March to the Stars

by David Weber

  "Cord," Pahner confirmed. "While he was recovering. He didn't have any memory of it."

  "Ouch. Oh, and the whole 'I cannot use my asi that way' thing . . . Oh, man!"

  "Yes," the captain said. "Which was why she couldn't tell him whose child—children—they were. He assumed she'd had . . . a fling, for want of a better term. Add to that that she was considerably less than half his age but that he was . . . interested in her anyway, and—"

  Roger laughed, then clutched at his chest in pain.

  "Oh, my. May-December romance, indeed!" he got out, almost crying between the laughter and the pain.

  "So now the Gastan has a new son-in-law, who's older than he is," Pahner acknowledged. "And from what Eleanora and I can figure out, it's even more complicated than that. Since the Gastan's oldest son, Thertik, managed to get himself killed, Pedi is his legal heir. But a benan can't inherit his position. There have been a handful of female Gastans in the history of the Shin, although they're very rare. It's more common for a female heir's consort to inherit the title. But a benan is required to follow his—or her—benai wherever that leads, so he can hardly stay home to rule the tribes. Unfortunately, a benan's children can inherit. So Cord's children—the Gastan's grandchildren—are the legal heirs to the overlordship of the Vales."

  "And since Cord insists on following me off-planet . . ."

  "Precisely," the captain agreed with a thin smile. "I hope you'll pardon me for pointing this out, Your Highness, but the three of you have a positive talent for leaving chaos in your wake. Well, to be fair, I suppose I shouldn't include Cord in that. Not, at least, until we met the Lemmar and his sense of honor got him into all of this!"

  "I think you're being too hard on him," Roger said with a laugh. "As far as I can tell, he fought the good fight to resist his attraction to Pedi. It's not his fault that he lost in the end—especially not with her taking such unscrupulous advantage of him when he was unconscious and unable to resist her advances!"

  "You would come up with something like that," Pahner told him, shaking his head in resignation. "And I suppose it actually is sort of funny, in a way. But don't you dare laugh when you see them. They're like a couple of teenagers. It's worse than you and Despreaux."

  "Oh, thank you very much, Captain," Roger said, and chuckled. Then grimaced as the chuckle claimed its own stab of pain.

  "Or Julian and Kosutic. Or Berent and Stickles. Or, God forbid, Geno Macek and Gunny Jin, for that matter." The Marine sighed, rubbing his head.

  "I'm sorry, Armand." Roger reached out to his bodyguards' commander. "I know we've laid burdens on you that were unnecessary, and for that, I apologize."

  The captain looked down at the hand on his arm, then patted it and shook his head.

  "Command challenges just make life more interesting," he said with a faint smile. "Although, after a certain point, they do tend to drag you down." He shook his head again. "For example, I would really appreciate it if you could stay out of one-shot range for the foreseeable future."

  "Sounds like a good idea to me," Roger acknowledged, settling back against his pillows and feeling very carefully of his chest. "Of course, it never occurred to me that the bastard might have one."

  "It wouldn't have occurred to me, either," Pahner admitted. "And I can't say that the fact that he did makes me very happy. But at least he didn't drill you clean."

  "I don't understand why he didn't," Roger said thoughtfully. "I thought once one of those things locked onto your breastplate, you were pretty much screwed."

  "Pretty much," Pahner agreed. "But from the looks of your armor, you managed to twist sideways just as he hit the tractor-lock. It didn't lock squarely. Instead of depositing the explosive charge at right angles, it hit you obliquely and a lot of the force of the explosion leaked sideways across the face of the plate. It was still enough for the shock damage to break your ribs, disable about sixty percent of your armor systems, and knock you unconscious. But it never managed to blow a scab loose, and you were lucky, Your Highness. Your anti-kinetic systems lasted long enough to keep it from doing anything worse than pounding your ribs—hard. Doc Dobrescu wouldn't have been quite so cheerful about the state they were in if you didn't have an even better nanny pack than the Corps gets issued. I know they still hurt like hell, but they're rebuilding fast."

  "I know I was lucky," Roger agreed, still exploring his chest gently. "It just doesn't feel that way."

  "Maybe not," Pahner said somberly. "But if he'd manage to blast that scab loose, all the anti-k systems in the galaxy wouldn't have helped you. And if they'd failed, the concussion alone should have turned every bone in your torso into paste." He shook his head. "No, Your Highness. You definitely were lucky. That's all that saved you—well, that and those souped-up reflexes of yours. I don't know if anyone else could have turned enough to take it at a survivable angle."

  "And what about Sor Teb?"

  "He was lucky, too . . . for a while," Pahner said. "The tractor must have gotten a good enough lock to at least stay put, instead of blasting right back through him. And the angle must have been oblique enough to direct the back blast away from him. I'm sure he figured you really were dead, since he had a second one-shot on him and he didn't use it on you to make certain. Unfortunately for him, he encountered Pedi on the parapet and suffered a mischief."

  "God, I bet she enjoyed that!"

  "You could put it that way. Especially since it was what pushed Cord into declaring his feelings for her," Pahner agreed with an evil chuckle.

  "But to return to you and Sor Teb's little surprise," the Marine continued, "he may not have managed to kill you, but he certainly did manage to kill your armor."

  "Which isn't good," Roger said with a grimace. "It's not like we had all that many operable suits to begin with."

  "Oh, it isn't all that bad," Pahner reassured him. "In fact, Poertena ought to be able to take care of the problem without too much difficulty. Assuming, of course, that we take the spaceport before he implodes."

  "Poertena?" Roger quirked an eyebrow. "What's his problem?"

  "He just found out that Mountmarch has a complete Class One manufactory at the port," Pahner said, standing up. "Can you imagine Poertena with a full-scale manufacturing plant at his mercy?"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Temu Jin picked up his cup and sipped. His attention—obviously—was entirely focused on the coffee, and he kept it that way as the timer clicked over to just past Mardukan noon.

  There were normally two com techs on duty in the communications control center, but at lunchtime, they went off duty, one at a time, to get something to eat. There were still the two guards, of course, but they were stationed in the vestibule just inside the blast door that was the only possible way in, not in the center itself. On this particular day, it was the other tech's turn to go to lunch first, which left Jin as the only person actually in the room. Which worked out just fine for him. Especially since the com center also doubled as the control room for the security perimeter.

  He watched the schematic from the corner of one eye and nodded internally as the first notation of a possible perimeter breach popped up on his screen. Right on time. It was nice to deal with professionals for a change.

  * * *

  The com center guards were supposed to be cycled off together just before noon, instead of one of them at a time going to get something to eat, but their relief was late. That wasn't particularly unusual—the relief was usually late on Marduk, and they would be late in their turn. But it meant they were suffering just a tad from low blood sugar, which made them more surly than usual with the Mardukan messenger.

  "What do you want, scummy?"

  "I have a message from the governor," Rastar said, in carefully badly accented Imperial as he held his message up in front of the security cameras. He stood there in the poncholike garment the peasants in the area around the spaceport habitually wore, and made himself look as much like one of the local rubes as he could.

>   It must have worked.

  "Okay, we'll give it to the geek," one of the guards said, and keyed in the code to open the door.

  "Thank you," Rastar said in his horrible Imperial, and stepped inside to hand over the folded message as the door finished opening. Then he reached under the "poncho" once more.

  "And if you'll be good enough to take me to the communications center," he continued in suddenly flawless Imperial, as four polymer-bladed knives closed like scissors on the guards' necks, "I'll let you live."

  * * *

  "Rastar and Jin have the communications center," Julian said. "Fain's team has taken down the guards on the main gate. The Shin are through the wire on the spaceport, and they've seized the vehicle park. I've got the code that the plasma towers are off-line."

  "I'll believe it when we're in," Pahner growled, and wiggled his body, writhing up through the chunks of ore in the back of the turom cart.

  The main difficulty in taking the spaceport was that the sensor net extended well beyond its perimeter. Besides increased radar sweeps from the geosynchronous satellite, there were micrite sensors scattered all over the surroundings. Those tiny sensors sent back readings on power emissions, nitrite traces, metal forms, and a variety of other indicators that could mean a potential attack by either low-tech or high-tech foes. Defeating them wasn't really hard, but it was time-consuming and complex.

  One of the things the sensors looked for was evidence of ChromSten or high-density power packs. To cloak both of those, the armored personnel had been secreted in piles of metallic ores after tests had shown that the ores were sufficient to hide them from the Marines' own sensors.

  The facility routinely purchased bulk materials from the Krath and the Shin, and, once again, the IBI agent had been invaluable. He'd spent his time and limited resources suborning various persons in the facility, which gave him all sorts of interesting handles when he needed them. In this case, he'd not only convinced the chief of supply that he needed to order "a little early," but had even given him a list of what to order. If the chief hadn't chosen to comply, certain pictures that he had on his personal system would have been turned over to the governor. Amazingly, an order for six carts of iron ore and ten of mixed foodstuffs had been placed within a day.

  Now, with the sensor net and—hopefully—the plasma towers under the control of "friendly" forces, the time had come to knock on the front door.

  "Well, let's find out what's going to go wrong," Kosutic said as she dropped out of the bottom of a turom cart into a spider-crouch. She looked up at the open gates and shook her head. "Look out for one-shots; we know there are some around."

  There was virtually no other conversation as the Marines poured out of the carts and through the gates. They broke up into teams of three and four, and spread out through the facility.

  "Commo secure," Julian chanted, trotting after Pahner as they both headed for the governor's quarters. "Armory: a Diaspran took a hit there, but the Marine team has it secured." A burst of firing sounded from the left, and he checked his pad. "Barracks are holding out, but the situation is secure."

  "Send the second wave of Vashin there," Pahner said. "Diasprans to remain on call. Shin to the spaceport."

  "Secondary control tower secured," Julian continued. "Nobody there. Maintenance and repair: no resistance."

  They rounded the Armory and pounded across the manicured lawn of the governor's quarters. Two humans by the front doors were being securely trussed up by Diasprans dressed as lawn maintenance "boys."

  "Servants are secure, Sir," Sergeant Sri said as he yanked one of the human guards back to his feet. "The governor's in his quarters."

  Pahner followed the schematic, helpfully forwarded from Temu Jin, to the rooms marked on the map, and stopped outside the main doors.

  Julian stepped forward and swept the interior with deep radar. Since Roger's unpleasant interaction with the one-shot, they'd all started getting back into "stuff can hurt us even in armor" mode. It took some adjustment—the armor had been the absolute trump card in so many previous encounters—but they were getting there.

  "No high-density weapons," Julian reported as he swept the sensor wand back and forth. "A twelve-millimeter bead pistol. That's it."

  Pahner considered the door's controls for a moment, then shrugged and kicked at the memory plastic until he'd inflicted sufficient damage to encourage it to dilate. He stepped through it, then cursed as a bead round bounced off his armor.

  "Oh, this is lovely," he snarled.

  Julian followed him through and shook his head as he saw the naked, trembling boy in the middle of the bed. The boy—he couldn't have been much more than ten—had grave difficulty just holding up the heavy bead pistol, but his expression was almost as determined as it was terrified.

  "Put that thing down, you little idiot," Pahner told him severely over his armor's external speakers. "Even if you manage to hit me again, it'll only bounce off and hurt somebody. Where's the governor?"

  "I'm not telling you!" the boy yelled. "Ymyr told me not to tell you anything!"

  "Bathroom," Julian said, and crossed to the bed. He reached out and thumbed the bead pistol to "safe," then yanked it out of the kid's hands. "Just stay there for a second," he told him.

  Pahner strode across the bedroom. This time, he didn't bother kicking; he just put a bead cannon round through the upper part of the bathroom door after ensuring that his armored body was between the bed and any blow back that might occur.

  The bead went through the door, through the wall beyond, through a section of barracks wall, and then headed for the mountains in the distance as Pahner stepped through the door and picked up the naked fat man inside the bathroom by what was left of his hair.

  "Governor Mountmarch," he growled, tilting the official's chin up with the muzzle of the cannon, "it gives me distinct pleasure to place you under arrest for treason. We were going to add all sorts of additional items, but I think we'll just stop at pedophilia. You can only execute someone once."

  "Damn." Julian grimaced at the sudden yellow puddle on the floor. "Cleanup on Aisle Ten."

  * * *

  "That's it?" Roger leaned back in the chair at the head of the conference table. "That's the big fight for the spaceport we've been sweating for the last six months?" He shivered and looked over by the door. "Speaking of sweating, or, rather not, somebody turn the thermostat up."

  Pahner smiled. Then he tapped a control on the surface of the faux-teak table and an image of the planet blossomed above it.

  "Well, Your Highness, we had two hundred Vashin and Diasprans," he said, nodding at Fain and Rastar, who were looking notably lethargic. Julian had set the thermometer at about thirty-five degrees, which was on the low side for Mardukans. "We also had inside help from Agent Jin and almost a thousand Shin."

  "Who expect to be paid," the Gastan said. "I'll need various gee-gaws to placate the hill clans, but for me, I need weapons. Bead rifles, for preference."

  "Not a problem," Roger assured him. "We'll get a shipment set up as soon as possible."

  "We've got other needs, as well, Your Highness," Pahner pointed out. "The troops need to be refitted. We've got base stores on most of the materials, but they'll need to be set and the electronics fitted. That takes the manufactory."

  "We'll set up a schedule," Roger said. "I hope no one minds if outfitting the troops takes precedence?" He looked around at the shaking heads and gestures of negation. "Good. I want the Vashin and Diasprans outfitted as well."

  "Why?" Pahner asked. "I thought we'd agreed they were going to secure the port, not come with us?"

  "Well, they still need uniforms," Roger replied. "Proper, antiballistic uniforms—I want them running around in better armor than those steel breastplates. And the temperature control will keep them from going into hibernation every evening, too."

  "And there's the taking of this ship to consider," Rastar commented. "I know you think we can be of no use in that, but I have to differ.
Our place is in battle with the prince and his Marines."

  "Rastar," Roger said uncomfortably, "again, I thank you for the offer. But ships are . . . They're not good places for the untrained to be running around."

  "None the less," Rastar said, "it is our duty."

  "Well," Roger said after a moment's thought, "how about if you're backup? We're going to recover the assault shuttles, anyway. We can pack about sixty Mardukans into them, once we pull out all the extraneous gear. If we need you in the assault, we'll call you in. If we don't need you, sorry, you'd really just be in the way. Once we have a ship and you've had a chance to examine it, you'll understand."

  "That's a good point, Your Highness," Pahner put in. "Actually, they could get a little off-planet training by lofting the shuttles; there's plenty of fuel on the base. And the manufactory can be programmed to fit them with chameleon suits and standard helmets. They won't have all the features of our stuff, but enough. Coms at least, and basic tactical readouts. And thermostats.

  "Furthermore," he smiled thinly, "they can act as bodyguards for you, Your Highness. You realize, of course, that you're not going to be in on the ship assault."

  "Oh?" Roger said dangerously.

  "Oh," the captain replied. "You're Heir Primus now, Your Highness . . . and there is no Heir Secondary or Tertiary. You can't be risked. And, frankly, many of the points you brought up about the Mardukans hold for you. You're not trained in shipboard combat. I'll freely admit that—leaving aside such minor matters as the imperial succession, a little matter of a coup, the need to rescue your Lady Mother, and my personal oath to protect your life at all costs—I'd take you in a Mardukan jungle over a squad of Marines any day. But not in a ship. Different circumstances, different weapons—and you're not trained for either. And it's not a time to let 'natural ability' take its course."

  "So the Mardukans and I sit it out on the planet? While you and the Marines take the ship?"

  "That's the right plan, Your Highness," the sergeant major interjected.