Shadows, стр. 10

father was hetman, his word carried the force of law. Once convinced of the necessity for the young men of his village to learn the Offworlders’ way of war, he had agreed to Cutter’s suggestion that they move the training camp a few miles to the west. After two months of standard weapons’ training and drills, Cutter had named Tanavuna as platoon executive officer, and three men named Riidono, Brakkel, and Scussian as sergeants, each commanding one of the platoon’s three squads. His platoon was nicknamed Cutter’s Cutters after the unit he’d led back on Earth, although the name thrust faces into his mind, shadows of the men he’d led to their deaths.

Months earlier, his men had laid out the representation of a town on the mostly barren expanse, and they had used it to practice urban combat techniques. Clumps of brush or trees, hillocks, and boulders all had designations as buildings or other structures. Gullies became sewers, and Cutter tried every way he could to simulate moving through foul sludge to acclimate his men. He didn’t want to play that card any more than they did, but it was a lot better to stink than die, and the enemy would never expect anyone to immerse themselves in raw sewage.

Four hours remained before twilight when the latest exercise ended. With enough time to run another assault, Tanavuna walked to the foot of the hill where Cutter stood, and with obvious reluctance asked if the captain wanted them to do it again. Just because he’d lived his entire life under R’Bak’s brutal sun didn’t mean he liked being out in it all day, every day, particularly as the approach of the Sear began turning the surface into an oven.

“No, no more training,” Cutter said to Tanavuna’s relief. “The men are ready. Bring them in.”

Cutter came down from the hill and motioned for his men to gather around. Forgetting their fatigue, it only took minutes for the forty-seven members of his platoon to circle him. “Pack up, boys,” he called out. Within their culture, calling them boys could be considered an insult, but Cutter had explained that where he came from it was a term of endearment, and they accepted it. “Major Moorefield is moving on Imsurmik the day after tomorrow. We’ll march east tonight, hole up during the hottest part of the day, and then get you home. We’ll camp outside the village, but I can give you three hours to see your families and make some babies.”

They laughed, both at the accuracy of Cutter’s words and with pleasure that the training was over. He’d seen it in 1944 and now again two hundred years later: the relief of finally moving toward engaging the enemy.

If only they knew what awaited them.

Life on R’Bak had more than its share of violence, but tribal warfare and blood feuds were a far cry from combat against an organized enemy who wanted you dead. And, despite Murphy’s assurances otherwise, Cutter assumed that was exactly what the militias in Imsurmik wanted, to kill them all. If they turned out to be the disorganized amateurs that Murphy and Moorefield said they were, fine, but as a combat commander, he had to plan as though they were R’Bak’s version of the Waffen-SS.

The men always moved fast at night, being the preferred time of travel during the hottest season. Now, after six months of intense physical training, they maintained a pace double that of before, while Cutter rode a whinaalani at the head of the group. Some of the men flanked the column at a distance of three hundred yards as a tripwire-skirmish line. The rest either marched in column or led the other whinnies being used as pack animals.

They moved fast and arrived at their camp west of the village just as night fell. Cutter made them delay rushing home to their families until everything was staged so they could pull out at dawn. He ordered them to be back in camp three hours later, and, except for one man, they were. Fifteen minutes later, they were in their sleeping rolls, dozing. Or trying to.

The locals called their village of six hundred people Nuthhurfipiko, which in their dialect meant “near the dry brown hill.” Cutter wasn’t sure how it got that name, since the hill had dots of trees and scrub greenery over most of its slopes. As he lay staring at the unfamiliar stars, he could hear the river nearby, and the illogic of the name kept his mind racing. The hill was neither brown nor particularly dry, but as he’d learned in France, place names didn’t always make sense. He mentally dubbed it Nuther.

Even with the sun down, he felt sweat trickle down his neck and sides, so maybe Nuther got its name during the last Sear, or the one before that, or the one before that. As hard as it might be to imagine, supposedly it got much hotter when the two suns blasted the planet’s surface like a flame-thrower, so he could see the hill turning brown under all that heat. Too bad it didn’t kill off the stinging insects, too.

Snoring nearby was a reassuring memory of the men he’d led in France, every one of whom he’d trusted with his life. Cutter felt the same way about the R’Baku of Nuther. The new platoon had been training for six months, but as much as he wanted to believe that his new men would react in battle like the old ones, that could only be verified when the shooting started.

He should have been exhausted, and physically he was, but his mind wouldn’t shut off. Instead, it kept repeating the same scenes over and over again, until he thought it would drive him mad. Eventually he dozed off.

Dawn was still an hour away when distant gunfire interrupted the already brief R’Bak night and woke him. Momentarily disoriented, he sat up shouting,