by David Weber
He was the junior guy in the squad, which was why Julian had picked him as his own backup. Better that Julian be stuck with the rookie, although, to be fair, a “rookie” in the Regiment was hardly the same thing as a rookie in a regular unit.
“We’re ready here, Gunny,” Julian said, and leaned into the wall and pointed his bead-cannon to the vertical as he took it off safe. Time to party.
“What was that?” N’Jaa Ide demanded. The booming echo was similar to thunder, but not identical. “It sounded like one of the weapons of these visitors, these humans,” the house-leader went on with an ill-pleased glare.
Mardukan state dinners, in Q’Nkok, at least, were conducted on platters and covers on the floor. This one was no exception, and by careful manipulation of the seating arrangements, the human guests had been placed opposite the house-leaders considered particularly dangerous. And, just coincidentally, all of those humans were accompanied by Marines in armor.
“What was what?” Xyia Kan asked innocently. The monarch’s power had been systematically hamstrung and undercut by the Houses for a generation, the very Houses which were about to be removed, and his dinner had been deliciously flavored with anticipation all evening.
“That noise,” Kesselotte said in support of N’Jaa, sounding even more suspicious than his fellow house-leader. After the last acrimonious meeting, he’d insisted on bringing his full complement of guards to this one. Indeed, there were over twenty house guards present, far more than should have been allowed into the king’s presence. Perhaps it was time to act. Sometimes even the deepest plots were improved by a willingness to take advantage of opportunities, and one such as this was unlikely to come again. He glanced at N’Jaa to see if the other leader was in agreement, but saw only worry.
Kesselotte was still considering the significance of the human weapon when two more booms echoed across the city. They were just as loud as the first one, and his eyes flew wide as other strange crackling noises followed them.
“Brothers!” He leapt to his feet. “It is an attack by the faithless Xyia Kan! We must—”
Before he could finish the sentence, two of the human leaders came to their own feet and drew weapons.
Pahner had been infuriated by Roger’s insistence, but in the end, he could only accede to his demands. At least this time the prince had made them in private! So when the captain stood and drew his bead pistol, Roger stood up right alongside him. O’Casey, at least, had the intelligence to scuttle behind the armored trooper at her back, then out the door.
Each of the Houses involved in “The Woodcutters Plot” had brought its maximum of three guards. In addition, two other Houses which were fully aware of that plot and were involved in others of their own against the king, had brought their maximum, as well. It was up to the humans to ensure that none of those extra guards did anything unpleasant.
Two of Xyia Kan’s bodyguards picked the king up and interposed their armored bulk between him and danger as the humans opened fire. Since each guest’s guards were placed to watch his back, and since the prince and the captain been seated facing the plot leaders, all their targets were lined up in a neat, formal row down the opposite wall.
It was Hell’s shooting gallery.
Armand Pahner had been shooting one weapon or another for the better part of his seventy-two years. The M-9 bead pistol was an old and dear friend, so as he began servicing targets, his hand moved as steadily as a metronome. The small bead pistols had tremendous recoil, which meant the maximum rate of accurate fire depended primarily on how fast the shooter could get the weapon back on target. Armand Pahner had plenty of bulk and plenty of forearm strength, so in the first four seconds, eight guards were slammed back against the far wall, staining the pale wood with huge splashes of blood before they slumped to the floor.
At which point, it was all over.
Sixteen of the guards had been designated as threats, and it had been decided that the bead-cannon of the armored Marines were a bit too overpowering for an enclosed space . . . particularly since the idea was for all the “lords” to survive. So it was up to the pistol-armed “officers.”
Pahner had moved from right to left, concentrating on picking off the guards that were quickest to respond. The first to react were a couple of N’Jaa elite, but before either of them could draw a sword or hurl a javelin, they were both bloodstains. The rest went down nearly as quickly, but by the time he’d cleared “his” zone, the prince’s zone was already empty.
He looked at the eight blood splotches, all high on the wall where Roger’s assigned targets had stood, then at eight headless bodies, and turned to his charge.
“Head shots?!” he demanded incredulously.
Roger shrugged and then smoothed his hair as the house-leaders erupted in consternation, some wailing at the blood that covered everything—the people, the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the food.
“My toot has a very good assassin program, Captain,” he said.
“Assassin program?” Pahner repeated. “There was no mention of any ‘assassin program’ in my brief, Your Highness!”
“I suppose that’s because a secret weapon isn’t very effective when it’s not a secret,” Roger said with a slight smile, then shook his head as the Marine’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic, Captain. I didn’t know you hadn’t been told, and that’s the only reason I can think of for your briefer, presumably Colonel Rutherford, not to tell you.”
“Um.” Pahner glanced at the bodies again. The pistol beads’ damage was too extreme to be certain, but it looked as if every one of those shots had been dead center, and it happened that the Imperial Marines in general and The Empress’ Own in particular knew quite a lot about combat enhancing toot software.
Pahner had several of the same sorts of packages tucked away in his own toot, for example. And because he was familiar with them, he knew that there were limits in all things. A package like the one the prince was suggesting was basically a shortcut for training, probably with some fairly impressive sight enhancing overlays to boost accuracy. But it was only a training device, one which had to have a human interlock if its possessor wasn’t going to go around mowing down innocent bystanders in job lots, and no one knew better than a combat veteran how completely training could desert a man the first time it truly dropped into the pot.
That obviously hadn’t happened here. Armand Pahner had a very clear notion of the sort of intestinal fortitude required for a combat newbie to stay focused—and confident—enough to take a single head shot, much less eight of them, rather than blazing away at center of mass.
“Head shots,” he repeated, shaking his head, and the prince shrugged again. “Not even a samadh in your honor.”
“Well, I didn’t want anybody getting hit by accident,” Roger said. “Safety first!”
“Now let’s think safe here, okay people?” Gunnery Sergeant Jin admonished as First Squad entered the building. He was in the middle, watching everyone else’s actions as the squad’s troopers executed their dynamic entry. The most dangerous part of an entry like this was friendly fire. They had overwhelming firepower and good technique, but it was just as easy as ever to be shot by your own side.
He kept a careful eye on the squad’s weapons. Each member had a zone to cover, including straight up, and the team leaders and Despreaux were ensuring that everyone covered his own area and not some random other.
“Julian,” the gunny said over the com, scanning the upper stories as they came into the gardens around the inner house, “we’re in the open. Be careful where you shoot.”
The rounds from the powered armor’s bead-cannons would go through the flimsy wooden walls as if they were tissue. There was plenty of evidence that the armored troopers had already been through; the swath of destruction looked like one of those pack beasts had gone on a rampage.
“No problem,” Julian replied. “We’re not firing much anymore. Most of them are being driven to the back. Make sure Third Sq
uad is ready for them.”
“Movement!” Liszez announced. “Balcony.”
Jin saw two or three weapons twitch in that direction, then settle down on their own sectors, as he looked up. A single Mardukan, probably panicked by the fire, was running down the balcony to the right. It looked like one of the small females.
“Check fire. No threat.”
“Check,” Liszez responded. If the target had been clearly hostile, it would already have been an ink blot pattern. “Clear.” She disappeared around a corner.
“Target!” It was Eijken, and the grenadier triggered a round as the Mardukan who’d charged into view drew back his arm to throw a javelin. The forty-millimeter grenade hit just to the left of the native and tossed him sideways like a mangled doll. “Clear.”
“Center building clear,” Julian reported. “Entering back rooms.”
“Don’t get too far ahead,” Jin told him. He paused and looked around. “Time to split. Despreaux, take Alpha Team into the left wing. I’ll take Bravo to the right. Clear front to back.”
“Roger,” Despreaux acknowledged, and jerked her head at Beckley to lead her team out. “Alpha, echelon left. Move.”
The team leader nodded acknowledgment of the order. She’d already spotted a downstairs doorway, and now she spotlighted it with an infrared laser designator.
“Through there. Kane, take the door. Go.”
The reconfigured team trotted towards the door with the plasma gunner in the lead. When she was fifteen meters away, the gunner triggered a single round into the heavy wooden door, which disintegrated in a roar of flame.
Kyrou and Beckley performed the primary entry. Kyrou went through and to the right and dropped to a knee. No more than five meters away a scummy was already starting to hurl the spear in his hand. Unfortunately for him, Kyrou reacted from thousands of hours of training, and the spearman was hurled backward by the hypervelocity beads punching into his chest. Another burst cleared a group further down before it could decide whether or not to attack.
“Right clear.”
There was a burst from behind the private.
“Left clear,” Beckley called. Another burst. “Really clear.”
Despreaux set a cracker charge against the door opposite their entry point, and the thin, high expansion-rate charge shattered the simple bolts on the other side and scattered splinters of the door throughout the area.
She blasted the scummy on the other side of the doorway before she realized it was one of the females. Not only were they entirely untrained for combat, but this society sequestered them. This might have been the first time in this one’s life that anything more exciting than sex had occurred. And it had been brief.
The sergeant gazed at the pathetic, shredded body, then inhaled sharply and looked around.
“Stairs,” she called sharply. “Ground floor clear.”
She stepped back out into the hallway, wiping at a line of blood from a flying splinter, and looked around. She pointed down the corridor.
“Kyrou, Kane,” she said, then gestured at the stairs. “Beck, Lizzie.” The team leader lead the way, and Despreaux followed. She carefully didn’t look back at the pitiful shape sprawled in the shadows of the stairs.
Later for that. Later.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Clear,” Pahner said, nodding his head at the report over the helmet radio. It had nearly killed him to let Lieutenant Sawato take point on managing the company, but he’d had to be at the dinner. And better him on the line than anyone else in the company when that particular bucket of shit hit the rotary air impeller. Except, maybe, Roger. Which still had him floored.
Pahner was not the type to judge anyone by his ability to shoot. He’d known too many consummate bastards who happened to be good combat shooters to do that. But between Roger’s surprising ability with weapons and the occasional depths he revealed, the captain was feeling distinctly whipsawed. Ninety percent of the time, he wanted to throttle the spoiled brat, but, lately, there’d been times when he was almost impressed. Almost.
He checked the maps and grunted at the report from Jin.
“Okay, I’ll take it up with His Majesty. Make sure you hold the treasury, but don’t get involved otherwise.”
He looked over to where Xyia Kan was sitting. Most of the blood had been washed off, but the king was still a sight. Bits of dried blood clung to the decorations on his horns and on his face, but he looked up alertly at Pahner’s motion.
“Yes? It goes well?”
It had, in fact, gone perfectly in the castle. The ring leaders had been seized, and their crimes had been detailed to the other house-leaders. Those leaders had then been instructed to send orders to their own Houses to stand down their guards on pain of the same sort of assault. Pending the delivery of proof of their crimes, the leaders of N’Jaa, Kesselotte, and C’Rtena had been separated and imprisoned. Those who apparently hadn’t had any knowledge of the plot had been released to return to their homes; the others were still being held in the dining room, surrounded by the now rotting blood of the dead guards. The psychological effect was salutary.
“It goes okay,” Pahner said. “We took casualties at C’Rtena, which I didn’t expect. No one got hurt bad, though, and other than that, we got off clean. But we have fires at C’Rtena and Kesselotte, and the troops need somebody to come put out the flames. And your guards are looting. My people can’t get them under control.”
“They will,” Grak said with a resigned handclap. “How do you stop soldiers from looting?”
Well, you can, for example, kill them until the survivors figure out it’s not permitted, Pahner thought with a mental snarl.
“I don’t suppose you can,” he said aloud, calmly. That shrug-your-shoulders, what-the-hell attitude was the sort of thing he had to ensure didn’t happen with Roger, he told himself. There was a fine line between ruthless and evil . . . and another between sloppy and barbaric. At the back of his mind, though, the song called. “I suppose that’s what makes the boys get up and shoot.”
“I’ll send servants to put the fires out,” the king said. “And soldiers whose job it will be to make sure they do so,” he said pointedly to Grak. “And to prevent them from looting. Is that clear?”
“I’ll go myself.” Grak hoisted his broad-headed spear and grunted in laughter. “Maybe I can pick up a few pretties myself.”
After the general left, Pahner found himself alone with the king. Roger had gone to wash, and the various guards had been dismissed. The situation was irregular, but the captain ignored that as he followed the movement and condition of the company on his pad.
The monarch, for his part, watched the human officer. So somber and serious. So precise.
“You see no difference between us and the barbarians of Cord’s tribe, do you?” he asked, wondering what answer he would hear.
Pahner looked up at the king, then tapped a command, sending half the reserve to reinforce First Platoon while he considered the remark.
“Well, Sir, I wouldn’t say that. Overall, I think it’s better to support civilization. Barbarism’s just barbarism. At its best, it’s pretty awful. At its worst, it’s truly awful. Eventually, civilizations have the ability to pull themselves up to a condition which is better for everyone.”
“Would you have assisted me if you didn’t need supplies for your journey?” the monarch asked, fingering the decorations on his horns and flicking off a bit of dried blood.
“No, Your Majesty,” Pahner shook his head, “we wouldn’t have. We have a mission: get Roger to the port. If this operation hadn’t advanced that, we wouldn’t have done it.”
“So,” the monarch observed with a grunt of laughter. “Your support for civilization isn’t so deep as all that.”
“Your Majesty,” Pahner said, pulling at a stick of gum and carefully unwrapping it. “I have a mission to complete. I will continue trying to perform that mission, whatever it takes. And so will my Marines. That mission has damn
ed little to do with our individual survival and everything to do with maintaining a degree of continuity in our political environment.” Pahner popped in the gum and smiled grimly. “Your Majesty, that is civilization.”
Roger watched the Mardukan mahout securing his armor on the giant pack beast. The creature looked very much like the one which had been chasing Cord, but the native insisted they were different. Roger thought Cord was probably right. The Cape buffalo looked very much like the docile water buffalo, and there was no more dangerous beast on Earth. Of course, these looked like giant horned toads, not buffalo. Capetoad. He wondered if he could get the translation system to start substituting the term.
He also wondered, not without some trepidation, if he could master the local mahouts’ skills himself. He’d always had a way with animals, and he’d been in the saddle of his first pony almost literally before he could talk and his first polo pony before he was ten, so it seemed possible. Despite that, he found the elephant-sized flar-ta daunting, and he didn’t even want to consider how the rest of the company felt about them.
Still, they’d best get over it and learn. They’d been far luckier than they deserved when Portena and Julian turned up with D’Len Pah in tow, and Roger knew it even if the Marines as a whole seemed unaware of their good fortune. Of course, for all their survival training, they were much less accustomed to using animal transport in inhospitable regions than Roger was thanks to his taste for safaris, but the prince had been shocked by Pahner’s apparent blithe assumption that they could simply buy their own animals and handle the beasts themselves.
Fortunately, D’Len Pah had made the company a better offer. Flar-ta were scarce in Q’Nkok, and even with the king’s strong support, the prices being demanded had been astronomical. Just buying the necessary pack beasts would have come close to bankrupting the humans, despite the hefty slice of Xyia Kan’s fines and confiscations which had come their way. They certainly wouldn’t have had enough left for the other supplies they needed.
