Authors: David Weber,John Ringo
Throne of Stars (47 page)
“Good!” the Vashin said. “I’m looking forward to ship combat. And I like the thought of seeing all those other worlds you keep talking about.”
“So do I,” Pahner said quietly. “And especially to seeing one that’s not Marduk.”
“Captain.” Roger nodded in greeting as the Marines walked into the command center. “It looks like everything is prepared to receive visitors.”
“It had better be,” Pahner growled. “We’ve only been getting ready for the last two weeks.”
“I was thinking. You have any major plans between now and when we launch the shuttles?”
“Nothing I’d classify as
major,
” the Marine said. “Why?”
“In that case, I was thinking it would be a good idea to have a party,” Roger said with a smile. “I’ve done up a few suitable awards. . . .”
Roger had been a bit put out to discover that he hadn’t originated the concept of the dining-in. But after he watched Pahner and Kosutic put together the plan for the evening in less than five minutes, he was less upset.
The sun was setting over the mountains in the west as the majority of the group that had fought its way to the spaceport gathered around tables arranged under awnings. The spaceport’s mountain plateau was much higher and drier than most of Marduk, which gave a rare clear sky and a view of both of the moons. It was also much cooler, but the Mardukans’ new uniforms finally made them immune to the torpor which set in with the evening’s chill.
Supper was a seven-course dinner. It started with fruits gathered from their entire trip, and everyone agreed that the winner was either the K’Vaernian sea-plum or Marshad’s kate fruit. The wine was a light white from a vineyard in the Marshad plain that came highly recommended by T’Leen Targ. The second course was wine-basted
coll
fish flown in from K’Vaern’s Cove—small, tender ones, not steaks from giant
coll
—accompanied by nearpotatoes skillet fried with slivered Ran Tai peppers. The wine for the second course, a light, sweet sea-plum vintage which had been recommended by T’Seela of Sindi, was perfect for cooling the palette after the peppers.
The third course was a fruit-basted
basik
on a bed of barleyrice. Roger’s table was presented with a very large platter. Several normal
basik
had been clustered around a sculpture of a very large, very pointy-toothed
basik
made out of barleyrice. The wine for that course was a kate-fruit vintage from the new vineyards around Voitan.
The fourth course was the
piece de resistance
. Julian had gone out and single-handedly downed a damnbeast, using nothing more than a squad of backup and a bead cannon, and his prize was served roasted as whole as possible. A certain amount of careful rearrangement had been required to cover up the enormous hole in its neck, and it was delivered on a giant platter carried in by six of the local Krath servants. Julian personally officiated over the carving of the steaks, which were served along with
peruz
-spiced barleyrice and steamed vegetables. The wine was a vintage from Ran Tai that the company had come to like during its sojourn there.
The remaining courses were desserts and niblets, and the feast culminated with everyone sitting around on the ground, picking bits of damnbeast out of their teeth while they tried to decide how much wine they could drink.
Finally, as the last course was cleared, Roger stood and raised his wine glass.
“Siddown!” Julian called.
“Yes, sit, Roger,” Pahner said. “Let’s see . . . I think . . . Yes, Niederberger! You’re to give the toast.”
The designated private took a hasty gulp of wine, then stood while Gunny Jin whispered in his ear. He cleared his throat and raised his glass.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Her Majesty, Alexandra the Seventh, Empress of Man! Long may she reign!”
“The Empress!” The response rumbled back at him, and he tried not to scurry as he settled back into his chair in obvious relief.
“
Now
you stand up, Roger,” Pahner said.
“Shouldn’t it be you?” Roger asked.
“Nah. You’re the senior officer,
Colonel,
” the captain said with a grin.
“No rank in the mess!” Julian called.
“I was just pointing it out,” Pahner said. “Your turn, Roger.”
“Okay.” Roger got to his feet again. “Ladies and Gentlemen, absent companions!”
“Absent companions!”
“Before we get into any more toasts,” Roger continued, waving Julian back down, “I have a few words I’d like to say.”
“Speech! Speech!” Poertena yelled, and most of the Vashin joined in. The armorer had taken a table with them, even though they’d made it clear that they didn’t want to play cards.
“Not a speech,” Roger disagreed, and held out his hand to Despreaux. She handed over a sizable sack, then sat back down with a smile.
“On the auspicious occasion of us almost getting off this mudball,” Roger said. “Sorry to all you people who were born here, by the way. But on this occasion, I think it’s fitting that we distribute a few mementos. Things to remember our trip by.”
“Uh-oh,” Kosutic whispered. “Did you know about this?”
“Yep.” Pahner grinned. “Or, rather, I found out just in time.”
“Lessee,” Roger said, pulling out a piece of plastscrip and a small medallion. “Ah, yes. To St. John (J), and St. John (M). A silver ‘M’ and a silver ‘J,’ so that we can frigging tell you apart!”
Roger beamed as the twin brothers made their way up to accept their gifts, then shook their hands (Mark’s had regenerated quite nicely since Kirsti) as he handed over the mementos.
“Wear ’em in good health. Now, what else do we have? Ah, yes.” He reached into the sack and pulled out a wrench no more than three centimeters long. “To Poertena, a little pocking wrench, for beating up on little pocking bits of armor!”
He continued in the same vein through the entire remaining unit of Marines and many of the Vashin and Diasprans, showing that he recognized their individual quirks and personality traits. It took almost an hour of mingled laughter and groans before he started wrapping up.
“To PFC Gronningen,” he said, holding up a silver badge. “The unsleeping silver eye. Because you
know
Julian is going to get you, sooner or later.”
He handed the badge to the grinning Asgardian and punched him on the shoulder.
“You’re doomed. You know that, right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Lessee. We’re getting near the bottom of the bag. . . . Oh, yes. To Adib Julian, a marksman’s badge with a ‘no’ symbol over it. The marksman’s bolo badge for always being second in any shooting match!”
Julian accepted it with good grace, and the prince turned to the sergeant major, Pahner, and the senior Mardukans.
“I’d considered the unsleeping eye for Rastar, as well,” Roger said, and the wave of human chuckles was swamped in grunting Mardukan laughter as the Marines and the Vashin alike recalled their first meeting and Roger’s ambush of the sleeping Rastar. “But in the end, I decided on this.” He reached into the bag and withdrew an elaborately chased set of Mardukan-sized bead pistols. “May you never run out of ammo.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.” Rastar accepted the gift with a flourishing bow.
“No rank in the mess,” Roger reminded him, and turned to his next victim. “For Krindi, a set of Zuiko binoculars. It seems you’re never able to fight at long range, but what the heck.”
“Thank you, Y—Roger,” the Diaspran said, and took the imaging system with a slight bow of his own.
“To Eva Kosutic, our own personal Satanist,” Roger said, with another grin, and handed her a small silver pitchfork. “The silver pitchfork medal. She was always there to prod buttock; now she has something to prod with. You can feel free to put it anywhere you like.”
“And yours was always a nice buttock to prod, Roger,” she told him with a grin as she accepted the award. Roger laughed with everyone else, then turned to Cord.
“Cord, what can I say? You’ve stuck with me through thick and thin, mainly thin.”
“You can say nothing and sit back down,” the shaman replied.
“Nah, not after I went to all this trouble,” the prince said, and winked at Pedi. “Okay, we have: a package of baby formula Dobrescu promises me will work for Mardukan kids just fine. A package of disposable diapers—I know you guys stick your kids in your slime, but when we get among humans, that might not always be an option. A set of four baby blankets—what can I say, do you
always
have to have quartets? And last, but most certainly not least, a set of earplugs. Just for Cord, though. He’s going to need them.”
“Oh, thank you very much, Roger,” Cord said, accepting the items and sitting down.
“Don’t think of it as a roast,” Roger told him. “Think of it as a baby shower.”
“What is that?” Pedi asked Despreaux quietly.
“Normally,” the Marine whispered back, “it’s when you give gifts that can help with an expected baby. In this case, though, Roger is twitting Cord.”
“And here comes Dogzard,” Roger said, looking under the table.
The beast raised her head as she heard her name, then she leapt to her feet when she saw her master’s body posture.
“Dat’s a good Dogzard,” Roger told her, and pulled a huge leg of damnbeast off the table. “Who’s a good beastie, then?”
The semi-lizard snatched the bone out of Roger’s hand and retreated back under the table. Her meter-and-a-half-long tail stuck well out from under it, lashing happily from side to side, and Roger waved his hand.
“Ow, ow!” He counted his fingers ostentatiously, then sighed in relief while everyone laughed. But then the prince lowered his hands, and turned to the last person on his list.
“And so we come to Armand Pahner,” he said seriously, and the laughter stilled. “What do you present to the officer who held you together for eight horrible months? Who never wavered? Who never faltered? Who never for one instant let us think that we might fail? What do you give to the man who took a sniveling brat and made a man of him?”
“Nothing, for preference,” Pahner said. “It really
was
my job.”
“Still,” Roger said, and reached into the now all but empty bag to pull out a small badge. “I present you the Order of the Bronze Shield. If I can, I’m going to have Mother turn it into an order of knighthood; we need at least one more. For service above and beyond the call of duty to the Crown. Thank you, Armand. You’ve been more than you’ve needed to be at every turn. I know we still have a long way to go, but I’m confident that we can get there, together.”
“Thanks, Roger.” The captain stood to accept the gift. “And I have a little present for you, as well.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” The Marine cleared his throat formally. “Long before the ISU, before the Empire of Man, in the dawn of the space age, there was a mighty nation called the United States. As Rome before it, it rose in a pillar of flame and eventually fell. But during its heyday, it had a few medals to reckon with.
“There were many awards and ribbons, but one, while common, perhaps surpassed them all. It was a simple rifle on a field of blue, surrounded by a wreath. What it meant was that the wearer had been where the bullets flew, and probably shot at people himself, and had returned from the fire. It meant, simply, that the wearer had seen infantry combat, and survived. All the other medals, really, were simply icing on that cake, and like the ISU before it, the Empire has maintained that same award . . . and for the same reasons.
“Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock,” the captain said, as he took the newly minted badge from Sergeant Major Kosutic and pinned it onto the prince’s uniform, “I award you the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. You have walked into the fire again and again, and come out not unscathed, but at least, thank God, alive. If your mother gives you all the medals you deserve, you’re going to look like a neobarb world dictator. But I hope that you think of this one, sometimes, because, really, it says it all.”
“Thank you, Armand,” Roger said quietly.
“No, thank you,” Pahner replied, putting his hand on the prince’s shoulder. “For making the transition. For surviving. Hell, for saving all of
our
asses. Thank you from all of us.”
The party had descended to the point at which Erkum Pol had to be dragged down before he hit someone with a plank, and Roger had gotten Despreaux off to one side. She’d been quiet all night, and he thought he knew why.
“You’re still insisting that you can’t marry me, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, and I wish you’d quit asking,” she replied, looking down the hills to the Krath city in the valley. “I’m short, Roger. I’ll stick along to Earth, and I’ll do what I can to get your mother out of danger. But I won’t marry you. When we’re settled, and things are safe, I’m putting in my discharge papers. And then I’ll take my severance bonus and go find me a nice, safe, placid farmer to marry.”
“Court is just another environment,” Roger protested. “You’ve been through a hundred on this planet, alone. You can adjust!”
“I probably could,” she said, shaking her head. “But not well enough. What you need is someone like Eleanora, someone who knows the rocks and shoals. Part of the problem is that we’re too alike. We both have a very direct approach, and you need someone who can complement you, not enhance your negative qualities.”
“You’ll stay until Earth, right?” he asked. “Promise you’ll stay until then.”
“I promise,” she said. “And now, I’m turning in, Roger.” She stopped and looked at him with a cocked head. “I’ll make an offer one last time. Come with me?”
“Not if you won’t marry me,” he said.
“Okay,” she sighed. “God, we’re both stubborn.”
“Yeah,” Roger said, as she walked away. “Stubborn’s one word.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“We’ve never had a ‘health and welfare’ inspection
before,
” the voice said suspiciously.
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” Jin controlled his voice carefully, sliding just the right hint of exasperation into it. “We’ve got a task force with an IBI inspection team coming out, and we need to make a big show. Personally, I think they’re operating on the theory that everyone needs a good shaking up after the coup attempt, but what do I know? According to The Book, we’re
supposed
to do these things on every ship, not that anybody ever did it! But now we’re under the gun, so we’re trying to get a paper trail going.”
There was a long pause, and Jin wished that he could see the other’s face, but the freighter had supplied only a voice channel.
Emerald Dawn
was a known ship. She’d passed through the system at least twice before, once since Jin had been inserted. She generally traded minor technological trinkets like fire-starters for local gems and artwork. In addition, she got a small fee for dropping electronic transfers in the system, which was the real reason for her visits. As a matter of fact, he’d talked with the ship on her previous run, and he hoped the familiarity of his voice would lull them to some extent.
“Okay,” a new voice said finally. “This is Captain Dennis. One person can come aboard for your ‘health and welfare’ check. But this is the
last
time I’m coming to this port. I don’t need this aggravation for a handful of cheap-ass gems, a mail chit that barely covers our air loss, and a cargo of scummy art-shit.”
“Whatever.” Jin let a bit of the peevish bureaucrat into his tone. “I’m just doing my job.”
The shuttle was on autopilot, so he slid out of the pilot’s chair with a nod at Poertena, and pulled his way aft. This was made somewhat difficult by the fact that the small craft was crammed with Marines in battle armor. Most of them had clamped onto the walls and floors, but a few were drifting, more or less at random.
He stopped opposite Captain Pahner, whose feet were stuck to the ceiling as he stood “head-down,” perusing the schematics for the target.
“They’re not real happy,” the IBI agent said.
“I don’t care if they’re happy,” Pahner said. “Just as long as they open their doors.”
“One shot, and we’re all vapor,” Jin noted.
“And as far as they know, they’re suddenly the most wanted ship in the Empire,” Pahner pointed out. “It would be very bad form for a tramp freighter to shoot up an official Imperial inspection craft. They’ll let us dock. After that, you just hit the deck.”
“Why does this make my butt pucker?” Fiorello Giovannuci—known to the dirt-side com station as “Captain Dennis”—asked as he gazed at the viewscreen image of the approaching small craft.
“Because your butt always puckers when we get boarded.” Amanda Beach, his first officer, shook her head in mock gravity. “Relax. It’s got all the codes for an Imperial customs ship. Really, it’s because your conscience isn’t pure. You need to spend some time on the planets, reacquiring your oneness with Gaia.”
Giovannuci glanced at her, then shook his own head and sighed.
“Your sense of humor is the reason you’re out here, you know. Just keep it up.” He leaned forward, as if the viewscreen could tell him more if he only stared hard enough, and rubbed his cheek. “And you’re wrong. There’s something very much not right here.”
“You want me to go down to the airlock?” Beach asked as the CO fell silent, watching the shuttle make its final approach. He continued to say nothing for several more seconds, but, finally, he nodded.
“Yes. And take Longo and Ucelli.”
“My,” she said, pursing her lips as she got to her feet, “you
are
nervous. Isn’t that sort of overkill?”
“Better over than under,” Giovannuci said. “Go. Fast.”
Jin waited until all the telltales turned green, then opened the airlock door and swung forward through it cautiously. The three people waiting for him represented a fair percentage of the total crew for a tramp like this, and their presence in such numbers indicated just how uncomfortable they must be.
He’d have been just as nervous in their shoes. The profit which could be made from “jacking” ships like this were enough to make them high-priority targets. Even a tramp as old and beat up as
Emerald Dawn
was worth nearly a billion credits. So anytime one was parked anywhere but at a fully secured port—which did not, by any stretch, describe Marduk—its crew was always on the lookout for pirates. And it wasn’t impossible to imagine the entire port being captured, or even that one Temu Jin would be in on it. Stranger things had transpired in the borderlands.
Besides, now that he thought about it, that was actually a pretty fair description, in a slightly skewed way, of what was actually going to happen.
The threesome had obviously been chosen with some care. According to her collar tabs, the woman was senior, a merchant lieutenant, so probably she was
Emerald Dawn
’s second-in-command. She looked a bit long in the tooth for that, and fairly beat up. Regen healed
almost
perfectly, but scars were inevitable—at least when a limb hadn’t had to be completely regrown—and this one, for all her striking looks, had plenty. She’d been in more than one fight, and a couple of them must have been with knives.
The second most notable was the largest of the group, a hulking figure which outmassed even the redoubtable Gronningen. But something about him told Jin that he was one of those big, fast men people tended to underestimate on the theory that anyone that big had to be too slow to be dangerous. He would bear watching.
For that matter, so would the little guy. He was the calmest seeming of the lot as he leaned nonchalantly against a bulkhead, but the low-slung double pistols sort of said it all.
And all three of them wore light body armor.
Jin stepped forward carefully, keeping his hands in view at all times, and extended the pad.
“Pax, okay?” He tabbed the controls and gestured around. “All I want is a thumbprint saying that the ‘inspection’ was complete, and that you have no complaints. I’ll put in all sorts of stuff checked, basically half the stuff on your manifest. And we’re all happy. I’m happy,
you’re
happy, the IBI asshole is happy, and everybody can go back to business as usual.”
Beach took the pad and glanced at the document on its display. As the bullet-sweating geek had suggested, it showed a detailed inspection of an imaginary ship conforming to their class, with a list of cargo opened and checked. It was quite an artistic forgery, a masterpiece of the genre.
“Why, thank you,” she said, giving him a thin smile as she annotated and thumbprinted the pad. “What’s wrong? You look nervous.”
“Yeah? Well, Mr. Gun-Happy over there looks like he’s remembering the last baby he ate, and I ain’t even gonna comment on Mr. Troll,” Jin said with a nervous laugh.
“I don’t eat babies,” the gunman whispered. “They stick in your teeth.”
“Ha. Ha,” the IBI agent said.
“Done,” Beach said, and handed him the pad.
“Thanks,” Jin replied with a relieved sigh. His hand was unaccountably clumsy as he accepted the pad, and it slipped out of his fingers. He swore, grabbed for it, then followed it to the deck, and as he did, he noted with the cool, professional detachment available only to the truly frightened that the threesome had reacted to the little ruse as if such things happened to them every day.
The fabric of his suit hardened under the kinetic impact of the first round just as the shuttle doors exploded open behind him.
“Shit,” Giovannuci said, and hit the alarm button with a fist as he erupted from his seat. “
Jackers!”
They couldn’t simply announce that they were Marines who were commandeering the vessel in the name of the Empire. First, no one would have believed them, and, second, they were all wanted for treason. Somehow, they were pretty sure that “No, really. It was all a big mistake,” wouldn’t fly. So the plan was to secure the “welcome party” and try to keep casualties to a minimum in the assault.
The “plan,” clearly, was a bust even before Gronningen did a flying leap out of the airlock. The undersized gun-boy was pumping rounds into Jin as the IBI agent rolled across the deck to spread the hits across the protective surface of his uniform. The big guy, on the other hand, had produced a cut-down flechette cannon—from where was a mystery—and was filling the airlock with flechettes, while the leader type had produced a heavy bead pistol and had Gronningen perfectly targeted.
“Don’t fire until fired upon” obviously wasn’t going to work under these circumstances.
Gronningen hit the deck sliding, and targeted the little gunner first, but the gunman had taken one look at the Marine battle armor and decided the odds were against the home team. The heavy bead round clove through the bulkhead, but the gunner was already gone. Gronningen’s next round, however, flipped the heavy gunner over backwards in a spray of red.
The woman was
fast
. Before he could reacquire her, she’d hit the deck exit button and was
out
of there. The inner airlock door slammed shut behind her, and Gronningen levered himself to his feet as Macek slid by and hit the door button.
“Sealed,” Geno said. “Oh, well.” He rolled out a slab of claylike substance and slapped it onto the hatch. “Fire in the hole!”
“Who in Muir’s Name
are
these guys?” Giovannuci demanded. A security team was on the way to the command deck, but he wanted to be forward. The last thing he’d seen was a wave of heavy Imperial armor coming out of the shuttle, and that was not good news.
“I don’t know,” Beach replied over her communicator. “What kind of jackers wear battle armor? Or even know how to
use
it, for that matter? But if they’re Empies, why don’t they have a warship? And if there
is
a warship, where in hell is it?”
“I don’t know,” the CO replied, looking at his schematic. “But whoever they are, they’re already through the lock. And moving down Deck C. It looks like they know where the morgue is.”
“Do they want to
capture
us?” the second officer demanded. “I’m falling back to the Morgue, but I’ve only got a limited group. So far, only eight and the two commandos at the Morgue door.”
“Well, I’ve got bodies, but
you’ve
got all the weapons,” Giovannuci snapped. “Sidearms are useless against that armor.”
“I know,” Beach said. “I’m into the Armory. Now, if we can just match bodies to bullets!”
“I’ll send groups through the side passages,” Giovannuci said. “For once, the way they butchered this thing when they converted her will work in our favor.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, next time, tell them to put the Pollution-bedamned Armory further away from the main hatch!”
“Will do. Giovannuci, out.”
“Lai, go with First Squad to Engineering,” Pahner snapped. “Gunny Jin, you’re with Second.” As the teams headed out, the sergeant major snagged Jin and Despreaux. She peered into the squad leader’s helmet visor, but its swirling mirrored surface made it impossible to see the younger woman’s expression.
“Despreaux, I know you’re not tracking too well . . .” Kosutic said.
“I’m
fine,
Sergeant Major,” the sergeant replied.
“No, you’re not,” Kosutic contradicted calmly. “You’re a basket case. So’s Bebi and Niederberger. And Gelert and Mutabi, for that matter.”
“Shit,” Jin said. “Mutabi went?”
“Yes,” Kosutic replied. “I’ve been trying to hold all of you out of combat as much as possible. This time, I don’t have any choice.”
“I’ll be fine,” Despreaux said desperately. “Really. I was fine in Mudh Hemh.”
“Nevertheless, Jin’s going along,” Kosutic told her. “Let him run your squad; you just cover everyone’s back.”
“I can
handle
it, Sergeant Major,” the sergeant said. “I
can
.”
“Despreaux, just do what I say, okay?” the NCO snapped.
“Yes, Sergeant Major,” she replied bitterly. “I’ll go ahead and give up my squad to the Gunny.”
“Trust the Gunny,” Jin told her quietly, tapping her on the shoulder.
“It’ll be okay,” Kosutic said, as the deck shook with a distant detonation. “Somehow or another, it’ll be okay.”
“Who the pock
are
these guys?” Julian snapped. He’d narrowly missed being smeared by the hypervelocity missile that had just torn the bulkhead into so much confetti. For a “tramp freighter,”
Emerald Dawn
’s crew had some heavy-duty hardware. And a lot of personnel.
“Captain Pahner, this is Julian. Third Squad is stuck on the approach to the Bridge. I’d estimate the defenders are in at least squad strength, with heavy weapons, and they’re fighting hard. We tried to cut through bulkheads, but several of them are made of reinforced blast steel. We’re having a hard time cutting that. We’ve eliminated two defense points, but we’ve also lost two suits to get here.” He looked around at the four members of the squad behind him. “Frankly, Sir, I don’t think we’re going to get through without some reinforcements.”
“Julian, hold what you’ve got. I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”
Pahner looked over at Temu Jin and raised an eyebrow. The IBI agent had been attempting to hack the ship’s infonet for almost two minutes. It was clear that whatever they’d run into—smugglers, pirates, or whatever—this was no “tramp freighter.”
“So, what did we just walk into Agent Jin?”
“Well, if it’s a tramp freighter, I’m an Armaghan High Priest. No offense, Sergeant Major.”
“None taken,” Kosutic rasped. “We need to do something here, Captain.”
“Yes, we do, Sergeant Major.” Pahner looked over at her. “But we really, really need some information to decide what, don’t you think?”
“Personnel, personnel . . .” Gunny Jin muttered, looking at the faded signs stenciled on the bulkheads. “Where’s the crew quarters?”
“Kyrou, cover your sector,” Despreaux snapped. The private had been glancing over at Jin as the gunny tried to navigate the unfamiliar maze.
“Yes, Sergeant,” the plasma gunner replied, turning back to the right.