coke said sharply. “Our report on the quality of potential allies and opposition is just as important as whether we recommend Nieuw Friesland accept an offer of employment here in the first place.”
“Sorry, sir,” Vierziger said. He didn’t sound ironic, but neither was he making any effort to appear contrite.
The sergeant had made a statement which he knew, and which Coke knew, was correct on the basis of the score or more similar planets they’d both seen. Coke didn’t know what Vierziger’s background was—his file began at the point he enlisted in the FDF; but he knew the little gunman had a background. Nobody got as good as Vierziger was by spending his time at the target range.
Coke laughed. “Hold up,” he called to Moden and Vierziger. He stopped where he was, set down the cases he was pulling, and motioned his team closer.
Lights from the terminal brightened that side of the faces watching Coke, but even there the flesh was colorless. Opposite the terminal, the team’s features lacked detail.
“Look,” Coke said, “we’re here now, we’re on our own. From this point on, we’re on first-name basis.”
Nobody reacted openly. Shutters clicked across the eyes of the more experienced trio, Moden, Margulies, and Vierziger.
“I don’t mean,” Coke explained hastily, “that we’ve suddenly become a democracy. Fuck that notion. You will take my orders, or I’ll have you court-martialed on return to Camp Able.”
A starship across the compound tested its landing motors. Plasma flared in an iridescent shimmer above the vessels, lighting the team members and the shattered ground about them. Vierziger grinned in broad approval.
“We’re all good at our jobs,” Coke resumed as the jet’s rumble faded away. “And we’ll be living in each other’s pockets while the operation goes on. I trust that we can maintain real discipline without pretending we’re back in base somewhere. Okay?”
The other members of the team nodded—Margulies with obvious relief. The last thing any sensible officer wanted was to serve under a commander whose first priority was that his troops like him.
Coke smiled and nodded. “Saddle up, troopers,” he said. He switched on the repulsion units of his cases and resumed the last stage of his trudge to the terminal buildings.
Vierziger fell in beside him. “I’m not used to thinking of myself as ‘Johann,’” the little man said with an unreadable substrate to the comment.
“Better get used to it, Johann,” Coke said.
Vierziger’s eyes were always on the far distance, the shadows which might be hiding an ambush. His cases tracked as nearly straight as the ground permitted, never tilting far enough to be in danger of toppling over. The little man’s peripheral vision chose the best line possible across the field.
“People generally don’t trust me,” Vierziger said, as if he were commenting on the magenta glow of the western horizon. “That’s understandable, of course. But I want you to know that you could trust me, can if you want to.”
A speck of light now at zenith had been fifteen degrees further east when Coke left the freighter. A moon, then, rather than a star; but merely a speck.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said aloud.
Vierziger laughed without malice. “The only difference between me and the pistol in your holster,” he said, “is that you’re more likely to hit the target if you aim me than if you aim it.”
Coke looked at the little man. Neither of them spoke for a moment.
“Watch out for this,” Vierziger said, gesturing toward a raw pit with the index finger of the hand gripping one of his cases.
The pit separated the two men by its width as they avoided it. “Why?” Coke asked.
“Because I think that’s what I’m here to do, Matthew,” Vierziger said.
He took two longer strides, then released his cases. They stood as sentinels to either side of the door as the gunman entered the terminal with his delicate hands free.
Coke walked through the doors a step behind Vierziger. Coke had been a combat soldier all his career, so he was irritated to be treated as an object for protection. Another part of him, though—
It was the job of the security element, Margulies and Vierziger, to protect the survey team’s staff personnel. Coke, as team commander, couldn’t object with even a frown at his people doing their jobs.
A hissing static broom shut off as the door opened. A woman, hidden until then behind the counter, stood up. Her lustrous auburn hair was caught in a braid and coiled on top of her head.
As Coke judged the mass, the hair would dangle to the floor if she removed the ornate silver combs pinning it up. Unlikely that she let it down often, though; the arrangement would take an hour to rebuild.
The woman wore black, relieved only by the massive silver crucifix hanging across her breast on a chain of the same metal. She was full-featured rather than fat and could have modeled for Rubens.
“Yes, gentlemen?” she said. Her voice held a touch of sharpness, a sign of uncertainty otherwise hidden. She appeared to be alone in the office. Two men had entered, well dressed but men and strangers, and there were further shapes looming outside the door.
“We’re passengers from the Norbert, ma’am,” Coke explained. “We’re looking for the entry control office.”
He hadn’t forgotten the sailor had said that would be in the left-hand structure. The center building was the only one that was lighted, however.
“Oh, they should have told me!” the woman said with a stricken look.
Her eyes focused on the door. The panels had once been clear, but years of grit blown by nearby landings had blasted them to a pebbled surface. “How many of you are there?”