The AWOL Guardsmen had taken over an E-type wildworld called Jopat, the Primgranese contingent holding the northern hemisphere and those from the Lontastan Federation the southern. The tropics between served as their battleground.
And a battle was in progress as Gweanvin Oster approached the planet. She could see nothing of it, even with her amplisight blinked on, from where she hesitated fifty thousand miles out. The barbs had evidently agreed to limit their combat zone to the ground and atmosphere—perhaps because space-fights were too deadly even for them.
What Gweanvin could not see, however, she could hear quite distinctly over the comm implant in her left ear. Cryptic commands and responses were snapping like verbal firecrackers among the Primgranese forces, along with savage yells of glee and occasional grunts of dismay. She had no trouble recognizing the deep bark of Spart Dargow, general of the Primgranese barbs, as he bellowed his orders.
Using her psionic comm tuner, Gweanvin scanned the band and found the frequency being used by the Lontastan forces. All she could get was a meaningless garble, since her unscrambler could not handle the Lontastan code. She listened only a moment before tuning back to General Dargow.
" . . . Red-seven, red-seven, horseback dawn, horseback dawn! . . . Jato. Blue-forty, jato, damn it! . . . Red-ten, red-ten, washout, washout!"
As a frontliner herself, Gweanvin had worked with Guardsmen enough to be familiar with their command language. But she could make only limited sense out of what she was hearing. Dargow was using a couple of terms she had never heard before, such as "horseback dawn." And she wasn't sure such familiar commands as "jato" meant the same thing here on Jopat as back home.
Here, after all, the language was being used in a situation that had never existed before—a pitched battle between massed forces of Guardsmen. In the econo-war, Guardsmen guarded. They defended their worlds, whether in the Primgranese Commonality or the Lontastan Federation, against entry by such enemy frontliners as spies, saboteurs and subverters. Occasionally a squad would vector out a few light-years to the assistance of a returning and hotly pursued frontliner, and a brief running battle would ensue. But never anything so insane as this combat on a wildworld.
Gweanvin grimaced in disgust. What boneheads these genetic barbarians were! Very useful in keeping the econo-war honest, very competitive, very high-survival—but boneheads!
She went full inert and let her momentum carry her slowly downward, her velocity perhaps ten thousand miles per hour relative to the planet. Except for being hungry after five days in space, she had no reason to hurry. Could be that it might be best to let the battle end before she tried to land. She had now located the scene of conflict as the late-afternoon zone, and she guessed hostilities would end by the time night fell if not before.
A Lontastan voice, speaking uncoded, suddenly boomed at her: "Hey, you at forty-seven thousand altitude! Identify yourself!"
Gweanvin's zerburst pistol was in her right hand instantly and her detector implants out full. She had trouble spotting her challengers, with the mass of the planet behind them and they only a few thousand miles up. There appeared to be about twenty of them, hanging south of the battle area, probably as rear guards and observers.
She tongued her toothmike and replied: "I'm Gweanvin Oster of the Commonality. Don't let me interrupt your stupid game. I'll wait here till it's over."
"Like hell you will!" boomed the response. "You got no business up there! You're south of the equator! Haul it north, doxie, or we'll blow you north!"
"Just try it, foghead!" she snarled back, and went on with a suggestion that the Lontastan go amuse himself in a manner both vulgar and physically impossible.
The twenty vague specks vanished abruptly. Gweanvin held her position a precise two-fifths of a second, then warped away on a minivector of some five thousand miles eastward. At that, she moved a trifle too soon to sucker the entire squad. Only six zerburst lances were fired, to terminate into flares of supersolar energy around the spot she had vacated. Gweanvin fired two quick shots of her own at the sourcepoints of two lances and vectored away quickly without waiting to see the results.
"Gweanvin Oster, what the hell are you doing?" General Dargow's voice was blasting at her. He sounded angry and concerned. "Vector north, girl!"
"Stay out of this, General Bonehead," she snapped, making another miniwarp when she found herself without a clear target.
"You're breaking our rules!" he protested furiously.
Her new breakout point put her close enough to one Lontastan for her to drill him cleanly through the belly. Her lance flared late, however, a hundred miles on the other side of him. Still, he would be one sick barb for a couple of weeks. "So what?" she snorted as she fired.
"So we'll come help the Lonnies blast you, if you keep fooling around!" yelled Dargow. "You'll still be gas when the universe coalesces!"
Her new minivector carried Gweanvin straight down, as close as she could warp toward the atmosphere without traumatizing herself. Here she had a few seconds respite from detection. "Send men you don't want!" she retorted warningly. As soon as she had the Lontastans above her well located, she miniwarped into their midst. This time she stayed long enough to get off three shots before making another quick drop out of normspace. She had an advantage in that she could shoot at any target she detected, whereas the Lontastans needed an extra split-second to make sure an unwarping figure was not one of their comrades.
She grinned. Playing a lone hand had its good points.
Dargow's voice was still yelling in her ear, threatening to send Primgranese fighters out to help the Lonnies blast her. But she made no response. Dargow was smart enough to know that mixing a squad of Grannies with the Lonnies would only add to the confusion already working for her, so his threat could be considered idle. She concentrated on her deadly game.
A few seconds later she noted that Dargow's yells were no longer directed at her but at some Lontastan commander. "Pull your men back!" he was urging. "Ignore her. She's just an interloper from back home, not working with me!"
The general's new tack suddenly worked. The space around Gweanvin emptied as the Lonnie squad warped away.
She blinked and looked around. Far below three bodies were tumbling planetward. Two other squadmen, evidently wounded and with damaged transport implants, were going down in controlled inert mode. That made a Lonnie casualty list of six, she figured, because she was sure she had flared one into vapor.
Below, the barb battle had ended, too, evidently broken off short because of the distraction she had created. She could hear a bedlam of pull-back commands over her comm as she vectored northward and began descending toward Primgranese territory.
"Gweanvin Oster, what the hell are you up to?" Dargow snarled.
"Coming in for a landing," she replied nonchalantly. "Give me a location."
"You know what I mean!" he stormed.
"Yes, I know. I also know I'm not playing your damn-fool game so I don't have to abide by its silly rules. I wasn't bothering the Lonnies, until they came up and started shooting. Are you going to give me a location?"
"No! I'm telling you to warp for home right now."
"Nuts to that. I've been in space five days and I'm starving. Welcome or not, I'm coming down to eat."
"Okay, damn it! Somebody will meet you at forty-one north, four forty-five realtime solar. But tomorrow you head for home, girl."
"That's tomorrow's problem," she replied.