Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry (10 page)

"Firestarters," Jasco said promptly. "I saw a case of them in the supply room last week." He consulted his pad. "I've got an inventory here—let me cross load."

He set his pad down on the table to transmit the inventory data, and the other lieutenants and O'Casey captured the data and began perusing it while Roger was still pulling out his own pad. By the time he had it opened and configured to receive, Jasco had cut the transmission and was back to looking at the data.

"Lieutenant," the prince said in a lofty tone, "if you
don't
mind?"

Jasco looked up from the lists in surprise. "Oh, sorry, Your Highness," he said, and set the list to transmit again.

Roger nodded as his pad picked up the data.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. And, again, it's 'Colonel' under these circumstances."

"Yes, of course . . . Colonel," Jasco said, going back to his data.

"What do we see?" Pahner asked, apparently ignoring the byplay. He didn't have a pad out, nor had he received a download.

Roger transferred the data to his toot and put his own pad away. He would've taken the data straight into the toot from Jasco's pad, but the implant had so many security protocols that filtering through the pad had been easier and faster. As Roger was going through these circumlocutions, the officers and O'Casey were studying the inventory.

"Virtually anything in here would be tradable," and O'Casey said, her eyes bugging out at the thought. "Space blankets, chameleon liners, water carriers . . . not boots. . . ."

"We'll be space and mass-limited," Pahner noted. "The ship's going to have to drop us fairly far out, and we'll have to come down in a long, slow spiral to avoid detection. That means internal add-on tanks of hydrogen, and those will take up volume and mass. So the higher the potential profit, the better."

"Well," O'Casey continued, "not uniforms. Rucksacks. There are five spares; that might be good. Spare issue intel-pads? No. What are 'multitools'?"

"They're memory plastic tools," Lieutenant Sawato said with a nod. "They come with four 'standard' configurations: shovel, ax, pick-mattock, and boma-knife. And you can add two configurations."

"We've got fifteen spares," Jasco said, flipping through the data. "And each Marine in the Company has one."

"Of course," Gulyas observed with a chuckle, "some of those have some . . . odd secondary settings."

"What?" Sawato smiled. "Like Sergeant Julian's 'out of tune lute' setting?"

"I was actually thinking of Poertena's 'pig pocking pag' setting," Gulyas snorted.

"I beg your pardon?" O'Casey blinked, and looked back and forth between the two lieutenants.

"The armorer controls the machine that resets the adjustable configurations," Pahner told her in a resigned tone. "Julian used to be Bravo's armorer before Poertena. Both of them are jokers."

"Oh." The prince's ex-tutor considered for several seconds, then snorted as she finally completed the translation of "pig pocking pag" in her head. "Well, in this case the setting makes sense. We're going to need lots of . . . large bags to carry equipment."

"Hey, Julian, old puddy!" Poertena yelled across the shuttle bay. "Gimme a hand what t'is pag!"

"Jesus Christ, Poertena!" Julian hefted the carry handles on the outside of the quivering memory plastic sack. "What the pock . . . I mean, what the heck do you have in here?"

"Every pocking ting I could pocking pack," the armorer answered. "Tee pocking suits don' run on t'eir pocking own. You know t'at!"

"What the hell is in here?" Julian asked, reaching for the mouth of the sack. It was heavy as hell.

"Get chore pocking hands out o' my pocking pag!" Poertena snarled, slapping at the offending member.

"Look, if I'm gonna help you hump it, I'm gonna know what the hell I'm carrying." Julian popped the sack opened and looked in. "Jesus Christ, Poertena!" he repeated. "The fucking
wrench
?"

"Hey!" the little Pinopan shouted, practically hopping up and down in fury. "You got your pocking way of doin' it, an' I got
my
pocking way! You never can get people out, they power goes off? Huh? Have to blow tee pocking seals! Only ting holding t'em seals is tee pocking secondary latches! You get tee secondary latches loose, you got tee armor open, and tee seals not damaged! Bot
no
! Big time billy badass soldier always gotta blow tee pocking bolts!"

"That's what it says to do in the manual," Julian said, throwing his hands up in the air. "Not
bang
on 'em until they come apart!"

"
Hey!
" Sergeant Major Kosutic shouted from the entrance to the bay as she strode across to break up the incipient fight. "Am I gonna have to jack both of you up?" she asked, glaring up at Julian.

"No, Sergeant Major," he said. "Everything's under control." He should have known she'd show up. She popped up like a damned Djinn every time anything got out of whack.

"Well, keep it strack! We've got a hard, cold mission to perform, and we don't need any sand in the gears. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Sergeant Major!"

"And, Poertena," the sergeant major said, rounding on the braced Pinopan. "One, you'd better learn not to tell any more sergeants 'pock you' in public, or I will have your ass. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Sergeant Major," Poertena said, looking for a convenient rock to melt away under.

"Two, you'd better learn a new word to replace 'pock,' because if you say it
one
more time in my hearing, I will
personally
tear off your stripes and feed them to you—raw. You are in The Empress' Own now, not whatever rag-bag line outfit you came from. We do not say 'pock' or 'rap' or any of those other words. We
especially
do not say them while rigging the pocking
Prince
. Do I make myself pocking clear?" she finished, pounding a rock-hard index finger into the lance corporal's chest.

Poertena's eyes flickered for a moment in panic. "Clear, Sergeant Major," he answered, finally, obviously unsure if he could get along without his verbal comma.

"Now what's in the Santa bag?" she snarled.

"My pock . . . my tools, Sergeant Major," Poertena answered. "I gotta have my po . . . my tools, Sergeant Major. Tee armor don' run by itself!"

"Sergeant Julian?" the sergeant major said, turning to the sergeant who'd started to drop out of his braced position as Poertena seemed to be getting the worst of the chewing out.

"Yes, Sergeant Major?" Julian snapped back to attention.

"What was your objection? You seemed to have one."

"We have mass limitations, Sergeant Major!" the NCO barked. "I objected to certain of Lance Corporal Poertena's tools that I didn't believe were strictly necessary, Sergeant Major!"

"Poertena?"

"He doesn't like my po . . . my wrench, Sergeant Major," the lance corporal answered somewhat sullenly. He was fairly sure he was going to lose the tool.

The SMaj nodded and opened the bulging sack. She glanced at the packrat's nest inside, and nodded again. Then she turned to the armorer and fixed him with a glare.

"Poertena."

"Yes, Sergeant Major?"

"You know we're humping across tee whole . . . this whole planet, right?" the top sergeant asked mildly.

"Yes, Sergeant Major." Poertena didn't brighten up; he'd been on the receiving end of mild and bitter before.

The NCO nodded again, and pulled on her earlobe.

"Because of your unique position, you will probably be exempt from helping to hump the ammo, power, and armor."

Kosutic looked around the bay, then back into the sack.

"But I'm not going to have any of these people carrying unnecessary stuff," she growled.

"But, Sergeant Major—"

"Did I ask you to speak?" the NCO snapped.

"No, Sergeant Major!"

"As I say, I'm not going to have anyone carrying unnecessary stuff," she continued, fixing the Pinopan with a frigid eye. "However, I'm not going to tell you, the armorer, what you really need to do your job, either. I'm going to leave that entirely up to you. But I
will
tell you that nobody else in the Company is going to hump one item
for
you. Is that perfectly clear?" she ended, with another rock-hard index finger, and the armorer gulped and nodded his head.

"Yes, Sergeant Major." He winced internally at what that meant.

"You are being given slack on what you've got to carry," Kosutic said, "
because
you have your own stuff to hump. Not, by Satan, so that other people can hump it for you. Clear?"

Index finger.

"Clear, Sergeant Major."

"So, if you want your hammer, or wrench, or whatever, fine. But
you
—" index finger "—are gonna hump it. Clear?"

"Clear, Sergeant Major." Poertena's voice sounded more strangled than ever, not least because Julian stood grinning at him behind Kosutic's back. The sergeant major gave the armorer one last glare . . . then turned to the squad leader with cobralike speed.

"Sergeant Julian," she said mildly, "I'd like a moment of your time out in the passage."

Julian's smile froze, and he cast a burning glare at the Pinopan before he followed the top sergeant out of the shuttle bay. Poertena, for his part, could have cared less about the glare. He was trying to figure out how to fit two hundred liters of tools into a ten-liter space.

"We can't fit that in," Lieutenant Jasco said, slowly and carefully so that Lieutenant Gulyas could understand. He pointed to his pad, where the loading program was already in the yellow. "We're . . . gonna . . . be . . . overloaded," he continued in the simplest possible terms, and Gulyas gave him a friendly smile that stopped at the eyes. Then he reached up to clap the much larger platoon leader on the shoulder.

"You know, Aziz, you're an okay guy, most of the time. But from time to time, you're a real prick." He went on as the other lieutenant's face colored up. "We need trade goods. We need ammo. We need power. But if we don't have enough supplements to last the whole trip, we're all gonna die anyway!"

"You've stripped the ship of every last vitamin and herbal remedy!" Jasco snapped, slapping the hand off his shoulder. "We don't need three hundred kilos of supplements!"

"No," Gulyas agreed. "By exact calculation, we need two hundred and thirty precisely balanced kilos for six months with no casualties. If we take no casualties. And if we stay six months. Neither of those is likely, so we probably need less. But what about waste? And we don't
have
the
precise
supplements we need. And what about a trooper's opening up his kit and finding that mold has eaten his stash overnight? If we don't have enough supplements, we're all
dead
. So we've gotta have all the supplements we can hump; it's that simple."

"We're overloaded!" Jasco snapped, waving the pad. "It's
that
simple!"

"Can I be of assistance, gentlemen?" Sergeant Major Kosutic appeared as if by magic between the two lieutenants. "I only ask because some of the troops seemed to be interested in this discussion, as well."

Gulyas looked around the shuttle bay and noticed that work had almost stopped as the troopers slowed down to watch the two lieutenants argue. He turned back to the sergeant major.

"No, I think we have it under control." He looked at Jasco. "Don't we, Aziz?"

"No, we don't," the junior lieutenant said stubbornly. "We're running out of room for the loading. We can't afford three hundred kilos of supplements."

"Is that all we're taking?" Kosutic sounded surprised. "That doesn't sound like enough. Hang on." She keyed her throat mike, and used her toot to bring the two lieutenants into the circuit. "Captain Pahner?"

"Yes?" came the growled response.

"Priority. Supplements, or trade goods?" she asked.

"Supplements," Pahner said instantly. "We can raid instead of trade if we have to, but all the trade goods in the ship won't keep us alive without supplements. The order of priority is fuel, supplements, food, the suits for Third Platoon, power, ammo, trade goods. Each person may bring ten kilos of personal gear. How many kilos of supplements do we have?"

"Only three hundred," Kosutic answered.

"Damn. I'd hoped for more. We'll have to eke it out with rations. We go on short rations from the moment we board the shuttles. And confiscate all the pogie bait. Most of it won't have much in the way of nutritional value, but it's something. No more than one ration per day, and we hope we have one a day all the way through."

"Understood," Kosutic said. "Out here." She raised her eyebrows at the lieutenants. "Does that clear the air, Sirs?"

"Yes, Sergeant Major, it does," Jasco said. "I still don't think we're going to run out, though."

"Sir, may I make an observation?" the sergeant major asked, and Lieutenant Jasco nodded.

"Of course, Sergeant Major." He was an Academy graduate, with a previous stint as a platoon leader and four years in the IMC under his belt, but the sergeant major had been beating around the Fleet long before he was born. He might be stubborn, but he wasn't stupid.

"In a situation this screwed up, Sir, planning for the worst is just good sense. For example, I would strongly suggest that you not put all the supplements on one bird. Or any other point failure source, such as spare ammo or power. Spread it across the shuttles. When the shit hits the fan, there's no such thing as being overparanoid."

She nodded and stepped lightly out of the shuttle bay, and Jasco stood shaking his head as he looked at the pad in his hand.

"Do you think she was looking at the load plan?" he asked Gulyas.

"I dunno. Why?"

"Because I had
all
the spare food, ammo, and power on Shuttle Four!" the logistics lieutenant said angrily, and shut the pad with a snap. "It would have carried the heavy weapons platoon in a standard drop, and since it was empty . . . What a cherry mistake! Damn, damn, damn it to hell! Time to start cross-loading."

"And that, Your Highness," Pahner said, gesturing towards the memo pad, "is why I don't consider it advisable for you to bring the three cartons of personal gear."