March to the Stars

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"You are a cruel human, Adib Julian," Kosutic said.

"It's an art," he replied, tapping the pad. "Despreaux's blood pressure and heart beat both increase, they're having an argument. Heart beat increases, and blood pressure drops, and they're... not."

"What about Roger?" the sergeant major asked.

"To tell you the truth, he's scary," Julian said. "The whole time, his heartbeat never changed within any sort of standard of variation. Steady fifty-two beats per minute. That's the lowest in the company, by the way. And his blood pressure barely flickered. You can't tell anything about what he's thinking or feeling from biometrics. Spooky."

"He gets angry," Kosutic said. "I've seen it."

"Sure," the sergeant agreed, flipping the pad closed. "And when he does, he's still got ice water running in his veins."

"Hmmm. You know, I think we're just starting to understand why you don't want to pock with a MacClintock."

Thousands of years before the coming of the race called Man, the mountain had been fire. Molten rock and ash spewed from the bosom of the world, laying down interleaving layers of each as the mountain grew higher and higher. Side openings occurred, and the red rock flowed from them like a steaming avalanche, occasionally breaking loose whole sides of the mountain in a semiliquid, fiery hot gel called pyroclastic flow.

Eventually, the fierce nuclear fire that was at the core of the local hotspot passed on, and the mountains began to cool. Water brought its beneficence of cooling to the steaming mountain, scouring its flanks and bringing growth where there had been molten rock. In time, the black, smoking wasteland became a fertile slope of trees and flowers.

Time passed, and the sun of the planet called Marduk flickered. For a time that was short for a sun, or a planet, the sun became cooler. To the sun itself, the effect was barely noticeable. But on the sole life-hugging planet that orbited it, the effect was devastating.

The rains stopped. Where there had been steaming jungles, there were sunbaked plains. Ice came. Where there had been liquid-drenched mountains, the water fell as snow and compressed, and compacted, and stayed and stayed, until it became mountains—walls of glacial ice.

Species died, and the nascent civilizations of the higher latitudes fell. Survivors huddled around hot springs while the white walls drew ever closer.

Along the side of the mountain, the white ice grew and grew. The hot spots to one side kept a continual melt in place, and the runoff water—dammed up behind the terminal moraine of the glacier—filled the valley from end to end. Regular floods laid down layers of lighter and darker materials on the valley floor, improving the already excellent soil. The glacier brought with it loess, the fine dust that was left when ice crushed its enemy rock. The glacier also brought massive boulders that it laid down in complex, swirling patterns that later residents would often use as roadbeds and quarry for building stone. And everywhere, it crushed the sides of the valley, hammering at the walls of the mountain and tearing at its stone and ash foundations.

Finally, in a short time for a star, the sun restarted and turned its thermostat all the way back to high. The rains came. Jungles regrew. And the ice... melted.

It started slowly, with more floods each spring than there'd been the spring before. Then the glacier started to break up, and the terminal moraine, the dam at the head of the valley, became intermingled with chunks and blocks of the ice. For a time, the dam grew higher, as the floods carried the silt and debris of four thousand years of glaciation to it. But finally, inevitably, the dam at the head of the valley burst. First came a trickle, then a flood, then a cascade, and finally, a veritable tsunami of water, crashing down the gorge in a flash flood to end all flash floods. It scoured the gorge wider than a hundred thousand years of lesser floods. It wiped out the small village that had been recently founded at the base of the gorge. And it drained the Vale of the Shin, leaving a fertile pastureland that simply begged for colonization.

And the mountain slept.

Erkum Pol wielded the machete like a machine, hacking away at the undergrowth while holding on to the rope to prevent himself from sliding back down the slope. It was also wrapped around his waist; it was a very steep slope.

" 'Set a few charges,' he said," Julian muttered as he slid sideways and stopped himself by grabbing a tree. Unfortunately, its bark was well provided with long spines, one of which jammed itself into his hand. "Aarrrgh! 'Blow up the side of the mountain,' he said. 'No problem,' he said."

"We have the explosives," Fain said, sliding down the rope beside him. "We have the 'shaped charges.' What's the difficulty?"

"Maybe emplacing them on a sixty-degree slope? We're going to have to dig out pits for the charges and hold them down with pins hammered into the rock. They have to have a bit of something holding them down. Usually, it's just the charge's case and the weight of the material, but in this case, we're going to have to anchor the cases, since they're pointing sideways. And I'm not sure any weight of cataclysmite is going to be enough to cut out from the bores."

"A trench," Roger said, coming hand-over-hand along the slope through the undergrowth. "We'll dig a shallow trench and fire them directly down. From this height, we should get plenty enough material to seal the river."

"We can do that," Fain said. "Like starting a new quarry."

"Exactly. In fact, if you can scratch out a trench in the loam, we can put in a line of det-cord which will practically make it for us."

"That will give away our position, Sir," Julian pointed out. The top of the Krath citadel was vaguely visible from their position, or, its northern bastion was, at least.

"They'll spot us up here before long anyway," Roger pointed out in return. "And they'll definitely notice when we blow the shaped charges."

The latter were waiting up the slope on the narrow track a local guide had "found" over the mountain. It was obvious that despite the best efforts of both the Gastan and the local Krath to restrict all commerce between them to Trade Town, and thereby tax it, plenty of smugglers moved through the hills around it.

"Captain Fain, put out some security teams and let's get to work," Roger said.

"Yes, Your Highness. It will be like old home week."

"What in the Fire do they think they're doing up there?" Lorak Tral wondered aloud.

The Sere's commander had envisioned the entire plan in a single instant when word of the High Priest's death reached him. For too long, the Shin, and the Scourge which pursued them, had been a thorn in the side of the Krath. But with the High Priest's death at the hands of humans (humans presumably allied with the Shin, judging from their actions), the stage had been set at last for the elimination of the Scourge. For two generations, the Scourge—most of them little more than jumped up Shadem and Shin themselves—had been on the upsurge. If they were permitted to continue to grow, the Krath would fall under the sway of slave-raiders. Better to use this opportunity to cut their legs off. By crushing Mudh Hemh, the Sere would show its importance to the council and the utility of the Scourge would be cut in half.

And it didn't hurt that it would leave him as High Priest.

"Perhaps they're planning to cut the supply line," Vos Ton said. The fortress' commander rubbed his horns nervously. "Even a slight stoppage in resupply will make our position difficult. I could wish you'd brought fewer troops."

Tral gazed up at the position and shook his head.

"Even with their rifles, they'll have a hard time stopping us from using the road. And they cannot stop us from taking Mudh Hemh."

"If we ever do," Ton groused. "Nopet Nujam is not a simple proposition. I warned you of that when you came up with this scheme."

"It's important to show that no one can simply walk in and kill our High Priest," Tral replied. "We must show them the error of their ways."

"Each day we laboriously besiege them gives them another day to try something new," Ton pointed out. "That's all I'm saying."

"No matter what they do, they are too few to truly affect us," the Sere replied. "Unless you think they can call the God of Fire down upon us?"

"No," Vos Ton replied, looking up at the figures, mostly hidden by trees. Even if they rolled rocks down, they wouldn't fall on his castle. "No, but I wonder what they are going to call down on us."

A moment later, a tremendous boom bellowed down the mountainside. A towering cloud of dust and smoke reared up, and then, as quickly as it had arisen, it rained down rocks and severed trees. They bounced and tumbled, battering downwards, and although most were captured by the trees below the cut, many made it all the way to the base, leapt off the last ledge, arced across the road, and ended up in the Shin River.

The roadbed at the narrows was cut into a shallow natural ledge that wended its way about ten meters above the river, higher than almost any reported flood. The few rocks and trees that made it to the river raised the water slightly, but the increase was only a fraction of the difference between its normal surface and the roadway.

"Are they trying to block the road?" Ton asked in a puzzled voice. "Or raise the river to block it?"

"Whichever it is, if they get enough into the river to become a problem, we'll send out a working party," Tral replied. Then he grunted in laughter. "Look," he added as the deep, rushing water broke up the shallow dam and carried it away. "The river does our work for us."

"Perhaps," the fortress commander agreed dubiously. "But I wish we had some reports from our spies. I would like to know what their conference was about. I want to know what they think they're doing up there."

"Hmmm..." Tral said. "We're almost ready for the great attack. We can move it up by a few hours; then, whatever it is, we'll have taken their fortress before they're able to use it."

"What about the Scourge force?"

"They were to attack as we did," the Sere leader said. "And, really, they were never to be anything more than a distraction. Whatever happens, it will be the Sere that breaks the back of Mudh Hemh for all time. It is that which will be remembered."

"From your mouth to the Fire God's ears," the fortress commander said.

"You know," Roger said, stepping into the narrow trench, "I bet they really are wondering what we're doing up here."

"Well, in about six more hours, it won't matter what they think," Despreaux said. She'd gotten out of her force cast that very morning, and she waved her newly liberated arm enthusiastically, pointing to spots along the trench even as she elbowed Roger out of the way with the other arm. "Here, here, here..."

"Hmmm," the prince murmured. After a moment's thought, he threw his rifle to his shoulder and zoomed up the gain on the telescopic sight. "Interesting."

"What?" Julian asked. His rifle had no scope at all.

"Just... some of the groups down there," Roger muttered. He walked to the end of the trench, where a tree had been uprooted, sat down behind it, and laid the rifle across the trunk. "Most of them are just scurrying around. But there's a couple of groups that are clearly watching us. And one of them looks like a batch of commanders..."

"We discussed this, Your Highness," Julian said repressively. "We're not supposed to shoot."

"I know," Roger sighed. "But I'm still pissed at them over the thing in Kirsti."

"Let me worry about that," Despreaux said. "And the demo. We've only got about fifteen minutes until the shaped charges are in place; you need to be heading for the crest."

Roger gathered up his rifle and stood with manifest regret.

"I think one of them is that senior war leader, Lorak Tral. One shot wouldn't hurt anything, would it?" he sounded so much like a little boy trying to wheedle a special treat out of his tutor that Julian smiled. But the sergeant also shook his head firmly.

"Go with the plan, Your Highness. You promised."

"Okay, okay." Roger looked up the hill and grimaced. "That's a long damned climb."

"And when you get there, you might as well keep going," Despreaux said. "I'll be pouring the slurry fifteen minutes after the shot. By the time you climb back down here, it'll be time to retreat, and if you're in my way then, I'll leave boot prints all over you. I, for one, don't intend to be on the mountain at all when we shoot this one."

"I get the point," Roger sighed. "And you're to come directly to Mudh Hemh, understand? You're in no condition to be in Nopet if they assault."

"I will," she said with a smile. "Now get going, Your Highness."

Roger slid off the civan and gave Pahner a casual salute.

"It's hard to consider a group that can build something like this 'barbarians,' " he said, waving at the massive walls above them. The back gates to Nopet Nujam weren't as large as the front gates, but their protective towers and bastions still made an imposing edifice.

"Local craftsmen, sure," Pahner said. "But it was Krath engineering. Your Highness, you're not supposed to be here."

"Anything going on?" Roger asked.

"No," the captain said stolidly. "The Krath got some small forces up on the mountain after you left, but the Diasprans beat them off. No injuries on our side. The emplacement team is on the way back, and the security team has retired to the back of the mountain. We're going to fire the shot anytime now, and it would really please me an immense amount to have you back in Mudh Hemh when that happens."

"I've got the picture," Roger laughed. Then he sobered. "Remember to send Despreaux back, as well. With that bum arm, she's not in shape for combat ops yet."

"Nor will she be even after the cast comes off," Pahner observed, looking him straight in the eye. "As I believe you're aware."

"When did you find out?" Roger asked after a long moment of silence. "I... She told me the other night."

"Oh, I started to suspect back around Sindi," Pahner said. "It was to be anticipated in most of the Marines—that's one of the reasons I've been trying to shift them to leadership positions, rather than shooting. Despreaux's not the only one. About the only squad I have full confidence in any more is the Third; Julian's maniacs are relentless."

"That... makes things difficult," the prince said quietly. "What about me? Or the Mardukans?"

"I think you're one of those guys who doesn't really peak, Your Highness." Pahner shook his head. "Dobrescu's been pointing out your vitals to me lately. Your heartbeat and respiration hardly changed the whole time you were in the Temple; that's unusual, in case you hadn't been aware of it."

"Oh, I'm getting that feeling," Roger said. "But what are we going to do at the spaceport?"

"If we can get this one licked, I think the rest will be a walkover," Pahner told him. "From Jin's data, the way Mountmarch has compromised his own security should make taking the port itself easy. And taking an arriving ship with modern equipment, which just happens to be stockpiled at the port where we can get at it, shouldn't be too hard. If we can just deal with this little problem. Which, I might add, brings us back to you. Specifically, to your presence at this particular locus of space-time."

"Okay, already," the prince said, pulling himself back onto the civan and kicking it on the snout as it turned to take a piece out of his leg. "I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow. See you after the surrender."

"Yep," Pahner agreed, with a waved salute as casual as Roger's own. He waited until the prince and his Mardukan guards were well down the road before he shook his head.

"Whose, Your Highness?" He murmured then. "Whose?"

Roger tapped on the door and entered at the grunted reply.

He'd returned to Mudh Hemh accompanied by a bare minimum security detail, but when he reached the town and found only two guards on the entire front wall, he'd realized the extent to which it had been stripped of defenders to reinforce Nopet Nujam. So he left his three Diasprans at the gatehouse to reinforce the Shin guards, and he was accompanied only by two Vashin. Those he left outside as he entered the dwelling the Gastan had turned over to Cord.

The interior was dark, but high for a human. Stone benches along two of the sides were covered in pillows, and the back side of the chamber was occupied by a cooking hearth and a large, low bath.

Cord was dangling his feet in the latter with his back to the door, while Pedi and the two serfs they'd liberated from the Lemmar rubbed his back.

"It looks like you've fallen into a good pond, Old Frog," Roger observed with a chuckle.

"I'm glad you've returned safely," the shaman said, and Roger carefully hid his concern as Cord clambered laboriously to his feet. Officially, his wound was well on its way to healing, but the old warrior wasn't snapping back the way he had after he'd been wounded at Voitan. Indeed, Roger was beginning to worry, very privately, that his asi might never snap back. Not all the way, at least.

"And I'm ashamed of my weakness," Cord went on, almost as if he'd read Roger's thoughts. "An asi should have been at your side."

"I have plenty of bodyguards," Roger remarked. "I have far fewer counselors I trust. Although, come to think of it, I'm running low on bodyguards, as well. It doesn't really matter, though. You need to get healed up; worry about the rest later."

"So why are you here?" Cord asked, limping over to one of the benches.

"Despreaux's on her way here from Nopet, which means they must be about to put off the shots. It should be spectacular, even from here. I thought you'd like to watch."

"Oh, that would be fun to watch," Pedi said. "You're taking off the whole face of Karcrag, yes?"

"Pedi should not be exerting herself," Cord said, lying back on the bench. "We will stay here."

"Pedi should not be exerting herself?" Roger repeated. "What in hell does that mean?"

"Nothing," Pedi answered angrily. "Nothing that he has any right to make a decision about."

"You are my benan," Cord said coldly. "It is my responsibility to ensure your welfare as it is yours to ensure my safety."

"Welfare, perhaps" she spat back. "But not safety. I will be fine, thank you!"

"Whoa," Roger said. He glanced at the other two former slaves, who were huddled in the corner, clearly unhappy about the argument. "I don't want to cross this whole planet just to die in a domestic disturbance. Cord, you need to get out in the fresh air... well, as fresh as it gets around here. We'll head up to the walls, watch the shot, and come back. And while we're walking, both of you can be thinking about what you want to tell me about what's going on."

"It is none of your responsibility, Prince Roger," Cord said.

"As you've pointed out to me before, Old Frog, I'm responsible for the success or failure of everything in this band. And we will have that talk. After we watch the shots."

"They're getting nervous," Pahner said. The Krath had sent another group up the mountain, using a different path from the one their own people had used. Since the security team had pulled back, it was just as well that the Krath would be too late arriving. They'd also pulled most of their forces out of the tent city, however, and seemed to be preparing for a large-scale assault.

"Yes," the Gastan said silkily. "Isn't it lovely?"

"You have your daughter's approach to handling enemies," Pahner said with a laugh.

"Fortunately, I don't have her approach to handling friends," the Shin king replied in a tone which was so suddenly exasperated that Pahner looked at him in genuine surprise.

"And I thought we were welcome," he said. "Or is there something I'm missing?"

"No, you're welcome, even chased by an army," the Gastan said. "It should be obvious to your Light O'Casey that this war has permitted me to consolidate my power as no Gastan has in three decades. And your support has been invaluable in that. But I could wish that my daughter had made better personal choices."

"Okay, now you've really got me confused," Pahner said as the Krath began filing into the assault trenches. The Gastan looked down at him and made a gesture of confused resignation.

"I wish that I understood your human body language better. Are you jesting? Or do you really not see the signs?"

"Signs of what?" Pahner asked. In the distance, the Krath assembly horns began to sound as the entire host started to move forward. The troops in the assault trenches would seek to pin the defenders in order to clear the way for the mass assault of the walls.

"You really don't see them, do you?" the Gastan said. Pahner gazed back up at the Shin's ruler and shook his head.

"She's pregnant," the Gastan said as the explosives on the hillside detonated and the mountain came apart.

By luck, more than knowledge, the amount and spacing of the explosives was almost perfect—not too hard, and not too soft. At first, the only sign of the impending disaster was a series of muffled thuds and a dust-jet mushroom shape above each of the boreholes. Despreaux had set them to detonate sequentially, instead of simultaneously, and the series went off like a very large machine gun as the sixteen charges exploded in under three seconds.

For a moment afterwards, there was stillness, and Pahner feared that all the planning had been for nothing. Then, slowly, the face of the mountain started to slide. The giant faux-teak trees were the first to show the movement, swaying back and forth as if tossed by a heavy wind before they began to slide. Then dust began to rise, and finally the whole mass began sliding towards the valley floor to impact in a gigantic crash that was felt as far away as Mudh Hemh.

At which point, the blocked waters started looking for an outlet. And looking and looking... and rising and rising.

"Cool," Roger said, gazing at the neat divot that had been taken out of the side of the mountain. He and Despreaux had moved to the wall of the Shin town, and now they stood watching the battle from the safety of the southern parapet.

The town's walls weren't very much compared to the mighty ramparts of Nopet Nujam. In fact, they were simply double wooden palisades with a stamped earth fill, and the works flanking the gates were open on top, with small guard rooms underneath. The walls of the town were designed to stop the occasional Scourge or hostile Shin raiding party, not to beat off the sort of serious attack that was directed at Nopet Nujam. And for the former purpose, they had worked just fine. They also made a dandy viewing platform.

From a distance, it looked as if some giant had taken an ice cream spoon and scooped out a serving of basalt and ash. The massive Krath fortress obscured anything but the column of dust rising into the air behind it, but it was clear that most of what they'd intended to do had worked.

"Now to see if it blocks the water," Despreaux said.

"You did good, Nimashet," he replied, slipping his arm around her waist.

"We'll see."

"Pessimist," he chuckled.

"I always keep in mind what can go wrong."