“Zebra Six, out.”
It was diffi?cult to sleep after that, but Santana fi?nally managed an hour or so and woke just before dawn, when standing orders required that all units serving in the fi?eld stand to arms. It was a tradition that went back hundreds of years and was based on the fact that predawn attacks were and always would be common.
But no attack was forthcoming, which left the second squad free to brew hot drinks and eat their MSMREs before taking fi?fteen minutes to erase the more obvious signs of their presence. Then it was up and off, as the legionnaires made their way through a long, narrow gorge before climbing up over a thinly forested ridge and descending into the jungle below. And that was where Sergeant Maria Gomez and the fi?rst squad were waiting for them. There were the usual catcalls, insults, and other greetings, but the only person Gomez truly cared about was her platoon leader.
Santana took note of the fact that the noncom had chosen to spend the night with her back to a cliff and a good fi?eld of fi?re. The pits had been fi?lled in, however, and the barricade had been removed, which meant the fi?rst squad was ready to move. The platoon leader nodded approvingly. “Nice job, Sergeant. Any excitement last night?”
But before Gomez could answer, DeCosta was on the team freq, his voice tight with anger. “Zebra Six to Alpha Six. . . . The clock is running! Or have you forgotten?
Please bring your platoon forward as quickly as possible. Over and out.”
It was the sort of thing that Gomez expected from offi?cers, and her anger was clear to see. She opened her mouth to speak, but Santana frowned and shook his head. Then, having made no response, he ordered Snyder forward. Meanwhile, as Santana took to the trail, the platoon seethed. None of the legionnaires approved of the way DeCosta was harassing the XO, and Hargo least of all. The serial murderer was still angry about the manner in which DeCosta had shelved him. “Who the hell does the little shit think he is?” the cyborg wanted to know. “One of these days I’m going to grab the bastard and twist his pointy head off!”
“That will be enough of that,” Gomez said sternly.
“Stow the bullshit, or I’ll put you on point for the next fi?ve days.”
With the shrewdness of enlisted people everywhere, Hargo had taken advantage of the disagreement between Santana and DeCosta to keep the war paint on in spite of the major’s order to get rid of it. Which meant that, as the T-2’s big blocky head turned her way, Gomez found herself looking into a pair of bleeding eyes. Hargo was pissed, the noncom knew that, but couldn’t be allowed to run his mouth. Slowly, so as to emphasize what she was doing, the squad leader pulled the zapper out if its holster and held it up for him to see. “You want to dance, big boy?” she inquired. “If so, then bring it on!”
There was a pause, followed by a synthesized rumble. “I got no beef with you, Sarge. You know that.”
Gomez made the zapper disappear. “Yeah, I know that,”
she replied casually. “I was checking, that’s all. Come on, you slackers. Let’s get our asses in gear before the major goes crazy on the captain again.”
The next few hours were largely uneventful as Santana led his platoon north. The column bushwhacked where necessary, but followed game trails whenever possible, to save time. But the legionnaire knew there was something even more important than speed, and that was the need to maintain the element of surprise. Because the moment the Ramanthians became aware of the team, they would bring an overwhelming amount of fi?repower to bear, and the mission would be over. Worse yet, the bugs might fi?gure out what the legionnaires had been planning to do and identify Nankool.
So when the fi?re team at the front of the column announced a clearing ahead, plus some sort of structure, the platoon leader was quick to order both squads off the trail. Once all of them were hidden, Santana directed Snyder to keep an eye on the back door while he followed Private Noaim Shootstraight forward. The brindled Naa was a crack shot, a skilled scout, and had been court-martialed for desertion. Not once but twice. However, in spite of the fact that there weren’t any jungles on Algeron, and the way his sweat-matted fur caused him to pant, the Naa seemed to slide between the leaves and branches as if raised on Jericho. Santana, by contrast, made twice as much noise, and was hard-pressed to keep up.
Ten minutes later the twosome arrived at the edge of a blackened clearing that had obviously been created with energy weapons or something very similar. And there, sitting at the very center of the open space, was a cylindrical structure. The construct was about twenty feet tall, shaped like a grain silo, and had evenly spaced holes all around its circumference. Ramanthian script had been spray-painted onto whatever the object was along with a six-digit number. None of it made any sense to Santana—but was seemingly obvious to Shootstraight. “It looks like a feeder, sir,”
the private whispered. “Like the ones we have for dooths back home.”
What the Naa said made sense. But the Ramanthians didn’t have any dooths. Then the offi?cer had it. . . . The food was for their tricentennial nymphs! The same ones who were out hunting. He was about to say as much when DeCosta spoke in his ear. “Zebra Six to Alpha Six. . . . What are you waiting for? Get a move on. Over.”
There were no Ramanthians in sight, young or old, which meant that the way was clear. Or that’s how it seemed. But the area around the silo was littered with the remains of dead animals. Bones mostly, since it looked as though scavengers had been at them, but some half-eaten corpses as well. Had foraging nymphs killed them? Or had the slaughter resulted from something else?
“Answer me, damn it!” DeCosta demanded shrilly. “I know you can hear me!”
DeCosta was distracting, so Santana killed the input, as he brought his binos up and inched them from left to right. There was nothing to see at fi?rst, other than corrugated metal, but then he spotted them. Half-hidden within the shadow cast by the feeder’s conical roof was an array of spotlights, vid cams, and some sort of weapons!
Which made sense if the bugs wanted to observe what the nymphs were up to and keep indigenous animals from getting their food. The platoon leader reactivated his radio to discover that DeCosta was in mid-rant. “. . . or I will know the reason why! Over.”
“This is Alpha Six,” Santana said softly. “We ran into a Ramanthian feeding station—complete with cameras and a computer-controlled weapons system. That means we’ve got to backtrack and go around it. Out.”
Even DeCosta could understand that, so there was no reply, which the platoon leader chose to interpret as a win. But Hargo wasn’t so easily satisfi?ed. He took each of DeCosta’s diatribes personally—and continued to fume. Having backtracked more than a mile and successfully circled around the Ramanthian feeding station, the fi?rst platoon continued toward the north and a reunion with the rest of Team Zebra. The much-awaited linkup took place at about 1500 hours, which left them about fi?ve hours of daylight.
DeCosta, who was clearly eager to get going, chose to position himself near the head of the column just behind the team on point. The decision spoke to his personal courage since both he and his T-2 would almost certainly be in the thick of things were the company to be ambushed. In the meantime Santana found himself in the drag position, which made tactical sense, but might be by way of a punishment as well. But whatever the reason for the assignment, the platoon leader took his duties seriously, which meant Snyder had to as well, even if that required extra effort. Because rather than simply walk backwards every once in a while, and scan the back trail with her sensors, the offi?cer ordered the T-2 to leave the trail periodically, hunker down, and wait to see if anyone was following. And not just following, but lagging so far back, as to initially fall outside of sensor range. Which seemed unlikely at best—and forced Snyder to jog in order to catch up with column.