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IronStar

Page 52

by Hallman, Grant


  Not bad, Kirrah felt the voice of her darkness say. Not bad at all. The corners of her mouth rose and her teeth bared, in an expression no sane person would have mistaken for a smile.

  So much for the scary part. Now for the hard part.

  Chapter 48 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-nine): Gifts and Promises

  “An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.” - Mahatma Gandhi - 20th century A.D. philosopher-peacemaker; India, Terra.

  “Kirrah Warmaster, calling Pssittagk.” A kilometer up the river, Kirrah could see the two tiny rafts lashed together, drifting closer in the current. In the powerful optical sight of Adrianne’s sniper rifle, the bodies of Akaray and Tash’ta were clearly discernible, still bound wrist and ankle atop the piles of oil-soaked brush on each raft. Somewhere between the children, invisible from her position, was an armored Kruss. Almost invisible high overhead, the Attila’s shuttle kept close watch.

  Adrianne crouched among some reeds beside Kirrah, unshackled by mutual consent when the shuttle landed near the river. The raft they had carried in the shuttle’s aft bay, with its cargo of meat, now lay tethered mid-river at the point of a long vee of rope slung across the current and tied at each shore about twenty meters upstream from where they stood. Rash’koi and Prax’soua stood by the bank a few meters from Kirrah. Between them lay a 20x25 centimeter gray cylinder. Lieutenant Warden and the others waited in the shuttle, ninety meters back from the riverbank. Kirrah put her lips to the wristcomp’s pickup once more.

  “C’mon, Pssittagk. Talk to me.” Her wristcomp remained silent. The raft drifted along in the current, slowly drawing closer. Except for a few puffy white clouds and a darker tan-colored stain peeping just above the southwest horizon, the sky was a glorious clear cerulean blue, with a slightly green-blue tinge low in the west. The Geera was chuckling to itself as it ran west toward the Sea of the Sun. A few birdcalls were audible in the distance. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day.

  On the north shore a kilometer away, two Marines in a Tango were still pacing the raft. Three kilometers up river, Captain Crathpae’s four steamships were on station, following as Kirrah had ordered.

  “Doris, give me a spyfly thirty meters out,” Kirrah called. The small aircraft popped out of a port in the side of the shuttle’s tail, rose on spinning rotors, tilted toward the river. On her wristcomp screen, the view from the spyfly lurched and swung, turned over the river, then steadied on the rafts. Two children, piles of brush, no Kruss apparent anywhere. Damn! What was the lizard up to?

  “Kirrah,” came Marcus’ voice over the shuttle’s comm. “My people on the other shore in the Tango report the last time they saw the Kruss was a few minutes after your balloon went up. They could see the flash over the palace clearly from here. They report seeing the Kruss stand a moment, then lie back down between the kids. The rafts swung around in the current, they lost sight of the Kruss for a few seconds. When the raft turned farther, the lizard wasn’t where it had been. No sighting since.”

  “I smell a rat, ma’am,” said Adrianne. “It was wearing one of their Hostile Environment suits. Air for up to sixty hours. It could be clinging to the bottom of the raft. It probably has remote detonation capability - I certainly would. Don’t assume it’s clear.”

  “No assumptions, Corporal Gilman. And thank you for volunteering to help. You don’t owe me anything, after what we did to you and Marcus.”

  “No hard feelings, ma’am. You aced us with appropriate guile and treachery. I hafta admire that.” The woman’s attractive face split in a rare grin, showing perfect white teeth. “Besides, it was in a good cause. And I’m the best shot with the P-6R. But it’s still ‘Adrianne’, ma’am.”

  “Ok, then it’s still ‘Kirrah’.”

  In another ten minutes the rafts were half the distance closer. Still no sign of her enemy. At least the children were alive, Akaray twisting and struggling against his bonds at the sight of the small aircraft hovering nearby. Nothing to do but wait. Kirrah found her hands aching for want of an arm to grab and hold. Irshe’s arm.

  Finally the drifting fire rafts bobbed up against the tether rope, ten meters away from their tethered raft. The current slid and spun the two fire rafts along the slanted rope, until they came up against the tethered raft bearing the sha’pluuth carcass. They stalled there, hung in the current. Nothing happened. The three log platforms bobbed together in mid-river.

  After another three minutes of excruciating suspense, Kirrah made a decision. She pressed a key on her wristcomp twice, then once more. Out on the tethered raft, the fabric under the sha’pluuth flew back and Elagai surged up from a void cunningly carved between two logs. Swiftly she stepped onto the raft with Akaray. He flinched and cried out as the Wrth’s dark blade flashed. One hand grabbed the box strapped around his neck, the other guided the blade between the strap and his throat. In half a second, the strap parted and Elagai flung the released device far out into the river. Akaray blinked, shook his head.

  Five more seconds and Tash’ta’s detector was similarly disposed of. Next Elagai slashed the rope on the far side of the tethered raft and secured all three log platforms together. The three rafts began to swing toward the near bank as the river current pulled them against the remaining tether rope. Rash’koi and Prax’soua dropped the gray cylinder and ran up the shore where they could haul in the rope.

  On the rafts, Elagai sliced the bindings and freed both children. They could barely stand from the cramps they had acquired in the night. As the raft drew nearer, Kirrah pulled her hand beamer. Adrianne swiveled the long fat barrel of the P-6R railgun to cover the approach, despite the ridiculously short range for the weapon. When the rafts were within two meters of shore, Elagai bodily threw Akaray to the bank, and she and Tash’ta plunged into the water and waded ashore.

  “Kirrah’sho!” Akaray barely got the word out before Kirrah fell on him like a stooping hawk, swept him up and ran toward the shuttle. The others followed as fast as they could. Panting and crying from relief and joy, they stopped under the shuttle’s wing. Kirrah and Akaray couldn’t seem to stop touching and hugging one another. Tash’ta was hugging Elagai, to the warrior’s obvious embarrassment. Behind them, the three rafts bobbed on the end of their tether.

  “We want nothing to do with that raft or anything that touched the Kruss. It could be mined. But I want that spool of nanowire,” Kirrah said. Her first step in that direction was stopped by Rash’koi, and he and Prax’soua trotted back down to the river and with a sharp tug released the fine Kruss filament from its attachment to the far bank. As they pulled, the nanowire leapt clear of the water and vibrated in a line all the way across the river, making tiny splashes in the water’s surface. They carefully used the spool to wind up the deadly stuff, relaxing only when the pull-ring was locked in position against the takeup reel.

  Against every instinct to be airborne and homeward bound, Kirrah allowed herself to be outvoted by the combined paranoia of Doris and Adrianne, who insisted on subjecting both children to a thorough scanning.

  While they set up the NMR, Kirrah said, “Thank you both, Prax’soua, Rash’koi. It would have been only justice to cut that little creature’s head off with its own nanowire, when it reached for the sha’pluuth. I am sorry we missed the chance, and I wonder what has become of it.”

  “Might it still be holding to the bottom of the rafts?” asked Rash’koi.

  “Whoops, there’s something,” said Adrianne, passing the NMR pickup over Akaray. Kirrah reacted as though struck, recoiling and then lunging for the boy. He reached into a pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small flat shiny object, about two by four centimeters. Nooo! Not after all this! Kirrah cried inwardly, and slapped the object from his hand before it could be detonated remotely. It landed five meters away on the not-grass, everyone stepping smartly back from it. Akaray began to wail at the unexpected assault from Kirrah, and in general reaction to the terrors of the last eighteen hours.

  While Kirrah h
ugged the exhausted, traumatized boy and crooned reassurances, Adrianne took her scanner closer to the object. In a minute, she went to the shuttle door and returned with a standard data reader. She bent over the object, returned and sat on the spongy ground cover beside Kirrah.

  “Ma’am, Kirrah, it scans like a standard data wafer. I put it in that hand reader, set it to broadcast, just turn your comm to Channel Three…” Together the group listened to the message the Kruss had left, Doris recording it from the flight deck on the shuttle’s comm system. The Kruss’ voice came out clearly, overlaid by the AI’s translation.

  « Pssittagk greets ssKirragk.

  « Pssittagk regrettably shows unreadiness to consummate proposed trade. Conditions change. Base gone. No dishonor.

  « ssKirragk learning as trader. Shows understanding lesson of ‘same coin’.

  « ssKirragk still not good marketer. Potential make good apprentice. Someday, we trade better together, not competing-merchants.

  « Pssittagk adapts priorities. Family gone. Companions gone. Simpler. Regnum solve several problems for Pssittagk. Pssittagk now leader, owns planet. Taking vacation. Later Pssittagk acquire better trade goods, return to bargain with ssKirragk.

  « ssKirragk receive number one marketing lesson now. Pssittagk make ssKirragk gift of two young humans. Free samples, purchase goodwill with future trading partner. Also future considerations. Transform Talamae idiom, ‘two lives, not balanced’. » The audio contained an untranslatable atonal whistling sound, which Kirrah recognized as the Kruss equivalence to laughter. The alien voice continued:

  « Pssittagk depart now. Concern soldier with long magnetic weapon end partnership before profits begin. Final word to student-marketer, Kruss proverb: whenever something revealed, by same act, something else hidden.

  « Eat well. Pssittagk closes ears. »

  Kirrah looked at Adrianne, who looked back at her. Finally, the Marine Corporal said,

  “I’ll be damned! A Kruss with a heart! If it’s dropped off the raft, it could’ve let go anywhere in the last two or three kay, Kirrah. With that suit, it could walk along the river bottom and come out anywhere within a hundred kay, either up or down river. We’d be chance-in-a-million getting a whiff of it on any sensors. For all we know, it left the river twenty minutes ago and is already halfway to the next country. Those things can make a good steady fifteen kph on the ground.

  “I understand if you want to do a few sweeps with the shuttle, just don’t pin your hopes on it.”

  Kirrah thought for a few seconds. “No, thank you anyway, I have what I want. Did you hear what it said? A gift.” She hugged Akaray, reached for Tash’ta, hugged her with her other arm. “I accept its gift. It said ‘two lives not balanced’, I think that means it’s claiming a debt, and I can’t disagree. We’ll set up a sensor grid when we can, we’ll find it eventually. And it was wrong about owning the planet, that much I can assure you. Let’s go home.”

  Nevertheless with clearance from Attila’s shuttle commander, they destroyed their rafts quite thoroughly from the air, before setting out on the short remaining flight to Talameths’cha. Kirrah radioed the steamships to turn back, and left the piloting to Doris.

  “Ma’am?” said Ensign Piersall rather plaintively from the jumpseat where she was still bound. “You let the Marines loose, is there any reason you can’t untie me?” Kirrah turned, a little surprised by the perfectly reasonable request, thought a moment, replied:

  “Mmmm. I think not. It’s just another few minutes, Margaret. It might come in handy, at what could be a very interesting hearing, to be able to say you were under restraint the entire time. The less freedom you have to intervene, the less you have to explain of what you didn’t do. It’s not much to offer, but I figure I owe you whatever I can give, for the next hundred years or so, anyway.” The young pilot nodded unhappily. Probably already thinking about her next interview with Admiral Dunning, Kirrah thought sympathetically. Wonder what she’ll do to her? Maybe I’d better check with my other ‘draftees’… She stepped back into the passenger compartment, looked over an ecstatic Elizabeth Einarson, a blissful Captain Schmado and family, a sore and weary but happy pair of Talamae children sitting next to a suddenly-maternal Issthe, a satisfied-looking Lord Tsano, and finally to a pair of gloomy Marines. As she passed the reporter Kirrah said:

  “Recording off until further notice, Ms. Einarson”. The reporter nodded absently, engaged deeply in a review of the images already captured. Kirrah continued down the aisle, sat down opposite the two Marines and asked:

  “Why the long faces? We won! Or are you contemplating your own futures?”

  “Any way I figure it, Kirrah,” said Marcus Warden, “we’re pretty much in drek over our heads. I have absolutely no regrets, I’m happy for you it worked out the way it did, but it’s time to pay the piper. Admiral Dunning is going to put two with two pretty damned quick when she reviews the shuttle’s log. Among other things, it’s going to show us both sitting here like idiots while you bluffed Margaret out of her beamer. Then it’s going to show you releasing us when we landed by the river to try the rescue, and us not immediately attempting to reassert control of the shuttle. Then it’s going to show Adrianne taking her P-6R down to the river there, as backup in case your ambush with the nanowire failed.

  “I make it two counts of dereliction of duty, one violation of a direct order with the rifle, and a possible conspiracy to mutiny, if the Admiral’s of a nasty turn of mind. Of course, she’s pretty creative, I may have missed a few of the finer points. Oh yeah, once she spots Margaret’s video hack, it’ll come out pretty quick that Corporal Gilman and I have been spending a lot of off-duty hours together here. Add ‘Violation of Standing Order Forty-Four Dash A Fraternization-Within-the-Chain-of-Command’, and a possible ‘Conduct Unbecoming’. I expect we’ll be able to come back for a visit, anywhere between five and twenty years, depending.” Kirrah sat back and thought a moment.

  “Marcus, that’s just not ok. You two have risked your lives and sacrificed your careers for me, for my adopted son, for all the humans on this planet. That has to be worth more than twenty years in the stockade. It is to me.”

  “Unfortunately, ma’am, it isn’t up to you,” said Adrianne. “She can’t ignore what we did, or what we failed to do. Hell, I wouldn’t think much of a commander who did ignore it. It’s just an unfortunate situation for …well, for us.”

  “Exactly my point,” Kirrah replied. “I get my Kruss-free planet and my hostages back, Admiral Dunning gets a successful mission, the Navy gets three unopposed bases in-system, the Regnum gets a new ally, and for helping us all, you two get dropped down the lav and the lid slammed down. Nope. Just won’t do.” Two pairs of sober eyes gazed at her, wondering, not quite daring to hope.

  “Look, people,” Kirrah continued. “If the Regnum Marines don’t want you, I do.” At the sound of the belly thrusters coming on in preparation for landing, Kirrah keyed her wristcomp to the shuttle’s intercom.

  “Doris, set us down in that big open area inside the city’s west wall, would you? I’d like to preserve a few options before we return our borrowed shuttle. Tell the Argosy we’re offloading some Talamae citizens, we’ll be back on ‘Roehl Two’ in fifteen minutes.”

  “Aye aye, ‘Warmaster’.”

  “So,” Kirrah continued, turning back to the two Marines, “What I’d like to offer you two, is jobs.” Their faces both looked satisfyingly surprised. “Talam is making a giant step into its own future, and I’m going to see that it does so on its own terms. We have a whole planet to bring into the Civilium, a hundred separate tribes. We have a renegade Kruss to find, we have a highly disciplined and professional military, trained in combat with horses, swords and arrows, that needs upgrading and modernizing. We have our own Navy to build, and did I mention that all this is fully funded by a new, locally grown food product that extends human lives almost as much as complete Regnum health care?” At their wide-eyed silence, Kirrah continued:
/>   “Look, have I mentioned anything so far, that interests you more than sitting in a Navy stockade for the next couple of decades? Or shall I go on? It sometimes comes in handy, being the supreme military commander of a sovereign state, don’t you agree?”

  Marcus was getting that glazed look that meant ‘overload’. Adrianne was looking wistful. She said:

  “Ma’am, that’s the most generous thing I’ve ever heard, and I’d be honored to work for you. But we can’t. There’s the matter of our oaths as Regnum Marines, ma’am. Even if we were willing to break them, and we’re not, we’d be hunted down as deserters. We could never leave the planet. And you’ll need people who can do some serious shopping back in Civilium space, at a minimum. I’m very sorry, your offer is…” her voice just trailed off.

  “I’d already thought of that, sorry, I let the logistics get ahead of the principles. I did not mean to imply you would forswear your oaths. I was thinking more along the lines of an honorable discharge, or a voluntary assignment to Talamae forces as some sort of long-term liaison, but with all charges dropped, in either case.” The shuttle bumped down, Doris’s touch, even with autopilot, not being the equivalent to Margaret’s finesse.

  “You could do that, ma’am?” For all her deadly skills, Adrianne’s face opened like a little girl’s, being offered a special miracle.

  “I think between Lord Tsano and myself, we could ask the Admiral for a little favor. I doubt she really wants you reamed the way the system would probably handle your actions. In fact I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she thinks you both deserve medals. Not that she’d give them to you - she has a Navy to run, and while she can sometimes run it on right, she always has to run it on rule.

  “I, on the other hand, know what you did, and why, and I am the rule in Talam, militarily. So I can do Admiral Dunning the favor of saving you from her unpleasant duty. As I see it, your choices are between liaison as Regnum Marines, or discharge and service with us.” At the front of the compartment, the hatch opened and people began debarking. Seeing thoughtful looks being exchanged between the pair, Kirrah added,

 

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