Decisively Engaged (Warp Marine Corps Book 1) (12 page)

  Heather had been working with the RSO for two years now, and she still wasn’t sure how she felt about the man. Rockwell often came across as an ass-kissing, time-serving political animal, the kind of Rat that gave Rats a bad name. And yet, he usually managed to do the right thing, or helped get the right thing done, typically by sweet-talking Llewellyn into it. She hoped he wouldn’t throw her under the bus this time.

“Ms. McClintock,” the Ambassador said as he stood up for her. The bastard had the gall to wrinkle his nose when she shook his hand.

Sorry for stinking up your office with the stench of combat
, she thought as she forced a smile onto her face.

“What happened out there?” Llewellyn asked.

They already had her report and her imp data. What they wanted now was analysis, less than an hour after exchanging gunfire with murderous aliens. The only easy day was yesterday; one of her instructors had been fond of that saying.

“A group of alleged rebels, likely sponsored by the Preserver faction of the Court, launched an attack on human and Vehelian personnel, with the support of elements of the Kirosha Army,” she said. “And, at the very least, did so with the tacit acquiescence of the Queen and the rest of the Court. To put it bluntly, they left us hanging in the breeze, and now they’ll probably raise a stink about the way we defended ourselves.”

Llewellyn’s eyes widened. “That’s ridiculous. What would they hope to accomplish? The whole rebellion is the work of disaffected elements in Kirosha society. Peasants, led by a religious cult.” The tone he used when saying ‘religious cult’ would have served equally well for ‘pedophile social club.’ “That sort of rebellion is a common fixture here; they have one every couple decades or so. I don’t see a conspiracy at work. Just incompetence. What else can you expect from primitives?”

“The lack of response from the Royal Guard suggests otherwise,” Heather said. “Historically, they are charged with suppressing riots, acting as the enforcement arm of the Crown. This was a relatively small uprising; less than five thousand people were involved. A Guard regiment would have slaughtered them, and there are five such regiments in the city or its environs. The Final Blow Society shouldn’t have been able to mass in numbers inside the city proper, let alone be supported by Army units.”

“We also have to consider the Crown’s refusal to answer our calls,” Rockwell said. “We still haven’t heard from anybody at the Magistrate level, let alone the Prime Minister. Something is not right.”

“That does concern me,” the ambassador conceded. “But that could be some internal matter that doesn’t involve us directly.”

It involved the dead pretty damn directly
, Heather thought. Out loud: “The faction trying to co-opt the rebellion is focusing their anger on us ‘Star Devils.’ Whatever their goals are, we are being made into targets.”

“Well, if the Ruddies get too uppity, we’ll just have to call up a starship and bomb them further down the totem pole than they already are,” Llewellyn said. “I’d rather things didn’t get to that point. Having to be rescued by the Navy will make us all look bad.”

It will make
you
look particularly bad, and I’m guessing this posting is your last chance before even Mommy and Daddy decide to give up on you
, Heather thought. Llewellyn’s inept handling of the Kirosha Court had likely made things worse.

“Hopefully the incident will discredit the Preserver faction,” she said. “The Crown lost face, showing itself unable to protect their ‘honored guests.’ They take hospitality very seriously here.”

Except when they don’t,’
she didn’t say out loud. Kirosha history was full of incidents where one ruler or another invited his enemies to a social gathering, and then proceeded to butcher them in the middle of the festivities. It was the most dishonorable thing a host could do, but winning big covered a multitude of sins.

“Well, I’ll have Deputy Norbert draft a firm note to the Queen. Demand reparations for all the dead Americans those peasants murdered,” the Ambassador said. “They killed, what, seven AmCits?”

“Fourteen,” Heather corrected him. “A van full of Star Mining employees got separated from the rest of the convoy. All eight passengers were massacred.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we? How come the Marines weren’t able to rescue them?”

“It took too long for the rescue force to reach us,” she said. “By then, the van had been overwhelmed. The rest of us are lucky to have survived.”

All thanks to you trying to keep the Marines at the Embassy, guarding your cowardly ass
.

Something must have shown in her face. The glare Llewellyn sent her way showed how little he cared to be corrected by an underling, even indirectly. Heather knew she needed to learn how to play the game at this level, or she’d never move beyond her covert agent status. The ambassador was about to say something when he paused for several seconds; someone had called him, which meant the call had been important enough to interrupt the meeting.

Saved by the bell
, Heather thought.

“You will have to excuse me,” the ambassador said. “The Vehelian and Wyrashat want to hold a conference call regarding the incident. We will continue this later.” He turned his chair around so its back was facing them, his way of dismissing them without having to say a word.

Heather and Rockwell left; the RSO gestured at her to follow him. They went outside, to a large balcony overlooking the Enclave and the city beyond. The fires around Kirosha were still burning, but the conflagrations the Marines had started during the rescue operation had been put out, a clear indication the royal authorities were back in control over the city proper. Assuming they’d ever lost control, that was.

Rockwell got down to business. “What did you think of the new Marine CO?”

“Competent. Takes his job seriously. Handled himself well in combat.”

“As did you. Maybe the Company should move you to Operations instead of Intelligence.”

Heather shrugged. “I go where they send me. Although so far Intelligence is failing miserably. I never suspected the Crown would allow insurgents to enter the city and ambush us.”

“Nobody did,” Rockwell said. “The Kirosha were hunting down every secret society that poked its head up, as recently as a few weeks ago. Something has changed.”

“I don’t see what could have changed. They know what Starfarers are capable of.”

During Kirosha’s First Contact, the High King – the current monarch’s father, dead some five years ago – had been taken aboard an American destroyer, flown to Jasper-Four, the second component of the binary planetary system, and allowed to see what a full spread of plasma missiles impacting a mountain range looked like. The whole thing had been presented as a show meant to ‘amuse’ the king, but the implicit threat had been clear.

Not the nicest thing to do, but most other Starfarers would have been even less kind. The Vehelians were pretty nice, but if turned down they would have simply gone to the Kirosha’s nearest neighbor, given them enough tech to overrun the Kingdom, and then made a deal with the new owners of the mineral deposits they wanted to exploit. The Wyrm would have made a demonstration of Starfarer firepower somewhere clearly visible to the entire city, probably melting down one of the nearby mountains with a plasma barrage, and never mind the panic that would have caused.

The Lampreys would have slagged the city of Kirosha, and negotiated the surrender of the whole continent with whoever came on top in the aftermath. Or depopulated the entire planet. The US didn’t do that sort of thing lightly; First Contact had seen to that.

Which makes us the good guys, I suppose
.

The United Stars of America preferred to colonize empty planets, but when it had to deal with primitive worlds, it behaved in a manner that might be described as ‘relatively fair’ if you were charitable, or ‘evil capital-imperialistic’ if you were not, although the latter view was not exactly safe to spouse openly. Oh, you wouldn’t get sent to a gulag if you spouted it – not anymore, at least; things had been much harsher during the State of Emergency years – but your name would go on a list, and someone would be given the job of figuring out a way to legally screw you. Even if you were a hundred-percent law-abiding – a minor feat in itself, because even after the Great Law Simplification of 47 AFC, most people still committed an unwitting felony or two at some point – you would be quietly discredited; doors would be shut, career paths blocked. Dissent was fine – to a degree. Past that, your choices narrowed until the best that you could hope for was a billet in some remote part of Earth or the galaxy.

After a while, most people figured out that going along was the way to go.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Rockwell said; Heather realized her mind had wandered off for a second or two.

“They aren’t worth that much. Still can’t think of a reason for the Crown to behave like this.”

“Unless they think they can get a better deal from the Wyrms or the Ovals,” the RSO said.

“They’d have to be nuts to think that. The Kirosha have been getting ripped off even in the handful of trade concessions they’ve negotiated with the other Starfarers. We at least try to pay our bills with something of value; the others are always looking for an angle.”

“I know it. You know it. But maybe the Kirosha don’t.”

“If that’s the case, they sure picked a strange way to curry favor with the Vehelians.”

“Well, there is that. Maybe the Envoy was the target. The Ovals can rub people the wrong way.”

“Hm. That might explain it, actually,” Heather said. “But they could just as easily PNG the whole Vehelian delegation, and we’d back them up. We like the O-Vehel Commonwealth, as much as we like anybody, but we don’t want to compete with them if we don’t have to.”

“Yeah. Declaring the Envoy persona non grata is a lot more sensible than blowing him to hell. Much lower chance of having your cities slagged.” He shrugged. “We need more information.”

“I’ll check with my people,” Heather promised, meaning her agents, the small network of mid- and low-level Kirosha functionaries she’d turned into spies through a variety of means, fair and foul. The fact that none of them had given her a heads-up about the uprising concerned her a great deal. You always worried when your agents failed you; it could mean they weren’t placed high enough to find out what was going on, but also that they had chosen not to share their information with you. Either way, it was bad news. Intelligence work wasn’t easy.

It was still better than playing kill-or-be killed games. She’d save that for the Marines.

* * *

Fromm walked past the assembled men and women in his unit.

Mostly men; there were exactly two women in Third Platoon. Combat units were slightly over ninety percent male on average, for a variety of reasons, some of which he agreed with, others not so much. Mostly men in their mid-twenties to early thirties, except for the few boots in their early twenties. The NCOs were far older, on average; they might look like they were in their thirties, but most of them would be pushing fifty or sixty. The Warp Marine Corps valued experienced personnel, and there was no pressure to pick up rank or get out; some people found a comfortable niche and stayed put. They were less likely to be promoted beyond their level of competence, which had been a problem back before First Contact.

The troops’ helmet faceplates were up, but with their short hair – about half of them had ‘highs and tights,’ the rest the more relaxed medium-reg haircuts – and clean-shaven faces they all looked the same, except for variations in skin and eye color. His imp highlighted each face in turn and flashed their records. Over half of them had Combat Action Ribbons: they’d been with the unit at Romulus-Four or had seen action elsewhere. A small minority were replacements, fresh off boot camp at New Parris and assigned to the platoon just before it was sent to Jasper-Five; they’d had nine months to learn how things worked in the real world. Fitness reports showed that Gunny Obregon had worked everyone mercilessly, doing his best to keep the unit in fighting shape.

Fromm worried that all that training might be put into practice sooner rather than later.

“Looks like this billet isn’t going to be as peaceful as I expected,” he said out loud, getting a few chuckles in return. He wasn’t wearing his helmet, and they could all see the shiny spots on his forehead where Nu-Skin had been applied to cover the shrapnel wounds he’d taken. “But as long as we all do our jobs, like you did earlier today, we’ll be fine. Dismissed.”

The troops relaxed and walked away, most headed back to barracks to take off their armor, others moving to replace the two squads he had up as a quick reaction force, cocked and loaded and ready to rock. Fromm headed back to his office. Less than three hours since he’d landed, and he’d already been in a firefight, had a counseling session with Sergeant Amherst, and was about to have a meeting with the ambassador. He hadn’t had a chance to unpack his bag. His only other stop had been at the inaptly-named Battalion Aid Station, where a Navy corpsman had treated his concussion, removed the chunk of foreign matter from his biceps, and recommended eight full hours of rest. Fromm had chuckled at the suggestion.

The borrowed armor chest piece Obregon had brought for him chafed him. He needed to have the platoon’s armorer fit it for his frame, the kind of thing you expected to have time for when you arrived to assume command of your unit. Nothing about this assignment had turned out as expected. Then again, he’d seen this billet as a second chance, although he didn’t think anybody had foreseen just how challenging it would be.