We Few

"Jesus, Roger! There's a reason those are all two-year appointments!"

"I know, and I don't really care. He's loyal to the Empire first—that I care about. Tell him I'd prefer CNO or Home Fleet."

"I tell him?"

"You. Turn over your intel-gathering to Nimashet and Eleanora. Then get Poertena. You're on the next ship headed towards the Halliwell System." Roger stuck out his hand. "Make a really good presentation, Julian."

"I will," the sergeant said, standing up. "I will."

"Good luck, Captain," Roger added.

"Captain?"

"It's not official till its official. But from now on, that's what you are from my point of view. There are going to be quite a few promotions going on."

"I don't want to be a colonel."

"And Nimashet doesn't want to be Empress," Roger replied. "Face facts, Eva. I'm going to need people I can trust, and they're going to have to have the rank to go with the trust. For that matter, you're going to be a general pretty damned quick. I know you think about the Empire first."

"That's... not precisely true," the Armaghan said. "Or, not the way it used to be." She looked him straight in the eye. "I'm one of your people now, Roger. I agree with your reasoning about the Empire, but the fact that I agree with it is less important than the fact that it's your reasoning. You need to be clear on that distinction. Call me a fellow traveler, in that regard."

"Noted," Roger said. "But in either case, you know what I'm trying to do. So if you think I'm doing something harmful to theEmpire, for whatever reason, you tell me."

"Well, all right," she said, then chuckled. "But if that's what you really want me to do, maybe I should start now."

"Now?"

"Yeah. I'm just wondering, have you really thought about the consequences of making Poertena a lieutenant?"

"Pocking nuts, t'at's what t'ey are," Poertena muttered, looking at the rank tabs sitting on the bed. "Modderpocking nuts."

Poertena had spent most of his life as a short, swarthy, broad individual with lanky black hair. Now he was a short, broad, fair-ski

"How bad can it be?" Denat asked.

The Mardukan was D'Nal Cord's nephew. Unlike his uncle, he was under no honor obligation to wander along with the humans, but he did suffer from a severe case of horizon fever. He'd accompanied them to the first city—what he'd considered a city at the time—Q'Nkok, to help his uncle in negotiations with the local rulers. But when Cord followed Roger and his band off into the Kranolta-haunted wilderness, Denat (for reasons he couldn't even define at the time) had followed along, despite the fact that everyone knew it was suicide.

In the ensuing third of a Mardukan year, he'd been enthralled, horrified, and terrified by turns, each beyond belief. He'd very rarely been bored, however. He'd also discovered a hidden gift for languages and an ability to "blend in" with a local population—both of which abilities had been pretty well hidden among a tribe of bone-grinding savages—which had proved highly useful to the humans.

And in Marshad, he had acquired a wife as remarkable, in her own way, as Pedi Karuse. T'Leen Sena was as brilliant a covert operator as any race had ever produced, and although she was small—petite, actually—for a Mardukan, and a "sheltered city girl," to boot, she was also a very, very dangerous person. The fact that she'd seen fit to marry a wandering warrior from a tribe of stone-using barbarians might have shocked her family and friends; it did not shock anyone who knew Denat.

In addition to gaining adventure, wealth, fame, and a wife he doted upon, he and Poertena had become friends. Representatives of two dissimilar species, from wildly divergent backgrounds, somehow they clicked. Part of that was a shared love of gambling, at least if the stakes were right. The two of them had introduced various card games to unsuspecting Mardukans across half a planet, and done rather well financially in the process. To a Mardukan, cheating was just part of the game.

"Ask me if I trus' him," Poertena griped as he packed his valise. "He's a Poertena! I gotta say yes, but t'ey got no idea what an insult t'at would be. Of course you can' trus' him."

"I trust you," Denat said. "I mean, not with cards or anything, but I'd take you at my back. I'd trust you with my knife."

"Well, sure," Poertena said. "But... damn, you don' have to make a big t'ing about it. An' it ain't t'e same t'ing, anways. If Julian goes in all 'good of t'e Empire,' Marciel's go

"Well, at least you're getting off this damned planet," Denat grumped. "It's a pocking ice ball, playing cards with these damned bears is boring, and the sky is overhead all the time. Doesn't it ever rain?"

Rain and overcast skies were constant companions on Marduk, one of the reasons the locals had evolved with slime-covered skin.

"You wa

"Don't tempt me," Denat said wistfully. "Sena would kill me if I ran off without her."

"So?" Portena snorted. "She also one of t'e bes' pockin' 'spooks' I know. Might be she come in handy in somet'ing like t'is."

"You really think Roger would agree to let both of us come?" Denat perked up noticeably, and Portena chuckled.

"Hey, got's to prove somehow where t'e pock we been for t'e las' year, don' we? I t'ink a pair of Markduans migh' be abou' t'e bes' pockin' proof we go

"Ask, please," Denat said. "I'm going crazy here."

"Well, we're moving." Roger pulled out a strand of hair, then tucked it behind his ear. "We can get an abort message to Julian, if it reaches him in time. But for all practical purposes, the die is cast."

"Second thoughts?" Despreaux asked. They were in Roger's quarters eating a quiet meal, just the two of them.

"Some," he admitted. "You don't know how good the 'government-in-exile' plan's looked to me from time to time."

"Oh, I think I do. But it was never really an option, was it?"

"No, not really." Roger sighed. "I just hate putting everyone in harm's way, again. When does it end?"

"I don't know." Despreaux shrugged. "When we win?"

"If we capture Mother, and New Madrid," he never called New Madrid "father," "and Adoula. Maybe everything will hold together. Oh, and capture the replicator, too. And if Helmut can checkmate Home Fleet. And if none of Adoula's cabal grabs a portion of the Navy and flees back to the Sagittarius Sector. If, if, if."

"You need to stop fretting about it," Despreaux said, and then smiled crookedly at the look he gave her. "I know—I know! Easier to say than to do. That doesn't keep it from being good advice."

"Probably not, he agreed. "But there's not much point giving someone advice you know he can't follow."

"True. So let's at least worry about something we might be able to do something about. Any news on the freighter?"

"Sreeetoth said maybe two more days," Roger replied with a shrug of his own. "They didn't have one that was quite right in-system. It's coming from Seranos. Everything else is ready to go, so all we can do is wait."

"Whatever will we do with the time?" Despreaux smiled again, not at all crookedly.

None of the crew recruited for the freighter were aware of the true identities of their passengers. They'd been recruited in spaceport bars around the Seranos System, one of the fringe systems of the Alphane Alliance which bordered on Raiden-Winterhowe, and they knew something was fishy. Nobody, no matter how rich and eccentric, charters a freighter, picks up a crew, and loads the freighter with barbarians, live animals of particularly nasty dispositions, and food that can't possibly recoup the cost of the voyage for reasons that weren't "fishy." But the crew, most of whom had some questionable moments tucked away in their own backgrounds, assumed it was a standard illegal venture. Smuggling, probably, although smuggling what was a question. But they knew they were getting paid smuggler's wages, and that was good enough for them.