In the Valley Read Online Free PDF Page B

Paul had seen Monkey-Boy lift a 150-liter barrel of water once, unassisted, like it was a joke. The Monkey might not be the smartest guy in the world, but he was ungodly strong. Maybe next time Paul had to do suit maintenance, he’d whistle him up.
    Paul waved back to him and then stepped into the tent with the colonel. His eyes took a second to adjust to the dim light in the tent. Damn thenecessity, Paul thought. Life was just easier with the halo; there would have been no transition from the blinding white sun outside to the dark interior of the tent. Once his eyes adjusted, Paul spotted Green sitting on a cot in the tent. He was discussing something earnestly with Captain Bashir, Paul’s sidekick.
    Colonel Fasi spotted the colonel, who had come in after Paul. He stood and shook his hand.
    “My friend, how are you?” said Fasi. The colonel looked at him and smiled while they exchanged more pleasantries. One thing Paul had noticed the past couple of weeks was how the colonel’s smile never quite got to his eyes anymore. The man was maxed out at ten-tenths of capacity, and it was beginning to tell.
    Finally, Fasi and the colonel sat down, and Paul and company got to the brass tacks.
    The colonel had had a special paper map made of the Baradna Valley, just for haloless meetings like this. The guy really did think of everything, Paul thought. He spread it out on the ground between the opposing cots, where the five men were seated. The colonel sat next to Fasi, and Green, Bashir, and the First Company commander sat on the other cot. Paul chose to stand.
    The sheer primitive grubbiness of the surroundings struck Paul. There was a map on the dusty ground and six sweating guys in a tent. Usually, this would be done with halo overlays, data extracted from the cloud, or micros—everything would have a seamless, professional feel. But not today—the meeting was strictly low-tech.
    Good, Paul thought. If the price he had to pay to catch Commander Mohammed was a little inconvenience and low-tech, then all to the better. That particular shithead and his gang had tried to kill Paul his teammates during the original assault into the Baradna Valley. His merry dissident crew had set up a rocket-assisted 155 mm round, oriented in such a way that it would shoot into the ground-car of the team as they rode in.
    That trick would probably have worked on the Juneau Army. Fortunately, Third Battalion’s advisors had requested some help from some forces armored engineers who happened to be kickin’ around on the June-bug without a mission. The colonel had given those guys from the Eighteenth Engineers a job, and they had performed. The engineers were thrilled to find the bomb. It was a lot like watching kids at a candy store when they came across a device and saved someone from being blown up.
    No doubt Commander Mohammed had been pissed. Well, thought Paul, fuck him. And now Third Battalion, Juneau Army, was going to come calling.
    The two colonels hashed out a basic plan and sought input from the others. Bashir suggested telling the provincial police that the battalion was going to be operating ten klicks in the opposite direction from where the battalion would actually be; Fasi laughed and thought that was a great idea.
    Pashtuns sure did love dirty tricks. Paul thought sometimes that they drank treachery with their mother’s milk. When Paul had first gotten this mission, he had done a little research on the inhabitants of this planet, and he’d found out that such glee at mayhem was a Pashtun trait from Old Earth. Some things just never change.
    Paul was chagrined he hadn’t thought of that bit of deceit himself; bringing the provincial police in on what the battalion was actually doing would have been the height of folly. They leaked info like a sieve compared to the army, which wasn’t all that great, except in comparison. After everyone present at the meeting added tidbits to the plan, the planning session was adjourned.
    Green