IronStar

by Hallman, Grant

  “Shuttle One, Argosy. Your call to Admiral Dunning is ready.” The shuttle was now parked just outside the Sun Gate in Talameths’cha’s western wall.

  “Thank you…” said Kirrah and Lieutenant Warden in unison, their hands colliding over the mike-rod. They glared at one another briefly, then the Marine waved his hand in an exaggerated after-you gesture and Kirrah spoke first.

  “Admiral Dunning, Ma’am, sorry to bother you, but we’re at an impasse here. This excellent Marine Lieutenant insists on following me into the city and setting a guard outside my quarters there. I know he has my safety in mind, Ma’am, but that would be an …unfortunate message to send our allies just now.”

  “Explain, Lieutenant Roehl.”

  “Aye, Ma’am. These people, the Talamae, have …I guess you could say elected me, as their Warmaster. It’s a temporary position, duration of hostilities only, but it carries absolute authority, sort of equivalent to martial law, and accountability for every human life in the country, subject only to their King or a recall by their, their parliament. If I show up with Regnum guards, it’s going to look like I don’t trust them, and like the Navy is just …taking over. And if I don’t return to my own quarters, it’ll look like I abandoned them. Look like the Regnum abandoned them. Ma’am.”

  “The Regnum ‘abandoned’ them? Just what have they been led to expect from the Regnum, Lieutenant Roehl?”

  “I, well… Ma’am, I told them the Regnum would open trade with them, and protect them from the Kruss. I told the O’dai, the people we were just fighting, that the Regnum would protect them too, all humans on this planet. I know this is something a Contact Team would normally handle, but I was on the ground and events were moving forward. Ma’am, did I do wrong?” Tell me I was right, please, please tell me you’ll back me up…

  “How did these ‘Talamae’ respond to your offer?”

  “Ma’am, very positively. We have a trade delegation and an indigenous Contact Management team in waiting, and the use of a building for a temporary Regnum consulate, and a site for a permanent embassy. We also have strong interest in a trade association from the Pavattans, the country to the north. And the people to the east, the Wrth, they want to send their children to the War Academy. Ma’am.” A few seconds’ silence filled the airwaves. Plenty of time for Kirrah’s guts to twist and her hopes to blossom, collapse, turn themselves inside out, upside down, and back again.

  “Well, Lieutenant Roehl, I don’t know why I bothered dragging a Contact Team all the way from Trailway. Congratulations on what looks like an excellent job.” Kirrah almost wept with relief, and within her, something thin and worn and bent almost to the breaking point, eased back a few notches. The Admiral continued:

  “Command experience has taught me the folly of fixing things that aren’t broken, Lieutenant. Subject to review by the actual Contact Team, or further tactical developments, you may consider your terms to the indigenes as provisionally accepted. This is a little out of the ordinary, but so are the circumstances.” Kirrah recognized the understatement, and stiffened unconsciously to attention as this commanding voice continued to write her future and the future of her adopted city.

  “Here’s what I want in return. Until you have been fully debriefed - no, until I specifically order otherwise, you will not put yourself at any, repeat any, unnecessary risk. You will accept whatever protection Lieutenant Warden deems necessary to save his green Marine butt from my wrath should you, for example, break a fingernail. He will do so with all due respect for local sensibilities, but he will do so.” Now both figures standing at the shuttle’s engineering station were at full attention.

  “What you may not yet appreciate, Lieutenant Roehl, is just how seriously NavInt has taken the news of a Kruss presence here, and just how critical your intel is to helping us, helping me, formulate our response.”

  “Ma’am! Aye, Ma’am!-am!” Kirrah glanced sheepishly over to the Marine Lieutenant, thinking, Damn! We sound good in unision! She continued:

  “Ma’am! Perhaps an invitation could be extended to the Lieutenant and some of his troops, to spend the night at the school where I’m billeted? Would that be satisfactory?”

  “I will leave that to Lieutenant Warden’s judgement. I have no difficulty with it if he deems the area secure.”

  “Thank you Ma’am!-am!” Unison again! Does she have this effect on everyone? Indeed the Marine Lieutenant was looking just as pleased and relieved as Kirrah felt.

  “At ease, you two. This seems to be my day for indulgences, Lieutenant Roehl. Since your area is reported relatively secure, and since you appear to have duties critical to indigene relations, and since your prompt debrief is mission-critical, we will come to you. I am sending down a debrief team and the official Contact Team. And since that’s where the debrief team will be, and since your shipmate appears to be in good shape, I’m diverting Attila’s shuttle to your position. We’ll just set up dirtside ops there. That will also give us another ten Marines on the ground. Marcus, you’ll be in charge of security. Ms. Roehl, I assume you can arrange an ‘invitation’ for us? Immediate landing rights, then debrief two hours after local dawn, First Contact meeting later in the day?”

  “Aye, Ma’am, consider it made. Excuse me, Ma’am, but do we know yet who…”

  “Ahh, yes. I have two hardcopies in front of me, Lieutenant. One is your request for update as soon as that info is available, which it now is, and the other is a specific request from …that individual, to allow …him or her, to greet you personally. Which request I am required to honor as a matter of privacy.” The Admiral’s voice lightened a notch: “…to say nothing of fairness, having just given you everything else you asked for. You’ll know in about… twenty minutes.

  “One more thing, Lieutenant Roehl. I am willing to bend the rules a little, because I have some idea of your feelings. However you will not discuss with your crewmate any events that took place between the time you first came under attack in space, and the time you landed, until you both have been debriefed. Lieutenant Warden will appoint a monitor who can eyewitness to this, in the case you wish to spend a little time with this person. I am trying to accommodate your understandable eagerness to be reunited with your shipmate, Lieutenant, but I will not have the legal merits of your combined intel compromised. Conduct yourselves as though every action has been and will be under the gaze of a Civilium Scrutineer. Because it probably will be. Dunning out.”

  Kirrah turned and looked at Lieutenant Warden, frustration and relief and happiness all warring for her expression. He answered her look with a that’s-how-she-is shrug, both of them too professional and too aware of the many recorders documenting this event to comment more tangibly.

  “Lieutenant,” said P.O. Thornlea from the engineering station. “There are some indigs out there, look like they’re waiting for something.” Kirrah noticed how diplomatically the alert had been worded, allowing either or both of the “lieutenants” in question to assume the Petty Officer had been addressing them. The thought crossed her mind that it might be a good idea not to exacerbate the complexities she had already introduced to the Admiral’s command structure. She clamped her mouth firmly shut, and after a momentary pause, Lieutenant Warden said:

  “Lieutenant Roehl, do you recognize any of these?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant Warden, that is my liaison officer down there, and what looks like an honor guard from the King. If you’re going to ‘respect local sensibilities’, you need to know a few things. For example, I know these are palace guards because of the orange and blue shoulder ribbons. Only palace guards and heavy cav wear orange-and-blue. If the orange ribbon has a tail hanging loose, that’s a dakka'tachk, a ‘leader-of-ten’, a corporal. If the other color has a tail hanging, that’s a ro'tachk, literally a group-leader, what we’d call sergeant. And if both colors are hanging, that’s a sana'tachk, a lieutenant. Means ‘strike-leader’. I know you’re only a Greenbutt so I won’t burden you with the other ranks, or the Pavattan�
��s totally different rank structure, until you’ve learned these. And since it seems we’ll be working together, call me Kirrah.”

  “Erm, thanks, I think. Kirrah. And it’s ‘Marcus’. What do we do now?” I have two thoughts on that, Kirrah realized, looking at the screen.

  “Introductions, I should think. Are those wristcomps programmed, Petty Officer Thornlea? Thank you, I’ll need at least half a dozen for the meeting tomorrow, too. And just to get it out of the way up front, Marcus and everyone, I am bunking with that tall sergeant out there. In fact I’d better give you a list of names for cleared access to my quarters… no, that won’t do, it’s a school, students are coming and going all the time. And don’t start with me about ‘secure perimeters’, Marcus,” she added as his face began to darken. “This whole city is a secure perimeter. Except the part within a kay of the river that’s still infested by those damned smartshots.”

  “You mean they go passive and then attack? Gods! I can see why you want their launcher so bad!”

  “Passive, hell! Marcus, the damned things hunt! They auger down, I found one of their rotor wings, just a wisp of microcarbonate film, and they lie there until they pick up a human sig, and then they crawl or jump at you! We lost thirty-six people, most of them civs, eight of them children! Can you see about getting some scan tech down here? They’re using standard Kruss microcells for power, they should show up like a beacon on NMR. And a whiff of the right solvent will melt their little sensor heads right off. I have several samples, it’s just a polyimide matrix. I bet they made it from medkit supplies!”

  And now for the second thing… Kirrah twisted and pulled the door controls, and a section of fuselage wall pulled out with a sucking sound and an audible pop and lowered into a ramp. At the sight of her at the top of the ramp, Irshe grinned like a schoolboy. She grinned back.

  “Irshe-ro'tachk! A proper welcome, if you please, for your victorious Warmaster and our Regnum friends!” The sound of her Talamae words whispered in Standard from the Marine Lieutenant’s wristcomp. Good, the language files work… and seconds later she, Peetha and Lieutenant Warden descended to a near-identical copy of the honor guard the Regnum Marines had greeted her with. Out of the corner of her eye Kirrah caught the raised-eyebrow expression on Marcus’ face as he trooped down the ramp and between the perfectly-aligned Talamae soldiers, but she totally missed the way PO Thornlea sat up a bit straighter at the sight on her screen.

  And they all missed the thoughtful expression at the other end of the video uplink, on Lucinda Dunning’s face as she recognized Kirrah’s diplomatic quid-pro-quo, and factored that in with the observation that she had not once heard the castaway use the word ‘us’ or ‘we’ in the context of the Regnum Navy. The habit of Navy discipline was clearly and firmly in place with the woman, but to Luce’s sense, something deeper was at work. Which was not necessarily a bad thing, she speculated. If you get all the accomplishments this woman had done in half a year, alone and virtually unequipped on a new hablet, you have to expect that something more than a by-the-book Survey Navigator One lives under that skin. Wonder why we didn’t spot it on her personnel profile? Seemed ordinary enough…

  Kirrah stood outside the city’s western gate between Peetha and Irshe, watching the approach of the second shuttle on the radar feed repeating on her wristcomp. Irshe asked:

  “Is the second sky-boat late?”

  “Not late, Irshe’jasa, I am just terribly impatient. Does it show?”

  “Only a little, Warmaster.” His eyes smiling, he lifted his left hand, to which her right was currently clinging, apparently totally of its own free will. He cupped their two hands in his right hand, and looked at her calmly.

  “You know what the Regnum calls these sky-boats?” Kirrah, we’re sounding a bit manic, dearie… “Their formal name is ‘Landing Assault Shuttles (Troop)’. If you take the first letters of those words and make a word of them, it says ‘L.A.S.T.’. The Navy always jokes with the Marines, tells them they’re taking the ‘last’ ride into action, after the Navy’s done its job.”

  Kirrah clamped her lips firmly as the untranslatable pun left Irshe puzzled. She stopped a moment, and just looked up at his eyes.

  “Irshe, I am afraid to hope! I am afraid to even think! I lost eight crewmates, and now I get to have one back, and just by hoping for which one it is, it feels like I’m choosing one! And choosing not the others! That’s why I’m feeling wrong - how can I choose just one? I’m losing them all over again and it’s my fault!” In the distance, a low rumble drifted down from the clear night sky. Her friend looked at her anguish-drawn face and held her shoulders at arms’ length.

  “Kirrah shu’Roehl has taken on the shee’thomm of Warmaster, and has carried it better than any before her. Surely the lives of your crewmates were in the hands of their Source. Aska, it would seem a trespass to demand this new shee’thomm from those very Hands, uninvited.” Kirrah felt her breathing slow as his words sank in. Not in her hands. Not her shee’thomm. Not her fault. No authority, therefore no blame. So simple to say, in Talamae. The rumble was growing into a low roaring sound, like all the winds on the planet gathering in one place, coming nearer.

  “Irshe’jasa is wiser than his Warmaster in this. How do you counsel?”

  “Watch, aska. Only see what-is.”

  Above and to the east, one of the stars was moving. In another few minutes, it spiraled once around the city, losing altitude. At a hundred meters, it pulled sharply up and four solid purple-white columns flared down and forward. As forward speed bled away, the craft leveled and stood on its belly thrusters, descending in a howl of hot exhaust. The not-grass blazed and shriveled under it, the ash glowing momentarily white-hot. Then the landing gear unfolded, and with a master’s feather-light touch, the eighty-tonne spaceplane settled to the earth a scant fifty meters distant. Kirrah found herself walking toward it calmly, detached, almost floating. The door opened, and a familiar voice cut into the night:

  “…care about the fucking ground heat, get this door open!” …and a figure leapt down the still-cycling ramp ahead of several others, and raced across the intervening meters and Kirrah found herself wrapped arm in arm with one Lieutenant Doris Finch, Sensor Specialist First Class, also late of the Arvida-Yee, also bawling her eyes out and sniffling and blubbering and babbling, the two of them like a couple of homesick Plebes on their first visit home.

  Chapter 39 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-seven): Debrief

  “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.” - Lady Margaret Thatcher, 20th century A.D. warrior and political leader; Great Britain, Terra

  “These are good,” said Doris Finch, licking the residue of yet another cream-and-fruit pastry from her fingers. The early sun was just reaching the inner courtyard at Stone-in-a-River school, and a larger than usual group was gathered for breakfast. Besides the regular staff, Doris, Marcus and two of his four ‘guest’ Marines, a little awkwardly in their Combat suits, were sampling the “indie” food. Multiple wristcomps provided running translations in both languages. Doris continued:

  “So what you’re saying, shipmate, is that while I was playing local god and handyman to the islanders, you were accidentally conquering the planet?”

  “A base lie, constructed from only the finest-quality truths. You must have been studying politics during your vacation among the Yashee islanders!”

  “Vacation? Gods, Kirrah! I was lucky to survive! After they pulled me out of the ocean, I was so glad to find I could eat the local food and not be on the menu, I was overjoyed to help them any small way I could. A single beamer made their life a lot easier, and they took good care of me. Ok, don’t roll your eyes like that, it was nice there. Warm climate, good food, great beaches. Hellacious storms, when it chose to. I learned a lot of respect for their seamanship. Just hopping from one of those islands to the next one in the chain was more than I cared for, but they treated the whole two-thousand kay archipelago like one big
playground.

  “Meanwhile, you were over here, ‘way out of comm range, getting these wonderful people organized and prepared to join the rest of humanity, and just coincidentally raising their tech level high enough to beat the drek out of any hostiles.” Doris paused to stuff another tiny pastry in her mouth, while Kirrah shifted a little uncomfortably under the accumulating barrage of praise.

  “It wasn’t…” she started, but Doris continued, ticking off points on her slender brown fingers:

  “…to say nothing of inventing artillery, building your own wet-Navy, adopting a son, becoming guardian over a whole township, absorbing the local language and culture like a Contact One, setting up not one but two major training programs, and being elected Supreme Military Commander for the entire country. Temporarily, of course. I have to hand it to you, my dear, you make me look like a stranded sailor.”

  “You were a stranded…” Kirrah stopped, seeing too late the neat trap her friend was laying. Damn, I’m out of practice with Doris…

  “My point exactly! So were you, my friend, and just look at you now!” Kirrah’s shipmate gestured triumphantly at the approach of another uniformed Talamae courier who saluted and waited respectfully for her Warmaster’s attention.

  “Hmph. Yes, Guardswoman?”

  “Apologies to intrude on Warmaster’s breakfast, but Rash’koi-sana'tachk says the O’dai are peaceful and orderly, and want to know when they can go home as promised.”

  “Not until…” Kirrah paused as Marcus’ comm beeped.

  “Warden, go,” he said into the suit’s throat-mike. A brief pause: “You’re sure? Good work, Gilman! Signal one of the local ferries, call the duty watch at Argosy One to meet you on this side with a Tango.” He looked across the table, and continued: