scores, currently.” He looked at Roger, obviously weighing pros and cons, then nodded. “And we’ll take the Prince’s. He doesn’t have much background in it, but it goes along with ensuring his survival.
“But we have to remember that crossing the planet only gets us halfway to our objective. The real mission is to take the port and get our hands on a ship home, and we’ll need the armor to take the port even more than we should need it on the way there. Initially, until we get the lay of the land, we’ll keep one team in armor at all times. Once we become comfortable with our ability to survive, we’ll make our way in normal uniforms to conserve power until we reach the port.
“Initially, we’ll maintain our security with bead rifles and plasma weapons. But we can assume that they, too, will become exhausted. So from our first encounter with the Mardukans, we will ensure that all Mardukan weaponry is gathered, and we’ll begin training with it.”
He looked at the lieutenants again. Jasco, at least, appeared to think he’d lost his mind. The other two were trying, unsuccessfully, to keep their thoughts off their faces, but the prince, to give him credit, just seemed confused. It amused Pahner to turn the lieutenants’ worldview on its ear; making them think was good for them, whatever the junior officers might believe. In the case of the prince . . . Pahner found himself moving from annoyed towards amused, which was another surprise.
Pahner had always considered the prince his charge, but never one of “his” officers. Or, for that matter, whatever the Table of Organization might say, his superior. But now the captain realized that what he actually had on his hands was a terribly confused, brand-new lieutenant. And since “Captain” Pahner had spent a good part of his life as “Gunny” Pahner, teaching confused lieutenants the rules of the game, the prince suddenly switched from a hindrance to a challenge. A tough challenge—Pahner had never seen a lieutenant with a lower likelihood of making a decent officer—but an approachable one, nonetheless. And the only kind of challenge worth facing was a tough one. With that realization, the mission, in Pahner’s mind, suddenly went from impossible to simply very difficult.
“Train with scummy weapons, Sir?” Lieutenant Jasco asked, looking at the other officers. “What are we going to do with them? Sir?”
“We’ll use them to hold off attacking Mardukans or hostile fauna until heavier weapons come online. And when we get to the point that our power supplies are at the minimum necessary, in my opinion, to take the port, we’ll use them exclusively.”
“Sir?” Lieutenant Sawato said diffidently. “Are you sure about this? Those—” She gestured at where the hologram had been. “Those . . . weapons aren’t very good.”
“No, Lieutenant, they aren’t. But we’ll just have to learn to get by. Our chameleon suits have limited ballistic protection, so we’ll be highly resistant to fire from their arquebuses. As for lower-velocity weapons like spears and lances and swords and everything else . . . we’ll deal with that as it comes.
“Now,” the captain continued. “What, other than charges for the weapons and armor support, are our largest issues?”
“Communication,” Lieutenant Gulyas said. “If we’re going to trade and negotiate, we have to be able to communicate. We have a ‘kernel’ of the Mardukan language, but that’s for one dialect on the subcontinent surrounding the base. We don’t have any kernels for other areas. Without kernels, our toots can’t translate for us.”
“I can work on that,” O’Casey said. “I’ve got a good heuristic language program I use for anthropological digging. I may have some trouble communicating with the first few groups we run across, but once I pick up a regional language base, even vast dialect changes won’t affect things. And I can create kernels for other toots.”
“Well, that’s that one solved,” Pahner said with a smile. “But you’ll need to get that program to other toots. We can’t have you as a point failure source.”
“That might be a problem,” she admitted. “It’s big. It will take a very capable toot to handle it. I’ve got one custom designed for me, but without a huge amount of processor capability and storage, this program runs like a slug.”
“I’ll load it,” Roger said quietly. “Mine’s . . . pretty good.” There was a slight, general chuckle at the understatement, for the Imperial Family’s implants’ abilities were almost legendary. “We might have some trouble loading it, but I’ll guarantee I can run it.”
“Okay,” Pahner said. “What’s next?”
“Food,” Lieutenant Jasco said. “We don’t have the rations for the trip, and we can’t forage and carry the armor and keep the Prince safe all at once.” His tone was respectfully challenging.
“Correct,” Pahner acknowledged calmly. “And what is the answer to
“Trade,” O’Casey said definitively. “We trade high-tech items for whatever the Mardukans use for portable wealth. That might not be metals, by the way. The ancient North Africans traded salt. But whatever they use here, we trade the largest mass of advanced technology at the first city-state for our basic needs and a ‘nest egg,’ and then portion the rest out slowly as we go.”
“Exactly.” Pahner’s nod was firm. “So, what do we have that would make good trade goods?”
“Firestarters,” Jasco said promptly. “I saw a case of them in the supply room last week.” He consulted his pad. “I’ve got an inventory here—let me cross load.”
He set his pad down on the table to transmit the inventory data, and the other lieutenants and O’Casey captured the data and began perusing it while Roger was still pulling out his own pad. By the time he had it opened and configured to receive, Jasco had cut the transmission and was back to looking at the data.
“Lieutenant,” the prince said in a lofty tone, “if you
Jasco looked up from the lists in surprise. “Oh, sorry, Your Highness,” he said, and set the list to transmit again.
Roger nodded as his pad picked up the data.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. And, again, it’s ‘Colonel’ under these circumstances.”
“Yes, of course . . . Colonel,” Jasco said, going back to his data.
“What do we see?” Pahner asked, apparently ignoring the byplay. He didn’t have a pad out, nor had he received a download.
Roger transferred the data to his toot and put his own pad away. He would’ve taken the data straight into the toot from Jasco’s pad, but the implant had so many security protocols that filtering through the pad had been easier and faster. As Roger was going through these circumlocutions, the officers and O’Casey were studying the inventory.
“Virtually anything in here would be tradable,” and O’Casey said, her eyes bugging out at the thought. “Space blankets, chameleon liners, water carriers . . . not boots. . . .”
“We’ll be space and mass-limited,” Pahner noted. “The ship’s going to have to drop us fairly far out, and we’ll have to come down in a long, slow spiral to avoid detection. That means internal add-on tanks of hydrogen, and those will take up volume and mass. So the higher the potential profit, the better.”
“Well,” O’Casey continued, “not uniforms. Rucksacks. There are five spares; that might be good. Spare issue intel-pads? No. What are ‘multitools’?”
“They’re memory plastic tools,” Lieutenant Sawato said with a nod. “They come with four ‘standard’ configurations: shovel, ax, pick-mattock, and boma-knife. And you can add two configurations.”
“We’ve got fifteen spares,” Jasco said, flipping through the data. “And each Marine in the Company has one.”
“Of course,” Gulyas observed with a chuckle, “some of those have some . . . odd secondary settings.”
“What?” Sawato smiled. “Like Sergeant Julian’s ‘out of tune lute’ setting?”
“I was actually thinking of Poertena’s ‘pig pocking pag’ setting,” Gulyas snorted.
“I beg your pardon?” O’Casey blinked, and looked back and forth between the two lieutenants.
“The armorer controls the machine that resets the adjustable configurations,” Pahner told her in a resigned tone. “Julian used to be Bravo’s armorer before Poertena. Both of them are jokers.”
“Oh.” The prince’s ex-tutor considered for several seconds, then snorted as she finally completed the translation of “pig pocking pag” in her head. “Well, in this case the setting makes sense. We’re going to need lots of . . . large bags to carry equipment.”
