March Upcountry

escape. “The Empire’s worlds have an enormous variety of tech levels, and the Marines recruit from almost all of them. You’d be amazed by the stuff some of the troops know. When we need something done, most of the time there’ll be a troop who has the skill. You just watch.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Trust me. I’ve been riding herd on Marines for almost forty standard years now, and they still surprise me sometimes.”

“In that case, I guess we just sit here and wait for the landing,” O’Casey said sourly.

“Pretty much,” Kosutic agreed. “You play pinochle?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Oh, joy.”

Pahner tapped the monitor control, but the picture didn’t get any better. Not that there was anything wrong with the sensors or their readouts.

For the last three days the shuttles had been on a pursuit arc headed to overtake the planet from behind. The port was on a small continent or a large island, depending on how one chose to look at it, and their flight plan had been carefully calculated to bring them down just on the far side of the local ocean. That would have put them within a thousand klicks of their objective, and the Mardukans were supposed to have seafaring capability, so most of the trip could be accomplished on shipboard. All they’d have to do would be to hire a ship or ships to carry them across.

It had been, Pahner admitted modestly, a neat and tidy plan. The only real drawback had been that it pushed the parameters of the shuttles’ range envelope. The deep-space burns required to put them on the proper intercept course for the planet had consumed so much of their total fuel that they had just enough left to complete their approach and land.

Unfortunately, there was a ship in orbit above the port.

She was powered down, or DeGlopper would have detected her, but she was probably the carrier for the parasite cruisers. And whoever she was, parked in that position, she would be able to detect and track the shuttles’ reentry unless they landed, literally, on the far side of the planet.

The good news was that the second Saint cruiser obviously hadn’t realized the shuttles had escaped—or, at least, hadn’t realized in time to alert her carrier. If she had, the carrier would have moved to watch the side of the planet which the port’s sensors couldn’t cover in order to prevent the shuttles from sneaking in. The bad news was that the carrier’s mere presence, and the diversion that would force upon them, would add some ten thousand kilometers to their dirtside journey.

And, of course, that they wouldn’t have enough fuel for the landing, anyway.

“Oh, this is bad,” Roger said, looking over the captain’s shoulder. “Very, very bad.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Pahner said with immense restraint. “It is.”

He and the prince had been at close quarters for three days, and neither was in the best mood.

“What are we going to do?” Roger asked, and that faint edge of whine was back in his voice.

Pahner was spared the necessity of an immediate response by the attention chime of the communicator. He managed not to let his relief at the interruption show as he hit the button that acknowledged the com request. Rather than answer immediately, however, he switched the system to holo-mode and waited patiently. It wasn’t a long wait, and he smiled thinly at the series of holograms which soon hovered in the compartment.

“I take it that you’ve all noticed our friend,” he said dryly once his audience—all three lieutenants, all four pilots, Sergeant Major Kosutic, and Eleanora O’Casey—was complete.

“Oh, yeah,” Warrant Bann said. “The planned IP is out, and so are aborts one and two.”

“We should have had a plan in place for this!” Chief Warrant Officer Dobrescu snapped. The pilot of Shuttle Four looked at Pahner as if this were all his fault. Which, in a way, it was.

“That’s true enough,” Bann said, “but the fact is that we never did have the fuel for a conventional powered landing, no matter where we set down. We needed that atmospheric braking even to hit the prime site.”

“Which site is completely out of the question with that damned carrier sitting there,” Pahner pointed out. It was, he decided, almost certainly the most unnecessary observation he’d ever made, but he made himself continue with the thoroughly unpalatable corollary. “We’ll have to land in the backlands, instead.”

“We can’t,” Dobrescu said. “You can’t land one of these things in a jungle unpowered!”

“What about these white patches?” Roger asked, and Pahner and all of the holograms turned to look at him as he tapped the limited chart he’d been feverishly reviewing. The map on the handheld pad had been prepared from a cursory spatial survey and had virtually no detail, but certain features stood out, and he tapped the image again.

“I don’t know what they are,” Pahner said. He took the pad and gazed thoughtfully at the irregularly shaped patches in a mountainous region on the far side of the planet from the port. “Whatever they are, they aren’t created structures; they’re too big for that.”

He started to say that they wouldn’t help, then stopped. They weren’t jungle or water or mountain, and that was about all the planet had to offer. So what were they?

By now others were studying their pads.

“I think . . .” Lieutenant Gulyas began, then stopped.

“You think what?” Warrant Bann asked. He too was drawn to the white patches.

“They’re one of two things,” Gulyas said. “I can’t tell if they’re above or below sea level, but if they’re low enough, I think they might be dry lakebeds.”

“Dry lakebeds on a jungle world,” Dobrescu snorted. “That’s rich. And very convenient if they are. But if we aim for them and they’re not, we’re dead.”

“Well,” Bann replied, “a planet is a damned big place, Chief. There almost have to be dry lakebeds on it somewhere, and we’re dead anyway if the carrier sees us or we auger into a mountainside. Might as well try the possible lakebeds and hope.”

“I agree with Lieutenant Gulyas,” Roger said. “That’s why I pointed them out. This looks like the sort of folded mountain formation where you’d get them. If the mountains folded around them and cut off their water sources, that would leave dry lakebeds.” He scanned across the rest of the map. “And there are others, closer to the port. See? It’s not just here.”

“But the rest of the world is swamps, Your Highness,” Dobrescu pointed out. “You need desert terrain for dry lakes, and why would there be desert only there?”

“I’d say that whole mountain range is probably arid,” Pahner said. “The surface color is brown, not green. And there are other arid regions—they’re just few and far between. So there’s a good chance these really are dry lakes.”

He gazed at the pad a moment longer, then set it aside and looked back at the pilots.

“Whether we’re in agreement or not, the possibility that they’re lakebeds is our only way out. So begin recalculating for an extended burn to slow us and a sharp descent behind the planet for a dead stick landing.”

Dobrescu opened his mouth to protest, but Pahner held up his hand.

“Unless there’s an alternative plan, that’s what we’re going to do. Do you have an alternative?”

“No, Sir,” Dobrescu replied after a long moment. “But, with all due respect, I don’t like the idea of risking His Highness’ safety on a guess.”

“Neither do I. But that’s exactly what we’re going to do. And the good news is, that we’re going to be risking the rest of our lives right along with his. So if it doesn’t work, none of us will have to explain it to Her Majesty.”

After they’d hit zero G and the likelihood of being shot out of space by the cruiser had passed, the troops had floated around the troop bay, lacing into their low-grav hammocks and chilling out. Three days on the shuttle without a damned thing they had to do but sleep were on the order of heaven to most of the experienced Marines.