Under Strange Suns (37 page)

A stone beneath his lead foot wobbled. Vongük swayed, then regained his balance. He was almost through, but such instances had been all too common during the twenty minutes the crossing required. Accidents would be frequent, injuries severe.

He would summon the pioneers.

Vongük cleared the field and neared the top of the rise, hoping to get a view of the terrain beyond. A moan caught his attention. A joon lay on his side, curled about himself. A severed arm, still clutching a sword, lay nearby. Vongük could see the joon pressing the remaining stump tightly against his midsection.

The Pontifex-General approached. The joon lifted his head and Vongük recognized Ghemel.

“Demon,” Ghemel said, his voice a barely audible croak.

Vongük sighed. The Watchful God was merciful. The Dictates authorized second, even third chances in the event of many transgressions. Vongük had not stinted in allowing Ghemel every opportunity for redemption, but the Watchful God had clearly withdrawn his favor from this man. His continued existence would burden the Army of the Northern Protectorate, his disfavor would hazard the entire enterprise.

Vongük whipped his sword from its sheath and drove the blade through Ghemel’s throat.

The Pontifex-General wiped blood from his sword tip and contemplated duty. Then he turned to retrace his steps. He had orders to issue.

W
ITHOUT THE WEIGHT OF THE EXPLOSIVES
and the need for stealth, Aidan made good time on his return to Girdled-by-Fields. But he could feel his fourth–or was it fifth?–wind starting to flag as he neared the walls.

He wanted to make an inspection of the defenses. The joon were diligent and from the vantage of his approach the dirt glacis looked high and formidable, sharpened stakes set at intervals jutting out from the sloping face. He could see more stakes being implanted as he approached. Ungainly, spindly looking towers provided unobstructed views for miles around. The Lhakovi would be unable to make a surprise attack.

But Aidan was too tired to undertake the circumnavigation. He waved and hailed the workmen at the first stretch of wall he reached. He heaved himself up the ladder, each rung an effort, though at the pitch of the outer face it was more akin to a stair than a ladder. He wished he could communicate with the joon that clustered about him after he had descended. He wanted to reassure them, let them know they still had time, that he had delayed the enemy. His smile and upthrust thumb did not, he thought, convey much of anything. His slow, measured steps probably provided some reassurance. Hurrying would indicate fear. So perhaps his sheer exhaustion was serving a morale purpose.

All he wanted was to collapse face first on his bed in the Esaul’s Hall. But he had one last task to undertake before he could say to hell with everything for a few hours.

He had entered near the river. He crossed over at the nearest bridge and shuffled toward the mining craft. A female joon saw him approach and disappeared within the craft. About a minute later, just about the time Aidan reached the hatch, Yuschenkov emerged, leaning on a cane, followed by the female joon and Khorknevot, the Master Smith.

“Hail the returning hero,” Yuschenkov said. “How did it go?”

“As well as could be expected, I think,” Aidan said. “Here, let’s take a look.”

He accessed the live feed. He and Yuschenkov bent over his datapad, analyzing the distant, tiny figures displayed therein.

“Looks to me that you bottled them up pretty good,” Yuschenkov said.

Aidan nodded. He could make out a small number of joon working in the rubble field he had created. Behind concentrated the bulk of the Lhakovi army doing what he’d probably have done had he been a part of it: nothing, or as little as possible.

“Resting,” Aidan said. “Letting the combat engineers clear the path. See, right there, I think those are tents going up. Figure we’ve bought McAvoy about a day. How’s he doing, anyway?”

“I spoke with him an hour ago. He’s found his supply and he says he and his team of miners are going at it like badgers hopped up on caffeine.”

“Good. And how’s your project coming along?”

“Given the absence of a clean room, computers, power tools, and assistants with PhDs in rocket science, well enough. Khorknevot is a quick study and Elnecetic is a whiz. I could start the Ghark Institute of Technology with the two of them. Don’t worry, we’ll have the drive installed before the barbarians are at the gate.”

“Good to hear. Look, I’d like to make an inspection of the walls and consult with Lieutenant Hemjeck, but it’s not going to happen. If I don’t get some rack time I’ll be completely useless. Can you pass along my report to Checkok and Hemjeck? I’ll set an alarm for six hours. I think I can afford it. But ask Checkok to send someone in to wake me, just in case. Preferably with some food.”

Aidan only dimly remembered returning to the Hall, staggering into his room. When he woke to the persistent shaking of a joon he discovered that he’d managed to strip off his weapons and his combat harness, but only one boot. The alarm tone on his datapad was an insistent buzzing in his implant, yet he had continued sleeping through it.

He sat up though every muscle in his body demurred, begging for a few more hours of sleep.

At least his wake up call was accompanied by room service. He shoveled down bland, granular mush, fried Ghark apple, and a sort of chopped meat that tasted for some reason like pumpkin, reminding himself every minute or so that he really needed to chew.

* * *

Aidan spared the time for a wash. No more than a sluice down with a bucket of water, but that and a change of clothes aided his few hours of sleep tremendously. But he still felt like hammered shit. Bruised, contused, and stabbed. He bandaged the sword punctures. They weren’t deep, but he didn’t want them constantly leaking. His scrapes were still raw, in that congealing stage short of actual scabbing over. Those, he ignored. If this whole thing worked out he could let Doctor Roberts bathe him in antibiotics and swathe him in bandages.

He checked the live feed. The Lhakovi engineers had been busy. They’d cleared lanes through the rubble but were still at the task. The army behind was active, taking down tents and performing the dozens of tasks of an army preparing for the day’s march.

But they weren’t marching yet.

Girdled-by-Fields was humming with activity. Pairs of joon were bustling everywhere. Some carried sheaves of javelins to the walls. Others toted food to feed the construction crews or to fill the larders in the event of a siege. Few paid Aidan any heed. He was no longer much of a novelty and they had work to do.

He noted buckets of sand or water positioned near each building. Fire suppression preparation, he supposed. He had obviously left the defense of the village in capable hands. Perhaps Checkok had selected the wrong captain. Aidan figured he had been less a commanding officer than a one-man commando team.

He crossed the nearest bridge then followed the stream north until he reached the wall. He thought about the stream chuckling by below him. The joon could move dirt when they had a mind to. He wondered if they’d have had time to divert the stream, dig a moat, if he had suggested it early enough.
No
, he decided.
Not without heavy machinery. Not in under, say, a month
. If he was going to wish for a moat, he might as well wish for stone curtain walls. Hell, why not trebuchets? No, he would make do with what he had available.

The walls had achieved the height intended. Now the workers were thickening them, strengthening them here and there with stone or balks of wood, excavating stairways to the parapet.

But where the walls met the stream, no defense stood at all. Joon might not take naturally to the water, but the Lhakovi ought to be able to get through that.

Aidan took out his weatherproof notebook and a pen. He sketched the walls and the stream. Then he waved over the nearest joon who appeared to be doing more ordering about than laboring. Aidan pointed to the stream, then showed the joon the sketch. When he figured he had got across the correspondence, he took up his pen again and drew in a wall set across the stream, overlapping the ends of the rammed dirt walls. He added parallel lines to the new wall to suggest a wooden construction, either boards or logs, with a couple of vertical lines for support. He paused, then scrawled four scribbles trailing from the corners, hoping to suggest ropes for maneuvering the ungainly construct.

Two female joon strode past, carrying bundles of javelins. Aidan intercepted one of them and pointed at the cord binding the bundle, then at his squiggles. He tore the sheet from his notebook and handed it to the local foreman who studied it again, said something incomprehensible, then turned and began shouting instructions to his crew.

Aidan caught the man before he had gone too far. He indicated the gap in the wall before them, then turned and pointed south to the other gap in the defenses where the stream flowed into the village. The joon spoke some more, then returned to issuing his orders.

Taking that for comprehension and feeling more like a captain now, Aidan climbed the nearest stairway and commenced a more thorough inspection.

They’d thrown up a wide perimeter. Perhaps too wide to defend. He had so few joon of fighting age. If he spread the defenders evenly then a concentrated assault on any given section of the wall would overwhelm his men. So, trickery. He couldn’t create inflatable tanks and fleets of balsa wood bombers, but he could prop javelins and helmets to peek up over the parapet. He could position a joon or two in the vicinity of the decoys to move about, enhance the illusion. That would leave him substantial numbers of troops to deploy where needed. The live feed should provide him sufficient advance notice to shuffle his defenders to the threatened sector.

That felt right.

Aidan waved at a joon stationed in a lookout tower. The joon gestured back. Aidan contemplated climbing up to take in the view. Perhaps he could shorten his inspection, get a reasonable impression of the defenses from that height. But the construction of the tower dissuaded him. It was sturdy enough to support the joon sentry but Aidan questioned its capacity to hold his human bulk.

Still, Aidan wanted to consult with his lieutenant and pass along his defensive scheme. So he opened the live feed on his datapad and dragged over the image to Girdled-by-Fields, comparing the real-time view to his imagined take. The uniformity was comforting; all those D&D sessions as designated mapper were paying off. There did not appear to be a weak point in the walls other than at the entry and exit points of the stream. A prosperous farmstead near to the western curve of the wall caught his eye. It offered a sieging force cover. A potential vulnerability. Aidan considered ordering the buildings torched but thought better of it. A vulnerability he knew about might prove an asset.

He had covered about a third of the wall on this inspection tour. Good enough for the moment. If he was allowed time later, he would complete the circuit. He descended the nearest stairs and made his way toward the mining craft, across the remains of a field, the crops trampled down into mulch.

The walk allowed him a minute to call McAvoy.

“McAvoy, Carson. Over,”

“Well, hello there, Captain Carson. How goes the war?”

“It hasn’t started. How goes the mining?”

“Excellent. This vein is paying out handsomely. Truth is, I’d like to keep digging. But we’ve just about reached Yuschenkov’s minimum requirement.”

“Then load it up and get your ass back here. Last I checked, our guests looked almost ready to head on over.”

“Aye, sir. We’ll be on our way within the hour.”

The conversation brought Aidan to the mining craft. Metal, plastic, and ceramic bric-a-brac formed a loose pile near the hatch–Yuschenkov apparently gutting the spacecraft to make room for the Y-Drive. Aidan hoped none of those parts were vital.

“Doc,” he called. “Got a few minutes?”

Muffled profanity and a clatter of tools emerged from the hatch. Yuschenkov followed a moment later.

“Up and about, I see,” Yuschenkov said.

“Could use another twenty or thirty hours, but yeah, I’m up and doing. How’s the retro-fit coming along?”

“We are making progress. I too could use another twenty or thirty hours, but I’ll get it done sooner.”

“Good. McAvoy says he’ll start back within the hour. If everything falls in line we can have the palladium loaded aboard and the Y-Drive installed before the Lhakovi reach the walls, and we can welcome them with a nice flaming shower from the thrusters. However, given my experience that shit happens, I need to have the defenses ready. So can you spare a few minutes to translate? I need to confer with Lieutenant Hemjeck.”

Yuschenkov nodded. He turned to shout something through the hatch. Khorknevot’s assistant, Elnecetic–Aidan dredged her name from his memory though he’d been foggy from exhaustion when he heard it–emerged in response. Yuschenkov rattled off a brief series of instructions and she jogged away.

“Take a load off while you wait,” Yuschenkov said. “Excuse me if I’m a poor host. I’m going back in to get some work done while we wait for Hemjeck to arrive.

Aidan didn’t sit. He knew that with his body in its current abused condition, pushing himself back to his feet would be both painful and undignified. He was the captain; he had to maintain the front.