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.What their pattern is, what sorts of guard posts they set that sort of thing.""All right," Roger said."But we've got some competitors in this.Let's notPage 28ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmllet them have an edge or tip our own hand.Send a team up to the plateau tocheck out the route, but tell them to stay low and keep their heads down."* * *"Kosutic and her great ideas," Julian said sourly.The windswept plateau was actively cold in the night wind, and the distantlights of the town didn't make him feel any better.If he and Poertena hadn'thappened to hear about this job and pass the word to Roger, he could have beendown there now, drinking on the prince's decicred."Hey, think we lucked out again, Sergeant," Gronningen said quietly.IThe big Asgardian was very good in the mountains.He moved like a mountaingoat, just as surely and almost as silently.That was why Julian had includedhim on this little jaunt, and the NCO nodded in agreement with his observationas he took another look at the objective.The mercenaries weren't stupid, andthey had guards on the wall against the possibility of a night attack.Butthey were very complacent, for there were no sentries actually patrolling thecamp they'd established in the valley.Or maybe complacent wasn't exactly theright word for it, he conceded after a moment.No Mardukan raiding force couldpossibly have come after them through these temperature conditions, after all,even if it could have made the climb up the cliffs in the first place, whichwas questionable."This is going to be a cakewalk," he whispered."Something's bound to go wrong," the plasma gunner disagreed, getting upcarefully to avoid sending a rock bouncing into the valley to give away theirposition.The two Marines moved back to the bivouac the team had established.It was anovercast, moonless night, and without the vision systems of their helmets,they would have been stumbling along blind.As it was, the faint reflection ofthe fires of Ran Tai was enough to give them near daylight vision.They rounded the small projection of stone that shielded their camp from viewfrom the valley and squatted down by Macek.The private was heating a cup ofsoup with a resistance heater.Technically, that was a violation of doctrine,since they were supposed to be making a cold camp, but the resistance heateronly radiated in infrared, and it wasn't like they had to worry about scummyscan teams picking it up."That looks good," Julian observed as he flopped down on his open bivy tent."Fix your own, then," the private suggested, and Gronningen chuckled andpulled out a piece of jerked capetoad.The meat from the animals had yieldedseveral hundred kilos of jerky that some of the company relished.Julian generally found it awful, but he was hungry enough to pull out a pieceof his own and start gnawing on it."I can't believe that after all I've done for you, you begrudge me a littlesoup," he said in a whiny tone."Yeah? Like dragging me up a mountain to alternately freeze and bake?" theprivate asked, then chuckled."Hell, I was making it for all of us," headmitted."It's not much, just a little jerky and a few leftover pieces oftater.""Sounds good," Gronningen said."I'm ready to get off this hill, too," headmitted reluctantly.TheAsgardian religion had some extremely stoic overtones."Me, too," Julian assured him."I'm ready for some of Matsugae's cooking." Hesighed."Or even some of the stuff in the town.It's not too bad, you know.""I want a bitok," Macek said."That doesn't seem too much to ask.""Oh, man," Julian said, smacking his lips."You would have to say that.I wantone, too.About an eighth of a kilo.With cheese and onions.""Yah," Gronningen said, leaning back in his own bivy and masticating theshoe-leather jerky."A bitok sounds good.Or my mutra's lutefisk." He sighed."It's been a long time since I had my mutra's lutefisk."Page 29ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"What's lutefisk?" Julian asked as he took the cup out of Macek's hand andsipped."Lutefisk?" The Asgardian frowned."That is.hard to explain.It is afish.""Yeah?" Macek took a chew of his own jerky."What's so special about a fish?"The Asgardian thought for a moment about trying to explain the attraction ofcod soaked in lye, then decided to give up."It is a family thing, I think," he said, and retreated into his normalreticent shell after that while Julian and Macek wrangled quietly over thequality of different bitok joints in Imperial City.Eventually, they bothagreed that the only thing to do was get back to Earth and go on a bar-crawlto compare them properly.They finished the soup, then divided up the watches and settled down for thenight.One more day of alternately baking and frying on the plateau, and thecompany should be on its way.* * *Roger pulled himself over the lip of the plateau and stepped forward to letthe next Marine up.The windy tabletop was beginning to fill up with thecompany, but the Marines stayed well away from the northern wall.One noisy,rolling rock could ruin the entire operation.Roger nodded to Kosutic as she walked up.The flattened view in the nightvision systems worked hand in hand with the helmet's face shields to makeeveryone anonymous, but the helmet systems threw up little tags as people cameinto view.The tags were effectively invisible, once you got used to them,unless you consciously concentrated on seeing them, but they provided a wayfor the user to distinguish who was who."How we doing, Sergeant Major?" the prince asked.He looked around as the lastMarine hauled herself onto the plateau and checked his toot for the time."Ithink we're a little ahead of schedule.""That we are, Sir," the sergeant major replied.She glanced around and sawthat the team leaders were getting their people into position.Everything wasworking out smoothly, exactly as planned.Which made her very, very nervous.CHAPTER FIVE"Ah, finally something that's working out," Julian said quietly.The two oversized squads which were all that remained of Bravo Company werelined up along the middle section of the gorge.The gorge snaked back from theentrance for nearly three hundred meters before opening into the mining area,where the majority of the barbarians were bivouacked, but the only guards wereon the gates themselves.By landing between the barbarians' camp and theguards, the company could take the mercenaries by the throat.assumingeverything worked as planned."Remember," Roger said over the company frequency, "minimum violence.I wantthem taken down, and taken down hard, but no killing if possible.""But don't take unnecessary chances," Kosutic added."Right," the prince agreed."Okay, you all have your targets," he said,clipping his drop line into place."Let's do it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]