Starfist: Kingdom's Fury by David Sherman & Dan Cragg Page B

that favored the Skinks. It was marshy, channeled with tiny rivulets and larger streams, slowly flowing water that skimmed over most of the ground that wasn't channeled. Stalky things that looked like reeds lined the streams and nearly filled the rivulets. Lightly flooded ground was studded with tufts of something that resembled grasses. What passed for high ground carried trees whose droopy foliage was too wet even to be called scraggly. It was nothing short of Skink heaven.
    Mother Corps wasn't treating her Marines right. Nossir! If Gunny Bass was still around, Claypoole thought sourly, I bet he'd have talked the brigadier out of this!
    The Kingdomites didn't have any morale, and probably didn't have any unit cohesiveness. When Claypoole met Second Acolyte Priestly, the platoon commander, he didn't seem to object to taking orders from the very junior Marine noncommissioned officer. And when Claypoole and Wolfman gave orders, none of the Kingdom soldiers looked to their own leaders to see if they should obey.
    So there they were, he and Wolfman, just the two of them, and a platoon from the—Claypoole shook his head at the ridiculous name—Lancelot Guardians of the Faith, way the hell and gone out here, ten klicks from the Haven-Interstellar City defenses, two klicks or farther from another patrol, looking for Skinks who, if they deigned to be found, would kill these soldiers. And most likely kill him and Wolfman into the bargain.
    This was a seriously messed up situation.
    Well, he was a Marine. Marines were expected to do more with less than anybody else. The merely difficult we do immediately, he thought, the impossible might take a little longer. And if anything was impossible, it was this situation.
    Claypoole got out his UPUD Mark III and examined it. Its infra display didn't show anything larger than a smallish dog within a kilometer of the platoon's position.
    He called up the caves download from the string-of-pearls and saw they weren't in easy striking range of a known or suspected cave outlet either.
    "Hold up," he said into his helmet comm. The platoon stopped, accordioning by squads as the squad leaders relayed the order to their men. Claypoole muttered, off circuit, about the stupidity of the Kingdomite high command in keeping comm units out of the hands of the troops. As if a small unit leader being able to communicate directly with all his men would promote heresy. "Assemble on me." He raised his helmet's chameleon shield and rolled up a sleeve so the soldiers could see where he was. He watched as they listlessly moved into a rough formation in front of him.
    "You out of whatever excuse you've got for a mind, Corporal Rock?" MacIlargie asked on their private circuit. What he said might be insubordinate, but he said it with proper military courtesy.
    "Shut up and cover my Six," Claypoole said on the same circuit.
    "The platoon's assembled, Acting Second Acolyte," Priestly reported with a dull voice when the ranks were formed.
    "Thank you, Second Acolyte." Claypoole nodded at the Kingdomite officer. To all he said, "Listen up. Rear rank, about face. Get into prone positions and keep watch. The rest of you, sit in place." When they did as he ordered, he moved close to the front rank so everybody could hear without him having to yell.
    "Look at you," he began. The Kingdomites looked anywhere but at themselves.
    "You call yourselves soldiers, but you look like a bunch of criminals headed for the gallows. I'll bet you think you're going to die today." The soldiers, even the prone watchers, seemed to fold in on themselves. "Well, let me tell you something. The Skinks can be beaten. I know that. Acting Platoon Sword MacIlargie and me, we were in the Swamp of Perdition when we killed more Skinks than we could count.
    Sure, they killed a lot of Marines, but we got all of them." In fact, he wasn't sure all the Skinks in that battle had been killed, but that was beside the point. "We were out in the countryside, working