March Upcountry

"Yes, I suppose they did. Your Highness," Pahner said flatly.

"Damn!" Eleanora shouted, slamming her hand down on the panel. The transmission had shut off in mid-line, and she'd only gotten part of the way through the entry on Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden.

She'd hunted for other data after entering that article, and as she had, she'd realized the incredible reach of the information available. The Marines could use data on improved metallurgy, agriculture, irrigation, and engineering. On chemistry, biology, and physics. It had all been sitting there the whole time, available for translation to pads or even toots. They could've loaded the whole thing into individual toots and had a walking encyclopedia!

But only if she'd thought of it in time.

"What's wrong?" Sergeant Major Kosutic asked, coming back into the compartment. She glanced at the monitors and nodded. "Oh. The DeGlopper's gone. But they got the Saint."

"No, no, no. That's not it!" O'Casey snapped, banging the workstation again. "I realized after you'd gone that I had the whole universe in my hand. I had a copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica in my personal system on the ship. I hardly used it, because it was only outline information. But there were all sorts of things that we could've downloaded if we'd only thought of it in time. I started grabbing articles, but the signal terminated on me."

"Oh? Did you get anything?"

"Yeah," O'Casey replied as she brought up the data. "I think I got the most critical stuff. Survival and hostile environments, survival first-aid, something on expedient shuttle fuels and the begi

Kosutic's mouth worked as she tried not to smile while the academic brought up the data on shuttle fuels.

"Oh. According to this, the field expedient shuttle fuel can be made by using electricity to break down water and—"

"And there's a system on the shuttle that can do it," Kosutic interrupted. "They get the power from solar cells... and it takes about four years to fill a shuttle's tanks."

"Right." O'Casey turned from the monitor. "You already knew that?"

"Yep," Kosutic admitted, still fighting back a grim chuckle. "And before anyone joins the Regiment, she goes through a Satan-Be-Damned course that includes combat survival skills. In fact, Captain Pahner is a survival instructor."

"Oh," O'Casey said. "Damn."

"Don't worry about it," Kosutic advised her, and this time the sergeant major allowed her chuckle to escape. "The Empire's worlds have an enormous variety of tech levels, and the Marines recruit from almost all of them. You'd be amazed by the stuff some of the troops know. When we need something done, most of the time there'll be a troop who has the skill. You just watch."

"I hope you're right."

"Trust me. I've been riding herd on Marines for almost forty standard years now, and they still surprise me sometimes."

"In that case, I guess we just sit here and wait for the landing," O'Casey said sourly.

"Pretty much," Kosutic agreed. "You play pinochle?"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Oh, joy."

Pahner tapped the monitor control, but the picture didn't get any better. Not that there was anything wrong with the sensors or their readouts.

For the last three days the shuttles had been on a pursuit arc headed to overtake the planet from behind. The port was on a small continent or a large island, depending on how one chose to look at it, and their flight plan had been carefully calculated to bring them down just on the far side of the local ocean. That would have put them within a thousand klicks of their objective, and the Mardukans were supposed to have seafaring capability, so most of the trip could be accomplished on shipboard. All they'd have to do would be to hire a ship or ships to carry them across.

It had been, Pahner admitted modestly, a neat and tidy plan. The only real drawback had been that it pushed the parameters of the shuttles' range envelope. The deep-space burns required to put them on the proper intercept course for the planet had consumed so much of their total fuel that they had just enough left to complete their approach and land.

Unfortunately, there was a ship in orbit above the port.

She was powered down, or DeGlopper would have detected her, but she was probably the carrier for the parasite cruisers. And whoever she was, parked in that position, she would be able to detect and track the shuttles' reentry unless they landed, literally, on the far side of the planet.

The good news was that the second Saint cruiser obviously hadn't realized the shuttles had escaped—or, at least, hadn't realized in time to alert her carrier. If she had, the carrier would have moved to watch the side of the planet which the port's sensors couldn't cover in order to prevent the shuttles from sneaking in. The bad news was that the carrier's mere presence, and the diversion that would force upon them, would add some ten thousand kilometers to their dirtside journey.

And, of course, that they wouldn't have enough fuel for the landing, anyway.

"Oh, this is bad," Roger said, looking over the captain's shoulder. "Very, very bad."

"Yes, Your Highness," Pahner said with immense restraint. "It is."

He and the prince had been at close quarters for three days, and neither was in the best mood.

"What are we going to do?" Roger asked, and that faint edge of whine was back in his voice.

Pahner was spared the necessity of an immediate response by the attention chime of the communicator. He managed not to let his relief at the interruption show as he hit the button that acknowledged the com request. Rather than answer immediately, however, he switched the system to holo-mode and waited patiently. It wasn't a long wait, and he smiled thinly at the series of holograms which soon hovered in the compartment.

"I take it that you've all noticed our friend," he said dryly once his audience—all three lieutenants, all four pilots, Sergeant Major Kosutic, and Eleanora O'Casey—was complete.

"Oh, yeah," Warrant Ba

"We should have had a plan in place for this!" Chief Warrant Officer Dobrescu snapped. The pilot of Shuttle Four looked at Pahner as if this were all his fault. Which, in a way, it was.

"That's true enough," Ba

"Which site is completely out of the question with that damned carrier sitting there," Pahner pointed out. It was, he decided, almost certainly the most u

"We can't," Dobrescu said. "You can't land one of these things in a jungle unpowered!"

"What about these white patches?" Roger asked, and Pahner and all of the holograms turned to look at him as he tapped the limited chart he'd been feverishly reviewing. The map on the handheld pad had been prepared from a cursory spatial survey and had virtually no detail, but certain features stood out, and he tapped the image again.

"I don't know what they are," Pahner said. He took the pad and gazed thoughtfully at the irregularly shaped patches in a mountainous region on the far side of the planet from the port. "Whatever they are, they aren't created structures; they're too big for that."