Firemask Read online

  "And where the hell did you get all this sudden wisdom?"

  "Easy," Njangu said. "It ain't my problem."

  Garvin smiled wryly.

  "So what do I do about it, o combat advisor and valued friend… for a dickhead."

  "Go bleed somewhere else."

  "What? Take leave? And what happens if something happens while I'm gone? No way," Garvin said. "I've got too much to do."

  "Wasn't suggesting you go piddle off," Njangu said.

  "The new fools we've got training are coming up for their graduation exercise.

  "We're fat city, no more'n two percent understrength, and the way it looks we're gonna graduate about eleven of them, with only two, maybe three washouts. Things like that are liable to make Hedley think we're getting soft since he gave us the company.

  "So take these clowns up in the hills, bust their nuts, see if you can't get five or six of 'em to go crying home to momma."

  "Like where?"

  Njangu considered the wall map.

  "Here's something that'd be a real killer. Take the virgins across to Dharma Island, maybe on the far side of Mount Najim, hike on up into the Highlands. It'll be nice and frozen, make 'em homesick for the tropics down here.

  "Go completely tactical, no air unless it's an emergency…" Njangu looked at the map again, checked the legend. "Yeh. Here we go. Insert here, where it's still fairly livable, then shamble on up into the Highlands to… here. That's the Musth base they abandoned.

  "See if there's any interesting sou-ven-waars. Tell the little bastards that we'll come in with hot rats and cold beer, give them a nice ride back here for graduation, then put on your best sorrow-face and say, 'The airlift didn't show, and we'll have to hike back.'

  "That ought to get some people busting into tears and quitting."

  Garvin looked at the map, at Yoshitaro.

  "That's an evil thought. How long ago was it you went through this shit?"

  "Year or so. Which reminds me. You never did qualify, not formally. So this'll be your own final grad. How's that hang, my friend? Be a real shame if you start wheezing and quit on us. They'll have to give the company to me, and send you back to polishing Griersons.

  "Give me a chance to give it some kind of sexy name, like all these steel-teeth units do in the holos. Screw Jaansma's Jewels, it'll be Yoshitaro's… urn…

  "Yoinks," Jaansma said, a smile coming for the first time in he didn't remember how many days. "Yerks. Yaahoos. Yobbos. Yoodles. Yackoffs."

  "Shut the hell up, sir . And go pack."

  "Thank you, Aspirant . I'll take your suggestion. God help those poor trainees. Take charge of the company 'til I get back."

  "I shall," Njangu promised. "And you'll not recognize it for the improvements."

  The Rentiers had built a great tabernacle, almost a fortress, overlooking the city of Leggett, just where the ground rose into the Heights and the aristocrats' estates.

  Their religion was quiet, formal, full of exactitude, and helped demarcate the established families from the parvenus. A proper Rentier could maneuver easily- through the rituals, while still admiring or despising the dress of a competitor or friend, considering whose turn it was to invite a "few friends" over for a postservice meal, or the latest gossip from the night before's ball.

  The Leader waited until the chorus's chanting died away in the dim rafters of the temple, then walked forward, his white-and-black robes swishing as he moved.

  "This is the second reading of the matrimony proposed between Loy Kouro and Jasith Mellusin. Again, is there any among us who knows of a reason these two should not be joined in matrimony?"

  He waited.

  Someone, no one ever found out who, far in the back, giggled.

  A few necks stiffened, but no one turned to look.

  "There are none," the Leader said. "Now, let us turn to this day's lesson…"

  The Grierson came in hot, skidding sideways and letting its momentum smash down brush on the edge of the clearing. Eleven women and men staggered out, an-thropoidal under huge packs, blasters cradled in their arms, lumbered to the far side of the clearing, and fell into a defensive perimeter.

  Inside the Grierson, Garvin started to unplug his throat mike, hesitated, keyed a sensor.

  "Vehicle Commander, this is Jaansma."

  "Yeh," Ben Dill said flatly.

  "Hey. Sorry I was a shit-for-brains."

  Without waiting for a reply, he lifted off the flight helmet, pulled on a floppy patrol hat, and lurched out into the center of the perimeter, dropping to his knee beside the trainee named as that day's patrol leader and her com man.

  She, like the other recruits, had been ground down to the point of emaciation by the long weeks of training in and around Camp Mahan, and her face, which might be pretty after a week's sleep, was pale in spite of the blazing sun. She was seventeen and, like the others, had her black hair shaved.

  The Grierson's ramp snapped up, and the combat vehicle lifted away sharply. This was the second time it'd lowered into a jungle clearing, and in common with standard insertion tactics, would do a second false insertion before returning to Camp Mahan.

  The trainee, a woman named Montagna, reflexively waited for Jaansma to tell her what to do, then realizing she was The Man now, recovered. She checked her map hastily, making sure, as best she could, they'd been landed where she'd asked to be put down.

  The patrol order had been set before they lifted off. Montagna nodded to the point man, and he checked his primitive compass, got up, and, moving slowly, eased into the jungle. Jaansma had insisted compasses be used, rather than global positioning SatPos, both to increase the hassle factor and because it was possible for an enemy not only to use satellite positioning to give false locations, but to backplot and locate someone using the system.

  Behind the point man came the woman picked for slack, then the rest of the patrol.

  Jaansma walked behind Montagna and the com man, moving in easy rhythm, as he'd done in many, many training patrols since taking over I&R, wondering why the hell he'd allowed himself to be talked out of being a nice quiet gunner on a Grierson, riding around high over this muck, letting his mind forget Mahan, Leggett, and people who were going to get married.

  " 'Kay," the wedding coordinator said briskly. "Now, imagine music… bumpbumpadump, bumpbump-adump… and the bride, that's you, Jasith, will come through those doors, that's right, no, more slowly, dear, you'll lose your flower girls, and go to the center aisle, where Loy will be waiting.

  "You'll hold the moment for the corns which'll be up there, remote from the rafters, another one in this pew, a third from behind you, at the main entrance.

  "You bridesmaids, don't pay any attention to the cameras, don't wave, or play the fool, or you'll get no champagne at the reception.

  "Now, let's run through it… bumpbumpadump, bumpbumpadump, pause, turn, now start up the aisle, bumpbumpadump, bumpbumpadump, and here comes little whatsisface holding your train and what the hell do you want?"

  The portly red-faced woman was scowling at a slender woman with a com.

  "Florist, ma'am. I need to go over just where you'll want the wreaths, and where the flowers from guests will go."

  "For the love of… all right, girls. Take a break."

  Jasith Mellusin slumped into a pew, wiped sweat. Mel-lusin was not quite the richest woman on C-Cumbre, heir to her murdered father's mining empire, but close. She was just twenty, medium height, with a slender model's body, black hair she kept long, and a pouty, provocative face.

  "This rehearsing is hot and stupid," she said.

  "Not as hot and stupid as it's going to be on The Day," one of her bridesmaids, Karo Lonrod said.

  "Aren't you glad you decided to get married, ha-ha-ha?"

  Lonrod was a year younger and a few centimeters shorter than Jasith, red-haired, with a slight tendency to chubbiness that her fanaticism for sports kept under control. She, like all the other women in the huge temple, was a Rentier, wealthy, an
d most aware of it.

  Jasith hesitated for a bare instant, then said, "It's better than the alternatives. And I could use a drink."

  "Who said it's better?" Lonrod said. "I don't plan on hitching to anyone 'til I'm an old maid, maybe twenty-five, no matter what Daddy wants or what rich prick he tries to shove down my throat."

  She giggled. "I didn't mean what I said to come out like that."

  Jasith managed a smile, looked around, saw no one was in earshot.

  "Karo, can I ask you something?"

  "Surely. Perhaps I'll even give you an answer."

  "You went out with Loy."

  "I did." There was sudden caution in the other woman's voice.

  "What's he like in bed?"

  Karo blinked at Jasith.

  "You mean you don't know?"

  "No," Jasith said, not looking at her friend. "I wanted to, but he said he wouldn't, not with the woman he was going to marry."

  "Oh boy."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I don't know what it means," Lonrod said. "But I didn't know there was anybody in our group that won't screw anything that comes in range. Did he say why?"

  "No. He just said it was real important to him."

  "That's weüürd," Karo said. "But 'kay, if that's the way he thinks. He's 'kay in the rack. Isn't as creative as some, but he stays there 'til you go off, at least.

  "But he isn't one of those go-all-night wonders like a couple you and I could remember."

  Jasith's serious expression dissolved, and she giggled.

  "As long as you asked me," Lonrod said. "What was that soldier boy you were going out with like? And why'd you dump him?"

  Jasith's laughter stopped suddenly.

  "I don't really want to talk about him," she said. "But PH tell you why I couldn't stay with Garvin. Just thinking about him reminded me of all that blood, and the shooting, and what happened to Daddy."

  "I don't track," Karo said. "He didn't start the war."

  "I don't know," said Jasith. "But I couldn't think of going to bed with him after that. I don't know why. Maybe…" she let her voice trail off.

  Lonrod looked at Jasith closely.

  "Are you sure this whole thing is that good an idea?" Her hand swept the temple, the twenty people waiting for the rehearsal to resume.

  "I've got to get married sometime, don't I? And Loy's surely the kind of man my father'd want me to marry, isn't he?"

  "Oh, no question about that," Lonrod said hastily. She was about to say more, caught herself.

  "It's too hot to be serious," she said. "Let's go see if anybody's got anything cold in their lims."

  Three days out, the patrol reached the steep slopes that led to the Highlands. Already it was cooler than it had been in the lowlands, a chill wind blowing down from the heights.

  So far, no one had quit, even though Garvin had been pushing them hard, giving them only three hours of sleep, and running regular night exercises.

  He pointed up and stepped out of the line, then motioned to that day's patrol leader, Abana Calafo, a small cheerful teenager who let nothing bother her, who— Garvin knew—would make it through the training. She came close.

  "Straight up," he whispered. "Rope up." A standing joke was you could tell an I&R troop because she'd follow SOP of no sound in the field, and whisper at her own wedding.

  She nodded, went to the point man and whispered the procedure. Garvin waited, looking impatient, secretly glad for the chance to wheeze a little before further exertion, while the patrol unrolled the climbing rope each wore around his or her waist, tied in, and started the ascent, which was just steep enough to be interesting if the climber slipped.

  Darod Montagna, next to last in line, moved past him, exhausted eyes sunk deeper in her gray face, but still determined, took a deep breath, and began climbing.

  The last man was Baku al Sharif, a solid block of a 'Raum. Garvin saw him watching Montagna's buttocks with a mildly interested expression.

  The combat knife flashed from Garvin's sheath, cut the rope linking al Sharif and Montagna.

  "You've got too much energy, troop," he whispered. "It's too slick, and the rope broke. You get to solo on up… that way."

  "That way" was a steep, brush-choked ravine.

  Al Sharif's lips pursed, and he glared at Jaansma.

  "A little hard?" Garvin suggested. "It gets to you. Yahweh knows I understand. You know, you don't have to put up with this crap. I could hit the com right now, get a Grierson inbound, and an hour from now you'd be in a nice hot shower back at Mahan, getting a real meal instead of this dried crud.

  "Then sleep. Nice white sheets, quiet, and maybe a three-day pass on the beach to recover from this stupid shit."

  Al Sharif looked at Garvin coldly.

  "Screw you. Boss."

  He pushed his way into the brush, started clambering up the face.

  Jaansma laughed.

  That'd be at least two that'd make it.

  He grunted, and started up the slope. He looked up, saw Montagna climbing just above him, thought, She does have sort of a cute butt, pity you can't socialize with anybody you're in charge of . Then he realized he hadn't thought of Jasith at all that day.

  "Y'see what you're gonna be missing?" the man shouted at Loy Kouro over the band's blare, waving at the three strippers onstage, who were down to scarves and smiles.

  Kouro owled at them, picked up his glass, and upended it in the general area of his mouth, half of the contents making its way down his throat.

  "Nup, nup, Jermy," he said, weaving a bit in his seat. "Th' time for that's pissed… passed… gone."

  "Not yet it isn't," his friend said. "Tomorrow, you stand up, take th' vows, an' you've got to become a good boy… or anyway not get caught bein' bad. Bad, bad, bad. Won't be able to do what we used to do with the girlies. Wouldn't want Jasith pissed at me, I wouldn't."

  He winked elaborately, sloppily refilled Kouro's glass with a mixture from three of the bottles on the table. Somebody wove past, grabbed the glass, disappeared with it. Jermy cursed, found another glass, dumped its contents out on the rug, and began rebuilding a drink.

  "Look around, m'friend. Nothin' but your friends here."

  The club was, indeed, packed with young Rentiers: some actually Kouro's friends, the others wise enough to want to stay on the good side of the planet's biggest publisher.

  "Th' girls finish up, an' they'll be over d'rectly," Jermy promised. "An' there's a room upstairs, an' you can go on up with any of 'em you want. Hell, all of 'em if you want. There's more ordered up, arrivin' in a bit.

  "Better make it a night to remember."

  "Nup, nup, nup," Kouro said. "That'd be dishonest, bein' untrue. I'd sure be pissed off if Jasith was runnin' around on me.

  "Time I grew up, anyway. Got to be like Hank Sank."

  "Huh?"

  "An old Earth play. By somebody or other. Couple plays, actually. Henry Vee, which stands for five in some old-timey language. This guy's a prince… that's next to a king… and he's a wild hair until he gets the throne, and then he becomes a great… greaaaat…

  warrior. Wins the Battle of Hastings or some-such. Long time since my father made me read it.

  "He's gone, now, and I've got to do what he'd want me to do. Marry good, think about havin' kids, keep the dynasty going."

  "Gods, man, you're not gonna turn into a dreek, are you?"

  "Got to grow up sometime."

  "Who says?"

  Kouro didn't answer, but reached for the drink. He overbalanced, fell facefirst into a pool of liquor. After a moment, he began snoring loudly.

  Jermy stared at him.

  "Poops out at his own party. Hafta come up with some stories about what really happened for tomorrow morning, when he's real hungover and needs some shame." He stood, waved at the stage.

  "Hey, girls! Hey. The party boy's out, but there's somebody over here still able to show you a good time!"

  A foot tapped Garvin's boot, and
he forced himself awake, ignored groaning muscles, and tried to look alert and eager. The patrol lay in a large star formation, legs almost touching.

  This was the day they'd "make contact," or, in reality, reach the abandoned Musth base.

  Garvin tried to decide if the mist was coming down hard enough to qualify as rain, decided it was, and that he hadn't been this wet since the last time he went to the field.

  He was incredibly dirty—they'd been out… and he had to count on his fingers… ten days now, and other than streams or when the near-constant mist became a drencher, nobody had bathed, and everybody wore the same combat fatigues they had on when they came off the Grierson. At least Jaansma had three pair of socks, one pair on his feet, another pair tied to his backpack being "washed" by the rain, the third just in the top of his pack supposedly drying.

  This was the I&R way, and again he wondered why the company never seemed to lack for volunteers, had an even greater wonderment about why he remained in the unit.

  Darod Montagna was again patrol leader, and made the mission briefing. Garvin had given her the data on where the patrol was and the situation posited by the exercise the night before, and now listened to her break it down.

  Everyone listened intently, fingers moving from point to point on their maps. No one wrote anything down—a lost or captured map could doom them all if this were real.

  "When we reach the target area," Montagna went on, "Alpha Element goes on line, and I'll indicate which way Bravo goes, left or right. Bravo will sweep the area, Alpha giving support fire. When the area's secured, Alpha moves across the area, and both elements reassemble.

  "If there is contact, each of you fires one unit of ammo. If the enemy's stronger than we are, I'll give the order, and we break contact, go for the RP…"

  She gave the map coordinates of the rendezvous point, went on, "… commo… support… chain of command." She finished, looked at Garvin.

  " 'Kay," he said briskly. "We eat, then move out. Now lemme give you the reality of what we're coming on. It's the old Musth headquarters, which'll most likely be boarded up.

  "You're carrying live ammo, but pick a god to pray to if anybody rolls a ball out the muzzle for real and makes a hole in somebody else's real estate. We're not at war with the Musth, and it'd be real goddamned dumb for somebody to start it over a busted window when and if they come back.