March To The Stars

been through too much—Diaspran, Vashin, and human, alike—in the last year to really care if someone wanted to be suicidal. If that was their society's choice, so be it; the group that had taken to referring to itself as The Basik's Own would be happy to oblige local custom.

Which didn't mean that they were blind to the tactical implications of the situation, of course.

'That's going to cause some problems retaking the ships,' Kosutic pointed out after a moment, 'considering the fact that they apparently don't care to allow any of their prisoners to be liberated, either. Should we even try to retake the prizes if the Lemmar are going to slaughter any captured crewmen before we get aboard? Will the mainland culture prefer to have their ships and no crews? Can we navigate them to the mainland with no crews? And is there any political payoff to retaking the ships if we get all of their crews killed in the process?'

'From what I've gleaned from Pedi, there should be both a political and financial payoff,' O'Casey assured her. 'The ships are, technically, the property of the Temple, but if they're taken on the high seas, fairly 'universal' salvage rules apply. If we return them, we'll be in for at worst a percentage of their value. And the supplies they have on board were apparently very important to establishing the Temple's presence on one of the formerly Lemmaran islands. The local priestdom has put a lot of political capital into that project, so helping save it from utter disaster should be viewed well, unless there's some odd secondary reaction.'

'So retaking the ships would be a politically positive action?' Pahner said. 'I want to be clear on that.'

'Yes, Captain,' O'Casey said. 'I won't go so far as to say it would be 'vital.' But failure to act could be construed as being less friendly—and certainly less 'brave'—than taking action would be. In my professional opinion, barring clear military negative factors, it should be considered highly useful in making positive first contact with the mainland culture.'

'Okay,' Pahner said. 'We'll discuss means later. But getting most of the ships and getting them intact may be hard.'

'They'll have scattered,' Roger mused aloud. 'We'll have to find them first. Then figure out how to take them without getting all of the original crews killed.'

'What about the Lemmar?' O'Casey asked.

'What about the Lemmar?' Roger asked in return. His response evoked another general chuckle, and the chief of staff nodded and turned to the next item on her list.

'In that case, I'd like to talk about what we'll call 'The People of the Vales'—the Shin, that is—versus the valley culture, or the Krath. I'll also offer some speculation as to where the cultures come from. Julian will discuss the purely military aspects later.

'The Shin are a fairly typical upland barbarian culture. They're centered around small, fertile valleys—the Vales—each of which has a clan chief, or 'king.' All of them are nominally independent, with a few of them allied to each other—or involved in blood feuds—at all times. There's a 'great king' or war leader, in theory, at least, but his authority is strictly limited.

'We do have a contact with the Shin,' the chief of staff pointed out, nodding at the female Mardukan who'd taken a position beside Cord. The Shin would have sat behind the shaman, but with him already sitting behind Roger, there simply wasn't room. It had occasioned a certain amount of negotiation when they first entered the cabin.

'And the straight-line distance from the valley entrance to the spaceport is shorter through the vales,' the chief of staff continued. 'On the other hand, given the information thus far developed, we're more likely to encounter difficulties passing through the vales than if we stay in the valley.'

'Those blood feuds,' Pahner said.

'Precisely.' O'Casey nodded. 'The clans are constantly feuding. We would—could—presumably make contact with and get help and passage from the Mudh Hemh clan, but if we did, we'd automatically find ourselves at war with the Sey Dor clan. There's also a 'cross-valley' dichotomy that Julian will discuss. But it shouldn't affect us.'

'Great,' Roger said. 'What about the valley? And what about the similarities between these ... Shin and Cord's people?'

'The similarities can be inferred from the linguistic and cultural matrix,' O'Casey replied. 'The Shin language is remarkably similar to the language of The People. Same basic grammatical rules, similar phonemic structure, even the same words in many cases, and only mildly modified in others. There's no question that they come from the same root society, and that the separation is historically recent.'

'Which, presumably, explains the cultural similarity between the benan and the asi bonds,' Roger murmured, then cocked an eyebrow at his ex-tutor. 'Any idea what's going on there?'

'Best guess is that the Shin are an aboriginal race of this continent which, like the Diasprans, survived the ice age by centering their culture on volcanic secondary features. That is, they stayed around hot springs and naturally warmed caves that should be fairly common on this continent. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that some of them then somehow moved over to Cord's continent, on the eastern verge. That would be a heck of a sailing journey, but it's possible that there's a shallow zone between here and there that was partially or mostly exposed by the ice age. We'd have to do a lot of surveying and research to confirm that, though.'

'So the divergence is relatively recent, and you think the ancestral group is from this continent?'

'Yes, and a good example is language divergence,' O'Casey pointed out. 'Benan is clearly derived from 'banan,' which is the Krath word for 'bride.' But compare that to The People's 'benahn,' which is their word for 'marriage.' ' She shrugged. 'Obviously, all three words are descended from a common ancestor.'

'Obviously,' Roger agreed, then grinned, leaned over, and punched Cord on the arm. 'Feeling married yet, buddy?'

'Oh, shut up,' Cord grumped. 'It was for my honor.'

'I know,' Roger said, somewhat repentantly. 'It was for mine, too. Sometimes, honor is a curse.'

'Often,' Pedi said, suddenly. 'I ... assure what ... Light O'Casey understand. Word make sense. Some.' She twitched one false-hand in a grimace of frustration. 'Almost.'

'Sort of,' Roger agreed, switching to Shin. 'But even if the languages are related, that was a real hash of a sentence.'

'Yes, but I can learn People,' Pedi said.

'No. I learn Shin,' Cord said. 'Here Shin. People not here.'

'Good, it sounds like we can get over the language divide,' Pahner interjected, then cocked his head at O'Casey and pulled the conversation back on track. 'What about the Krath?'

'Looking at the map, the Shin vales probably make up the majority of the continent, which is mostly volcanic 'badlands,' ' O'Casey said. 'But the continent's bisected by a larger valley that curls like a tadpole, or a paisley mark, from the south in a big bend north and to the west. And that valley is where the majority of the population and real power of the continent lives.

'The valley of the Krath has a contiguous river that stretches, through some falls, all the way from a large upland vale to the sea. And, from Pedi's description, it's very heavily populated. The valley is one more or less continuous political unit, as well. I say 'more or less' because from the description of the scheming that goes on, the emperor, who is also the Highest of the High Priests and who rules from a capital near the spaceport, has only limited control over the lower valley.

'The society is a highly regimented theocracy, with the chief political officers of each region also being the high priests. And, unlike Diaspra, it is not a benevolent one. The society is similar to the latter medieval society of the Adanthi or the Chinese Manchu Dynasty. And it's also heavily slavery-based, as Julian will now discuss.'

The NCO nodded at his cue and stood.

'We've got a bit of a problem. One of the reasons the Krath and the Shin don't get along is that the Krath see the Shin as a ready source of slaves for their theocracy—what are called 'The Slaves of God.' In addition, the base barbarian society is bisected by the valley. On the generally western and northern side are the Shin, but on the eastern and southern sides, the vales belong to the Shadem. And the Shin and the Shadem don't get along at all. In fact, the Krath use the Shadem for advance scouts for their raiding parties against the Shin. As a consequence, the Shin really hate the Shadem.

'As for the raiding parties themselves, they seem to be carried out by one of the three branches of the