March Upcountry

by David Weber

  "Yes, Sir," Roger said, and produced another salute.

  "You'd better get up there, Lieutenant," the captain said soberly. "Your platoon is hard at work digging in. I think you should familiarize yourself with the situation as soon as possible."

  "Yes, Sir!" Roger saluted yet again.

  "Dismissed," Pahner said, and shook his head as the prince trotted up the ruined road towards the citadel. At least he finally had Roger unambiguously slotted into the chain of command, although he hated to think how the Regiment's CO was going to feel about the expedient to which he'd been driven. Now if he could only keep the young idiot alive! Platoon leader really was the most dangerous post in the Corps; which didn't mean that it wasn't less dangerous than watching Prince Roger ricochet around like an unaimed rifle bead on his own.

  He watched the prince for a few more moments, then decided that he should hurry himself. He couldn't wait to see Jin's face.

  * * *

  "Gunnery Sergeant Jin?"

  "Yes, Your Highness?" The gunnery sergeant turned from specifying positions and fields of fire with Corporal Casset and glanced at the prince. "Can I help you?"

  The city of Voitan had been vast, but the citadel was the simplest of constructions. It was built into the slope of the mountain, backed up to a cliff which had been quarried sheer, undoubtedly for building material for the rest of the city. A seven-meter curtain wall ran in a more or less semicircle from cliff to cliff and surrounded a three-story inner keep. The curtain wall was thick, three meters across at the top and tapered outward as it descended, with a heavy bastion built right into the cliff face at either end. The only entrances to the bastions were through small doors on the inner side at the level of the top of the wall. The original doors were long since gone, but temporary doors were already being constructed. The upper stories of the bastions had been of wood and had burned down long ago, as had the upper story of the keep, but the lower stories were built into the wall, and the interior partitions were stone. These had withstood not only the Kranolta assault but also the ravages of time and even the unceasing onslaught of the Mardukan jungle.

  Slits for javelins and spears were arrayed on the "wall-level," pointing outward. No inner first-story slits faced the top of the wall, but upper-level slits did just that, designed so that if the top of the wall were taken, fire could be poured into the attackers. There were also slits at the level of the bailey, so that if the attackers made it over the wall they could be attacked as they assaulted the keep.

  The keep itself was a large, burned-out, vine-covered shell. The upper story, like those of the bastions, had been constructed of wood and was now charcoal. The rear of the keep, however, was dug deeply into the hillside, its roof supported by cleverly constructed stone buttresses, which provided a large, cavelike area that could be used to shield the pack beasts, wounded, and noncombatants. The flar-ta, kept from stampeding by chains stapled into the naked rock, were on the ground level, while the wounded and noncombatants waited on a raised shelf on the north side, along with Julian and the other power-armored Marines.

  There were spear slits at the keep's bailey level, but the only exterior door was on the second floor, up a staircase. Vines covered the walls, and trees had grown up through the flagstones of the bailey, but other than the vegetation and the damage to the gates, the gray stone of the fortress was intact.

  Third Platoon, which was still more or less at full strength, had been assigned the left side of the wall, while First and Second shared the right. Teams from both groups were working feverishly to construct barricades to replace the broken and decayed gates, and Sergeant Jin had been noting the locations of the platoon's troopers and their fields of fire. It was important to ensure that all possible approaches were covered and that the heaviest fire could be directed at the point where the enemy would be most likely to attack in force.

  With that in mind, Jin had placed his grenadiers in locations covering the primary avenues of approach. He'd also pointed out to them the locations that the enemy was most likely to use for cover. There were, unfortunately, a lot of those. The citadel overlooked what had once been a densely populated city, and the shells of buildings still loomed above narrow, twisting streets. That would have been enough to mask the approach of any attackers by itself, but the ruins were also massively overgrown with vines, creepers, small trees, and jungle ferns, producing what were effectively well-screened trenches up to the foot of the citadel wall. Those would be the particular target of the grenadiers, since they were the only troopers whose weapons would allow them to drop indirect fire behind obstacles.

  The platoon also had two plasma cannon. Given the failure of the power suits and the fact that this would be a stationary defense, the heavy cannon had been set up on their tripods. Jin intended to use them only against the heaviest concentrations of enemies, both because the Marines had developed a healthy distaste for the possible repercussions of firing them and because of the need to conserve their precious ammunition.

  He was going to be without Julian and his team of suit-users. The inoperable suits had been lashed back onto the pack beasts, with their cursing users still trapped inside them, and carried out into the citadel. The gear was now scattered on one side of the bailey with Poertena working on it, but the personnel whose suits did work were going to be used as a reserve for the company as a whole. So it was with too few troops to man the section of wall he'd been given, with his heavy troopers missing, and the possibility, however remote, of losing half his platoon to exploding plasma cannon, that the gunnery sergeant found out he had a new responsibility.

  "I'm your new platoon leader," Roger said.

  "Pardon me?" Jin looked around. Corporal Casset was standing with his jaw dropped, but other than the corporal (and the pissed-off and tired looking shaman standing behind the prince) no one else had heard Roger's announcement. "Is this some sort of joke, Your Highness?"

  "No, Gunnery Sergeant, it isn't," Roger said carefully. "Captain Pahner has asked me to 'wear another hat.' He's appointed me to be your platoon leader."

  "Oh," Jin said. He did not add "joy," for some unknown reason, but after a moment he went on with slightly glassy eyes. "Very well, Your Highness. If you'll give me a moment, I'll walk you through the defenses and explain the placements. I would ask for your comments and suggestions after that."

  "Very well, Gunny. And, I think 'Sir' would be appropriate. Or 'Lieutenant.' I'm not really a prince in this assignment, as I understand things."

  "Very well, Your . . . Sir," the sergeant said, shaking his head.

  * * *

  "Captain, we've gotten our people into position, and—"

  "Shhh!" Pahner's hand waved Lieutenant Jasco to silence as the captain turned his head from side to side.

  "Pardon me, Sir?" the lieutenant said after trying for a moment to figure out what he was looking at. All the lieutenant could see was the idiot prince talking to Gunny Jin.

  "Shhh!" Pahner repeated, then grunted in satisfaction as he finally managed to get the directional microphone onto the conversation just as Jin realized what his company commander had done to him.

  Lieutenant Jasco maintained a straight face as Captain Pahner did something the lieutenant would have flatly denied was possible. He giggled. It was an amazing sound to hear out of the tall, broad officer, and Pahner cut it off almost immediately. He listened for a few more seconds, then switched off the mike and turned to Jasco with a seraphic smile.

  "Yes, Lieutenant?" he asked, still chuckling. "You were saying?"

  "We've gotten all of our people into position, Sir. When do you think they're going to attack?"

  "Lieutenant," Pahner looked at the sky, "your guess on that is as good as mine. But I think they'll wait until morning. It's getting late, and they've never hit us at night. I'll come by your positions in a bit. Go get with your platoon sergeant and figure out a chow rotation for right now."

  He could smell Matsugae starting something on a fire.

/>   * * *

  Roger sniffed and looked towards the keep where Kostas had dinner well under way. The valet might just have put himself in harm's way to rescue a nobody trooper, but it didn't seem to have affected him at all. He'd simply gone back to organizing the camp. Maybe there was a lesson to learn there.

  Roger turned and swept his gaze over the troopers still working all around him. Now that the basics had been done—setting up the heavy weapons, assigning fields of fire, putting up sandbags where stones had fallen from the battlements of the citadel wall—the Marines were improving their individual positions. Despite the intense heat, even more focused here inside the stone walls, the troopers worked without pause. They knew it would be too late to improve their chances of survival after the Kranolta hit.

  Despreaux walked over to him, and he nodded to her.

  "Sergeant," he said, and she nodded back and tossed him the small object in her hand.

  "Nice folks."

  Roger caught the item and blanched. It was a very small Mardukan skull, one side crushed. The horns were barely buds.

  "There's a big pile of bones over in the bastion," she continued. "That was part of it. It looks like the defenders made some sort of stand."

  Roger looked over the wall at the crumbled city below. He had enough experience now to imagine the horrors the castle's defenders would have observed as the rest of their city went up in roaring flame and massacre. And to imagine their despair as the gate crumbled and the Kranolta barbarians poured through. . . .

  "I'm not really very happy with these fellows," he said, setting the skull gently on the parapet.

  "I've seen worse," Despreaux said coldly. "I made the drop on Jurgen. Pardon me if I'm humanocentric, but . . . it was worse."

  "Jurgen?" Roger couldn't place the name.

  Despreaux's sculpted profile hardened, and a muscle in her jaw twitched.

  "No place that mattered, Your Highness. Just a stinking little fringe world. Bunch of dirt-poor colonists, and a single town. A pirate ship dropped in for a visit. It was a particularly unpleasant bunch. By the time we got there, the pirates were long gone. The results weren't."

  "Oh," Roger said. The attacks on border worlds were so common that they hardly ever made the news in the Home Regions. "I'm sorry."

  "Nothing for you to be sorry about, Your Highness. Just something to remember; there's bad guys out there all the time. The only people who usually see them are the Fleet and the Marines. But when things get screwed up enough, this isn't so uncommon. The barbs are always at the door."

  She touched the skull gently, then gave him another cool nod and walked back to where her squad was digging in. Roger continued looking out over the city, stroking the skull with a thumb, until Pahner walked up.

  "How's it going, Lieutenant?"

  "Just fine . . . Sir," Roger said distractedly, still gazing out over murdered Voitan. "Captain, can I say something as 'His Highness' instead of 'Lieutenant'?"

  "Certainly," Pahner said with a smile. "Your Highness."

  "I don't think it would be a good idea to leave an existing force in our rear, do you?"

  "You're talking about the Kranolta?" Pahner glanced at the skull.

  "Yes, Captain. How are we fixed for power for the suits?"

  "Well," Pahner grimaced, "since we only have four of them up, not bad. Days and days with just four of them. But we need to get the rest up to have a hope in hell of taking the spaceport."

  "But we have enough for a pursuit, don't we?"

  "Certainly." Pahner nodded. "And you have a point about leaving remnants in our rear. I don't want to have to fight off ambushes from here to the next city-state."

  "Good." Roger turned and looked the captain in the eye. "I don't think that the cause of civilization on this world would be advanced by leaving a single Kranolta alive, Captain. I would prefer that that not be the case after tomorrow."

  Pahner regarded him steadily, then nodded.

  "So would I, Your Highness. So would I. I think tomorrow we'll be building a samadh. To the honor of the Corps."

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Roger looked out from the citadel wall as the first overcast light of dawn stole across the dead, jungle-devoured cityscape.

  The company had been up for nearly an hour, getting breakfast and preparing for these first moments of early morning light. This time, Before Morning Nautical Twilight, had been considered the most dangerous time of all for millennia. It was the time preferred for a "dawn attack," when sleepy-eyed sentries were at their lowest ebb and attackers could slip up under cover of darkness but attack with the gathering light.

  The Marines' answer was the same one armies had used for centuries: get up well before time and be awake and alert when the moment of "stand to" came. Naturally, as had also been the case for centuries, there were some complainers.

  Roger wasn't one of them. He'd been up for hours the previous night, reviewing his actions of the day before and worrying about what was to come. For all that he'd been fighting monsters and the occasional skirmish or ambush all the way across the continent, this would be his first true battle. Today the Kranolta would come to kill the company, and someone would lose, and someone would win. Some of them would die, and some would live. While it seemed likely that casualties would be light, there was still a risk. There was even a risk that the humans would lose, and then word of the treachery aboard the DeGlopper would never reach Earth. Roger had smiled at himself when he reached that point in his ruminations. It was amusing to realize that the main thing he thought about was that the word wouldn't get back to his mother, not that he himself would be dead.

  Sergeant Major Kosutic padded up silently behind him and leaned on the lip of the adjoining embrasure.

  "Still quiet," she said, and glanced over at Cord who stood silently at Roger's back. Since the events of the day before, the old shaman had attached himself firmly to his "master," and was rarely to be found more than five meters away.

  The sergeant major had been up from time to time the night before. Not worried, just running through the practiced actions of an experienced warrior checking on changes. Still, she'd become slightly perturbed as every sentry throughout the night had reported more and more fires. The tactical computers were having a hard time pinning down numbers, but each fire sent the estimates up and up. The current balance of forces didn't look good.

  "I wish we had some razor wire," she said.

  "Do you think it will come to that?" Roger asked in surprise. "They've only got spears; we have plasma cannon."

  "Your Highness—I mean, Lieutenant," Kosutic said with a smile, "there's an old story, probably a space story, about a general and a captain. They were fighting some indigs and an air car came in with a spear sticking out of the side. The captain laughed and asked how they could lose against people armed only with spears. But the general looked at the captain and asked how she thought they could win against people willing to fight an air car with only a spear."

  "And the moral is?" Roger asked politely.

  "The moral, Lieutenant, is that there is no such thing as a deadly weapon. There are only deadly people, and the Kranolta—" her hand waved over the battlements at the broken city "—are fairly deadly."

  Roger nodded and looked around, then back into the sergeant major's eyes.

  "Are we?" he asked quietly.

  "Oh, yeah," Kosutic said. "Nobody who gets through RIP is a slacker in a firefight. But . . . there's gonna be a lot of those scummies, and there ain't many of us." She shivered slightly at the smell of woodsmoke from the thousands of fires in the jungle. "It's gonna get interesting. Satan damn me if it ain't."

  "We'll get the job done, Sergeant Major," the prince said confidently.

  "Yeah." Kosutic looked at the sword hilt jutting up over his shoulder. "I suppose we will."

  Captain Pahner strolled up, checking the positions, and looked out at the mists curling around the ruined city.

  "Beautiful morning, fellas," he
remarked, and Roger chuckled.

  "It'd be even more beautiful if half 'my' platoon were in armor, Captain. What's the status?"

  "Well," Pahner said with a grimace, "it isn't pretty, 'Lieutenant.' Poertena found the fault, which is a mold eating the contacts coating of the joint power conduits. You can't remove the coating; it's a dissimilar metallic contact. The problem seems to be in a new 'improved' version."

  "Oh shit," Kosutic chuckled grimly.

  "Yeah." Pahner nodded with a grim smile. "Another improvement. The suits that hadn't been 'upgraded' are okay. But that's just the four."

  "What are we going to do?" Roger's eyes were wide, for Pahner had stressed repeatedly that they had to have the suits to take the starport.

  "Fortunately, the contacts tend to wear out, so each suit has a spare in its onboard spares compartment. The ones sealed up in the storage packets are okay, but . . ."

  "But there's only a couple of spares per suit, normally." Kosutic shook her head. "So we're down to four sets of armor for everything except taking the spaceport."

  "Right." The captain nodded. "We can cannibalize from suits that we lose the users for, or that go down with other problems we can't fix. So we can put His Highness in a suit if things look particularly bad. But until then, it's just 'The Four Horseman.' "

  "I guess that will have to do," Roger said with a shrug, then changed the subject. "So what's the plan for today, Captain?"

  "Well," Pahner replied with his own shrug, "we wait until they have the majority of their forces in close, then engage with all the firepower we have. I won't say that I agree or disagree about whether they should be wiped out as a tribe, but we can't afford to have a large force following us to the next city-state. So they have to be eliminated as an operational threat at least."

  "Can we do that?" Over the night, Roger's ardor had cooled, and he looked at the scattered weapons positions worriedly.

  "Against what I'd estimate the maximum threat to be, yes," Pahner said. "There's a big difference between barbarian warriors and soldiers, and today these Kranolta are going to discover that."