Starfist: Kingdom's Swords Read online

  Charlie Bass swore violently. “That is the biggest load of—”

  “I know, Charlie,” Conorado interrupted.

  “Any of us would’ve done the same, Skipper!” Top Myer protested.

  “And if we didn’t, sir, you’d have kicked our asses!” Humphrey added, his trepidation about taking command of the company having vanished.

  “Nevertheless, gentlemen, it’s gone down and I have to go back and face the charges. Don’t worry; General Cazombi and Special Agent Nast will be there with me, and I couldn’t ask for two better witnesses. Speaking of which, Charlie, the brigadier has ordered that you and Lance Corporal Dean be deposed about what you know, especially how Hoxey tried to get ahold of Owen to experiment on him, and about the reaction of the Avionians when we let them loose. So after this meeting, get over to the SJA. They’re expecting you. By the way, speaking of Owen, where is that little devil?”

  “Over in my office, sir, dining on some rocks.” Top Myer laughed.

  “Top, Charlie, I’m coming back when this is over, so don’t you let anybody write me off.” He laughed too. “All right, you two are dismissed. Phil, stick around for a minute, will you?”

  The two NCOs filed out, closing the door behind them.

  “Phil, you can command this company as well as anybody. I know you. I’ve watched you in combat. There couldn’t be a better replacement for me. The men and officers of this company will give you their total support and confidence. And you know the old maxim—rely on your noncommissioned officers and you’ll never get a bum steer.”

  “I know, sir, and thank you. It’s like the old joke, ‘Sergeant, put up the flagpole!’ ”

  Conorado laughed. The story went that a group of officer candidates had been given a practical exercise to erect a flagpole. They’d been given all the tools and equipment plus a sergeant and two enlisted men. They attacked the problem like trained engineers but each candidate had his own suggestion on how to get the job done. They argued and demonstrated, drew up detailed plans, but after fifteen minutes of talk they still had not started on the job. “Gentlemen,” their tactical officer had said after the confusion had gone on long enough, “allow me to demonstrate how this is done.” He turned to the sergeant and said, “Sergeant, have the men put up the flagpole.” In five minutes it was done.

  “Okay, Phil, I’ve got a lot of administrative trivia to get through before I go home and pack. Leave me alone for a while, would you?”

  Conorado remained in his office most of the rest of that day, authenticating reports, writing instructions to his staff, reviewing dozens of personnel matters, generally trying to clean up as much detail as he could in order to leave Lieutenant Humphrey free to concentrate on taking over command. He knew that Humphrey would have plenty of time to get himself bogged down in the administrivia of running an infantry company, not that as XO he hadn’t had enough of that already.

  At 1500 hours Top Myer knocked on the captain’s door. “Sir, Lance Corporals Dean and Claypoole have requested to see you.” There was a quizzical look on the first sergeant’s face.

  “What about, Top? I’ve got a lot of stuff to get through here before I can leave.”

  “They wouldn’t say, Skipper.”

  “All right, send them in,” Conorado said, a tone of annoyance in his voice.

  The two lance corporals marched in and stood at attention before Conorado’s desk.

  “What is it, Marines?”

  Dean and Claypoole looked at one another. Claypoole nodded, evidently designating Dean as their spokesman. “Sir, we heard that you are leaving and—”

  “Goddamnit!” Conorado shouted, slamming a fist onto his desk. The two lance corporals blanched and Top Myer stuck his head in the doorway. “It’s okay, Top. Men, I apologize. You caught me by surprise. What do you have for me?” Conorado kicked himself mentally. He was letting the stress get to him. The worst was yet to come, when he went home and told his wife he was leaving. But with all his experience, he should have known that in the company news of his imminent departure couldn’t be kept secret longer than five minutes. Nobody could keep a secret for very long in an infantry company.

  “Well, sir, we heard you’re going back to Earth and, uh, well, we wanted to give you something like a going-away gift. Sort of, that is,” Dean said, fumbling for words.

  “Something you’d appreciate, sir. Gunny Bass said it was okay,” Claypoole added.

  “Well, thank you, men.” He stood up.

  Dean handed him a small leather case. It was heavy. Conorado hefted it and smiled. “Hope it’s not a watch.” He laughed. Dean and Claypoole laughed with him, but nervously.

  “It’s definitely not a watch, sir,” Claypoole offered. Conorado heard something in his voice and glanced up at him. There were tears in his eyes.

  “Well, well . . .” Conorado unzipped the case. Inside lay an old-fashioned projectile weapon, a pistol. He took it out and examined it. The instrument was jet-black and shiny. He pressed a stud on the handle and the magazine dropped out into his hand. It contained six old-fashioned gunpowder rounds in shiny brass casings.

  “It’s called a POS, sir. That means—”

  “I know what it means, Dean. When I was your age that’s what I called the first landcar I ever owned. It really was a POS.”

  “Sir, you put the magazine back into the handle and work it by pulling the slide back. That puts the first bullet into the chamber. Then you just sight it and squeeze the trigger. It’s .25 caliber, six rounds, weighs only a little over four hundred grams. You kinda gotta hold it tight when you shoot it because it’ll kick. But first round’s what counts, they say. The cops, that is. They gave them to us.”

  “Is this the pistol you used, Claypoole, back on Wanderjahr?”

  “Yessir!” Claypoole answered proudly.

  “The police gave us each one, sir,” Dean repeated, “as sort of a badge of honor. When we were working for Chief Long. When he was the FIST F2, you know, after Commander Peters got wounded?”

  “Claypoole, you actually shot a man with this thing, didn’t you?”

  “He sure did, sir! Turned the tables on the sonofa—er, ’scuse me, sir.”

  “I killed him deader’n hell, sir,” Claypoole said. “One round, right in the forehead, and he went down like a goddamned sack of—” Dean signed for Claypoole to be quiet. “Well, the sonofabitch roughed me up, sir,” he continued in a quieter tone of voice, “and nobody handles a Marine like that and gets away with it,” Claypoole added lamely.

  “Sir, we figured, well, a man should always have something to fall back on. And you have a long trip, and who knows? And we don’t have time to get you a proper gift. So we talked it over, sir, and decided to give it to you. Claypoole doesn’t have any need for it. And Gunnery Sergeant Bass approved,” he repeated hopefully.

  “Well, thank you, Marines. Thank you very much,” Conorado said, slipping the gun back into its case. It was highly irregular to accept a gift from enlisted men, but Conorado could hardly refuse it under the circumstances. “I’ll take good care of it. Now I have work to do. Dismissed.”

  The two lance corporals did a smart about-face and marched out of the captain’s office, huge smiles on their faces.

  Conorado shook his head and smiled. He slipped the tiny pistol into his briefcase. When he got home he’d secure it in his private safe and forget about it.

  His work done, Captain Lewis Conorado stood silently behind his desk. The walls of his office were bare, and where other officers might have framed trids of themselves or their various awards, Conorado had none. He didn’t even keep trids of his family on his desk, just a few artifacts, mementos of things past: the butt of a ten pound mortar shell fired at him on Elneal; the fuse plug from an explosive shell fired from the main gun of a Diamundian tank; the set of ensign’s bars issued to him when he was first commissioned; and the staff-sergeant chevrons, which he’d given up when he reported to officer candidate school. He stood looking down a
t them. Not much to commemorate a lifetime of service, he thought. Slowly, he packed them into a box, examining each one lovingly as he wrapped it and put it away.

  As he turned to place the box into the cabinet behind his desk, a dull blue glow suffused the room. He turned and saw Owen the woo, standing in the doorway. “What’s up, Marine?” He really liked Owen; all the men in Company L liked the woo. He was their mascot, but in the time since Dean had brought him back from Diamunde, the Marines had taken to treating him as one of their own, like another Marine. Some believed he was highly intelligent, and everyone talked to him as if he could understand human speech. Many thought he did.

  Owen wobbled into the captain’s office and jumped lightly up on his desk. He stood there swaying, his great saucerlike eyes staring plaintively up at the officer. Blue was a color of distress for a woo.

  “Aw, what’s the problem, you old grunt, you?” Conorado asked, genuine affection in his voice. “You sad I’m going away? Shake.” He held out his finger, and one of Owen’s many delicate appendages wrapped itself around it. It felt like the tendril of a tiny plant, and immediately Owen’s color began to change from blue to pink, the sign of satisfaction and happiness. “I’ll be back, Owen. While I’m gone, you help Lieutenant Humphrey run this company. I’m counting on you. You do a good job while I’m away and I’ll promote you to honorary lance corporal when I get back.”

  The creature wobbled comfortably on the edge of the captain’s desk, on their stalks his huge eyes were raised to the man’s face, as if it were trying to tell him something. Captain Conorado smiled.

  “Good luck, Skipper,” Owen the woo said.

  Bass sat comfortably in Sergeant Major Shiro’s quarters, a liter of cold Reindeer ale on the table beside him. The FIST sergeant major often invited select senior NCOs to his quarters after duty hours, to unwind and discuss among themselves important matters affecting the enlisted men of 34th FIST. These sessions were an unofficial form of NCO Call, but they often accomplished more business than any formal meeting ever could.

  First Sergeant Myer, Lima Company’s top kick, occupied another chair in the sergeant major’s tiny sitting room. Next to him Sergeant Major Parant of the FIST’s infantry battalion stretched his long legs and sipped an ice cold beer. The room was hazy with cigar smoke, proving the old adage that in the Corps all you needed to find your way to an NCO meeting was to follow your nose.

  The topic under discussion was Captain Conorado’s imminent departure.

  “Will there be any problems with this Humphrey?” Shiro asked Myer directly.

  Myer glanced at Bass. “Not if Charlie and I can help it,” he answered. “Besides, the kid’s been around.” To Top Myer, anybody under fifty was still a kid.

  Parant laughed. “There isn’t much you two old grunts can’t handle. Hell, we’ve all been training junior officers since Christ was a corporal. That’s what NCOs do, and the Corps knows it.”

  “There’ll be no problems with Lieutenant Humphrey,” Bass said quietly. “He’s been shot at and missed and shit at and hit and he’s come through just fine. Top and I’ll keep an eye on him, though, in case he’s forgotten anything since he was a corporal. Thankfully there’re no deployments on the horizon. Humphrey probably won’t want to give the company back when Lew returns.” They all laughed. They knew Lieutenant Humphrey would be just fine as Company L’s commander.

  “What’s with this recall anyway, Charlie?” Shiro asked. “Oh, I know the bare bones, but what happened out there that could get such a fine officer in so much trouble?”

  Bass shrugged. “Fred, I’ve never seen an officer display so much guts as Lew did on Avionia Station.” He explained briefly what had happened. “I gotta tell you, Lew has it all, he’s brave in combat and he’s morally courageous. That’s what that army general said of him, and for once the army is right.”

  “Sounds like you’re describing yourself there,” Parant interjected. Bass’s face turned red at the compliment. “I mean it, Charlie,” Parant continued. “What the hell are you doing, sitting there as a gunnery sergeant, ‘platoon commander’ notwithstanding? There’s not an officer in the Corps better fitted for command than you are. You’re still young enough. Get a goddamned commission!”

  They had discussed this many times before. Bass gave the same answer: “You know I could ask any one of you that same question. But Bern, I don’t want to lose contact with my Marines. I’d take a commission as an ensign, maybe even a lieutenant, but I’m a platoon sergeant. I want to stay where I can work with Marine infantrymen. I’m good for them and they’re good for me. I become an officer and next thing you know I’m off to some charm school or some rear-echelon assignment. You know how every officer is supposed to be a potential general, so the Corps shifts them around to get all the ‘experience’ they need to command a FIST or be the commandant. Besides,” he added, “I become an officer, and you guys won’t let me play poker with you anymore! I’ll take Frank’s job, though.” He nudged First Sergeant Myer in the ribs.

  “What? Give you my cushy job? Never happen said the cap’n!”

  “We don’t like to play with you anyway, you lucky bastard,” Parant said.

  “You guys,” Shiro said, shaking his head. “Well, you’re right about one thing, there are no deployments coming up so we can enjoy garrison life for a while. Now, we have successfully disposed of the matters affecting human life in the universe, so let’s get down to real business. Deal the cards!”

  Captain Conorado trudged wearily down the hallway to his apartment. Now came the hardest part. The door opened soundlessly in response to his voice pattern. He set his briefcase on a table in the tiny foyer and stepped into the living room module.

  “Lew!” Marta exclaimed as she came out of the kitchen module, a dish towel over her shoulder. The Conorados couldn’t afford the servomechs most civilian households used for housework, so Marta did it herself. The smile washed off her face. She realized from her husband’s expression that bad news was coming. “Another goddamned deployment?” She pulled the dish towel from her shoulder and flicked it to emphasize her anger.

  “Marta . . . No, not another deployment. I’ve been recalled to Earth.” He pushed some pillows out of the way and sat on the sofa, letting out a deep sigh as he settled in.

  “You mean, we’re going back to Earth?” She brightened at the prospect.

  “No, Martie, I mean I’m going back. You stay here.” One of Conorado’s failings was that he did not know how to sugarcoat bad news. He was not a diplomatic person.

  “Well, why? Lew, why are they sending you back?”

  “I can’t tell you, honey, it’s classified.” He knew how that would go over and braced himself, but he didn’t know how else to put it.

  Marta stared at him silently for a long moment. “Goddamnit to hell!” she shouted. She threw the dish towel into the kitchen. “Classified? What in the hell are you doing that’s classified, Lew? What’s not ‘classified,’ Lew, is how goddamned hard I’ve worked all these years to be a good Marine wife, to make a home for you and raise our kids! What’s not ‘classified’ is how I get to live alone all the time because my husband is off on a deployment light-years away. What’s not ‘classified’ is how I raised our children essentially by myself, Lew, because you were never there! What’s not ‘classified’ is how the Corps jerks you around, sends you here, there, everywhere, to get yourself killed fighting some goddamned battle some goddamned fat-assed politician thinks is the ‘cause of the moment’ with his goddamned brain-dead constituents! I’ll tell you again, Lewis Conorado, Captain, Confederation Marine Corps—not a single one of those bastard government creeps back in Fargo has a kid in the Fleet or a husband or a wife laying their asses on the line somewhere out there,” she gestured toward the ceiling, “and now you come in here and blithely announce this crap—” She began to cry.

  The Conorados had had that kind of fight before, but nothing quite as serious as this was turning out to be. Lew real
ized that Marta was venting deeply suppressed emotions. He also realized that once they got out they’d never go back where they came from. Lewis Conorado loved his wife as deeply as he loved the Corps. Neither had the market on his affection. He just loved them in different ways.

  “Honey—”

  “No. No, Lewis, sit still.” She wiped her eyes on a sleeve. She was calm now. “Lewis, tell me what’s up. Tell me everything.”

  So he told her everything. He told her what he knew from personal experience and what he suspected from what he’d learned over the months. He knew he was committing a felony by revealing classified information. But the worst that could happen is he’d be removed permanently from command—and his family. He knew Marta would never subject him to that. Alien sentiences? Conorado thought. What the hell did anyone back at Fargo know about “alien sentiences” anyway? Here, they’d had one living among them for months and nobody’d really figured out that not only was Owen the woo sentient, he’d learned to speak English! Conorado wasn’t about to tell anyone either. The scientists and bureaucrats could all go straight to hell.

  Marta seemed to wilt as Conorado talked. “My God,” she whispered at last, thinking of the Skinks, “and they’re not telling anyone? And they’re going to court-martial you for doing what any decent man would’ve done in that awful birdman situation?”

  “Well, not exactly a court-martial, Marta. Just an inquiry. I don’t think it’ll fly but I’ve got to be there. Look, I’d take you with me, honey, but you know we can’t afford it. And look on the bright side—I won’t be in any danger back there.”

  “Lewis, that was not funny. You have to resign, that’s all there is to it. Resign. Tell them to stick their court-martial right up their—”

  “Marta, be reasonable. I can’t resign, not while this thing is hanging over my head. All favorable personnel actions are suspended when a man gets into a situation like this. You know that.”

  Marta nodded. “Yes, Lew, I know it. I know you love those Marines in that company of yours too. I’d be jealous if I didn’t love them too. Goddamnit, Lew, every time you go on deployment I worry as much about your Marines as I do about you!” Her face began to crumple but she got hold of herself. “I’ll help you pack,” she said at last, a tone of resignation in her voice.