March Upcountry

"Check fire. No threat."

"Check," Liszez responded. If the target had been clearly hostile, it would already have been an ink blot pattern. "Clear." She disappeared around a corner.

"Target!" It was Eijken, and the grenadier triggered a round as the Mardukan who'd charged into view drew back his arm to throw a javelin. The forty-millimeter grenade hit just to the left of the native and tossed him sideways like a mangled doll. "Clear."

"Center building clear," Julian reported. "Entering back rooms."

"Don't get too far ahead," Jin told him. He paused and looked around. "Time to split. Despreaux, take Alpha Team into the left wing. I'll take Bravo to the right. Clear front to back."

"Roger," Despreaux acknowledged, and jerked her head at Beckley to lead her team out. "Alpha, echelon left. Move."

The team leader nodded acknowledgment of the order. She'd already spotted a downstairs doorway, and now she spotlighted it with an infrared laser designator.

"Through there. Kane, take the door. Go."

The reconfigured team trotted towards the door with the plasma gu

Kyrou and Beckley performed the primary entry. Kyrou went through and to the right and dropped to a knee. No more than five meters away a scummy was already starting to hurl the spear in his hand. Unfortunately for him, Kyrou reacted from thousands of hours of training, and the spearman was hurled backward by the hypervelocity beads punching into his chest. Another burst cleared a group further down before it could decide whether or not to attack.

"Right clear."

There was a burst from behind the private.

"Left clear," Beckley called. Another burst. "Really clear."

Despreaux set a cracker charge against the door opposite their entry point, and the thin, high expansion-rate charge shattered the simple bolts on the other side and scattered splinters of the door throughout the area.

She blasted the scummy on the other side of the doorway before she realized it was one of the females. Not only were they entirely untrained for combat, but this society sequestered them. This might have been the first time in this one's life that anything more exciting than sex had occurred. And it had been brief.

The sergeant gazed at the pathetic, shredded body, then inhaled sharply and looked around.

"Stairs," she called sharply. "Ground floor clear."

She stepped back out into the hallway, wiping at a line of blood from a flying splinter, and looked around. She pointed down the corridor.

"Kyrou, Kane," she said, then gestured at the stairs. "Beck, Lizzie." The team leader lead the way, and Despreaux followed. She carefully didn't look back at the pitiful shape sprawled in the shadows of the stairs.

Later for that. Later.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

"Clear," Pahner said, nodding his head at the report over the helmet radio. It had nearly killed him to let Lieutenant Sawato take point on managing the company, but he'd had to be at the di

Pahner was not the type to judge anyone by his ability to shoot. He'd known too many consummate bastards who happened to be good combat shooters to do that. But between Roger's surprising ability with weapons and the occasional depths he revealed, the captain was feeling distinctly whipsawed. Ninety percent of the time, he wanted to throttle the spoiled brat, but, lately, there'd been times when he was almost impressed. Almost.

He checked the maps and grunted at the report from Jin.

"Okay, I'll take it up with His Majesty. Make sure you hold the treasury, but don't get involved otherwise."

He looked over to where Xyia Kan was sitting. Most of the blood had been washed off, but the king was still a sight. Bits of dried blood clung to the decorations on his horns and on his face, but he looked up alertly at Pahner's motion.

"Yes? It goes well?"

It had, in fact, gone perfectly in the castle. The ring leaders had been seized, and their crimes had been detailed to the other house-leaders. Those leaders had then been instructed to send orders to their own Houses to stand down their guards on pain of the same sort of assault. Pending the delivery of proof of their crimes, the leaders of N'Jaa, Kesselotte, and C'Rtena had been separated and imprisoned. Those who apparently hadn't had any knowledge of the plot had been released to return to their homes; the others were still being held in the dining room, surrounded by the now rotting blood of the dead guards. The psychological effect was salutary.

"It goes okay," Pahner said. "We took casualties at C'Rtena, which I didn't expect. No one got hurt bad, though, and other than that, we got off clean. But we have fires at C'Rtena and Kesselotte, and the troops need somebody to come put out the flames. And your guards are looting. My people can't get them under control."

"They will," Grak said with a resigned handclap. "How do you stop soldiers from looting?"

Well, you can, for example, kill them until the survivors figure out it's not permitted, Pahner thought with a mental snarl.

"I don't suppose you can," he said aloud, calmly. That shrug-your-shoulders, what-the-hell attitude was the sort of thing he had to ensure didn't happen with Roger, he told himself. There was a fine line between ruthless and evil... and another between sloppy and barbaric. At the back of his mind, though, the song called. "I suppose that's what makes the boys get up and shoot."

"I'll send servants to put the fires out," the king said. "And soldiers whose job it will be to make sure they do so," he said pointedly to Grak. "And to prevent them from looting. Is that clear?"

"I'll go myself." Grak hoisted his broad-headed spear and grunted in laughter. "Maybe I can pick up a few pretties myself."

After the general left, Pahner found himself alone with the king. Roger had gone to wash, and the various guards had been dismissed. The situation was irregular, but the captain ignored that as he followed the movement and condition of the company on his pad.

The monarch, for his part, watched the human officer. So somber and serious. So precise.

"You see no difference between us and the barbarians of Cord's tribe, do you?" he asked, wondering what answer he would hear.

Pahner looked up at the king, then tapped a command, sending half the reserve to reinforce First Platoon while he considered the remark.

"Well, Sir, I wouldn't say that. Overall, I think it's better to support civilization. Barbarism's just barbarism. At its best, it's pretty awful. At its worst, it's truly awful. Eventually, civilizations have the ability to pull themselves up to a condition which is better for everyone."

"Would you have assisted me if you didn't need supplies for your journey?" the monarch asked, fingering the decorations on his horns and flicking off a bit of dried blood.

"No, Your Majesty," Pahner shook his head, "we wouldn't have. We have a mission: get Roger to the port. If this operation hadn't advanced that, we wouldn't have done it."

"So," the monarch observed with a grunt of laughter. "Your support for civilization isn't so deep as all that."

"Your Majesty," Pahner said, pulling at a stick of gum and carefully unwrapping it. "I have a mission to complete. I will continue trying to perform that mission, whatever it takes. And so will my Marines. That mission has damned little to do with our individual survival and everything to do with maintaining a degree of continuity in our political environment." Pahner popped in the gum and smiled grimly. "Your Majesty, that is civilization."