by David Weber
Roger panted and looked at the next scummy in line. Already, three bodies had been pulled out of the de facto arena, and he was beginning to learn the rules. The line he’d drawn was a safe point. As long as he stayed on “his” side of it, they wouldn’t attack, and if they were on the other side of their line, he couldn’t attack in turn. However, the one time he’d waited too long to come out to meet an opponent, they’d gotten agitated. Obviously, he couldn’t just sit and wait for rescue.
He didn’t look around as he heard running feet behind him, but from the stiffening of some of the Mardukans, it had to be a Marine.
“There’s a line behind me on the ground. Don’t cross it!”
“Yes, Sir.” He recognized Hooker’s voice and hoped the angry little Marine would keep her cool. “Armor’s on its way.”
Roger nodded and flexed his shoulders. He’d long since dropped his rucksack, ammunition harness, and anything else that threatened to weigh him down. His sparring with Cord had taught him much that had, so far, kept him alive. As a mass, these scummies might be the most terrifying thing on this part of the planet, but as individuals, they were almost woefully ill-trained. On the other hand, it had been a long day already, and he was getting tired.
“Tell them to get here fast, but keep their cool,” he said as another set of boots pounded up behind him. Then he looked at the scummy. “Come on, you four-armed bastard. I’m getting bored.”
Julian passed the Mardukan shaman, hurrying towards Roger’s position. The NCO wasn’t sure exactly what the old scummy was saying, but it sounded a lot like cursing. The old geezer, who was fast enough on open ground, was having a bunch of trouble with the fallen trees, which was obviously the reason Roger hadn’t included him on this little jaunt.
“Glad to see you’re as happy with him as we are,” the Marine yelled over his external speakers as he thundered by.
“I’ll kill him,” Cord snarled. “Asi or no asi, I swear I will!”
“Okay by me, but you’ll have to get in line,” Julian said as he passed out of sight. “A long line.”
“I’m gonna kill him,” Pahner said, almost calmly, as Bilali and the stretcher team pounded into view.
“Bilali?” Kosutic asked rubbing her ear.
“Roger. Maybe Bilali, too.”
The team leader marched up to the company commander and saluted.
“Sir, Sergeant Bilali reporting with party of one.”
“And that one isn’t the Prince, I see,” Pahner said coldly. “I am far too enraged at the moment to deal with this. Get out of my sight.”
“Yes, Sir.” The sergeant walked over to where the medic was working on Gelert.
“Don’t go ballistic, Armand,” Kosutic whispered. “We have a long way to go.”
“I keep telling myself that,” Pahner replied. “And I’m trying not to. But if we lose the Prince, finishing the journey is next to pointless.”
Kosutic could only nod at that.
* * *
Roger stepped back across his line and turned around.
“Who is the leader here?” he asked.
Over a hundred scummies had gathered to watch the contest by now. So far, Roger had won each match handily. A gouge on his helmet indicated the closest anyone had come to hitting him, and several of his own supporters—including Julian and his armored companions—had assembled with Hooker behind him. So far, the scummies had left his cheering section strictly alone while they concentrated on the main event.
A handful of seconds passed, and then a single Mardukan stepped carefully onto the blood-soaked ground. He was older than most of the others, much scarred, and wore a necklace of horns around his neck.
“I am the senior tribe chief. I am Leem Molay, chief of the Kranolta Du Juqa.”
“Well,” Roger flipped the sword sideways to flick off the blood pooling on it, “I am Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock, of the House MacClintock, Heir Tertiary to the Throne of Man. And I finally have enough firepower to turn your pissant little tribe into meat for the atul.” He took a rag from Hooker and began wiping down his blade as Cord came scrambling across the fallen tree trunks at last. “I don’t intend to kill you one by one until I’m exhausted, and I don’t intend to stand here jawing until darkness. So I propose a truce.”
“Why should we let you live?” the chief scoffed.
“Julian?” Roger hadn’t been able to see who was in the suits, and he’d long before turned his radio off. Listening to Pahner bitch had gotten on his nerves.
“Yep,” one of the suits answered over its external speakers.
“Leem Molay, how many of your warriors do you want slaughtered to prove that you should let us walk away?” Roger sheathed his cleaned sword and took his reloaded grenade launcher from Pentzikis, but his icy eyes never left the Kranolta chieftain.
“Let me ask it this way,” he went on calmly, tilting his head to the side. “Which half do you want us to kill to prove our point?”
“If you could truly kill us all, you would!” the chief retorted. “We are the Kranolta! Even Voitan could not stand before us! We will wipe your pissant little tribe from these lands!”
Roger inhaled sharply through his nostrils. The stench of dead Mardukans barely affected him at this point; he was far too deep into that dark world of battle.
“Watch carefully, old fool,” he hissed.
The impromptu challenge matches had occurred on an open spot on the southern edge of the main battle zone. The Mardukans, for the most part, had been appearing from the northern woodline, so the southern one would make a better neutral target zone.
“Sergeant Julian.” The prince gestured to the south. “Demonstration, please.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the squad leader replied over his external speakers. He’d directed the response at the Kranolta, and his toot automatically translated it into the local dialect. “Gronningen, make these fine people a clearing to bury their dead in.”
“Aye,” Gronningen acknowledged, and turned to the south. “Shaman Cord, you might want to cover your ears.”
The M-105 was a much heavier system than the M-98. That meant that, despite the all-pervasive, humid dampness of the jungle, the first shot from the plasma cannon left a trail of flickering fires on a ruler-straight line from the big Asgardian to the plasma bolt’s impact on a tree in the middle of the area Roger had indicated. Where it shattered a divot into the woods.
The cannon’s “CRAAACK!” was the loudest sound any of the Mardukans, even the survivors of the first brush with the company, had ever heard. It set their ears ringing, and the thermal pulse dried the surface of their mucus-covered skin, burning several of them painfully. And that was just from the secondary effects.
Twenty meters of the jungle giant which had been the gunner’s target simply vanished as a lightning bolt carved from the heart of a star devoured it. The massive trunk shredded explosively for another five to ten meters above the impact point, and splinters longer than Roger was tall shrieked through the air far more lethally than any Kranolta javelin. The top of the tree flipped away into the burning jungle beyond, and the vegetation around it was turned into a finely divided, drifting ash surrounded by a dozen other burning, fallen trees.
And then Gronningen fired another round. And a third.
With those three rounds, he’d cleared a section of jungle fifty meters on a side and ringed with smoldering vegetation. Within that semicircle of hellfire, the ground steamed and smoked.
After a moment’s stunned reflection, the chieftain turned from the destruction and asked the question.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t intend to fight my way into Voitan. We walk into the city unmolested, or we kill every scummy in sight. Your choice.”
“And on the morrow?” Molay was beginning to understand Puvin Eske’s objections to this attack.
“On the morrow, you do your damnedest to kill all of us. Good luck. You had your chance to kill me as
an individual . . . and couldn’t. I suggest that you go home. If you do, we . . . I, Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock, will let you live.”
The Kranolta chieftain laughed, although, even to himself, the sound was hollow. Or perhaps it was only the ringing in his ears.
“You think much of yourselves, humans. We are the Kranolta! I myself was one of the first over the walls of Voitan! Don’t think to impress me with your threats!”
“We are The Empress’ Own,” Roger replied in a voice of iron, “and The Empress’ Own does not know the meaning of failure.” He smiled grimly, baring his teeth in that way which bothered most species except humans. “We rarely know the meaning of mercy, either, so count your blessings that I’m willing to show it to you this once.”
The Mardukan glanced again at the flaming clearing and clapped his true-hands.
“Very well. We will let you go.”
“Unmolested,” Roger said. “To the city.”
“Yes,” the old Mardukan said. “And on the morrow, we will come, Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock. And the Kranolta will kill you all!”
“Then you’d better bring a bigger army!” Roger snarled, turning his back, and switched on his radio. “Julian, take the back door.”
“Oh, yeah,” the squad leader said. “Bet on it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Most of the company was already gone when Roger walked through the gates. The hill ascended through the ruined city to a citadel on the upper slope, and it was obviously there that Captain Pahner had decided to make his stand.
Not everyone had been sent on to the citadel, however. A security detachment consisting of most of Second Platoon covered the gates, and Pahner sat waiting on his mound of rubble.
Roger walked up and saluted the captain.
“I’m back,” he said, and Pahner shook his head slowly and spat out his gum at the prince’s feet.
“First of all, Your Highness, as you’ve pointed out to me time and again, you don’t salute me, I salute you.”
“Captain—”
“I won’t ask what you were thinking,” the Marine continued. “I know what you were thinking. And I will admit here and now that it has a certain romantic attraction. It will certainly play well to the newsfeeds when we get home.”
“Captain—”
“But it doesn’t play well to me,” Pahner snarled. “I’ve spent Marines like water to keep you alive, and having you throw that away on a stupid little gesture really pissed me off, Your Highness.”
“Captain Pahner—” Roger tried again, beginning to get angry.
“You wanna play games, Your Highness?” the officer demanded, finally standing up. The two were of a height, both of them nearly two meters, but Pahner was by far the more imposing, a modern Hercules in bulk and build.
“You wanna play games?” he repeated in a deadly quiet voice. “Fine. I’m a master of playing games. I resign. You’re the fucking company commander.” He tapped the prince on the forehead with one finger. “You figure out how to make it across this goddamned planet without running completely out of ammunition and troops.”
“Captain—” Roger was beginning to sound desperate.
“Yes, Sir, I’ll just toddle along behind. What the hell, there’s not a damn thing I can do anyway!” Pahner’s face was turning a truly alarming shade of red. “I am really, really pissed at Bilali, Your Highness. You know why?”
“Huh?” Roger was confused by the sudden non sequitur. “No, why? But—”
“Because he can’t forget he’s a goddamned Marine!” Pahner barked. “I was a Marine before his mother was born, but when I came to the Regiment the first time, do you know what they told me?”
“No. But, Captain—”
“They told me to forget about being a Marine. Because Marines have all sorts of great traditions. Marines always bring back their dead. Marines never disobey an order. Marines always recover the flag. But in The Empress’ Own, there’s only one tradition. And do you know what the tradition of your regiment is, Colonel?”
“No, I guess not, but, Captain—”
“The tradition is that there is only one task. Only one mission. And we’ve never failed at it. Do you know what it is?”
“To protect the Imperial Family,” Roger said, trying to get a word in edgewise. “But, Captain—”
“Do you think I liked leaving Gelert behind?!” the captain shouted.
“No, but—”
“Or Bilali, or Hooker, or, for God’s sake, Dobrescu? Do you think I liked leaving our only medic behind?”
“No, Captain,” Roger said, no longer even trying to rebut.
“Do you know why I was willing to lose those valuable people, troopers I’ve trained with my own hands, some of them for years? People I love? People that until recently you didn’t even realize existed?”
“No,” Roger said, finally really listening. “Why?”
“Because we have only one job: get you back to Imperial City alive. Until Crown Prince John’s kids reach their legal majority and Parliament confirms their place in the succession, you —God help us all—are third in line for the Throne of Man! And whether you believe it or not, your family is the only damned glue holding the entire Empire of Man together, which is why it’s our job—the Regiment’s job—to protect that glue at any cost. Anything that stands in the way of that has to be ignored. Anything!” the captain snarled. “That’s our mission. That’s our only mission. I thought about it, and determined that I couldn’t persuade them to retreat and abandon Gelert. But the company probably would have been lost if we’d settled into a meeting engagement on that ground. So I ran,” he said softly.
“I abandoned them to certain death, cut my losses, and beat feet. For one reason only. And do you know what that was?”
“To keep me alive,” Roger said quietly.
“So how do you think I felt when I turned around and you weren’t there? After sacrificing all those people? And finding out it was for nothing?”
“I’m sorry, Sir,” Roger said. “I didn’t think.”
“No,” Pahner snapped. “You didn’t. That’s just fine, even expected, in a brand new, wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant. The ones who survive by luck and the skin of their teeth learn to think, eventually. But I can’t take the chance on your not making it. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” Roger replied, looking at the ground.
“If we lose you, we might as well all cut our throats. You realize that?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Roger, you’d better learn to think,” the Marine said in a softer tone. “You’d better learn to think very quickly. I nearly took the entire company back out to get you. And we would all have died on that slope, because we couldn’t have extracted you and then withdrawn successfully. We would have died right here. All of us. Bilali and Hooker and Despreaux and Eleanora and Kostas and all the rest of us. You understand?”
“Yes.” Roger’s voice was almost inaudible and he was looking at the ground again.
“And whose fault would that have been? Yours, or Bilali’s?”
“Mine.” Roger sighed, and Pahner looked at him unblinkingly for several moments, then nodded.
“Okay. As long as we have that straight,” he said, and waited again until Roger nodded back.
“Colonel,” he went on then, without a smile, “I think it’s time we gave you another ‘hat.’ ” He reached out again and tapped the prince on the forehead once more, more gently this time. “I think you need to take over as Third Platoon leader, Colonel. I know it will be a step down in rank, but I really need a platoon leader over there. Are you up for it, Colonel?”
Roger took his gaze off the ground at last, looked up at him, and nodded with slightly misty eyes.
“I’ll try.”
“Very well, Lieutenant MacClintock. Your platoon sergeant is Gunnery Sergeant Jin. He’s an experienced NCO, and I think you could learn a lot from listening to
his advice. I remind you that platoon leader is one of the most dangerous jobs in the Corps. Keep your head down and your powder dry.”
“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.