The Rings of Salammis

Infiltrator

     "Halt!" commanded the Sergeant, raising a hand. "Fall out!"

     The thirty Beltharan soldiers collapsed gratefully onto the soft grass, slipping the heavily weighted backpacks from their screaming shoulders and swinging their arms to ease their cramped muscles.

     Matthew stared in awe and wonder at the giant, massively muscled Sergeant who, alone of them, seemed as fresh and rested as when they'd started their ten mile run, despite the fact that his backpack was weighted even more than his own. "He's not human," he muttered, collapsing onto his back and staring up at the clear blue sky. "He can't be!"

     "No Sergeants are human," whispered back Bobby Fell, the only one of his regimental cohorts to have survived the ruthless selection process this far. "They're a race apart. Centuries ago a human mated with a rock giant, and all the Sergeants in the world today are descended from them."

     Matthew chuckled. "I can well believe it. If I'd known I'd have to go through all this just to get a place on that bloody ship..."

     "It'll be worth it," said Fell, pulling up a long stalk of grass and putting it between his teeth. "Think of all the things we'll see. New worlds and new civilisations. Things not even the wizards have seen before."

     Matthew smiled. "Yeah," he agreed. "And you can't run very far on a small ship."

     "Oh I expect we'll teleport home a few at a time for exercise runs around the valley."

     "Don't say that!" warned Matthew, wincing at the idea. "Not even as a joke."

     The trouble was that it was all too horribly plausible. So long as the Ship of Space remained in their universe, the crew could be rotated back by means of the teleportation chamber no matter how far away it was, and their superiors would probably not want to risk a crew going stale by leaving them aboard too long.

     Able Wingman Fell chuckled to himself. "A few weeks aboard that tin ball and you'll be begging to come back and run laps around the valley. With full pack and load and carrying Monk piggyback." They both glanced over at one of the other runners. A tall, solidly built man nicknamed for the solemn, contemplative look he never seemed to be without.

     Fell climbed back to his feet. "Think I've got long enough to water the bluebells? I'm gonna bust if I don't go soon." He didn't wait for an answer but trotted over to a nearby copse, hoping the vegetation was dense enough to shield him from view while he did what was necessary.

     The shrubbery was dense enough to hide not just him but the two men who were already there, crouching silently as they waited for the essence of herbs an accomplice had slipped into his breakfast to have its effect. The sergeant always allowed his men to rest here, and so the waiting men had been fairly certain that Fell would use this clump of vegetation in which to relieve himself. They held their breaths as the Able Wingman squeezed himself in amongst the shrubbery, glanced around to make sure he was unobserved and then began to fumble frantically with his lower clothing.

     While he was engaged in his business he was acutely sensitive to any slight sound that might suggest the approach of some wandering apprentice and there was no chance at all that he could be taken by surprise, so the two men waited until he'd finished and was re-adjusting his clothing. Then, pleased and relieved to have gotten away with the risky and embarrassing business, he relaxed, and that was when they struck.

     The larger of the two men, dressed as one of the University's contract gardeners, rose silently behind him and felled him with a chop to the back of the neck. He caught him and lowered him gently to the ground while the other man slipped out of his travelling cloak, the only thing he was wearing. They worked together to hurriedly remove Fell's clothes, and then the second man stared down at his naked body, memorising every detail of it. He concentrated, and his body began to melt and flow, taking on the exact appearance of the young Able Wingman. When it was finished he might have been his twin. His reflection in a mirror.

     He dressed hurriedly in the young man's clothes while the first man dressed Fell in the second man's travelling cloak. He was still doing up the last few buckles and catches of his breastplate when they heard the Sergeant bellowing to know where the missing man was. He peeped carefully through the undergrowth and saw Matthew pointed to their clump of bushes, saying something too low for him to hear. The Sergeant gave a sigh of exasperation and began marching across.

     The clay man bent low over Fell's body and gently touched his fingers to the young man's face, using his advanced psionic powers to absorb some of the Able Wingman's memories and personality traits. Enough to allow him to masquerade as him among people who knew him. Then he crawled out of the undergrowth to meet the Sergeant, apologising effusively for his absence and cringing under the torrent of abuse he received in return, exactly as the real Fell would have done.

     Matthew gave him a sympathetic grin as the troop stood, preparing to continue its run, and the two of them, one human, the other very definitely not, swapped jokes as they hefted their heavy backpacks onto their shoulders.

     The man remaining in the trees watched through a gap in the undergrowth as the troop trotted away, and he uttered a brief but fervent prayer that this sabotage attempt would have more luck than any of the previous ones. Time was running out and they were running out of options. He would have preferred not to have to deal with the mercenary and unreliable clay men, but the University authorities had somehow figured out who was behind the sabotage attempts and it was no longer safe for any felisian to involve himself directly. They were reduced to acting through intermediaries, therefore, and the success or failure of his mission now depended on one of the magically created shape changing monsters native to this world.

     He sighed at the irony of it, then activated the small device that would alert his fellows and bring them to extract him and the unconscious human from the valley.