There was an electricity among the troopers, a deep excitement. The world of their first contract was no longer a concept, no longer even a blaze against the blackness, or a beautiful blue, white, and tan ball. "Out there" had become "down there."
The Burkitt was a combination passenger and cargo ship, not built as a troop transport, let alone as a transport for egalitarian forces designed after the T'swa pattern. Thus the regiment's senior officers sat in the wardroom, watching on the large screen there. The platoon leaders and platoon sergeants watched on screens in the first-class dining room, and the lower ranks in their messhalls (they ate in shifts) and troop compartments.
On the screens, flashes of silver had become lakes, often in chains, and threadlike creeks could be made out where they flowed across open bogs and fens. Some of the fens in particular were large, showing pale greenish-tan, occasionally with islets of forest looking like black teardrops. Here and there, widely separated, were the lighter rectangles of farm fields, mostly in small clusters or strings. Romlar supposed they were along roads, but at first the roads couldn't be seen.
Most of it was dark forest though. As the Burkitt sank lower, the horizons drew in, the view became more oblique, and the forest appeared nearly unbroken. The terrain was gently undulating, approaching flat, with here and there low ridges crossing it, wrinkles on the plain. Then someone on the bridge changed the camera, and they were looking straight downward. In the local area shown below them now, fields were prominent. A couple of miles lower they became predominant, with scattered farm buildings visible. In the center, a village stood along the north side of a stream, with a mill pond and mill. On the south side of the stream, at a little distance, were the orderly tent rows of a military camp that would house, Romlar thought, a couple of regiments.
Their descent stopped and the intercom sounded. "Colonel Romlar to the bridge, please. Colonel Romlar to the bridge, please."
It was time. Romlar got up and left the wardroom, striding down the passageway to the bridge, a room not particularly large, resembling in size and shape the bridge on a surface ship. The central monitor showed the same picture he'd seen in the wardroom, but here it was flanked by an array of other views. The Burkitt's captain motioned him over, and Romlar contacted the government below, to find out where to land.
As soon as Colonel Fossur's aide began to talk with the ship over the radio, the president rang General Belser's office and informed him. Then Lanks, his War Minister, his intelligence chief, and his daughter Weldi went outside. The ship hung motionless, something less than two miles above the village. It seemed very large. None had ever seen one before, and to Weldi especially, it was exciting. The four of them climbed into Fossur's open-topped army GPV, filling it, and trailing a long tail of dust, drove down the road to the landing site, to welcome the mercenary regiment.
When they got there, the ship still hovered above the village. The camp site had been prepared as agreed. Tent floors had been hammered together and stood in regularly placed stacks, with folded squad tents piled beside them. Log footings had been set, and sills spiked on them. Mess tents had already been erected, along with the tents that would be regimental and battalion headquarters, and orderly rooms. Wells had been driven and hand pumps installed, the best the Smoleni could do under the circumstances. Latrine pits had been dug.
The ship was still parked above the village.
Another GPV sped down the gravel road, to pull up nearby. General Belser's aide got out and came over to them, trailed by a master sergeant. They saluted when they got there. "Mr. President," the aide said, "General Belser sent me as his representative."
Lanks nodded soberly. "Thank you, Major."
Vestur Marlim's lips thinned. Belser wasn't coming then. He was "making a statement," no doubt; he had "important" things to do, and the mercenaries weren't worth his attention. Actually, Belser hadn't initiated a single action since the Komarsi ended their advance. As if he was willing to sit here until the food ran out, making no effort. If I were president— The thought embarrassed the Minister of War, as if it were disloyal. He'd long admired Heber Lanks as a historian-philosopher and teacher, and admired him now as president for his patience, his humility—and yes, his judgment. Marlim was learning not to second-guess him; the man could be right with the most unlikely decisions.
But something needed to be done about that arrogant, surly, Yomal-punish-him Belser!
With the coming of the other GPV, the major's reporting, and his own thoughts about Belser, Marlim had lost track of the ship. Now he became aware that the others' attention had shifted upward, and he saw the ship lowering, even as it moved toward them. Within a few minutes it had parked only two or three feet above the ground. Massive jacks extruded, sought and found the earth, and the ship's AG generator gradually surrendered the Burkitt's tonnage to them.
Abruptly gangways opened and men poured out, boiled around the piles of floors and tents, and began to set up. As if they'd drilled it; no doubt they had. Others began to unload the ship's cargo holds, to set up prefabricated sheds and transfer goods to them. All this was under way before the mercenaries' commander had time to come over to the welcoming group.
President Heber Lanks watched him come, a man with thick shoulders and marked presence, flanked by what appeared to be two aides. Another man followed a bit behind them and to one side, wearing a helmet that seemed to be a camera as well; it had lenses, and a visor covered his upper face. It occurred to Lanks that he himself bore no insignia of office. Fossur was in uniform, and so was Major Oress, but Lanks wore comfortable yard clothes, with a heavy twill shirt to protect him somewhat from the bull flies, for fly-time had followed mosquito-time in the Free Lands. He looked, he supposed, more like a curious villager than an offworlder's concept of a president.
The mercenary colonel seemed to know him though. He stopped six feet in front of him, saluted casually, and spoke: "I'm Colonel Artus Romlar. This is my executive officer, Major Jorrie Renhaus, and my aide, Captain Fritek Kantros."
So young! "I'm Heber Lanks; I'm, uh, the president."
As Lanks had begun to speak, a bull fly had landed on Colonel Romlar's temple and dug in; clearly the young man had not applied a repellent. It distracted the president, and for a moment he'd faltered, then continued. "This is Vestur Marlim, my Minister of War; Colonel Elyas Fossur, my adviser and chief of intelligence; and Major Oress, aide to General Belser, who commands our armed forces. It seems I don't know Major Oress's first name. The young lady is my daughter and caretaker, Weldi."
The fly had continued to bite, and been joined by another at the angle of the jaw, but there'd been no indication at all that the mercenary commander noticed. Then Oress stepped forward and held out a folded paper to the young man.
"Colonel Romlar," he said, "these are General Belser's orders to you."
The young man took them, glanced at them, and handed them back. "Has the general read the contract of employment?"
Oress blinked. "I—don't know. I presume so."
Romlar smiled, his eyes steady on the major now, his voice mild but utterly uncompromising. "It is quite explicit. First we are allowed two full weeks for reconditioning and to become familiar with the situation. I don't expect it will take that long, but it's ours if we need it. Furthermore, I am not subject to the general's orders: We are here to apply our military expertise, which includes my military judgment."
Oress had gone pale at this; the general would skin him for bringing such an answer. The young colonel continued. "I'll be happy to receive the general's briefing, and to coordinate my planning with his, or with whatever representative President Lanks may care to designate."
Both bull flies had gorged themselves and flown; another had settled on the colonel's other temple. President Lanks suspected that welts would arise at the sites. "I do urge, though," Romlar went on, "that whoever I work with be thoroughly conversant with the contract. Its language is straightforward and leaves little room for interpretation."
One of the president's long hands gestured as if dismissing the awkwardness. "Colonel Romlar," he said, "I appoint Colonel Fossur as liaison between you on the one hand and myself on the other. I am quite conversant with your contract, and I'll want to be kept aware of your plans and activities. I'm sure they'll be intelligent and potent, and I look forward to your results. If you're prepared to receive a briefing now, we will go to my office for it. I'm sure Colonel Fossur can deliver it without any special preparation."
He turned to Oress then. "Major, please radio for a vehicle for the colonel's use. There are too many of us for these two GPs."
"Of course, Mr. President."
Kelmer Faronya had kept his camera on the principals. He was more aware of the president's daughter, though, than of anything else, and he positioned himself to keep her in view. She couldn't be more than seventeen, he thought, tall and coltish and astonishingly pretty. In fact, it seemed to him she was the most appealing girl he'd ever seen. Weldi. It seemed to him the name was pretty, too.
Colonel Romlar hadn't said anything about the journalist attending any briefing, but when the extra GPV arrived, Kelmer climbed into the back with Captain Kantros. Perhaps he'd have a chance to talk to her.
Lunch was brought to them in the president's office by his cook. Fossur kept finding more and more to tell, Romlar and the other two officers following on maps that Fossur gave them. It was late afternoon before he'd finished.
They'd taken a midafternoon break. Kelmer, going outside to move around a bit, had seen Weldi in the garden, and talked with her briefly. He'd learned that she was indeed seventeen, and that her father was a widower. She admitted to playing the piano, and invited him to visit them some evening, when she would play for him. He'd been in a state of bliss when he went back in the house.
Among the things that interested Romlar were: There had been no significant fighting for twenty days; the Komarsi seemed content to wait—starve them out. And General Belser, who'd earlier directed a dogged defense and hard-fighting withdrawal, had not suggested any further military actions, although the president had prodded him.
The boundary of Komarsi-occupied territory mostly ran east to west along the Eel River to Hawk Lake, where the Eel curved northward, continuing west from there to a monadnock named "the Straw Stack." This line was thinly manned by Komarsi forces, thinly because they correctly evaluated that any Smoleni breakout would be short-lived and very costly.
North of the Eel River, the Komarsi had no "held lines." However, they'd established a number of brigade bases in two major valleys whose streams flowed south into the Eel. Combined, these brigade bases held more troops than the entire Smoleni Army. The two valleys had some sizeable villages, most of whose families had fled. They also had substantial farmlands, and Komarsi occupation denied the Smoleni their crops and pasturage.
The Smoleni army had inflicted and taken heavy casualties in the south. The replacements were quite largely teenaged recruits from the refugee camps, but there were also many Class B reservists from the northern districts, middle-aged backwoods farmers and villagers who logged in the winter as the markets allowed. The Smoleni Army had a leavening of trappers, many of them backwoods farmers who in winter worked so-called trapping "bounds" assigned to families. Also there was a tradition of solitary "wandrings"—often in winter—hiking or snowshoeing in the vast forests for days or even weeks at a time. The wanderer slept beneath the stars, or in a tiny lean-to set up where dusk found him, living largely off what he could snare or shoot or pull from the water. Most northern men, and more than a few towners and men of the Leas had done this, some only a few times in their youth, but many others repeatedly. On occasion, squads of these backwoodsmen had gone AWOL, to bushwhack Komarsi patrols in the vicinity of brigade bases, with the tacit approval of their reservist officers. When Belser had learned of this, he'd forbidden it. To him it smacked of ill discipline.
Romlar was a very thoughtful young man as he rode to the regimental encampment. He'd already made certain working decisions, and shared them with Fossur on the condition that they not get to Belser till Romlar was ready.