The Final Planet Page 15

  “Well, at least someone around here shows gratitude.”

  Damn inhuman people.

  Forgetting that he was supposed to know nothing about military matters, O’Neill suggested that the now rearmed Zylongi troopers deploy themselves on the low hill. With fires burning at the campsite, they would be able to trap the next raiding party before it knew what hit them.

  Marjetta fixed him with a long, inscrutable stare, then nodded. “Those are excellent tactics, Poet O’Neill.”

  At high noon Narth sent a good-sized unit to wipe them out—a troop of monsters mounted on horses and a company of hordi armed with spears. The cavalry was inept. They allowed their mounts to bolt at the first volley, leaving the hordi at the mercy of the Zylongis’ concentrated fire. At the end, thirty to forty dead and dying hordi lay inside the encampment with not a single Zylongi trooper wounded.

  Narth himself appeared on the ridge just out of carbine range. He was clad in a flaming crimson robe, surrounded by a crowd of horsemen. O’Neill bet they were the pick of the exiled families—Narth’s Imperial Guard.

  There was a wide space of open ridge between him and the Zylongi troopers, who were now exhausted and let down after their success. A classic cavalry charge would have cut up the Zylongi. O’Neill could see Narth’s fist raised in defiant fury and imagined the contorted face beneath his full black beard. Unwilling to risk further losses, the Emperor Narth turned and rode off down the ridge into the light of the risen sun.

  Chicken, thought O’Neill contemptuously. No match for the Wild Geese.

  Acting very much like a commanding officer, O’Neill called Retha, Marjetta, and Sergeant Markos into conference. “Margie,” he began briskly, giving up all attempts at Zylongi formality, “you told me last night that the hordi don’t venture into the desert. Are they afraid of it?”

  She nodded.

  O’Neill continued. “Our only chance is to run for Hyperion … to try to get back to the departure point will bring us much closer to the mountains, where they might be able to give us a taste of our own ambush medicine. We have to change our route, head directly for the ocean, and then follow its shore around to the fort. It’ll be longer that way, but we’ll only have to watch one flank. The hordi won’t come that far out into the desert. If our friend Narth comes after us with his pony soldiers, we’ll be able to see him coming.” He turned to Marjetta. “How long before we reach the fort?”

  “Two days on horseback,” said Marjetta.

  “We have no horses,” said Retha, timidly.

  “So we’ll have to walk. That should double the time. Add two more days for safety and we have six days, right?” All nodded except Marjetta, who sat very still and looked at him suspiciously. O’Neill knew he was causing warning lights to go on in her head. The woman was no fool. Not at all, at all.

  “Pack enough food and water,” he continued, “for just six days, and enough ammunition for two long firefights. Destroy everything else. If there’s any room for more in our packs, make it water. We should be moving in two hours.” O’Neill stood up. The others sat for a moment confused, not knowing whether to obey his commands or to defer to Marjetta, their commanding officer.

  Marjetta repeated, “We move in two hours, as Captain O’Neill suggests.”

  Major if it comes to it. Aloud he said softly, “Thanks for the promotion, Margie, but Poet O’Neill will do.”

  She looked like she didn’t believe a word of it.

  That night, when the camp had settled down except for the alert watchers Marjetta had stationed on the high ground, O’Neill was stirred from a deep sleep by a most unpleasant sensation. The long march through the desert had exhausted him. A man had a right to his sleep, damn it. He ignored the unpleasantness—until he heard a voice saying coldly, “Wake up, O’Neill, or I will kill you in your sleep.”

  It was enough to wake a man, all right. He tentatively opened one eye. Marjetta’s cold, angry face was outlined in the glow of the portable light that hung from the tent pole. Her carbine prodded his stomach.

  “Musha, woman, a man needs his sleep. Put that thing away. We’ll worry about whatever’s on your mind in the morning.” He closed his eyes and rolled over.

  “Oh no, we will not. You are going to tell me the truth now or I will kill you,” she told him, sternly. “I do not like to kill, but I have done enough of it today not to mind one more.”

  The girl meant it. Seamus stirred himself to full consciousness, looked at the long steady line of the gun barrel and muttered, “Woman, you’ve taken leave of your senses.”

  “You told me when we first met that you were not a soldier, only a wandering poet. From the moment you came into the MC you acted like a soldier, you kept a soldier’s lookout at the camp last night, you organized a soldier’s ambush this morning, you laid out a marching plan that only a soldier could have thought of. An experienced and able soldier at that.”

  Oh, Lord, is she mad! “Well, now, that’s a mighty conclusion you’ve jumped to,” he tried to get her off the track with an argument, “if you take my meaning.”

  “You are wasting my time, O’Neill. You do not have much of your own left. What are you doing here? Why did you lie to me? To Samaritha and Ornigon? I want the truth this time.” She jabbed him again with the carbine barrel.

  He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. There were so many better things to be doing with a proper young woman like her at this time of the night.

  “I didn’t want to tell you that I had been an officer because then I would have had to explain why I wasn’t one anymore. I guess I was afraid that you would feel contempt for me. I didn’t want you to know I was cashiered.” I’ll appeal to her sense of compassion, that’s what I’ll do, though I haven’t noticed her having much of it.

  “Why were you cashiered?” she barked at him.

  No compassion there.

  The next question would be why the original mind probe at the Body Institute had not found out about this supposed disgrace. He answered the unspoken question first to throw her off stride. “I don’t know why your mind probe didn’t pick it up. Maybe because on Tara when they throw you out of the officer corps, they deprogram you. You remember some of your training but you forget your career completely.” The gun went down a fraction of an inch. Good, I’ve got her curious. “It had something to do with the safety of my men. Friends tell me that it was a political thing, that the trial was rigged. There was nothing I could do about it. I was a Commandant, by the way. A Major.”

  Well, a man was entitled to a little vanity, wasn’t he?

  Sure you just want to impress her.

  And why not?

  “Do you work for the Committee?” The muzzle of the gun was back in his stomach.

  O’Neill was stunned. “Glory be to God, why should I work for those Amadons?”

  “The Hooded Ones?” she persisted. “The anarchist hooligans?”

  “Didn’t Sammy tell you about the fight on Zylongday?”

  “Yes, a little,” came the grudging response. “The Young Ones?”

  “The who?”

  “The student and military radicals—Horor, Carina, Yens, and others. You seemed friendly with Horor.”

  “Not all that friendly,” protested O’Neill. “I never felt overwhelmed with his friendliness toward me. Who’s Yens?”

  “Retha’s programmed mate. He is one of the Council of the Young Ones.”

  “Do I look like someone who would get mixed up with a bunch of half-baked kids?” He tried to sound angry and in the process he found himself getting very angry indeed. The damn bitch.

  “The Fourth Secretary—he is the Committee for all practical purposes—is very much afraid of them. They are the Technicians who will administer the City in a few years.”

  “I don’t care what that gombeen man fears. I’m not involved in any of your nonsense.”

  “So you are not part of any of them?” The carbine was almost in a position where he might survive the first sho
t.

  “I hate to mention it, but I did save you from the hordi supper table last night—a fact that seems to have escaped Your Ladyship’s attention.”

  “That could have been part of the plot,” she responded stubbornly.

  To hell with it. “Okay, Margie, me girl, maybe it is all a plot. You’re either going to shoot me or not. Decide for yourself. If you think you’re going to be able to bring these kids of yours down to Hyperion with just the help of a banged-up old noncom and a kid who should be in the classroom, you’re crazy. Maybe you don’t want to trust me; I don’t care much, but you’ve got to trust someone. I’m the only one around who can be of much help. Now get out of my tent unless you have foul designs on my body—in which case, welcome. I need some sleep.” He rolled over, moderately confident that she wouldn’t shoot.

  “O’Neill…?” Her voice came plaintively from the entrance of the tent.

  “What now?” he demanded impatiently. Got her!

  “I am thankful to you for rescuing me from the … uh … supper table.”

  “Well, praise be to Brigid, Brendan, Patrick, and Columcile, it only took twenty-four hours to get it out of your mouth.”

  “May all those wonderful friends of your god be with this tent.”

  Well, now wasn’t that nice.

  And so poor Retha’s on this crazy adventure because she’s a dangerous revolutionary. I’ve seen more dangerous firebrands in the nursery on the Iona.

  It was long after dark on the next day when they crossed the line of dunes that separated beach from desert. The ocean water looked inviting, serene blue, topped by great white rolling surf. But it was bitter cold, so there was no refreshment there. O’Neill contemplated what lay before them. It was still a long walk to Hyperion. All they had to fear was the Committee, Narth, the Young Ones, the Hooded Ones, the hordi. How many other dangers were there that no one had seen fit to tell him about? Margie said the commander of the fort was a man of the highest integrity who would have nothing to do with an overt Committee plot. Maybe there would be respite there. Even if they made it, they were bound to return to the City. O’Neill yearned for just one small gunship, the Tom Doherty perhaps, a speedy and powerful craft, to help blast this whole planet into shape.

  Deirdre, My Lady, how did you get me into this? … There’s no answer. There never is. You’ve forgotten about me altogether.

  The next morning he was in deeper than ever. Margie came up to him as they were breaking camp. “Come down to the shore with me,” she said briskly.

  “Ah, now, that’s an invitation no man in his right mind would refuse.”

  “You were truly a Major on Tara?” she asked bluntly.

  “Hmmm?” He tossed a clump of sand into the surf.

  “I mean before you were cashiered. Or were you lying about that too?”

  He had nothing against telling the truth when he could afford it. “Like I said, I was a Commandant. A Major. And,” he added irritably, “I don’t care, my bitchy friend, whether you believe me or not.”

  “I do not think I want to ask what a bitch is. How old are you?”

  “Let me see, twenty-five of our years, that makes about thirty of your years.”

  “That makes you five of our years older than I am.”

  “Too much older?” he demanded.

  “Oh, not at all—” Was that a faint smile? “—but isn’t that very young for such a rank?”

  “Customs are different,” he said shortly.

  “But still…”

  “All right, have it your way. Yes, it was very young. The thought seemed to be that I was a very good soldier.”

  All of which was true enough, but it was poet he was meant to be.

  “That’s beyond a doubt.” She nodded her head approvingly. “You are obviously a more experienced commander than I am. If you rose to such a rank so young, a much better one. I am going to trust you—as you said, I have no choice. You must be in charge. And one more thing, Major O’Neill…”

  “Ah, musha, you’ll find me a very democratic CO. You can call me Jimmy.”

  Tight-lipped, hands on her hips, she ignored his offer of friendship. “I am technically a widow now, even though Pojoon was only my intended mate. I do not have to seek another; I do not intend to do so for a long time—perhaps never. I will not accept any suggestions in that direction. Do I make myself clear?” Her pretty face was hard, her brown eyes stern.

  “What makes you think I’d even be interested?” he demanded.

  She smiled faintly again. “That’s right, I’m a bitch. I presume that in your world men don’t mate with bitches.”

  She turned on her heel and strode back toward the camp.

  “Well, as to that, it all depends,” Seamus shouted after her.

  She did not waver. Ah, and the woman does have a lovely ass on her, doesn’t she? Sure there’s a lot better things to do with it than spank it. The threat will be enough.

  He then reprimanded himself for having such thoughts about a fellow officer in time of battle. The thoughts did not leave him however. Not at all, at all.

  Giving him the command changed her attitude. Later that day she relaxed and smiled, and by the second day was joking with the troops, making them laugh. With him, however, she was deadly serious. That’s fine with me, woman. I want no part of the likes of you, wonderful ass and lovely legs and all.

  Well, not just now anyway.

  Her good humor sustained the flagging morale of the sand-beaten, wind-stung, and heat-baked troops as they struggled along, falling more and more behind schedule. O’Neill ordered first half and then quarter rations of food and water.

  They would never make it if they continued to march during the daylight hours when the sun scorched them and increased their thirst. O’Neill decided the troops should rest during the day and march at night, a decision that slowed the march still more. Some nights there were no moons to show them their way through the thick sand and rolling dunes. (But they were less visible to possible pursuers. Once, from the vantage point of a high dune, O’Neill thought he saw dust in the distance. A sandstorm? Narth’s cavalry?)

  Another torture was the sandstorms that struck without warning, forcing them to seek shelter in the lee of the dunes until they were over. Fortunately, they occurred during the day and seldom delayed a march. Seamus wondered how many of the carbines still worked.

  On the seventh day, Marjetta and Seamus huddled together at the side of a great dune, hoods pulled down over their faces to protect them from the sting of wind-whipped sand.

  “Tonight should be the last of it,” he shouted over the wind.

  Marjetta moved her hooded head so that their two cowls formed a tunnel. “It will if your calculations are right. Otherwise we’ll be wondering where our next drink of water will come from.” She was laughing at him. Maybe even with him. Her trust in his expertise was total.

  He decided not to remind her that they had already marched beyond his calculations. Arrival time tomorrow was at the extreme of calculation, just before panic took over. He spread his robe over both of them so they could talk more easily. “Should I carry Retha in? I’m afraid the kid’s feet are so bad she may not make it on her own.”

  “You told her back at the first camp that she was a bad soldier. She is determined to prove you wrong. She is one of those poor, foolish women, Seamus O’Neill, who feels a need to impress you.”

  “Well, ‘tis a good thing you’re not that way. Sure it might go to my head.” Impulsively he put his arms around her. She did not try to fend him off.

  Seamus kissed the sand-caked, weary face ineptly at first, then hungrily as his own weary mind let go in the face of urgent and long-suppressed emotion. He felt a surge of response in her, her breasts pressed against his chest. A flame leapt from his heart to hers and back again. With the flame came a strange dread. She turned her head quickly away.

  “O’Neill, you are incorrigible. Kissing in a sandstorm.” Her voice was severe but shak
y. “I am not, after all, a stony-hearted bitch, am I?”

  “Well, there’s a time and a place for everything, like my grandmother used to say. As for the stony-hearted bitch, the adjective is yours. I’ll reserve judgment on the rest.” (Seamus never knew his grandmother, but that didn’t make any difference.) He kissed her again. Gently she pushed him away.

  “You’re a good man, Seamus O’Neill, even better than you know yourself. Not many good men try to appear outrageous like you do. You are kind, gentle, and loyal; you would not hurt the smallest insect except in self-defense. I may never see you again after this mission is over, so I will say that I am glad my life had you in it for a time.” Touching his lips with an affectionate finger, she slipped out from under his robe and ran back to the main body of troops.

  Now does that mean I can have her if I want her?

  He was fearful that it might.

  He spent a dazed few hours when the march resumed at nightfall contemplating the afternoon’s major event. You heard her, I hope, Deirdre. I told you all along that you folks never really appreciated all my sterling qualities. Ah, but it’s a good thing that we will get to Fort Hyperion before dawn tomorrow. Heaven only knows what that young woman will do for an encore.

  And thus, O’Neill walked through a long night, the last hours with the weight of the sleeping Retha in his arms. She had finally collapsed, her feet bleeding, her waiflike body dropping with exhaustion.

  He picked her up. She seemed like a baby in his massive arms, a baby however with very pretty little breasts. Yens, or whatever the hell the little idiot is called, has got himself a good woman.

  “I can walk,” she protested weakly.

  “You’ll follow orders if you know what is good for you,” he said gruffly. “Besides I want to walk into the fort tomorrow with a beautiful woman in my arms, and herself is a little heavy if you take my meaning.”

  The young officer giggled happily and snuggled into his arms.

  Shortly after dawn Major Seamus O’Neill led his battered, hungry, and thirsty expedition through the open gate of Fort Hyperion. Most of them collapsed as soon as they were inside the walls. He put the waiflike child with the bleeding feet on the ground, tenderly wrapping a cloak around her, and kissed her soundly.