He knew little of the forest predators except that there were a lot of them and they didn't fear man much, but he knew even less about river predators.
He hoped desperately that what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him, and resumed his downstream drift. This time, though, he could see, though the inky blackness of Jumbo rendered the value of that sense useless. Still, there was comfort in at last having his whole head above water, and his eyes and moving hands to his front.
It seemed many hours before he realized that he could dimly make out the riverbank, and he greeted the oncoming dawn with a relieved grin. He struggled to the bank and pulled himself from the river. Then he sat patiently with crossed legs until the sun rose and day arrived.
The two ruts that were the road to the fishing village were only a few feet away. This led him to wonder whether he had passed the road between Ham's Town and the hunters' village. Of course, he didn't remember seeing the crude wooden bridge that spanned the river, but in the depth of Jumbo's night he wouldn't have seen it if he'd bumped into it.
Zant's spirits climbed. Now he could see, and had a road to follow. Whether it led to the road or to the fishing village really didn't matter. Either way, he could get a message to the hunters and through them to Cale. Ignoring the cold clamminess of his soaked clothing, he set off briskly, whistling.
Two hours later his path crossed the sketchy road that led to the hunters' camp. Wearing a broad grin, he turned left toward rescue.
********
Colonel-General Ochoa-Mariden, Santiago Army, retired, surveyed the stack of damage reports with a mix of alarm, fury and despair. His great plan for the accelerated development of Jumbo was in ruins, and it was all the fault of that blasted Rankin!
He'd lost the only real artillery he'd been able to afford to buy, that big disruptor. He'd been counting on that to break the discipline of the massed army he'd expected to face. And his flitter was a burned-out hulk, with not even enough salvageable parts to rebuild his other shot-up hulk. The last of his eyes-in-the-sky had been taken from him. Only the ultracoms gave him a tactical advantage over the locals now; and that was a very limited advantage. If he couldn't see the blasted battle, having ultracoms to issue orders was little comfort.
The heavy lasers were gone, too, but they had been mostly psychological weapons anyway. They used up power cells so fast that they barely paid their way when he could recharge the cells; now that Rankin and his people had cut off the powersat, the heavy lasers were almost a liability. Still, it hurt to lose weapons whose searing lines of light the locals considered magic.
It seemed that those had been the main targets of the commando raid. Ochoa-Mariden admitted a grudging admiration for Rankin and Jenfu. The raid had been well-planned, and very well executed, for a bunch of leather-clad woodsrunners. And they hadn't stopped with the three main targets. They'd planted several dozen bombs and booby traps to sow confusion and permit the commando to escape. He'd lost over a dozen men, including four officers.
His men had killed six of the attackers, but he was under no illusion that they'd got them all.
He glanced down at the crossbow one of them had been carrying. It was a sweet little design. Spec Ops troops used quite a few nonstandard and low-tech weapons, crossbows among them. But these didn't have the cumbersome bow; they could be easily operated while prone. They also permitted lightning-fast repeat shots, another feature the common design lacked. Oh, they used power packs, of course, but each pack would obviously be good for hundreds of shots, instead of the eight of a laser and twelve of a blaster.
He'd also examined one of the snipers' rifles a few weeks ago. Another imaginative design, well suited to Jumbo's limited capabilities. Whoever was designing Rankin's weapons, the General decided, should have been working for him!
He slammed a fist down on the table that replaced his desk. He should have been in complete control of the inhabited portion of Jumbo by now, and well on the way to pacifying the nomads. Instead he had lost almost half his force; the six leather-clad bodies outside were no consolation.
His hundred and sixty-three men were no longer enough to execute the plan. Most of his strength would be required just to maintain control here, and protect the colony from the nomads.
But he couldn't afford to just sit on his butt, either. Those sheol-damned snipers were slowly but surely bleeding him dry. He'd quickly reach a tipping point where he could no longer control Nirvana and Gorby as well as New Home. He'd have to pull his forces back to New Home and fort up. But that wouldn't work, either. With hostile nomads on one side and hostile kings on the other, there was only one inevitable outcome, for his troops and for the colony they'd sworn to protect.
There was one other factor he hated to confront, but must. Spec Ops troops make terrible garrison troops, and even worse prison guards. The number of troops on report for drunk on duty, fighting, and other infractions was climbing dramatically. Very soon he'd start seeing desertions. The only reason they hadn't been a problem yet was Jumbo's low tech level. If the planet had real toilets and real booze instead of just sour beer, he'd have already lost some.
Ochoa-Mariden was haunted by the feeling he might finally fail in his sworn duty. Oh, of course Santiago had surrendered to Ilocan, but that war was lost in space, not on the ground. He hadn't failed, and neither had his men.
He'd quickly spotted the threat, though. Ilocan wanted revenge. There was little doubt that wimp Calderon would give in to the Ilocan demand for blood. And the best Santiagan troops on Ilocan had been his. Politicians didn't understand total war; they were always being pushed around by bleeding hearts. So it was obviously only a matter of time before they came for his spec ops command, and he didn't intend to wait around.
He'd learned about the Greeners by accident, but the timing had been perfect. A new world. A new colony. A new start for the troops that had served so well. He'd retired, and bought into the group. Then he began using his own finances to help his troops buy in. He'd made certain they had sworn a new allegiance to the colony; he was a soldier, not a pirate.
His research had convinced him that Jumbo had the potential to regain civilization quickly. Once the locals were exposed to star technology all this 'magic' nonsense could be replaced by a drive to learn the new science. With the help and educational resources the colony could provide, Jumbo would be the equal of Santiago in less than a century.
He knew, of course, that the Greeners had no such plans. They simply wanted to build farms. They felt that over time, the locals would come to see the advantages of Greener farming techniques and tools, and would begin to copy them, spurring invention and technological development. The General shook his head in disdain. Even hiring local farm hands who would learn the new ways, and offering education to their children, it would take centuries to bring Jumbo into the present.
Look at Valhalla. That royal family had been using an old library to try to bring their domain up the ladder of civilization for over 70 years, and all they had to show for it was a railroad and a steam truck that blew up with annoying regularity.