Throne of Stars (21 page)

“And we could see an assault shuttle here within a day or two afterwards,” Roger said with a grimace.

“Yes, Your Highness,” the captain agreed evenly. “We could.”

“And what do we do about that?”

“One thing is to try to get a better feel for the intentions of this Sor fellow,” Pahner replied. “If he’s ambitious enough to want to head up the local satrap, he’d probably be even more interested in knocking off the entire valley.”

“Try to recruit him?” O’Casey asked dubiously, and grimaced. “He’s a slippery little snake, Armand. Reminds me of Grath Chain in Diaspra . . . only competent.”

“I don’t like him either,” Pahner said. “But he’s the most likely to be willing to take a chance. If we back his coup, we use our better position and his raiding forces to move up through the other satraps and take the port.”

“And if he balks?” Roger asked.

“Well, if Eleanora’s negotiations aren’t completed by the end of the week, I suggest we come up with a Plan B and implement it,” Pahner said. “At that point, we can assume that the port is aware of our presence.”

“And what do we do about
that
?” Roger asked again.

Pahner let a flash of annoyance cross his face, but the question wasn’t really off-point. In fact, it was bang on-point.

“Then we cut our way out of the city, head for the hills, and hope like hell we can disappear in the Shin mountains before the port localizes us.”

“I thought you said there was no alternative to being patient,” Roger said with a smile, and almost despite himself, Pahner smiled back, ever so slightly.

“And the Shin?” the prince continued after a moment.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Pahner said, his smile fading into a frown. “Getting out of town will be hard enough,” he went on, and turned to the intelligence NCO.

“Julian, we need to work up a full order of battle on the local forces. In addition, I want routes from here to the gates, alternate routes, and alternate gates. I want to know where all the guard houses are, what the forces at each guardhouse consist of, probable reaction times, and how they’re equipped. I want to know as much as you can find out about the forces
outside
the city, as well. And we need a better feel for the relative capabilities of the three different forces here in Kirsti. Last, I want to know where the main units of this slaving force are. It’s beginning to look like they’re both the most effective force, and the one with the most effective commander. I want to know, if we make a move to break out of town, where the majority of them are, and when we can expect their reaction.”

“Tall order, Captain,” Julian said as he marked up his pad. “But I’ll try. We’ve still got some of our remotes left. I’ll get them deployed and then get Poertena and Denat to spread around a little silver, see what sort of HumInt they can shake free.”

“Shanghai Despreaux and anyone else you need,” the captain said. “You know what to do.”

“Yes, Sir,” Julian replied. “That I do.”

“Poertena,” Pahner continued. “Supplies.”

“Bad, Cap’n,” the Pinopan growled. “T’e price of grain is ou’rageous—worse t’an anyt’ing since Ran Tai! An’ t’ese pockers gots no barbarian armies to drive t’em up, either. Food has to be nearly half an annual income. Jus’ feeding t’e
civan
is gettin’ expensive. I been laying in supplies for t’e trip, but t’ey low, Sir. Low.”

“Julian, figure out what’s stored in the area around us. Get with Poertena on that. Make up a list of targets.”

“These guys really have you exercised, Captain,” Roger said carefully. “You don’t normally think in terms of looting.”

“They have me nervous, Your Highness,” the Marine replied. “Their invariable response has been at least passively hostile. They’re very closed, in ways I don’t care for, and we’re looking at the possibility that they may be in contact with the port. All of those things tend to trip my professional paranoia circuit.”

“Mine, too,” Kosutic said. “And that’s not the only thing making me nervous. Or, rather, one of the ways they’re ‘closed’ . . . bothers me. I’ve been trying to keep from stepping on any toes by avoiding the subject of religion, and it’s been remarkably easy.”

“I can tell from your tone that that does a lot more than just ‘bother’ you, Smaj,” Roger said. “But why does it?”

“You’ve been to a theocracy, Your Highness,” the sergeant major replied. “Think about Diaspra. Or about the Diaspran infantry. They’re constantly discussing religion; it’s their main topic of conversation. But these people don’t talk about their religion
at all
. That isn’t normal by any theocracy’s viewpoint. In fact, it’s frankly weird. They say that in Armagh, if you ask the price of a loaf of bread, the baker will tell you that His Wickedness proceeds from God. But if you ask the butcher for a steak,
he’ll
tell you that God proceeds from His Wickedness. The best I can determine, these guys worship a fire god. That’s
it,
Sir. The whole enchilada. The sum total of all I’ve been able to learn about a theocracy’s doctrine and dogma, and I got most of that from discussions with Pedi.”

She shook her head.

“I don’t trust theocrats who won’t discuss theology, Your Highness. I have to wonder what they’re hiding.”

“We’d still be better off with their support,” Pahner said. “But in the event that it drops in the pot, that they inform the port of our presence and we have to deal with that, we should have plans in place for how to exit the town and how to obtain the supplies we need. Fortunately, we have a week or two to figure all of that out.”

“There’s just one thing,” O’Casey said, her expression pensive. Pahner looked at her, and she shrugged. “What if they’re quicker than that? Quicker than twenty days up?”

“What do you mean?” Roger asked uncomfortably. “They don’t have
civan,
so I don’t see how they can move much faster than a
turom
caravan.”

“I’m thinking about the Incas,” his chief of staff said with an unhappy grimace. “They used to use teams of runners. You’d be surprised how much distance you can cover when each person is running, oh, twenty kilometers as fast as he can go. Or, rather, how much distance a
message
can cover in how little time if each relay is by someone who has to run
only
twenty kilometers as quickly as he can.”

“No, I wouldn’t be surprised at all,” Pahner said with an even unhappier grimace. “That’s a lovely thought.”

“Yep,” Julian agreed. “On that note, I guess I’d better get started on that order of battle,” he added. Then he laughed.

“What?” Pahner asked.

“Well, what’s the worst case, Sir?” Julian asked with a decidedly manic grin. “I mean, that’s what we’ve got to think about, right?”

“Yes, it is, Sergeant,” Pahner agreed tightly. He cut the NCO a certain amount of slack, because pressure brought out two things in Julian: brilliance, and humor. “The worst case? The worst case would be that the starport is fully under the control of the Saints, and that they’re able to determine that the humans reported to them are being led by His Highness.”

“Yes, Sir. That
is
the worst case from our perspective,” Julian agreed. “But now think about their
reaction
to the news.”

It was the worst tradecraft that Temu Jin had seen in all the thirty-plus years since he’d first left Pinopa.

The small gap in the security wall at the back side of the spaceport required the governor’s “secret contact” to cross the entire compound just to meet the native runner. And since the hike required the receiver to break his normal routine—usually with no advance warning to let him build a believable reason for him to be here—anyone investigating the governor’s (many) illegal activities would have found it ludicrously easy to identify, analyze, and break the communications chain. All they’d have had to do would be to watch for the idiot marching back and forth at the most ridiculous time of day for the least logical reason.

Short of wearing an illuminated holo-placard saying “Secret Courier!” in meter-high letters, Jin couldn’t think of anything else he might have done to make the hypothetical analyst’s job any easier.

There were only two saving graces to the incredibly stupid set up. The first was that it had been set up by a previous communications technician, so Jin didn’t have to take responsibility for it. The other was that the person on the base responsible for trying to
find
the link was Jin.

It was also a “hard contact.” That was, the people at both ends knew if there was a message to be exchanged. By way of comparison, his own tenuous communications with his control had been a soft-connect, and almost entirely “one-way.” His outbound communications method—message chips passed via a dead-drop to well-paid tramp freighter pursers—had been cut out when all three of his contacts became victims of “piracy” in the sector.

Inbound, it was easier. The local garrison received a variety of e-zines and carefully crafted personal ads passed all the information he needed to receive. He occasionally wondered, as he perused them, how many of the other messages were code. He especially did that after the last missive—the message for “Irene” that told her it was over. That she should go on with her life.

The one that told him he was out in the cold.

It had been interesting, from a professional perspective, that there’d been at least twice as many personals as normal in that particular month’s e-zines. The memory still brought a certain grim chuckle, and he wondered how many other people there’d been on how many other planets, looking at those messages and going “What the . . . ?”

The code had been the ultimate disaster message, telling him that “the World” was gone, and he was to sever all contacts, trust no one, respond to nothing but personal contacts. For him, it had simply been one more nail in the coffin. Heck, bad news on Marduk was as expected as rain, right?

He took the leather satchel from the Mardukan and walked back into the bushes at the edge of the field. The entire set-up was just
too
asinine. So imbecilic. So
amateurish
he was embarrassed every time he went through the charade. The Mardukan, some unknown “agent” of the Kirsti satrap, would now go back through a cleared passage in the minefields, through a portion of the mono-wire that had been changed out in favor of less lethal materials, and through an area where the sensors had been bypassed. The governor, whose life and limb, in the event of attack,
depended
on all those defenses, had ordered the changes so that these “secret communiques” could slip through.
Ordered
it!

Jin shook his head and cracked the seal on the pouch. The governor could not, of course, read Krath, despite having been here for over fifteen years, and despite the fact that “learning” it would require only an upload to his toot and a few minutes of his time. No, the governor had better things to do than learn enough of the language so that the minor messages—like, oh,
secret communiques,
for an example that just
popped
to mind—could be read by someone other than his
communications technicians
. Such as the
governor
.

Jin shook his head again. Could it be possible that the Empire was truly so short on functional genetic material that they’d had no choice but to send this . . . this . . .
idiot
out to be governor?

No. No, he told himself. The Empire couldn’t possibly be that hard up for talent. No, this was a brilliant ploy of the Imperial bureaucracy. They’d found themselves stuck with someone so stupid, so dazzlingly incompetent, that the only possible defense had been to send him someplace so utterly unimportant that even
he
could do no damage there.

Jin took a deep breath, clearing his mind of the governor and the asininity of whoever had assigned him to Marduk. It actually helped, and he felt marginally more cheerful as he unfolded the message. Then he read the first few words . . . and closed his eyes.

For just a moment, a remembered whiff of corruption seemed to fill his nostrils and he almost fell out of character. He knew—
knew—
that if anyone saw him in that moment, his life wouldn’t be worth a Mardukan raindrop. He knew he had to get his composure together, that far more than just his life depended upon it, but for a moment it was all he could do not to cry. He
wanted
to cry. To scream. He wanted to shout for joy and terror. To announce the arrival of the moment he’d spent hours dreaming of as he stared up at the bunk above his. Although, he admitted, his dreamy imagination had never included the possibility that he’d want to throw up when the moment came.

He had a real problem, though. Not one that he hadn’t planned for, but a problem nonetheless. Since returning from the aborted “rescue mission,” he’d slowly and carefully worked himself into a position where he picked up most of these communications. It was generally shoved off on the low man on the totem pole—not only was it a long way across the port in the heat, but the messages rarely had any significance for the humans. They were generally about the shifting politics of the inter-satrap “wars,” and how much was that going to affect the port? Other satraps sent messages to other locations, and he picked up most of those, as well. But this was the one communique that it was absolutely essential the governor never see . . . and the one he had set up the entire system to ensure that he
did
see.

Or would have, if Temu Jin had had any intention of ever allowing him to.

Unfortunately, the guv wasn’t a
complete
idiot. He always had at least two people translate any missive from his local contacts, and he would be aware that Jin had gone out to collect this one. Which meant that Jin couldn’t simply make this one disappear. There had to be a different one.

He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small package, then flipped through the various messages contained in it until he got to one that he liked. He read over it once more, and smiled thinly. It appeared that the Shin barbarians were contemplating allying with the Wio in return for the Wio’s halting their raids. This was, in fact, bullshit. But since it was “unconfirmed” information from the Im Enensu satrap, when it turned out to be incorrect, it would simply be assumed that the Im Enensu satrap, or his intel chief, couldn’t find his ass with all four hands.