March Upcountry

CHAPTER TEN

Roger grabbed the arms of the command chair as another concussion rocked the shuttle like a high wind.

"This," he remarked quietly, "is not fun."

"Hmmm," Pahner said noncommittally. "Check your monitors in the troop bay, Sir."

The prince found the appropriate control and tapped it, turning on the closed-circuit monitors in the troop bay. What they revealed surprised him: most of the troops were asleep, and the few who were awake were performing some sort of leisure activity.

Two had electronic game pads out and appeared to be competing in something with one another. Others were playing cards with hard decks or, apparently, reading. One even had a hard copy book out, an old and much thumbed one from the look. Roger panned around, looking for anyone he recognized, and realized that he only knew three or four names in the entire company.

Poertena was asleep, with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open. Gunnery Sergeant Jin, the dark, broad Korean platoon sergeant of Third Platoon, had a pad out and was paging slowly through something on it. Roger scrolled up the magnification on the monitors, and was surprised to see that the NCO was reading a novel. He'd somehow expected it to be a military manual, and he spun the magnification still higher, curiously, so that he could read over the sergeant's shoulder. What he got was a bit more than he'd bargained for; the sergeant was reading a fairly graphic homosexual love story. The prince snorted, then spun the monitor away and dialed back on the magnification. The sergeant's taste was the sergeant's business.

The monitor stopped as if by its own volition on the face of the female sergeant who'd summoned him from the armor fitting. It was a face of angles, all high cheekbones and sharp chin with the exception of the lips, which were remarkably voluptuous. Not a pretty face, but arguably a beautiful one. She was looking through a pad as well, and for a reason he wasn't sure he would have cared to explain, he hunted until he found a monitor that would permit him to look over her shoulder. He panned the camera down, and felt a sudden rush of relief—although exactly why he was glad that what she was reading was the briefing on Marduk was something he didn't care to consider too deeply.

Flipping back over to the original monitor, he zoomed in on the sergeant's chameleon suit. There it was. On the right... breast. Despreaux. Nice name.

"Sergeant Despreaux," Pahner said dryly, and the prince hit the trackball and panned the monitor off the name.

"Yes, I recognized her from when she crashed my fitting," he said hurriedly. "I was just realizing how few of these guards I know by name." He cleared his throat uncomfortably, happy, for some reason, that the captain couldn't see his face.

"Nothing wrong with getting to know their names," Pahner said calmly. "But what you might want to catch is their attitudes," he continued, as another salvo slammed into the ship.

"We just lost Graser Four and Nine, and Missile Three. We're down twenty-five percent on our countermissile launchers. More on the laser clusters," Commander Talcott said. He didn't bother to add that DeGlopper had also suffered severe hull breaching, since everyone on the bridge could feel the draw of the vacuum around them. The executive officer had just turned toward the captain, when there was a crow of delight from Tactical.

"There she blows!" the sublieutenant shouted. The Saint cruiser had come apart under the hammer of the missiles, without even having come to grips at energy weapon range.

"Put us back on course for the planet—and shift to Evasion Able Three!" Krasnitsky snapped to the helmsman. "We're not out of the woods yet. There are still incoming missiles."

"Yes, Sir," Segedin agreed with a triumphant grin. "But we still got her!"

"Yes, we did," Talcott whispered so quietly that only Krasnitsky could hear. "But what about her mate?"

The tac officer shut down the guidance channels to the remainder of the offensive missiles and shunted all the processor power they'd been using to the defenses. Then he picked up half the defensive net and waded in. Between the added processor power, the loss of the cruiser's support, and the addition of Segedin's experience, the remainder of the missiles were quickly shredded. All that was left, for the time being, was to pick up the pieces.

"So that's it, Your Highness," Captain Krasnitsky finished, looking up from the pad in his hand. His skin suit was sealed, and the orange vacuum warning light behind him was clearly visible. "We used less than half our missiles in this engagement, but the other cruiser has already broken orbit and is accelerating towards us. We'll drop your shuttles in two hours, and it will take us longer than that to get patched up and restore pressure again. So I would suggest that you stay where you are, Your Highness."

"Very well, Captain," the prince said. He was aware that all the captain was seeing was the distorted ball of his powered armor's helmet-visor, and he was just as glad. He was beginning to understand why DeGlopper had to, effectively, commit suicide, but he was still uncomfortable with it.

Pahner's company, at least, were official bodyguards for the Imperial Family, with the tradition of taking rifle beads to protect their charges; "catching the ball" as it was called. But the company's personnel had to survive—some of them, at least—if they were to accomplish their mission of keeping him alive; DeGlopper's entire crew had to die to do that. Spoiled he might be, but not even Roger MacClintock was immune to the sense of guilt that produced. Yet nothing in Krasnitsky's tone or attitude suggested that he had ever even considered any other course of action. In the captain's place, Roger suspected that he might be thinking about how... convenient it would be if something happened to remove the prince from the equation. After all, if Roger were dead, there would be no reason for Krasnitsky's remaining crew to die to save him, now would there? Somehow, the fact that Krasnitsky and all of his people seemed totally oblivious to that glaringly logical point only made him feel guiltier.

"I suppose we'll talk again before separation," he said after a moment, awkwardly. "Until then, good luck."

"Thank you, Your Highness," the captain said with a tiny nod. "And good luck to you and the Company, as well. We'll try to do the DeGlopper name proud."

The communications screen blinked out, and Roger leaned back and turned to Captain Pahner. The Marine had doffed his helmet and was scratching his head vigorously.

"Who was DeGlopper, anyway?" the prince asked, fumbling with the controls and latches of his own helmet.

"He was a soldier in the American States, a long time ago, Your Highness," Pahner said, cocking his head at the angle Roger had begun to recognize as a subtle sign that he'd stuck his foot in it. "There was a plaque right outside the cabin you were in, listing his medal and the citation for it. He won their equivalent of the Imperial Star. When we get back to Earth you can look up the citation."

"Oh." Roger pulled the pin and let his hair down so that it cascaded across the back of the armor, then scratched his scalp with both hands at least as vigorously as Pahner. "We weren't in these things all that long. What makes your head itch so badly?"

"A lot of it's psychosomatic, Your Highness," Pahner said with a snort. "Like that itch between your shoulder blades."

"Agggh!" Roger rolled his shoulders as well as he could in the constricting armor and squirmed, trying to rub his back against the internal padding. "You would have to mention that!"

Pahner just smiled. Then he frowned ever so slightly.

"Can I make a suggestion, Your Highness?"

"Yesss?" Roger replied doubtfully.

"We're not going anywhere for two hours. I'm going to go roust out the troops and tell them they can undog their helmets and do a little stretching. Give them about a half-hour, and then come down and talk to a few of them."

"I'll think about it," Roger said dubiously.

He did, and his thoughts didn't make him all that happy.