March To The Sea

apparent source in the future.'

'So we raise some cash.' Roger shrugged. 'We've been doing that all along.'

'I hope we're not going to have to take any more towns,' Gunnery Sergeant Lai said. 'The last one was bad enough for me.'

'No towns,' Roger agreed. 'But,' he continued, sitting up, 'we need money, and we're a top-notch combat unit. There's a massive migratory movement going on, and lots of fighting because of it. There should be a high- paying mission around here that we can do with minimal casualties.'

'You're talking about becoming mercenaries,' Pahner said incredulously.

'Captain, what else were we in Marshad? Or, for that matter, Q'Nkok?' the prince asked with a shrug.

'We were Bravo Company of the Bronze Battalion,' the captain replied with a tight smile, 'forced by circumstances to fight. Then taking payment for services rendered because it made sense to. We were not common goddamned mercenaries!'

'Well, Captain,' Roger said quietly, 'do you have a better alternative?'

The Marine started to open his mouth, then closed it with a snap. After a moment, he shook his head.

'No. But I don't think we've sunk low enough to be mercenaries.'

'Poertena,' Roger said. 'Do we have the funds to buy enough barleyrice to make it to the coast?'

The armorer looked from the prince to his company commander wildly. 'Hey, You' Highness, don' get me in t'is!'

'Yes, Roger,' Pahner said tightly. 'We do. But eventually we'll run out of cash. Of course, we can forage once we hit the jungles. That will eke out supplies a little longer.'

'Which will double our travel time,' Roger pointed out mildly, one eyebrow raised. 'And wear down the flar-ta. And use up our dietary supplements. Not to mention that we'll undoubtedly be out of funds when we reach the coast . . . and need to charter or buy ships for the next stage.'

'Captain,' Kosutic said, and paused. 'We . . . might have to think about this. There's more than just the barleyrice to consider. The troops need a break, and I don't mean sitting in the jungle. They could use some downtime in the city, drink a little wine, do a little shouting. And not having to forage would really speed up the march. It . . . might make sense to look around for a . . . job. But it would have to pay enough to matter.'

Roger looked at Pahner and could see that he was thoroughly pissed by the situation. He smiled gently at the commander of his bodyguards and shook his head again.

'What was it you told me? 'Sometimes we have to do things we don't like.' I think this might be one of those times. And I also think that whatever we do to get me home is within the mission parameters. We need cash to do that, so this is within the parameters. And as a last point,' he added with a broader smile, 'if we don't get Kostas his nearpeppers and spices, he might go all sulky.' He winked at his valet, who returned the look blandly.

Pahner regarded the tertiary heir to the throne of the Empire of Man darkly. It had been a vast relief when Roger finally accepted that there truly was nothing—literally nothing at all—more vital than returning him safely to the imperial court on Terra. The captain knew that it had been hard for the prince to come to grips with the notion that his life was that important, given the estrangement which had existed between himself and his mother, the empress, for as long as he could remember. The simple fact was that Roger had believed no one in the entire universe, with the sole exception of Kostas Matsugae, had given much of a good goddamn for him. Which, Pahner had to admit, had been true in many ways. Even, he had come to realize, in Roger's own case, for the prince hadn't much cared for the spoiled, petulant brat he'd seen in his own mirror each day. If anyone had ever sat down and explained to him the reason his father had been banished from court things might have been different, but it had become painfully clear that no one ever had. Personally, Pahner suspected that Eleanora O'Casey was right— everyone had simply assumed that someone else had explained his father's inept conspiracies against the throne to him.

No one had, however, and the fact that Roger was the very mirror image of his incredibly handsome, incredibly spoiled playboy father had made things immeasurably worse. Since everyone 'knew' Roger was aware of the reasons for his father's disgrace, they'd assumed that the fact that he seemed bent on turning himself into a physical duplicate of that father represented some sort of declaration of defiance . . . or worse. Nobody except Matsugae had ever guessed how much of Roger's 'spoiled brat' exterior had been the almost inevitable response of a little boy who had never understood why no one seemed to trust—or love—him to the pain of his loneliness. Certainly no one in Bravo Company had ever guessed just how much more there might be inside him before events in Voitan and Marshad.

But like the other changes in his personality, Roger's new awareness of the realities of the political instability which plagued the Empire of Man, and of the fact that the MacClintock Dynasty truly was the only glue holding that empire together, had proved to have a nasty double edge from the perspective of the commander of his personal security detachment. It meant that the prince had finally learned to accept that there truly was a reason he had to allow his bodyguards to die if that was what it took to keep him alive, and also that nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of his return home. But it had also brought the famous MacClintock ruthless practicality to the surface. If nothing could be allowed to stand in the way, then by the same token, there was nothing he was not prepared to do . . . including turning Pahner's beloved Bravo Company into raggedy-assed mercenaries on a planet full of barbarians.

The captain knew that, and the prince's reasonable and all too logical arguments didn't make him feel one bit better about it. He glowered at Roger for a moment longer, then turned to the two gunnery sergeants.

'What do you think?'

'I don't want to take any more casualties if we don't absolutely have to,' Lai said immediately. 'We've got quite a way to go and a battle at the end. We need to keep that in mind.' But after a moment she shrugged. 'Having said that, I have to side with His Highness. We do need the cash. And the downtime.'

The captain nodded, then turned to the other gunny. 'Jin?'

'Yeah,' the Korean said. 'I gotta go with the merc idea. But it's gotta pay.' He looked up at his CO. 'Sorry, Cap'n.'

'Well,' Pahner said, patting his breast pocket. 'It looks like I'm outvoted.'

'This isn't a democracy, as I believe you've pointed out once or twice,' Roger said mildly, propping himself sideways. 'If you say 'no,' the answer is no.'

The Marine sighed. 'I can't say 'no.' You're right. That doesn't mean I have to like it, though.'

'Tell you what,' the prince offered, sitting up straight. 'We'll handle it. You just sit back and make sure we don't screw up. That way you can imagine it wasn't really Bravo Company that did it.' He smiled to take away any sting in the words.

'We can do it 'incognito,' ' he continued. 'I won't be 'Prince Roger.' I shall be . . . 'Captain Sergei!' And it will be 'Sergei's Raiders' who perform the mission, not Bravo Company of Bronze Battalion.' He chuckled at his own suggestion, but O'Casey raised an eyebrow.

'So you'll be incognito, Your Highness?' she said, smiling slightly. 'With your incognito band of bodyguards?'

'Uh, yeah,' he said suspiciously. 'Why?'

'No reason,' the historian told him. 'No reason at all.'

'Oh, whatever,' Pahner sighed. 'Okay, Roger, you take it. Find the mission, plan the mission, command the mission. Just make sure that it's as low risk and high pay as possible.'

'Those are usually contradictions in terms,' Jin said darkly.

'Maybe we'll come up lucky,' Roger told him confidently.

CHAPTER THREE

'Well, I think we came up lucky for the downtime,' Kosutic said, floating faceup in the lake. She sat up in her jury-rigged float chair and took a sip of wine. 'And with the apsimons. Real lucky.'

From the humans' perspective, Ran Tai was a pleasant change from the previous towns they'd visited . . . which meant it was Hell itself for the Mardukans who lived there. Not that they hadn't done their best to