Decisively Engaged (Warp Marine Corps Book 1) (13 page)

The office chair molded itself to his body. A computer screen on the desk came to life, obsolete but still mandated by regulations; desktop comps were heavily shielded against disruptive attacks that might neutralize or even kill an imp, and everything important had to be routed through them. They still made you type reports on a keyboard, just to keep you from getting lazy. Generally speaking, anything that could kill your imp would most likely kill you too, and even if it didn’t, the sudden loss of input would leave you too messed up to do much, including typing, but regs were regs.

He had about an hour to kill before his meeting with the remfies in charge. Fromm spent the time going over logistics. Until Fleet showed up and taught the local primmies not to attack American visitors, his troops had to be prepared for the worst. Like he’d told McClintock, his job was to evaluate capabilities, not intentions, and he needed to know what his people were capable of doing.

Things weren’t as bad as he’d feared, but they weren’t great, either. Third Platoon had shipped out with a standard combat package: all the weapons, ammo and consumables needed for three weeks of sustained combat operations. Fromm had learned first-hand that the three-week estimates were wildly optimistic. In combat, you always ended up using more than you expected; more of everything, from ammo to asswipes to human beings.

His unit also had two dedicated fabbers at their disposal, not counting the Embassy’s own fabricator facilities and several private ones in the Enclave. Fabricators were the most ubiquitous piece of Starfarer tech in the galaxy: 3-D printers that could be programmed to produce anything from ordinary nuts and bolts to the components of a plasma missile. Ammo and spare parts would be little trouble to replace. The ordnance they’d spent in the brief skirmish in the city would be fully replaced in a few hours, as long as the fabbers had access to the raw feedstock necessary. The platoon had enough of the mixed-material powder to produce another two weeks’ worth of combat materiel, maybe more if they could use local raw materials to eke out the feedstock reserves. Five weeks’ ammo and spares. Given that a relief fleet could show up in as little as eight hours, they should be okay.

Fromm checked the figures one last time before getting ready for his meeting, replacing the armor and field uniform with his dress blues after a much-needed shower. He pitied McClintock, who’d been ushered to the Ambassador’s presence with blood on her clothing. The thought led to his wondering if she was single. The sudden brush with death had gotten him revved up; she wasn’t in his chain of command, and she’d looked damn good before, during and after the fight, bloody clothes or not. Something to think about.

A short walk to the Embassy complex gave him a better feel for the place. There were plenty of good fields of fire, the walls of the main building would be proof against small arms fire, and the gardens surrounding the property consisted of low-height flowerbeds that would offer little cover to an advancing enemy force; the gentle slopes leading towards the compound could be improved with entrenchments that would allow a small number of well-equipped troops to hold off an army. All in all, there were worse places to defend.

Assuming the remfies let them, of course.

He was led to the office by an unsmiling secretary. There was no hand-shaking, no offers to sit down. They kept him standing while the Ambassador spoke.

“I find it deplorable that you allowed your troops to act against my standing orders,” the Rat-in-Chief said. “While I appreciate the desire to safeguard human lives, we have a chain of command for a reason. My main concern was the safety of the Embassy, which would have been left unprotected if all your Marines had gone gallivanting into the city. If your men had waited a few minutes, or if you had bothered consulting with me beforehand, I would have approved the rescue mission. I suppose that, since things turned out all right in the end, we can overlook some of the breaches in protocol. I will have to write a report about this, however.”

Fromm didn’t say anything; he’d be filing his own report soon enough, and Llewellyn wasn’t going to come off well from this situation. That kind of egregious remfie bullshit didn’t get you very far in the USA. Llewellyn had spent all his life under peacetime conditions, which meant he didn’t understand how things worked when plasma and explosives were flying around. He’d learn soon enough. The Hewer Administration had almost as little patience for remfies as Fromm did.

“In any case, I hope we can work together moving forward,” Llewellyn went on. “I’ve also been made aware that several native vehicles were militarized without authorization. While I’ve been convinced they should not be decommissioned immediately” – he glanced briefly at the RSO – “I want you to make sure your men didn’t embezzle any discretionary funds to build their toys, and if they did, I need those expenses noted. Under the circumstances, I suppose I must approve them after the fact, but any other such activities need to be run past the RSO and myself from now on. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

If Fromm played his cards right, he might be able to reimburse Obregon and everyone who’d chipped in to equip Rover Force. Sometimes a Rat’s devotion to bean-counting could be used for good instead of evil.

“Mr. Rockwell will keep a close eye on your behavior from now on. We have to present a united front. Stick to the chain of command.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. You are dismissed.”

Fromm saluted and left.

This assignment had started with a fight to the death, and he had a bad feeling it was only going to get worse.

Year 163 AFC, D Minus Eight

Heather McClintock needed answers, and she wasn’t getting them.

People she’d come to rely on – never fully trust, of course, since they were all traitors – weren’t responding to her attempts to contact them. Years of careful tradecraft, her own as well as her predecessor’s, had been seemingly wasted. Her agents were either too scared to speak to her, or worse, had been discovered, maybe even turned, although in the latter case they should be eager to get in touch with her.

There was plenty of signals intelligence available – all phone and radio communications in Kirosha were an open book – but whoever was behind the current plot was cagey enough not to use such methods. She wished she could have planted bugs throughout the Palace complex, but one of the last actions of the current monarch’s father had been to purchase a very expensive Wyrashat security suite. The alien anti-surveillance systems were good enough to handle the stuff her budget could afford: collecting intelligence in a primitive world of little strategic significance hadn’t exactly been a priority for the Central Intelligence Agency, which also explained why a thirty-two year old field agent was in charge of the whole operation. This wasn’t a prestige post, or even a career-enhancing one. Failure would kill her career just as dead as if she’d botched an operation against the Galactic Imperium, of course.

More importantly, under the current circumstances failure might literally kill
her
. It was time to be more proactive about getting answers.

Things had calmed down significantly in the two days since the incident, which made leaving the Enclave merely risky rather than insanely dangerous. The rioting and arson in the slums were over, for the time being at least. Even so, all AmCits were still being advised to remain in the Enclave. She wished she could heed that advice.

Heather and Locquar drove out in an unmarked private car, a pricey model that might belong to a mid-level functionary or a wealthy merchant. Her shawl and sunglasses hid most of her alien features well enough that a Kirosha peering through its tinted windows might not recognize her as a Star Devil. The driver was wearing a light armor vest with force field generators under his clothing. So was she. The city’s peace might have been restored, but the realization of how quickly that peace could be shattered had sunk in.

A short while later, they waited for their quarry outside a gambling saloon, a discreet establishment in a seedy part of town, frequented by people who didn’t want their vices to become public knowledge. They didn’t have to wait long; Sub-Magistrate Preel Lood emerged from the building shortly before the end of his scheduled three-hour lunch and siesta break, giving himself some fifteen minutes to walk back to his office at the nearby House of Permission. Locquar started the car and drove until it was alongside the bureaucrat.

Heather rolled down her window. “Please allow me to drive you to work, Sub-Magistrate,” she said pleasantly.

Preel froze mid-step, looking around as if searching for an escape.

“My driver will be happy to help you in, if you wish,” she added. Locquar gave him a toothy grin from the driver’s side. The violent reputation of the Sea Clans was well known, and Locquar’s skin color and shaved ridge hair made his ethnicity obvious. The reluctant agent got in the car.

“That was the first wise thing you have done of late,” Heather said as Preel looked at her with apprehension bordering in panic.

“A thousand pardons, most esteemed Starfarer,” the sub-magistrate said. “My duties, you see, they have prevented me from being as receptive to your needs as…”

“Save it,” McClintock cut him off, still speaking in flawless Kirosha but being rudely direct. “You took my money, Preel. You betrayed your office to pay for your gambling debts. In doing so, you went down a path you cannot change. You know what the penalty is for treason.”

Preel blanched even further at the thought.

“I beg your forgiveness,” he said. “I am yours to command.”

“My forgiveness depends on what you have to tell me. What is happening in the capital? Why were rioters allowed to enter the city and attack Starfarers?”

Preel slumped in defeat and fessed up. “That was the doing of the Preserver faction. The City Prefect has joined them. Magistrate Eereen Leep is their new leader. The Prime Minister, who favored the Modernists, has resigned and been sent into exile Any civil servant with ties to the Devil-Lovers has been purged. Some have been imprisoned. That is why I dared not try to contact you. I feared for my life.”

As he spoke, Preel kept casting glances in every direction, as if expecting the dreaded Royal Inspectors to appear out of thin air.

“How about the Army? The Merchant Guilds? The Crown?”

“I do not know. There are still elements in the Court that favor accommodation with the Star Dev… with the Starfarers, of course. Nobody knows which faction enjoys the favor of Her Supreme Majesty favors. Many Army officers, of the higher ranks are Modernists. The merchants as well, but…” Preel could not contain a sneer even in his frightened state. “Who cares what the merchants think? They are whores in fine clothing, woolly beasts to be sheared as needed.”

Since First Contact, the merchant caste, long considered merely one notch above the peasantry, had begun to surge as a force to be reckoned with. They had led the way in adopting new technologies and their factories and trading posts were rapidly increasing Kirosha’s wealth. To the bureaucratic, warrior and noble castes, they were still vermin to be exploited and otherwise ignored.

“Is there anything else you wish to report? I will be most vexed if I discover you were holding out on me.”

“There is a rumor among the Learned,” Preel said, using the traditional term for the scribe and bureaucrat caste. “A hooded figure has been seen speaking to high-ranking members of the Magistracy and the Courts. Some claim he is a foreigner, perhaps a Star Devil himself. I cannot say if those tales are empty gossip or truth to be recorded for eternity.”

“I thank you, Sub-Magistrate.”

They dropped off Preel a discrete distance away from the House of Permission and drove off.

“What do you think?” she asked Locquar. The driver had lived in Kirosha all his life; his family had been mercenaries and bodyguards in the capital for generations, although officially they remained foreigners and had to carry passports just as if they’d just arrived to the continent.

“My cousins are worried,” he said. “They work for a number of merchant houses, and stood guard during the riots. They hear many things; their employers often forget guards have ears. I will call on them later today and see if they have anything to say.”

“Thank you.”

They drove past two dead drop sites, but nobody had left a message in them. After that, they returned to the Embassy; Locquar went off to visit his family and do his own information-gathering, and Heather sat down to generate a report about the meeting with her agent. She considered highlighting the rumor of a possible Starfarer agent was stirring trouble with the locals, but decided to hold off until she could verify it. The only polity that might benefit from upheaval in Jasper-Five was the Wyrashat Empire, and Kirosha’s lanthanide deposits weren’t exactly worth risking war with the USA. She was missing something, she was sure of it.

The rest of her day was spent reading the SIGINT take from her colleagues in the next office. It looked like both the Army and the Royal Guards were increasing readiness across the board: leaves had been cancelled, requisition orders for spare parts and equipment had shot up, and every general rank officer was in the field with the troops instead of hanging out in the capital rubbing elbows with the nobility, which was how the Kirosha top brass usually spent their time.

Just as she was about to go home for the day, Locquar came back. He did not look happy.

“All my cousins have lost their jobs,” he reported.

“They were fired? Why?”

“The merchant houses have been told that no private armies of any kind are allowed within the capital. Their guards’ permits to wield weapons will be cancelled by sundown tomorrow; we are required to turn them in or leave the city before then. Many of us have lived here all our lives. We hold property here, but now we have no employment, and soon no weapons. If the Final Blow Society goes hunting for foreigners, we will be among the first they will attack.”

“How many people are we talking about?” Heather asked, thinking furiously. There was room in the Enclave – a lot of non-Starfarer foreigners had left as soon as the riots stopped – and she felt she owed Locquar.

“A hundred and thirty-three,” he said. “Forty of them are Clan warriors.”

That wasn’t too bad. “You can bring them into the Enclave,” she said. “At least until you can figure out a way to return to your homes.”

Locquar blinked at her in gratitude. “I and all of mine will be in your debt. Ms. McClintock.”

It would take some doing to convince the Embassy to help out, and more paperwork, but it would be worth it.

* * *

Timothy Brackenhurst only had three months left in his mission, and he still wasn’t sure if he was happy to be going home or frustrated about leaving so much work undone.

The LDS mission on Jasper-Five had been established six years ago. It had begun as a purely humanitarian effort, with no attempts to proselytize, until it had become clear that the Kirosha Crown did not care if humans shared the Gospel: religion in the planet, or at least in the only continent humans had explored with any thoroughness, was a minor concern to most people. Their morality came from tradition, reinforced by draconian laws and a strict system of castes and customs where you knew the course your live would take from the moment of your birth, and where attempts to deviate from that course were met with penalties ranging from ostracism to death by torture, depending on the severity of the infraction. The Kirosha lived in a godless, merciless world, and when given the opportunity to show them a different way, the Latter Day Saints, the Star Baptists and the Catholic Church had all jumped at the chance.

During those six years, the LDS had accomplished a great deal. It ran a school, currently attended only by the lowest of the low, children of the Jersh Caste, whose assigned professions – fullers, garbage and manure collectors, morticians and fertilizer processors – rendered them unfit to associate with peasants, let alone any of the higher castes. Changes in technology had brought a measure of prosperity to some segments of the Jersh, but there were precious few ways for them to use their newfound wealth. Trying to educate their children was one of them, but until the arrival of the Starfarers it had been difficult and expensive. The mission’s school had started by teaching Kirosha subjects – basic literacy, the planet’s own mathematical system – which Timothy, who thought about becoming an engineer some day, had found rather elegant – and the same subjects that would be taught at a Kirosha academy. Just as Timothy’s mission began, Starfarer sciences and history been added to the curriculum. It was too early to tell what effect of the new program would have, but Timothy felt confident it would be positive. One day, Kirosha – all of Jasper-Five – would venture forth into the stars, and he was sure that members of the Church, including many former pariahs, would lead the way.

The school had been so successful that members of the noble and merchant castes had inquired about hiring teachers as private tutors, or trying to set up a separate school for their own children. The mission president had politely declined, which Timothy thought was a mistake, because now the upper castes of Kirosha society had been left to the tender mercies of the Catholics, particularly the Jesuits, who ran a much fancier school in the Palace Complex, or at least had done so until the recent troubles started.

“You seem rather pensive today,” Timothy’s companion, Jonah Ruiz, said as they finished their morning exercise routine. “Are you packing your trunks already? Thinking of home?”

For Timothy, home was back on Earth, in North California. Jonah was another Earthling, although his family lived in Sonora and he had no plans to go back there; the fifty-seventh state was still dominated by wilderness and haunted by the aftermath of First Contact. Jonah had been barely able to afford to pay for his mission, even with his family’s help. He was planning on joining the Navy after he was finished here. Timothy envied his friend’s certainty; he still had no idea what he would do in six months’ time.

“Or is it the recent unpleasantness that is bothering you?” Jonah went on when Timothy stayed silent for a few seconds too long.

“It certainly doesn’t help,” Timothy said. He missed riding his bicycle into the capital; he’d been delighted to find out that bikes were commonplace in Kirosha, and riding down the crowded and colorful streets of the city had been an amazing experience. But no longer. The last time he’d been there, the usually amused stares of the locals had turned into angry or scared glances. Few Kirosha welcomed the sight of humans riding down the streets in their white shirts, black slacks, ties and helmets, not anymore.

Jonah’s normally placid demeanor became glum. “I’m sorry, Tim. I shouldn’t be kidding around when that kind of thing is going on.”

“I hate to say it, but I’d expected things would have gotten much worse after the riots. I thought a new spate of murders would follow.”