March Upcountry

“I’m your new platoon leader,” Roger said.

“Pardon me?” Jin looked around. Corporal Casset was standing with his jaw dropped, but other than the corporal (and the pissed-off and tired looking shaman standing behind the prince) no one else had heard Roger’s announcement. “Is this some sort of joke, Your Highness?”

“No, Gunnery Sergeant, it isn’t,” Roger said carefully. “Captain Pahner has asked me to ‘wear another hat.’ He’s appointed me to be your platoon leader.”

“Oh,” Jin said. He did not add “joy,” for some unknown reason, but after a moment he went on with slightly glassy eyes. “Very well, Your Highness. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll walk you through the defenses and explain the placements. I would ask for your comments and suggestions after that.”

“Very well, Gunny. And, I think ‘Sir’ would be appropriate. Or ‘Lieutenant.’ I’m not really a prince in this assignment, as I understand things.”

“Very well, Your . . . Sir,” the sergeant said, shaking his head.

“Captain, we’ve gotten our people into position, and—”

“Shhh!” Pahner’s hand waved Lieutenant Jasco to silence as the captain turned his head from side to side.

“Pardon me, Sir?” the lieutenant said after trying for a moment to figure out what he was looking at. All the lieutenant could see was the idiot prince talking to Gunny Jin.

“Shhh!” Pahner repeated, then grunted in satisfaction as he finally managed to get the directional microphone onto the conversation just as Jin realized what his company commander had done to him.

Lieutenant Jasco maintained a straight face as Captain Pahner did something the lieutenant would have flatly denied was possible. He giggled. It was an amazing sound to hear out of the tall, broad officer, and Pahner cut it off almost immediately. He listened for a few more seconds, then switched off the mike and turned to Jasco with a seraphic smile.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he asked, still chuckling. “You were saying?”

“We’ve gotten all of our people into position, Sir. When do you think they’re going to attack?”

“Lieutenant,” Pahner looked at the sky, “your guess on that is as good as mine. But I think they’ll wait until morning. It’s getting late, and they’ve never hit us at night. I’ll come by your positions in a bit. Go get with your platoon sergeant and figure out a chow rotation for right now.”

He could smell Matsugae starting something on a fire.

Roger sniffed and looked towards the keep where Kostas had dinner well under way. The valet might just have put himself in harm’s way to rescue a nobody trooper, but it didn’t seem to have affected him at all. He’d simply gone back to organizing the camp. Maybe there was a lesson to learn there.

Roger turned and swept his gaze over the troopers still working all around him. Now that the basics had been done—setting up the heavy weapons, assigning fields of fire, putting up sandbags where stones had fallen from the battlements of the citadel wall—the Marines were improving their individual positions. Despite the intense heat, even more focused here inside the stone walls, the troopers worked without pause. They knew it would be too late to improve their chances of survival after the Kranolta hit.

Despreaux walked over to him, and he nodded to her.

“Sergeant,” he said, and she nodded back and tossed him the small object in her hand.

“Nice folks.”

Roger caught the item and blanched. It was a very small Mardukan skull, one side crushed. The horns were barely buds.

“There’s a big pile of bones over in the bastion,” she continued. “That was part of it. It looks like the defenders made some sort of stand.”

Roger looked over the wall at the crumbled city below. He had enough experience now to imagine the horrors the castle’s defenders would have observed as the rest of their city went up in roaring flame and massacre. And to imagine their despair as the gate crumbled and the Kranolta barbarians poured through. . . .

“I’m not really very happy with these fellows,” he said, setting the skull gently on the parapet.

“I’ve seen worse,” Despreaux said coldly. “I made the drop on Jurgen. Pardon me if I’m humanocentric, but . . . it was worse.”

“Jurgen?” Roger couldn’t place the name.

Despreaux’s sculpted profile hardened, and a muscle in her jaw twitched.

“No place that mattered, Your Highness. Just a stinking little fringe world. Bunch of dirt-poor colonists, and a single town. A pirate ship dropped in for a visit. It was a particularly unpleasant bunch. By the time we got there, the pirates were long gone. The results weren’t.”

“Oh,” Roger said. The attacks on border worlds were so common that they hardly ever made the news in the Home Regions. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing for you to be sorry about, Your Highness. Just something to remember; there’s bad guys out there all the time. The only people who usually see them are the Fleet and the Marines. But when things get screwed up enough, this isn’t so uncommon. The barbs are always at the door.”

She touched the skull gently, then gave him another cool nod and walked back to where her squad was digging in. Roger continued looking out over the city, stroking the skull with a thumb, until Pahner walked up.

“How’s it going, Lieutenant?”

“Just fine . . . Sir,” Roger said distractedly, still gazing out over murdered Voitan. “Captain, can I say something as ‘His Highness’ instead of ‘Lieutenant’?”

“Certainly,” Pahner said with a smile. “Your Highness.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to leave an existing force in our rear, do you?”

“You’re talking about the Kranolta?” Pahner glanced at the skull.

“Yes, Captain. How are we fixed for power for the suits?”

“Well,” Pahner grimaced, “since we only have four of them up, not bad. Days and days with just four of them. But we need to get the rest up to have a hope in hell of taking the spaceport.”

“But we have enough for a pursuit, don’t we?”

“Certainly.” Pahner nodded. “And you have a point about leaving remnants in our rear. I don’t want to have to fight off ambushes from here to the next city-state.”

“Good.” Roger turned and looked the captain in the eye. “I don’t think that the cause of civilization on this world would be advanced by leaving a single Kranolta alive, Captain. I would prefer that that not be the case after tomorrow.”

Pahner regarded him steadily, then nodded.

“So would I, Your Highness. So would I. I think tomorrow we’ll be building a samadh. To the honor of the Corps.”

CHAPTER FORTY

Roger looked out from the citadel wall as the first overcast light of dawn stole across the dead, jungle- devoured cityscape.

The company had been up for nearly an hour, getting breakfast and preparing for these first moments of early morning light. This time, Before Morning Nautical Twilight, had been considered the most dangerous time of all for millennia. It was the time preferred for a “dawn attack,” when sleepy-eyed sentries were at their lowest ebb and attackers could slip up under cover of darkness but attack with the gathering light.

The Marines’ answer was the same one armies had used for centuries: get up well before time and be awake and alert when the moment of “stand to” came. Naturally, as had also been the case for centuries, there were some complainers.

Roger wasn’t one of them. He’d been up for hours the previous night, reviewing his actions of the day