"Look at this goddamned thing!" Ramadan raged.
Sturgeon glanced briefly at the paper. It ordered Captain Lewis Conorado to report to Headquarters Marine Corps in Fargo on Earth by the quickest possible method of transportation. Nothing else, just a fund citation to pay for his transportation. Sturgeon sighed. "I know what this is, Ram. Please sit down."
Colonel Ramadan did not know what had happened to Lima Company on Avionia. The only reason Brigadier Sturgeon knew was because General Cazombi, the army general in command of the operation, had stopped on Thorsfinni's World and filled him in on the details on his way back to Earth. Now Sturgeon told Ramadan. The colonel took it all in silently. "So I guess despite this army general's promise, this Hoxey woman really has filed charges against Lew for letting her guinea pigs go," Sturgeon concluded.
"This army general—Cazombi, you said his name was?"
"Yeah. Lew swears by the guy, so I guess he's okay, did his best to kill the damned incident, I'm sure. Goddamnit, Ram!"
Sturgeon slapped the order with his hand. "They're keeping us here on Thorsfinni's World like lepers, quarantined, because we have knowledge of alien sentiences the government wants to keep quiet. That's what I found out when I went back to HQMC. All right, I accept that. But this—this—" He slapped the paper again. "—this crap goes too damned far! They're taking away one of my best officers because some dried-up old..." He let the words trail off. Then: "Okay. Ram, get Van Winkle at Battalion, tell him to have Lew report to me personally, on the double. We keep this to ourselves. But you know, all this hush-hush stuff, I really don't give a damn anymore. My Marines are taking it on the chin because a bunch of goddamned government bureaucrats don't trust anybody but themselves with the truth. I'm up to here with it! Let them sentence me to Darkside. All right, Ram, see to it."
Back in his office Ramadan discovered the Anniversario had gone out. He relit it. These were the only cigars he knew of you could do that with and lose none of the flavor. He got Commander Van Winkle on the system.
Captain Conorado finished reading the message and looked up at Brigadier Sturgeon. "I guess General Cazombi wasn't able to get Dr. Hoxey to withdraw the charges."
"Are you ready to go back to Fargo and face these charges then?"
"Yessir, I am," Conorado replied evenly.
"Nobody from 34th FIST is being subpoenaed except you, Lew. Plenty of the men in your company witnessed what went on at Avionia Station. Seems to me the court's being packed against you."
Conorado thought about that for a moment. "General Cazombi will be there. So will Mr. Nast from the Ministry of Justice. I think they're all I'll need to support me."
"Didn't you tell me that this Hoxey woman tried to get Dean to give up the woo for experimentation? And Charlie Bass was there with you when you released the Avionians. Can you think of anyone else in your company who witnessed what she was doing to the creatures? I'll have them deposed, and you can take the depositions back with you."
"But sir, this is all ultrasecret information, and the staff judge advocate isn't cleared—"
"Lew, how long have we known each other?" Sturgeon interrupted.
"Years and years. Since I was a corporal and you were an ensign." Conorado laughed. "Since Caesar was a road guard."
"Since Christ was a corporal," Sturgeon added. "Well, I'm not going to let you go down by yourself on this, Lew. You put your career on the line out there for something you believed in. I believe in you and the other Marines in this FIST, and by the cheeks of Mohammed's hairy ass, I don't give a damn for ‘security’ when it comes to this business. Good God, those pirates knew all about Avionia! By now every crook in the Confederation must know. So the Confederation wants to keep only the honest citizens in the dark? And we haven't even mentioned the Skinks! What the hell are things coming to with all this ‘security’? We all know now that they're keeping us here because of this ‘alien sentiences’ crap! It's wearing mighty thin, Captain.
"Now, I want Bass and Dean deposed by the SJA. I've already talked to the judge. Have them report over there when you get back to the company."
"Yessir. And sir? Thanks."
"Don't mention it. We'll team up on Darkside and make a breakout.
"The F1 and the finance people have arranged for your transportation back to Earth. The next ship leaving for there takes off from New Oslo in two days. It's a civilian job, the SS Cambria. It stops somewhere en route, but even so, it'll get you back to Earth before any naval vessel we can scare up on such short notice. Turn Lima Company over to your XO." He stood and extended his hand. "Lew, we're going to miss you."
"Thank you, sir. I'll be back." They shook hands for a long moment.
"I know you will, Lew," Sturgeon replied, but he wasn't so sure.
Chapter Three
It was a case of garbled communications, miscommunication, and bureaucratic arrogance right from the start. Not to mention ignorance brought about by secrets kept too tightly.
Ambassador Friendly Creadence, emissary of the Confederation of Human Worlds to the human planet formally known as the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles, but more commonly called simply "Kingdom," wasn't certain who the invaders were, or even that they were invaders from off-world. So his dispatch to the Ministry of State didn't make that fully clear. Moreover, he was a career diplomat whose only military contact—not experience; he had no experience—was with military attachés who more often owed their appointments to political connection than to military acumen. Consequently, he had a dreadfully minimal understanding of the nature of military weaponry, which ignorance caused him to omit information about the invader's armament.
The dispatch Ambassador Creadence sent to the Ministry of State on Earth requesting Marines noted horrendous fighting, death, and destruction in the outlands, against a foe of unknown origin, armed with weapons evidently superior to those used by the armed forces of Kingdom.
Associate Vice Consul for Consular and Ambassadorial Affairs Moyamenssing, the mid-level Ministry of State bureaucrat who was charged with disposition of the dispatch, began by looking up Creadence in the Blue Line of Ambassadors, Ministers, and Consuls. The five paragraph entry outlined an undistinguished career. Creadence seemed to be a competent enough man with no great political connections but sufficient social ones to assist him in gaining advancement through the ranks slightly faster than routine. Kingdom was his third ambassadorial assignment. The earlier two—one as a consul, the other as an ambassador—were, like the present one, to unimportant worlds. Kingdom had to be unimportant; Associate Vice etcetera Moyamenssing had never heard of it.
He looked it up in the eighteenth edition of The Atlas of the Populated and Explored Planets of Human Space.
The governing body of the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles was an ecumenical theocracy. Reading between the lines of the short entry, he concluded that the government must be repressive: over the past couple of centuries it had suffered more than ten major rebellions and numerous lesser revolts; on six occasions Confederation Marines had been dispatched to put down the revolts. The entry included an annotation that requests for military assistance were handled by the Office of the President of the Confederation of Human Worlds.
Then there was that passage in the dispatch: "Certain images of one of the possible invaders indicates that they might be of a nonhuman origin. "So where are the images?" Moyamenssing muttered. Well, the suggestion that the possible off-worlders might be an alien sentience was simply too absurd to even consider. Everybody knew that h. sapiens was the only sentience anywhere near Human Space.
Moyamenssing duly queued Ambassador Creadence's urgent dispatch via routine channel to the President's office, where two days later it reached the top of the queue of Second Associate Deputy Director for State Affairs Lumrhanda Ronstedt.
Ronstedt's hobby was the history of the lesser worlds of the Confederation. He recognized the world in question immediately and laughed with delight. "Again?" The follies of hu
manity never failed to amuse him. After a second reading of the dispatch—it was marked "urgent," but obviously State didn't think it was, since it had been queued to him via routine channel—he looked up Creadence's entry in the Blue Line... And laughed with yet more delight; the man had absolutely no experience that would allow him to make a considered judgment on whether military assistance was necessary. Further, his dispatch didn't note any immediate threat to either Interstellar City, the off-worlder enclave outside Kingdom's capital of Haven, or to Confederation citizens outside Interstellar City—the prerequisites for Confederation military intervention on Kingdom.
And the intimation that it might be an alien invasion? He laughed again. It was absurd. The comedic possibilities of ambassadorial level appointees who lacked experience outside diplomatic circles were just too rich!
In total, Ronstedt saw no justification for military intervention. Still...
If memory served—and he was confident it did—the Confederation hadn't used military force on Kingdom in more than twenty years, even though there had been two or three uprisings during that time.
He pondered. The simple fact the "rebels," if that's what they were, were allegedly using weapons superior to anything in the Kingdom arsenal at least theoretically implied a threat to the security of Interstellar City and Confederation citizens. And there was that silly intimation of aliens. Yes, he could find justification for Ambassador Creadence's call for Marines.
Ronstedt chuckled. If he was patient enough to wait for the Marines to get to Kingdom—which meant if he didn't forget about it during the many months it would take for orders to reach an appropriate unit, for the Marines to travel to Kingdom, and news of the mission to get back to Earth—it could provide him with months of amusement.
He marked the dispatch "Approved, Office of the President" with not even a twitch at exceeding his authority, and queued it via "fast"—he wasn't prepared to exceed his authority far enough to queue it "urgent"—channel for the offices of the Combined Chiefs of Staff.
The next day the dispatch reached the top of the message board for Colonel Alleghretti Adoni, Confederation Army, the Assistant Director of Civil Affairs of the Combined Chiefs.
Colonel Adoni checked the authenticity certificate of the "Approved, Office of the President" annotation, and then read the dispatch. Since the dispatch was marked "Approved..." he didn't bother to look up Ambassador Creadence. He did, however, look up Kingdom. When he interpreted the diplomatic language of the brief entry in military edition of The Atlas of the Populated and Explored Planets of Human Space, he sadly shook his head. Adoni had spent his entire career as a staff officer in higher command headquarters, but he was enough of a humanist to realize the necessity of decent treatment of people. His own subordinates almost invariably thought well of him and did exemplary work, which made him look good, and he rewarded it as well as he could. It was evident to him that Kingdom's governing body probably brought the repeated revolts on itself.
Even though he could request Headquarters Marine Corps to dispatch up to a FIST to quell a civil disturbance or put down a revolt—only the Combined Chiefs could actually order it—he decided that, given the history of Confederation military interventions on Kingdom, his boss should make the decision.
He queued the dispatch urgent to Major General Michael Khanzhak, his boss and the Director of Civil Affairs of the Combined Chiefs, checked that General Khanzhak was available, and walked down the hall to his office.
"Big Mike" Khanzhak, Major General, Confederation Army, rumbled, "Come on in, Al," when Colonel Adoni appeared in his office door. "Big Mike" certainly was, but the bigness of muscle he'd had when first given the name as an artillery officer had morphed into fat from too many years spent cocking a desk instead of a cannon. "What do you have for me?"
"Thank you, sir," Adoni said, taking the seat Khanzhak waved him to. "What I have is a situation for which I want to see if you come up with the same solution I did. My authority is sufficient to deal with it, but my solution exceeds my authority."
Khanzhak cocked an eyebrow at his deputy and reached a hand to morph the console from his desktop.
"I queued it urgent," Adoni said, "and attached an entry from The Atlas..."
Khanzhak nodded and turned to his console. He diddled a control, then read Ambassador Creadence's dispatch and the attached entry on Kingdom from under lowered brows.
"You checked the authentication?" Khanzhak asked.
Adoni didn't answer; the question was pro forma.
Khanzhak leaned back in his chair and considered the situation. He came to a conclusion and sat up, facing his deputy.
"You're right, Al, you could handle this under your own authority. Most likely, all this peasant revolt will take is a company or two of Marine infantry. But I think it's time those theocrats saw a real sample of Confederation military power. What do you think?"
Colonel Adoni grinned. "I wonder if I should say ‘like minds.’ That was my thinking."
"That's why I keep you on as my deputy, Al. You come up with the same solutions I would."
"Thank you, sir."
"Draw up a request to HQMC to dispatch one FIST with another on standby. I'll sign it and kick it upstairs as soon as you get it to me."
Neither of them gave a thought to the nonsensical hint that Kingdom was dealing with an alien invasion rather than a peasant revolt. There weren't any sentient aliens, everybody knew that.
Lieutenant Colonel Rory Torn, Deputy Director for Civil Affairs, Marine Corps, snorted when he read the request from the Combined Chiefs. What are they spiking their caf with over there? he wondered. Don't they realize how many deployments the Marines already have? An entire FIST—with another on standby—to put down a peasant revolt on a rinky-dink little world like Kingdom? He didn't have to look Kingdom up, he'd been a corporal with the company 37th FIST sent to put down a peasant revolt that threatened Interstellar City more than twenty years earlier. An entire FIST? If the damn army could get its damn act together it could send a military police company to Kingdom, maybe reinforced by a special services platoon, on permanent garrison duty to keep the peace, and leave the Marines to perform more important missions.
But it was an official request from the Combined Chiefs, so he assumed the commandant must know about it and be in agreement.
Lieutenant Colonel Torn didn't think of an alien invasion at all; the request merely quoted selections from Ambassador Creadence's dispatch instead of containing its full text. He passed the request on to his boss, queued through "fast" channel and added an annotation that 34th FIST on Thorsfinni's World, currently not on deployment, was the closest unit to Kingdom.
Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Aguinaldo didn't find out about the deployment until after the orders were dispatched. If he had, he would have quashed them and assigned the duty to a different unit. But then, nobody had told the Marines there might be aliens involved. Aguinaldo was virtually the only Marine outside of 34th FIST who knew there really were sentient aliens, and that dealing with them was 34th FIST's primary, albeit secret, assignment.
Chapter Four
Lieutenant Humphrey, Company L's executive officer; First Sergeant Myer; and the company's platoon commanders stood crowded in Captain Conorado's tiny office. He had called for this meeting as soon as he got back from his talk with the brigadier.
"Men, I'll be brief. I've been recalled to Earth, and Lieutenant Humphrey will take command of the company during my absence."
At first the men received this news in shocked silence, and then, "For how long, sir?" "Why?" "What the hell?" "Goddamn!" Of them all, Lieutenant Humphrey was the most shocked. He thought, Command of the company? Me? He was both frightened and elated. Frightened because nobody could follow Conorado's act as a Marine company commander; elated because if he did well, his own captaincy was assured. But if he screwed up... He was like any junior officer, self-confident and anxious to prove himself, but scared silly he'd make a mistake. Humphrey
was in his mid-thirties and he'd been a corporal before commissioning, but still, company commander? The Old Man? Actually, as company executive officer and nominal second in command, he had proved himself a very capable and brave officer, and he was respected by the men of Lima Company. But being the happy-go-lucky number two was a lot different from being commander and dealing with all the responsibility that entailed.
He smiled.
Well, he thought, thank God this didn't happen during a combat operation! At least he'd have time to work his way into the billet, since there were no deployments on the horizon. Lieutenant Humphrey was well-aware that command in combat is the ultimate test of an officer's ability.
Conorado raised a hand. "That's enough. I leave in the morning. Lieutenant Humphrey can make the formal announcement at formation then. I don't know how long I'll be gone—months, of course. Nobody say anything until Humphrey makes the announcement. I know you'll all give him your total support while he's in command. Otherwise, he'll just kick all your asses." He turned to his ashen XO. "Isn't that right, Phil?" Humphrey made a sickish grin in reply.
"That's all, men. Phil, Top, Charlie, would you stay behind for a moment?" They remained standing until the platoon commanders had filed out. "Take seats, gentlemen," Conorado ordered. He sat down himself. "I think you should know the score. It seems Hoxey has filed formal charges against me for what I did on Avionia and I have to return to Headquarters, Marine Corps, to face a court-martial inquiry."
Charlie Bass swore violently. "That is the biggest load of—"
"I know, Charlie," Conorado interrupted.
"Any of us would've done the same, Skipper!" Top Myer protested.
"And if we didn't, sir, you'd have kicked our asses!" Humphrey added, his trepidation about taking command of the company having vanished.
"Nevertheless, gentlemen, it's gone down and I have to go back and face the charges. Don't worry; General Cazombi and Special Agent Nast will be there with me, and I couldn't ask for two better witnesses. Speaking of which, Charlie, the brigadier has ordered that you and Lance Corporal Dean be deposed about what you know, especially how Hoxey tried to get ahold of Owen to experiment on him, and about the reaction of the Avionians when we let them loose. So after this meeting, get over to the SJA. They're expecting you. By the way, speaking of Owen, where is that little devil?"
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