Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (21 page)

The leaders present did not represent all the sects on Kingdom, only those with the largest membership. The other sects had little say in the governing of the planet and were kept in check mostly by the efforts of de Tomas and the Collegium. He was always present at the meetings, to accept and, seemingly, immediately carry out any assignments the leaders might give him.

Archbishop General Lambsblood sat by himself, a scowl on his face. He commanded the Army of God, and as such, technically outranked Sturgeon, who only commanded two FISTs of Confederation Marines. But when the Convocation had asked for the Confederation's help, it was agreed that the Marine commander would command all of the planet's military forces, and so Lambsblood now had no choice but to accept his subordinate status.

"General Sturgeon," Shammar began, but paused when Sturgeon stood.

"Your Holiness, I am a brigadier in the Confederation Marine Corps. The Marine Corps has various ranks of general, but I am a brigadier."

"Excuse me, Brigadier," Shammar apologized quickly. "Brigadier Sturgeon, we—our people, that is—have been fearfully injured by these invaders, and we are now under siege here in the capital city. Under siege in our own capital! Unthinkable!

This situation has gone on for days now. When you came here with your forces, you promised to repel the invaders and save our people. But we are on the defensive now. General Lambsblood's forces have sustained heavy casualties. Your forces have sustained casualties. We demand to know how you plan to extricate us from this debacle."

"You must call for reinforcements!" Lambsblood blurted out from where he sat.

"Brothers! It is the judgment of the Lord!" Ralphy Bruce Preachintent shouted, rising. The other leaders grimaced and looked at the tabletop. "We have sinned, brothers, and the Lord has allowed Satan to invest us with his minions! I—"

"Brother Ralphy Bruce, please," Shammar pleaded. "Be seated. Brigadier Sturgeon must make his report. Brigadier, please take us into your council."

"Your Holiness, gentlemen, General Lambsblood," Sturgeon began, nodding at the assembled personages, deliberately leaving de Tomas out, "I don't need to tell you that the situation is very grave. Our casualties have been heavy, but so have the enemy's. I am going to break his encirclement of the capital and attack him where he is most vulnerable." He sat down.

Ayatollah Shammar gaped at Sturgeon. He remained silent, waiting for the brigadier to continue. When he showed no sign of doing so, he stuttered, "Ah, Brigadier, do you have, ah . . . any, uh, details of your plan to communicate to us?"

He waved one hand vaguely as he spoke.

"No."

There was silence around the table. The leaders gaped at Sturgeon, not understanding what he meant. "You mean you do not as yet have a plan?" Cardinal O'Lanners asked in astonishment.

"Yes, Eminence, I have a plan," Sturgeon replied.

The leaders looked at one another. Swami Bastar cleared his throat nervously.

"Well, share it with us, Brigadier."

"No, gentlemen, I cannot do that."

The leaders gasped and then they all began to talk at once. Finally, Shammar gestured them to silence. "Brigadier, as the representatives of the sovereign government of this world, we demand you take us into your confidence in this matter. What are we to tell our people?"

"You may tell your people that we shall defeat the invaders."

"But—But . . . how, Brigadier?" Bishop Ralphy Bruce asked.

"He neither knows nor cares!" Archbishop General Lambsblood shouted. "He has used my men as cannon fodder, sacrificing them to save the lives of his own precious Marines!"

"Lambsblood," Sturgeon replied mildly, deliberately ignoring his military rank, "it is you who've turned your men into cannon fodder. Before I got here the Skinks were slaughtering your men left and right. At least now they're fighting back, and once my Marines have had a chance to train them in proper small-unit tactics, they'll be able to take the initiative away from the enemy. Had you been left in charge here, you wouldn't have an army anymore. And all of you sitting here would be dead now."

Lambsblood was so angry he could only splutter as his face turned a beet red.

"And something else, while we're at it, General. The whole trouble with your army is that you're all so wrapped up in your religious orthodoxies you don't even trust your men at the squad level to have radios!" He leveled a forefinger at the unhappy Lambsblood. "That's criminal! I'll tell you this: that's going to change."

Lambsblood seemed on the verge of having a stroke.

"But—But General, er, I mean Brigadier," Cardinal O'Lanners sputtered, "have you asked the Confederation for reinforcements?"

"I have," Sturgeon answered, "but it's too soon to have received a reply. You all know how long it takes to get messages from here to Earth. We don't have time to wait for a response, much less heavy reinforcements. All I can really do is apprise headquarters of the situation. We are on our own here. So I am going to act on my own and hit the Skinks hard enough to break their hold on this planet."

"That's outrageous!" Bishop Ralphy Bruce shouted. "It'll mean the deaths of everyone!"

Brigadier Sturgeon smiled. "Sir, you are a minister of God. You believe in an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, all-loving God, do you not? You believe in an afterlife, an especially nice one for those who believe as you do. So it strikes me as mighty inconsistent that you're so damned afraid of dying."

The meeting broke into pandemonium. Ambassador Spears thought it was time to intervene. "Gentlemen." He stood. "Brigadier Sturgeon, and he alone, is responsible for the defense of your community now. You have called him away from his duties.

He has been kind enough to come here to address you, but he must return to his command post. You will have to accept his prerogative to keep his planning secret until he is ready to put it into operation. You requested the Confederation's help, and you have it. But you will follow our lead in all military matters, and that is it."

Spears sat down. The leaders stared at him with bulging eyes. After a moment Sturgeon spoke again.

"Your Holiness," he said, addressing Shammar directly. "First, before they are finalized, I never share my plans with anyone outside my chain of command.

Second, there is the vital matter of security. I do not know what manner of intelligence the enemy might have, but I do know that when you men leave here to return to your, uh, respective congregations, you'll tell your closest associates and aides everything you've been told this morning. So I'm telling you nothing. Now, please excuse us; I must be getting back. General Lambsblood." He turned to the apoplectic figure who was still simmering. "Be in my command post in one hour. If you do not feel you can oblige, I will appoint someone else to command your army.

If you or if anyone else," his glance took in all the leaders at the conference table,

"oppose me in any way, I will take you into custody until my job here is finished."

Sturgeon stood, gave the leaders a polite bow and, closely followed by Ambassador Spears, strode out of the room.

As the pair passed de Tomas, who had remained silent during the entire scene, de Tomas stood and bowed deeply at them, a lopsided sneer on his face. Sturgeon ignored him, but Spears could not suppress a grimace of disgust.

In the evening, secure in the fortress that was his headquarters, de Tomas played the recording he'd made of what Sturgeon and Spears had been saying, from the time they got into their car to the time they got out, back at Sturgeon's command post. "‘Christ's bleeding piles’." De Tomas laughed. That was a new one on him. He was beginning to like this Brigadier Sturgeon. They apparently thought alike when it came to the uselessness of religion in running a government. Then he smiled at the brigadier's threat to "squash" him. "No fear of that, my dear Marine commander," he said aloud. "I'll not get in your way. No, sir, my dear Confederation friends! You do your work and then I will do mine. My day is coming." He laughed with real pleasure, and with a flourish as if proposing a formal toast, finished the glass of Katzenwasser '36 he had been drinking.

Back in his billets, the young soldier who had driven Brigadier Sturgeon and Ambassador Spears to the Convocation earlier in the day reflected on the things the brigadier had said in the car along the way. ". . . these religious leaders are some of the worst of the lot," the Marine commander had said. The worst fools, is what he meant. He had never, ever heard anyone speak that way about the Convocation of Ecumenical Leaders! And he took the Lord's name in vain and was not struck by a bolt of lightning! Extraordinary! And he'd said the Collegium, the one institution everyone on Kingdom feared and respected, was "worse than any secret police organization." That's what the brigadier had said! And he'd called them all "whining pulpit thumpers." Those words had literally taken the young soldier's breath away.

These Marines were not like anyone else he'd ever met. They talked freely to everyone, showed no fear of being overheard, and made the most outrageous statements without the slightest fear of correction. And more than that, men only slightly higher in rank than himself were given the most important responsibilities and evidently left alone—trusted—by their leadership to carry them out. Such initiative was totally alien to his army, and he marveled that mere enlisted men in the Confederation Marine Corps could be trusted so explicitly. Taking responsibility seemed natural to them! And he had never received such good instruction as the Marines were giving the Kingdomite soldiers. Amazingly, it was evident his Marine teachers really wanted him and his fellow soldiers to act as they themselves did.

Deep down inside, beneath a lifetime's religious indoctrination and stringent orthodoxy, a small flicker of doubt burned within that young soldier's soul. He was beginning to like the Marines.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The days following the attack on the Skink supply depot were filled with activity on all sides, but there was little contact between the Marines and the invaders. Most of the activity on the Confederation side wasn't conducted by the Marines, but by the scientists and technicians of Interstellar City and on board the
Grandar Bay
. The raiding party had brought back forty packages from the supply depot. Eleven of them were duplicates, which left twenty-nine different items to identify. The civilian and navy scientists and technicians on the ground and in orbit worked furiously to analyze them. The navy assembled a special engineering team to work on the spare barrel, or whatever it was, that Lieutenant Eggers had captured.

The Confederation forces were excited. The Skinks were decidedly not.

The Over Masters and more senior of the Senior Masters again assembled before the Great Master. No small tables were set between them. No diminutive females moved silently and gracefully among them to serve a steaming beverage. They carried no weapons, not even ceremonial swords. Facing the assembly, the Over Master responsible for defense of the entrances to the underground complex sat cross-legged in front of the Great Master. He was naked except for a loincloth, and a long knife lay on the bare floor in front of his ankles. His face bore no expression. A Large One faced him from a pace to his left and rear. The Large One held a sword, its blade gleaming sharply. The unsheathed sword that lay across the Great Master's crossed legs was a true weapon, not an emblem.

The Great Master glared at the Over Masters and more senior of the Senior Masters; he did not look at the loinclothed Over Master before him. When he spoke, his raspy voice rumbled and crashed like an avalanche.

"The Earthman Marines attacked us underground!" he roared with the sound of a city toppling earthquake. "The Earthman Marines are not supposed to be able to reach us in our caves and tunnels. Our defenses are supposed to stop them if they attempt to enter our home. They found an entrance we did not know about and destroyed a logistics depot. This should not have happened! This is unacceptable!

This will not happen again!"

He cast his glare upon the Over Master responsible for defense. Had his eyes been a weapon, they would have reduced that Over Master to his constituent atoms.

"Die," he rumbled, an earthquake's aftershock.

Still expressionless, the Over Master responsible for defense leaned forward, picked up the knife, held its point to the side of his belly, and drew it through the flesh, eviscerating himself.

The Large One a pace to his left and rear brought his sword up and swept it down, severing the Over Master's head from his shoulders. The head bounced off the chest of an Over Master in the front rank and thudded to the floor. Bright blood spurted from the Over Master's neck and splashed onto the nearest Over Masters.

None of them flinched, none showed any expression.

"There are entrances to the caves we do not know about," the Great Master said, ignoring the corpse in front of him. "They will be found. They will be defended."

The Over Master newly appointed to command the defenses of the caves and tunnels was given as many Leaders and Fighters as he requested to prowl the land and find previously undetected entrances to the underground complex.

The cartons and sacks the raiding party brought back were broken open and inventoried. Samples of each item, along with samples of the packaging, were put in a drone and dispatched to Earth. The remainder were divided between the xenobiology team on the
Grandar Bay
and the scientists and techs of Interstellar City.

One carton held shirts, the right size for a young adolescent, but another held some that would have been too big even for the most overweight member of the Interstellar City staff. These were immediately identified. The xenobiologists used the measurements they'd taken of the recovered Skink lower body and determined that the large Skinks stood approximately 2.2 meters tall and massed close to two hundred kilos. Strips of fabric about thirty centimeters wide by two meters long puzzled everybody until an Interstellar City accountant who had once worked as a theatrical costumer wrapped it around his hips and discovered that they were the loincloths the Skinks were sometimes seen wearing. The hats were also obvious. The material closely resembled linen in weave, texture, and feel, but it was not from any plant the xenobiologists could identify.