March to the Stars

by David Weber

  "No," he said, wrapping his arms around her knees. "Nimashet, I'll need you. Even if we succeed, and that's not a given, I'll need you to be there. I . . . you're always at my back. Maybe you're not shooting anymore, but you're still there. Even when Cord isn't, you're there. You're like my right arm. I can't make it without you."

  "Hah," she snorted through the tears. "You'd still be cursing your enemies with both arms and legs hacked off. And drown them in blood to kill them. You don't know when to quit. Me? I do. I quit. When we get back and everything is done, I'm turning in the uniform. And until then, I'm going to see Sergeant Major Kosutic about putting me on noncombat duties. It's beyond combat fatigue, Roger. I just can't focus anymore. I may be at your back, but that's because you're wiping everything out in front of you, and at your back is the safest place to be. The only problem is that I'm supposed to be your bodyguard, not the other way around."

  "You've saved my life . . ." He thought about it. "Three times, I think."

  "And you've saved mine as many," she replied. "It's not a matter of keeping score. Just, let it go, okay? I can't marry the Emperor, I can't guard you worth a damn, and I'm not much good for anything else. I'll head back to Midgard, buy a farm, find a nice stolid husband, and . . . try not to think about you. Okay?"

  "No, it's not 'okay'! I can see your logic, sort of. But if you think I'm going to release you to go hide on a farm, you've got another think coming. And unless there's a clear reason for a dynastic marriage, I'm still going to marry you, come hell or high water. Even if I have to drag you into the church, kicking and screaming!"

  "You and what army, Mister?" she asked dangerously. "If I say no, I mean no."

  "Look, none of this is settled until we get to Terra," Roger said. "Let's just . . . bank it right now. We'll pull it out and look at it again when things settle down. But I don't care if you're not one hundred percent in close combat. Who's making the shaped charges?"

  "Me," she sighed.

  "And who's going to be managing the demolitions?"

  "Me."

  "And when we get back to Terra, can I trust you to hang in there and do whatever needs to be done to the best of your ability, as long as you don't have to kill anyone?"

  "Yes," she admitted.

  "Can I go get any old joker off the street that I can trust? Or any of the Marines on Terra? No. I'll need every single body I can trust. And you're a body that I can both trust and admire," he finished with a leer.

  "Gee, thanks." She smiled.

  "You told me a long time ago that we might not get to retire to Marduk. That Mother might have other plans for us. Well, the same goes for you. Unless we're all killed, I'm going to have things I need you to do. Only one of them involves marrying me, and we'll discuss that when the time comes. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Does this mean I can't wrestle with you in the water?" he asked, running his hand up her side.

  "If you get this cast wet and short it out, Dobrescu will kill you," she pointed out.

  "It's okay. I'm a faster draw than he is."

  "Well, since you put it that way," she replied, and slid down into the water and leaned forward to kiss him.

  "Your Highness," Bebi said, leaning in the door. "Captain Pahner's compliments, and he'd like to see you in his quarters."

  "I think I'm beginning to detect a pattern here," Roger snarled under his breath.

  "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action," Despreaux replied huskily. "So far, it's just coincidence.

  "So far," Roger replied. "But I have to wonder."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  "You are a cruel human, Adib Julian," Kosutic said.

  "It's an art," he replied, tapping the pad. "Despreaux's blood pressure and heart beat both increase, they're having an argument. Heart beat increases, and blood pressure drops, and they're . . . not."

  "What about Roger?" the sergeant major asked.

  "To tell you the truth, he's scary," Julian said. "The whole time, his heartbeat never changed within any sort of standard of variation. Steady fifty-two beats per minute. That's the lowest in the company, by the way. And his blood pressure barely flickered. You can't tell anything about what he's thinking or feeling from biometrics. Spooky."

  "He gets angry," Kosutic said. "I've seen it."

  "Sure," the sergeant agreed, flipping the pad closed. "And when he does, he's still got ice water running in his veins."

  "Hmmm. You know, I think we're just starting to understand why you don't want to pock with a MacClintock."

  * * *

  Thousands of years before the coming of the race called Man, the mountain had been fire. Molten rock and ash spewed from the bosom of the world, laying down interleaving layers of each as the mountain grew higher and higher. Side openings occurred, and the red rock flowed from them like a steaming avalanche, occasionally breaking loose whole sides of the mountain in a semiliquid, fiery hot gel called pyroclastic flow.

  Eventually, the fierce nuclear fire that was at the core of the local hotspot passed on, and the mountains began to cool. Water brought its beneficence of cooling to the steaming mountain, scouring its flanks and bringing growth where there had been molten rock. In time, the black, smoking wasteland became a fertile slope of trees and flowers.

  Time passed, and the sun of the planet called Marduk flickered. For a time that was short for a sun, or a planet, the sun became cooler. To the sun itself, the effect was barely noticeable. But on the sole life-hugging planet that orbited it, the effect was devastating.

  The rains stopped. Where there had been steaming jungles, there were sunbaked plains. Ice came. Where there had been liquid-drenched mountains, the water fell as snow and compressed, and compacted, and stayed and stayed, until it became mountains—walls of glacial ice.

  Species died, and the nascent civilizations of the higher latitudes fell. Survivors huddled around hot springs while the white walls drew ever closer.

  Along the side of the mountain, the white ice grew and grew. The hot spots to one side kept a continual melt in place, and the runoff water—dammed up behind the terminal moraine of the glacier—filled the valley from end to end. Regular floods laid down layers of lighter and darker materials on the valley floor, improving the already excellent soil. The glacier brought with it loess, the fine dust that was left when ice crushed its enemy rock. The glacier also brought massive boulders that it laid down in complex, swirling patterns that later residents would often use as roadbeds and quarry for building stone. And everywhere, it crushed the sides of the valley, hammering at the walls of the mountain and tearing at its stone and ash foundations.

  Finally, in a short time for a star, the sun restarted and turned its thermostat all the way back to high. The rains came. Jungles regrew. And the ice . . . melted.

  It started slowly, with more floods each spring than there'd been the spring before. Then the glacier started to break up, and the terminal moraine, the dam at the head of the valley, became intermingled with chunks and blocks of the ice. For a time, the dam grew higher, as the floods carried the silt and debris of four thousand years of glaciation to it. But finally, inevitably, the dam at the head of the valley burst. First came a trickle, then a flood, then a cascade, and finally, a veritable tsunami of water, crashing down the gorge in a flash flood to end all flash floods. It scoured the gorge wider than a hundred thousand years of lesser floods. It wiped out the small village that had been recently founded at the base of the gorge. And it drained the Vale of the Shin, leaving a fertile pastureland that simply begged for colonization.

  And the mountain slept.

  * * *

  Erkum Pol wielded the machete like a machine, hacking away at the undergrowth while holding on to the rope to prevent himself from sliding back down the slope. It was also wrapped around his waist; it was a very steep slope.

  " 'Set a few charges,' he said," Julian muttered as he slid sideways and stopped himself by grabbing a tree. Unfortuna
tely, its bark was well provided with long spines, one of which jammed itself into his hand. "Aarrrgh! 'Blow up the side of the mountain,' he said. 'No problem,' he said."

  "We have the explosives," Fain said, sliding down the rope beside him. "We have the 'shaped charges.' What's the difficulty?"

  "Maybe emplacing them on a sixty-degree slope? We're going to have to dig out pits for the charges and hold them down with pins hammered into the rock. They have to have a bit of something holding them down. Usually, it's just the charge's case and the weight of the material, but in this case, we're going to have to anchor the cases, since they're pointing sideways. And I'm not sure any weight of cataclysmite is going to be enough to cut out from the bores."

  "A trench," Roger said, coming hand-over-hand along the slope through the undergrowth. "We'll dig a shallow trench and fire them directly down. From this height, we should get plenty enough material to seal the river."

  "We can do that," Fain said. "Like starting a new quarry."

  "Exactly. In fact, if you can scratch out a trench in the loam, we can put in a line of det-cord which will practically make it for us."

  "That will give away our position, Sir," Julian pointed out. The top of the Krath citadel was vaguely visible from their position, or, its northern bastion was, at least.

  "They'll spot us up here before long anyway," Roger pointed out in return. "And they'll definitely notice when we blow the shaped charges."

  The latter were waiting up the slope on the narrow track a local guide had "found" over the mountain. It was obvious that despite the best efforts of both the Gastan and the local Krath to restrict all commerce between them to Trade Town, and thereby tax it, plenty of smugglers moved through the hills around it.

  "Captain Fain, put out some security teams and let's get to work," Roger said.

  "Yes, Your Highness. It will be like old home week."

  * * *

  "What in the Fire do they think they're doing up there?" Lorak Tral wondered aloud.

  The Sere's commander had envisioned the entire plan in a single instant when word of the High Priest's death reached him. For too long, the Shin, and the Scourge which pursued them, had been a thorn in the side of the Krath. But with the High Priest's death at the hands of humans (humans presumably allied with the Shin, judging from their actions), the stage had been set at last for the elimination of the Scourge. For two generations, the Scourge—most of them little more than jumped up Shadem and Shin themselves—had been on the upsurge. If they were permitted to continue to grow, the Krath would fall under the sway of slave-raiders. Better to use this opportunity to cut their legs off. By crushing Mudh Hemh, the Sere would show its importance to the council and the utility of the Scourge would be cut in half.

  And it didn't hurt that it would leave him as High Priest.

  "Perhaps they're planning to cut the supply line," Vos Ton said. The fortress' commander rubbed his horns nervously. "Even a slight stoppage in resupply will make our position difficult. I could wish you'd brought fewer troops."

  Tral gazed up at the position and shook his head.

  "Even with their rifles, they'll have a hard time stopping us from using the road. And they cannot stop us from taking Mudh Hemh."

  "If we ever do," Ton groused. "Nopet Nujam is not a simple proposition. I warned you of that when you came up with this scheme."

  "It's important to show that no one can simply walk in and kill our High Priest," Tral replied. "We must show them the error of their ways."

  "Each day we laboriously besiege them gives them another day to try something new," Ton pointed out. "That's all I'm saying."

  "No matter what they do, they are too few to truly affect us," the Sere replied. "Unless you think they can call the God of Fire down upon us?"

  "No," Vos Ton replied, looking up at the figures, mostly hidden by trees. Even if they rolled rocks down, they wouldn't fall on his castle. "No, but I wonder what they are going to call down on us."

  A moment later, a tremendous boom bellowed down the mountainside. A towering cloud of dust and smoke reared up, and then, as quickly as it had arisen, it rained down rocks and severed trees. They bounced and tumbled, battering downwards, and although most were captured by the trees below the cut, many made it all the way to the base, leapt off the last ledge, arced across the road, and ended up in the Shin River.

  The roadbed at the narrows was cut into a shallow natural ledge that wended its way about ten meters above the river, higher than almost any reported flood. The few rocks and trees that made it to the river raised the water slightly, but the increase was only a fraction of the difference between its normal surface and the roadway.

  "Are they trying to block the road?" Ton asked in a puzzled voice. "Or raise the river to block it?"

  "Whichever it is, if they get enough into the river to become a problem, we'll send out a working party," Tral replied. Then he grunted in laughter. "Look," he added as the deep, rushing water broke up the shallow dam and carried it away. "The river does our work for us."

  "Perhaps," the fortress commander agreed dubiously. "But I wish we had some reports from our spies. I would like to know what their conference was about. I want to know what they think they're doing up there."

  "Hmmm . . ." Tral said. "We're almost ready for the great attack. We can move it up by a few hours; then, whatever it is, we'll have taken their fortress before they're able to use it."

  "What about the Scourge force?"

  "They were to attack as we did," the Sere leader said. "And, really, they were never to be anything more than a distraction. Whatever happens, it will be the Sere that breaks the back of Mudh Hemh for all time. It is that which will be remembered."

  "From your mouth to the Fire God's ears," the fortress commander said.

  * * *

  "You know," Roger said, stepping into the narrow trench, "I bet they really are wondering what we're doing up here."

  "Well, in about six more hours, it won't matter what they think," Despreaux said. She'd gotten out of her force cast that very morning, and she waved her newly liberated arm enthusiastically, pointing to spots along the trench even as she elbowed Roger out of the way with the other arm. "Here, here, here . . ."

  "Hmmm," the prince murmured. After a moment's thought, he threw his rifle to his shoulder and zoomed up the gain on the telescopic sight. "Interesting."

  "What?" Julian asked. His rifle had no scope at all.

  "Just . . . some of the groups down there," Roger muttered. He walked to the end of the trench, where a tree had been uprooted, sat down behind it, and laid the rifle across the trunk. "Most of them are just scurrying around. But there's a couple of groups that are clearly watching us. And one of them looks like a batch of commanders . . ."

  "We discussed this, Your Highness," Julian said repressively. "We're not supposed to shoot."

  "I know," Roger sighed. "But I'm still pissed at them over the thing in Kirsti."

  "Let me worry about that," Despreaux said. "And the demo. We've only got about fifteen minutes until the shaped charges are in place; you need to be heading for the crest."

  Roger gathered up his rifle and stood with manifest regret.

  "I think one of them is that senior war leader, Lorak Tral. One shot wouldn't hurt anything, would it?" he sounded so much like a little boy trying to wheedle a special treat out of his tutor that Julian smiled. But the sergeant also shook his head firmly.

  "Go with the plan, Your Highness. You promised."

  "Okay, okay." Roger looked up the hill and grimaced. "That's a long damned climb."

  "And when you get there, you might as well keep going," Despreaux said. "I'll be pouring the slurry fifteen minutes after the shot. By the time you climb back down here, it'll be time to retreat, and if you're in my way then, I'll leave boot prints all over you. I, for one, don't intend to be on the mountain at all when we shoot this one."

  "I get the point," Roger sighed. "And you're to come directly to Mudh Hemh,
understand? You're in no condition to be in Nopet if they assault."

  "I will," she said with a smile. "Now get going, Your Highness."

  * * *

  Roger slid off the civan and gave Pahner a casual salute.

  "It's hard to consider a group that can build something like this 'barbarians,' " he said, waving at the massive walls above them. The back gates to Nopet Nujam weren't as large as the front gates, but their protective towers and bastions still made an imposing edifice.

  "Local craftsmen, sure," Pahner said. "But it was Krath engineering. Your Highness, you're not supposed to be here."

  "Anything going on?" Roger asked.

  "No," the captain said stolidly. "The Krath got some small forces up on the mountain after you left, but the Diasprans beat them off. No injuries on our side. The emplacement team is on the way back, and the security team has retired to the back of the mountain. We're going to fire the shot anytime now, and it would really please me an immense amount to have you back in Mudh Hemh when that happens."

  "I've got the picture," Roger laughed. Then he sobered. "Remember to send Despreaux back, as well. With that bum arm, she's not in shape for combat ops yet."

  "Nor will she be even after the cast comes off," Pahner observed, looking him straight in the eye. "As I believe you're aware."

  "When did you find out?" Roger asked after a long moment of silence. "I . . . She told me the other night."

  "Oh, I started to suspect back around Sindi," Pahner said. "It was to be anticipated in most of the Marines—that's one of the reasons I've been trying to shift them to leadership positions, rather than shooting. Despreaux's not the only one. About the only squad I have full confidence in any more is the Third; Julian's maniacs are relentless."

  "That . . . makes things difficult," the prince said quietly. "What about me? Or the Mardukans?"

  "I think you're one of those guys who doesn't really peak, Your Highness." Pahner shook his head. "Dobrescu's been pointing out your vitals to me lately. Your heartbeat and respiration hardly changed the whole time you were in the Temple; that's unusual, in case you hadn't been aware of it."