by David Weber
“Fine. But get it done after you get some rest. Figure out the schedule for the next day or so, and then tuck it in. Clear?”
“Clear,” she said, then grinned. “I’ll follow anybody that tells me to knock off work.”
“I told you to cut back to twelve hours per day,” Roger said with another cheek twitch, “not to knock off. But now, tonight, I want you to get some rest. Maybe even a beer. Don’t make me send one of the guards.”
“Okay, okay. I get the point,” the former Saint said, then shook her head. “Six more damned centimeters.”
“A miss is as good as a mile.”
“And just what,” Beach asked, “is a ‘mile’?”
“No idea,” Roger answered. “But whatever it is, it’s as good as a miss.”
Roger continued down the passageway, just generally looking around, talking to the occasional repair tech, until he noticed a cursing monotone which had become more of a continuous, blasphemous mutter.
“Pock. Modderpocking Saint modderpocking equipment . . .”
Two short legs extended into the passage, waving back and forth as a hand scrabbled after the toolbox floating just out of reach.
“. . . get my pocking wrench, and t’en you gonna pocking work . . .”
Sergeant Julio Poertena, Bravo Company’s unit armorer when the company dropped on Marduk, was from Pinopa, a semitropical planet of archipelagoes, with one small continent, that had been settled primarily from Southeast Asia, and he represented something of an anomaly. Or perhaps a necessary evil; Roger was never quite certain how the Regiment had actually seen Poertena.
While the Empress’ Own took only the best possible soldiers, in terms of both fighting ability and decorum, the Regiment did allow some room in its mental framework for slightly less decorum among its support staff, who could be kept more or less out of sight on public occasions. Staff such as the unit armorer. Which had been fortunate for Poertena’s pre-Marduk career, since a man who couldn’t get three words out without one of them being the curse word “pock” would never have been allowed, otherwise.
Since their arrival on Marduk, however, Poertena had marched all the way across the world with the rest of them, conjuring miracles from his famed “big pocking pack” times beyond number. And, when miracles hadn’t been in the offing, he’d produced serious changes of attitude with his equally infamous “big pocking wrench.” More recently, as one of the Marines’ few trained techs, he’d been assisting with the ship repairs . . . in, of course, his own, inimitable fashion.
Roger leaned over and tapped the toolbox, gently, so that it drifted under the scrabbling hand on its counter-grav cushion, apparently all on its own. The hand darted into it and emerged dragging a wrench that was as long as an arm. Then, the hand—with some difficulty, and accompanied by more monotone cursing—hauled the giant wrench into the hole, and there was a series of clangs.
“Get in t’ere, modderpocker! Gonna get you to pocking—”
There was a loud zapping sound, and a yowl, followed by more cursing.
“So, t’at’s t’e way you gonna . . . !”
Roger shook his head and moved on.
“Get up there, you silly thing!” Roger shouted, and landed a solid kick behind the armored shield on the broad head.
Patty was a flar-ta, an elephant-sized, six-legged Mardukan packbeast, that looked something like a triceratops. Flar-ta had broad, armored shields on their heads and short horns, much shorter than those of the wild flar-ke from which they were clearly descended. Patty’s horns, however, were just about twice normal flar-ta length, and she obviously had more than her share of “wild” genes. She was a handful for most mahouts, and the Bronze Barbarians had long ago decided that the only reason Roger could ride her was that he was just as bloody-minded as the big omnivore. Her sides were covered in scars, some of which she’d earned becoming “boss mare” of the herd of flar-ta the Marines had used for pack animals. But she’d attained most of those scars with Roger on her back, killing the things, Mardukan and animal, that put them there.
Now she gave a low, hoarse bellow and backed away from the heavy cargo shuttle’s ramp. She’d had one ride in a shuttle already, and that was all she was willing to go for. The long, sturdy rope attached to the harness on her head prevented her from drawing too far away from the hatch, but the massive shuttle shuddered and scraped on its landing skids as she threw all six-legs into stubborn reverse.
“Look, Roger, try to keep her from dragging the shuttle back to Diaspra, okay?” Julian’s request was just a little hard to understand, thanks to how hard he was laughing.
“Okay, beast! If that’s how you’re gonna be about it,” Roger said, ignoring the NCO’s unbecoming enjoyment.
The prince slid down the side of the creature, jumped nimbly to the ground via a bound on a foreleg, and walked around her, ignoring the fact that she could squash him like a bug at any moment. He hiked up the ramp until he was near the front of the cargo compartment, then turned and faced her, hands on hips.
“I’m going up to the ship in this thing,” he told her. “You can either come along or not.”
The flar-ta gave a low, high-pitched sound, like a giant cat in distress, and shook her head.
“Suit yourself.”
Roger turned his back and crossed his arms.
Patty gazed at his back for a moment. Then she gave another squeal and set one massive forepaw on the shuttle ramp. She pressed down a couple of times, testing her footing, then slowly eased her way up.
Roger gathered in the slack in the head rope, pulling it steadily through the ring on the compartment’s forward bulkhead. When she was fully in the shuttle, he secured the rope, anchoring her (hopefully) as close to the centerline as possible. Then he came over to give her a good scratching.
“I know I’ve got a kate fruit around here somewhere,” he muttered, searching in a pocket until he came up with the astringent fruit. He held it up to her beak—carefully, she could take his hand off in one nip—and had it licked from his palm.
“We’re just going to take a little ride,” he told her. “No problem. Just a short voyage.” You could tell a flar-ta anything; they only knew the tone.
While he was soothing her, Mardukan mahouts had gathered around, attaching chains to her legs and harness. She shifted a few times in irritation as the chains clicked tight against additional anchoring rings, but submitted to the indignity.
“I know I haven’t been spending much time with you, lately,” Roger crooned, still scratching. “But we’ll have lots of time on the way to Althar Four.”
“What the hell are you going to do with her aboard ship?” Julian asked as he entered the compartment through the forward personnel hatch and picked up a big wicker basketful of barleyrice. He set it under Patty’s nose, and she dipped in, scooping up a mouthful of the grain and then spraying half of it on the cargo deck.
“Put her in hold two with Winston,” Roger answered, using a stick to reach high enough to scratch the beast’s neck behind the armored shield. The big, gelded flar-ta was even larger than Patty, but much more docile.
“Let’s hope she doesn’t kick open the pressure door,” Julian grumbled, but that, at least, was a false issue. The cargo bay pressure doors were made out of ChromSten, the densest, strongest, heaviest alloy known to man . . . or any other sentient species. Even the latches and seals were shielded by too much metal for Patty to demolish.
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Roger said. “Feeding her now. That might be.”
“Not as much as feeding the civans,” Julian muttered.
“Quit that!” Honal slapped the civan on its muzzle as it tried to take a chunk out of his shoulder. It was never wise to allow one of the ill-tempered, aggressive riding beasts to forget who was in charge, but he understood why it was uneasy. The entire ship was vibrating.
Cargo was being loaded—lots of cargo. There were flash-frozen coll fish from K’Vaern’s Cove, kate fruit and
dianda from Marshad, barleyrice from Diaspra and Q’Nkok, and flar-ta, atul and basik—both live examples and meat—from Ran Tai, Diaspra, and Voitan. There were artifacts, for decoration and trade, from Krath, along with gems and worked metals from the Shin. All of it had been traded for, except the material from the Krath. In the Krath’s case, Roger had made an exception to his belief that it was generally not a good idea to exact tribute and simply landed with a shuttle and ordered them to fill it to the deckhead. He was still bitterly angry over their attempt to use Despreaux as one of their “Servants of the God”—sentient sacrifices to be butchered living and then eaten—and it showed. As far as he was concerned, if all of their blood-splattered temple/slaughterhouses were stripped of statuary and gilding, so much the better.
Honal couldn’t have agreed more with his human prince, except, perhaps, for that bit about “not a good idea” where tribute was concerned. But he understood perfectly how the continuous rumble of the loading, not to mention the strange smells of the damaged ship and the odd light from the overheads, combined to make the civan, never the most docile of beasts at any time, nervous. And when civan got nervous, they tended to want to spread it around. Generally by making anyone around them afraid for their lives.
Civan were four-meter tall, bipedal riding beasts that looked something like small tyrannosaurs. Despite their appearance, they were omnivorous, but they did best with a diet that included some meat. And they were often more than willing to add a rider’s leg or arm to that diet. On the other hand, they were always willing to add an enemy’s face or arm to the menu, which made them preeminent cavalry mounts. If you could get them to distinguish friend from foe, that was.
The Vasin were experts at creating that distinction, which had made them the most feared cavalry on the Diaspran side of the main continent of Marduk. Up to the coming of the Boman, that was.
The Boman had been a problem for generations, but it was only in the last few years that they’d organized and increased in numbers to the point of becoming a real threat. The Vasin lords, descendents of barbarians who had themselves swept down from the north only a few generations ahead of the Boman, had been established as a check on the fresh barbarian invasion from the northern Plains. They’d been paid in tribute from the more civilized areas—city-states like Sindi, Diaspra, and K’Vaern’s Cove—to prevent people like the Boman from causing mischief to the south.
But when the Boman had combined under their great chief, Kny Camsan, they’d swept the severely outnumbered Vasin cavalry from the field in waves of infantry attacks. The fact that the Vasin cities’ food supplies had been systematically sabotaged (for reasons which had, presumably, made sense to his own warped thinking) by the particularly megalomaniacal ruler of Sindi, one of the cities they were supposed to be defending, had effectively neutralized the Vasin’s traditional strategy for dealing with that sort of situation. With their starving garrisons unable to stand the sieges which usually outlasted the Boman’s ability to maintain their cohesion, the Vasin castles and fortified cities had been overwhelmed, their garrisons and citizens slaughtered to the last babe in arms. And after that, the Boman had continued on to conquer Sindi and put its miscalculating ruler and his various cronies to death in the approved, lingering Boman style.
They undoubtedly would have destroyed K’Vaern’s Cove and the ancient city of Diaspra, as well, but for the arrival of Roger’s forces. The Marines’ core of surviving high-tech gear and their thousands of years of military experience and “imported” technology—pike formations, at first, and then rifles, muskets, artillery, and even black powder bombardment rockets—had managed to hold together an alliance against the Boman and break them in the heart of their newly conquered citadel of Sindi.
The entire occupied area had been recovered, with the Boman forces scattered after hideous casualties and either forced to resettle under local leadership or driven back across the northern borders. Even the Vasin castles, what was left of them, had been retaken. The last Boman remnants had been driven out as soon as the humans took the spaceport and, reassured that there were no Saints around, could use their combat shuttles and heavy weapons against the barbarians.
Honal and Rastar could have returned to their homes. But one look at the ruined fortifications, the homes they’d grown up in and in which their parents, families, and friends had died, was enough. They’d returned to the spaceport with Roger and turned their backs upon the past. The Vasin—not only the force Honal and Rastar had led out of the ruins of Therdan to cover the evacuation of the only women and children to survive the city’s fall, but all that had been gathered from all of their scattered people’s cities—were now surrogates of Prince Roger MacClintock, heir apparent to the Throne of Man. Most of the survivors remained on Marduk, relocated to new homes near Voitan and provided with locally produced Imperial technology to ensure their survival and well being. But Rastar’s personal troops were committed to the personal service of the human who had made their survival as a people possible. Where Roger went, they went. Which currently meant to another planet.
Honal had to admit that if it weren’t for the circumstances which made leaving possible—his entire family was dead, as well as Rastar’s—he would have felt only pleased anticipation at the prospect of following Roger. He’d always had a bit of the wanderlust, probably inherited from his nomadic forefathers, not to mention his Boman tribute-bride mother. And the chance to see another planet was one very few Mardukans had been given.
On the other hand, it meant getting the civan settled aboard a starship. It had been bad enough on those cockleshell boats they’d used to cross the Western Ocean, but starships were even worse, in a way.
For one thing, there was that constant background thrum. He was told it was from the fusion plants—whatever they were—that fed power to the ship, and that they’d been charging the “capacitors” for the “tunnel drive” (more odd words) for the last two days. And the gravity was different from Marduk’s. It was lighter, if anything, which allowed for some interesting new variations on combat training. And, like most of the Mardukans, Honal had developed a positive passion for the game of “basketball.” The humans, on the other hand, had insisted that the Mardukans had to use baskets which were mounted at two and a half times regulation height the instant they saw the Mardukan players soaring effortlessly through two-meter jump shots in the reduced gravity. But if the Mardukans enjoyed the lighter gravity, the civan didn’t like it—not at all, at all. And they were taking out their dislike on their grooms and riders.
Honal looked around the big hold at the other riders settling the civan in their stalls. Those stalls had been custom-made by the “Class One Manufacturing Plant” which had been shipped from the spaceport to Voitan. They were large enough for the civan to pace around in, or lie down to sleep, and strongly made from something called “composite fibers.” And there were attachment points on the floor—the deck—of the hold, to which the structures had been carefully secured.
The stalls were also roofed, and much of the material the civan were going to be eating on the voyage was stuffed into the vast area above them. Huge containers of barleyrice and beans had been hoisted into the area and stacked in tiers. There was water on tap in several spots, and arrangements had been made to dispose of the civan’s waste. He’d been told that human ships occasionally had to move live cargo, and from the looks of things, they’d figured out how to do it with the normal infernal human ingenuity.
An open area on the inner side of the hold had been fenced off to provide space in which they could work the civan. It was big enough for only a few of the beasts to be exercised or trained at once, but it was better than they’d managed on the ships of the Crossing, where the only exercise choice had been to let them swim alongside the ships for short periods. Still, with only one working area available, the grooms and riders were going to be working around the clock to keep them in decent shape.
The clock. That was another thing that took get
ting used to. The Terran day, which the ship maintained, was only two-thirds as long as Marduk’s day. So just about the time it felt like early afternoon, the ship lights dimmed to “nighttime” mode. He’d already noticed the way it affected his own sleep, and he was worried about how the civan would react.
Well, they’d make it, or they wouldn’t. He loved civan, but he’d come to the conclusion that there were even more marvelous transportation options waiting beyond Marduk’s eternal overcast. He’d lusted after the humans’ shuttles from the instant he’d seen them in flight, and he’d been told about, and seen pictures of, the “light-flyers” and the “stingships” available on Old Earth. He wondered just how much they cost . . . and what he was going to be earning as a senior aide to the Prince. A lot, he hoped, because assuming they survived for him to collect his pay, he was bound and determined to get himself a light-flyer.
“How’s it going?” a voice asked, and he looked up as Rastar appeared at his shoulder.
“Not bad,” Honal replied, raising a warning hand to the civan as he sensed the lips drawing back from its fangs and its crest folding down. “About as well as can be expected, in fact.”
“Good.” Rastar nodded, a human gesture he’d picked up. “Good. They think they’ll finish loading in a few hours. Then we’ll find out if the engines really work.”
“Won’t that be fun?” Honal said dryly.
“Engaging phase drive—” Amanda Beach drew a deep breath and pressed a button “—now.”
At first, the image of the planet below seemed unchanged on the bridge viewscreens. It was just the same slowly circling, blue-and-white ball it had always been. But then the ship began to accelerate, and the ball began to dwindle.