March To The Stars

Gronningen was ready, and air hissed in his nostrils as he heaved upward. The door rose a few centimeters, and Julian got under it and threw his own weight against it. Between them, they raised it shoulder high, and Macek propped it up with a piece of wood.

There was no ladder, but it was a simple enough proposition—after climbing the mountain—to lower themselves into the room below. The chamber was about fifteen meters on a side, with a high, domed ceiling, and a stairway in the west corner. It, too, was deserted, with a dead coal fire in a hibachilike affair in the middle of the room.

'That's a quick way to asphyxiate,' Macek observed in a whisper.

'Out?' Gronningen murmured, pointing to a door on the east side. 'Or down?'

'Down,' Julian whispered back promptly, although his expression was puzzled.

The spiral stairs led to a passageway—high for the humans, but low and narrow for Mardukans—that went both right and left, towards the gates and the barracks, respectively.

'Right,' Julian said, and led the way.

The passageway turned, apparently following the shoulder of the hill, and opened onto a large room with barred windows through which a cold wind blew. The room was at the base of the gates, and stairs disappeared upward into the gloom where the gate controls were presumably located.

Other than some litter in one corner, the room was empty.

'This is getting silly.' This time, Macek didn't bother to whisper.

'We'll try the barracks,' Julian said. 'There has to be somebody around here.'

They followed the same passage back in the opposite direction, towards the barracks. They had to deal with two more barred doors along the way, but finally they entered the main hall of the keep. It was a vaulted monstrosity, with a huge fire pit in the middle and the ubiquitous cushions that served Mardukans for chairs scattered around the pit.

No one was using any of the cushions, however. Instead, the middle of the pit was filled by a group of Mardukans, arranged in a fairly neat pile. Half-burned logs and ash had been dragged out of the center and pushed to the side. Obviously, the Mardukans had set a fire in the pit during the day so that they could sleep on the warmed rock underneath at night.

And every one of them was in the semi-hibernation torpidity that extreme cold induced in their species.

'Oh, puhleeease! ' Macek exclaimed in disgust. 'This is it? I rode all the way up here, played mountain goat, and then jumped off a damned cliff for this?'

'I think these guys must've taken the short airbus to school,' Julian said. 'The Vashin at least try to keep one guy per squad awake. This is idiotic. Geno, get up to the roof and signal the prince. Tell him we've taken the 'fortress.' '

'Will do,' Macek said with a sigh. 'But this really bites.'

'What? You wanted a fight?' Gronningen asked, looking at the heaped Mardukans. The entire garrison's weapons were stacked neatly along one wall, and all of their armor was laid out in ranks. Obviously, they were ready to get up in a few hours, when things warmed up, and start banging horn with the best of them. 'I think this is great,' the Asgardian announced.

'Whatever,' Macek grumped. 'It just offends my sense of professionalism.'

'And Gomer here pushing me off the cliff didn't?' Julian asked.

'Nah,' the corporal replied with a grin. 'In fact, that was about the most professional payback I've ever seen!'

* * *

The column rounded the last corner of the interminable track just after dawn. It had started to rain again, but with the increased elevation, it was a cold, miserable rain that ate into the Marines' uniforms like acid. The chameleon uniform was, technically, all-environment—capable of handling anything from jungle to arctic. But the Marines had been slogging across a hostile world for nearly six months, and it showed.

The uniforms were a tattered patchwork of different cloths. There were whole sleeves and legs of dianda— the silklike flax of distant Marshad—as mute testimony to the terrible battle at Voitan. The dianda, in turn, was patched with the fine sedgelike cloth of K'Vaern's Cove and Diaspra. All of the patches were of faded dark cloth, which had the virtue of low visibility but blended poorly with the changeable chameleon cloth.

The Marines looked as faded as their uniforms. Their faces were drawn and pale, from the ascent into the mountains, from the cold, from the ongoing low-level vitamin deficiencies of their coll –oil supplements substitute, and from the omnipresence of war. All in all, Roger thought, the company looked on its last legs.

He walked to the front of the column and waved an ironic salute at Captain Pahner.

'I make you a gift of the Fortress of Shesul Pass, with fifty turom, one hundred and twenty rather questionable soldiers, and a rich booty of small arms,' he announced, and Pahner chuckled.

'I think you're getting too into this, Your Highness.'

'Just trying to make like a Roman, Captain,' Roger replied with a grin. 'Seriously, we should probably rest up for a day or two before we move on.'

'We can't discount pursuit,' Pahner pointed out.

'No,' the prince agreed. 'But when you get a good look at this place, I think you'll agree we can also leave a nonexpendable rearguard to hold any pursuit off.' He waved to O'Casey as she joined them.

'Ms. O'Casey.' He greeted her with a nod. 'The mountain air appears to agree with you,' he said, and it was true. In many ways, the academic looked better than the Marines about her.

'That's a long walk to force on an old woman,' his chief of staff replied.

'Well, the captain has almost convinced me to let you take a break,' Roger joked. 'The Krath must've had plans for this pass; the facility's area is far larger than necessary for the garrison. There are sufficient quarters to house all of us in relative comfort, although they don't appear to have discovered the chimney, so the fires fill the rooms with smoke.'

'If you don't mind, Captain,' Doc Dobrescu said, dropping down from one of the passing carts, 'I have to agree. We've got a lot of wounded and injured, and these carts are pure hell on them. Give them a couple of days under a roof and warm, and they'll be able to heal much faster.'

'All right,' Pahner said. 'We'll stay. Two days. Your Highness, I assume the Vashin are down from the cold as well?'

'They're not doing well,' Roger agreed. 'Actually, they're more used to it than I expected, probably from being from the northern plains, but the most they can do is to maintain sentries.'

'We'll let them rest as well,' Pahner decided. 'We should be able to go down to about ten percent security. I'd really prefer to put out a sentry group down the valley, but we'll settle for putting them up on the walls. Sergeant Major!'

'Yes, Sir,' Kosutic replied. The carts had reached the open bailey of the fortress and were now stopped in a line. Roger noticed that most of them were being driven by Marines, and the handful of native teamsters driving the rest had small charcoal braziers burning under their seats.

'We're stopping here for a day or two,' Pahner told Kosutic. 'Leave the carts mostly packed; there should be stores in the castle, and we'll live off of them. Ten percent security, Marines only. Get everybody bunked down and working on gear.'

'Yes, Sir,' Kosutic repeated, making no effort to conceal her obvious relief. The sergeant major was like iron, but she knew when a unit was on its last legs. Now she looked up and shook her head.

'Speak of the devil,' she said, and grinned as Julian walked towards the command group. But the intelligence sergeant didn't grin back, and her own smile faded as she absorbed his expression.

'Sirs,' he said, nodding at the officers, then held up a small device. 'I found this in the commander's quarters.'

Pahner accepted it, turned it over in his hands, and frowned at the maker's mark.

'A Zuiko tri-cam?' he mused.

'I think they must have been in contact with the port,' Julian said darkly. 'We may have a real problem,