Peace Company: These Green Foreign Hills - Book 2 by Roland J. Green

Author:Roland J. Green [Green, Roland J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Caliber Books
Published: 2024-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

The sky was dark and silent, the rain fading to a drizzle. For lack of anything else that seemed to need doing, Parkes was standing guard over the bodies on their stretchers.

One body was human. Jim Kennedy hadn’t been at home in the Field Squadron, or so Dozer said. Now he’d gone where either nobody or everybody was at home, depending on your religion. The lodges of the Wise One opted for everybody, although Parkes couldn’t help wondering if there was a special place for soldiers. They were likely to be odd volumes in this world, and probably would be in the next. It should still count for something—that if Jim Kennedy hadn’t died like a soldier, a good many humans and Hrothmi in the University camp would have died like sheep.

The other three bodies were Hrothmi—the camp’s second cook and two terrorists. Every time he looked at those two, Parkes could hear the sizzling of fat in the fire. By morning word that the terrorists were or at least included Hrothmi would be all over Utopia. Even comparatively level-headed Utopians (if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms) would be hitting ceilings in record numbers. As for what the bigots would be doing—

Parkes told himself firmly to worry about only six things at a time, at least until he could get something hot to drink. News of the attack had dragged him out of bed and on to a verti before he’d really reached full sapience. Any properly programmed robot could have done as well as he had for the first half hour at the University camp. Now he was about to be left in charge here, with Lieutenant Simmel taking her company into the field and Major Vela flying on to join Kuzik and MacLean at the tunnel. He had to at least simulate knowing what he was doing.

“...can’t embalm them, with the equipment available?”

Major Vela’s voice sounded indignant, just short of angry. He also seemed to be wanting to make himself heard all over the camp—particularly, Parkes suspected, by Anglic-speaking Hrothmi. Vela’s partisanship for his beloved Hrothmi went beyond the bounds of discretion, or even saw discretion as disloyalty.

The tone of Captain Laughton’s reply bordered on insubordination. “It’s not a question of equipment, sir. It’s a question of people. We’ve got nine casualties here and fourteen more up at the tunnel. We’ll probably have more before the night’s over. Do you want me to let some of the wounded—Hrothmi wounded, maybe—die to embalm corpses as evidence for God knows what?”

Parkes clearly heard Vela’s indrawn breath. The big vein on the side of his neck would be throbbing now. Wise One grant that Laughton knew what this meant...

“Captain Laughton, if you can’t handle twenty-three casualties and still spare a couple of people for embalming the terrs, you don’t know how to run your company. I mean it. Either those Hrothmi are embalmed or I’m going to Colonel MacLean about this.”

“Sir!” Captain Laughton’s tone would have turned the rain into hail if she’d spoken louder.

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