March to the Stars

CHAPTER THIRTY

"I think this is going pretty well," Pahner said as he watched a Vashin cavalryman try out his new plasma cannon. For any human not in powered armor, the heavy weapon was a crew-served mount, but the Mardukan stood on the range, holding the cannon and firing it "off-hand." Not only that, he was putting a round a second down range. Then he stopped for a moment, flipped the selector to "auto," and began putting out bursts of plasma that ate into the cliff being used as a backstop until the power magazine discharged itself and automatically popped out. At which point, the cavalryman used a false-hand to pop a new one into place... and resumed fire in under a second.

"We still can't use them inside the ship," Kosutic said, grinning as the hillside started to smoke from the target practice. "They do too much damage."

"Agreed," Pahner said, and cut himself a fresh slice of bisti root. It had struck him that Murphy was working overtime when it turned out that there wasn't a single stick of gum left in the entire compound. He'd nearly shot one person who was chewing his last stick when Mountmarch's personnel were rounded up.

"We can't use them on shipboard if we want it intact, at any rate," he continued as he began to chew. "Although... when we load them, we'll outfit most of them with bead cannons. Maybe one plasma cannon in three. And instead of loading with beads, we'll load flechette packs. That way they won't be a cataclysm just waiting to happen."

"You're thinking you might actually use them?" the sergeant major asked with a frown.

"I'm thinking that if you're going to have a backup, it might as well be a backup you can use," the captain replied with a sigh. "And it's the little details that are crucial."

He was right about that, the sergeant major reflected. And it had been a fortnight for details. Besides refitting and rearming all the Marines and their Allies, there'd been a billion other "details" to handle, all of them as quickly as possible.

The first order of business had been to determine just how deeply the Saints actually had their hooks into the planet. As it turned out, the governor had partially covered himself by getting permission for "occasional welfare and socialization visits" from passing Saint warships. His request had pointed out that he was on the backend of nowhere, with no naval backup, and that refusing requests might be a good way to start a war.

But his personal files, helpfully cracked by the ever-useful Temu Jin, had revealed the other side of the story. The steadily growing accounts in New Rochelle banks would have been hard enough for Mountmarch to explain, but the electronic communications records were damning. It was clear that he'd been in the Saints' pocket almost from the day he arrived on Marduk. Indeed, some references in the correspondence raised the very real possibility that he'd been a Saint operative even while he was a centerpiece of court intrigue. One reply from his Saint handler—identified in the messages only as "Muir"—indicated that the Saints had used a combination of money and blackmail, probably about his illegal predilection for young boys, as a means of control. When the Bronze Barbarians returned to Old Earth (and assuming they managed to both survive the trip and then get the various warrants against them dropped) the database would make interesting reading at IBI.

For the moment, however, what was more important was that the data gave them a good read on Saint visits, and the next warship wasn't scheduled for over two months. Furthermore, it indicated that activity overall would be cut back for the foreseeable future. Prince Jackson's coup had all the other star nations surrounding the Empire on high alert, and the majority of the Saint fleet had been pulled to more important systems.

While Julian and Jin had been tickling the electronic files, a team made up of Third Squad and augmented by Eleanora O'Casey for political interaction had been sent out to cover their back trail and pick up the shuttles. Harvard Mansul had requested and been granted permission to accompany them, and they'd visited most of the Company's waypoints. They'd retraced their entire six-month journey in less than a week, and insured that the various societies they'd passed through had survived. Mansul, in the meantime, recorded interviews with many of the Mardukans who'd experienced the Company's passage. Besides laying the groundwork for a series of fascinating articles and one heck of a docudrama, his records were intended as evidence for Roger's defense when the time came, since they made it clear he and Bravo Company had been far too busy surviving to be involved in any plots against the Throne.

K'Vaern's Cove's was well on its way to a major industrial revolution, and dragging Diaspra kicking and screaming along behind it. The flotilla's ships' captains had returned, and the Cove had been very much in two minds about precisely what to do about Kirsti. Public attitude had been hardening towards sending a follow-up military expedition, but O'Casey had been able to inform them that by the time a fleet could make it back to Kirsti, the Fire Priests would have had their attitudes adjusted and be waiting for a friendly visit.

Marshad was experiencing some political instability, and had been mauled in two minor wars. The team "counseled" everyone involved, but O'Casey recognized that it would take a full soc-civ team to get the city-states cooperating, rather than competing for territory. Marshad did still have control of the lucrative dianda trade routes to Voitan, however, and the revenues from that were helping it recover from its near demise at the hands of its former overlord.

Denat had accompanied the team, but rather than return to his home tribe, he had decided to remain in Marshad until their return trip.

Voitan was in a renaissance, as well. It had developed a lively merchant class that traded wootz steel ingots and finished weapons to Marshad for dianda, then shipped the dianda south to the city-states. New trade routes had been opened all the way to the Southern oceans, and the market in the south was hungry for both Voitan steel and Marshad cloth. Voitan was having some trouble with an influx of workers fleeing the war in the south, which sounded something like the worst of the city-state wars in ancient Italy, but given the shortage of labor with which the reborn city had started, the influx was mostly to the good.

Q'Nkok was flourishing as a side benefit of the rebirth of Voitan. In many ways, the first town the Marines had visited was the least changed by their passage. It supplied raw materials from the mountains and jungles to its west and north to Voitan and the other, larger city-states, and the only real change seemed to be the increased clearing on both sides of the river. With the shift of the People to materials suppliers, rather than hunter/gathers, their need for extensive forests had dwindled, and a new treaty for extended lands had been signed, ending for the time being any rationale for conflict between the two groups.

The shuttles were virtually untouched. All they needed for liftoff was fuel, and on the way back the team stopped to pick up Denat, along with T'Leen Sena, who had accepted his proposal of marriage.

The shuttles, and the port's other aircraft, had also sufficed to pick up the Vashin and Diaspran dependents, along with spare civan and even a few flar-ta, including Patty. They'd found that they could just fit one flar-ta to a shuttle, and as long as they kept the beasts sedated, the trip was a piece of cake.

In addition to all that, the Mardukan members of The Basik's Own had been put through a brief course in shipboard combat. They'd been taken into orbit aboard the assault shuttles and shown how to move in free-fall. After a brief period of total disorientation, most of them had taken to it well, and it turned out that the locals' four arms were incredibly helpful in zero-gravity combat.

After their initial exposure to micro-gravity, they were put through a few maneuvers and finally exposed to vacuum in their new uniforms. After that, there wasn't much more to do. The best the humans could do with the materials at hand was to familiarize the locals with space combat in its most basic sense. If it came down to it, the Mardukans would have to learn the ins and outs as they went, which was rarely a path to long-term survival.

Cord had not joined them in their training. Despite the old Shaman's sulfurous protests, Roger had decided that his asi had no business in any potential boarding actions. It looked more and more as if Cord would be at least partly disabled permanently from his wound, despite all Dobrescue could do. Even if he'd been in perfect health, Roger had pointed out ruthlessly, nothing Cord could have done in battle would make much difference one way or the other to the protection of someone already in powered armor. But he wasn't in perfect health, and that was that.

What Roger very carefully had not mentioned was his conviction that his asi had no business in combat under any circumstances when he stood on the brink of finally becoming a parent. Pedi had been equally careful to stay out of the entire discussion, but Roger had recognized her gratitude when Cord finally grumpily accepted that his "master's" decision was final.

With the Mardukans' training as close to complete as it was going to get, they'd hidden the assault shuttles away, reloaded with fuel and ammunition, in the jungle on the edge of the Shin lands and settled down to wait for the right ship. When the time came, the main force would loft in one of the port shuttles, suitably stealthed, while the Mardukan "backup" waited on the ground in the much more threatening assault shuttles.

One ship had come and gone already, but since it was a tramp freighter flagged by Raiden-Winterhowe, they'd passed it up. Hijacking ships under the protection of one of the other major interstellar empires wasn't a good idea. What they were looking for was a ship flagged by the Empire, or even better, one that was owned by an Imperial company but under a flag of convenience. They might be returning to attempt a counter-coup, but they didn't want to start an interstellar war in the process.

It had been a hectic two weeks, but now, with all the preparations in place, all they had to do was wait and train. And if a ship didn't come soon, they'd either have to cut back on the Vashin ammunition allotment—which might lead to a mutiny—or else find a new hill for them to shoot up.

Pahner chuckled at the thought, then keyed his helmet com in response to a call from the com center. He listened for a moment, then nodded, and turned to Kosutic.

"All right, Sergeant Major. Tell the troops to quit their fun and suit up."

"Ship?"

"Yep. A tramp freighter owned by Georgescu Lines. Due in thirty-six hours. I doubt they can detect plasma bursts from more than twenty hours out, but I think we should start shutting down the ranges and getting our war faces on."

"Georgescu? That's a New Liberia Company, isn't it, Sir?" Kosutic asked, and Pahner frowned. He understood the point she was making, because New Liberia definitely wasn't a part of the Empire of Man.

"Yes," he said, "but the company's owners appear to be Imperial. Or maybe a shell corporation. And it's not like New L is going to go to war with the Empire, even if we do cop one of their ships."

"No, I don't guess so," Kosutic agreed.

New Liberia belonged to the Confederation of Worlds, which was a holdover from the treaties which had ended the Dagger Wars. The Confederation was a rag-picker's bag of systems none of the major powers had wanted badly enough to fight each other for, and the treaties had set it up primarily as a buffer zone. Despite the centuries which had passed since, however, it had never progressed much beyond subsistence-level neobarb worlds, most of them despotisms, of which New Liberia was by far the most advanced. Which wasn't saying much. Even that planet wasn't much more than a convenient place to dump an off-planet shell corporation, or register a ship at a minimum yearly cost. As for New Liberia itself, the planet had a population under six million—most of them dirt poor—and a few in-system frigates that were play-toys for whatever slope-brow bully-boy had come out on top in the most recent coup. They were unlikely to charge the Empire with piracy, especially of a freighter which was owned by an Imperial corporation skating around the tax laws.

"We'll call on them to surrender, try to keep casualties to a minimum, and pay Georgescu off when we get back," the captain said. "I suppose we could simply say that we're commandeering the ship and ask the captain to come down to the surface to surrender, but then there's the little issue of there being a price on our heads.

"If I thought there was a chance in hell that we'd do anything but get ourselves disappeared when we returned, I'd turn us over to the first authorities we found," he continued with a frown. "But there isn't one. Jackson couldn't afford not to make us disappear."

"Do you think he was the one who put the toombie on DeGlopper?" Kosutic asked. They'd lost so many Marines on the trip that she had a hard time even coming up with all the names, but she remembered shooting Ensign Guha as if it had happened yesterday. Killing a person who was acting under his own volition was one thing. Shooting that toombie—a good junior officer who'd desperately wanted to do anything but what the chip in her head was telling her to do—still made her sick to her stomach. Even if the shot had saved the ship.

"Probably," Pahner sighed. "As the head of the Military Committee in the Lords, he had the contacts and the knowledge. And he was no friend of the Empress."

"Which means he also killed the rest of the Family," the sergeant major said. "I'd like some confirmation, but I think that he's one person I'll take active pleasure in terminating with as much prejudice as humanly possible."

"We will require confirmation that the Empress isn't in full and knowing agreement with his handling of the situation," Pahner said. "I don't think there's any doubt that she isn't, but getting hard proof of that will be... interesting. I have a few ideas on the subject—where to begin, at least—but before we can do anything about it one way or the other, we need a ship." He waved to Honal, who'd been overseeing the training. "Round them up, Honal. We're expecting company."

"Good!" the Vashin said. "I'm looking forward to ship combat. And I like the thought of seeing all those other worlds you keep talking about."

"So do I," Pahner said quietly. "And especially to seeing one that's not Marduk."

"Captain." Roger nodded in greeting as the Marines walked into the command center. "It looks like everything is prepared to receive visitors."

"It had better be," Pahner growled. "We've only been getting ready for the last two weeks."

"I was thinking. You have any major plans between now and when we launch the shuttles?"

"Nothing I'd classify as major," the Marine said. "Why?"

"In that case, I was thinking it would be a good idea to have a party," Roger said with a smile. "I've done up a few suitable awards... ."

Roger had been a bit put out to discover that he hadn't originated the concept of the dining-in. But after he watched Pahner and Kosutic put together the plan for the evening in less than five minutes, he was less upset.

The sun was setting over the mountains in the west as the majority of the group that had fought its way to the spaceport gathered around tables arranged under awnings. The spaceport's mountain plateau was much higher and drier than most of Marduk, which gave a rare clear sky and a view of both of the moons. It was also much cooler, but the Mardukans' new uniforms finally made them immune to the torpor which set in with the evening's chill.

Supper was a seven-course dinner. It started with fruits gathered from their entire trip, and everyone agreed that the winner was either the K'Vaernian sea-plum or Marshad's kate fruit. The wine was a light white from a vineyard in the Marshad plain that came highly recommended by T'Leen Targ. The second course was wine-basted coll fish flown in from K'Vaern's Cove—small, tender ones, not steaks from giant coll—accompanied by nearpotatoes skillet fried with slivered Ran Tai peppers. The wine for the second course, a light, sweet sea-plum vintage which had been recommended by T'Seela of Sindi, was perfect for cooling the palette after the peppers.

The third course was a fruit-basted basik on a bed of barleyrice. Roger's table was presented with a very large platter. Several normal basik had been clustered around a sculpture of a very large, very pointy-toothed basik made out of barleyrice. The wine for that course was a kate-fruit vintage from the new vineyards around Voitan.

The fourth course was the piece de resistance. Julian had gone out and single-handedly downed a damnbeast, using nothing more than a squad of backup and a bead cannon, and his prize was served roasted as whole as possible. A certain amount of careful rearrangement had been required to cover up the enormous hole in its neck, and it was delivered on a giant platter carried in by six of the local Krath servants. Julian personally officiated over the carving of the steaks, which were served along with peruz-spiced barleyrice and steamed vegetables. The wine was a vintage from Ran Tai that the company had come to like during its sojourn there.

The remaining courses were desserts and niblets, and the feast culminated with everyone sitting around on the ground, picking bits of damnbeast out of their teeth while they tried to decide how much wine they could drink.

Finally, as the last course was cleared, Roger stood and raised his wine glass.

"Siddown!" Julian called.

"Yes, sit, Roger," Pahner said. "Let's see... I think... Yes, Niederberger! You're to give the toast."

The designated private took a hasty gulp of wine, then stood while Gunny Jin whispered in his ear. He cleared his throat and raised his glass.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Her Majesty, Alexandra the Seventh, Empress of Man! Long may she reign!"

"The Empress!" The response rumbled back at him, and he tried not to scurry as he settled back into his chair in obvious relief.

"Now you stand up, Roger," Pahner said.

"Shouldn't it be you?" Roger asked.

"Nah. You're the senior officer, Colonel," the captain said with a grin.

"No rank in the mess!" Julian called.

"I was just pointing it out," Pahner said. "Your turn, Roger."

"Okay." Roger got to his feet again. "Ladies and Gentlemen, absent companions!"

"Absent companions!"

"Before we get into any more toasts," Roger continued, waving Julian back down, "I have a few words I'd like to say."

"Speech! Speech!" Poertena yelled, and most of the Vashin joined in. The armorer had taken a table with them, even though they'd made it clear that they didn't want to play cards.

"Not a speech," Roger disagreed, and held out his hand to Despreaux. She handed over a sizable sack, then sat back down with a smile.

"On the auspicious occasion of us almost getting off this mudball," Roger said. "Sorry to all you people who were born here, by the way. But on this occasion, I think it's fitting that we distribute a few mementos. Things to remember our trip by."

"Uh-oh," Kosutic whispered. "Did you know about this?"

"Yep." Pahner grinned. "Or, rather, I found out just in time."

"Lessee," Roger said, pulling out a piece of plastscrip and a small medallion. "Ah, yes. To St. John (J), and St. John (M). A silver 'M' and a silver 'J,' so that we can frigging tell you apart!"

Roger beamed as the twin brothers made their way up to accept their gifts, then shook their hands (Mark's had regenerated quite nicely since Kirsti) as he handed over the mementos.

"Wear 'em in good health. Now, what else do we have? Ah, yes." He reached into the sack and pulled out a wrench no more than three centimeters long. "To Poertena, a little pocking wrench, for beating up on little pocking bits of armor!"

He continued in the same vein through the entire remaining unit of Marines and many of the Vashin and Diasprans, showing that he recognized their individual quirks and personality traits. It took almost an hour of mingled laughter and groans before he started wrapping up.

"To PFC Gronningen," he said, holding up a silver badge. "The unsleeping silver eye. Because you know Julian is going to get you, sooner or later."

He handed the badge to the grinning Asgardian and punched him on the shoulder.

"You're doomed. You know that, right?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Lessee. We're getting near the bottom of the bag... . Oh, yes. To Adib Julian, a marksman's badge with a 'no' symbol over it. The marksman's bolo badge for always being second in any shooting match!"

Julian accepted it with good grace, and the prince turned to the sergeant major, Pahner, and the senior Mardukans.

"I'd considered the unsleeping eye for Rastar, as well," Roger said, and the wave of human chuckles was swamped in grunting Mardukan laughter as the Marines and the Vashin alike recalled their first meeting and Roger's ambush of the sleeping Rastar. "But in the end, I decided on this." He reached into the bag and withdrew an elaborately chased set of Mardukan-sized bead pistols. "May you never run out of ammo."

"Thank you, Your Highness." Rastar accepted the gift with a flourishing bow.

"No rank in the mess," Roger reminded him, and turned to his next victim. "For Krindi, a set of Zuiko binoculars. It seems you're never able to fight at long range, but what the heck."

"Thank you, Y—Roger," the Diaspran said, and took the imaging system with a slight bow of his own.

"To Eva Kosutic, our own personal Satanist," Roger said, with another grin, and handed her a small silver pitchfork. "The silver pitchfork medal. She was always there to prod buttock; now she has something to prod with. You can feel free to put it anywhere you like."

"And yours was always a nice buttock to prod, Roger," she told him with a grin as she accepted the award. Roger laughed with everyone else, then turned to Cord.

"Cord, what can I say? You've stuck with me through thick and thin, mainly thin."

"You can say nothing and sit back down," the shaman replied.

"Nah, not after I went to all this trouble," the prince said, and winked at Pedi. "Okay, we have: a package of baby formula Dobrescu promises me will work for Mardukan kids just fine. A package of disposable diapers—I know you guys stick your kids in your slime, but when we get among humans, that might not always be an option. A set of four baby blankets—what can I say, do you always have to have quartets? And last, but most certainly not least, a set of earplugs. Just for Cord, though. He's going to need them."

"Oh, thank you very much, Roger," Cord said, accepting the items and sitting down.

"Don't think of it as a roast," Roger told him. "Think of it as a baby shower."

"What is that?" Pedi asked Despreaux quietly.

"Normally," the Marine whispered back, "it's when you give gifts that can help with an expected baby. In this case, though, Roger is twitting Cord."

"And here comes Dogzard," Roger said, looking under the table.

The beast raised her head as she heard her name, then she leapt to her feet when she saw her master's body posture.

"Dat's a good Dogzard," Roger told her, and pulled a huge leg of damnbeast off the table. "Who's a good beastie, then?"

The semi-lizard snatched the bone out of Roger's hand and retreated back under the table. Her meter-and-a-half-long tail stuck well out from under it, lashing happily from side to side, and Roger waved his hand.

"Ow, ow!" He counted his fingers ostentatiously, then sighed in relief while everyone laughed. But then the prince lowered his hands, and turned to the last person on his list.

"And so we come to Armand Pahner," he said seriously, and the laughter stilled. "What do you present to the officer who held you together for eight horrible months? Who never wavered? Who never faltered? Who never for one instant let us think that we might fail? What do you give to the man who took a sniveling brat and made a man of him?"

"Nothing, for preference," Pahner said. "It really was my job."

"Still," Roger said, and reached into the now all but empty bag to pull out a small badge. "I present you the Order of the Bronze Shield. If I can, I'm going to have Mother turn it into an order of knighthood; we need at least one more. For service above and beyond the call of duty to the Crown. Thank you, Armand. You've been more than you've needed to be at every turn. I know we still have a long way to go, but I'm confident that we can get there, together."

"Thanks, Roger." The captain stood to accept the gift. "And I have a little present for you, as well."

"Oh?"

"Yes." The Marine cleared his throat formally. "Long before the ISU, before the Empire of Man, in the dawn of the space age, there was a mighty nation called the United States. As Rome before it, it rose in a pillar of flame and eventually fell. But during its heyday, it had a few medals to reckon with.

"There were many awards and ribbons, but one, while common, perhaps surpassed them all. It was a simple rifle on a field of blue, surrounded by a wreath. What it meant was that the wearer had been where the bullets flew, and probably shot at people himself, and had returned from the fire. It meant, simply, that the wearer had seen infantry combat, and survived. All the other medals, really, were simply icing on that cake, and like the ISU before it, the Empire has maintained that same award... and for the same reasons.

"Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock," the captain said, as he took the newly minted badge from Sergeant Major Kosutic and pinned it onto the prince's uniform, "I award you the Combat Infantryman's Badge. You have walked into the fire again and again, and come out not unscathed, but at least, thank God, alive. If your mother gives you all the medals you deserve, you're going to look like a neobarb world dictator. But I hope that you think of this one, sometimes, because, really, it says it all."

"Thank you, Armand," Roger said quietly.

"No, thank you," Pahner replied, putting his hand on the prince's shoulder. "For making the transition. For surviving. Hell, for saving all of our asses. Thank you from all of us."

The party had descended to the point at which Erkum Pol had to be dragged down before he hit someone with a plank, and Roger had gotten Despreaux off to one side. She'd been quiet all night, and he thought he knew why.

"You're still insisting that you can't marry me, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes, and I wish you'd quit asking," she replied, looking down the hills to the Krath city in the valley. "I'm short, Roger. I'll stick along to Earth, and I'll do what I can to get your mother out of danger. But I won't marry you. When we're settled, and things are safe, I'm putting in my discharge papers. And then I'll take my severance bonus and go find me a nice, safe, placid farmer to marry."

"Court is just another environment," Roger protested. "You've been through a hundred on this planet, alone. You can adjust!"

"I probably could," she said, shaking her head. "But not well enough. What you need is someone like Eleanora, someone who knows the rocks and shoals. Part of the problem is that we're too alike. We both have a very direct approach, and you need someone who can complement you, not enhance your negative qualities."

"You'll stay until Earth, right?" he asked. "Promise you'll stay until then."

"I promise," she said. "And now, I'm turning in, Roger." She stopped and looked at him with a cocked head. "I'll make an offer one last time. Come with me?"

"Not if you won't marry me," he said.

"Okay," she sighed. "God, we're both stubborn."

"Yeah," Roger said, as she walked away. "Stubborn's one word."