Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [76]
Those who served with James Boris from his early days as a young recruit knew the true derivation of his nickname, however. It came from the classroom, not the locker room.
“James Boris, you have all the imagination of a tree stump!” remarked an instructor caustically.
The name stuck.
The comment—and the nickname—didn’t bother James Boris one bit. He wore it proudly, in fact, as he wore his many medals. This lack of imagination was, he considered, one factor that had enabled his swift rise through the ranks. Major Boris was a by-the-book commander. His roots were deeply mired in the firm ground of rules and regulations, a comforting and reassuring thought to those he led. There was never any need to wonder where James Boris stood on any issue. If it was covered in the rules and regulations, then Major Boris stood squarely on top of it and nothing—not even the legendary tank—would move him. If it wasn’t covered in rules and regulations …
Well, that point was moot. James Boris had never encountered anything that wasn’t.
Until now.
This particular aspect of Major Boris’s personality—the fact that he had no imagination—had been one of the major factors involved in selecting him for the expeditionary force to Thimhallan. Top government officials had descriptions of this bizarre world, descriptions provided by two men: one known to casino audiences as Sorcerer and another known only to certain secret government agencies as Joram. The top officials, many of whom could scarcely believe what they heard, decided that it would take a man of nerve and cold, hard logic to survive in Thimhallan without losing his senses.
It was easy to see how they reached this decision and it undoubtedly had some merit. Unfortunately, the decision proved disastrously wrong. Although any person sent from the safe, secure world of technology into the strange and terrifying world of magic must have been shaken to his core, a commander with imagination might have been flexible enough to cope with the mind-boggling situations. Major Boris, on the other hand, felt that—for the first time in his life—his solid, sturdy stump had been blasted clean out of the ground. Now he lay helpless, his roots exposed, a pathetic sight.
“You want to know what I recommend, Major?” muttered Captain Collin. “I recommend we get the hell out of here!”
The Captain, a man of forty-five and a veteran of one of the most grueling tank campaigns ever fought on the Outer Fringes, took out a cigarette with a trembling hand, dropped it, took out another, accidentally snapped it in two, and finally stuffed the case back in his pocket.
Major Boris looked gloomily at his other captains and received emphatic nods from the rest, except for one, who wasn’t paying attention, but sat huddled in a chair, shivering.
“You’re suggesting we retreat—” James Boris growled.
“I’m suggesting we get out of here before we’re all dead or looney as—” Captain Collin bit his words off with a vicious snap, letting a glance at the shivering captain sitting beside him complete his sentence.
Major Boris sat behind a standard-issue metal desk, facing his company commanders who sat before him in standard-issue metal folding chairs, meeting inside Major Boris’s standard-issue field headquarters, a dome of plastic made in the latest geodesic design. A series of other domes—some larger (supply domes, mess domes) and many smaller, living-quarter domes—dotted the landscape for miles about. The domes could be dismantled in a matter of minutes, the entire battalion could be aboard ship and out of this nightmare world in a matter of hours.
Resting his hands firmly on the metal top of the desk, the Major felt reassured by