Champion of the Last Battle

V

Ahrkeethoheeks Hahfos Djohnz, Warden of the Ahrmehnee Marches, looked up from the letter he had been reading and leaned back in his desk chair, his elbows on its arms, his hands idly toying with the leather tube in which that letter had been rolled.

The middle-aged-to-elderly man who stood before his desk did so at rigid, military posture of attention, for all that of all his clothing and equipment, only the plain, functional sword and the businesslike, unadorned dirk he wore looked at all military. True, his clothing, boots and armor were all plain enough, but their rich quality betrayed them—no army ever issued, or could afford to issue, such material.

The shadow of a smile flitted over the lips and eyes of the seated officer. Then he remarked conversationally, “It’s obvious that civilian life agrees with you, Djim Bohluh. So why must you go a-traipsing off into the unknown western mountains, eh? Not that I’m of any mind to refuse you, not with the backing of your insanity that this letter indicates you to have, I’m not.”

His pale-blue eyes fixed on a point above and beyond the head of Hahfos, the older man began, “Sir, with the lord strahteegos’ permission, Bohluh, Djim, has—”

He ceased to speak suddenly, as the seated man began to laugh. “Oh, knock it all off, Djim. I’m no longer a strahteegos and you’re no longer a sergeant. Pull up that chair yonder, help yourself to the ale or the wine and let’s discuss this like the civilians we both now are. There, that’s much better.”

Hahfos poured himself a measure of wine and indicated that his guest should do likewise. The cups were large, of massive, chiseled silver and decorated with the golden bear that was become Hahfos’ personal ensign as well as that of this new sept of Clan Djohnz.

“Djim Bohluh sits because the lord strah ... ahh, ahrkeethoheeks requests it. If it pleasures him, fine ... but it still ain’t right and fittin’ fer a common man to sit and drink and all with a noble off’ser, and Djim Bohluh knows it, sir.”

Again, Hahfos’ easy laugh rang out. “Djim, Djim, times have changed, but I guess that in your stubborn, loyal old heart you never will, and I can’t but respect you for it.

“But look you, man. You are come to me as the official emissary of the tahneestos and acting thoheeks of a Kindred Clan. Your letter of introduction—as if a letter to introduce you to me were needed, hah!—is signed by the High Lord Milo himself, not to mention a prince, two ahrkeethoheeksee, five thoheeksee and a number I’ve not yet counted of komeesee, vahrohnoee, vahrohneeskoee and city-lords.

“Your second letter, this Confederation-wide safe-conduct, is signed by both the High Lord Milo and the High Lady Aldora Linszee Treeah-Pohtohmas Pahpahs. Djim, you have powerful friends in the very highest of places, nor are you exactly a mendicant beggar. Your letter of credit from the Confederation treasury contains no limit as to amount, nor do you seem to be at all impoverished in your own right. That sword, for instance, it’s an Yvuhz, isn’t it? Prince-grade, perhaps?”

The older man shrugged. “No, my lord, duke-grade.”

“What?” said Hahfos sarcastically. “Only duke-grade? Shameful!” Then in his normal tone, “Even with the sizable pension for your Golden Cat, you’d have to live on air for a good five years to save enough to buy a sword like that.”

“But I ... but Djim Bohluh dint buy the sword, my lord.”

In mock horror, Hahfos asked, “You stole, Djim? A good, honest, honorably retired veteran of the Confederation Army stole?”

Old Djim forgot himself long enough to show worn yellow teeth in a sly grin. “Near enough as, my lord. I won the dirk and the sword, too, off the captain of the bodyguards of the ambassador of the King of Pitzburk, up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs.”

Hahfos, too, grinned. “Two dice or five, Djim?”

“Five ... and my old dicecup,” the oldster replied.

“And beautifully, unnoticeably tapered, without a doubt,” laughed Hahfos. “The old army game, played by a past master. Didn’t the poor barbarian bastard even suspect he’d been had?”

“Not until that next mornin’,” answered Bohluh. “Summa his frin’, they come up t’ me and ’lowed as how I hadda give back his thangs or faht him. So I fit him, down to the guards barricks, thet aftuhnoon. He won’ worth a damn with a shortsword and a army shield, but the bugger had guts, put up a dang good fight, he did.”

“Did you kill him, Djim?” inquired Hahfos, as the old man paused to wet his throat from the contents of his silver cup.

“No sir, my lord, jes’ smashed his kneecap and mashed in his nose and all, both of ’em with the shield, too, never evun laid the shortsword to any part of him won’t armored, I dint.”

“I assume, to have been an officer of the ambassador’s guards, this man must have been a nobleman of the Middle Kingdoms. So what was the upshot of your crippling him, Djim?”

“Wal, my lord, sir, the ambassador’d been watchin’ I come to fin’ out. Raht then and there, he offered fer to hire me to go up nawth to Pitzburk and teach shieldwork to his king’s whole dang army. I tol’ him I’d have to thank on it, but I couldn’ do it nohow til aftuh I done a job fer the High Lord and High Lady. He gimme this here ring and said whenever I wuz to come to Pitzburk, to give it to enybody at the palace and ast fer Archduke Brytuhn.”

Hahfos whistled softly. “Sun and Wind, man, that’s the king’s half brother. As I said earlier, you have powerful friends in high places.” He paused, then asked, “He knighted you, too, didn’t he, Djim?”

The broad, beefy old man flushed. “Don’ mean diddly, my lord, sir, not in the Confederation, it don’t. ’Sides, it ain’ like I earned it or nuthin’, like I done fer to git my Cat.”

“Oh, but it does mean something, Sir Djim Bohluh,” said Hahfos gently. “It means a great deal. As for earning it, the archduke obviously felt you deserved it for a notable combat. And I’m more than certain that you earned that and more many times, when there was no officer surviving to bear witness, over the forty-odd years you soldiered in our army. Djim, even in officer circles, you were a living legend; you’d have been an officer yourself, had you not been such a boozing, brawling, profane, insubordinate rakehell, when in garrison. But that’s all years agone, Sir Djim, I’m no longer an officer of that army and you’re no longer a sergeant. However, I’ll issue you this one, last command: start wearing that order, today, now! It may not mean much to you, yet, but it will mean a great deal to the only disciplined troops I can just now let you have to take west with you. They’re all Freefighters from the Middle Kingdoms, one and all, and I’ve no slightest doubt but that they’ll be happier following the banner ... you do have a banner? Well, never you mind, you’ll have one before you leave here; these Ahrmehnee women are marvelously skilled at all manner of embroidery.

“Anyhow, these Freefighters would rather be led by a Knight of the Black Bull of Pitzburk than by anyone else present in this area, I’ll wager. There are a hundred and ninety-two of them—all dragoons, well mounted, well armed, good soldiers, as their type goes. Of course, you’ll need guides, translators, and it just so happens that I can help you there, too.

“You’ll dine at my home tonight, and I’ll there introduce you to Freefighter Captain Guhntuh and a couple of Ahrmehneewarriors I think you’ll like. Oh, and Sir Djim, be sure to wear that ring and your order, eh?”

When the Ahrmehnee messenger, a Taishyuhn tribesman, had departed Sir Geros Lahvoheetos’ house-cum-headquarters to dine with Soormehlyuhn distant-cousins, the young knight drained off his jack of brandy-water and, while absently refilling it from the ewer, remarked, “A Knight of the Order of the Black Bull of Pitzburk, that Ahrmehnee said, Pawl. On his way down here with nearly tenscore Freefighters, three more Moon Maidens and more than threescore Ahrmehnee warriors he’s paid the rent on from a couple of the dehrehbeh,

“I could understand it if it were old Komees Hari or even the High Lord sending us reinforcements, but what the hell is a nobleman of Pitzburk doing down here?”

“Sir Geros, lad,” replied the gray-haired, fiftyish Freefighter officer, “Duke Bili’s dam, you must remember, is a daughter of the Duke of Zuhnburk. That means that he has relatives of varying degrees of kinship all over the Middle Kingdoms. No doubt some of the returning Freefighters took word of his disappearance in these mountains up to Pitzburk, and this is the response of some cousin or other ... and he must be a well-heeled cousin, son Geros, for you know these Ahrmehnee don’t rent their fighters cheap.”

“But, damn it all!” swore Sir Geros, “We could have marched tomorrow ... or the day after, anyway. Why in hell must we wait another fortnight or more for this damned Pitzburker?”

Captain Pawl Raikuh took his own jack down from his lips and said, matter-of-factly, “Because the addition of him and his force will give you something on the order of six hundred swords at your back, that’s why; this Pitzburker comes well dowered indeed, Sir Geros. I say that despite the fact that I’m a native Harzburker, and as is well known, we Harzburkers own damn-all love for any shoat out of the Pitzburk sty.”

He sighed, then, cracking his prominent knuckles loudly, added, “All the same, I’ll feel considerably better to be riding off into those mountains and into the lap of Steel knows how many more Ganiks in the company of six hundred rather than a mere four hundred fighters, Pitzburkers or no.

“Yes, Sir Geros, you’d be well advised, I think, to wait for this Black Bull knight ... for a moon, if necessary.”

Captain Djeri Guhntuh had grown old in professional soldiering—which was adequate statement of his luck, survival instincts and combat skills. He was well over fifty years of age, only some ten years younger, truth to tell, than was Sir Djim Bohluh. Unlike most Freefighter officers, he was not noble-born, though years of command under, with and over born nobility had rubbed a certain amount of polish onto his bearing and manner. He was quite simply a born leader of men and a well-proven combat commander; soldiers all followed him or heeded him automatically. The same was true of old Sir Djim, and the two men recognized their mutual and close similarities on first meeting. Before they finally rode forth from the principal village of the Taishyuhn Tribe and headed southwest, they were become fast friends and they shared command with a natural ease.

As they wound their way through the territories of the various tribes which constituted this southern branch of the Ahrmehnee stahn, their native contingent grew, apace, as the Ahrmehnee-wise march warden, Hahfos, had bade them expect. The messenger sent ahead to Sir Geros Lahvoheetos—thought to still be bivouacked in Behdrozyuhn lands with his own force of Freefighters and Moon Maidens—had alerted any Ahrmehnee warriors with itchy feet or a need for hard money that a low-lander with a need for fighters and the wherewithal to pay their hire was coming.

At nearly every sizable village there would be a contingent of them, swarthy, big-boned men in exquisitely fashioned coats of mail and open-faced steel helmets with cheek guards and segmented nape guards of hardened leather. To Sir Djim and his Freefighters they seemed all alike—big noses and black eyes, slashing swords and cursive daggers, spears and small, round, hammered-bronze bucklers, the leathern cases of darts and throwing sticks finely tooled and richly decorated, like the saddles on their big, bred-up mountain ponies, sleeping robes rolled and tied on the crupper, warbag and an occasional cookpot hung from the near side of the pommel, axe from the off side.

As the numbers of Ahrmehnee warriors began to seriously outnumber the company of Freefighters, Captain Djeri Guhntuh began to privately question the worth of so many irregulars and openly doubt the feasibility of hiring on more of the same.

But Sir Djim Bohluh welcomed—most cordially welcomed, indeed—every Ahrmehnee tribesman he could sign on. In the more than forty years he had soldiered with the Army of the Confederation, he had heard of and seen men just like these hike the very best regulars into the ground, then suddenly turn and beat those same finely equipped, well-led regulars to a frazzled standstill: Whole battalions—and at least one entire reinforced regiment—of Confederation infantry had marched into the Ahrmehnee lands in hot pursuit of raiders to never again be seen, to disappear completely, and assignments to the always-under-strength garrisons of forts along the borders of Ahrmehnee lands had been, in Sir Djim’s soldiering days, considered to be a virtual death sentence by the rank and file of the Confederation Army.

Nor was there any need to carry load on packload of beans and grain for the mounts of these irregulars, as there was for the warhorses of Captain Guhntuh’s Freefighter dragoons. The mountain-bred ponies were quite capable of staying in good flesh off nothing more than grass, rougher herbiage, even tree bark, if necessary. That these ponies’ riders, too, expected to live off the land was attested by the small amounts of rations they brought with them, nor did Sir Djim doubt that they could do just that.

But Bohluh was nothing if not shrewd; he let it be widely known that he agreed with Captain Guhntuh, but allowed himself to be “persuaded” by the leader of his original force of Ahrmehnee, one Bahndahr Taishyuhn, to hire on any tribesmen passed upon by that worthy—a fortyish man with the scars of a veteran and the look and bearing of a natural killer. And so when at last he and his force approached the unmarked border of Behdrozyuhn lands, he lacked the numbers of warm bodies he might have led, but he felt assured that all or most of those he did lead were of better than average quality. He had ridden out of Taishyuhn lands with about two hundred and fifty effectives; he would join Sir Geros with nearly five hundred.

Brigadier Sir Ahrthur Maklarin still felt as if he had been ridden over, trampled by an entire brigade of heavy cavalry. Each and every necessary movement still brought a choked groan or a snarled curse from betwixt his swollen lips. On the left side of his head, just behind and above the ear, was a hard knot the size of a turkey egg. That New Kuhmbuhluhn bastard had smashed the boss of his buckler so hard into the brigadier’s face that it had actually bent the cold-hammered steel of the visor, breaking the old officer’s nose, mashing his lips until they split and spouted blood, loosening all of his front teeth and chipping four of them and all but breaking his jaws. While he had just lain there, half stunned, the dirty by-blow had kicked him in the head—the old man recalled that, clearly. And to add insult to injury, some issue of unspeakable filth had stolen his fine sword, which blade had been his father’s, before him.

He had been found by the regiment sent into the gap left by the virtual extirpation of Colonel Bruce Farr’s regiment.. A litter had been quickly fetched and he had been carefully borne up to his pavilion and the staff surgeon summoned. That worthy had speedily ascertained that, although his patient was one mass of bruises and contusions, scrapes and the occasional cut or split in the skin from crown to soles, a broken nose, loose teeth and three fingers that might or might not be broken were the worst of the old man’s injuries. He left him in the care of his staff and aides and hurried back to the scores of seriously wounded men who awaited him.

Well knowing his superior’s nature, Senior Colonel Sir Djaimz, immediately it was clear that the New Kuhmbuhluhn force was truly withdrawing from the field, had come to the brigadier and, when he found him both conscious and rational, had sketched the calamitous events of the day.

To all intents and purposes, one entire regiment of pikes—Colonel Farr’s—had ceased to exist. The colonel himself was gravely wounded, and it would be long before he took the field again, if ever he did. The two regiments which had flanked Farr’s—Taylor’s and Gambel’s—had been so badly mauled as both to be down to about half the effectives listed before the battle. The regiments to the west of the stricken three had all taken heavier than usual losses, most of them from a variety of small throwing axe identical to those which had exacted similar losses in the autumn battle of the year past.

There had been few if any missiles employed by the other two attacking forces, both of which had been easily held off by the pike lines and severely bled as they had attempted to hack through by main strength. But those who had thrown the deadly little axes had never closed in any strength until a way for them had been cleared by those who had come in afoot.

Unable to then speak clearly or without much pain, the brigadier had thought to himself, “Humph, well, our herald’s cozening didn’t work on all of them, obviously. Hope the canny bastard who led those axe throwers was killed. Wonder if he’s the same fucker who chewed us up so badly last year? Speak of last year, have to talk to our prisoners from last year again, too, along with those from this set-to ... if we captured any, that is. Far more men attacked us than I’d thought they’d be able to scratch up.

“And as for prisoners, what about that strange, dark woman and her band of scruffy scum we captured in our glen? Rifles! Our Skohshun legends speak of them or something similar—they used to be common, apparently, in our lost homeland. God in Heaven, if I had enough of them I could go through this land like a hot knife through butter! But she doesn’t know how to make them ... or, at least, she claims she doesn’t, nor even how to make the charges and projectiles for them. She does say that she could lead us to where a fair number of the rifles are buried, but from the maps she drew up, we’d have to go directly through the very heart of New Kuhmbuhluhn to get there.”

Sir Djaimz continued his report. “All save three of the short-hafts from Colonel Pease’s regiment are dead or seriously wounded, but with the exceptions of Farr’s, Taylor’s and Gambel’s sergeants, no other shorts were lost.

“However, the loss of officers was exceptionally high. Colonels Farr and Taylor are wounded, Colonel Gambel is dead. A total of seven other officers are fit for duty from the entire before-battle complement of those three regiments. Five of the six staff officers who rode with you down to the rear areas are dead. Lieutenant Bryson is wounded; so too is Ensign Grey. I’d sent the lad down to find you. Instead, he apparently essayed to stop the New Kuhmbuhluhn horsemen headed for Gambel’s regiment, single-handedly; the surgeon had to take off one of his legs at the knee, but he thinks he’ll live.”

“Poor valiant little bugger,” thought the old man, then, “Oh, Jesus, Lady Pamela, his mother, will ream me out a new arsehole for this! Fine piece of female flesh, there, that woman ... if only I were twenty years younger ... ten, even ... ? But she’ll not stay widowed long, if I’m any judge of these matters. Now young Tom can be honorably retired into the reserve and get to work siring a new generation of Greys on some likely chit.”

After a brief but noticeable pause, Senior Colonel Sir Djaimz said gravely, “Although not in the same way, thank God, we have been flanked, taken in the rear, before—several times within my memory and probably many more than that in your own, sir—but our losses have never been this heavy before, mostly for the reason that the short-haftmen were there to do their principal task, that of defending the otherwise highly vulnerable rear and flanks of the pike lines for a sufficient time for men to ground pikes, turn about and form a hedge of two fronts or a porcupine, whichever seemed best at that time and place.

“Now, sir, while I am not necessarily saying that that would have worked in this case, not against a mixed force of both heavy horse and light horse plus a contingent of heavy-armed foot, I do state categorically that our chances to avoid such a bloodletting as our arms have this day experienced would have been far better had we had our shorts in the proper place when they were needed.”

“You’ll rise high, my boy,” thought the brigadier, “either in rank or by your neck from the end of a rope. You know damned well just who, just which noble arsehole, is directly culpable for this calamity, know as well as do I.

“It’s really my fault, though. I should’ve foreseen something like this happening under the circumstances. I knew that that damned Potter was displeased with the alignments, and I knew he is a cousin of the earl, and I knew that the earl—unlike his old father, God rest his soul—does dote on playing at war captain, when he finds or makes himself the opportunity.

“So, it’s going to be entirely up to me to gingerly chew our esteemed leader out for his tragic folly, this time. Sir Djaimz here obviously wouldn’t dare do so; he has too much to lose to chance incurring the earl’s disfavor. At least my place is secure.

“But I’ll put that particular chore off until I can speak clearly and precisely—there must be no misunderstanding of aught I say to him.

“Well, I suppose that the next, logical step is going to be to march on New Kuhmbuhluhnburk itself, and call on it to surrender ... not that I think the feisty bastards will, mind you. No, I’d wager we end up besieging them there ... unless the place is weak enough to fall by storm, which I doubt on general principles. Odd, that no scout of ours has ever been able to get an actual sight of that city and come back to us with the tale. Even our herald was not allowed close enough to give us any idea of the defenses of the place. But I must plan to act on the assumption that New Kuhmbuhluhnburk is at the very least defensible and well garrisoned and, being a mountain city, probably has sources of unpollutable water inside the walls, as well.

“And so, Ahrthur Maklarin, that leaves two options: entrench and throw zigzags close enough to tunnel and undermine a likely stretch of wall, or simply hunker down on the spot and try to starve the buggers out, if we can’t find a traitor or two to open a stray gate to us of a dark night.

“From last year’s crop of prisoners and from those we captured when we took our glen, I get an impression that out from the foot of the capital there spreads a long, wide and exceptionally rich plain. Conceivably, we could live well off their own lands while besieging their city. But as we’ve here learned to our sorrow, not all of these New Kuhmbuhluhners think or act alike. There’s a wide streak of shrewd canniness runs through some of the leaders, so no doubt but our folk up in the north will be on short rations, are our men on the siege lines to be fed for however long it takes to achieve a capitulation. But it can and must be done. Our folk are tough, accustomed to privation, and they and their forefathers before them have done the like before to support a field army. They will not conceivably stick at doing it all again, not to gain a prize so rich as these lands, this Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn.”

The Skohshun army stayed in place, remained in the camps they had come to call Twin Hills for long and long after the disastrous battle. The seriously wounded, if they lived through it, were wagoned back to what they called Skohshun Glen and the wagons returned with foodstuffs, beer and other necessities of field life.

Long before he could even sit up straight without blinding pain, the brigadier had reassumed his command. The young Earl Devernee had taken his oral birching with far better grace than Sir Ahrthur had foreseen. Apparently he had been shaken to his innermost core of being by the sanguineous results of his intemperate decisions of that morning before the battle. This fact cheered the battered old man mightily, for he had much yet to do and he had not relished the thought of an ongoing feud with his nominal superior whilst he went about his necessary tasks with the army.

Of the three, lonely prisoners—all wounded—taken in the aftermath of the battle, two were New Kuhmbuhluhn nobles, and they gave him precious little information he had not had ere this. The third, once stripped of armor, proved to be a dark and lovely woman; but she could not or, more likely thought the brigadier, would not speak any comprehensible tongue. Her racial similarity to the woman prisoner up in the glen struck him early on, so he suddenly decided to have all of the prisoners brought down to the camps, thinking that he might well find a use for them between here and New Kuhmbuhluhnburk.

As regarded the army, there was no rebuilding of Colonel Fair’s regiment possible, not without stripping the last reserve pikeman from the glen, nor could all the vacant places in the ranks of the other two regiments be filled in. Therefore, he had Farr’s regimental banner sent back in the same wagon that bore the wounded officer himself; it and he would become a part of the reserve establishment until/when/if there were enough trained bodies to again fill that unit out.

The few pikemen and shorts left of the “disbanded” unit were parceled out as replacement fillers where needed. As for the remnants of the regiment of the late Colonel Gambel, the brigadier retired that banner, too, and merged the survivors with the regiment of Colonel Taylor. It seemed to him the quickest and simplest answer to the problem, and he was itchy to get the army reorganized and on the march toward New Kuhmbuhluhnburk before the foemen had the time and the leisure to concoct any unpleasant surprises for him and his.

His mounted messengers kept the roads and trails dusty between Twin Hills Camps and the captured glen, while his messages kept the glen and a large number of its inhabitants as busy as so many ants. But the Skohshuns were familiar with this kind of activity. Almost every war season within living memory it had been the same drudgery of preparing their men for war and providing for them whilst they campaigned; the only activities held of more worth were those of agriculture and animal husbandry, and even these were closely related, of course, to the welfare of the troops in the field.

Unsatisfied with reports from various of his subordinates, the brigadier himself took the time to interview, to debrief first the commander, then several of the officers and other ranks of the dragoons who had trailed the defeated army of New Kuhmbuhluhn all the way to the capital. But to a man their observations of the city and its environs made no sense, had little similarity one to the other, yet these men all were trained, experienced scouts.

The brigadier found the whole business to be most unsettling, but he moved on to other affairs, rationalizing that he and all the rest would be there to see the city and countryside soon enough.

When Dr. Schiepficker had completed his oral report and surrendered the microphone to Corbett, the officer said, “If you’re not sitting down, David, I strongly advise that you do so, now.”

“Erica ... ?” came the hoarse, hesitant whisper. “She ... she’s ... you’ve found her ... her ... ?”

“It would seem, from what a Ganik that Johnny Skinhead brought in had to say, that up to about a month ago, she was alive and the captive of some group or tribe calling themselves Skohshuns. Their lands are well up to the north and the west of here, somewhere close to the south bank of the Ohio River, I’d say, on the basis of current information. Apparently, they are newcomers to these mountains, invading—migrating, really—from north of the river. Instead of relying on cavalry as do most groups hereabouts, they seem to have developed truly effective infantry, along the general lines of the Swiss or German Landesknechten and—”

“Dammit, Jay,” fumed Sternheimer impatiently, “the very last thing I want to hear right now is your assessment of their culture, military or otherwise. The one, the only thing I want you to tell me is when you are going to move to rescue poor Erica.”

Corbett sighed. “David, which is the most important thing to you, to us, to the Center, just now—salvaging our loot from the Hold of the Moon Maidens or marching off God alone knows how far into completely unknown country on a mission which already may be pointless? If it’s the former, which of my Broomtown officers should I leave in charge of the salvage operation while I take a reinforced company north? If it’s the latter, what would you suggest be the provisions made for Dr. Schiepficker and the other civilians while the rest of us go charging to the supposed rescue with the entire battalion?”

“Oh, God damn you, Jay Corbett!” Sternheimer snarled with intense feeling. “Of all people, you know how I feel about Erica. You also know how important, how very vital that salvage mission is to us at the Center, and I—

“Wait! I’ve got the solution. Why not leave Dr. Schiepficker in charge?”

Corbett sighed once more. “David, David, Mike Schiepficker is a gifted zoologist, he’s even a decent rifle shot, but I doubt if he could easily tell the difference between a blasting cap and an increment charge. Whoever remains in charge, in my place up here, must have a good grounding in explosives and blasting, along with a military background and the ability to command. And, David, I can think of but one man down there who meets the explosives qualifications.

“If you want me to go north after Erica, put Dr. Braun’s mind into a decent body and get him and Colonel MacBride from Broomtown up here to me, yesterday. The sooner they are here with us, the sooner I can leave with a special force. You’d better lay on the biggest copter for the job, too, as I’m going to be wanting MacBride to bring along some additional weapons and equipment.”

“No,” Sternheimer began petulantly. “I don’t think Harry Braun should—”

Corbett cut him off brusquely. “David, I don’t think you understood me. Those are my terms; they are non-negotiable. This is not a mission I really want to undertake, you see. I’m doing it for you, as a personal—a very, very personal—favor. I’d much rather complete this project, here, before undertaking anything else, and unless you immediately meet my conditions, I’ll do just that.” He paused, then added, “Do I make myself clear, this time around, David?”

Now it was Center Director Sternheimer who sighed. “Yes, Jay, your meaning is quite clear. I’ll set things in motion, down here. You can make arrangements with Broomtown Base. Out.”