March To The Stars im-3

by David Weber

"Pock," Roger said bitterly. "You're serious."

  "As a heart attack, Your Highness. You're no longer in a category that can be even vaguely threatened. You are the Heir. I can't stress that enough."

  "Okay," Roger said, shaking his head. "I'll stay on the ground with the Mardukans."

  "I want your word on that. And no weaseling."

  "I'll stay on the ground ... unless you call for reinforcements. And take note; if you don't call for reinforcements when you need them, you'll be endangering me. And if you are rendered hors de combat, all bets are off."

  "Agreed," Pahner said sourly.

  "So you'd better take the ship quick," Roger pointed out.

  "That shouldn't be a big deal," the sergeant major said. "Most tramp freighters are pretty coy about being jacked, for obvious reasons. But we'll have a shielded shuttle, and once we're through the airlock, there's not much they can do with a platoon of Marines on board."

  "You're taking everybody?" Roger asked.

  "There are enough suits in the Morgue to outfit all our survivors," Kosutic pointed out. "It's another thing to toss on Poertena's pile, but it's not like he's busy."

  * * *

  Julian strode down the hallway, twisting his shoulders from side to side. The issue uniforms were made of a soft, pleasant cloth, and should have been very comfortable. But the uniform he'd just carefully folded and put away had been on his body for almost eight months. The various cloths of which it was comprised had been worn in. No matter how well-made, or how basically comfortable its fabric, a new uniform always took a certain amount of breaking in.

  He forgot his minor discomforts as he rounded a corner on the final approach to the Armory. Besides new uniforms, they were drawing new weapons and turning in the ones they'd wielded for the last half year. Given that most of the bead rifles and grenade launchers with which they'd arrived were suitable only for salvaging as spare parts, he'd simply packed the weapon up and headed for the Armory. Like the uniforms, it made more sense to throw the guns away than store them.

  Which was why he stopped with an expression of surprise. Half the remaining Marines were lined up on the floor in the corridor outside the Armory, laboriously cleaning their weapons.

  "Don't even bother, man," Gronningen growled. "Poertena's being a pocking bastard."

  "You're joking."

  "Go ahead," Macek said tiredly. "See for yourself."

  Julian stepped through the blast doors and shook his head. The new weapons, many of them freshly manufactured, and all of them gleaming with lethal purpose, were arrayed on racks in the back of the Armory, with a mesh security screen between them and the main administrative area. In the front of the large vault was a counter, with a swinging gate on one end and a repair area on the opposite end. Poertena had settled himself behind the counter and was minutely inspecting each weapon that was turned into him.

  "Pocking pilthy," he said, and tossed the grenade launcher back to Bebi. "Bring it back when it clean."

  "Come on, Poertena!" the grenadier snarled. "I've cleaned it twice! And you're just going to DX it anyway!"

  "I'm not explaining to Captain Pahner why t'e pocking Inspectorate downcheck my pocking Armory," the sergeant growled. "Bring it back when it clean."

  "We're planning on overthrowing the Inspectorate!" the grenadier protested, but he left anyway. With the launcher.

  "Poertena," Julian said, "you've got too much to do to be picking over guns with micro-tools!"

  "Says you," the Pinopan replied, and snatched the bead rifle out of Julian's hands. "Barrel dirty!" he said, as he broke the weapon open and checked it. "Silica buildup in t'e pocking discharge tube! Julian, you know better t'an t'at! Nobody gets a pass in t'is Armory!"

  "Goddamn it, Poertena, you've got thirty suits to get online!" Julian snapped. "There's a week of solid day-in-day-out work right there. More, probably! Not to mention reconfiguring the manufactory to outfit all the Vashin and Diasprans!"

  "I guess I'm going to be too busy," the armorer replied with a grin. "I hear t'at t'e sergean' major is looking for you, though ..."

  "Ah, there you are, Adib!" Kosutic strode into the Armory. "Poertena, take the sergeant's rifle and find somebody else to clean it. He's going to be rather busy."

  "Oh, no," Julian groaned. "Come on, Eva."

  "Don't you 'Eva' me, Sergeant," she said with a grin. "You're fully qualified out on a Class One—I checked your records. And it's going to take a squad to get all the work done, anyway. Fortunately, you're a squad leader."

  "Look," Julian said mulishly, "I can stand here and argue all day over whether you should pick me or somebody else. And do it well. To start with, I am a squad leader; I'm supposed to manage my squad. You're the one who told me that—"

  "Hi, Poertena," Roger said, as he stepped through the blast door. "I need to turn in my bead pistol and—"

  "I'm outta here," Julian announced, and darted for the exit. "I think you said something about setting up the manufactory, Sergeant Major?"

  "What did I say?" Roger asked as Kosutic snickered her way out of the room in Julian's wake, and Poertena snatched the pistol from his hand.

  "What? You call t'is po ... You call t'is clean? You Highness."

  * * *

  "Okay, Captain Fain, welcome to Supply Central," Aburia said as she beckoned for the Mardukan to come through the door.

  In deference to the locals' temperature sensitivity, the room had been set at nearly forty degrees. For most humans, it would have been sweltering, but after six months on Marduk, the Marines found it pleasantly cool. Which didn't prevent the corporal from wiping a drop of sweat from her forehead as she gestured to the platform.

  "Sir, I'd like you to stand up here, please," she said. "We're going to measure you for your uniform."

  "This is an odd way," the Diaspran said. The room was filled with sounds that the Mardukan classified as a triphammer, and also a peculiar rushing noise. The most prominent feature, though, was a low vibration through the floor that Fain found very unpleasant.

  "Well, we do it a bit differently, Sir," the corporal replied. "Please, on the platform."

  The captain complied, and the Marine triggered a code with her toot.

  "The lights are harmless, Sir," she said, as lasers patterned the Mardukan's body in blue. "They're measuring you for your uniform."

  After a moment, they winked off.

  "And if you'll step down," the corporal continued as she removed a piece of plastscrip from the console, "this is your number. Stickles is in the other room, and he'll show you where to pick up your gear."

  "That's it?" Fain asked, waving for Erkum to climb up onto the platform.

  "Yep," the Marine said. "Back there, there's a big machine that's going to turn everything out. It's got imported material for the base on the uniform, and various imported and local materials will be used to make the helmet. It's just like the machines in K'Vaern's Cove," she finished, "only—"

  "Much more sophisticated," Fain finished as Pol stepped down from the platform and accepted his own piece of plastscrip.

  "Yes, Sir," the human said with a grin. "We've got a few thousand years of technology on you, Sir. Don't take it badly."

  "I don't," the captain said as he left. "I'm just glad you're on our side."

  "Well, it's not always perfect," Aburia admitted. "And just being able to make stuff doesn't always mean it works the way you planned."

  "Oh?"

  * * *

  "Look, you stupid beast. If you want to go with me on the ship, I have to get this on you."

  Roger appreciated the time it must've taken Julian to design and build the custom-made suit for Dogzard. He considered that the sergeant's efforts were a nice compliment, especially considering all the other duties he'd fitted it in around. Dogzard, however, failed to share his appreciation for the final product.

  The Mardukan beast hissed as Roger tried to force one talon into the suit. Then she jerked suddenly backwards, twisted away, and darted
into a corner.

  "It's state-of-the-art," Roger panted as he leapt across the compartment in an effort to pin the monster down. "It's even got little thrusters, so you can maneuver in zero-g, and ..."

  Dogzard writhed in his grip until she managed to twist loose, then raced for the door. Showing a startling level of sophistication, she hit the door release and dashed out.

  "Well," Roger said, sucking a cut on his hand. "I think that went well."

  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.