Empire of Man

by David Weber

  The first barbarians were already charging forward to regain the gateway, and Julian wondered whether it was courage or stupidity—or if there was a difference between them—that kept the barbarians on their feet. Or perhaps it was only the battle fury for which the Boman were famed. Not that it made any practical difference what kept the survivors coming.

  The army behind him was also charging for the gates, and his HUD showed a tide of blue icons racing to support him. But the K’Vaernians had kept well clear of the impact zone, which meant they had considerably farther to go, and it was clear that the surviving barbs were going to get there first.

  Not that it was going to do them a bit of good.

  Julian didn’t even bother to unlimber his bead cannon. He and Moseyev were still busy opening the gates, anyway, but that was all right. The only way the scummies could reach the gate was down the long, narrow gate tunnel, and anything his stutter gun could have added to the carnage of Gronningen’s plasma cannon in such confined quarters would have been superfluous.

  The phlegmatic Asgardian squeezed off a single shot that filled the tunnel’s bore from wall to wall with a sliver of a star’s heart. Half the tunnel roof disappeared as the upward-angled plasma bolt slammed into it and sliced a huge wedge out of the back face of the city wall. For a few moments, the rest of the tunnel roof looked as if it might hold, but then it, too, collapsed downward, taking half of one of the gate bastions with it. The avalanche of plunging masonry looked as if it might be going to bury the Marines, but it fell clear . . . and Gronningen’s second shot blew straight down the gaping, roofless cut through the curtain wall which had once been a tunnel.

  The bolt of nuclear fire hit the new-made rubble before it even had a chance to settle properly, and the broken walls and falling stones simply lifted back into the air. Some of their mass was converted to slightly cooler plasma, but most of it simply added its weight to the shrapnel flying from the explosion, as if the city itself was rising up against its invaders.

  The same actinic fire, mixed with bits of half-molten stone, washed over the surviving Boman . . . who promptly stopped surviving.

  “Krin,” Bistem Kar half-whispered as the first battalion of K’Vaernian infantry slid to a skidding halt behind the armored figures it had intended to relieve. No unarmored individual was going to be able to survive in the blast-furnace fury of that shattered gate tunnel for some hours to come, and the Cove’s senior guardsman shook his head in slow disbelief. The humans had never demonstrated any of their energy weapons for the K’Vaernians, who’d had only the reports from Diaspra to go on, and despite himself, Kar had never really quite believed those reports. Oh, he hadn’t doubted them intellectually, but what Bogess and Rus From and other veterans of the New Model Army had described to him had been so far beyond the limits of his experience that he’d simply been unable to grasp the reality.

  Now, he’d seen it . . . and he still wasn’t certain he believed it. The power of the plasma cannon was even more shocking, in an odd sort of way, because it came on the heels of the rocket bombardment. The dreadful, overwhelming hiss and roar and crackle and thunder of the rockets had been the most cataclysmic thing he’d ever experienced. In the instant that those howling missiles slammed home, he’d felt, however fleetingly, as if the very lightnings of the gods had been placed in his true-hands. Yet that single shot from Gronningen’s weapon had sliced effortlessly through the massive stonework even the concussive thunder of the rockets had left virtually untouched, and the tough, confident guardsman felt something tremble inside him as he realized that every single word the Diasprans had told him was true.

  He turned to Pahner and shook his head.

  “Why don’t you use them to clear the whole city?” he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the armored Marines, still standing unconcernedly in the inferno of the gutted gate tunnel. “We’re going to take casualties in those warrens, prying the Boman holdouts out one by one.”

  “Power,” Pahner said. “Not enough of it, that is.”

  “Ah,” the K’Vaernian commander said with a gesture of puzzlement. “I’m just a simple old soldier, of course, but—”

  “Ha!” the Marine laughed. “Some ‘simple old soldier’!”

  “I stand by that description,” Kar said with a dignity which was only slightly flawed by the twinkle in his eye. “But, simple old soldier or not, that—” he waved at the gaping wound which had once been a gate tunnel “—seems ample power to deal with anything these barbarians might bring to bear.”

  “Not that kind of power,” Pahner said. “Or, not directly, that is.” The K’Vaernian regarded him with obvious confusion, and the Marine shrugged. “You know how some of the hammer mills in K’Vaern’s Cove use wind power, and others use water power from your storage cisterns?”

  “Yes,” Kar said, his expression suddenly thoughtful. “Are you saying those things”—he nodded at the quartet of armored Marines once more—“don’t have enough rainwater stored in their cisterns?”

  “In a way,” Pahner agreed, trying to figure out how to explain “potential energy.” “The suits run on very powerful energy storage devices. We don’t have many of them, and we need those we have for later use. And the weapons themselves only have so many charges, so we can’t afford to use them unless we really need them. And we are going to need both them and all the power we’ve got left soon enough; there’s a real battle waiting for us down the road.”

  “I can see that you wouldn’t consider this a battle,” Bogess said, glancing at the carnage of the gate. “But that’s because we pulled the main force away from the city, and because the Boman were considerate enough to assemble right in the middle of our kill zone, exactly as we’d hoped. Unfortunately, we’ve used up the rockets now, so we won’t be able to blast them this way again. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “I still don’t know how useful the rocket wagons would be in a real mobile battle. We knew where the city was, so we could plan exact trajectories. And better yet,” he chuckled grimly, “Sindi couldn’t exactly dodge.”

  “That’s true enough,” Kar acknowledged, “and it’s also the reason I agreed that we should use them all now—there’s not any point in holding back weapons which might not work later if their use now helps to assure a victory we have to have.”

  “Agreed,” Bogess nodded. “But it still looks like there were at least ten thousand warriors still in the city, and that’s only a small fraction of what’s out tramping around chasing Rastar and Honal. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to face up to the rest of the horde, after all, and I suppose that would qualify as a battle in almost anyone’s eyes.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the rest of the Boman,” Pahner said, pulling out a slice of bisti root. “We haven’t been totally up-front with you guys. Oh, we haven’t lied to you, or anything like that, but we’ve . . . neglected to mention a couple of things. Like the fact that the port we keep saying that we have to reach on the other side of the ocean happens to be held by our enemies.”

  “Your enemies?” Bistem Kar said carefully. “With similar weapons, I assume?”

  “Yes.”

  “God of Water preserve us,” Bogess said faintly.

  “Anyway, there won’t be many holdouts to find in there,” the Marine observed. “As you said, Bogess, most of them were right where we wanted them, waiting for us on the walls. Most of the ones we missed there got themselves killed in the gate tunnel, and the ones who didn’t are probably still running . . . and will be, for a while. So keep the troops in hand and fight them through the city, but you shouldn’t have that much trouble punching through. Just remember we have to get in before everybody else refugees out. And while you two get that moving, it’s time for Rus to bring up the labor teams so we can get down to the real work.”

  “Well,” Bogess said, “now I understand why you Marines don’t look upon a battle with the Boman with dread. This isn’t much of a battle to you, is it?”

  “In a wa
y,” Pahner said, “but it’s not just a matter of scale, you know. That—” he gestured with his chin at the huge pall of smoke and flame still billowing above the rocket strike “—is just as destructive, in its way, as any plasma cannon. It’s not as . . . efficient, I guess, but those poor Boman bastards are just as much dead, mangled meat as if we killed them with bead rifles or smart bombs. Blood is blood, when you come right down to it, and it’s not the thought of the battles that lie in our future that makes this any less dreadful. Not really. It’s just that once you’ve walked through Hell a few times, it takes a lot for anything to get past your shell.

  “Even something like this.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Roger squatted by the side of the trail and tied his hair up in a knot. A crint called in the jungle, and he smiled.

  “It’s good to be back in action,” he said.

  “Maybe so,” Cord replied repressively. “But I wish you would at least stay behind the scouts . . . as Captain Pahner instructed you to.”

  “I am behind the scouts,” Roger said with a grin, and pointed to the south. “See? They’re right over there.”

  The thrown-together force whose cavalry component had taken to calling itself—unofficially, at least—“The Basik’s Own” had pounded up the muddy track from D’Sley as fast as the infantry’s turom could go while the main army made the same trip by water. Now they were about a half-day short of the city itself, and a thin line of screening cavalry stretched south from them, bending back in an inverted “L” to cover the track from just west of Sindi back to the Bay while the labor gangs who couldn’t be crammed into the available water craft completed the march from D’Sley behind it.

  Roger had chosen an encampment along a shallow stream that cut the track. The waterway, no more than thigh deep to the turom, flowed out of the jungle to join with the Tam River just to the north. It would provide a landmark to place the force around and water for the civan and turom.

  The prince himself had just climbed down from Patty when Turkol Bes, his infantry commander, rode up on his turom, dismounted, and clutched the inside of one thigh.

  “God of the Water, none of the troops will be able to fight! They’ll all be too busy rubbing their groins!” he groaned.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Chim Pri laughed as he slid off his civan. “After a week or so, you’ll get used to it.”

  “How are the turom?” Roger asked.

  “They’ll be okay,” Bes said. Not long ago, the young battalion commander had been a simple wrangler working on the Carnan Canal in Diaspra, but only until the Carnan Labor Battalion had been drafted for the New Model Army at King Gratar’s orders. Of all the workers in the battalion, Turkol Bes had repeatedly shown the greatest ability to think on his feet and make good decisions under pressure, and promotion had been rapid.

  “It’s not like they’re carrying much weight,” the former laborer continued. “But they’re not used to going so fast.”

  “Too bad we couldn’t put you on civan,” Chim Pri said with another laugh. “You’d really love that.”

  “But they needed all the spare civan in the Cove for the main cavalry force,” Roger pointed out. “Maybe after we get them back we can upgrade.”

  “Oh, no,” Bes said. “I’ll sit on a turom, if that’s the cost for keeping up with the civan-boys. But I am not going to try to ride one of those vile and ill-tempered beasts.”

  “You do whatever it takes to complete the mission, Turkol,” Roger pointed out. “Speaking of which, right now we don’t have one. But we can expect to get used pretty soon, I think. Now that the labor force is in Sindi, the Captain’s going to start spreading the cavalry screen back out to cover the troops still working on the road gangs, and he’ll need us then. Maybe even sooner. So we need to start thinking about how that might work. This is ground we could be fighting over, so I want everyone to keep a close eye on it.”

  The two battalion commanders traded looks.

  “Do you think we’ll actually be used?” Pri asked.

  “Yes, I do,” the prince said. “You might think you’re just an oversized bodyguard, but Pahner is going to use us. Our mobility will be a key factor, if the Boman are hard on someone’s heels.”

  He took a sip out of his camel bag, then pursed his lips and grimaced when it ran dry. It was time for a refill, but he looked at the nameless stream without enthusiasm. It was choked with mud stirred up by the hundreds of civan and turom, and although the bag’s osmotic filter would take out the mud, some of the taste always got through.

  “We need to keep an eye out all around,” he continued, playing with the nipple of the empty camel bag. “Just because we think we know where the threat is, doesn’t mean we’re right.”

  “Let me fill that for you, Roger,” Matsugae interrupted, gesturing at the camel bag. “You’re just going to distract them playing with it if I don’t.”

  “Thanks,” the prince said, pulling the bag out of his day pack and handing it over.

  “There is a cavalry screen out there,” Bes pointed out to the prince, gesturing with his false-hand.

  “Yes, there is,” Pri said. He handed his own canteen to Matsugae at the valet’s gesture. “Thanks, Kostas,” he said, and looked back at the infantry commander. “It could probably stand to be pushed further out, though, if we want real security. And even if we do push it out, it could still be wiped out before we got the word . . . if there was a force coming up from the south, at least.”

  “So keep an eye on the terrain,” Roger said, nodding in agreement. “The roads and the streams and where they are, shortcuts, and spots that would slow you down. Or slow the Boman. And most of all, make sure everyone stays on his toes.”

  Matsugae walked upstream, waving at the occasional soldier he knew. He recognized quite a few of the Diaspran riflemen from work details which had been assigned to the kitchen—a surprising number, really. It just showed that they’d been on this godforsaken planet too long, he thought. But he had to admit, hellhole or not, it made good people. The Mardukans were a fine race, and it would be interesting to see what Roger made of the planet after he got back to Earth.

  The valet finally reached the edge of the picket lines and turned to the stream. There was a small team of scouts a bit further upstream, but they weren’t fouling the water, and the hovering cavalry screen didn’t seem to be doing so either. It was running quite clear, and actually a bit cool, which would help the chiller on Roger’s camel bag.

  He stepped onto a root and dropped the camel bag into the water. Its active osmotic system could absorb the water directly through its skin, but using the chemical filter took several hours. Fortunately, there was also a simple pump which could fill and filter it rather quickly, but Matsugae suddenly realized that although he knew about the pump, he’d never personally used one. He’d seen the Marines use them enough times, but this was actually the first time he’d fetched water on the entire trip; he’d had his own duties, and there’d always been someone else around to do that.

  He looked down at the camel bag, fiddling with the pump fitting for a few moments until he finally figured out the release. Then he dropped the snorkel tube into the water and started pumping. To his delight, the bag started to fill instantly, and he grinned. Got it right in one, he thought cheerfully, watching the bag swell.

  What he forgot to watch was the water.

  The fastest reactions in the universe couldn’t have gotten Roger across the encampment in time, and the finest neural combat program couldn’t have killed the damncroc any deader than the two dozen rounds from the cavalry outpost.

  None of which made any difference to Kostas Matsugae.

  By the time Roger got there, it was all over but the bleeding. The atul had taken the valet in the throat, and even Doc Dobrescu’s little black bag couldn’t have done anything for the imperial servitor. More was gone than just the throat when one of the cavalrymen rolled the limp body over.

  Roger didn’t b
other checking for life. He’d become only too intimately familiar with death, and no one could live with his head half severed from his body.

  “Ah, Jesus, Kostas,” St. John (J.) said, coming up behind the prince. “Why the fuck didn’t you look? There’s always crocs.”

  “I don’t think he’d been outside a secure perimeter before,” the prince said quietly. “I didn’t think about that. I should have.”

  “No one can be right all the time,” Cord said. He knelt by Matsugae and picked up Roger’s camel bag. “Mistakes happen. You have to accept it when they do, but this was not your mistake, Roger. Kostas knew the jungle was dangerous. He should have been more cautious.”

  “He didn’t understand,” Roger said. “Not really. We all spent our time wrapping him and Eleanora in foam packaging.”

  “The foam packaging we should have wrapped you up in,” Beckley said. The team leader shook her head. “We need to bag him, Your Highness.”

  “Go ahead,” Roger said, then knelt and removed the palace badge from Matsugae’s tunic. “I promise you, Kostas. No more mistakes. No more dawdling. No more dandying.”

  “Maybe dandying,” St. John said. “He liked you to wear nice clothes.”

  “Yes, he did.” Roger looked at the much patched chameleon suit the valet was wearing. “St. John, look in his packs. Knowing Kostas, he’s got one good outfit packed. Beckley, if he does, dress him in it. Then bag him, and before you tab him, I want to say a few words.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” the corporal said quietly. “We’ll take care of him.”

  The prince nodded, but before he could reply, his helmet gave the minor ping of an incoming call.

  “Roger, it’s Pahner. The engineers are getting down to it here in Sindi, but it looks like we’re going to need a bigger labor force to pull this off. That means I’m going to have to draft more infantry, which means what cavalry we have is going to have to take on an even bigger share of responsibility for our flanks and the convoys. I’m going to have to bring them close into the road and spread them thinner to cover the extra footage, so I need you to swing further down to the south to anchor the line. I want you at Victor-One-Seven by nightfall.”