Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) (35 page)

Thank you.
Tawfiq had just spoken the words Arun had been praying for.

“Too risky,” said Sushantat. “We need military assistance without delay.”

“Need I remind you who is in charge here?” Biljah’s artificially voiced words were expressionless, but Arun was sure she was issuing some stern scents to her subordinate.

The leader of the Hardits suddenly remembered Arun was there and switched off her human translation. The argument raged on for a short while. Arun couldn’t follow a word, but at the end of it, he was still alive and following Tawfiq back to Team Beta’s room.

Arun had barely made it out with his life, but he’d done the necessary.

Operation Clubhouse was back on.

“Mistress, this slave begs to report our status.”

Arun shook his head. Adrienne was enjoying this a little too much. Any human listening in would hear the smirk behind her words.

“Report,” came Tawfiq’s artificial voice through Adrienne’s radio, which was turned up loud enough to fill the truck cab.

“Thank you mistress. We have caught and interrogated an Agri-Aux.”

“And?”

“And they are concealing something.”

“Concealing what? Explosives? Weapons?”

“We have not discovered weapons. I meant that the Agri-Aux knows something but would not reveal what she knew.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” whispered Arun. He was sitting alongside Adrienne in the truck cab. Madge glowered at her from the driver’s seat.

“Do not trust the crop slaves,” said Tawfiq. “Stay on your guard.”

“Oh, mistress. I never knew you cared.”

Madge reached over and switched off the radio.

Arun could practically see the sparks fly between the two women.

“Go check the others are okay,” Madge ordered him between clenched teeth.

Arun took the hint. He opened up the hatch in the cab and climbed out, leaving Adrienne and Madge to work out between them who was in charge. Arun would back his squad mate without hesitation, but he understood that Madge wanted to prove she was the commander without Arun there to outnumber Adrienne.

He heaved himself up, closed the hatch and clambered over the spine of the lurching dung truck.

The truck’s powerplant was completely silent, but the heavy tread tires made enough racket to nearly drown out the angry squawks of the birds they disturbed as they drove along the same track they always used to get to Alabama.

Arun was sore all over from the Hardit’s pain shocks, but his sense of balance was undamaged. He stood up and walked toward the rear, arms thrown out for balance. On the road behind them he could see Springer driving the other truck. They waved to each other.

When Tawfiq had sent Team Beta out to investigate the strange goings-on at Alabama, giving them strict instructions to never speak of what they found to anyone but her, it was Adrienne who had requested transport. The result was the tucks that ferried the broken-down human excrement from Detroit to the farmland depot: the
Alabama Dung Express
.

The poop trucks consisted of a wheeled frame to which four pods were attached by mag clamps, two pairs hanging from either side of a central spine. Instead of raw ingredients for fertilizer, today one of the pods had a different cargo.

Arun open up the hatch on top of the pod and shouted inside. “Everything all right in there?”

He was greeted with a cheer.

“I guess that’s a yes then. You want I should close the hatch?”

“No, it’s a lovely day. Keep it open.”

“You got it.”

Arun and many of the Aux inside the pod were wearing skirts and bonnets – the full high-tech protective kit. Esther’s people had donated eight crude suits earlier in the week, but today all of her Agri-Aux had decided to forego their full protective gear as part of their atonement.

Arun hoped she wasn’t going to be frakked off when she learned they’d taken the dung express rather than walk

“Hey, McEwan!” came a call from the hatch.

“What?”

“We can’t get radio reception down here. Catch!”

Someone threw a speaker up through the hatch. Arun clamped his radio to the hatch, connected the speaker then settled down, sitting astride the truck’s spine, looking out over the fields. Now that he was properly shielded, he could appreciate the beauty of the golden crops as they rippled in a light breeze under delicate flakes of pure white clouds. Arun could happily spend the entire day looking at clouds; they were so beautiful and he didn’t often get to see them.

In the distance he could see the last few wisps of smoke dissipating in the sky from one of the fake fires the Agri-Aux had started, using the smoke bombs provided by Pedro. Hopefully they had given off enough heat to look like a genuine fire to any orbiting satellite.

Arun turned his back on the smoke. That was someone else’s problem now. Having done his bit, he was looking forward to taking the rest of the day off. He’d never had a vacation before.

He settled down to enjoy the broadcast from Radio Hortez.

So there you have it, Scendence fans, The Stormers from 4th battalion, 101st Assault Regiment have knocked out Divine Inspiration from 5th battalion, 420th Tac. While we wait for the next game, stick with Radio Hortez as we return once again to Team Ultimate Victory’s Deception-Planning match from earlier today, against the Fieldgrays from 1st battalion, 410th Tac.

Each match uses a randomly selected game or challenge, and for this contest the Scendence AI has selected an old favorite, Skat. It’s an ancient Earth card game, folks. Skat’s a popular game because it rewards bluff, risk taking, and a grasp of probability statistics. Up till this point in the game, our bug-ugly contestant from Team Ultimate Victory has lost every hand. Fieldgrays opponent, Kadian Stadeker, has kept a straight face but now I can see his expression soften, a faint smile on his lips. He’s coasting to an easy victory against the surprise Troggie substitution for disgraced idiot, Arun McEwan. Or so he thinks. Let’s begin our replay by hearing what our scribe friend has to say after losing yet another hand.

“You do realize, Stadeker, that I have bluffed all along. I have allowed you to win up to this point. I have just been dealt an excellent hand and I shall beat you with it. It is not that I especially wish you to lose, but I wish to win more.”

“What do you mean? You want to win more than I do?”

“No. I wish to win more than I don’t want you to lose.”

“Eh? Your language skills are even worse than your card playing. You’re talking utter drent.”

“I regret to tell you, Stadeker, that you are incorrect. It is your ability to listen and comprehend that is utter drent.”

Kadian shrugs that barb away, but you can see on his face that he’s rattled.

“Eight of hearts.”

“You what?”

“Ten of bells. Unter of acorns.”

“What are you playing at, insect?”

“Unter of bells. Ten of leaves.”

“Hey stop that!”

“King of leaves.”

“That’s frakking cheating.”

“No, this is using my natural frakking advantages. I can smell your hormones the way you can see words in a book. Shall we ask the referee to adjudicate?”

Have you ever had the sense that you’ve snatched defeat from the jaws of victory? No? If you could only see Stadeker’s face you would understand exactly what it must feel like. Only moments before he was certain of easy victory. Now he’s so confused that he isn’t certain of anything. If you told Stadeker that his name was Merry Madge, he’d probably believe you.

Mind you, your host on Radio Hortez can hardly believe what he’s seeing either. I’ve watched this scene five, maybe six, times now and it still makes my eyes pop. The competitors are sitting at a small circular table covered in a black velvet cloth. Well, I say sitting, but our insect – who goes by the name of Pedro – is resting its seven-foot-long bulk on a kind of bench that leaves its back two pairs of legs free to wiggle along with its feelers. Its front pair of limbs holds a hand of cards. Its drab thorax – the middle segment of its body – is coated in fine rust-colored hairs, neatly brushed for the big occasion. Its abdomen – the lower and largest part of the Trog – is mottled in shades of brown and gray and coated in semi-transparent carapace armor that gleams like highly polished lacquer. He looks like the kind of ultimate monster. If you met our Pedro in your dreams you’d wet yourself in fright, but our insect hero is calmly lying there, holding a hand of playing cards. It’s simply bizarre, my friends. Unbelievable.

Tell you what, though. Our big ant is built for these bluffing card games. It’s staring at Stadeker through twin pairs of eyes like glossy black glass bowls, making absolutely no facial expressions at all. And it’s speaking through a thought-to-speech device. No giveaway tells there, folks.

I’ll hand you back to Pedro…

“I insist we consult the referee, because I play not only for victory but to uphold the good name of my nest.”

“Your nest doesn’t have a name, insect. Just a smell. A bad one too, I expect.”

“On the contrary, we do have a human name. We are Nest Clubhouse.”

Yeah! Let’s hear it for Nest Clubhouse. Just remember who’s made all this possible today. I can’t name names without risking getting our benefactor into trouble. Let’s just say this Scendence match had us hanging on a Cliff-edge, eh?

Back to the match. The ref confirms that trash talking to your opponent is all part of the game. As for Stadeker – get this! – now he’s shielding his face, hiding it behind his hands.

“Unter of leaves. Nine of bells.”

“You can cut that out. I’m not talking to you.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I don’t want you to. I don’t need to see your face either. I can smell your reaction as I name each possible card you might hold. Seven of bells. Seven of acorns.”

“Damn you, skangat insect.”

“You smell upset. If I were you, I’d play my first card ASAP. The longer you delay, the more of your hand I will uncover.”

Stadeker makes his play. It’s the ten of bells, the trump suit.

“A safe play. Very sensible under the circumstances, Stadeker. After all, I will soon know your entire hand and you have no idea what I’ve been dealt. That gives me a crushing advantage, don’t you think? Only a miracle of good fortune can save you from defeat.

Our bug-ugly friend, Pedro, was right. He won that hand. And the next. And every hand after that until he played the winning card and claimed a stunning victory for Team Ultimate Victory, standing in for Arun McEwan who was too busy with his vacation to make it to the match today.

They say a great Scendence player is crushing in victory and stoic in defeat. Was Kadian Stadeker calm? Was he heck! Let’s fast forward to my favorite part of the match. Pedro has just won, and Stadeker is on his feet, thumping the table and hurling abuse at the big insect. Looks to me like there’s going to be a fight.

“You’re a skangat cheat!”

“The referee disagrees.”

“The referee can go vulley herself. I’m talking about all the cadets watching this. In their eyes you’re a cheat. Maybe you don’t care, but the human players in your team are cheats too by association. A stench of dishonor will hang around them for the rest of their lives.”

“If I were you, young human, I would sit down. It is you who risk dishonoring yourself. In your human translation of the Jotun bifurcated-noun, the game we have just played is called Deception-Planning, is it not?”

“It is. Notice the word ‘cheat’ doesn’t appear there.”

“Indeed not. To win by cheating would be vile. And since you are a much more experienced skat player than me, I planned to win by deception instead. I convinced you that I could smell your reaction when I named each card. I can’t. That was a lie.”

Dear, Radio Hortez fans. I’d give anything to swap places with each and every one of you right now, so you can see with your own eyes the expression on Kadian Stadeker’s face.

To begin with, his face is bloated with disgust and envy. To get the idea, picture a ripe cabbage in place of his head, a vegetable bursting with greenness. Now imagine filming that cabbage being cooked for an hour in a steam bath, until it is the color of bleached bone. Finally, speed up the cabbage-cooking footage a thousand-fold.

There.

Now you know how Stadeker’s expression changed as he realized how he’d been artfully played by the latest Scendence sporting sensation.

Okay, let’s move on. Pedro gave an interview after the match. I warn you, do not drive, operate machinery or fire tripod-mounted weapons while listening to this interview. It is so hilarious it will have you in fits of hysteria.

Belay that! We’ll come back to that laughter-fest in a moment. There’s a live interview with Xin Lee just starting. I’ll patch you through to the feed now.

“… whose crazy idea was it to field a Trog substitute?”

“A team effort. Everything about today has been one huge team effort. Sometimes, it seems the whole of Detroit and beyond is backing us.”

“I think you’re right. Team Ultimate Victory is the comeback team of this year’s Scendence season. Your Trog is filling in for your previous super-sub, Arun McEwan. Was it strange to play without McEwan?”

“Not really. Arun was with us more than you realize. If you’re listening, Cadet Prong, I have a hug and more waiting for you. Oh, and tell your little girlfriend, Madge, hi from me. She sent me such a sweet message telling me all about your predicament.”

“Do I detect a hint of team romance, Xin?”

“I don’t think so. Anyway, nice talking with you. We’ve won two of our four matches today, which means there are still two more to win. I’m heading over to the Gunnery arena now.”

Well, what can I say? You heard it first on Radio Hortez. Arun McEwan has a little girlfriend called Madge. She sounds a sweet thing. If anyone can see Arun’s girlfriend right now, please radio in a description of her face. C’mon, it’s only fair. I described Stadeker for you!