The air-cooled staff car was approaching the T'swa encampment in the second hour of daylight when it passed the open-topped T'swa vehicle. Voker saw young Lormagen riding with two T'swa, and wondered how the journalist's first day had been.
The young man was naive, but he had persistence and at least a modicum of guts. And more importantly, he had luck. He'd need it, Voker told himself, he'd need it.
A few minutes later Voker's car crossed a low ridge, from which he could see the T'swa camp. When he'd first visited it, the day before, Voker had been astonished. It seemed impossible that Lamons could have read the briefing and a T'swa contract—any T'swa contract—and then tried to palm off a place like that on them, especially with a lumbering operation and cement plant in the Aromanis District, and a supply depot set up for major base expansion.
Standardness, with a large S or a small one, is a two-edged knife, he told himself, and we keep cutting ourselves with it. There were too many minds that couldn't function in the face of something nonstandard. They went idiot. Not that he'd voice that observation out loud.
At least the rain had settled the dust here, he told himself as they pulled up outside the headquarters tent of the Night Adder Regiment, and the soil wasn't a kind that made problem mud. As he stepped out of the staff car, the morning heat blanketed him. The waiting captain offered a handshake; the T'swa didn't seem to salute except ceremonially. The captain's hard palm didn't startle Voker. He'd gotten over that the day before, had concluded that the thick calluses protected the hand from hot surfaces, which on Tyss was probably almost any surface. It might be a genetic adaptation or simply have developed in childhood and youth in connection with some aspect of training.
Colonel Biltong and Colonel Koda were waiting in the tent for him; they stood up and shook his hand perfunctorily with hands as hard as the captain's, then invited him to sit. He did.
"Gentlemen," said Voker, "I gave our rough plans and specifications to the base engineer, Major Krinder. He and his staff worked up a materials list last night and they'll start work on your new camp today, two miles southeast of the army's base camp."
The T'swa nodded almost in unison. There'd been room for them inside the base perimeter, with the security and convenience that would provide, but they'd insisted on being outside, as if they felt no concern about possible Bird attacks. Voker had found it hard to believe they'd be careless after all their years of war. Perhaps they'd welcome an attack.
"Today," he said, "it's time to look at possible actions for your regiments. What kind of briefing have you had on the situation and combat environment here?"
"We received copies of your army's Orlanthan briefing cube before we left Tyss," Biltong said. "And we have an action to suggest. We generally prefer to engage a new opponent briefly, and so far as possible on our own terms, before any major campaign. To learn what he is like, and what the field of operation is like. Therefore, we would like to stage a raid in force on the two mining sites, simultaneously. My regiment will hit the Kelikut site, and Colonel Koda's the Beregesh site, by night."
"You'll find both sites strongly defended," Voker replied. "How do you propose to go about it? How much preparatory aerial bombardment will you want?"
"None. No aerial bombardment of any kind. We propose an attack by stealth. Marauder squads will parachute in from 30,000 feet, from several miles away, and strike enemy installations by surprise. We will want to examine aerial holos of the sites in detail, to help in planning."
Voker was staring, incredulous. "From—30,000 feet? They'll be scattered all over the district!"
"Not at all. It is a technique we T'swa are trained in, and use rather frequently. We will choose a night when the greater moon is large. We see almost like cats at night. Our marauders will freefall to within a few hundred feet, each squad body-planing to remain in contact and reach the drop site.
"While the insurgents are being distracted by the marauder squads, the regiments proper will put down by armored troop carriers, different companies at different points, and attack enemy fortifications in force, doing as much damage as possible. We will then disengage, leaving the marauder squads behind briefly as a rear guard to provide covering fire and confusion while the major part of the assault force withdraws to pickup areas."
"How will you get your rear guard out?"
"Once evacuation of the main forces is well underway, the rear guard will disengage and make their way out of the area by stealth, so far as possible, to be picked up by light utility floaters well away from the insurgent camp. We'll be very interested in how the enemy responds, and how much difficulty the marauder squads have in disengaging and getting away."
Voker contemplated the two calm-seeming T'swa. Not calm-seeming, he told himself. These bastards are calm! "Frankly, gentlemen," he said, "I can visualize offhand about twenty things that could go wrong, resulting in your regiments being chopped up and your marauders wiped out."
"Of course," Biltong replied, "there is always that possibility. But the demands on your air crews should not be excessive, and our people are extremely competent. Your adjectives 'resourceful' and 'proficient' come to mind. And 'nimble-witted,' if I may coin a term using Standard roots. Each of our people has survived fourteen years of war."
High-elevation parachute jumps? Body planing! Voker had never heard of such things. How nonstandard can they get? he asked himself. Without noticing, he began to feel excited.
"Colonels," Voker said, "I suggest we all go to base headquarters. We can find there all the aerial holos you'll want, and a large-scale tank to project them in."
When they left Colonel Biltong's headquarters tent, Colonel Koda took with him the audio recorder that he'd transcribed the conference on. It might be useful to their new publicist to have a record.
Varlik quickly fell into a routine that combined his desire to live with and learn about the T'swa and his other responsibilities as a journalist/publicist. He would spend one day with the T'swa, the next at the main base, narrating his reports and editing his cubes. There was never any difficulty now with his coming and going, and he gave Bakkis and Konni access to his material.
Meanwhile, progress on the new T'swa camp was rapid, the sort of thing that can happen when an army puts its manpower resources to work on a project. The base construction battalion was turned loose on it, and on the seventh day the T'swa moved in. Now their tents had floors, there were showers and wash stands, and their jungle boots padded on boardwalks when they went to meals.
And with the new camp, the video team was allowed to visit the T'swa, shooting their own pictures. One afternoon they even rode along behind Company A on a training run, their cube showing Varlik running with the T'swa. He'd begged them to record some other outfit, but they'd have none of it.
The T'swa would have twelve full days to enjoy their new facility before their first action on Kettle, because when Lamons had been informed of their projected raids, he at once decided to follow them up promptly with a full-scale invasion and takeover of Beregesh. General preparations for the invasion had already been planned and were well underway, but even so, his staff had insisted that sixteen days, around the clock, was the minimum time needed to complete preparations.
With alternate days to recover in, those parts of the T'swa training regime that Varlik took part in were not too hard for the young correspondent. Not quite. The close combat drills he didn't even attempt. Parts of the bayonet drills he did attempt, though his muscles screamed obscenities at him. The speed marches he survived, sometimes taking a break in the hovercar that was always at hand. And the holo-briefings on the Beregesh mining site he found exciting. His bowels found them uncomfortably exciting.
Then one evening Colonel Koda sent him to the airfield with B Company, which had been selected to provide the Beregesh marauder squads. The T'swa strapped on their freefall chutes and loaded into several small utility floaters for a practice jump, Varlik with the First and Second Squads of the First Platoon.
He wore no chute; he was along for the ride.
When they took off, the troops were as bland and cheerful as always. Varlik was nervous, even though he wasn't going to jump. Shortly, they put on their oxygen masks. At what he'd been told was 30,000 feet, the troop doors were retracted; the air that swirled in was shockingly cold. This time their drop zone was their old camp site in the prairie, from which they would jog the twenty-six miles to the new one. The T'swa lined up as casually as if for breakfast, but wearing gloves and encumbered with chutes, weapons, and the heavy coveralls that would protect them from scrub vegetation when they jumped at Beregesh. Their protective mesh face masks were tilted up to make room for oxygen masks; they'd clip them into position at a lower altitude.
The blackness snarled and whipped about the door as they waited, and Varlik, camera busy, hoped desperately that he wouldn't be sick in his oxygen mask. The red light beside the door changed to yellow, and the floater slowed, stopped. Then it flashed green, and five T'swa trotted out the door into icy nothingness, Varlik dutifully recording the process.
The floater made three small circles then, simulating flight to another drop site, and at the end of each circle, five more men jumped. The greater moon was early in its first quarter, its light not enough to do an Iryalan much good, but by it the T'swa were supposed to see and body plane to the old campsite, where a target had been bulldozed that they could see from high in the night.
When the second stick of jumpers stood up, Varlik crouched beside the door, grateful now for coveralls and heated gloves. Camera in hand, he followed their drifting fall in his monitor until the floater's circling put them out of sight.
And when the last stick had gone, an exhausted Varlik, chilled and shivering, slumped down on a bucket seat while one of the air crew closed the troop door. He visualized the T'swa falling spread-eagled, planing through quiet darkness, eyes on the drop site and sometimes on the altimeters at their chests. To an Iryalan, the very concept was outrageous. Yet despite that, and despite the bone-numbing fear he'd felt when they'd jumped, he wished he was with them, though it seemed to him he'd surely have soiled himself before stepping out the door.