March To The Stars

onerous—and we'll determine what 'onerous' means—we'll agree on the condition that the rest of us are given free passage to the spaceport.'

'Agreed,' Eleanora said, and Roger looked over at Pedi, who was still making surreptitious negative gestures under her sumei.

'Okay, why not?'

'Not Servant,' she whispered in broken Imperial. 'Bad, bad. Not Servants.'

'And what if duties okay?' Roger asked in Krath.

'Duty of Servant is to Serve,' the Shin whispered back. 'Is no other duty.'

'And what's so bad about that?' Roger asked quietly.

'What?!' The Shin's voice came out in a squeak as she tried not to scream the question. 'Duty is to be of Service! How much worse could it be? To be of Service and to Serve! What you want, to Serve twice?'

Roger glanced over at O'Casey and Kosutic, both of whom looked suddenly very thoughtful.

'We're missing something,' he said.

'Agreed,' Kosutic said. 'I mean, she's sliming, and this is a 'guuuurl' who killed two armed guards with her bare hands. While chained to the deck.' She shook her head. 'Could the translation be bad?'

'This is the only language group for which we actually had a comprehensive kernel when we landed,' O'Casey said thoughtfully. 'It's possible that the kernel has a bias built in. I'm not sure what to do about that, though.'

Roger considered the translation program for a moment. Throughout the trip, the burden of translation of new dialects had fallen upon him and Eleanora due to their superior implants. To aid in that, he'd read most of the manual for the software, but that had been a long time ago. There was a section on poor translations related to initial impressions and inaccurate kernels, but at the moment he couldn't find it on the help menu.

'The only thing I can think of to do is to dump the kernel,' Roger said. 'Dump the whole translation scheme, and start fresh.'

'We need time to do that,' O'Casey objected.

'Agreed,' the prince replied, and turned back to the local leaders. They were showing signs of impatience, and he smiled much more calmly than he felt.

'We need to discuss this with the other members of our party, and we seem to be having a problem with our translation system. Could we perhaps call a recess, and resume the discussion tomorrow?'

'It is with regret that I must decline that suggestion,' Sor Teb replied. 'The God speaks to us now. He sends His darkness upon His people now. Now is when we must gather our Servant, and you are the leader, the decision maker, of your people. If you would prefer that the Servant come from one of your lesser minions at your headquarters rather than from those here with you, we can send a runner. But the decision must be made now.'

'Pardon me for a moment longer, then,' Roger said slowly, and turned back to the others.

'Oh, shit,' Despreaux said quietly.

'Did he just say what I think he said?' Cord asked.

'So much for 'minor functionaries,' ' Kosutic said with a snort. 'Marshad time.'

'Stop talking,' Roger said, pointing a finger directly at Pedi. As soon as she froze, he sent a command to his toot, 'dumping' the entire Krath language and everything they had determined of Shin. Then he locked out the 'kernel' that had come with the system, as well. It was now as if he had never heard of Shin or Krath, and any biases would be erased, as long as he concentrated on ignoring them. He also locked out the low-level interplay between the systems, so that his own would not be corrupted by the Marines' and O'Casey's. Taking a guess, based upon O'Casey's idea of a migratory connection between the Shin and Cord's people, he loaded the language of 'the People' as a potential kernel.

'Okay,' he said, crooking the petrifiying finger. 'Now talk.'

At first, what the benan was saying was only a low, unintelligible gabble. But after a moment, bits and pieces began to join together.

' ... temple ... priests ... death ... serve ... sacrifice ... serve the worshipers ... feast.'

'Oh, shit.'

Roger pulled up the two translations, and the difference was immediately apparent. In the kernel, the word 'sadak,' when used in the context of the priests, was translated as 'Servant.' When the kernel was dumped, though, it translated as 'sacrifice.' In fact, there was an entire series of synonym and thematic biases built into the system, but changing a few words around and removing a syntactic bias made everything clear.

Including why the Lemmar refused to be captured.

He punched the changes into his toot with the flashing speed of direct neural interfacing, then reloaded the corrected kernel and turned slowly back to the Scourge and the High Priest.

'We have determined the problem with our translator. What you want is a human sacrifice. Which will then be shared as a feast among your worshipers. The body and blood, so to speak.'

'Oh, shit,' Kosutic whispered, and grimaced as she took another look at the guards. 'I knew I didn't like these guys. They're Papists! Man, I hate fanatics!'

'We recognize that certain lesser peoples refuse to accept this rite,' Sor Teb replied, with a gesture of contempt at Cord and the swathed Pedi. 'But humans are, after all, civilized.'

'Civilized,' Despreaux whispered. She was too well-trained to actually check a weapon, and she could feel the stillness that had descended over the troopers behind her. Each of them was very carefully not reaching for a weapon. They were carefully not counting their rounds, or ensuring that their bayonets were loose in the sheaths. Not, at least, on the outside.

Roger reached slowly into a pouch and extracted a thin leather band. Then he tossed his hair behind him and bound it slowly into a ponytail.

'And if we politely decline this invitation?' he asked, pulling his locks into place one by one as he smoothed the hair on the top of his head. Behind him, O'Casey drew a surreptitious breath and made sure her weight was balanced on her toes.

Sor Teb glanced at the High Priest, now apparently asleep on his stool, then back at the humans.

'My guards in this room outnumber you, and I have over a hundred in the corridors. At a word, you are all Servants. And then I will take all of the rest of you at the docks, and the people will know that it was the Scourge which brought humans to the God at last.'

His false-hands moved in a complicated shrug which signified total confidence.

'Or,' he continued, 'you may surrender a single sacrifice of your choice. That will suffice for my purposes ... and the God's, of course. But either way, I will have the Servant I require, and the people will know it. Those are your only alternatives.'

'Really?' Roger said quietly, calmly, as he tugged one last time on his ponytail to tighten it down. 'Hmmm. A binary solution set. Just one problem with your plans.'

'What?' Teb's eyes narrowed, and Roger smiled gently.

'You've never seen me move.'

The prince and his bodyguards had blasted their way through half a dozen city-states on their bloody march across Marduk. Roger knew he could depend upon them to do their job and back him up. So as his hands descended to the pistols holstered at his side, he concentrated solely on what was in his own field of view.

The local arquebuses weren't particularly accurate, and the Marines' uniforms were designed to protect against high-velocity projectiles by hardening to spread the impact over a wide area. Neither Roger nor O'Casey, however, were wearing helmets, so an unlucky hit from one of the arquebuses would be fatal. And Cord and Pedi were completely unarmored.

The first target, therefore, was the arquebusier to the left of the throne. The High Priest was no threat, and hitting the target to the left would permit Roger to track right and take Sor Teb with the next shot.

But by the time Roger had shifted targets, before the headless body had even had time to start to fall, Sor Teb had just moved. Roger had heard the Marines comment on his own speed, often in