March To The Stars

* * *

Roger tried not to let his amusement show as he watched Pedi and the still limping, very slowly moving Cord jockey for precedence through the door. The Marines had already swept the other side, and even including Despreaux and Pedi, Roger was probably the most dangerous person present. But the precedence of security was everything.

'I'm sure we're all friends here, Pedi,' he said, placing a hand on her back as she passed him. Then he drew his hand back and looked at it oddly. Her back had felt ... lumpy. If she'd been a human, and if it had been her front, instead of her back, he would have thought he'd accidentally put his hand on a breast. But the feel had been firmer, like a large blister. Or a tumor.

Whatever it had been, Pedi shied away from the touch. Then she seemed to recover her customary poise.

'And we were sure the High Priest would never have your party attacked in his presence, Your Highness,' she said. 'My duty to my benan is clear. It is my responsibility to ensure the room is safe. Not the Marines'.'

'And it is mine to ensure that it is safe for you, Roger.' Cord's voice still wheezed alarmingly, and Roger shook his head.

'You need rest, old friend,' he said. 'You can't guard me if you're as weak as a day-old basik.'

'Nonetheless, it is my duty,' Cord said, trying unsuccessfully to conceal how heavily he was forced to lean upon his spear for support.

Roger paused in the doorway and turned to his asi. He looked up into the face that now seemed familiar, rather than alien.

'Cord, I need you for your advice more than your guarding. And I need you well. Respect my opinion in this; you need to rest still. Get your strength back. I hate to mention it, but you're not as young as you used to be, and you need more time to recover. That was a bad wound, so rest. Go to Mudh Hemh. Have a mud bath. Get some sleep. I have the Marines to cover me, and I'll come to Mudh Hemh myself, as soon as the last of these negotiations are complete.'

Cord regarded him impassively for a long moment, but then made a gesture of resignation.

'It is as you say. I cannot perform my duties as I should in this condition. I'll go.'

'Good!' Roger clapped him on the arm. 'Recover. Build up your strength. You'll need it soon enough.'

* * *

'Good morning. My name is Sergeant Adib Julian, and I will be giving the first briefing on suggested tactics for relieving the Krath problem,' Julian said, looking around the room. The hall was near the center of the Shin citadel and was large enough to accommodate all of the prince's commanders and the senior Shin warlords.

The latter were an extremely mixed bag. Some of them were from groups that were in long-term close contact with the Krath, and those were fairly 'civilized.' They'd turned up wearing well polished armor and seemed to be following the briefing with interest. They seemed especially fascinated by the hologram of the force structure the NCO had thrown up. However, many of the other chieftains were obviously from 'the back of beyond.' The latter were notable for their lighter and less well maintained armor, and the wide separation the Gastan had instituted between the groups—and between some of the clans within each group, for that matter—suggested that some of them would rather beat on each other than on the Krath.

'A short analysis of relative combat strengths of the Krath and the Shin/Marine alliance indicates that direct assault is unlikely to be effective,' Julian continued, bringing up a representative animation of a Shin/human assault. 'The inability of the human forces to use their plasma weapons, coupled with a lack of powered armor, means that any direct assault, even with human, Diaspran, and Vashin support, is liable to be swallowed without a burp.'

As he finished speaking, the short, holographic animation ended with the 'good guys' dead on the field and the Krath flag flying over Nopet Nujam.

'Alternatives to this may be viable, however,' he continued, and brought up a new animation. 'The Krath have had only very limited experience with a civan charge, and have no equivalent at all of the pike wall.'

In the animation, a unit of civan quickly ran down one flank of the Krath forces, causing the rest to redeploy. As they did, the animation drew back, showing a hazily outlined 'blue' unit of pikemen and assegai troops, supported by conventional Shin forces, on the slopes above the Krath tent city.

'If this attack is simultaneous with an attack on the tent city by a stealthed armor unit, sufficient chaos may be created to permit a major sortie, supported by Diaspran and Marine infantry, to retake the siege lines and destroy the palisades and the majority of their bombards before they ever get them into effective action.'

The 'blue' troops on the slopes swept downward, butchering the surprised Krath in their path, and the animation ended with the wooden palisades of the siege lines, the tent city, and the bombard emplacements all sending up pillars of black smoke as they blazed merrily away.

'And then what?' one of the more barbaric chieftains asked, looking up from the design he'd been carving into a tabletop with a dagger. 'You think they'll turn and run after a single defeat? We need to take Thirlot! We'll cut them off from food and retreat as we always have, and it's good loot, besides!'

'Thirlot is well defended,' one of the lowland chieftains said, buffing his polished breastplate. 'They left a good portion of their force there on the way up, and another is in Queicuf. If your scruffy band thinks it can take Thirlot, more power to it.'

'Scruffy?! I'll give you scruffy!'

'Enough!' the Gastan barked, and his guards banged the floor with their ceremonial spears. 'Shem Cothal, Shem Sul. Taking Thirlot was considered and rejected. Sergeant Julian?'

'We might be able to take Thirlot,' Julian said, looking pointedly at the chieftain in the breastplate. His toot, taking its cue from the Gastan, flashed the name Shem Sul across his vision. 'Certainly we could enter the city. With our aid, you could probably destroy the forces that the Gastan's spies indicate are in the city. Our non- plasma heavy weapons could smash the doors, our armor could open up any hole necessary to get you inside the walls, and a force of Shin and Marines could enter the city and roam almost at will.'

He held the eye of the more polished barbarian until the latter made a gesture of agreement.

'What we could not do is hold it,' he said then, turning to the other chieftain, Shem Cothal. 'And if we can't hold it, we can't cut their supply lines. The Krath would turn their army to the rear and assault Thirlot by swarming the walls. Those walls are barely ten meters high; they could stand on each other's shoulders and come right over them. And they can march back down the road on the rations they have right here in camp—it's barely two days to Thirlot. When they got there, our force in the city would be overrun. It would certainly be forced out with severe casualties, possibly cut off and destroyed. Other plans involving putting a blocking force on the Queicuf-Thirlot road have also been rejected for the same reason. We simply don't have sufficient forces to hold anything other than Nopet Nujam against the Krath army.'

'All of that is no doubt true,' Shem Sul said. 'But I have to agree with my colleague.' He gestured at the hologram. 'You're discussing a spoiling attack, nothing more.'

'It's the best we can do at this time,' Julian said. 'And it's a spoiling attack we can replicate almost at will.'

'They're not so stupid,' the other chieftain said. 'They'll change their dispositions. 'Tis but a tithe of them that attack at anytime. All they have to do is pull some of their other troops back, and your raiders are going to be useless.'

'Then we'll change tactics,' Roger said. 'The point is to wear them down.'

'As opposed to us being frittered away,' Sul replied. 'You'll take casualties on each raid, and they willwin a battle of attrition. I have to agree with Shem Cothal; we have to cut their supply lines. Cut those, and their army withers on the vine. Nothing else, short of a human superweapon, will work.'

'We can't use our superweapons until we've taken the port,' Pahner said. 'And you're correct, this is an attrition battle, with the addition of trying to break their will. At some point, we might take Thirlot, if only to burn it to the ground, but only if it helps with our objective, which isn't to beat them so much as to convince them to go away. We don't have the numbers to kill them all—our arms would fall off before we were done—so we're looking at ways to convince them victory would simply be too expensive. We'll look at other options,