Starfist: Kingdom's Swords Read online

  The packing did not take long, and Marta said little as they went about it. Conorado stood in the living room, his bag hanging loosely from one arm. “You look splendid in your reds,” Marta whispered. “Just as splendid as the day I first saw you when I was young.”

  “Marta . . .” Powerful emotions were welling up in Conorado’s breast. He swallowed and suppressed them. The Conorados were not the kind of people who showed emotion readily; they never billed and cooed and whispered sweet nothings to each other. They were alike in that they both believed action spoke louder than words. They knew they loved each other, and that was all either needed to know about the other. They just didn’t think it necessary to remind themselves of that.

  “Martie, the shuttle to New Oslo leaves soon. I’ve got to go now.”

  “Good-bye, Lewis.” She made no move to approach him.

  Conorado hesitated for a moment, as if expecting more from his wife. Then: “Good-bye, Marta.” He turned and walked toward the door.

  “Lewis!” Conorado whirled around. “Lewis, don’t count on me being here when you get back.”

  That statement hit Conorado like a plasma bolt in the chest. She meant what she’d just said. He knew that, knew there was nothing he could say to her about it, and also knew she’d been working up to saying it for a long time now. But now he got mad. “Well, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get to it,” he said as he turned about sharply, grabbed his briefcase, and went out the door without a backward look.

  “Captain, may I have a word with you?” someone said as Conorado crossed the lobby of the apartment building.

  “Huh?” He turned. It was that naval lieutenant, his neighbor—of sorts.

  “Captain, my son tells me you threatened him the other day. I won’t stand for that!”

  “What? Who?”

  “My son, Brian. He said you accosted him in the lobby here and said you would ‘come after’ him. You have no business threatening my children.”

  Yes, he remembered now. Brian. That was the kid’s name. The kid or one of his siblings had pissed all over the floor, and he had told him to clean it up.

  “Well, Lieutenant . . .” Conorado turned to face the man. He wore the insignia of the naval supply corps and two ribbons on his tunic, one for deep space service and the other some sort of navy commendation. “I apologize.”

  Thinking he’d made the Marine captain back down, the lieutenant preened himself, “Well, of course there must’ve been a misunderstanding, Captain. I—”

  “No, no. No ‘misunderstanding,’ Lieutenant. I really should not have threatened Brian.” Conorado stepped very close and put his face right up to him. “Tell you what. Next time one of your brats pisses all over the floor, or screws up generally in any other way, I won’t say a word. They’re only kids. They’re learning. From their dad. Instead, I’ll come and get you. I’ll give you the spanking, Lieutenant. And if you don’t like it, you pasty-faced little shit, I’ll just right here and now reach down your fucking throat and pull your goddamned tongue out by the roots. Now shove off, Mr. Squid!”

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  FIVE

  The Confederation Marine Corps’ Fleet Initial Strike Teams, known as FISTs, were expeditionary forces. They were designed to deploy on short notice to anyplace there was a problem that might require a military solution. Sometimes the mere arrival of a FIST in orbit around a problem planet—or a planet with a problem—was sufficient to calm matters enough that military intervention was no longer needed. Sometimes it was necessary for the Marines to make planetfall and simply look able to take on and defeat any opposition. Often they had to fight.

  Infrequently, a FIST—or, rarely, more than one—went in to kick open a door so the Confederation Army could walk through.

  From the hand-blasters carried by officers and senior noncommissioned officers all the way to the Raptors flown by fighter pilots, the Marines were more lethally armed than any force they were likely to come up against. Their communications devices were the best the Confederation could provide. Their normal combat uniform was chameleon, made of material that mimicked the color and pattern of whatever it was closest to—a combat-ready Marine was effectively invisible. When they weren’t on deployments, the Marines of a FIST trained incessantly so they’d be ready for whatever they might face when they next mounted out.

  Deployments for any FIST could come back-to-back or be a year apart. Orders to mount out could come at any time, and almost never had advance notice. Sometimes the need for Marines was urgent and an entire FIST would be aboard Confederation Navy shipping and en route within two days. Other times the need was less urgent and there might be a week or so between the receipt of orders and the time the FIST boarded navy starships.

  Nobody thought there was any particular need for urgency when the Confederation ambassador to Kingdom made his urgent request for military assistance. There was rarely any urgency to dealing with a peasant revolt, especially one on Kingdom.

  Morning formation, an age-old military ritual. It was an easy means for a commander to make sure none of his men were missing and that all were fit for duty. It was also an easy means for commanders to pass the official word to their people and make other necessary announcements.

  Company L formed up behind the barracks on a balmy spring morning at Camp Major Pete Ellis. “Balmy spring morning” at that northerly latitude of Thorsfinni’s World meant the breeze was stiff but seldom howled or gusted to gale force, and the temperature was a bit above ten degrees Celsius. The air was damp with moisture from the snow evaporating from the mountains that lurked on the windward horizon—nobody but the new men noticed the constant, pervasive, smell of fish.

  “Sir!” Gunnery Sergeant Thatcher barked, and brought his hand crisply up in salute as Lieutenant Humphrey marched up and halted two paces in front of him. “Company L, all present and accounted for.”

  Humphrey returned Thatcher’s salute. “Company L, all present and accounted for,” he echoed. “You are dismissed, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  Thatcher cut his salute, said, “Aye aye, sir,” and executed a sharp about-face. He marched to the barracks and disappeared into it.

  Everyone’s attention was piqued; the lieutenant carried a clipboard. Captain Conorado never carried a clipboard to morning formation unless he had some important news to give them.

  As Humphrey looked over the formation from one end to the other, each Marine before him was trying to guess what Humphrey would say. There could be an important visitor coming, or a FIST commander’s inspection, or a deployment. The platoon commanders, standing at attention in a line behind him, also gave no hint. A deployment was most likely. Even though Company L had deployed by itself recently, and its third platoon not long before that, the entire FIST hadn’t mounted out in a couple of years, an unusually long time.

  A couple of years. The normal tour of duty for a Marine assigned to a hardship post such as 34th FIST was two years. Many of the Marines had been with 34th FIST for much longer than two years. Maybe Humphrey had word on when rotations would resume. Probably not. He’d dismissed Gunny Thatcher, so maybe it was an unexpected training exercise and the Gunny needed extra time to make plans for it.

  Humphrey didn’t let the suspense last overlong. “At ease,” he said in a voice that carried clearly, and stood easy himself. “Thirty-fourth FIST has a deployment.”

  The announcement was met stoically by the men who had been with the FIST the longest and were most looking forward to transfer. It was received with nervous anticipation by the newest Marines who had never been on a deployment.

  “Eight days from today,” the acting company commander continued, “we will board the CNSS Grandar Bay, an Amphibious Landing Ship, Force, for transport to the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles. I know a few of you have been to Kingdom in the past. It appears the peasants are revolting again. Thirty-fourth FIST’s mission is to restore peace and order.” Humphrey didn’t soun
d happy about the deployment, and with good reason; he was one of the Marines in Company L who had been there before and had no love and less respect for the world’s government.

  “During the coming week you will have time to put your affairs in order. Most of the time, though, we will undergo refresher training on civil strife response actions. There are no further announcements. When you are dismissed you will proceed to your quarters and commence preparations for deployment. You will be notified of the time and place of the first training evolution.

  “COMP-ney, a-ten-HUT!” he barked, and snapped-to himself. There was a crisp snap as the Marines returned to the position of attention. Humphrey looked them over again, then said, “Platoon sergeants, take your platoons!” He stepped off and led the officers back into the barracks.

  The sergeant of third platoon, Wang Hyakowa, pivoted to face his men. “At ease,” he said, and held up a hand. “No questions. This is the first I’ve heard of this deployment. I don’t know anything about the training we’ll be having other than the civil strife response action training I’ve had in the past, and most of you have had that training as well. I’ve never been to Kingdom, so I can’t tell you anything about it either.”

  That last statement wasn’t totally true. Hyakowa had heard about it from other Marines who’d been there, and seen the trids and vids they’d made of conditions on that world. He knew it to be an agrarian world on which the overwhelming majority of the population lived and worked in the countryside; communication with the outside universe, including books and all other forms of entertainment, was forbidden to the general populace; literacy beyond what was needed for scripture study was almost nonexistent; life expectancy for all but the ruling theocracy was little more than half the 117 years in the Confederation at large.

  The little Hyakowa knew about Kingdom made him wonder why the Confederation assisted its government in putting down the frequent peasant revolts instead of aiding the rebels. But that was something he couldn’t say to his Marines.

  What he did tell them was: “You heard Lieutenant Humphrey. Go to your quarters and start packing. Dismissed.”

  The platoon broke formation and the Marines headed for the back door of their wing of the barracks, talking among themselves. Hyakowa didn’t try to listen to them as they went past, but he couldn’t help but overhear comments, and so it was obvious to him that the more experienced Marines didn’t like the deployment, and that it had nothing to do with resentment over their indefinitely delayed rotations to more civilized, more mainstream duty stations than Thorsfinni’s World.

  Few Marines who’d ever been on a mission to put down a peasant revolt had any stomach for another. Generally, peasants were poorly armed and trained, and more often than not their leadership had little or no knowledge of military tactics. Thirty-fourth FIST’s deployment to Wanderjahr three years earlier had been an exception; the leaders of the rebels had excellent military training. Even so, when the Marines and rebels had met, it was a slaughter. It was one thing to meet a properly trained and equipped soldier in combat and kill him—he at least had a chance, no matter how small. It was altogether something else to kill an untrained, poorly armed farmer—especially one who might have a legitimate grievance.

  But they were Marines, Hyakowa thought. They went where they were sent and did their job. Nobody said they had to agree with the mission, much less like it.

  When the second fire team of third platoon’s second squad reached its room on the second level of the barracks, Corporal Kerr, the fire team leader, went straight into the head they shared with the squad’s third fire team and bolted both doors, though the head could accommodate all six men simultaneously. He needed a few minutes’ privacy. It had been on a mission not too dissimilar, one that required heavy civic action, that he was savagely wounded and spent many hours in surgery while the doctors put the inside of his chest cavity back into a working arrangement. That was followed by months of recuperation, and even more months of physical therapy while he regained his full strength and agility.

  Since his return to Company L after an absence of nearly two years, Kerr had been on two deployments: Third platoon went to the exploratory world nicknamed “Waygone,” and then Company L went to the quarantined world of Avionia. On the first one, they encountered strange beings from elsewhere, the ones they called Skinks. On the second, they dealt with smugglers who were trading with a backward alien sentience. Contact with that sentience, the existence of which was a closely guarded state secret, was the reason for the cancellation of all transfers out of 34th FIST.

  When he’d first returned, Corporal Kerr was uncertain whether he’d be able to function properly as a combat infantry noncommissioned officer. But after an initial fright on Waygone, he’d been the same cool, collected Marine corporal he’d always been. But neither of those missions had been a civil action. Neither had any relationship to the mission on which he’d been almost killed. This one did.

  Quite unexpectedly, Corporal Kerr found himself terrified at the prospect of a civil strife response action. He knew he had to get hold of himself and overcome this fear. If he didn’t, he not only risked his own life, but would unnecessarily place the lives of his men, and other Marines, in jeopardy.

  Lance Corporal Schultz noted Corporal Kerr’s disappearance and chose to ignore it. He knew Kerr was a solid Marine who would get over whatever was bothering him. He turned immediately to his own preparations. He had little in the way of personal possessions that he couldn’t take along; his packing could wait until the last day or until he was ordered to pack. First, he wanted to learn about Kingdom.

  This wasn’t his usual first step in preparing; usually he made sure—for him an unneeded operation—that his weapons were ready. Next, he wanted to undergo any training that might be needed for the mission. Learning about the mission world was low priority because, he figured, people were people no matter where they were in Human Space. But Schultz had heard a few comments when morning formation broke up, and thought he detected an undertone to Lieutenant Humphrey’s voice when he told them about the mission. This made him curious. He got out his reader, flipped it on, and checked the index. Yes, it still held the Confederation Intelligence Agency’s FactBook Overview. He called it up and opened it to the entry on the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles.

  Three short paragraphs. Founded by an ecumenical group of religious fundamentalists, Kingdom had a closed, agrarian culture. It was well away from normal shipping routes and had little interstellar trade. The small off-worlder community was restricted to one settlement, Interstellar City. Congress between off-worlders and Kingdomites was limited to official contacts. The entry was followed by a short listing of references, none of which Schultz had in his library. He was linking into the Camp Ellis library to see which of those references it had when Corporal Doyle, the fire team’s third man, interrupted him.

  “L-Lance Corporal Sch-Schultz?” Doyle was afraid of Schultz. In fact, Schultz was the kind of man who inspired fear, but Doyle’s fear ran much deeper—he was secretly afraid of all warriors.

  “Speak.” Schultz kept his attention on his data search.

  “What’s it like?”

  “What?” Schultz found a reference and downloaded it for study. He kept searching.

  “A civil strife response action? You’ve been on one.” Doyle’s most recent duty was as Company L’s senior clerk. His entire Marine career had been as a clerk, so he was familiar with the careers of the Marines of the company. This was his first assignment as an infantryman.

  “Chickenshit.” Schultz found two more references and downloaded them.

  “What?”

  “Hmm.” Schultz had found and downloaded a total of seven references, precious little for a Confederation member world.

  “Wh-What do you m-mean, ‘chickenshit’?”

  Schultz glowered at Doyle. He wanted to read the material he’d downloaded. “Farmers acting up. We put them in their place. Almost l
ike Elneal. Chickenshit.” Schultz returned to his reader.

  “Farmers acting up?” Doyle’s mind flashed on an ancient vid he’d once seen that showed peasants in homespun, swinging scythes and hoes as they attacked a castle. Then he flashed on a Hieronymous Bosch painting of hell, with Marines as the devils and farmers as the damned souls. He shuddered. That wasn’t anything like the action he’d taken part in on Elneal. Absently, he fingered the material of his shirt above the left pocket—where the Bronze Star medal he’d been awarded for that action hung on his dress reds.

  Farmers acting up? A Boschian hell? What?

  He shuddered again.

  Schultz was immersed in his study. The “chickenshit” was about more than farmers acting up. He knew 34th FIST was secretly designated as the Confederation’s official alien-contact military force. Why were they being sent to deal with a Mickey Mouse peasant revolt?

  The company classroom could comfortably seat fifty. All 120 Marines of Company L crammed themselves into it. The platoon sergeants stood against the wall on both sides of the entrance. Lieutenant Humphrey stood outside, waiting to make his entrance. Top Myer, the company first sergeant, stood at one side of the small stage opposite the entrance, Gunnery Sergeant Thatcher at the other. They gave the men a moment or two to settle themselves, then mounted the stage.

  “AT EASE!” Thatcher bellowed.

  The susurration of voices stilled and all eyes turned toward the stage.

  “We have a week before we mount out. We will spend that week in training for the coming mission.”