Killing and Dying

Four days had passed, three of them on patrol, since the Battle of the First Days. APFs took platoons to designated map coordinates, and picked them up six or eight hours later, somewhere else. The patrols were to watch for any sign of Wyzhnyny activities, but mainly they were keeping sharp, and getting a better sense of the wilderness fringe that was their stronghold. Meanwhile their platoon leaders checked out uncertainties on the detailed, large-scale maps Division had brought from Terra. Maps from high altitude photographs, made years earlier by Terra's foreign ministry, which on worlds like New Jerusalem had little to do, and cooked up unobtrusive, hopefully useful projects to pass the time.

Patrolling also served to integrate the replacements. There could be no replacements from offworld, of course. So the platoons with the heaviest losses had been deactivated, and their remaining personnel distributed to others to fill the holes. 2nd Platoon's replacements had come from 3rd Platoon, A Company, which had also been airborne qualified.

They were all Jerries, of course, had been trained alike, and their limited combat experience had been similar. But their unit folklores had different characters and stories. Still, a couple of days was all it took to become brothers. The many casualties had made them more conscious of their mortality and brotherhood.

After breakfast on the morning of the fifth day, Ensign Berg mustered 2nd Platoon in a light rain. "Men," he said, "today we're going to do something different. The surveillance buoys report what seem to be four small groups of fugitives hiding out from the Wyzhnyny. You may possibly know some of them. The general's sending us out in four armored personnel floaters, each with a squad, to pick up the fugitives and bring them in." He looked at his men expectantly. "How does that sound?"

Their response was not the enthusiasm he'd anticipated. It was Esau who finally answered. "Sounds fine to me, sir." This brought a circle of nods. "But we may hear some things that won't exactly warm our hearts. A lot of folks that stayed weren't kindly disposed to those of us that decided to leave. Called us deserters; said we lacked faith in God. It turned out they spurned God's offer of escape, instead. Some of them'll hate us for that, too. Hate us for being right."

Berg nodded slowly. "I expect some may at that," he said, then briefed them on policies and procedures.

By the time they took off, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out; steam rose from the forest roof. Esau knelt beside the copilot. He'd called up the regional orientation map in his map book. An X marked the reported location of the group he was to pick up, while the floater's location was a tiny moving icon. But mostly it was the ground he watched, the Milk River Hills. The only good orientation feature was the Milk River, named for its milky tinge. These hills were not rich in streams. Except for the Milk, they tended to be short, appearing from springs as full-grown creeks, then disappearing into the ground. All of them were a milky green.

The forest was heavy. Some of the species he could recognize from the air. Scattered whitewood, with large pale leaves, its wood light in weight, favored for sawing or splitting out boards; dense groves of "cedar," narrow-crowned and with lanceolate leaves, the best of all for building logs; here and there steelwood, some of them towering, its hard and heavy wood slow to decay; and "redwood," with roseate wood and red-tinged leaves, a favorite for cabinets and other dressy things. Jael had had a redwood hutch, crafted by her grampa as a wedding gift.

Esau pulled his mind away from that, and back to the hills they flew over. Hills not fit for farms, he told himself. Best left to God's livestock, not man's.

They were getting close now. The floater icon almost touched the X. Down there were folks who'd stayed behind. He wondered how they'd fared the past year, and how they felt now about those who'd left. Not that it matters greatly, he told himself. Leastways it shouldn't. As Speaker Crosby had said: "God made diversity amongst his people for a reason. They will disagree, but He loves them all." Speaker Crosby had stayed, but he'd wished them well. "I'm too old to go flying off to the stars," he'd said. "And my flock needs me."

Some of that flock had already condemned him for "encouraging desertions."

Esau called up a quadrangle page, its much larger scale showing considerable detail, including a second, smaller X. He guessed the larger was a camp, and the smaller a hunting party, now about a mile west of it. The smaller X moved slightly while he watched, still westward toward a meadow. "Go to the smaller X first," he told the pilot. "Before they get any more separated than they are."

"Right," the pilot said. Esau went aft to the open hatch, hooked his safety line, then knelt, leaning out. He'd already keyed the speech output of his helmet comm to the floater's bullhorn. Below, all he could see was treetops.

"Helloo!" he called. "You down there! An army's come to clean out the Wyzhnyny-the aliens. If you hear me, fire a gun. We can pick you up at that meadow off west."

He heard no gunshot, and the APF's gravdrive produced only a low hum; if there'd been a shot, he'd have heard it. Maybe, he thought, they've run out of powder. There'd always been folks, a few, who preferred a crossbow or longbow for hunting. They'd have an advantage now.

"Fine," he called. "We'll go to your camp and wait there."

The pilot heard, and swinging the floater in an easy curve, headed for the larger X, where the map showed a creek along the foot of a ridge. Trees overhung it, but in places the water was visible from overhead, milky green like the river. Probably, Esau thought, there was a cave there.

He tried the bullhorn again. "Helloo! You down there! An army's come to clean out the aliens. I'm coming down to talk with you. If you want, we can take you to camp with us. Feed you up proper. Fix you up with shoes, and new clothes."

He could imagine what they looked like after hiding out in the wilderness all that time. They'd hardly have a shoe between the lot of them. Maybe moccasins. He disconnected from the bullhorn and spoke to his squad.

"Talbott, I'm leaving you in charge. Turner, you'll come down with me."

Turner nodded, and Esau turned to the pilot. "Sergeant Pindal," he said to the Indi flyer, "find a place close by, where we can let down."

The pilot glanced back, nodding. "Right, Sergeant," he answered, and in a few seconds had parked his aircraft over a small blowdown gap. "Will that do?"

The two Jerries were snapping on letdown harnesses as Esau looked down. "Yup. Good enough." There wasn't much visibility through the gap; branch growth was filling it. But it would do. Two letdown spars had emerged from their housings, one on each side of the floater, above the door. Esau stepped out backward and began his descent, controlling it by voice while signaling with his arms to refine the centering. It was something they'd all done before at Camp Nafziger. Then he was through the gap and into the trunk space. No one was waiting. When his feet touched the ground, he pulled the safety clip and slapped the release. "All clear," he said.

His harness disappeared upward on its cable; meanwhile Turner had landed beside him. They were about a hundred feet upslope of the stream, and seventy or eighty yards downstream from the X. "We'd better take our helmets off," Esau said. "Otherwise no telling what these folks will think we are."

Both men tipped their helmets back, letting them rest on their light field packs. Then they went downslope to the creek. From there they could see a young boy waiting a couple hundred feet upstream on the far bank. Esau started toward him, waving. "Howdy!" he called. "I'm Esau Wesley, from Sycamore Parish. This here's Malachi Turner, from Tanner's Run."