We Few

"Beat the crap out of him, Sir," Julian replied after a short pause.

"Yes, I saw the surgeon's report," Helmut said with a trace of satisfaction. Then— "What happened to Pahner?" he rapped suddenly.

"Killed, Sir," Julian said, and swallowed. "Taking the ship we captured to get off that mudball."

"Hard man to kill," Helmut mused.

"It was a Saint covert commando ship," Julian said. "We didn't know until we were in too deep to back out. He died to save the Prince."

"That was his responsibility," Helmut said. "And what was his position on this... countercoup?"

"We developed the original plan's framework before the attack on the ship, Sir. It had his full backing."

"It would," the admiral said. "He was a rather all-or-nothing person. Very well, Julian. Yes, you have my backing. No Marines at the last minute, no double crosses."

"You haven't asked what you get for it," Julian noted. "The Prince will owe you a rather large favor."

"I get the safety of the Empire," Helmut growled. "If I asked for anything else, would you trust me?"

"No," Julian admitted. "Not in this. But the Prince authorized me to tell you that, as far as he's concerned, you can have Sixth Fleet or Home Fleet or CNO 'until you die or go senile.' That last is a direct quote."

"And what are you getting, Sergeant?" the admiral asked, ignoring the offer.

"As a quid pro quo? Nada. Hell, Sir, I haven't even been paid in over ten months. He told me before we left that I'm a captain, but I didn't ask for it."

Julian paused and shrugged.

"The safety of the Empire? Admiral, I'm sworn to serve the Empire, we both are, but I serve Master Rog. We all do. You'd have to have been there to understand. He's not... who he was. None of us are. We're Prince Roger's Own. Period. They call aides 'dog-robbers' because they'll rob a dog of its bone, if that's what the admiral wants. We're... we're pig-robbers. We'll steal slop, if that's what Roger wants. Or conquer the Caravazan Empire. Or set him up as a pirate king. Maybe Pahner wasn't that way, maybe he fought for the Empire, even to the last. But the rest of us are, we few who survive. We're Roger's dogs. And if he wants to save the Empire, well, we'll save the Empire. And if he'd told me to come in here and assassinate you, well, Admiral, you'd be dead."

"Household troops," the admiral said distastefully.

"Yes, Sir, that's us. And the nastiest group thereof you're ever likely to see. And that doesn't even count the Mardukans. Don't judge them by Denat; he just follows us around to see what mischief we get into. Rastar or Fain or Honal would nuke a world without blinking if Roger told them to."

"Interesting that he can command such loyalty," Helmut mused. "That doesn't... fit his profile from before his disappearance. In fact, that was one factor in my disbelief that he had anything to do with the coup."

"Well, things change," Julian said. "They change fast on Marduk. Admiral, I've got a presentation on what we went through and what our plans are. If you'd like to see it."

"I would," Helmut admitted. "I'd like to see what could change a clothes horse into—"

"Just say a MacClintock."

"Well, well—Harvard Mansul." Etie

"Good to see you again, too, Etie

"Thought we'd lost you for sure this time, Harvard," he said after a moment, stepping back and holding the reporter at arm's length. "You were supposed to be back months ago!"

"I know." Mansul shrugged, and his smile was more than a little crooked. "Seems our information on the societal setup was a bit, um, out of date. The Krath have undergone a religious conversion with some really nasty side effects. They almost decided to eat me."

"Eat you?" Thorwell blinked, then regarded Mansul skeptically. "Ritualistic ca

"Usually." Mansul nodded in agreement. "This time around, though—" He shrugged. "Look, I've got the video to back it up. But even more important, I got caught in a shooting war between the 'civilized' ca

That much, he reflected, was certainly true. Of course, he'd had to do some pretty careful editing to keep any of the humans (or their weapons) from appearing in the aforesaid video. A few carefully scripted interviews with Pedi Karuse's father had also been added to the mix, making it quite plain that the entire war—and the desperate battle which had concluded it—had been the result of purely Mardukan efforts. The fact that it made the Gastan look like a military genius had tickled the Shin monarch's sense of humor, but he'd covered admirably for the human involvement.

"Actual combat footage?" Thorwell's nose almost twitched, and Mansul hid a smile. He'd told Roger and O'Casey how his boss would react to that. The official IAS charter was to report seriously on alien worlds and societies, with substantive analysis and exploration, not cater to core-world stereotypes of "barbarian behavior," but the editorial staff couldn't afford to ignore the realities of viewership demographics.

"Actual combat footage," he confirmed. "Pikes, axes, and black powder and the decisive defeat of the 'civilized' side by the barbarians who don't eat people. And who happen to have saved my own personal ass in the process."

"Hot damn," Thorwell said. "'Fearless reporter rescued by valiant barbarian ruler.' That kind of stuff?"

"That was how I figured on playing it," Mansul agreed. "With suitably modest commentary from myself, of course."

They looked at each other and chuckled almost in unison. Harvard Mansul had already won the coveted Interstellar Correspondents Society's Stimson-Yamaguchi Medal twice. If this footage was as good as Thorwell suspected it was, he might be about to win it a third time.

Mansul knew exactly what the chief editor was thinking. But what made him chuckle was the knowledge that he had the SYM absolutely sewed up once he was able to actually release the documentary he'd done of Roger's adventures on Marduk. Especially with the inside track he'd been promised on coverage of the countercoup after it came off, as well.

"I've got a lot of other stuff, too," the reporter went on after a few moments. "In-depth societal analysis of both sides, some pretty good stuff on their basic tech capabilities, and an update on the original geological survey. It really underestimated the planet's vulcanism, Etie

"Just before the wheels came off for the Krath, they made contact with these people from the other side of the local ocean—from a place called K'Vaern's Cove, sort of a local maritime trading empire—and I got some good footage on them, too. And the food those people turned out!"