March To The Stars

Jin shook his head again. Could it be possible that the Empire was truly so short on functional genetic material that they'd had no choice but to send this ... this ... idiot out to be governor?

No. No, he told himself. The Empire couldn't possibly be that hard up for talent. No, this was a brilliant ploy of the Imperial bureaucracy. They'd found themselves stuck with someone so stupid, so dazzlingly incompetent, that the only possible defense had been to send him someplace so utterly unimportant that even he could do no damage there.

Jin took a deep breath, clearing his mind of the governor and the asininity of whoever had assigned him to Marduk. It actually helped, and he felt marginally more cheerful as he unfolded the message. Then he read the first few words ... and closed his eyes.

For just a moment, a remembered whiff of corruption seemed to fill his nostrils and he almost fell out of character. He knew—knew— that if anyone saw him in that moment, his life wouldn't be worth a Mardukan raindrop. He knew he had to get his composure together, that far more than just his life depended upon it, but for a moment it was all he could do not to cry. He wanted to cry. To scream. He wanted to shout for joy and terror. To announce the arrival of the moment he'd spent hours dreaming of as he stared up at the bunk above his. Although, he admitted, his dreamy imagination had never included the possibility that he'd want to throw up when the moment came.

He had a real problem, though. Not one that he hadn't planned for, but a problem nonetheless. Since returning from the aborted 'rescue mission,' he'd slowly and carefully worked himself into a position where he picked up most of these communications. It was generally shoved off on the low man on the totem pole—not only was it a long way across the port in the heat, but the messages rarely had any significance for the humans. They were generally about the shifting politics of the inter-satrap 'wars,' and how much was that going to affect the port? Other satraps sent messages to other locations, and he picked up most of those, as well. But this was the one communique that it was absolutely essential the governor never see ... and the one he had set up the entire system to ensure that he did see.

Or would have, if Temu Jin had had any intention of ever allowing him to.

Unfortunately, the guv wasn't a complete idiot. He always had at least two people translate any missive from his local contacts, and he would be aware that Jin had gone out to collect this one. Which meant that Jin couldn't simply make this one disappear. There had to be a different one.

He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small package, then flipped through the various messages contained in it until he got to one that he liked. He read over it once more, and smiled thinly. It appeared that the Shin barbarians were contemplating allying with the Wio in return for the Wio's halting their raids. This was, in fact, bullshit. But since it was 'unconfirmed' information from the Im Enensu satrap, when it turned out to be incorrect, it would simply be assumed that the Im Enensu satrap, or his intel chief, couldn't find his ass with all four hands.

Somebody might notice that the pickup signal had been the one for Kirsti, not Im Enensu, but that was unlikely. Temu had been the one to receive that as well ... exactly as planned.

He heard a voice in his head, as if it were yesterday: 'Plan! Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance! Plan for every contingency. And be ready when your plans fail!'

Come to think of it, he really wished someone had told his control that.

He put the new message into the satchel, closed it, and pocketed the original. He could analyze it later. It would be interesting reading.

He looked up at the eternal Mardukan clouds, flared his nostrils wide, and smiled into the first drops of rain.

'What a beautiful pocking day!'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Denat picked up the poorly baked clay cup and hunched his shoulders. A fine rain had started, and the denizens of the port bazaar had mostly sought the shelter of awnings. Personally, Denat was rather enjoying the gentle drizzle, and sitting out in the middle of it should make him look even more like an ignorant barbarian, too stupid to come in out of the rain. Certainly not the sort of eavesdropper a civilized city dweller would concern himself over—after all, the ignorant lout wouldn't be able to understand a civilized dialect, anyway!

But Denat understood enough to get along, and even from his place in the open, he could hear various conversations under the awnings. He grimaced as he sipped the thin, sour wine—just the sort of stuff any city barkeep would offer a dumb barbarian—and subconsciously sorted the discussions around him.

Denat's natural flair for espionage, like his gift for languages, had never been noticeable among the People as the nephew of the village shaman. His skill and expertise as a hunter, one who actually preferred to hunt the far more dangerous night than during the day, had been well-known. And even before the arrival of the Marines, he'd had an affinity for picking up information in Q'Nkok, which was one of the reasons Cord had asked him to accompany the humans as they made their way to that first city. But no one had ever seriously considered him for the role of a spy.

It had originally been assumed that he and the other village warriors would return after Cord and his asi's companions had passed through Q'Nkok to begin their monumental, probably suicidal, trek halfway around the planet. Instead, he and a few others had stuck around, as much to play cards with Poertena as anything else, and the journey which had so noticeably changed the prince, had changed Denat almost as greatly.

He'd discovered his natural ability for languages, and a flair for the dramatic that permitted him to either blend into societies or to put on an excellent 'dumb barbarian' routine. And he'd also discovered how much he enjoyed putting those talents to work.

It was in the dumb barb role that he had been wandering the city for the last few days, and the impressions he was picking up made him uneasy. He still had only a rudimentary grasp of Krath, and an even more rudimentary one of the society which spoke it, but nothing he had learned so far seemed to add up.

This city was filled with temples. In fact, it seemed that there was one on every third street corner, and they were all more or less identical, barring size. They had a square front that connected to a conical back. The cone was clearly meant to represent a volcano, and on the one holy day which had been observed since their arrival, smoke had issued from all the temples. And the smoke had been filled with the bitter-sweet scent of burning meat, which had to have been immensely expensive. Denat knew how much forage for the civan was costing Poertena, so he also knew that the cost of feeding meat animals had to be extremely high. So if the worshipers were prepared to tithe sufficient donations for the priesthood to fatten up sufficient sacrificial animals to scent that much smoke, then they must be really devout.

The quantity of smoke was explained readily enough. It had come from the endless loads of coal and wood that had been brought in through the previous few days by the many slaves of the Temple. What didn't add up was that there were no holding pens around the temples. The Diasprans hadn't practiced animal sacrifice, but other religions on Denat's home continent had, and behind all of those temples had been pens for the sacrificial animals. But there hadn't been so much as a single turom penned up around these temples.

In addition, as Sergeant Major Kosutic had pointed out, nobody argued religion. This city was clearly a theocracy, even more totally under the control of the local priesthood than Diaspra had been. But whereas, in Diaspra, everyone discussed the nature of Water, here no one discussed the nature of their god at all. It wasn't even clear what the god was, although Denat had been told it was a god of Fire.

The conversations around him were of no use. They were all complaining about the lack of trade, which was a pretty constant theme. Something had dried it up, and fairly recently, apparently. The immediate consequences were readily apparent, particularly in the dock areas, where many of the wharves were unused. Exactly what had happened to it was unclear, to say the least, though. The almost total lack of a long-range