March Upcountry

Pahner looked around, but there was nowhere to have a private conversation. So he touched the control that opaqued the prince's visor again.

"Your Highness," he began, then drew a deep, calming breath. "Your Highness, can I ask you a question?"

"Captain Pahner, I assure you—"

"Your Highness, if you please," Pahner interrupted in a strangled tone. "May. I. Ask. You. A. Question?"

Roger decided at that moment that discretion was better than valor.

"Yes."

"Do you want to live to get back to Earth?" Pahner asked, and Roger paused before responding carefully.

"Is that a threat, Captain?"

"No, Your Highness, it's a question."

"Then, yes, of course I do," the prince said shortly.

"Then you'd better get through your overbred, airheaded brain that the only way we are going to survive is if you don't fuck me over every time we turn around!"

"Captain, I assure you—" the prince started to respond hotly.

"Shut up! Just shut up, shut up! You can have me relieved once we get back to Earth! And I am not going to wrap you up in ropes and carry you the whole way, although right now that sounds like a good idea! But if you don't get a grip and start figuring out that we are not on some backwoods adventure where you can go and blast anything in sight and walk away without consequences, we are all going to get killed. And that would really piss me off, because it would mean that I failed to get you back to Earth so that I can give you back to your mother in one goddamned piece. That is all I care about, and if you don't get with the program, I will sedate you and carry you to the spaceport unconscious on a stretcher! Am I making myself absolutely, positively, crystalline clear?"

"Clear," Roger said quietly. He realized there was no way he could possibly explain the situation as he saw it to the enraged captain. He also realized that with the helmets opaqued and on a restricted frequency, no one else had heard the dressing down.

Pahner paused for a moment longer, looking around the desolate wasteland. It might look flat, but he knew it hid dozens of little dips where enemies and predators could be hiding. The whole march, for months on end, was going to be like that. And all the Marines, as opposed to the civilians they were guarding, knew that. He shook his head and switched to the all-hands frequency.

"Okay, show's over. Let's move out."

Great. Just great. Just what a unit in a situation like this needed: an obvious argument in the chain of command right at the start.

"Woo, hoo, hoo," Julian whispered on his suit mike. "I think the Prince just caught himself a nuke."

"I bet Pahner didn't even ask why he took the shot," Despreaux said.

"He knows why Princy took the shot," Julian shot back. "Big, bad big-game hunter saw the biggest game in town. Time to try out the rifle."

"Maybe," Despreaux admitted. "But he is a big-game hunter. He's dealt with big nasty animals a lot. Heck, he does it as a hobby. Maybe he knew something Pahner didn't."

"The day you find out something the Old Man doesn't know," Julian commented, "you come look me up. But bring some CarStim; I'll need it for the heart attack."

"I t'ink he just like to kill stuff," Poertena said soberly. They'd reached the carcass of the giant herbivore, and he examined more closely. It would have made a fair trophy for any hunter.

Despreaux glanced over at the armorer. Despite the huge rucksack that made him look like an ant under a rock, he'd come up behind them so quietly she hadn't noticed his presence.

"You really think so?"

"Sure. I hear about his trophy room," Poertena said, sipping water out of his tube. "There are all sorts of t'ings in there. He likes to kill stuff," he repeated.

"Maybe," Despreaux repeated, then sighed. "If so, I hope he can learn some control."

"Well, I guess we'll see the next time we have a contact," Julian said.

"Contact!" the point guard called.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kosutic tapped a bead rifle outward.

"There are three people covering one scummy," she commented to the trooper as she stepped past him. "Watch your own Satan-Be-Damned sector."

"... just appeared out of nowhere," the point guard was saying as the sergeant major walked up. The PFC waved the sensor wand at the scummy. "Look, there's hardly any readout!"

"That's what your eyes are for!" Gu

The Mardukan stood two and a half meters tall. He—it was clearly and almost embarrassingly a "he"—carried a figure-eight shield nearly as tall as he was. A lance that was even taller was cast over one shoulder, and he had a large, leather covering thrown over his head. It was obviously an attempt at a parasol, and his need for something like it was clear. Given the fact that Mardukans were covered in a water-based mucus, the fact that he could have survived all the way to the edge of the salt flats was amazing. He should have been dead of dehydration long before he got this far.

Kosutic tossed her bead rifle over one shoulder in a ma

The Mardukan gabbled at her, and she nodded. The gesture meant no more to him than his handwaving at the horned beast did to her. He could be angry that they'd killed his pet, or happy that they'd saved his life. Her toot took a stab at the language, but returned a null code. The local dialect had very little similarity to the five-hundred-word "kernel" they'd loaded into the toots.

"I need O'Casey up here quick," she subvocalized into her throat mike.

"We're on our way," Pahner responded. "With His Highness."

Kosutic held up one hand again, and turned to look over her shoulder. As she did, she noticed the two bead rifles and the plasma gun still leveled at the apparently benign visitor.

"Go ahead and lower them, Marines. But keep them to hand."

She half-turned at the crunch of gravel, and smiled at the group approaching from the center of the company's perimeter. The diminutive chief of staff was virtually invisible behind the bulk of Pahner and Roger's armor. And surrounding Roger was a squad from Second Platoon that looked ready to level the world. All in all, it looked like a good time to fade, and she bowed to the visitor and drifted backwards, wondering how it would go.

Eleanora O'Casey wasn't a professional linguist. Such people not only had specially designed implants, they usually also had a flair for language that interacted with their toots so that the final translation was synergistically enhanced. She, on the other hand, was dependent on an off-the-shelf software package and a general knowledge of sentient species to carry her through. There were quite a few "ifs" in that equation.

The regions around the spaceport used a four-armed bow as a sign of parley. Unfortunately, there were a variety of nuances to it—none of which had been very clear in the explanation—and she had only two arms.

Here went nothing.

D'Nal Cord examined the small being before him. All of the beings in this tribe—they looked like basik, with their two arms and waggling way of walking—were small and apparently weak. However, most of them blended into the background as if they were part of it. It was probably an effect of their strange coverings, but it was also disconcerting. And some weapon or magic among them had killed the flar beast. Both features bespoke great power. And since the flar beast had nearly had him, it also spoke of an asi debt. At his age.