Empire of Man

by David Weber

  “If we reach Voitan,” Cord said, deliberately, “we’ll have many places to defend. Not only should there still be walls in places, but the quarries behind the city offer numerous fortifiable spots.”

  “What do you think, Captain?” Roger asked, yawning. Everyone was exhausted, including him. He just needed to drive on.

  “I think that in the morning we pull out carefully, then make the fastest march possible to Voitan. We’ll pile the packs on the beasts again and force the pace. I doubt they expected us to cross the swamp here. They probably have a crossing place they use, and if they’ve begun to assemble to hit us, they’ll probably be assembling there. Unfortunately for them, we were too stupid to use the ‘good’ crossing.”

  “So we make a run for Voitan,” Kosutic said.

  “Right.” Pahner considered the situation for a moment. “If it’s as close as Cord thinks, then we should arrive by mid-afternoon.” The long Mardukan day would work in their favor for once.

  “And if it’s not?” Kosutic asked.

  “Then we will have exhausted ourselves for nothing,” Pahner told her grimly.

  Matsugae sampled the stew and gave the mahout who was stirring it a thumbs up. He walked on to where a Mardukan female was turning strips of meat battered with barleyrice meal on a large metal sheet over a fire. He pulled one of the strips off and blew on it to cool it enough to taste without burning his mouth. Again, he smiled and gave the cook a thumbs up.

  The captain had backed the camp up against the river, and the company had spent the remainder of the afternoon digging in and cleaning up. Matsugae, for his part, had spent the same time working hard to put together a decent meal for the first time in three days. Many of the swamp beasts had been lassoed or hooked and dragged to shore. Although there was good flesh all over the carcasses, there were three or four particularly good cuts, and with all the bodies floating in the river, the mahouts had ended up taking only the skins and the very best of the meat.

  Most of the mahouts were preparing the skins. The swamp beasts were fairly rare, and their skins brought a high price. The company, possibly Roger alone, had shot the cost of two or three pack beasts in one afternoon.

  Matsugae grinned. The mahouts had been picking up the skins of all the beasts that the company shot along the way. The captain had nearly offered them to the drovers as a free benefit, but Matsugae had convinced him not to do that. The mahouts were being paid a straight rate, just as they would for any caravan. The skins, however, even after processing, were the property of whoever shot the beasts they came from. Give the mahouts a bonus for their work, certainly, but the skins of those predators were valuable. The beasts that had harassed them would help pay the company’s way, and that gave the valet a simple sense of pleasure.

  The dog-lizard wandered into the outdoor kitchen and sniffed at the strips on the fire. The Mardukan female tending them shooed her away, so she wandered over to Matsugae, looking pitiful. The beast had grown steadily since Roger adopted it. It was nearly the size of a dalmatian now, and its growth showed no sign of slowing. In addition, its tail was thickening. The flar-ta, which were similar to the dog-lizard in many ways, stored up reserves in their tails, or so the mahouts claimed. Certainly, they were skinnier now than when the company had left Q’Nkok. Apparently, unlike the pack beasts, the journey had been good for the dog-lizard.

  Matsugae consulted his toot and smiled as he tossed the dog-lizard the last bit of damncroc tail. Nearly time for dinner.

  “Kostas, that was wonderful, as always.” A yawn interrupted Roger’s compliment, and he grimaced. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Your Highness,” Pahner said. “We’re all beat. I hope like hell we don’t get hit tonight. I don’t think Bravo of the Bronze could hold off a troop of Space Scouts tonight.”

  “I think you underestimate them, Captain,” O’Casey said. The chief of staff had begun to adjust to the brutal regimen of the trip, shedding fat and putting on muscle. When she got back to Imperial City, she intended to recommend shipwreck on a hostile planet full of carnivorous monsters and bloodthirsty barbarians as a sovereign method for attaining physical fitness. Now the former tutor smiled warmly. “Your troops have been just magnificent. Her Majesty will be incredibly proud when we finally get back.”

  “Well,” Pahner said, “we have a long way to go before we find out. But, thank you, Councilor. That means a lot to me, and it will actually mean something to the troopers as well. We don’t just fight for pay, you know.”

  Roger shook his head sleepily.

  “I never considered all the little stories around me all the time. Do you know Corporal Hooker’s first name?” Roger asked as he fed Dogzard a scrap of gristle from the damncroc.

  “Of course, Your Highness. Ima.”

  “She said her dad had a sick sense of humor,” the prince confirmed in a tone of outrage. “I offered to have him thrown out an airlock.”

  “He’s long dead,” Kosutic said, taking another fingerstrip of damncroc tail. “Snorted himself to death on dreamwrack.”

  “Ah,” Roger said with a nod. “And Poertena wanted to go to college on a swimming scholarship . . .”

  “ . . . but he got beat out in the finals,” Pahner finished. “There’s more to leadership than wearing the right tabs on your collar, Your Highness. Knowing the details of the troops is important, and for knowing the really intimate details . . .”

  “. . . you have sergeant majors and gunnery sergeants,” Kosutic said with a frown. “Andras’ wife was expecting when we left, and I doubt we’ll be back before she’s due. I don’t suppose it will matter one way or the other, though; we’re undoubtedly written off as dead.”

  “That . . . sucks,” O’Casey said.

  “Being a Marine sucks,” Pahner told her with a quiet smile. It was rare for the academic to swear.

  “Then why do you do it?” she asked.

  “It’s something I’m good at. Somebody has to do it, and better someone who’s good at it. Not everyone is.” The captain looked pensive for a moment. “It’s . . . bad, sometimes. When you realize that what you’re really good at is either killing other sentients in person or leading others in the killing of them. But everyone in the Regiment is an exceptional Marine. And reasonably presentable. And utterly loyal . . .”

  “But there’s more,” Kosutic said with a grin. “That describes a surprising number of Marines. And even a surprising number that can make it through RIP. It’s a big Corps, after all.”

  “Yes,” Pahner said, taking a sip of water, “there is more. Every member of The Empress’ Own has some odd skill that the selection board thought might conceivably be of use. You don’t get in if the only thing you know is what you’ve learned since Basic.”

  “I knew Poertena could swim that river,” Kosutic told the prince. “But I wasn’t about to tell him that I knew he was an Olympic-class swimmer,” she added with a laugh.

  “You mentioned Corporal Hooker,” Pahner said soberly. “Ima Hooker was an air car thief before a judge gave her a choice between the Marines and a long jail sentence.”

  “What the hell is she doing in The Empress’ Own?” O’Casey asked with a gasp as she choked on a mouthful of wine.

  “She can open and be driving an air car she’s never seen as fast as you can open your own and drive away with a key,” Kosutic said seriously. “If you think that’s not a skill the Empress might need someday, you’re sadly mistaken.”

  “She is also utterly loyal to the Empress,” Pahner told the chief of staff. “She actually has one of the most stable loyalty indexes I’ve ever seen. Better than yours, I might add, Ms. O’Casey. The Marines took her out of a hellish existence and gave her back her honor and purpose. She’s somehow transferred that . . . redemption to the person of the Empress. She’s definitely one of the ones who’s going to end up in Gold.”

  “How strange,” the academic murmured. She felt as if she’d stepped through the ancient Alice’s looking glass.


  “So what’s your skill, Captain?” Roger asked.

  “Ah, well.” The CO smiled as he leaned back in the camp chair. “They make exceptions for captains.”

  “He’s taught himself to be a pretty fair machinist, and he can rebuild an air car from the ground up,” Kosutic said with a grin at the captain. “You only thought they made an exception for you. He also does decent interior work.”

  “Hmph! Better than yours.”

  “What is yours, Sergeant Major?” O’Casey asked after a moment had passed and it was obvious that the sergeant major wasn’t going to be forthcoming.

  “Well, the main one is . . .” Kosutic paused and glared balefully at Pahner “. . . knitting.”

  “Knitting?” Roger looked at the grim-faced warrior, unable to keep the laugh completely out of his voice. “Knitting? Really?”

  “Yes. I like it, okay?”

  “It just seems so . . .”

  “Feminine?” O’Casey suggested.

  “Well, yeah,” the prince admitted.

  “Okay, okay.” Pahner grin. “Let me point out that it’s not just knitting. The Sergeant Major is from Armagh. She can take a hunk of wool, or anything similar, and make you an entire suit, given time.”

  “Oh,” Roger said. The planet Armagh was a slow-boat colony of primarily Irish descent. Like many slow-boat colonies, it had backslid after reaching its destination and stabilized at a preindustrial technology level before the arrival of the tunnel drive. And unfortunately, also like many, it had broken down into factional warfare. The arrival of the first tunnel drive ships and the subsequent absorption of the planet into the Empire of Man had reduced the blood feuds, but it hadn’t eliminated them. It had been suggested that nothing short of carpet bombing the surface with nukes and sowing it with salt would get the residents of Armagh to stop fighting amongst themselves. It was practically a genetic imperative.

  “Hey, it’s not that bad,” Kosutic protested. “You’re safer in downtown New Belfast than you are walking around in Imperial City. Just . . . stay out of certain pubs.”

  “Some other time, I’ll ask you what it was like being a priestess of the Fallen One on Armagh. Everywhere I turn there are fascinating stories like this,” Roger said. “It’s like taking off blinders.” He yawned and patted Dogzard on the head. “Get up, you ugly beast.” The sauroid lifted her red-and-black-striped head off his lap with a disturbed hiss and headed for the tent door. “Folks, I’m exhausted. I’m for bed.”

  “Yes,” Pahner said, standing up. “Long day tomorrow. We should all rest.”

  “Tomorrow,” Roger said, getting up to follow Dogzard.

  “Tomorrow,” O’Casey said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “We have found the nest of the basik outlanders!” Danal Far shouted. “Tomorrow we shall sweep down upon them and rid our lands of them forever! This land is ours!”

  The shaman clan-chief of the Kranolta raised his spear in triumph, and the horns of defeated enemies clattered against the steel shaft. It had been long years since the Kranolta gathered in anything like the numbers in this valley. The crushing of the invasion by these “humans” would be the high point of his time as clan-chief.

  “This land is ours!” the clan gathering echoed with a blare of horns. Many of them dated from the fall of Voitan, when the horns of champions had been common.

  “I wish to speak!”

  The statement took no one by surprise, and Danal Far grunted silently in laughter as the limping warrior stepped to the front. Let the young fool say his piece.

  Puvin Eske was now the “chief” of the Vum Dee tribe of the Kranolta. As such, he was the representative of the tribe which had supplied the majority of the mercenaries to the N’Jaa of Q’Nkok. But now his tribe consisted only of many hungry females and a handful of survivors of their ambush of the human caravan. The tribe would be gone before the next full moon; the jungle and its competitors would see to that.

  Puvin Eske was half the age of most of the leaders gathered for the council. Many of them had participated in the battles to take Voitan, long, long ago, and they remembered those days of high glory for the clan clearly. Few of them, however, saw the truth of the clan as it was, despite their complaints over the loss of spirit among their younger warriors.

  “We face a grave decision,” the young chieftain said. Only a few days before, he would have been far too hesitant, too aware of his youth, to speak in opposition to the clan elders. Now he’d looked into the face of Hell. After fighting Imperial Marines, no circle of weak, old men would bother him. “Our clan, despite its high standing, has faltered in my years. Every year, we have become fewer and fewer, despite the fertile lands we took from Voitan—”

  “What is this ‘we,’ child?” one of the elders interrupted in a scoffing tone. “You weren’t even a thought in your weakling father’s head when Voitan fell!”

  There were rough chuckles at the jest, but Danal Far raised his Spear of Honor to call for order.

  “Let the ‘chief’ speak,” the old shaman said. “Let the words be spoken in public, not in the darkness at the back of huts.”

  “I asked,” the scarred and burned young chief continued, “are we not fewer? And the answer is, ‘Yes, we are.’ And I tell you this: the reason we are fewer is the fall of Voitan. We lost many, many of the host in the battle against Voitan. Now we recover slowly. Indeed, we seem to be faltering rather than recovering. I had many playmates in my years, but my son plays alone.

  “Now the Vum Dee and Cus Mem are a memory. We brought the pride of our tribe against these ‘humans,’ and the warriors of Cus Mem joined us. We attacked them all unawares, with no warning.”

  He had, in fact, argued with his own father against the decision to attack. The runners who’d brought the tale of the fall of the House of N’Jaa had also brought word of the terror of the humans’ weapons. Hearing that, and fearing for the tribe in its already crippled state, the young warrior had argued against taking losses among the flower of their warriors, but his arguments had been rejected.

  “Yes, we surprised them,” he continued, “yet still we lost a set of sets while the humans might have lost a hand pair.”

  The Kranolta’s problems, although Puvin Eske didn’t know it, were dispersion and death rate. The native sophonts had only two reproductive periods per Mardukan year. With the dispersion of the Kranolta to fill a huge hunting area very sparsely, the males of the tribe had been able to range at will in their hunting quests. Unfortunately, this meant that they weren’t always around brooder females when their seed quickened.

  Coupled with these missed opportunities to breed were the tremendous casualties taken in capturing Voitan. A single male could only implant a single female with eggs during mating season. With the multiple “pups” that this normally produced and a biannual reproduction, normal death rates were taken care of. But the death rate the Kranolta had suffered in capturing the city hadn’t been anything like “normal,” and despite the increase in hunting range, child death rates hadn’t declined since.

  All of which meant that the clan was recovering very slowly, if at all, from its “victory.”

  “If we lose the greater part of the clan’s warriors to these terrible weapons,” Eske continued, holding up an arm cooked by plasma fire, “we shall be ended as a clan. Some few tribes might survive, but even this I doubt.”

  “Who shall speak to this?” Danal Far asked. He himself would have spoken against it, but an image of impartiality was important. Besides, the answer was a massed roar, and he pointed to one of the other veterans of Voitan. Let him put the young puppy in his place

  “The only thing that the loss of Vum Dee shows is that they were and are gutless cowards, as proven by these words!” Gretis Xus shouted. The old warrior limped forward on painful scars won not just in the destruction of Voitan but in constant skirmishing against the other city-states that bordered his tribe. “Vum Dee has sat on its behind since the fall of Voita
n. But the Dum Kai have continued to battle against the shit-sitters. We are not so weak and gutless as to accept this intrusion. I say that Vum Dee is no longer true Kranolta!”

  Xus’ words drew a roar of approval, not just from the gathered tribe chiefs, but from the ring of warriors behind them. Puvin Eske heard it, and bent his head in sorrow.

  “I have spoken my words. As I spoke them to my father, who is no more. Puvin Shee, who was the first over the walls of Voitan; who wore the horns of the King of Voitan on his belt. And who I saw cut in half before my eyes by fire from warriors it was nearly impossible to see.”

  He raised his head and regarded the other tribes.

  “Vum Dee will be eaten soon enough by other tribes and the jungle. But if the Kranolta go forth to battle the humans, so also shall the rest of the Kranolta be eaten. You say the Vum Dee, whose fathers led the Kranolta over the walls of Voitan, whose warriors were the spear of the Kranolta all the way out of our ancient tribal lands, whose own flesh was the clan-chief of the Kranolta for the war against Voitan, are not true Kranolta? Very well. Perhaps it is true. But tell me this five days hence, for then it shall indeed be true. For five days hence, there shall be no Kranolta!”

  The warrior turned and walked out of the circle of hostile faces. Many glared, but none tried to stop him. None would dare even now to touch a chief at the clan meeting. Let them wait the days.

  Danal Far took center place again as the Vum Dee chief and his decimated retinue left the circle.

  “Are there any other objections?” he asked. “Seeing none, I call for an attack against these humans as soon as we can reach them. They will move out on the morrow, probably for Voitan, but we shall intercept them before they reach there. They move slowly through the jungle, and it will be easy. They are only shit-sitters, after all.”

  “Move!”

  Julian shouldered the private aside, hit the sixth setting on his multitool, held it at arm’s length as it flicked into a 130-centimeter blade, and grunted with effort as he brought the mono-machete down on the thick liana. The girder-thick vine parted with a crack and swung towards him, and he grunted again as it hit him in the stomach—then yelled in fear as he had to roll out of the way of a descending pack beast paw.