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"What did I say?" Roger asked as Kosutic snickered her way out of the room in Julian's wake, and Poertena snatched the pistol from his hand.
"What? You call t'is po ... You call t'is clean? You Highness."
* * *
"Okay, Captain Fain, welcome to Supply Central," Aburia said as she beckoned for the Mardukan to come through the door.
In deference to the locals' temperature sensitivity, the room had been set at nearly forty degrees. For most humans, it would have been sweltering, but after six months on Marduk, the Marines found it pleasantly cool. Which didn't prevent the corporal from wiping a drop of sweat from her forehead as she gestured to the platform.
"Sir, I'd like you to stand up here, please," she said. "We're going to measure you for your uniform."
"This is an odd way," the Diaspran said. The room was filled with sounds that the Mardukan classified as a triphammer, and also a peculiar rushing noise. The most prominent feature, though, was a low vibration through the floor that Fain found very unpleasant.
"Well, we do it a bit differently, Sir," the corporal replied. "Please, on the platform."
The captain complied, and the Marine triggered a code with her toot.
"The lights are harmless, Sir," she said, as lasers patterned the Mardukan's body in blue. "They're measuring you for your uniform."
After a moment, they winked off.
"And if you'll step down," the corporal continued as she removed a piece of plastscrip from the console, "this is your number. Stickles is in the other room, and he'll show you where to pick up your gear."
"That's it?" Fain asked, waving for Erkum to climb up onto the platform.
"Yep," the Marine said. "Back there, there's a big machine that's going to turn everything out. It's got imported material for the base on the uniform, and various imported and local materials will be used to make the helmet. It's just like the machines in K'Vaern's Cove," she finished, "only—"
"Much more sophisticated," Fain finished as Pol stepped down from the platform and accepted his own piece of plastscrip.
"Yes, Sir," the human said with a grin. "We've got a few thousand years of technology on you, Sir. Don't take it badly."
"I don't," the captain said as he left. "I'm just glad you're on our side."
"Well, it's not always perfect," Aburia admitted. "And just being able to make stuff doesn't always mean it works the way you pla
"Oh?"
* * *
"Look, you stupid beast. If you want to go with me on the ship, I have to get this on you."
Roger appreciated the time it must've taken Julian to design and build the custom-made suit for Dogzard. He considered that the sergeant's efforts were a nice compliment, especially considering all the other duties he'd fitted it in around. Dogzard, however, failed to share his appreciation for the final product.
The Mardukan beast hissed as Roger tried to force one talon into the suit. Then she jerked suddenly backwards, twisted away, and darted into a corner.
"It's state-of-the-art," Roger panted as he leapt across the compartment in an effort to pin the monster down. "It's even got little thrusters, so you can maneuver in zero-g, and ..."
Dogzard writhed in his grip until she managed to twist loose, then raced for the door. Showing a startling level of sophistication, she hit the door release and dashed out.
"Well," Roger said, sucking a cut on his hand. "I think that went well."
CHAPTER THIRTY
"I think this is going pretty well," Pahner said as he watched a Vashin cavalryman try out his new plasma ca
"We still can't use them inside the ship," Kosutic said, gri
"Agreed," Pahner said, and cut himself a fresh slice of bisti root. It had struck him that Murphy was working overtime when it turned out that there wasn't a single stick of gum left in the entire compound. He'd nearly shot one person who was chewing his last stick when Mountmarch's perso
"We can't use them on shipboard if we want it intact, at any rate," he continued as he began to chew. "Although ... when we load them, we'll outfit most of them with bead ca
"You're thinking you might actually use them?" the sergeant major asked with a frown.
"I'm thinking that if you're going to have a backup, it might as well be a backup you can use," the captain replied with a sigh. "And it's the little details that are crucial."
He was right about that, the sergeant major reflected. And it had been a fortnight for details. Besides refitting and rearming all the Marines and their Allies, there'd been a billion other "details" to handle, all of them as quickly as possible.
The first order of business had been to determine just how deeply the Saints actually had their hooks into the planet. As it turned out, the governor had partially covered himself by getting permission for "occasional welfare and socialization visits" from passing Saint warships. His request had pointed out that he was on the backend of nowhere, with no naval backup, and that refusing requests might be a good way to start a war.
But his personal files, helpfully cracked by the ever-useful Temu Jin, had revealed the other side of the story. The steadily growing accounts in New Rochelle banks would have been hard enough for Mountmarch to explain, but the electronic communications records were damning. It was clear that he'd been in the Saints' pocket almost from the day he arrived on Marduk. Indeed, some references in the correspondence raised the very real possibility that he'd been a Saint operative even while he was a centerpiece of court intrigue. One reply from his Saint handler—identified in the messages only as "Muir"—indicated that the Saints had used a combination of money and blackmail, probably about his illegal predilection for young boys, as a means of control. When the Bronze Barbarians returned to Old Earth (and assuming they managed to both survive the trip and then get the various warrants against them dropped) the database would make interesting reading at IBI.
For the moment, however, what was more important was that the data gave them a good read on Saint visits, and the next warship wasn't scheduled for over two months. Furthermore, it indicated that activity overall would be cut back for the foreseeable future. Prince Jackson's coup had all the other star nations surrounding the Empire on high alert, and the majority of the Saint fleet had been pulled to more important systems.
While Julian and Jin had been tickling the electronic files, a team made up of Third Squad and augmented by Eleanora O'Casey for political interaction had been sent out to cover their back trail and pick up the shuttles. Harvard Mansul had requested and been granted permission to accompany them, and they'd visited most of the Company's waypoints. They'd retraced their entire six-month journey in less than a week, and insured that the various societies they'd passed through had survived. Mansul, in the meantime, recorded interviews with many of the Mardukans who'd experienced the Company's passage. Besides laying the groundwork for a series of fascinating articles and one heck of a docudrama, his records were intended as evidence for Roger's defense when the time came, since they made it clear he and Bravo Company had been far too busy surviving to be involved in any plots against the Throne.