March Upcountry

by David Weber

  The plasma rifle was the IMC's version of a squad automatic weapon. It weighed six kilos, and was supplied by external powerpacks which weighed two kilos each and were good for three to twelve shots, depending on the weapon's discharge settings. The "basic load" for a plasma gunner was twelve packs, the gunners normally carried up to thirty packs in their rucksacks, and their squad mates usually distributed another thirty among them. If there was one thing in the universe a Marine squad hated, it was running out of plasma ammo.

  This particular squad from First Platoon had gathered in the bay for one last cleaning of weapons, and since the plasma rifle had a mass of subcomponents, it was natural that the gregarious Julian, from Third Platoon, would offer to help. The new private had just started to smile when her fire team leader spoke up.

  "Don't do it, gal," Corporal Andras said.

  "What?" Julian affected a hurt expression. "You don't think I can help this rookie trooper?"

  The trooper, Nassina Bosum, had just spent six months in the Husan Action before reporting as a Bronze Barbarian. She opened her mouth to retort angrily that she was anything but a rookie, but was cut off by her team leader.

  "Oh, you'll help all right. . . ." Andras muttered.

  "Seven seconds," Julian said with a smile, and the corporal eyed him beadily.

  "No way." There were over forty subcomponents in the M-96 plasma rifle. There was no way to disassemble it completely in seven seconds. Not even for the legendary Julian.

  Julian reached into a breast pocket and extracted a chip. "Ten creds says I can do it in seven seconds."

  "Impossible!" Bosum snapped, forgetting the implied insult. The standard was over a minute; nobody could disassemble a plasma rifle that fast.

  "Put your money where your mouth is," Julian said with a smile, and tossed the chip onto the table.

  "I'll take some of that," a grenadier said from down the table, and the squad leader, Sergeant Koberda, pushed forward to manage the piles. Finally there were two chips on Julian's side, and a pile of five- and ten-credit chips opposite.

  "Who bet on Julian?"

  "I did," Andras said sourly. "He's taken my money every other time."

  "We ready?" Julian asked, his hands hovering over the plasma rifle.

  "Uh, hang on," said one of the bead riflemen, pulling a helmet out from under his station chair and putting it on his head. "Okay," he said, tapping a control so that the ballistic-protection visor extruded. "Fine by me."

  Sergeant Koberda touched the plasma gunner on the shoulder.

  "You might wanna step back," he said with a little warning wrinkle of the nose. He suited action to words himself, then put his arms over his head, and the gunner saw others do the same.

  "Wha . . . ?" Bosum began, but the squad leader had already activated the timer in his toot and said: "Go!"

  Removing the compression pin to begin the disassembly process took the longest, just over a third of a second. The new troop watched in awe until the first magneto ring bounced off her skull. Then she realized that pieces of the weapon were flying all over the compartment and started to yell for the sergeant to stop . . . just as the last bit of component flew across the open space and bounced off a bulkhead.

  "Done!" Julian yelled, raising his hands.

  "Six point four-three-eight seconds," Koberda announced morosely, consulting his toot as he kicked aside a capacitor.

  "Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen," Julian said, bowing and splitting the heap of chips into two equal piles. He slid one across to Andras, picked up his own, extracted a bundle of other chips large enough to choke a unicorn, and added the squad's offerings to the bundle. "Always a pleasure," he added, and headed for the next compartment.

  Corporal Bosum looked around the compartment, trying to figure out where all the pieces of her weapon had gotten to.

  "Does he do this often?" she asked sourly.

  "Every chance we give him," Andras said. He picked up a capacitor ring and tossed it to her. "But sooner or later, he's gotta lose."

  "Sergeant Julian to the Armor Bay," chimed the intercom. "Sergeant Julian to the Armor Bay."

  "Oh, man," Koberda said. "That was Despreaux. Despreaux, Poertena, and Julian all in the same compartment! I'd rather be on the bridge!"

  * * *

  Roger tugged down the skirts of his safari jacket and flipped off an imaginary bit of fluff before nodding at the guard to trigger the hatch command. The guard waited patiently, then tapped the green square and stepped through the hatch to do an automatic sweep for hostiles. What the sweep turned up was a massive amount of tension.

  Roger stepped over the now tape- and padding-covered control runs and crossed to the tac center. He took a stance with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands behind his back, nodded coolly at Krasnitsky and Pahner, and then glanced at the rippling tactical display. His cool demeanor vanished abruptly, and his hand flew forward to point at the red icon in the hologram.

  "Look! There's a—"

  "We know, Your Highness," Pahner said stonily. "Another cruiser."

  "It hasn't moved out yet," Krasnitsky said with a sigh. "It's probably warming up its pulse nodes because we haven't slowed down." He rubbed his stubbly jaw and sighed again. "The XO has been hailing the first one. It wants us to begin decelerating to prepare for boarding. It's claiming to be an imperial cruiser, HMS Freedom, but it's not. For one thing, the Freedom is a cruiser carrier, not a cruiser. For another, its captain has a Caravazan accent."

  "Saints." Roger's mouth felt dry.

  "Yes, Your Highness," Pahner said. He didn't comment on the obviousness of the conclusion. "Probably," he corrected. "Whoever they are, the worst-case scenario is Saints. So we assume it's them."

  "But, Captain," the prince said, looking at Krasnitsky, "can your ship win against another cruiser?"

  Krasnitsky looked around the bridge. Not a hair had twitched, but he knew better than to have that discussion in public.

  "Perhaps we should step into the briefing room," he suggested.

  Once the hatch had closed, he turned to the prince. "No, Your Highness. There is zero chance that we can survive taking on two cruisers. We're not a full-scale Line ship, just a heavily armed and armored transport. Were we at full strength, without damage, maybe. As it is, there's no chance."

  "So what do we do?" Roger looked from Pahner to Krasnitsky. "We have to surrender, right?"

  It was Pahner's turn to sigh. "That's . . . not really an option, Your Highness."

  "Why ever not?" Roger asked. "I mean," he turned to the grim looking Fleet officer, "you're going to die if you don't!"

  Pahner bit his tongue on a sharp rejoinder, but Krasnitsky simply nodded. "Yes, Your Highness, we will."

  "But why?" Roger asked, his eyes wide in amazement. "I mean, I know it isn't the proper thing to surrender, but you can't run, and you can't win. So why not?"

  "He can't risk their getting their hands on you, Your Highness," Pahner snapped finally.

  "But . . ." Roger began, then stopped to think about it. He pulled his ponytail in frustration. "Why not? I mean, what could they do with . . . with me, for God's sake? I mean, I could understand if it was Mother, or John, or even Alexandra. But who the heck cares about Roger?" he ended a trifle bitterly. "I don't know any secrets, and I'm not in immediate line for the throne. Why not turn me over to them?"

  The prince's face hardened with resolution.

  "Captain, I insist that you surrender. As a matter of fact, I order you to. Honor is all well and good, but there is a line between honor and stupidity." He lifted his chin and sniffed. "I will surrender to them myself, with honor. I'll show them who's a MacClintock." The stance would have been improved if there hadn't been a slight quiver in the pronouncement.

  "Fortunately, Your Highness, you're not in my chain of command," Krasnitsky said with a wry smile for the bravado. "Major Pahner, I'm going to go get ready for the change in plans. Do you want to try to explain it to him?" With that, he
nodded at the prince and left the compartment.

  "What?" the prince gasped as the hatch closed behind him. "Hey! I gave you an order!"

  "As he said, Your Highness, you're not in his chain of command," Pahner said with a shake of his head. "But you might at least thank him for committing suicide, not berate him."

  "There's no reason for them not to surrender," Roger said stubbornly. "This is just stupid!"

  Pahner cocked his head and looked at the prince darkly.

  "What happens if the Saints get their hands on you, Your Highness?"

  "Well," Roger said, thinking about it. "If they tell the Empire, it's war, or they hand me back over. I suppose they could force a few concessions, but they don't want a war."

  "And what if they don't tell the Empire right away, Your Highness?"

  "Uhmmmm . . ."

  "They can't tamper with your toot, Your Highness; not with its security protocols. But what about psychotropic drugs?" Pahner tilted his head to the other side and raised an eyebrow. "What then?"

  "So I make funny noises and bark like a dog," Roger scoffed. Until they were finally fully banned, psychotropic drugs had been common at comedy clubs for the terminally humorless.

  "No, Your Highness. My guess—and I'm not privy to these sorts of scenarios—but my guess is that they would have you babble all the state secrets that you know to their 'free and independent' news services."

  "But that's the point, Captain Pahner," Roger said with another laugh. "I don't know any state secrets."

  "Sure you do, Your Highness. You know all about the Empire's plans to invade Raiden-Winterhowe."

  "Captain," the prince said warily, "what are you talking about? Not only are we at peace with Raiden-Winterhowe, but taking them on would be stupid. They've got nearly as good a navy as we do."

  "In that case, Your Highness," Pahner said with another smile, "what about the Empire's conspiracy to enslave all the alien species we can find and to terraform planets that have been reserved because of their unique flora and fauna?"

  "Captain Pahner, what are you talking about?" the prince demanded. "I've never heard of any of this! And that sounds like Saint rhetoric. . . ." He stopped. "Oh."

  "Or about how your imperial mother eats fetuses for breakfast, or about—"

  "I get the point!" the prince snapped. "You're saying that if they get their hands on me I'll be their mouthpiece for all that bullshit they're always spouting."

  "Whether you want to or not, Your Highness." Pahner nodded. "And I don't even want to think about what they'll do with your big game hunting record. For that matter, it would make the lives of the rest of the Family worth less than a plugged millicred. If they could kill the rest of the Family, that would make you heir."

  "Parliament would impeach me," Roger said with a bitter laugh. "Hell, Parliament would probably impeach me even if the Saints weren't putting words into my mouth. Who the hell is going to trust Roger at the controls?"

  "It takes two-thirds to impeach, Your Highness," the captain said darkly.

  "Are you suggesting that the Saints could influence a third of Parliament?" Roger was beginning to think he'd stepped through a looking glass and into some sort of weird fantasy universe. There'd always been bodyguards around him, certainly, but no one had ever seriously suggested that he might be a target of another empire's designs. He'd always assumed that the guards were there mainly for show or to keep off the occasional overly smitten female fan. Now he suddenly realized that what they were there for was . . . sitting on his chest, waiting for the air to evacuate.

  "Why?" he asked, quietly, wondering what would make people serve and protect someone that even he didn't like looking back at him in the mirror.

  "Well," Pahner replied, not understanding the true question, "the Saints want to ensure that humanity doesn't expand further into uncontaminated worlds. It's a religion to them." He paused, unsure how to go on. "I'd assumed that you'd been briefed, Your Highness."

  Actually, it was common knowledge. The Church of Ryback had a few outlets in the capital, all heavily financed by the Saints, and they ran regular commercials. For that matter, it was a common subject for discussion in civics and history classes, which made Pahner wonder about the prince's education. Asking what the Saints wanted made no sense at all, given that O'Casey had been Roger's tutor for years and she had a quadruple doctorate in, among other things, history.

  "No. No, that's not what I meant. I meant . . ."

  Roger looked into the bleak face of the Marine and realized that this was not a good time to get the question off his chest. And even if he asked it, Pahner—as most people seemed to do when Roger asked questions—would probably just provide some opaque answer that ensured deeper confusion.

  "I meant, 'What.' What do we do now?"

  "We're going to go for the longshot, Your Highness," Pahner said, nodding now that the question made sense again. He suspected that something else had gone on in that airhead, but what it had been he neither knew nor particularly cared. There was a mission to perform, and it looked to be a long one.

  "We're going to reload the boats. With the cruiser topside, taking the port by assault is out. So we're going to have to land on the planet and make our way to the port on foot. We can't let anyone know we're there, or they'll slaughter us, so we're going to have to come in on a ballistic approach and land quite a way around the planet from the port. Marduk was an afterthought to the Empire, so it's never been fully surveyed, and there's no satellite net, so the port won't be able to detect us as long as we stay out of line of sight. Once we reach the port, we capture a ship and head for home."

  It sounded easy put like that. Right.

  "So we're going to land on the backside then take the shuttles across . . . um, I can't remember the term. Low to the ground so they don't get spotted?"

  "Nape of the Earth," Pahner answered somberly. "No, Your Highness. Unfortunately, we're going to have to launch nearly five light-minutes out. We're going to put three platoons and a few support personnel from the ship in four assault shuttles: enough room for a reinforced company. The rest of the load is going to be fuel for deceleration. When we're down, if we have enough fuel to do a couple of klicks we'll be lucky."

  "So how are we going to get to the port?" Roger asked, dreading the answer.

  "We're going to walk, Your Highness," the captain said with a grim smile.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "It says here, 'Marduk has a mean gravity of slightly greater than Earth normal, and is a planet of little weather change,' " Sergeant Julian said, reading off his pad. He'd managed, along with Poertena, to get two more suits up and running before the call came to drop everything and change the loadout on the shuttles. Currently, they were unloading.

  He was perched on one silver wing of an assault shuttle as his squad moved out nonessential materials. The space-to-ground assault craft's variable geometry wings could sustain in-air flight at speeds as low as a hundred KPH or as high as Mach three, but it also had hydrogen thrusters for space maneuvering. Similar to a ground support pinnace, it had lighter weapons and a single top-mounted quad-barreled bead cannon, and thus correspondingly more room for personnel and equipment.

  " '. . . with a median temperature of thirty-three degrees and a median humidity of ninety-seven percent,' " he continued. There'd been nothing in the Marine databases on the planet, but it turned out that one of the corporals in Second Platoon had a Fodor's Guide to the Baldur Sector. Unfortunately, it offered only a limited amount of data on the planet . . . and what data there was only made a gloomy situation worse. "Jesus Christ, that's hot!"

  "Oh, just fucking great," Lance Corporal Moseyev said as he trotted out of the shuttle with a case of penetrator ammunition in his hands. "I only had three weeks and I was transferring to Steel!"

  " 'The native culture is at a stagnant level of low-grade firearms technology. Politically, the Mardukans—' Hey, there's a picture!"

  The Mardukan native, a four-armed bip
ed from a hexapedal evolutionary line, was pictured next to a human wiredrawing for size. From the scale, the Mardukan was the height of a grizzly bear, with broad, long feet on the ends of long, backcurved legs. The hands of the upper and lower arms were about the same size, with the upper shoulders wider than the lower, which were in turn wider than the hips. The upper arms ended in long, fine, three-fingered hands with one fully opposable thumb each. The hands of the shorter, lower arms were heavier and less refined, with a broad opposable pad and two dissimilar fingers. The face was wider and flatter than a human's, with a broad nose and small deep-set eyes. Two large horns curled up and back over the head. They were obviously functional weapons; the inner curve looked razor-sharp. The rubbery-looking skin was a mottled green and had an odd sheen to it.

  "What's that?" Moseyev asked, pointing to the sheen.

  "Dunno." Julian tweaked the cursor over the skin and rolled up the magnification. "'The skin of the Mardukan is covered in a polycy . . . polyss . . . in a something something coating that protects the species from casual cuts and the various harsh funguses of its native jungle home," he read, then thought about it for a second. "Ewww."

  "It's covered in slime," Moseyev laughed. "Yick! Slimies!"

  "Scummies!" Sergeant Major Kosutic snapped from the hatchway, and strode into the launching day. "I thought you were told to get the extraneous equipment out of the shuttle, Julian?"

  "We were getting updated on the mission, Sergeant Major!" Julian was suddenly at attention, the pad held alongside his trousers. "I was briefing my squad on the enemy and conditions!"

  "The enemy are the fucking Saints or pirates or whatever-they-are that hold the port." Kosutic stalked up to stand so close to the braced sergeant that he could smell her breath mint. "The scummies are what we're going to have to cut our way through to get there. Your mission, right now, is to get the shuttle unloaded—not to sit around on your ass cracking wise. Clear?"