March Upcountry

point. That should spring any ambushes before we get to them.”

“It’s not doctrine, Sir,” Jasco pointed out, fingering his sling. “It won’t spring a long-range ambush, and you’re effectively offering a squad as a sacrifice instead of one Marine.”

The captain shook his head angrily.

“We keep forgetting that the Mardukans are range-limited. Or these Mardukans are, at least—that may change when we finally hit some of them with gunpowder. But as long as we keep flankers out at thrown-weapon range to the front, the Kranolta can’t ambush the main body. They don’t have the range. So we change the doctrine.”

“And pack up the goddamned plasma guns,” Gulyas said with a grimace. Bosum’s death had been spectacular, and most of the plasma gunners had already unloaded their weapons as a precaution. No one knew what had gone wrong, and no one wanted to be the next person to find out.

“Yeah,” Jasco snapped. “No shit.”

He was out half a squad and a team leader from the malfunction. Between Koberda’s death and the loss of most of the squad’s Alpha Team to the plasma rifle malfunction, Gunnery Sergeant Lai had been forced to roll what was left of Second and Third Squads together under the Third Squad leader.

“Well, like the King said in Q’Nkok,” Pahner pointed out, “if you have one problem, it’s sometimes insoluble. But if you have several, they sometimes solve each other. We took enough casualties that there are spare weapons for all the plasma gunners to switch over to something else. I’ll have Poertena and Julian start going over the plasmas in the morning, but in the meantime, we’ll limit ourselves to grenades and bead guns.”

“As long as the ammo holds out, Sir,” Jasco said.

“That too,” the company commander admitted with a grim smile. “That too. Which brings this conversation full circle.”

Roger knew that doing kata while angry was pointless. No matter how many times he tried to find his balance, he could never quite manage it, yet he couldn’t stop, either. He spun in the darkness behind his tent, hair windmilling out in a golden halo, away from the eyes of most of the company while he tried to work out his frustration, anger, and fear.

He was shocked by the casualties the company had taken. Despite everything, it had never truly occurred to him that the Marines might be wiped out by this march. Oh, intellectually he’d acknowledged the possibility, but not emotionally. Not at the heart of him. Surely modern troops, armed with Imperial weapons, would be able to slash their way through an enemy armed only with spears and swords or the crudest of firearms.

But that presumed the enemy was unwilling to take casualties. And it also presumed that the Marines could see the enemy in time to kill him before he reached such close quarters that all of their advantages in range and firepower were negated. The failure of the automated sensors to detect the attackers before they struck boded ill for the rest of the journey.

Although the tactical sensors were, theoretically, designed to detect a broad range of possible “traces,” it was now clear that the software depended heavily on infrared and power source input. If it had a possible contact, but the contact was “anomalous,” it filtered by infrared tracing and power emissions, which made perfectly good sense against high-tech opponents who would be emitting in those bands.

But the Mardukans emitted in neither of them, so the sensors were throwing out most detections as ghosts. In some cases during the battle, the helmet HUDs had flatly refused to “caret” the enemy at all, which had thrown off the Marines, who were trained to depend primarily on their helmet sensors precisely because those sensors were so much better than the ones evolution had provided. Except that now they weren’t.

Roger had dealt with that problem by ignoring the targeting carets—first by using the simple holographic sights on his rifle, and then by firing into a melee where he knew the Marines weren’t on the theory that that was where the enemy had to be. Of course, the burst radius of the grenades had caused a few problems, but still . . .

He spun on the ball of one foot, carrying the heavy sword through a vicious butterfly maneuver. It wasn’t fair. He’d personally broken the back of the ambush. So the method was a little drastic. It had worked, and whatever Pahner might think, his actions had stemmed from neither panic nor stupidity nor arrogant carelessness.

Now if someone besides the ever-worshiping Dogzard would just realize that, he might even—

He froze at the sound of a cleared throat and turned gracefully to face the interruption. His face settled into a practiced, invulnerable mask of hauteur as he placed the point of the sword on the toe of his boot. It was an incredibly arrogant pose, and he knew it, but he didn’t really care just at the moment. Screw ’em if they didn’t like it.

“Yes?” he asked Despreaux. He hadn’t heard the soft-footed squad leader approach, and he wondered what she wanted.

The NCO regarded him carefully for a moment, taking in both the attitude and the picture. The prince had changed into a pair of shorts to work out, and the heat and activity had raised a heavy sweat. The greater moon, Hanish, was breaking through the clouds, and the reflected fire and moonlight dappled the sweat on his body like patina on a bronze statue. The image sent a stab of fire through the NCO’s abdomen which she firmly suppressed.

“I just wanted to say thank you, Your Highness. We probably would have cut our way through the ambush, but we were in the tight, no question. Sometimes you have to do things that seem crazy when it drops that far in the pot. Blowing the shit out of the Company isn’t the dumbest thing I can think of, and it worked. So, from me, thanks.”

She didn’t add that the Mardukan who’d been blown all over her by one of the grenades had had her dead to rights when it hit. Another second, and the big bastard would’ve taken her head off before she could reload.

Since it was exactly what he’d wanted to hear, Roger couldn’t understand why the statement caused him to flare with rage. But it did. He knew it shouldn’t have, but it did. He tried hard—really tried—to swallow his contrarian reaction, but his inner anger leaked through his control.

“Thank you for your input, Sergeant,” he replied tightly. “In the future, however, I’ll try to think of a more . . . elegant solution.”

Despreaux didn’t have a clue what it was about her comment that had pissed the prince off so badly, but she was smart enough to back off.

“Well, thanks anyway, Your Highness,” she said quietly. “Good night.”

“Good night, Sergeant,” Roger said more naturally. His intense flare of anger was already fading, and he wanted to apologize for his earlier tone, but he couldn’t find the words. Which only made it worse, of course.

The rebuffed NCO nodded calmly to him in the moonlight and headed back into camp, leaving him to swing his sword and rage . . . now at both the world and his own stupidity.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“I brought everyt’ing I could pocking pack,” Poertena snapped. “How tee pock was I gonna pack a pocking plasma cradle?”

Captain Pahner had decided the company needed a day or two to repair and reconsolidate. His initial reaction had been to push on, trying to deprive the Kranolta of time to concentrate more warriors on their position. But although all the pack beasts had been recovered, many of them were injured, and the mahouts insisted that some of them needed a few days rest. Pahner had to admit that it would help the Marines as well, so the company had spent the next day improving the camp’s defenses and recovering from the contact.

Well, most of them had. Julian and Poertena had a different mission.

The sides of the hide tent which had been turned into an ad hoc armory were rolled up, but they were still unpleasantly hot under it. Not as hot as the Marines digging stake-pits, perhaps, but at least the diggers didn’t have to make bricks without straw.