The delay gave him time to study his briefing packet and compare it to the reality he’d soon experience first hand.
Jasper-Five was almost identical to Earth, with a mostly-compatible Class Two biosphere and a dominant tool-using species. A pretty accomplished species, as a matter of fact. It had developed technologies roughly comparable to Earth’s first century before First Contact, or the twentieth century in the old calendar. Most sophonts in the galaxy never advanced beyond the Iron Age (the vast majority stayed at Paleolithic levels, as a matter of fact) before a Starfarer species showed up and uplifted, enslaved or exterminated them. Earth and Jasper-Five were exceptions to the rule.
The planet had been discovered some twenty years ago by an American survey ship, and First Contact had been established shortly after. The United Stars had placed the system and its inhabited fifth planet under its protection and largely ignored it, until a follow-up survey had discovered large deposits of rare earths, among the most valuable commodities in the galaxy. While asteroid mining provided most of America’s rare earth needs, new sources were always in demand. Jasper-Five’s lanthanide deposits were concentrated in one of the planet’s continents, dominated by the Kingdom of Kirosha.
While some Starfaring civilizations would have just seized the kingdom’s mineral wealth by force, the USA found it easier to negotiate with the locals for mining rights, providing them with hard currency they could use to improve their technology and living standards far beyond what they had before First Contact. It was cheaper than outright conquest, and in the future might provide the US with a client species that might serve as an eventual ally. The US could always use more friends in a largely hostile galaxy.
Over the ensuing two decades, Kirosha had changed a great deal; the formerly insular, relatively backward kingdom had become the most powerful nation on the planet. Its newfound wealth had allowed it to purchase the best military equipment available from its neighbors (no Starfarer was willing to sell them high-tech weaponry for the time being) and modernize their kingdom.
From the smoke dotting the edges of the city, it looked like the changes had brought their share of problems as well.
The fires were mostly concentrated on a ring of shantytowns that had accrued around the city proper like crystals in a supersaturated solution. The briefings didn’t provide any reasons as to why the locals seemed intent on arson as a form of protest. Fromm would have to figure that out by himself after he made landfall. He couldn’t even query his own command or the Embassy beforehand, not with two rival Starfarer delegations in place, quite capable of eavesdropping on any but the most heavily-encrypted communications.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the shuttle’s pilot announced. “We’ve been authorized to land, and will be arriving in under five minutes. Be advised; there are reports of civil unrest throughout the capital. Transport to the Foreigner Enclave has been provided for everyone, courtesy of Caterpillar, Inc and Star Mining Enterprises. Venturing outside the Enclave is not recommended. If you must go into the city proper, make sure you do so in groups. Things are a bit rough out there. Hope you had a good trip. God Bless America.”
“God Bless America,” the passengers chorused back. A couple of remfie suits sitting near the captain did so while rolling their eyes in jaded cynicism, but the miners, technicians and machinery operators who comprised the majority of the passengers said the words with the mildly bored sincerity of people raised to love God, Flag and Country from earliest childhood. Fromm’s own response was heartfelt, but tempered with the knowledge of the price involved in upholding those words. God might wish America His best, but He left most of the heavy lifting in the hands of mere mortals like Fromm and his beloved Corps.
There was the usual rapid shift in pressure as the shuttle dropped the last several hundred feet towards the ground, throwing itself on the mercy of the gravity grapples dirtside. The abrupt motion slowed down during the last few seconds, and the hundred-ton vehicle came down in a gentle, almost imperceptible motion. Fromm grabbed his personal satchel from the overhead compartment. His orders had come so abruptly that he’d left most of his meager possessions behind; they would follow him here eventually, which given the remoteness of his new posting meant weeks, if not months. On the other hand, a few weeks ago he’d fully expected to spend the rest of his life behind bars, which given the capital nature of his crimes was likely to be a very short time. A hasty posting to a planet in the ass-end of nowhere was a much better alternative.
The Marine took a deep breath as he stepped onto Jasper-Five’s soil for the first time. It was a bit of a ritual he had, marking his first impression of each new world he visited. Every planet was slightly different, even Full Goldie worlds like this one, where conditions were nearly identical to Earth’s. ‘Nearly’ always turned out to be a rather elastic term. In this case, there was a hint of spice in the air, likely coming from the cultivated fields beyond the spaceport, vast expanses of some kind of yellow-capped plant, broken by scattered copses of leafy trees. Mixed in with the fragrance of the local flora was a faint smell of burning things, coming from the capital city thirty klicks away.
He looked up. A huge moon was clearly visible in the mid-morning sky, easily four, five times larger than Earth’s. His briefing classified it as a planet, actually, but it looked like Earth’s Moon: a white, pockmarked disk, bereft of an atmosphere and life. The sky surrounding it was a blue so light it faded to white in places. Out in the distance, a line of snow-capped mountains filled the horizon. The temperature felt cool to his skin; his imp helpfully reported it was fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit at the moment, with a high of sixty-three and a low nighttime temp of fifty-two degrees. Not too bad.
The landing pad was a flat concrete circle a quarter of a mile wide and sixty feet tall, surrounded by the squat shapes of the port’s landing grapples. Loading cranes and trucks moved towards the shuttle’s cargo hold as the passengers disembarked. A fenced pedestrian path led to a flight of stairs and a lower level where ground transport was located. About a dozen humans and twice as many locals were waiting there.
His imp highlighted one of them: a woman in her mid-thirties, her light brown hair covered under a colorful shawl thrown over a utilitarian civvie outfit, a jacket over pants tucked into leather boots with sensible rubber soles, dressy but perfectly good for walking and running. The imp ran an overlay onto his field of vision, containing all her basic data: Heather Tamsin McClintock, Department of State, Deputy Charge D’affaires of the US Embassy on Jasper-Five. Her Facettergram profile was set to private; so was her curriculum vitae. Spook, he decided as she walked up towards him, a pro forma smile on her face.
Normally, he would have expected to be met by his platoon sergeant and a driver, maybe with a squad’s worth of grunts if an escort was deemed necessary. Nothing about this situation was normal.
“Captain Fromm,” she said, shaking his hand. Her nails were short, her grip strong, indicating someone who worked with her hands at least some of the time, if only for physical fitness purposes.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. McClintock.” Imps made personal introductions largely superfluous, except for politeness’ sake, which remained rather important.
“Ambassador Llewellyn wanted to keep all military forces at the embassy, due to security concerns,” McClintock said, answering Fromm’s unspoken question. “Given the current situation, he deemed them necessary for the protection of the Foreigners’ Enclave.”
“I see,” Fromm said. What the hell’s going on in here?
“I’ll brief you in the car.” She looked at his satchel. “Is that all your luggage?”
He nodded, noting with some envy that most of his fellow passengers were dragging hundreds of pounds of baggage on their mag-lev carriers. It was nice to have stuff.
“You carrying?” she asked.
“Colt PPW.” The 3mm pistol was standard Marine issue. Fromm could not imagine being out and about without a gun. It’d be like forgetting to wear pa
nts in public.
Her smile became harsher and sincerer at the same time. “Good. You probably won’t need it for the trip to the Enclave, but you know how it goes.”
Fromm nodded. Better to have a weapon you didn’t need, than need a weapon you didn’t have.
When you needed a weapon, you needed it very badly.
Two
Year 163 AFC, D Minus Ten
Heather McClintock led the newly-minted Marine captain to the embassy car. The locally-produced four-wheeler was overbuilt and massive, a civvie version of a Kiroshan military vehicle with off-road capability. It was painted a light sky blue, a color that indicated high-caste ownership. Her staff driver was leaning against the car. He was of the same species as the denizens of the Kingdom, but from a different nationality and ethnicity. The locals called themselves Kirosha, a term that covered the capital city, the greater nation-state, and its citizens, not unlike Earth’s Rome. Her driver’s name was Locquar, and he was the most trusted member of her staff. Among other reasons, because he wasn’t Kirosha, but a foreigner, as loathed and hated by the locals as any other aliens.
Like most sophonts from Class Two biospheres, the natives of Jasper-Five were humanoid in shape and general biology. They were bipeds with opposable thumbs on their four-fingered hands, with body size and mass well within human ranges. Their skin had a reddish tint, ranging from a deep scarlet to a light flamingo pink, the lighter varieties being most common among the Kirosha; they had very little body hair, concentrated mainly on a ridge beginning at the top of their heads and running down to the small of their backs. Their large eyes and smooth heart-shaped faces gave them a cartoonish appearance to human sensibilities.
Locquar’s skin was a deep scarlet, which clearly marked him as an outsider. He also shaved his ridge-hair, as was the custom of his tribal group but was considered barbaric by the locals. His small mouth was set in what Kirosha would consider a grim expression and humans would perceive as a comical moue.
“Captain Fromm, this is Locquar Asthan, Embassy Staff.”
To her surprise, Fromm squatted down, hands upraised in a standard Kirosha greeting, instead of trying to shake hands American fashion, as both she and Locquar had expected. The jarhead had done his homework, which put him well ahead of many Americans, who mostly assumed it was the locals’ job to learn their customs and language. The squat was awkward – human leg joints couldn’t quite reproduce the Kirosha motion – and he showed more deference than appropriate to the driver, who was technically three social rungs beneath him. The gesture was still miles better than what most State Department employees usually managed, let alone the other two thousand-plus humans currently dwelling on the planet. Cultural sensibility was not high on the list of US priorities. Understandable, given that humans were viewed largely as barbaric parvenus in Starfarer society and treated with contempt, but often regrettable. The only other human polity, the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, was even worse; being largely Earth-bound, its behavior wasn’t readily apparent across the stars, however.
Locquar returned the squat – the greeting wasn’t what his people used, but he was well-versed in Kirosha mores – and batted his eyelashes at the Marine, the equivalent of a warm smile.
“It is a fine day, is it not?” Fromm said in Kiroshan, or tried to.
“It is, and also a pleasure to meet you, Captain,” Locquar said in English, which he could manage better than humans could speak the local languages; the natives’ audible range was a little past what human vocal chords could manage without mechanical aid. Heather’s throat implants, courtesy of the US Embassy, allowed her to talk like a native.
“We’ll leave as soon as everybody’s ready,” she said. The colorfully-painted bus Caterpillar Inc. had provided for its employees was filling up fast; a van hired by Star Mining Enterprises was collecting its own share of the shuttle’s passengers. They all had agreed to leave together. Safety in numbers. Things had gotten bad enough that no Starfarer dared leave the Enclave alone; two AmCits had been injured in separate incidents during the past week, and the Kirosha authorities didn’t seem to be in a hurry to round up any suspects. The arriving human passengers would travel in a convoy comprising the bus, van, and Heather’s embassy vehicle, sandwiched between two escort cars manned by armed private contractors.
Fromm spotted the lead and chase cars just before they drove off. “I guess it’s time for that briefing.”
“I’m sending chapter-and-verse to your imp,” she said. Analyzing that information would take time, however, so she went on. “The gist of it is, a peasant rebellion has been simmering for several months. At first it was limited to the outlying provinces, especially southwest from here, but the discontent has spread to the capital.”
“I see,” Fromm said, looking out the car windows. He nodded towards the smoke cresting over the horizon. “When did that start?”
“They set the first fires two days ago. You’d have been in warp-transit then.”
“Yes. A twenty-hour warp jump, New Parris to Lahiri, a day in-system, and then caught an inbound freighter here for an extra eight hours.”
New Parris was a harsh, barely inhabitable planet the Warp Marine Corps had adopted as its training and staging center. The Lahiri star system had no planets at all, but its neutron star was a major warp nexus, with space-time ‘valleys’ that led to dozens of other systems, including Jasper. A total of twenty-eight hours’ warp travel over three days was no picnic, but the Marine seemed to have handled the trip well.
“What’s the rebels’ beef with the government?” he asked.
“The Crown has been raising taxes to modernize its armed forces for some time, which wouldn’t have been so bad if a drought hadn’t hit half the continent a year ago. And there’s been the usual problems with rapid modernization: peasants being displaced by farm machinery and discovering factory work is not to their taste, that sort of thing. The main issue is that a faction within the Kirosha ruling class is manipulating the rebels into blaming foreigners for all their problems.”
“Not a big leap, since Kirosha hate just about everyone who doesn’t look like them, right? The info files I got made that clear.”
Heather nodded. “Pretty much. Their words for ‘foreign’ and ‘wrong’ are closely related. ‘Foreigner’ also translates as ‘evil.’ If you aren’t Kirosha, you’re a demon, basically. Humans and any other Starfarer species are known as Star Devils.”
“They sound like a great bunch of guys.”
“They’re kind to their children, and love their pets. But if you’re an outsider, watch out. The Preserver faction hates the influence Star Devils have over the Kingdom’s affairs. Everything from the new mines to missionaries opening hospitals, schools and orphanages. And it’s using the rebels against us.”
“This is a fucking mess,” Fromm said. “Why are we letting this happen?”
“Money and politics. We don’t want to handle the expenses necessary to assume direct control of the country, for one; it’d likely cost more than what we’re getting from the mines. And the Kirosha might turn to the Wyrashat or Vehelians for protection, which could lead to tensions between us. Which means we’re treading softly, for now.”
“Sounds awesome.”
“And you’re the senior military officer on site. Congratulations,” Heather said.
The Marine probably wasn’t the right man for the job at hand. Then again, no recently-promoted captain was meant to handle something with the makings of an interstellar incident. Unfortunately, Ambassador Llewellyn wasn’t up to the task, either, in Heather’s opinion. The developing situation was above everyone’s pay grade and, worse, their competency level.
They fell silent while Fromm mulled things over and accessed the raw data she’d uploaded into his computer implant. He started outlining some key data out loud, seeking confirmation and elaboration form her.
“All right. There are over two thousand Americans on Jasper-Five: about two hundred Embassy perso
nnel and dependents, the rest either corporate employees or missionaries of assorted denominations, plus about two hundred military contractors.”
She nodded. “Plus a few odds and sorts, raising the total human presence on Jasper-Five to twenty-five hundred or so. About three hundred are working in the main mining operation on the Neesha Valley, about five hundred klicks inland. They should be safe enough there; the mines are isolated and far away from population centers. About half the military contractors on the planet are out there, providing security.”
“Got it. If things go wrong, the US military presence consists of my Marine contingent: a platoon plus a number of attached units, including the original Marine Security Detachment: seventy-eight personnel total.”
“There is also a hundred or so military contractors in the capital, an Enclave constabulary force with fifty-two peace officers, and a hundred and eighty-two Navy personnel, including thirty master-at-arms ratings, mostly stationed at the spaceport.”
“I guess that’s better than nothing,” Fromm said. Technically, his command’s sole mission was to protect the embassy. In practice, he and his men might be called upon to help any Americans in need.
“At least almost everybody is in one place. A lot of people were working on assorted projects outside the capital, but after the first riot they’ve been advised to confine themselves to the Enclave. Which has caused no end of trouble; housing is scarce, and the area is packed with idle miners and machinery operators, not exactly the most placid folk. The constabulary force is having trouble keeping order.”
“I hope nobody thinks my Marines can help with that.”
“Not as far as I know. In fact, nobody at the embassy really knows what to do with your unit. The ambassador isn’t happy about the quote-unquote ‘needless expense.’ We got the reinforced platoon nine months ago; before that, our Marine Security Detachment consisted of nine men. The assignment happened over the ambassador’s protests, mostly because it’s put a big crimp on the budget even after additional funds were assigned for the platoon’s upkeep. He’d much rather spend the money on social functions.”
Decisively Engaged (Warp Marine Corps Book 1) Page 3