March To The Stars

'If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the early Christian church was very impressed with the Mithraists,' Kosutic said sourly. 'But at that point the Christians had two of the major political forces in Rome on their side: the Army, which switched to Christianity in droves as soon as they saw that it was just Mithras in another guise; and the matrons who no longer had to throttle their excess children. The rest is known history—the Emperor converted, and it was all over but the shouting. And let me tell you, that was ferociously argued—and occasionally warred over—for nearly two thousand years after it could be debated in public. But in the end, the preponderance of evidence pointed to that being the pattern, rather than his mother telling him he had to do it.

'On the other hand,' she noted, 'it has little or nothing to do with the Krath, other than as an example of the intersection of religion and politics.'

'Can I ask one thing that's bothering me?' Roger said.

'Ask away, Your Highness,' the sergeant major replied.

'You used the present tense a lot when discussing the cult of Baal and its sacrifices,' Roger said carefully. 'And I recall you saying something about 'the Brotherhood of Baal' among the Armaghans ...'

'The Brotherhood does not practice human sacrifice,' Kosutic said, then waggled her hands. 'As far as I know. Although they do have the occasional death under the 'enhancement' rituals, which might count. They certainly do not practice ritual infanticide. The Church of Ryback, on the other hand, has a variety of Baalian influences.'

'The Saints,' Pahner said. 'I wondered when you'd get to the point.'

'The Saints,' the sergeant major said with a nod. 'There are various ... word choices and phrases in the Church of Ryback that indicate to comparative theologians that it was influenced by the New Cult of Baal, which was formed—and died—during the Dagger Years. Also, the Rybackians have various sub-cults, which are, ahem, more 'fundamental' than others.'

'I notice that you say 'ahem' when you're trying not to say something,' Roger observed. 'What was that'ahem'?'

Kosutic sighed and shook her head.

'There are ... rumors that are generally discounted about some of the sub-cults of Ryback eating their young. Personally, I don't put much faith in them. You hear that sort of thing about all sorts of hated sub-groups. But ... I also wouldn't put it past them, either. Anyway, you can imagine their reaction to the overcrowding of the Krath. Never prove it, though.'

'And we could be wrong,' O'Casey pointed out. 'There's the whole influence of the spaceport, the original survey team, the previous group of archeologists ... It could have been any of them, or spontaneous serial development, for that matter.'

'Oooo, like pyramids?' Kosutic asked with one eyebrow arched.

'Well ...' O'Casey blushed faintly and actually wiggled in the water. 'In this case, it's at least possible. I know that archeologists still have a bad reputation from that, but in this case it's possible. Cannibalism is endemic in every culture except the Phaenurs.'

'Who don't even have wars,' Despreaux whispered to Julian.

'Oh, they have them,' the intelligence sergeant replied. 'They just don't get noticed.'

'They're empaths,' she protested quietly. 'How could empaths have a war?'

'You've obviously never had a Jewish mother-in-law,' Julian told her under his breath.

'Sergeant Major, you're clearly having fun,' Pahner interjected. 'But I'm not sure that knowing where the Krath got the idea for sacrifices gets us. I think we need to concentrate on the tactics for a little bit, here.'

'I think that's straightforward,' Roger said. 'We'll write a message to Jin. The Gastan sends it via his runners. When we get the explosives, Nimashet builds the shaped charges, we blow the mountain, and then we call for the Krath's surrender.'

'And in the meantime, Your Highness?'

'Well, in about five or six days, we start assembling teams and training,' Roger said. 'And until then, I intend to drink some wine and sit in a hot tub with my girlfriend. I suggest you do the same. Well, except the girlfriend part. You can abstain from that.'

'Thanks so very much, Your Highness,' Pahner said.

'No problem,' the prince replied. He held out a flask and cup. 'Wine?'

* * *

Temu Jin looked at the message, then at the messenger.

'Do you know what they're going to do with it?' he asked.

'I don't even know what 'it' is, human,' the Shin runner replied curtly. The runner appeared to be almost a different species from the Gastan. He was as tall as any Mardukan Jin had ever dealt with, and had weirdly long fingers and shortened horns. Combined with the four arms and widely spaced eyes, it made him look like a mucous-covered insect. 'All I know is that there are four more of us waiting. And we are to take packages from you. We wait until the packages are prepared.'

'Come on, then,' Jin said, with a gesture.

The meeting was taking place at the back of the spaceport, as usual. Now Jin descended the slight slope from the edge and headed to the nearest Krath hamlet, a tiny burg called Tul by the locals. The majority of the few off-planet visitors stayed on the port reservation. The few who didn't usually exited by the main gates, and thence down the road to the Krath imperial city, called, with surprising imagination, 'Krath.' Very few humans, or any other visitors, for that matter, came to Tul.

On one level, that made it a bad place to hide purloined materials. The sight of a human face there was a dead giveaway that something was going down. On the other hand, the bribes were lower, and the local farmers and craftsmen reminded him of home. As long as he kept up the payments, they were unlikely to go squealing to the taxmen, who were their only contact with the central government.

And it was convenient for the purpose—which was to build up a cache against the day he needed it.

Originally, the caches had started as insurance against the possibility that Governor Mountmarch might decide he could dispense with the services of one Temu Jin. Jin was well aware that he was deep into the 'knows too much; not close enough to the inner circle to be trusted' category. Life on the frontier was cheap, and the only law was the governor. If Mountmarch wanted him dead, it was a matter of a nod. Against that almost inevitable day, he'd started smuggling the odd weapon or ammo pack out of the port. And when he'd realized how easy it was, he'd upped his depredations to using whole pack teams of Mardukans to smuggle material out.

As far as anyone would be able to tell, it was just a regular black-market operation. He sold Imperial materials to the Mardukans, and in return he had a nice Mardukan servant and trade goods, which he used to purchase materials from docking spacers. In reality, the majority of materials weren't being sold, but stored in bunkers. Each time he sent stuff down, he also sent along payments to the mayor—either human goods, or Krath coin. And each time he pulled stuff out, he paid more. He had backup caches in the hills, including a full set of armor, for which he had the codes, and a heavy plasma gun. If he had to fight to get the rest, he could. But he'd never had any trouble with Tul. He thought of it as his little war-bank.

And now it was time to make a withdrawal.

They came into the village the back way, through the turom fields, stepping carefully around the round balls of horselike dung. Like much of the continent's architecture, the mayor's house was a squat construction of heavy basalt rocks. It was built more like a fortress than most, and its back door was constructed of half-meter thick planks that didn't respond well to a standard knock. Which was why Jin drew his bead pistol and pounded on the door with its handgrip, swinging the gun like a hammer.

After a few moments, the door swung open to reveal a wizened old Mardukan female. Jin had never been sure if she was the cook, or a mother-in-law, or what. It probably didn't matter, but it nagged at his sense of curiosity. She was always the one to answer the door, no matter if he was early or late.

She looked at him, looked at the Mardukans with him, made a motion to wait, then closed the door. After a few moments more, it was opened by the local Krath leader.

'Temu Jin, I see you,' he said. 'You bring Shin to my door?'