e found O'Shaughnessy lying almost beside him, squinting along his
carbine. The Narakan's face split into two replicas of the map of
Ireland and he saluted flat handed, his webbed fingers at just the
proper angle.

"O'Shaughnessy, you don't have to salute when you're lying down!"
O'Mara tried to keep his voice as calm as possible.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Lieutenant. Pretty quick we fight now?"

His lieutenant ignored him and searched for signs of life in the
houses across the square. There wasn't a Rumi in sight except for one
on the roof of a shed next to the burning warehouse. He tried a couple
of shots with his automatic and missed. He grabbed O'Shaughnessy's
carbine and dropped the creature as it tried to scramble off the shed.

"Pretty soon we fight with bayonet?" O'Shaughnessy asked as Terrence
handed back the carbine.

"O'Shaughnessy, why do you do things like this to me, me who took you
out of your damn mud hole and made a soldier out of you?"

O'Shaughnessy's mouth formed a huge round moon, "Not understand,
Lieutenant...." he began but he was ignored again as Terrence stared
across the street in pained disbelief to where the heavy weapons squad
of the Narakan Rifles was gathered in a huddled group behind a native
house, struggling to set up their Banning Automatic Blaster and two
machine guns. One of the men was down on his hands and knees balancing
the heavy barrel of the blaster on his back while two others were
attempting to push the ponderous breech onto it by main strength. The
two machine guns were half on and half off their tripods. The leg of
one of them had been bent in the wrong direction and the other was so
covered with grease that the parts wouldn't fit together.

"Oh, Lord!" moaned Terrence and was bracing himself for a dash across
the street when a figure in Terran battle armor came around the
building on the run, dodging and crawling as spring bolts raised the
dust in front of him. It was the short, stout Gunnery Sergeant,
Polasky. Terrence breathed a sigh of relief.

He turned to O'Shaughnessy, "Now, Sergeant, this is our problem. Those
buildings over there are filled with Rumi. They have automatic weapons ...
spring guns ... firing a clip of twenty plastic bolts. They're deadly at
close to medium range. They can penetrate our battle armor." He looked at
the thick, knobby skin of the Narakan, "Yours too. Now, they are probably
just a patrol about the size of one of our companies. They don't see