March to the Stars

by David Weber

  "Prepare for lift," Dobrescu called over the all-hands circuit. "Helmets on! You sc—Mardukans get ready. You're going to feel realll heavy. Three, two, one . . ."

  "Just hang on, Nimashet," Roger whispered. "Just hang on. . . ."

  Four Marine assault shuttles, containing the Mardukan contingent of the Basik's Own, lifted skyward on pillars of flame.

  * * *

  "All units, hold what you've got," Pahner called. "The cavalry is on the way."

  "Satan, protect us," Kosutic snapped as a team of commandos rolled across the corridor. She winged one, but the other three got away. "We're getting outmaneuvered and outshot, Captain."

  "I've noticed," Pahner said calmly. "Suggestions?"

  "Let Poertena and me take it to them," Kosutic said. "Having a mobile force will force them to react."

  "I'll have a mobile force here in—" He consulted his suit. "Seven minutes."

  "Seven minutes is a lonnng time, Armand."

  Pahner sighed and nodded.

  "That it is."

  * * *

  "Aaaahhh!"

  "Oh, calm down, Rastar," Roger grunted. The shuttles still had the extra hydrogen tanks installed, and the plotted intercept had been calculated based upon that almost limitless fuel supply. So they'd lifted at three gravities and would hit a DV-Max of almost seven. For Roger and the pilots, that was simply very unpleasant. For the Mardukans, who had never experienced more than a couple of gravities during their limited micro-gravity familiarization flights, it was a nightmare.

  They'd put all of them through at least one lift, but nothing like this. The humans had managed to convince themselves that there was no conceivable situation in which the Mardukans would actually be used for a combat assault, so they hadn't subjected them to the real stresses of such a launch. And now the Mardukans, and their allies, were paying the price for that complacent gentleness.

  "All hands, remember, crunch!" Roger gasped. "Squeeze your stomach like you're taking a dump, but plug your butt." He glanced over at the telltales. "There's only another . . . three minutes."

  * * *

  "I hate freefall," St. John (M) said as he hugged the hull of the ship.

  Their EVU packs were gone, and the two Marines were now flat on their faces behind a tiny exterior catwalk. The first emplacement, a missile launcher, had been undefended. But by the time they made it to the second and last, a heavy plasma cannon, the Saints had suffered a rush of common sense and sent one of their few "free" heavy weapons to protect it. The ship-to-ship cannon itself couldn't depress far enough to engage the Marines, or they'd already have been reduced to constituent atoms, but the heavy bead gun that had popped out of the firing port had them well and truly pinned. Because of the angle it had, they couldn't even back up and swing around.

  "Mom always said we'd come to a bad end," St. John (J) said.

  "Don't go all heroic on me, Bro," Mark said. "There's got to be a smart way out of this."

  "In about thirty seconds, the prince is going to come over the horizon, Mark." John readied his plasma cannon. "So you've got exactly twenty seconds to figure something out."

  "Oh, that's not hard," Mark said . . . and stood up.

  The first bead took him in the left arm. The heavy projectile smashed the ChromSten armor like tissue paper, severing the limb just above the elbow in a spray of gas and body liquids.

  "Pock, not again," he gasped as he aimed his cannon one-handed at the base of the defensive platform and locked the trigger back.

  * * *

  "Pollution," Giovannuci whispered as he turned away from the display. The armored form had taken three bead rounds before the plasma platform went up, but it was still firing. Whoever it was had to be dead. But he kept firing until Emerald Dawn's last space defenses turned into floating bits of wreckage.

  "What does it take to kill these people? Who the fuck are they?"

  "Sir," his com tech said, "you have got to hear this."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  "Saint ship, this is His Highness Prince Roger MacClintock. Cease resistance to this legal boarding, and you will be detained for eventual repatriation as prisoners of war. Continue your resistance, and you'll be considered unlawful combatants under the laws of war. In two minutes, I will be performing a forced boarding with the remainder of Prince Roger's Own. You have until then to comply."

  * * *

  "Is there any indication which shuttle that's coming from?"

  "Negative, Colonel Giovannuci. It's being rebroadcast from all four."

  "Pity," Emerald Dawn's commander murmured, then shrugged. "Put me on."

  * * *

  "Approaching shuttles, be aware that the prince is dead. He was killed in a shipwreck. So you're not him."

  Roger looked at the communicator and shrugged.

  "Believe what you will, but the report of my demise was exceedingly exaggerated. One minute, twenty seconds."

  * * *

  "If we surrender, they'll probably do what they say," Beach said over the discrete command channel. "These can't be jackers. Only Imperial Marines are this precise. Its Empies, all right."

  "And that means it might be the prince," Colonel Giovannuci mused. "But it doesn't really matter. If we surrender and they repatriate us, the clerics will send us to the wall. The only real choice is to win."

  He considered the situation, regarding the monitors covering the three main fights. He knew that Beach, like most naval officers assigned to SpecOps, resented the tradition which put Army officers in command of the ships assigned to them. He was even prepared to admit—privately—that the Navy's arguments against the practice might have a point when it came to naval actions. But this was his sort of fight, not Beach's, and he thought about his options for a moment longer, then looked up at the commando lieutenant at his elbow.

  "I don't like them holding the Bridge passage. I want some freedom of movement. Take some of the Bridge guards and work around to the other side of them. Then we'll try to nutcracker them between us—clear them out and get ourselves some room to maneuver. While you get into position, I'll be dealing with this pompous oaf."

  * * *

  "Prince Roger, or whoever you are, thanks for the offer. But, no. I think we'll take our chances."

  Roger shrugged again and flipped the schematic to show the approach vectors.

  "Have it your way. See you in a few minutes." He changed frequencies and nodded at the image of Fain that appeared on the monitor. "Captain, when we dock, send one platoon to the Bridge, one to the Armory, and one to Engineering."

  "As you command, Your Highness," the Diaspran said.

  "I'll be going to the Bridge. I recommend that you take one of the other locations." Roger turned to the Vashin who shared the compartment and waved a hand. "Rastar, I want your guys to head for the boat bays, but other than that, just spread out and slow down these Saints that are trying to sneak their way to the Armory. Send one unit to Captain Pahner, though, for him to use as a reserve."

  "Okay," Rastar said as the acceleration finally came off. "That's a relief," he added with a sigh of bliss as the shuttle changed to freefall.

  "Don't get used to it," Roger advised . . . just as the deceleration hit.

  "Aaaaaaahhhh . . ."

  * * *

  "Colonel, we're getting killed down here," Beach said. "I've slipped a few people through to the Armory, but they're just making up for our losses. We're stalemated."

  She looked at her schematic and shook her head with an unheard snarl.

  "And we've got somebody moving around. I just lost a team by Hold Three."

  "I know," Giovannuci replied, watching his own displays. The internal systems hadn't been designed to handle a pitched battle, but he'd been able to use the monitors to follow at least some of the action. Not that very many of them were left; the invaders had been systematically shooting them out. He could more or less tell where they'd been from the breadcrumb trail of smashed pickups in their wake, but not, genera
lly, where they currently were.

  "The bad news is that they're about to receive reinforcements," he told his executive officer. "We need to break the stalemate before that happens, or at least to get some mobility going for us."

  "Suggestions are welcome," Beach said tartly.

  "About the only thing that might work is hitting one of the defense points and breaking out," the colonel said. "It will only take a couple of minutes to get set. We'll hit them simultaneously in five minutes."

  "Works for me," Beach agreed laconically. "And I hope to hell it works for all of us. If the Empies don't kill us, the clerics will."

  * * *

  Eva Kosutic slid along the passage, using her turned-up audio and movement sensors to search for hostiles . . . and trying very, very hard not to let anyone on the other side know where she was. The majority of the Saints were in light body armor and skin suits, so fairly light weaponry was capable of penetrating it with carefully aimed fire. In her case, she'd loaded one of her dual magazines with low-velocity penetrator rounds. Designed to avoid damage to important systems in shipboard actions, they left a very small hole in their victim and didn't tumble or expand upon entry. But they were capable of defeating light armor points and portions of helmets. And for Eva Kosutic, that was all that was required.

  Her sensors told her there was another group moving along the same passage, trying to infiltrate past the various Marine groups to the Armory. She looked around, and then lifted herself into an overhead position, holding herself in place against the deckhead with one hand and both legs planted.

  * * *

  "I'm going to send all these Pollution-damned Empies straight to Hell," Sergeant Leustean said. The commando NCO twisted his hand on the foregrip of his bead rifle and snarled. "Straight to Hell."

  "Well, don't get us all kilt doin' it," Corporal Muravyov replied.

  "We'll be doing the killing!" the sergeant snapped . . . just as the sergeant major opened fire.

  The first three shots entered just below their targets' helmets, penetrating the light armor on the relatively undefended patch at the top of the neck and severing the cervical vertebrae. But by the third shot, the team was reacting, the highly trained commandos spinning and diving for cover. But good as they were, they didn't stand much of a chance up against a suit of combat armor, and an even more highly trained Imperial bodyguard who'd just gone through an advanced course in combat survival.

  Kosutic dropped to the deck and walked over to prod the bodies.

  "Not today, Sergeant." She sighed, then glanced at her telltales. More movement. "Not today."

  * * *

  Roger double-checked the seal, then hit the hatch release, letting Rastar and two other Vashin precede him through the still-smoking hole in the ship's side.

  Even freighters used ChromSten for their hulls. The material was expensive, making up a sizable fraction of the total cost of the ship. But given that it was proof against almost all varieties of space radiation, and an excellent system to protect against micro-meteor impacts, it was worth every credit.

  Freighters did not, however, have warship-thickness ChromSten. The material on the outside of a freighter was generally less than two microns thick, whereas a warship's might be up to a centimeter. And it was that difference which had permitted the thermal lances on the assault shuttles to eat through the hull in less than three seconds.

  The point Roger had chosen for his hull breaching was one of the vessel's innumerable holds, and its interior was filled with shipping canisters of every conceivable size and shape. Roger took a look around, shrugged, and waved the Vashin forward. Somewhere, there was a battle to be joined.

  * * *

  Rastar tapped the controls of the sealed portal, but it was clear that the hatch out of the hold was locked.

  "I'll fix that, Your Highness," one of his Vashin said, lifting his plasma gun.

  Rastar backpedaled furiously, but he still caught the fringes of the blast as the door shattered outwards.

  "Watch those things!" he shouted, then keyed the radio to transmit as the luckless cavalryman flew back from the doorway, most of his mass converted to charcoal. "Watch those things. They're not carbines, for Valan's sake!" He looked around and then down at his suit. "Why is the suit hardening?"

  * * *

  "Damned scummies," Dobrescu growled as he clambered past the prince. Roger could barely hear him over the shrill wail of escaping atmosphere. The blast from the plasma cannon and the resulting overpressure had popped part of the temporary seals between the shuttle's hull and the hole blasted through Emerald Dawn's skin.

  "Watch your fire!" the warrant officer shouted over the Vashin frequency.

  "Can we do anything about it?" Roger asked.

  "Not unless I pull away and reseal," Dobrescu replied sourly. "We might as well wait until we repair the hole."

  "Which brings up an interesting point. Do we have anyone who knows how to weld ChromSten?"

  "Fine time to ask now, Your Highness," Dobrescu said with a harsh laugh.

  "We weren't supposed to have been facing this much resistance," the prince pointed out.

  "Begging your pardon, Prince Roger," one of the Vashin said as he trotted over through the increasing vacuum. "Prince Rastar's compliments, and we have no idea which way to go."

  Roger chuckled and gestured at Dobrescu.

  "Get going, Doc. Raise as much hell as you can while doing the minimum damage. Keep them from reinforcing the Bridge, Engineering, and the Armory. Pay attention to the shuttle bays, especially."

  "Got it," Dobrescu acknowledged, adjusting his carbine sling. "Where are you going?"

  "Bridge," Roger replied as four Vashin fell in with him. He arranged them so that the sole plasma gunner was in front of him. The others' bead cannons were loaded with shot rounds and couldn't penetrate his armor.

  "Now we find out if I'm a genius, or an idiot."

  * * *

  Giovannuci flipped through screens, trying to get a handle on the battle. He was sure all four of the shuttles had managed to breach and board, and one was visible on an exterior monitor. Unfortunately, the holds were poorly covered at the best of times, and so far he hadn't been able to find out how many of the Marine reinforcements had come aboard.

  He touched another control, then looked up as he heard Lieutenant Anders Cellini, his tactical officer, gasp.

  "Sir," the tac officer said in a strangled voice. "Screen four-one-four."

  Giovannuci keyed the monitor for Hold Three and froze in shock.

  "Are those what I think they are, Sir?" Cellini asked with a pronounced edge of disbelief.

  "They're scummies," Giovannuci replied in a voice of deadly calm. "With plasma and bead cannons. That resource-sucking, inbred cretin gave scummies plasma cannon. And he brought them aboard my ship!"

  "Well, at least it's not more Empie Marines." The tac officer sounded as if he were trying very hard to find a bright side to look upon, and Giovannuci barked a harsh, humorless almost-laugh.

  "You're joking, right?" he snapped. "Empie Marines would at least know not to blow holes in the side of the ship; that hold is depressurized."

  * * *

  When Harvard saw the yellow light above the hatch, he knew that volunteering to "help out" had been a bad idea. Not that he'd had a lot of choice. There were so few Marines left that, in the end, the prince had shanghaied every human he thought he could trust to assist the Mardukans. Now technicians from the port, and even complete civilians like Mansul, were running around the interior of a Saint Q-ship, trying to keep the scummies from killing themselves.

  It was turning out to be a difficult assignment.

  "The button won't open the door," Honal snarled, hitting the circuit again.

  "Uh . . ."

  For entirely understandable safety considerations, Harvard had wedged himself into the middle of the scummies' formation. Unfortunately, this meant he couldn't reach the Vashin nobleman before the light dawned.

/>   "Aha!" Honal said. "The emergency release."

  "Honaaalll!"

  It was too late. Before the human could get the Vashin's attention, Honal had flipped out the emergency unlock lever and thrown it over.

  As Honal would have realized, had he been able actually to read the information displayed on the lock-assembly, the far compartment wasn't totally depressurized. It was, however, at a much lower atmospheric pressure than the near side of the hatch. The result was a rather strong suction.

  Honal was unable to let go of the hatch before it flew backwards, dragging him with it. However, the physics of its opening, rather than spinning him to slam into the bulkhead, combined with the blast of wind at his back to pick him up and pitch him violently down the passage.

  All that Mansul could hear was a short, cut-off cry, the clang of the hatch hitting the stops, and a crunching sound. Then he was carried along by the stampede as the Therdan contingent rushed to the aid of its commander.

  Harvard found him lying against a piece of radiometric monitoring gear, crumpled and twisted like a pretzel. His head was tucked under one armpit, and one of his legs was thrown over backwards, touching the deck.

  "So, Harvard Mansul," he croaked. "What does a yellow light mean?"

  * * *

  "You're joking, right?" Beach had lost contact with Ucelli and was trying to round up more stragglers to feed into the cauldron around the Armory. She was also hunting Empies. A team had been ambushed somewhere around here, and she was determined to track down the Marines responsible. She'd sent Ucelli to block the passage leading up from Cargo Main, but now she wished she'd kept him around. The little gunslinger would've been good backup for facing down scummies. Although . . . maybe not scummies armed with plasma cannon.

  "No, we're down to the wire, here," the colonel said. "If we can't get more people armed up and armored, I'm going to have to punch the ship."