Author's note: Thanks to everyone leaving encouraging comments and messages. Very much appreciated.
Things are getting busy for me again and I may be away for a time. However, I have another chapter almost ready to be posted and several more that need editing. Currently working on chapter 13. Looks like there might be 20 chapters total.
*****
Liam rolled to his side feeling every cramped muscle and stiff joint in his body. He was sure that if he tried to move too quickly he'd hear tendons snapping so he very slowly worked himself into a sitting position.
"Damn," he swore softly. "Mom said there would be days like this."
"Did she really?" a soft voice inquired from the nest across from him. M'pel E'kmel pushed herself up onto her elbow and smiled. Her smoke-colored eyes were only half open, still filled with sleep and in the fading light of the late afternoon her golden fur looked more dusky than usual. He smiled back and shook his head.
"It's just an expression," he said. "I had a sergeant in advanced gunnery who would say that to us on maneuvers. He was one of the best instructors I ever had."
"Ah. I wondered how your mother would know one day you would be cast away upon a remote world with three soldiers of an enemy nation," she laughed playfully. "Are you rested, Sergeant?"
"I'm better than I was a while ago," he conceded. "Give me a minute. I need to check something."
She waited patiently and watched with interest as he took his medical kit from his pack. Placing it on his broad chest he tapped a button and waited until the device chimed. Holding it in front of his face he read something from the little screen.
"And what does it say?" she asked mildly but with a hint of concern.
"Well," he said, screwing up his face. "My nutritional balance for the day is a little too heavy on proteins and too light on carbohydrates. Nothing serious. I'm well within the norm for hydration. That's good. And it looks like my vitamin D and my iron are a bit low, but again, nothing serious. Everything else checks out. The machine does recommend more sleep, though."
"Then lay back down," she advised.
"I'm already awake and I should relieve Tem'Ma'tel on watch. She's been out there all day."
"And you have been extremely active for the past two days," M'pel E'kmel said reasonably. "You should sleep a little while longer. Lay down and I will sing you a lullaby. One my mother used to sing to me."
He looked at her with a soft smile and said, "Now that would be worth hearing. You have a very nice voice, Commander. I think it's best if I go relieve Tem'Ma'tel, though. Sing your lullaby to her."
She was going to speak but paused when Liam reached into his pack and came out with one of his ration packets. He tore the end open and drew out a disc about the size of his palm.
"What's that?" she asked.
For answer he gave her a glance and then winked. Holding the disc with the fingers of one hand he placed the fingers of the other over it and pulled them apart. The disc opened up into a cylinder and he twisted the top off. He stuffed that into his pack and took out his canteen, pouring a measure of water into the open end of the cylinder. Steam wafted up from it and a pleasant scent filled the old tree. He handed the cylinder to M'pel E'kmel.
"It smells wonderful," she said after waving the drink under her nose.
"The drink of the gods," he said in a mock serious tone. "And the life's blood of marines and college students everywhere."
"Indeed?" she said in an appropriately grave tone. "What's it called?"
"That, my dear Commander, is coffee. At least it's a pretty close approximation of the stuff."
"This?" M'pel E'kmel said, genuinely impressed. She had heard of coffee but had never had an opportunity to try any. She reached to hand it back, but Liam held up a palm and pulled a second disc from the ration packet.
"Go ahead and drink it," he said, repeating the preparations for the second cup. "Just don't waste it. There are thirsty marines who would push their sainted grandmothers down a flight of stairs to get some."
She laughed, her eyes dancing, and took a sip of the hot liquid. M'pel E'kmel held the cup several centimeters in front of her eyes and stared at it. Her ears twitched and her whiskers vibrated. She took a larger sip and shot Liam a surprised and very pleased look.
"I guess you like it," he said with a grin and sipped from his own cup.
"This is wonderful!" she proclaimed and sat up, careful of her cup. "If your people sent our general staff a case of this the war would end tomorrow! You say this is only an approximation of the drink?"
"I've had the real stuff plenty of times," he told her. "I had Kona coffee every day when I was stationed in Honolulu and I had Indian coffee while on maneuvers in the Punjab. The Pliskan blend from Adder is really good, all original beans transported there about a hundred years ago from Columbia. I have it wherever I go. This stuff is coffee mostly in name alone. It tastes better with sugar and cream if you want to try some of that."
"No thank you," she said and sipped again. "My people do not process sugar very well. We can't even taste it. And the cream I am leery of. I do not wish to ruin a good thing."
Liam snorted at that and drank his coffee. It perked him up considerably and soon he was feeling more ready to face a long watch. He collapsed his empty cup and pushed it back into the ration packet then stood and collected his armor.
"Sergeant," M'pel E'kmel said, watching him pull the sleeves up his arms. "How long will it take to recharge the stretcher?"
"Oh, if we could keep it in direct sunlight, about six hours," he told her. "With all this shade, call it twelve or fourteen."
"And how long would the charge last?" she asked.
"You mean if we loaded all of our gear on it?"
She nodded.
"That's a lot of weight for it to hold up," he said, fastening the pauldrons on his shoulders. "That's why it ran down so fast. I guess it would carry that load for about six or seven hours. Thinking about taking it somewhere?"
"I found a place on one of our orbital survey maps," she said. "I think we could reach it in a single day if we started at dawn."
"Dangerous," he observed. "We figured daylight lasts about twenty-four hours here. You want to march straight through?"
"I had thought we might try it," she admitted and sipped more of her coffee. "If the stretcher runs down so quickly we would certainly be forced to stop."
"How about making the trip in stages?" he asked and fastened his gun belt.
"I suppose we must."
"If you can use your map to find some places on the way where we could hole up and recharge the stretcher, we could make a couple of short journeys in a day," he said and picked up his helmet. "Might be able to reach the place you found in as little as two days. Probably more like three, since we won't know the terrain until we're actually walking through it."
"Yes," she said with a nod. "You are wise, Sergeant. And you are more accustomed to marching than I am. That's one reason I'm very glad to have you with us. The terrain, I suspect will be no worse than it is here, though it will gradually climb as we near the hills."
"Stands to reason," he said with a nod. "If we can get to some good, defensible ground before nightfall, I think we'd be fine."
"I'll go over the map tonight," she said and finished her coffee. "Let us take a look at it in the morning. We can work out more details once I have a better idea of what we're facing and what course we can take."
+>0<+
Tem'Ma'tel crawled into her nest, tired but filled with anticipation. Clot'ilda was coming down from the upper entrance and already was unfastening the catches on her trousers. The scent of the little Pah'Tht preceded her and told Tem'Ma'tel how excited she was. Clot'ilda playfully sprang naked into the nest from several paces away, landing lightly next to Tem'Ma'tel and delivering a quick nip to the side of the dTel'Qohar's neck. Tem'Ma'tel giggled at the antics of her friend and both began purring.
"
This must come off
!" whispered Clot'ilda, her fingers tugging at the seal on Tem'Ma'tel's jacket.
