"I should go to the head of your group," Cord pointed out. "I'm sure I have been watched as we approached, but I should go to the head so that they're sure I'm not a prisoner or a kractan."
"Yeah," Roger said, and turned to look at Pahner. "Are you coming, Captain?"
"No," the Marine said, and triggered his communicator. "Company, hold up. Our local is going up to pass us through."
"I'll stay here," he continued to Roger, and raised one hand in a beckoning gesture. "Despreaux!"
"Yes, Sir!" the NCO snapped. She'd been scanning the bushes with a hand-held scanner, and she didn't like the fact that she'd kept getting twitches but hadn't been able to lock them down.
"Take your squad up front with the Prince and Cord."
"Roger, Sir." She gestured at the squad and pointed to the front. "Up and at 'em, Marines."
She put the scanner away and glanced off to the north one more time. There was something out there, she was sure, but what it was eluded her.
Cord and Roger moved up to the front of the company, surrounded by Despreaux's squad. The company had spread out in a standard cigar-shaped perimeter, and now most of the Marines were down in the prone, covering against any attack. There was no such thing as "safety" in a combat zone, but a unit temporarily at rest like this was in the worst possible situation. Unless an enemy has had time to prepare an ambush, a moving unit is a hard target to hit. Similarly, a unit which has had time to prepare defenses is a tough nut to crack, but a company which has just stopped can be hit at any moment and isn't prepared for the attack.
It makes soldiers who are well trained—like those of The Empress' Own—very nervous.
Cord followed a beaten track up to the single opening in the palisade. As he approached, another Mardukan of the same height and general demeanor appeared in the opening. At the sight of Cord, followed by the humans but clearly not threatened by them, the second Mardukan waved his upper arms in welcome.
"Cord," he called, "you bring unexpected guests!"
"Delkra!" the shaman shouted back, waving his spear. "As if you hadn't been shadowing us these last few hours!"
"Of course," the greeter agreed imperturbably as Cord and Roger's party reached the top of the hill.
The last portion of the path was so steep that steps had been cut and reinforced with logs and rocks. The top of the hill had been roughly leveled, and now Roger could glimpse the village through the palisade opening. It looked much like other villages on other planets. A large communal fire pit was at its center, surrounded by an open area which was currently deserted. Immediately inside the walls were rude, thatch and wattle huts, open to the inside of the palisaded area. The similarity to villages once found in the Amazon basin and other tropical areas on Earth would have amazed Roger if he hadn't spent enough time hunting on primitive planets to realize that there was only so much that could be done with mud and sticks.
"D'Net Delkra, my brother," Cord said, clapping the greeter on his upper shoulder, "I must introduce you to my new asi-agun." He turned to Roger. "Roger, Prince of the Empire, this is my brother, D'Net Delkra, Chief of The People."
The greeter, Delkra, hissed and clapped all four hands together in agitation.
"Ayee! Asi-agun? And at your age? Foul news, brother—foul news, indeed! And your quest?"
Cord clapped right true-hand to left false-hand in a gesture of negation.
"We met on the way. He saved my life from a flar beast without clear need, without threat to his life, and being not of my tribe."
"Ayee!" Delkra repeated. "Asi debt, indeed!"
The Mardukan, who was a bit taller than the shaman, turned to the prince, who'd doffed his helmet. The armor was more comfortable than the steamy heat of the jungle, but Roger felt it was more diplomatic to face this Delkra, who was presumably senior in the local hierarchy, without the obscuring head gear.
"I thank you for my brother's life," Delkra said. "But I cannot be happy for either his enslavement or the failure of his quest."
"Whoa!" Roger said sharply. "What's this 'enslavement' thing? All I did was shoot a... a flar beast!"
"Asi bond is the tightest of all bonds," the chief explained. "To save another's life, without fear or favor, binds him to you through this life and beyond."
"What?" Roger was trying to get over the "slave" concept. "You guys never help each other out?"
"Of course we do," Cord said, "but we are members of the same clan. To help another is to aid the clan, and the clan, in turn, aids us. But you had no such reason to kill the flar beast. For the life of me, I'm not sure that you should have."
"It could have attacked the Company," Roger pointed out. "That was the real reason I shot. I didn't even see you."
"Fate, then," Delkra said with a hand clap. "It wasn't threatening you or your..." he glanced over the Marines scattered down the hillside "... clan?"
"No," Roger admitted. "Not at the time. But I could tell it was dangerous."
"Karma," Cord said with a double hand clap. "We will complete the binding tonight," he continued with another gesture. "Delkra, I request shelter for the night. And shelter for my asi's clan."
"Oh, granted," the chief said, stepping out of the palisade opening and waving into the jungle. "Granted. Come in out of the rain!"
"We're getting sensor ghosts all along the perimeter," Lieutenant Sawato had just taken a tour of the company while Captain Pahner kept an eye on the negotiations of the top of the hill. Now she looked around at the curtaining rain and shook her head. "I've got that funny feeling... ."
"We're surrounded by the warriors of this tribe," Pahner said in a distant tone. "They're good. They move slow, so the motion sensors aren't sure if they're really there, and they're isothermal, so the heat sensors can't pick anything up. No power sources, no metal except a knife or spearhead, and we don't have the sensors dialed in for scummy nervous systems." He pulled out a pack of gum and absentmindedly extracted a stick and popped it into his mouth. He shook the pack a couple of times to get the water out, and put it away, all without looking. "Take a glance over to the left. There's a big tree with spreading roots. Halfway up, there's a limb covered in... stuff. Go out the limb five meters, just before a red patch. About a half a meter to the right of the red patch. Spear."
"Damn," Sawato said softly. The scummy was as hard to spot as any professional sniper she'd ever seen. He appeared to be covered with a blanket that broke up his outline. "So, what do we do about it, long-term?"
"Dial in the nervous system sensors. We'll have enough data after tonight to do that. After that, any scummy comes within fifty meters of us, we'll be able to detect them. And warn everybody that they're out there. We don't want any accidents."
"I'll pass that on then, shall I?" Sawato asked. Pahner seemed awfully detached about the whole thing, she thought.
"Yeah. Might as well. Looks like the negotiations are going all right after all. I was waiting to see if it dropped in the pot."
"You know," Julian said, "I've been shot, blown up, deep frozen, and vacuum dried. But this is the first time I ever worried about being washed away."
The rain had yet to let up, and the position the squad leader occupied—a slight depression behind a fallen and rotting tree—was rapidly filling. The combination of rising water and the weight of his combat armor meant he was slowly sinking in quickmud.