March To The Stars

'That wasn't a request, Sergeant!' The sergeant major snapped. 'Cover our damned backs!'

'Vashin!' Roger called. 'One volley, and draw! Cold steel!'

'Cold steel!'

'The People!'

'SHIN!'

* * *

'Two of the main intersections are secure,' Rastar called as his civan trotted down the broad boulevard past Pahner. 'We took the main Flail headquarters for the sector on the way. They tried to fight, but these guard pukes are no use at all.'

'Basik to the atul,' Fain agreed as another volley crashed out. The Diaspran had tucked his company tight around the retreating wagons, letting the Vashin clear the way ahead. 'They just fight dumb. Almost as dumb as barbs. No style, no tactics—simple personal attacks, and they just advance into our fire. Dumb.'

'Not dumb, just ... stagnant,' Pahner corrected. 'They're so used to fighting one way they don't know any other. And they haven't figured out how to change. I suspect that they're as good as it gets against other satrap forces or when it comes to suppressing riots in the city. But they've never dealt with rifle volleys or snipers.'

The latter—mostly Marines, but a few of the Diasprans as well—had been picking off any leaders who showed real imagination.

'Any word on Roger?' Rastar asked.

'Nothing since they called from the Temple,' the captain said.

'They'll make it, Sir,' Fain said. 'It's Roger, isn't it?'

'Yeah, that's what they tell me.' Pahner shook his head. 'I almost wish he was still considered incompetent. Maybe then I'd have sent a decent sized force to look after him.'

* * *

'You know,' Roger parried a blow from a staff and slid his blade down the shaft to cut off the Mardukan wielder's fingers, 'I could wish that Pahner didn't have so much confidence in me!'

'Why?' Kosutic punched her bayonet through the roof of the staff wielder's screaming mouth. Unlike the Diaspran riflemen, the Marine's bayonets were made of monomolecular memory plastic, not locally produced steel blades. The impossibly sharp bayonet sliced up and outwards in an effortless spray of blood, and she kicked the falling body out of her path with a grunt.

'Well, if the captain hadn't been so sure we could handle anything, he would have sent more troops with us!' Roger yelled as Dogzard, unnoticed, landed on the back of a guard about to strike Cord. The Mardukan might have been able to support the one hundred and twenty kilos from a standing start, but when it hit him at forty kilometers per hour, he went over on his face in the red mash of the floor. And down on his face, with an enraged Dogzard on his back, there wasn't much he'd be doing but dying.

'But more troops would mean fewer guards for each of us!' Pedi protested as she slashed the throat out of one attacker and wheeled to chop another's true-arm just below the shoulder. A staff clanged off her horns in response, and she kicked out at the wielder, slashing at him with the edge of her horns and following up with the thrust to the chest. A handspan of bloody steel protruded out of the Krath's back, and she twisted her wrist. 'Fewer Krath to kill and bodies to loot! What fun would that be?'

She withdrew her blade in a flood of crimson, and Roger paused to survey the blood-soaked sacristy. The area—fortunately or unfortunately—had been designed for adequate drainage, and a nasty sizzling sound and a horrible burned-steak smell rose from the furnaces at the rear, where the gutters terminated. The ground was littered with the bodies of priests and guards left in the Vashin's and Marines' wake. The few worshipers who had joined the guards to attempt to stop them had fared no better, and the Vashin had been particularly brutal. Many of the corpses showed more hacks than were strictly necessary.

'I suppose when you look at it that way,' Roger said as one of the Vashin pried an emerald the size of his thumb out of a statue. Between the ornamentation and the clothing of the priests and worshipers, there was probably a month's pay per Vashin in this room alone. The prince leaned down and picked up a more or less clean cloth from the ... debris and wiped his sword. There was hardly a sound in the entire Temple, except for the sizzle from the rear and an occasional groan from their only serious casualty. The Vashin had been particularly efficient in ensuring that there were no Krath wounded.

The sacrifices had scattered. Whether they would be able to survive and blend into the population, Roger didn't know. All he knew was that the way out was clear, and that there were no living threats in view. On Marduk, that was good enough.

'Three minutes to loot, and then it's time to go, people!' he called, waving his sword at the door. Even after a quick wipe, the blade left a trail of crimson through the air. 'Let's find a way out of this place!'

* * *

'Third Squad has closed up, Captain, but we're getting quite a bit of pressure from the rear,' Fain said. A rifle volley crashed out from someplace downslope, answered by high-pitched screaming. 'Nothing we can't deal with. Yet.'

'Still haven't heard from Roger,' Pahner said with a nod. He looked around in the gloom and shook his head. One of the 'civilized' aspects of Kirsti was that many of the major boulevards had gaslights. Now he knew why they had gaslights; it was so they could see during broad day.

'There's been the occasional explosion from his direction, so I take it he's on his way,' the Marine continued. 'Now, if we could just take the gate before he gets here.'

'Sorry about that.' Rastar shrugged. 'It was closed when we arrived. They probably did it ahead of time.'

'Why not use a plasma cannon, Sir?' Fain asked.

'Signature.' Pahner pulled out abisti root and cut off a sliver; it was covered with a thin layer of bitter ash by the time he got it into his mouth. 'If they're going to be watching for advanced weapons anywhere, it will be on this continent. And plasma cannons aren't the weapon of a lost hunter. Much the same reason why, after his first message, we've been out of contact with His Highness. No, we're going to have to take this thing the old-fashioned way.'

'That will be expensive,' Fain said, looking at the gate defenses. The central gatehouse was flanked by two defensive towers, both of them loopholed to sweep the exterior of the gatehouse with arquebus and light artillery fire. The fortifications were obviously meant to be equally defensible from either side, so that if an enemy made it over the wall, he would still have a hard fight for the gate tower.

'Boiling oil will be the least of it,' the Diaspran added.

'Well, I'm not planning on stacking bodies to climb up and over it,' Pahner said, and pointed to a stairway. It ran up the inner face of the gatehouse to a heavily timbered door at the third-story level. 'We go up there, blow the door with a satchel charge, and take the interior. Somewhere in there will be the controls.'

The doorway in question was on the top of the wall, in full view of the western tower. Firing slits along that tower's eastern side had a clear shot at the stairs and the area in front of the door. Rastar surveyed the slits, which probably concealed heavy swivel guns. They would undoubtedly be loaded with canister, like giant shotguns. He'd seen the same sort of weapon in Sindi, used on the Boman barbarians, and knew exactly what the effect would be.

'We'll still take quite a few casualties.'

'I know, Rastar,' Pahner said sadly. 'And it will fall mostly on the Diasprans and the Vashin. I can't afford to lose many more Marines. Hell, most of the ones I still have left are already busy, anyway.'

'What's to be done, must be done,' Rastar said philosophically, drawing his pistols. 'We'll need the satchel charge prepared.'

'I got t'at,' Poertena said, pulling out his pack. 'Two satchel charge. One or t'e other gonna work.'

'Not your specialty, Sergeant,' Pahner said. 'Somebody will need to go into the gatehouse and find the gate controls. That won't be like working in an armory.'

'I'm a po ... a Marine, Sir,' the Pinopan shot back. 'Gots to die someplace.'

Pahner gazed at him for perhaps one second, then shrugged.

'Very well. It appears that the Vashin will have the honor of taking the gate, supported by the unit